these bountiful silences

5 // moon

"Don't you wish that you could be more than who you are?"

Chapter 5 // moon

There's a round thing in the sky, that sometimes hides in shadows, turning and flipping, only sometimes showing it's full face.

It steals light, supposedly. Gemma talked to him about it one night, she said that the white of the disc and the halo of light it filters through the black of the night is artificial, reflected. Harry likes the idea of it, wants to touch it. Wants to know more about it.

But that's impossible, the disc is miles and miles away; untouchable.

Harry leans his head back against the chair, looking up at the stale, milky light and the stars stare right back at him.

"Hi," someone says and Harry starts forward.

He looks over and meets eyes with a brunet man leaning against the the divide between their balconies.

The man's bracelet is flickering a bright 03 in the night. Harry has four left today (he's spent the whole day inside his own flat).

Harry nods at the man, and the man smiles - eyes crinkling, nose scrunching up.

"Harry, right?" he asks.

He nods, his own eyebrows pulling together.

"Here." The man reaches into his trouser pocket and throws a small rectangle into Harry's lap.

Harry picks it up and tries to use the light of the disc to examine it. There's words in weird blocks embedded in the silver lay of the rectangle.

Harry looks up, trying to search the man's eyes, but it's too dark and shadows fall over them.

"What's this?" he asks.

The man just shakes his head, furrows his eyebrows pointedly at Harry, then leaves the balcony. Leaving Harry alone with the dark night wrapped around him like a blanket.

The rectangle is a port, Harry learns when he slips back into the artificial warmth of his flat, he angles the port towards his lamp. Scouting Gen. 13, the script embedded in the meddle reads. It's senseless - odd. Harry presses his thumb onto the grid anyways, making the import pop up from the top.

He puts the port into the cavity, and the telly bursts to life. The couch is soft and worn when he sinks into it, and Dusty jumps up into his lap, mewling and nuzzling her furry head into his side. He reaches a blind hand out to scratch between her ears when the anthem seeps through the speakers.

"Join us," a slightly familiar male voice says, the timbre filling the walls of his flat.

The screen goes from a light black to a large panoramic view of The Movement's boundaries. The camera skims over pods (the cities that are shaped in circles), flipping over the high-rising buildings and the bright blue of the bodies of water. There are rolling hills separating each pod, with high, green trees reaching towards the sky. The camera keeps moving, until it stops on a certain building and surges down. The building doesn't have a sign, just an arrow pointing upwards nestled in the middle of a circle.

The camera stays there, for nearly a minute. And then the whole video starts going backwards, starting at the arrow and panning until it's a view of the whole entire Movement colony.

"Join us," the voice says again.

The screen fades to black, after a few seconds, a date flickers onto the screen. The date is for next week.

"What?" he murmurs to himself.

He has half of a mind to grab the port and his scribe and go next door, to ask the brunet man why he gave this and what it means. But it's five minutes past curfew now.