UNCHANGED (Unremembered #3) - Excerpt

2: Amiss

I take the long route back to the Residential Sector, weaving through the glinting Aerospace hangars whose surfaces always distort my reflection in unsettling ways. Turning me into a disfigured monster with one giant eye and no neck.

I’m one of the few people who walk around the compound. Most people prefer to travel by hovercart, due to the heat and distance between sectors, but I actually enjoy walking. The distances don’t bother me and my body was designed to withstand severe climates. The weather-resistant clothing helps, too.

I used to like to walk the perimeters, alongside the VersaScreens so I could see the world on the other side. But ever since the announcement of the upcoming Unveiling, the world on the other side is populated with news crews and protesters and people wanting to steal a peek inside our walls.

Even though I know they can’t see through the screens—they’re programmed for one-way visibility—it still frightens me to walk past them. I can feel their energy in the air like buzzing flies around a dead carcass. There’s a franticness about their desperation that unnerves me.

Dr. A says that’s normal. I’m allowed to be afraid.

“Fear doesn’t equate to weakness,” he told me. “It equates to obedience. You want to be obedient, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I want to serve the Objective.”

He smiled. “We all do. And your distrust of strangers will keep you safe.”

I know I won’t be able to stay hidden behind those walls for much longer, though. The Unveiling is in two days. Then they will see my face. Then they will know me.

And that is the part that frightens me most of all.

I cut across the Agricultural Sector, making a wide arc around the cottonwood tree in the corner. I’ve never liked that tree. It looks like a pudgy old ogre with too many twisted limbs. And when the sun splinters through the branches at just the right angle, I swear I can hear it screaming. A shadowy, piercing sound that vanishes the second I turn around. Like the ghost of an echo.

The delicious scents of the freshly-grown herbs waft from the vents of the hydroponic dome as I walk. Dr. A says one day we won’t need to grow food at all. Computers will be able to engineer molecules from raw materials and shape them into anything we want to eat.

“Kind of like we did with you,” he likes to say, as though I’m a hot plate of superberry flatcakes, molecularly processed to order.

I like when Dr. A talks about the future. It implies that the Objective will be a success. And really, we’re not that far off. Diotech has already mastered the engineering of synthetic meat after the government outlawed the breeding of livestock for food seven years ago. I learned about it from one of my uploads about agricultural history.

From here, with my enhanced vision, I can see all the way to northwest gate, the main entrance of the compound, where the majority of the media crews have gathered, hoping to gain access or corner someone for an interview to put on the Feed. I know they will never be allowed inside. Director Raze’s security force is top notch.

“They’ll have to step over my dead body before I let them get near you, Princess,” he says to me. Always with a wink.

As I exit the Agricultural Sector and near the polished metallic archway of the Medical Sector, I stop as a familiar nagging sensation starts to tickle the pit of my stomach. I turn around, almost expecting to find someone standing behind me, but there’s no one there.

Yet, the feeling persists.

I spin in a slow circle, letting my flawless eyes zero in on every planted flower, every curved ceiling of every building, each individual blade of grass along the pathway. I can feel my shoulders tighten, my body clench.