Amaryah's Awakening

Chapter Two

Earth 2606 AD

Okay, thought Amaryah who was sitting on a dilapidated stone chair on level one as she looked at persons going about their daily lives. She had enough money for one ration a day for a week, maybe she could find another job before then. She scoffed at her own optimistic inner voice. There were only engineering and grease monkey jobs available, everything else had been taken over by androids and robots, and she couldn't even be a pleasurer. She was sure robots did it best and had no desire to enter into that field just yet but still added it to her mental list just in case it became a necessity when she was starving. Because she would be starving, eventually.

She looked at the mothers hustling around in their long, tattered duster coats, holding tightly onto the tiny hands of children who were old enough to know they'd been born into the wrong level and would have to work hard for the rest of their lives while those of levels five and up benefited from their labor. A sorrowful wail drifted up from across the street and people darted away from the noise and into parlors or businesses to flee. Amaryah realized what it meant when the sharp cloying stench of sickness and death reached her, and she saw the cleansers gliding toward the housing container that had emitted the wail.

The cleansers were shaped like men, with two arms and two legs, but that was where the similarities ended. Their arms and legs ended in a mechanically enhanced bulky limb that had a dull silver sheen to it, accentuated by red wiring, the arms having needle like fingers and feet being boot shaped. The male human body that these enhancements were added too was almost skeletal and wiry in appearance, with the ribs easily countable and hexagonal implants visible through the skin along the spine of the bot. The head of the robot was completely metallic, in the shape of a blunt hammer head. At the back was a cylindrical protrusion that acted as the sensor of the robot, no eyes or ears needed. The disconcerting "head" was attached to the neck area with tubes and wires that formed an intertwined system that kept the robot's humanoid body alive.

Amaryah watched in mute horror as the two cleansers converged on the home and dragged a slumped man into the streets, a woman screaming hysterically, her face distorted in anguish held onto the man's leg in a vice like grip. The woman's terror washed over her, coating her mouth in a metallic flavor that reminded her of blood. Amaryah silently hoped that the woman would let go, the cleansers were not capable of mercy and would kill her in order to remove the man, especially on the lower levels of the dome. Their one purpose was to remove the unwanted of society, this was only supposed to include the sick, but the lower levels knew the cleansers removed those even without any illness signs and once a person was removed they never came back. Amaryah suspected that death would be the least of the worries of someone who was taken, she knew there were worse things than death that the government was more than capable of.

She ran into a nearby parlor pushing out the feelings of the woman that had invaded her mind, she really hated when she was able to read and feel the emotions of people, it was nothing more than a burden. When the cleansers left with the man in tow and the woman who was now slumped between them, life returned to the streets with people casting worried glances in the direction of the raided container. They'd all become accustomed to the life of fear and constant guarding.

Amaryah breathed out sharply and gripped her beer tightly, she needed to find a way to make credit or else she'd starve to death or get picked up by a cleanser. She'd rather the former. She walked back to the elevator that took her down to the base level where she and other dirt-poor persons lived, even lower than the "unwanted" in level one. Her steps echoed as she jogged through the poorly lit pathways that lead to her diminutive home-container. Once there, she eased out of her overalls and chucked them in a corner - they'd never be used again - and stood naked in front of her mottled mirror that her mother had left behind. She was losing weight. Her body was petite, lined with wiry muscle due to her hard work in the plant. Sighing she let down her hair and was surprised when it hung past her shoulder blades -with hardly enough time to look in the mirror before and after work due to exhaustion this was the first time in months. Her loosely coiled deep rust colored hair - a gift from her mother - complimented her bronze skin and Amaryah knew if she wasn't scarred and didn't have two weirdly different colored eyes, she'd at least be considered pleasing to look at. Her gaze settled on her face, the scars that ran across it, one from her chin to just over her top lip on the left side and two others, much more jagged and violent under the left pale grey eye, the eye that unsettled everyone with its unexpectedness. She traced them with her fingers, one of the scars was longer, it had narrowly missed her eye but bisected her left eyebrow.