Cogito

CHAPTER 1

I think, in a way, that we're all kind of like flowers.

When we're born, we're small, fragile, and at least for a moment, nameless. We're born, and then we grow. We turn from these small, fragile, nameless things into little people with our own unique characteristics and identities. We're all similar, but never the same, though we're all born from the same seed.

And then, for a while, we wait. We wait to blossom. We wait for something better. We wait for someone to love us, for something to come up, for some realization to hit us like a slap in the face and wake us from our dreams. Like flowers, we wait to bloom.

Flowers don't grow where I come from. It's too dark and polluted. We only keep flowers behind computer screens, frozen in photos like warm memories we just can't let go. People pretend they don't care about it. But I know they do. They have to.

Maybe if they saw it, they'd remember the way they lean in the wind like little baby dancers in tiny pirouettes, or the way they feel, like a plush fabric, fuzzy and maybe a little worn. Maybe they'd remember the sweet smell of a garden upwind. Maybe things would be better if they did. Maybe, maybe not.

I think about this as I sit down in my dark office for the umpteenth time. Monitors flicker to life around me as I turn on the computer. I'm greeted by the Windsor AI company boot-up screen, mimicked 30 times over on 30 different screens. I squint and shield my eyes against their cumulative glare. The computer loads, and begins searching the only program it has installed for the location of a file. This file is the focal point of my existence. It's where all of her data is kept - this girl I've had to observe for the last few years. Everything I do now centers around her and how she's doing. And I don't mind at all, to be honest.

She's pretty damn amazing.

Maybe if they met her. She'd show them. She showed me, after all, and that's definitely saying something. Maybe. But they won't ever meet her. Either way, as it stands now, she's just a girl inside a computer, waiting to bloom, never knowing that her reality - the soil in which that flower thrives - is nothing but a fantasy living at the mercy of a power button.

And her name is Anna Hawkins.

With her hair tossed over her shoulder and her hand hanging out the open window of her Jeep, she drives out of the woods and into a field. All around, white magnolias fan out like a freshly-washed linen bed-sheet laid over a sea of golden-tipped grass to sun-dry. Dust spirals up in little clouds behind her tires. The engine growl and dirt road crunch barely mask the sound of her voice fused with rock music blasting out of an old car radio.

She slows down where the road curves against the field, and pulls to a stop on the side. As she climbs out of the car, she throws her camera strap around her neck.

Anna comes out from around the Jeep. A hearty breeze sweeps over the field, carrying away stray flower petals like sideways raindrops, twisting and twirling on the wind. Anna puts her hand in front of her face to block her hair from flying over her eyes and grabs her camera with the other.

Once the wind has passed, she's stepped into her element. She lines up a shot of the field, adjusting zoom and angle. Her brow furrows with the exertion. Her fingers rise the way a mantis poses its claws before an attack. Then...

Click.

As Anna lets down the camera to observe her handiwork, her lips flex into a wide grin. She pushes her fingers back through her hair and sighs. As if being rewarded for her art, nature itself returns to her a subtle symphony of birdsong and shifting flower-tides. She spreads her arms wide to take it all in and twirls until she falls on her back, caught softly and with open arms by the pillowy earth.