Resisting Emotion

Chapter Three -Marlie

The Netport clicks off, the screen turning black. I can feel the dry tear tracks down my face, but now I'm filled with a burning anger and I'm sure most of our city is too. I stand, tuck my Miniport into my jean pocket and head to the adjacent room. My right leg tingles from being left crossed for so long but all I can focus on is the anger. As I enter the small bathroom a 'beep' sounds as the port in the pocket confirms that I have left the living room. On my current timetable, I am required to be connected to the Netport from 3pm until 3am, with assigned breaks. No more and no less. Daryl is on this schedule too, so is everyone in the district. We are then given set eating and free time. Although it is also stated we must rest from 3am until 10am, this is only advisory. Lucky for me because I spend many hours after a season discussing it with my relay group. I will generally work on 4 hours sleep and a whole lot of caffeine. The time in which we enter sleep is advisory, although 10am is the district wake up and there is no way around that.

In the bathroom I splash my face and refill my glass with cold water before gulping it down in one, and topping it up again. I beep back through the doorway and head back into the living area and flop onto my bean-bag mountain. Even if I tried the Netport wouldn't turn on, so I flick on the lamp and wiggle my console out of my pocket. A direct message from Daryl along with a continuous stream of buzzes from the Relay appear. I check Daryl's message first and it tells me to go to the relay, so I square the screen over into the group.

Darylsaurus: Anyone here?

Jessie: I'm here. Wow...

Darylsaurus: Can you believe they would do that to us?

Tomo: Wait up, where is Marl?

Jessie: Did you guys tear up? I sure as hell did.

Marlie-Moo: I'm here. Jess you should have seen me. My face is still frozen from the tears!

Tomo: Guys don't cry.

Darylsaurus: I may have dobbed us in on that one Tom, Marl knows I broke down like a baby.

And so the stream went on, the discussions, the emotions, all sent back to the centre for filtering until at 5:20am we all crash and agree to resume in the morning.