Same disclaimers as last times: Writing stories in English is a huge challenge and effort for me. I’m not satisfied with it but still wanted to upload it. I guess almost nobody is gonna read it anyway.Keep in mind: THIS IS A COMPLETELY FICTIONAL STORY! I don’t condone violence in real life.
It is hard to describe my thoughts on this walk. Especially on the third day since I took Adrian with me. The more we approached the goal of our little journey, the more depressed I got. I’m have not been used to having human company for what feels like an eternity. Seeing the young, fresh boy full of energy, I compared the physical strength he was about to reach in very few years with my own declining abilities. I did everything imaginable to counter age, to withstand the ravages of time, but now in the mid-fourties it became more and more apparent that these efforts would all be in vain on the long run. In the few days since he ran away from the watchdogs he had already adapted himself to the physical stress that had caught him off-guard at the beginning.
Nelly had told me, that keeping a teenager lacking all knowledge how to live as an outsider undetected directly next to so-called normal people, was a big risk. Sure, she is right about this. I will be at far higher risk in the first few months than I would be when staying on the run and alone. This was not the first time I had lived some months as a bum. I can only repeat myself: Age takes it’s toll and living this life isn’t feasible anymore.
It was Nelly’s voice that suddenly ripped me out of the depressive, vicious circle. “NO YOU WON’T!” she shouted. Adrian looked astonished, just as if he had a big question mark on his face. “I won’t, Nelly. I promise. Not yet.” I answered. Subconsciously I had touched my emergency exit, my way of leaving this world. A dose of Pentobarbital enough to kill twenty strong, adult humans in a painless way. “NOT ANYTIME SOON!” Nelly replied angrily. “I swear, I will not serve Adrian if you do this.” The boy asked Nelly and me multiple times what this was about, but neither of us answered the question.
Nelly changed the topic in a way that made Adrian instantly forget about the strange incident. “Please listen to me, both of you.” she started. “We will reach the suburban area where ‘M’ lives in about an hour. He is at home and awaits us.” Note, that I will not mention his real name (which does not even start with an M). “He can and will help us. The watchdogs involved in the purge of your family, Adrian, have been demoted and will face disciplinary actions for screwing up so badly, not once but twice: You escaped and they failed catching you. None of this should have happened.
But don’t get happy about this. Sadly I also have to tell you that you are now an orphan. Your mother died this morning. This fact is part of openly available data. The official cause of death is suicide. This is certainly possible since it is pretty early for a beautiful woman to die after being arrested in a purge. Normally they die some weeks later. Don’t be too sad, Adrian. It is better for her.”
We reached the suburban area in an hour. Just like Nelly had predicted. We could openly walk along the streets since Nelly had convinced M in using his influence to disable the unfiltered upload of data in a radius of about a kilometer around his house. He has certain privileges. I haven’t met him in about five years, but I recognized him in a second after he opened us the door. He now has less hair which look more gray than I remembered. His equally gray eyes have something special. I can’t explain it. He just seems to look right into me whenever we look at each other. He is one of the rare males with the genetic abnormality “HDD Memory”. The abnormality is confirmed to exist since the 19th century, but most of the time only few of the female descendants are gifted with these extreme eidedic memory abilities. To my knowledge no second man with this is alive right now.
“There is still hope, Anis.” he said answering my thoughts “We won’t see the light in our lifetime. But CLife will fail at some point. The program has a critical error and will corrupt itself and all data after a running time of 102 years and a few days. Besides me nobody has the insight into that program anymore. This knowledge is gonna die with me. Your young fellow might live long enough. I’ve adjusted the databases, Anis. You are now his stepmother. The pretended father is dead – like his real dad. Living together with your own son would be ideal, but since a genetic check can occur anytime this wasn’t a possibility. How are you going to pay me? You don’t have anything of value left, Anis. I really want to help you, but I can’t get the needed codes myself if I can’t pay. Will you give me –”
“NO!” screamed Nelly. “You can’t have my source! It is far too risky!”
M nodded, but his face showed very apparent disappointment. Adrian unpacked his boxes. Noble metals and rare earths. Businesslike M stated after checking: “Okay. Payment received. This is worth 50 sub root codes, 10 prioritized sub-root codes and one unchecked Carte Blanche circumventing CLive’s consciousness.
While uploading the most powerful code to Nelly M stated: “Ten people died for this.” Then he gave Adrian and me a big folder full of paper. “Your new identities. You got two days to learn it. Here are the physical keys to your apartment. Surveillance is online again. You may ignore it. Just go to that address and live there like normal people.”
Meeting M
The poor boy has had enough confusing input in the past hours, so I chose to not even get started on this topic. We needed all our power to make it to my contact person in two days. Hours and hours of continuous walking without saying a word. The only thing we heard was the quiet, steady sound of our feet touching the ground and the mildly stronger than normal breathing because of the constant effort of walking fast.It is hard to describe my thoughts on this walk. Especially on the third day since I took Adrian with me. The more we approached the goal of our little journey, the more depressed I got. I’m have not been used to having human company for what feels like an eternity. Seeing the young, fresh boy full of energy, I compared the physical strength he was about to reach in very few years with my own declining abilities. I did everything imaginable to counter age, to withstand the ravages of time, but now in the mid-fourties it became more and more apparent that these efforts would all be in vain on the long run. In the few days since he ran away from the watchdogs he had already adapted himself to the physical stress that had caught him off-guard at the beginning.
Nelly had told me, that keeping a teenager lacking all knowledge how to live as an outsider undetected directly next to so-called normal people, was a big risk. Sure, she is right about this. I will be at far higher risk in the first few months than I would be when staying on the run and alone. This was not the first time I had lived some months as a bum. I can only repeat myself: Age takes it’s toll and living this life isn’t feasible anymore.
It was Nelly’s voice that suddenly ripped me out of the depressive, vicious circle. “NO YOU WON’T!” she shouted. Adrian looked astonished, just as if he had a big question mark on his face. “I won’t, Nelly. I promise. Not yet.” I answered. Subconsciously I had touched my emergency exit, my way of leaving this world. A dose of Pentobarbital enough to kill twenty strong, adult humans in a painless way. “NOT ANYTIME SOON!” Nelly replied angrily. “I swear, I will not serve Adrian if you do this.” The boy asked Nelly and me multiple times what this was about, but neither of us answered the question.
Nelly changed the topic in a way that made Adrian instantly forget about the strange incident. “Please listen to me, both of you.” she started. “We will reach the suburban area where ‘M’ lives in about an hour. He is at home and awaits us.” Note, that I will not mention his real name (which does not even start with an M). “He can and will help us. The watchdogs involved in the purge of your family, Adrian, have been demoted and will face disciplinary actions for screwing up so badly, not once but twice: You escaped and they failed catching you. None of this should have happened.
But don’t get happy about this. Sadly I also have to tell you that you are now an orphan. Your mother died this morning. This fact is part of openly available data. The official cause of death is suicide. This is certainly possible since it is pretty early for a beautiful woman to die after being arrested in a purge. Normally they die some weeks later. Don’t be too sad, Adrian. It is better for her.”
We reached the suburban area in an hour. Just like Nelly had predicted. We could openly walk along the streets since Nelly had convinced M in using his influence to disable the unfiltered upload of data in a radius of about a kilometer around his house. He has certain privileges. I haven’t met him in about five years, but I recognized him in a second after he opened us the door. He now has less hair which look more gray than I remembered. His equally gray eyes have something special. I can’t explain it. He just seems to look right into me whenever we look at each other. He is one of the rare males with the genetic abnormality “HDD Memory”. The abnormality is confirmed to exist since the 19th century, but most of the time only few of the female descendants are gifted with these extreme eidedic memory abilities. To my knowledge no second man with this is alive right now.
“There is still hope, Anis.” he said answering my thoughts “We won’t see the light in our lifetime. But CLife will fail at some point. The program has a critical error and will corrupt itself and all data after a running time of 102 years and a few days. Besides me nobody has the insight into that program anymore. This knowledge is gonna die with me. Your young fellow might live long enough. I’ve adjusted the databases, Anis. You are now his stepmother. The pretended father is dead – like his real dad. Living together with your own son would be ideal, but since a genetic check can occur anytime this wasn’t a possibility. How are you going to pay me? You don’t have anything of value left, Anis. I really want to help you, but I can’t get the needed codes myself if I can’t pay. Will you give me –”
“NO!” screamed Nelly. “You can’t have my source! It is far too risky!”
M nodded, but his face showed very apparent disappointment. Adrian unpacked his boxes. Noble metals and rare earths. Businesslike M stated after checking: “Okay. Payment received. This is worth 50 sub root codes, 10 prioritized sub-root codes and one unchecked Carte Blanche circumventing CLive’s consciousness.
While uploading the most powerful code to Nelly M stated: “Ten people died for this.” Then he gave Adrian and me a big folder full of paper. “Your new identities. You got two days to learn it. Here are the physical keys to your apartment. Surveillance is online again. You may ignore it. Just go to that address and live there like normal people.”
