Time compressed within my mind. My perception
was flipping around as my mind was conquered
by distraction. It wasn’t the blackness causing it,
but something I generated within me as I lost sensibility.
Recognition of linear time was lost. What I could comprehend
were snippets of movement as I went outward from the spire’s
lift.
Faces unconcerned with me were seen flitting left and
right while I plowed through crowds. My legs were being
driven by a lack of direction. I was just going somewhere.
There was no destination. No one seemed to notice me.
Perhaps I looked normal, but I felt lost within some other
dimension of reality.
Light would come and go. Those cropped segments of
perspicuity arriving within my conscious mind sped through
me. I had no control over anything I did. Not that I did much.
Several days charged by within seconds as I walked and walked
and walked. Darkness, light, darkness, light, darkness, light.
Perhaps three days, maybe more, but not less.
Hunger and exhaustion weren’t present. Whatever
motivated me didn’t care.
I was dragged through an unchosen path in life.
Thoughts remained a constant during that period, as if
my mind was operating on two planes of existence. The body
was in some herky-jerky mode within the time continuum. My
mind was fluid as it existed outside the stuttering recognition
of the world around my ambling frame. All I wanted to do was
to kill. I wanted to kill everyone. Everyone deserved to die, in
my reason. Anger overwhelmed me. Everyone was Mr. God’s
property and I wanted to kill that false deity. Unable to do so, I
wanted to destroy everything else around him which he valued
until I could end him forever.
Luckily I was not connected enough between body
and mind to enact my burning will. Instead I just walked and
walked without purpose.
Flickering segments of intelligibility lengthened and
normalized within my ken. Everything came back to normal
over some unknown amount of time. The trigger to my inward
healing was in front of me: a woman.
She was a good distance down the street. I wasn’t
sure who she was, but I recognized her from the last bundle of
moments in which I could perceive what I was doing. Hours
must have passed as I followed her around the city, stalked her
through crowds, trailed her movements, and watched her from
afar.
Though I couldn’t see her face very well, my body was
chasing this female because she looked quite similar to my
poor Sharon 1-323. Her body was tall and slim like Sharon,
having that pitifully fluid and feminine sense of motion about
her. Lean body was topped by brown, wavy hair down to her
shoulders. What this woman was doing as duty or recreation
wasn’t apparent to me, yet. Actually, I didn’t care. Nothing
mattered to me.
I wasn’t even sure why I was hunting her; she wasn’t
within my assignment. The pad wasn’t red on the edges yet. I
hadn’t chosen a random face from the city. My mind and body
still acted quite independent of my conscious awareness. It
was discomforting in ways.
My heart wondered what was she like, I hungered for
her face. Perhaps she was the identical twin of my Sharon.
Maybe they were related in some way. I wanted to know. I
wanted to find out more about this woman, just like the rest of
me had already been doing.
There could be a cruel humor in the possibility that
it was my Sharon 1-323. Maybe Mr. God resurrected her
somehow with his unfathomable powers. Maybe this had all
been some morbid test. Maybe my Sharon was in front of me.
Maybe my Sharon was home and waiting for me, worried to
death about where I had been.
Not true! There is no coming back from the end of life.
I knew that. I knew that. No one alive had ever come back
from dead. No one was ever held up as a miracle of life in such
a way. Deep inside me was a hope that Sharon would be the
first to revive from endless sleep.
My inner self was detached again. Images blinked past
my ability to understand.
I continued stalking the woman for some span. I saw
where she lived as she went inside her apartment.
Soon I was in my home, my lonely pair-bond
apartment. There was no Sharon 1-323. There was no Sharon
1-323. Everything was dull and silent. My eyes examined
my bonding ring for a while. Then I was back on the streets
bumbling around in the dark.
Next I saw was a lightened street; the day came back to
the city.
In front of me was that unknown woman, once more.
Those annoyingly segmented perceptions flew by as I silently
wondered what I was doing.
Perhaps this woman was Sharon, but revived and
senseless. It could have been Sharon, memory lost in her
death. She must be Sharon, I thought. I must have my Sharon
back, I demanded of corporeal existence.
Feet rushed me forward with anticipation. Someone
began talking to her: a tall man. Others were around. I hid.
When Sharon was free again, alone to wander her
own path, I began directly approaching her. Control of my
mind spliced together again. When I was several feet from my
desired mate, I was absolutely myself again. Tears were felt
streaming from my face.
Seconds later, my hands grabbed her shoulders and
spun her around.
“Tell me you are Sharon 1-323!” I told the lady.
Within my eyes was a face. It was a vaguely Sharon
face, but it wasn’t Sharon. It must be Sharon, I thought: she
had changed a little because her memories were gone, her face
held differently from a wiped mind.
She said nothing, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Tell me,” I pleaded, “Tell me you are Sharon!”
“I do not know Sharon,” the woman replied.
“Tell me, please,” I rambled, “Please, Sharon!”
“I’m not Sharon,” she continued.
“I need Sharon, you must be Sharon!”
“No, I am not.”
“Sharon!”
“No, I am not. You need help.”
“I need my Sharon!” I cried out.
“Be as it may, I am not your Sharon,” she plainly said
with sympathy in her eyes.
My eyes and mind concentrated through distracted
misperception. Everything clarified from a mental fog. The
woman wasn’t Sharon. She wasn’t my Sharon.
Whomever the woman was, she was similar to my most
cherished bonding. This woman was at least ten years beyond
Sharon’s tender age. This woman had minor creases on her
face; she was maybe even older than I. Her eyes were larger,
her lashes longer, lips thinner, face less-rounded and more
angular. Slightly different, but close.
I began sobbing.
“Let me help you,” the woman told me, “you need help.
Something is wrong within you. Tell me what has happened.”
“Sharon,” I burbled as I collapsed away from the lady
and staggered to a fountain alcove nearby.
We seated on the edge of the water trough sluicing
between tall buildings. Others watched us, but they quickly
moved onward to their duties. She and I were alone.
“You are pair-bonded,” the woman said pointing to my
bonding ring holding third and fourth finger tight at the base of
the digits near the palm of my left hand.
“I was,” my reply weakly chimed, “to Sharon. My
Sharon. She’s gone.”
“Tell me about her.”
This woman was kind. She felt something for me in
some way. Her eyes were sad and comforting in those
“You look like my Sharon,” I confessed.
My trembling hand felt the ring harnessing my middletwo
left fingers.
“Maybe you are my Sharon,” I added feverishly, “you
have to remember me!”
“I’m not your Sharon,” she told me, “I’m Eva 2-299.
You must believe me. You need help.”
Eva’s mouth was different than Sharon’s when she
smiled. So much was so similar, but so much was different.
Eva was a cruel joke of this world, laughing at me in my
torment. I became twisted with pain.
“No,” I told her with insanity creeping over my mind,
“No! You can bring her back! Maybe she will come back in
exchange for you!”
“You make no sense,” were her last words before my
hands grabbed her neck and choked her.
“You can bring her back for me!” I screamed.
Eva didn’t understand what was happening. She was in
pain but not sure what I was doing to her or what it meant. It
couldn’t have been comfortable. Regardless, she allowed me to
strangle her without struggle.
“Let her come back when you find her!” I yelled
through tears and sobs.
My perception was slipping. There was no way to tell
how much time was spent clutching and grasping at her neck.
Murderous impulse was scattered and distrait.
Next moment of conscious recognition brought her
head into my eyes, filling the scope of my vision. Kind Eva’s
fading lights became Sharon’s face. I was choking my Sharon
with my own hands. Sharon was being killed by me as I
watched.
Swiftly, I tore away from the woman’s throat and stood
back.
People were watching from the street, unable to
comprehend what was happening.
“Something is wrong,” croaked Eva as she massaged
her throat, “Stewards! I require assistance.”
Her request was heard and a call went out for the
Stewards. It increased my fear as I backed away from her. A
couple bulky guardians entered the nook, filtering through the
loose clutch of people observing us.
They went to Eva. I ran. As I sped out of the
fountain’s area, my hands pushed over several onlookers.
A few seconds later I heard a throaty voice behind me.
“Halt!” screamed one of the stewards, “Come back
here!”
I disobeyed the command. My feet fled. My mind
and body were completely one again as fear poured over my
muscles and bones to give me ultra-human endurance and
speed I never knew before.
I ran.
Within minutes they would have my data in the hands
of every steward in the world. All of the Earth would chase
me down. I would die for this transgression of Mr. God’s
commandment: I knew the penalty. All I could do was run until
I could understand a way to escape.
Seconds later, a blaring alarm screeched from all
buildings in the area.
I tore into a doorway to some building somewhere
along some street or avenue in this horrid existence. Feet could
be heard, dozens of them trampling after me as I went up and
down stairs and through hallways.
Soon I was going down. Down and down, hunted into
the ground itself by the anguished and outraged masses of
stewards and citizens set to subdue me.
Down. Down. The third level was cool and filled with
large areas stuffed with machinery. Noise of fluids rushing
through pipes and processors chopped the sound of pursuers,
obfuscated my footsteps. I wasn’t sure how far back they all
were; I had no wish or time to glance back at that point.
My escape was conceived.
Minutes later I scurried down the staircase going to the
bizarre door with the broken-graphic puzzle.
When at the bottom I constructed the symbol and
opened the door. No one was behind me yet. Before I left the
world behind, I leapt up, grabbed the light fitting I had repaired
and ripped it out, leaving the downward access stairway black.
I rapidly shut the door behind me as people began
crossing the well-lit corridor opening far above me. My
disappearance would be a mystery. Hopefully I had become
magical to those simple fools on the surface.
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