The Misprint Lie
He wasn’t supposed to be allowed here – he was not family, just a friend, and even then not a close one. Years had passed since that Misprint, but the Code was not to be amended. Our paths should not have crossed and yet…
He noticed me waking and leaned forward, squeezing my hand; the service light went on over the headrest. I looked at where his fingers interlaced with mine – dark red rash ran from his knuckles up to the wrist and disappeared under the sleeve. The first signs we had violated the Code. His thumb stroked my hand, almost touching the metallic ripple of the Fate Bracelet. The chip lighted it orange, warning. But Aidan did not let go.
“I was holding your hand, when you died in the spaceport, and I swear I felt your life pressed against my palm, sipping into my bracelet at that moment. Am I crazy?” His brows came together; he sounded almost reproaching.
And I had thought they have resuscitated me. I caught sight of his Bracelet – it gave no warning.
“I am scared that if I let go of your hand you would die, irrevocably.”
It was my time to raise eyebrows. They had let him in because Aidan refused to let go of my hand. I gasped. Then.
“Would it make the difference?” I pressed lightly at the new developed rash on his hand. “Your Bracelet might be silent, but your body knows the enemy.”
“I’ve been thinking. What if it was not Fate? What if they simply did not want me to re-write the app?”
I frowned.
“I wanted to make it so it would help you look for the True Code.”
“I thought you never believed in it.”
“It’s a scary thing to think your Fate is lying to you, but then statistically computers error not less than humans. I don’t think I would feel your life if our Fates were contrary.”
“But you cannot re-make the app now. It’s in their control.”
“Well,” Aidan shrugged and pressed his palm even harder into mine, “I cannot change the app which builds the routes. What I can do is dismantle the current map.”
“If you want to do this, I believe I have something I stole from Jenkans that can help you. The faux matrix.”
His eyes went big. “No wonder they chased you all throughout the galaxy. Only you would have an idea to steal from the Fate-Forgers.”
“They make it work somehow, which means there are beads of truth in their matrix. After all these years, I believe the True Code is spread over all the Fates and Codes that exist. I am not even sure it is retrievable.”
“And yet you try.”
I looked at my Fate Bracelet still glowing orange, then on the spur of the moment brought it close to his. There was a flash, some sparks, a small fire, which extinguished before any damage was done to our wrists. When the smoke faded the Bracelets were tied. The rash on Aidan’s hand was quickly disappearing and the air immediately above our hands had a different colour to it.
“There is another view and I want to see it.”
“You will have to do it with me,” he raised our merged wrists. “I knew I felt your life in me.”
Written by inklore
More:
The Hall Of Fathers
I brush the non-existing dust off the skirt of my pink tulle dress and scratch my left wrist. My small, glittering shoe finally crosses the line. The scanner in the floor reads my approach and the tall doors of riveted, lacquered wood spread open. I enter the Hall of Fathers.
Graffiti Ghost
I arrive in the street cramped with huge lit signs of various shops and restaurants. There is a wrapper stuck to the sole of my trekking boot already. My shoulders ache – the trip from the airport included a lot of walking. A smell of hot bibimbap comes from the nearest door, enticing me to go in, take off my backpack – which is heavy with everything I own – and order a bottle of soju on top of everything.
The Shifting Tattoo
I feel it before I manage to see it and almost drop the coffee cup into the sink. I could nearly mistake it for the scald of the too hot water if it didn’t run up my forearm instead of down. It is rather precise as well, like tiny piranhas biting their way along the thin paths, very artistically. And when I look down – there it is. Or better say isn’t. Parts of my tattoo gone, vanished without a trace.
Ye and I…
The crack on the glass of the observation deck was branching fast, turning into a cave painting. Panic seized my heart, and my legs wouldn’t move to reach for the alarm button. There I was, glued to the floor in my customary observer’s position, knowing what awaited me and yet doing nothing to prevent it, to save myself.
Through The Hole
I can feel the layers of threads, but behind them the outer envelope is rock-hard. Each time I try to get through, my thin legs are sucked into the silk of the cocoon. Each time I pull back in horror, scared they would get trapped inside. Yet I cannot stop. It gets more and more cramped in here, and the air is stale, sparse. My new body wraps around me too tightly.
Karma On Pause
Yrid was escorted down the long white corridor by a lovely blonde-haired man. His features looked even more perfect when she tried to put her own face next to his in her mind’s eye – the aligned symmetry, the enhanced colours of the irises, the glow of the smoothest skin she’d ever seen. Not that she was very much surprised – every publicity material about Karma Inc. mentioned the high clinic standards, not only when it came to R&D and equipment, but the whole aesthetics.
Hobble Forward
I tense the muscles in my right foot and half-hop, half-skitter forward. Quick pause, then repeat. After a few steps I get the rhythm and the speed, and manage to climb the ramp with only a little bit of help from my wings, which too are clipped. This is an extra measure, because I am attached to a kid – they don’t want to traumatise her by having to use the disintegrating button. I have a few words to say about that, but my programming blocks them.
Phantom Heist
The things are finally quiet, and I glide down the corridors to the Egyptian room. I feel a bit nervous, so at one point I stop minding the cabinets and the walls and simply go through them. The benefits of being a ghost!
Switch
From my vantage point I look for any moving shadows, but they are always twigs or bushes, not even a stray cat. When I hear a rustling, I turn one-hundred-eighty degrees, but it’s just a chocolate wrapper carried around by the ecstatic wind, which seems to enjoy the empty streets. I wait and keep looking. They must be somewhere.
#FFA500
Their skin was a terrible orange colour. Still. If they could, they would peel it off and dump into the nearest trash bin.
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