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  Copyright © Ignacio Salome 2017

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  Prologue

  AS SHE TURNED the last staircase corner, Alexia observed her surroundings carefully. Before her, the last run of stairs to exit to the roof was dimly lit up by the first rays of reddish morning sunlight sneaking through the door’s frame. Layers of rust covering the handrails and the hundreds of paint chips rising from the walls revealed the state of neglect some sections of the building were in. Then again, some elements of the scene could be nonexistent constructs superimposed on her senses by her sister. Her mind struggled to make the distinction and the lack of artificial lighting in the staircase only made it worse. Taking a deep breath, she pushed back her blue-framed glasses and grabbed on to the handrail to continue the climb, trying her best to ignore the intense headache.

  Not a construct, she thought when rust stuck to her hand. She absentmindedly tried to wipe it off on the side of her uniform, staining the otherwise impeccable white and blue dress. There was an Exit sign above the door, along with other warnings to keep off the roof. When she reached it, she found the push bar on it was rusted in place. Time and again she tried to unlock it to no avail until she put the weight of her small frame against it, eventually forcing its mechanism to give way and open the door which loudly ground its rusted hinges. A faint smell of vegetation rushed in, pulled by the vacuum of the stairway. It was a pleasant surprise as she did not expect it to be carried all the way up there from the surface by the gentle breeze of the atmosphere contained within the protection of the Citadel.

  For a moment, she stood under the door frame to catch her breath. High above in the sky, morning sunlight filtered through the crimson energy barrier, illuminating the roof with shades of red, its slow downwards ripples projecting dancing patterns on the floor. The roof was littered with a mess of abandoned items. Office equipment, boxes, books. It looked as if they had been thrown out there back when the building was repurposed and no one ever bothered to tidy up. Still recovering from the climb, she looked down to check on her uniform which at that point was ruined. Here and there she tried to shake off the rust and dust with no luck. Eventually she recovered some stamina and walked away from the roof exit.

  Moments later, she was standing on the edge of the rooftop. A sharp rush of vertigo overtook her senses, forcing her to take deep breaths to calm down and regain balance. Ten stories below on the surface, hundreds of white structures the size of warehouses were carefully arranged in rows that ran to the edge of the habitable zone miles away where they met the perimeter of the half-spherical barrier. She took off the glasses and stored them in her side pocket. The lightheadedness receded at the expense of her clarity of vision which blurred slightly.

  “What are you doing up here?” Aurora asked from behind.

  Startled, Alexia turned and faced her twin sister who was standing a few feet away with her arms crossed and a bored expression on her face. They had met months ago, and yet it was still unsettling for her just how alike they looked. With the exception of their hair which Alexia kept tied up in a practical ponytail and Aurora let run down her back free, they wore the same white and blue uniform and their facial features were identical. Although Aurora had no need for glasses.

  “I needed to get away for a little while, that’s all,” Alexia replied, feeling her voice trembling.

  “Get away from what? Your duties?”

  A faint breeze ran past Alexia, still cold from the previous night and she held her arms to her chest for warmth and looked away. “Being a Controller is not what I thought it would be,” she then replied.

  “You’re a Controller at age 12,” said her twin with a subtly condescending tone. “You’re officially the smartest girl in the Citadel. People look up to you with envy, just like you always wanted.”

  “No,” Alexia interrupted. “I just want to help, it’s nothing like that!”

  “Yeah, sure. You realize you can’t lie to me, do you?”

  “I know,” Alexia replied, looking at Aurora in the eyes as she felt fear transition to anger. “I know you’re always there, you don’t have to remind me.”

  “Alright, enough. Just go back downstairs,” Aurora said, signaling with her head. “We both know you’re not going to jump.”

  “No,” said Alexia as she put her arms down and her hands curled into fists, her breathing speeding up from the adrenaline rush. “I want you to stay away from me.”

  Aurora shook her head in astonishment, as if she would have never expected her to muster the courage to stand up in defiance. Then she scoffed and smiled as she said “really? Or else what?”

  Or else, Alexia thought. Her sister was right. As long as she could remember, all she ever wanted was to become a Controller. Everything she had gone through, all the training, the classes and the friends she had lost led to that moment when she realized to be a Controller meant to sacrifice more than she had ever imagined. And to be at the mercy of her twin. It hadn’t even been a year since she had earned the title and still she couldn’t picture an entire lifetime ahead living with it.

  Or else, she repeated internally. There was no way to force Aurora to leave her alone. Looking back towards the edge of the roof, she realized there was a way. A permanent way. With a certain peace she hadn’t felt in a long time, she faced Aurora and smiled back as she prepared to take a step back onto nothing.

  Alarmed, Aurora uncrossed her arms and locked eyes with her sister’s.

  Time slowed down to a crawl for Alexia as her ears rang with a disorienting pitch. A shroud of darkness blurred her vision then blacked it out completely. Pain ran from the back of her neck to the temples which pulsated with the accelerated rhythm of her heartbeat. Pressure behind the eyes forced her to close them shut. Suddenly and with a life of their own, her limbs shifted body weight to the front, causing her to lose what little balance remained and fall on her stomach.

  Slowly, Alexia began to regain control as Aurora’s influence retreated. Through the veil of her blurred vision, she saw her twin walking closer with a calm demeanor. She stopped then kneeled next to her. Still weakened, Alexia sat up clumsily as she leaned on her right arm to keep balance through the lingering dizziness so they could be at almost the same eye level. It hadn’t been that long since the last time Aurora had forced her way in for control of her body.

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m stuck with you as much as you’re stuck with me,” said Aurora.

  Feeling something warm under her nose, Alexia reached for it then gasped when she found blood on her fingers. She had seen this before. Memories of the friends who did not survive the Controller Program rushed through her mind.

  When she turned up to face her sister, Aurora had begun dissolving away as she usually did, much like a puzzle randomly losing pieces that rapidly disappeared into thin air. The dizziness became too much to bear and Alexia surrendered to it, falling back on the floor, lifting centuries old dust. In the last seconds before losing consciousness, she saw Aurora completely vanish and behind, a man wearing a similar lab coat as hers come out of the staircase.

  “Dad…” she managed to whisper then darkness enveloped her.

  Alexia

  10 years later

  LONG AGO IT had become daily routine for Alexia to wake up minutes before the alarm went off. For a moment she lay under the bed covers trying to rem
ember the nightmare that had disturbed her sleep just hours before but nothing came to mind. No scenes, or places or situations, only a distressing sensation of impending danger, as if being stalked by an unknown entity. She sighed then curled into a fetal position, wondering for how long more was Aurora going to keep inducing the disturbing dreams she appeared too fond of keeping abstract. There was nothing she could do but wait for her sister to grow bored of the newly found bullying tactic.

  Just as her mind was beginning to drift away back to sleep, the alarm clock by her bedside came to life, displaying 0700 on its LCD and urging her to get up and go on with her day. She turned it off then as usual, she sat up and scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary. Reddish sunlight coming in through the window on the right illuminated the apartment bedroom just enough for her to make up the outlines of the furniture and other features in it in it. Alexia couldn’t recall the last time Aurora had placed audiovisual constructs there but once had been enough to always keep her guard up. There was the nightstand on the left of her bed with the alarm clock, her blue framed glasses and a tablet on it. Directly in front, a closet with one of its slide doors open where her lab uniforms hung inside. On the right of the bed, a simple vanity table with a mirror and a comb on it.

  The room appeared unchanged at first sight so she put on her glasses and grabbed the tablet which she brought up from sleep mode for a quick check of Citadel status. All system indicators were on the green. There were no urgent matters to worry about and even if there were, Aurora would resolve them in real time but checking every now and then still gave Alexia a sense of contributing something. Perhaps, she figured, one day she would be able to actually do something that would merit her owning the title of Citadel Controller.

  Satisfied, Alexia put the tablet back on the nightstand and stood up then took off the glasses and her nightgown which she tossed down the laundry chute built into the wall. She walked in the bathroom and turned on the shower, letting the hot water stream fully wake her up.

  Moments later, she stepped out wearing a towel and slid the closet door all the way open then picked a fresh uniform from the many identical ones hanging there. Her apartment was a small one-bedroom with austere furnishings but contained some of the best kept artifacts from the time before people lived in citadels. A large, high resolution television set mounted on the wall adorned the living room, connected to a digital storage box that contained several years’ worth of movies, music and shows. The set was one of the last functioning entertainment systems but she didn’t care much for it so it went for the most part unused. The kitchen was equipped with several food processing appliances which mostly collected dust just like the electronics in the living room. Very few Citadel residents were privileged enough to know the comforts of having entire private quarters for themselves. After getting dressed, she sat on the small bench in front of the vanity desk and tied up her hair in the usual ponytail. For a moment, she observed the mirror. Without glasses, the blurry reflection of Aurora seemed to look right back at her. She then put them on, slightly distancing her appearance away from her twin’s.

  Just like every morning, her breakfast consisted of a bowl of dried cereals and soymilk. Electronic ration coupons for more varied pantry items piled up and expired in her email inbox regularly. Being a member of the elite class of the Citadel granted her access to the best possible list of grocery rations, even including fish grown in the underground farms and certain rare fruits, luxuries the average citizen would rarely get to taste their whole lives. And yet, knowing she didn’t deserve any of it, there was no incentive to enjoy them. As she took a spoonful of the bland cardboard-like high fiber cereal, she once again checked the tablet and was surprised to find an email in her personal inbox. Tapping on the touchscreen, she opened it to read its contents:

  From: Mark Stevens ([email protected])

  To: Alexia Sommers ([email protected])

  CC: Maya Garland ([email protected])

  Title: Convergence session scheduled for today.

  Good morning, Alexia. Last night your friend Maya over at Francisco Citadel requested a convergence session which we successfully scheduled today for 0900. There is a firmware upgrade she would like to share. Something to do with power routing, I don’t know. It’s the kind of sorcery only you controllers get :) We’re going to be prepping the chamber for you in the meantime. There’s no need to come in until that time. See you later.

  -END OF MESSAGE-

  Alexia closed the email client and continued eating her breakfast as she wondered how she was going to spend the next hour and a half. After finishing, she washed the bowl and left her apartment. The elevators were only a short walk away from her door. After getting there, she pushed the call button and stood in wait, recalling it had been months since the last time she had been outside. When the cab arrived, she got in and without a second thought, pushed the button for the lobby. Her apartment was in the third floor so it didn’t take long for the elevator doors to open again. She stepped out and made for the exit.

  “Good morning, Controller,” a male voice startled her. She turned and realize it was the security guard sitting behind the lobby desk who had stood up to greet her.

  “Oh, didn’t see you there. Good morning,” Alexia said, returning the greeting with a smile while trying to remember his name which never came to her. He returned the smile then sat back down and so she resumed her walk.

  As she left the building, Alexia breathed in the fresh morning scent of vegetation. Farm workers were just leaving their underground homes and emerged on the surface to go about their days. There were large structures containing thousands of aeroponic farms as far as the eye could see. Originally designed for temporary housing in the event of disaster, the sturdy canvas structures with aluminum skeletons and translucent roofs were still surprisingly well preserved since pre-Sync times. Scattered in between the farms, a few concrete buildings just like hers rose above them. Buildings that housed government officials and operations managers amongst other Citadel elites but not the farmers, they lived in one of the many subterranean levels underneath. Miles away, massive perimeter bastions delineated the boundaries of the habitable zone and separated it from the deadly wastes outside where there was no breathable atmosphere. Beyond the barrier, only the faint outline of mountain ranges could be seen. Humming in the distance, at the center of the Citadel stood the tower which served as its central bastion. A constant column of bright red energy shot out of it skyward where it met the barrier to feed it and close the circuit with the perimeter bastions, forming its characteristic half-sphere shape.

  Alexia walked towards the one concrete bench on the sidewalk she had used before, as the others were too far away and it was hard to tell if they had been placed outside of the area she was allowed to be in. Some of the streets still possessed leftover traffic signs and electrical grid poles. The rest had been taken down along with the cars that once occupied the roads to repurpose the electronics in them or smelt their component metals in the underground foundries. Most structures from the pre-Sync city that at one time had thrived on Citadel grounds had been demolished to make room for the farms but the asphalt streets remained for the most part untouched. A subtle but deep humming that dominated most other sounds in the surface emanated from the bastions, interrupted now and then by construction machinery working in the distance as they dug down to build more underground dwellings. As monotonous as the scenery was, Alexia still enjoyed her walks there, if only to take a break away from the lab. Smiling, she sat down and closed her eyes, allowing herself a few minutes of peace. She didn’t notice the elderly woman and the young boy that were crossing the street until they were standing right in front of her.

  “Hi!” said the boy as he waved cheerfully.

  Alexia opened her eyes, startled by the sudden interruption and observed them for a few seconds. The two of them appeared to be farmers judging by their patchwork clothing and the light green hue of their skin
which was caused by daily exposure to aeroponic nutrients suspended in the air inside the farms. They stood there looking at her with curious admiration. The smile vanished from Alexia’s face as she felt her heart racing, struggling to figure out if the visitors were real or just actors superimposed on her senses by Aurora.

  “Hello,” Alexia nervously returned the greeting. She stood up and shook the woman’s hand then patted the boy’s head, as usual having to judge carefully when a new person or object were in close proximity. Touching was a good test to separate reality from Aurora’s mental constructs. Her sister still didn’t seem to know how to simulate weights or textures.

  “Controller Sommers! It’s so nice to meet you in person!” the woman said, her voice wheezing from the damage done to her respiratory system by the same chemical cloud that tinted their skin. A wide variety of plant life thrived in it at the cost of the health of the farmers whose bodies deteriorated from the inside out.

  Based on the unfamiliar tone of their voices, the touch check and other subtle things like the accurate angle of their shadows, Alexia concluded these two people were most likely real.

  “Oh… please, call me Alexia,” she said a little bit more relaxed, her voice as soft-spoken as usual.

  “Alexia, what a pretty name. Pretty just like you, dear child,” the woman replied with a wide smile.

  “How does it feel like!?” the boy interrupted with enthusiasm. “You’re controlling the Citadel right now. Can you make the ripples move faster?” he asked, pointing at the barrier.

  Alexia looked up and observed the barrier’s lazy downwards rippling motion, wondering if that was even possible. In theory, the automated nature of the stemlink could be overridden by strong enough conscious thoughts much like breathing. However, as tightly integrated as the Citadel systems were with her encephalon, there was no abstract equivalent to speeding up barrier generation in her mind. This was more of a question for Aurora but Alexia would prefer it went unanswered rather than asking her.