Society: Emergence
The dumpster contained, exclusively, clear plastic waste. Shame. There appeared to be no food there either. With a sigh, I moved away from the metal container of grime and out of the back alley from which it was situated. As I merged with a crowd, I threw a hood up over my head in an attempt to hide myself. I knew it didn’t matter much. After all, none of these people would expect a Test-Class Synthoid like me to be walking the streets. Our kind was born, raised, and kept in the laboratory city of Clon—a name deprived of creativity, all things considered.
Jolting me from my thoughts, a man bumped into me, yelling crudely and cussing at me in some language I didn’t understand before telling me I needed to watch where I was walking in English. I clenched my fist but held my tongue, apologizing without turning back to look at him. I couldn’t afford to bring attention to myself. While it was true that no one would think to give me too hard a look normally it was also true that if I happened to cause a commotion and got the police involved they would know I was an escapee. Test-Class Synthoids aren’t supposed to leave Clon.
After this thought, I had the misfortune of stepping into a puddle below my feet, soaking the cheap shoes I had stolen on my escape. Looking down I saw myself, reflected in the murky puddle: dirty brown hair, dark bloodshot eyes with horrid bags, and pale skin. I looked like every other Test-Class Synthoid: a biologically engineered human deprived of basic rights. Us test types were used to find cures for diseases, as well as to gain a better understanding of the functions/reactions of the human body. We were called scientific miracles: beings that had allowed many medical breakthroughs whilst not wasting a precious human life. The bottom line was that we weren’t considered human. We were something else.
With no money and no idea of how this city, which I would learn later was called Avaricia, operated on a functional level, I didn’t risk stepping inside any establishments. I knew that this place wasn’t friendly to me, and that was enough. With no other options, and when nobody was looking, I ducked into a back alley. It was getting late, the pale moon shining down over the city as I felt the tiredness grab hold of my eyelids, attempting to force them down. There was a dumpster, and seeing as it wasn’t much better of a sleeping quarter than my cell at Clon, I quickly passed out behind it, shaded from the moon and those who passed by on the street.
…
I awoke to a hand pressing against my neck, triggering my fight or flight reflex. Acting as if the touch was a mortar blast my body flung itself away from it, smashing my head against the brick of a building behind me, leaving me with a headache. Focusing on the present, my eyes flickered before singling out the person who had touched my neck.
He was a tall, slimly built, blonde man with blue eyes that sparkled with amusement and a labcoat that reached the ground not unlike a trenchcoat.
“Mornin’, Test-Class Synthoid.” He smiled at me. “Aren’t I lucky I got to you before the authorities did?” He said it as if it was fact, and yet I wasn’t so sure.
“G-Get away from me!” My yell was a contradictory whisper, as I didn’t want to alert other people to what was going on.
The man laughed. “You don’t think things through, do you? You won’t survive another day in this place. Your escape from Clon was met with quite a bit of fanfare.” He leaned in closer, his mouth right up to my ear, his hot breath against my neck. “You’ve caused quite a stir among researchers. Most are calling your escape a modern miracle.” I couldn’t move, his voice was so commanding it was as if my body was paralyzed. He pulled away and smiled a smile that would make the devil jealous. “So, do you wanna come to my place?”
“What’s the catch?” I asked, my hesitance and guard not succumbing to his seductive words for an instant.
The man laughed again. “You’re in no position to be asking questions, I’m afraid.”
He was right. There was nothing I could do, and this man knew it perfectly well. If I denied him there was a chance he might just go and report me, leading to a swift capture and execution, something I couldn’t risk.
“F-Fine," I yieled, reluctantly, “I’ll go with you.”
“Aren’t I lucky?” It was hard to tell whether the man was joking or not, but nevertheless, he began to walk out of the alleyway at a brisk pace, and I had to hurry off my feet to keep up with him.
“Wait, just one question,” I whispered, quietly, as I stared down at the black street, avoiding making eye contact with anyone or staring up at the smoggy morning sky.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice a perfect monotone.
“Ahh, well. What’s your name?” I replied, sheepishly.
“Oh. I’m WIlliam, William Orwell.” He laughed, it was an empty laugh.
William, despite being odd and possibly dangerous, gave me a slight comfort. It was less suspicious for me to be walking the city streets when I had someone like him with me. After all, what civilian would be willingly harbouring a Test-Class Synthoid? As we were cheap to make they weren’t gaining anything like that, not to mention the consequences were pretty steep.
Eventually, we stopped at what seemed to be a transport station. I didn’t make a sound, even though I so desperately wanted to ask where we were going. I knew it wasn’t my place to question it. It wasn’t as if any of my questions would change the outcome. I had to go with this man whether I liked it or not. Transport stations had security. If I were to run away right now I’d be taken in for questioning due to my suspicious actions, and then they’d find out what I was.
“Permits?” A man, wearing an outfit doused in a grimy corporate gray with a small nametag written in a language I hadn’t been taught how to read, spoke clearly and calmly - with no discernable accent - to William.
“Oh, yes.” William made a show of reaching into one of his pockets, patting around with contrived surprise as he pulled out one permit. “Ahh. Sorry sir, it seems that I’ve actually left the permit for my Synthoid here behind somewhere.” He thumbed toward me. “This won’t do. No this won’t do at all.” He sighed. “I have an important meeting to attend soon, do you think you could let this pass? It’s only a Synthoid permit, after all.”
The man looked at William once again and then gave me a look as well. “Prick’s, the whole lot of you.” He spat on one of William’s shoes. Oddly enough, despite the complete lack of any discernable accent earlier, you could hear bits of an English accent breakthrough as he talked to William now. “The Orwell family makes me sick. Privileged pricks.” Despite his words, he let us pass.
“Orwells receive a lot of special treatment,” William mentioned in passing as we stepped into the transport station.
I was familiar with transport stations in theory. I had seen many men of high class use them to go to and from Clon, bringing or taking other test class synthoids with them. However, I was one of the many test-class synthoids that had been in Clon for his entire life. Even during the escape I had avoided using the transport station and had instead stowed away in a shipping container.
It was a dreary place, and once past the singular guard we had to go down a set of stairs into a small underground room with a vending machine and a large metal ball on tracks at the end of the room, a singular hatch opened revealing a white-coated inside with 4 seats.
“You ever ridden on a Mage Tram?” William asked, stepping inside the ball, jolting it a bit before it found its balance.
“Well, no…” I, clumsily, stepped into what William had called a Mage Tram, almost falling as my feet touched the floor of the sphere and made it wobble. “Is it safe?”
William laughed at the question. “You certainly have quite the tendency for asking about things that don’t matter.” He kicked the heel of his shoe on the floor, making it wobble just enough to send me toppling into one of the seats, the door closing as I did so. “It’s cost-efficient, and that’s all that anyone really cares about.”
“10 minutes ’til arrival.” A meek, woman’s voice sounded out inside the sphere.
“Cool, right?” William smirked. “It’s actually voice activated too, if you ask how much time you have left it will speak and tell you.”
Out of all the modern scientific marvels I found the fact that this man seemed to focus on something as simple as a voice-activated audio recording odd. Based on his attire he was one of the scientists that worked on Synthoids, a far more advanced form of modern technology than a silly voice.
“I suppose I should’ve asked this earlier…but…Where are we going?”
“Elysium, the city of the elite.”
