AJCO: Smoke and Ashes. Part 1 - The Daedalus Collection
And to kick off, here is a pretentiously-titled Part 1!
Title: Part 1: The Daedalus Collection
Setting: AJCO: Smoke and Ashes. (State past)
Warnings: Mentions of violence
Summary: Asha Vachan reflects on current events, and her own history.
Characters: Dr Vachan; the Auditor
Words: 1300
FAC-19 disappeared this morning.
‘Demolition’, the infosheets say. ‘Dissolution’, the radio cries. As do at least three very, very clipped announcements from the Department of Information, all-but following me down the public streetways. It’s been years since I paid much attention to my daily route, but today each building seems half-unreal, overlaid with a glass-edged ghost of its own absence. I think of the city; this city, with all its thick-angled monoliths of blunted architecture in eternal salute to a dreary sky; its wide central avenues, lined with formulaic foliage and Sanctioned statuary; and the tangled mass of alleyways and narrow streets that knot about the Planned roads like half-clogged civic veins.
I remember Aeronautics-ONE, a few years ago, and now I imagine the city gone. Demolished. Dissolved. All the legacies here, ground so deep into these concrete bones by the thunderous beat of Mother’s own heart – vanished. Removed, in an instant, leaving nothing more than a smooth-side crater, a perfect excision against the regimented tapestry of AGRI-FAC that lie outside the walls.
My name is Dr Asha Vachan. Citizen; life-tenure research lead in Reconstructional Therapies at CYFAC, with five levels of combined Furtherance in Cybernetic Interface and Neuro-manipulation. I have spent my life in this city, the currency of my existence paid again and again on the account of our so-beloved, never-sated State. And it has killed me three times, so far.
She keeps count. I’m hardly the top of that macabre chart – known only to those on it, and its keeper; known but never written, never something so incriminating – but as far as I’m aware, I’m the longest-running. It’s a seniority, of a sorts, I suppose; as if I need more reminders of that, of the grey already laced through my retained hairline, of the slow and creak in my remaining biological joints.
We are Interesting, you see, and Mother does not encourage the arrogance of singularity. Peculiarity is non-compliance. In a way, to raise yourself at all – whether from deliberate ambition, or a quirk of skill or chance – is to draw Her ire. The higher you go, the more successful you become, the riskier it is. Deference is joy. Compliance is humility. To step above the cool shade of the Cradle’s shadow may bring you – blinking – into the sunlight, may bring accolade and accomplishment – but the more you rise, the closer you will come to the waiting branches of the Icarus Tree.
It is said that nothing burns quite so brightly as hubris.
Mother knows best. But She does not know everything.
Even after all these years, there is a certain thrill to thoughts like these. My expression is unfaltering as I move, walking with the precise, measured step of Worthy Intent, and I am quite sure that none of this shows on my surface.
With a surface such as mine, I hardly need more attention.
We are Interesting. Outstanding, in some way. Innovators or skill-smiths of particular capability, or even – in at least one case I know of – exceptional defiers of the shackles of chance. Whatever the reason, and even now I am not completely sure I understand the exact process, we have impressed her.
My thoughts turn again to history, as my feet – rooted firmly in the now – lead me along the grid-iron roads of the residential quarter, towards the East Gate in all its shell-pocked glory. Beyond that, a cluster of low domes rise against a tarmac web of roadways; the upper floors of the whole SFAC complex, burrowed deep into the ground like the sprawling hive of some great insects, entombed and shielded beneath the poisoned earth.
This is home, and I remember how I first came here.
I remember the fear, back then, the cold-iron twist of raw terror in my heart as I was ushered unkindly to stand before that table, heavy with paperwork. Much of it I recognised. Unofficial designs. Private notes. Stupid things I had jotted in the margins, flights of fancy and what had seemed like jokes at the time. None of them were funny now, not when I could see the deadly garden of coloured marks, sprung like malevolent fungi across my own – undeniably my own – handwriting.
Thought Crime: Category Three.
Appropriation of State resources.
Severe violation of primary remit.
I was twenty-six years old, and subject to a full Audit. I remember looking down, as if the weight of my own stare was too much to hold up, as the charges were read out. They were all accurate. Painfully accurate, and I admitted every one. What was the point in pretending otherwise? I had three new, grade-two discoveries under my belt, was well on my way into my second Furtherance, and deception was not my strong point. Why should it be? I had thought myself invaluable. Invincible, in the unconsidered way of the blithely fortunate.
I would not make twenty-seven; that was abundantly clear. By the time the final charge was read, the final poison-point of non-compliance dragged from my careless endeavours, I could barely stand. Would it be quick? I was no Facilitator, no senior researcher with their face in the newsheets. My work was groundbreaking, yes, but outside of my field I was still unknown.
Perhaps they would merely shoot me. It is a strange moment, when that thought is the sudden, shining goal in the blackening ashes of your life. Quick. Clean. I have advanced several fields in this ending span of mine; I have been a valuable resource. Did I deserve even that much?
‘Look at me, Asha Vachan.’
I complied. There was no defiance left, if I had ever really had any at all, amongst the deluded dreams so rigorously catalogued before me. I looked up, and saw her properly for the first time. She could not have been that much older than me, my Auditor; a pale young woman, blandly unremarkable in every feature, with short brown hair and eyes like smudged-newsprint – but unlike me, the thick-air weight of that room, the iron clang and ignition-scream promise of Audit, sat easily on her shoulders. She was smoking, the ruby tip of the cigarette the only point of real colour against the crafted, clerical monotony of her.
The room was empty, I realised. Only we two remained, with the fine curls of tobacco smoke twisting in the air between us.
‘You understand all charges brought against you.’ Her voice was unaccented, stripped clean, so the sound of it is hard to recall exactly. ‘You have accepted every one, denied nothing.’
I nodded. I could not speak. What would be the point? The Auditor looked down, at the dissected remnants of my life, and pursed her thin lips. Then she looked at me.
‘Tell me, Vachan. Do you regret any of this?’
There was silence. I had been silent before, and since, but nothing will ever be quite like that moment. At the end of your world, when there is nothing between you and oblivion, and the silence is so, so loud, and there is no space left for lying.
‘...no.’
I don’t know how I spoke; I don’t know where I even found the breath, but even that was struck from me as the Auditor smiled.
‘Good. But we will have to work on your presentation.’
I did not understand the true meaning of any of what followed, not for some time. I remember collapsing, as fear and confusion and the impact of impossible relief took what remained of my senses. I remember the Corrections, and I have been careful to keep the scars of them to this day – but I am certain that I did not understand what she meant. Not really.
I would learn.
I was twenty-six years old when my life was first taken; and returned to me so very much changed.
