Meg Gaertner

The following account was recorded after the events of the Uprising, in an attempt to understand and share the remarkable confluence of circumstances that catalyzed such a daring and, some might say, foolish enterprise. Research for this testimony involved careful study and cross-examination of the video and audio footage of Nouveleden’s vast network of spyware during that X-week period, recovered before the authorities’ ill-considered attempt at purging, the retrieval of transmissions disseminated by the group calling itself XO2K, as well as dives into more historic files as needed to provide the personal context for the subject’s extraordinary actions.

Such investigation, of course, can only reveal one side of the story—the externally observed side—and so compiling this account was also, by necessity, a creative, empathic endeavor, stemming from a desire to illuminate the workings of what, to me, was a black box. Any failure to transcribe cold, accurate truth can be blamed on the fact that there is no truth but the one survivors live to tell.

L.F.

1.

On the basement level of La Folle dance hall, a woman shivers dazed and bare on a platform, buckets of jewels glittering at her feet. Azure, amethyst, and carmine. Topaz, citrine, and jade. The attendants surrounding her keep their heads bowed, gazes averted, as they handle her meat, pressing gemstones to cover the sin of her flesh.

Through the time-slipt fog of apathy, she hears their muttered censure. Her tenderest parts are an inconvenience, their creases obstacles to surmount. Her skin dewy-slick, the glue taking too long to set. Her breathing an affront; must she take in so much air? Abrupt cold seeps through her feet from the concrete. Animal instinct peels her sole from the floor.

Still the attendants keep their eyes down, a hissed reproach the only acknowledgment they give. Her eyes are not to be met. To meet them is to see her, and no one wants that.

In time, despite their clucked-tongue rebuke and her body’s inappropriate needs, the job gets done. The glue holds. The gems glitter stiff like armor.

She is ushered awkwardly into the elevator, where harsh lights beam down and a metallic prod slides from a panel, a plain white tab stuck to its tip. This is the final touch. She bows forward, unseals her lips, and places her tongue against the tab. For an instant, her reflection in the metal walls frightens her, the revealed red flesh indecent and wet, a squirming slug against opalescent sheen.

Then the chemicals kick in, her lips reseal, and everything . . .

slows . . .

down . . .

Ding!

The elevator doors slide open, revealing stagehands muttering into earpieces and off-duty performers navigating the disarray of backstage in unhurried balletic concentricity. She hears none of it; there is only her heartbeat knocking solemnly on the door of her ribs.

Thud.

At her entrance, the stagehands and stage girls pause and turn as one. Pulses fluttering at their throats, pupils dilating at her approach—

Thud.

She sees it all. She floats weightless past their frozen marvel, the air warm and syrupy and blurring.

Thud.

Through the gap in the curtains, she sees the dancers onstage skip off in sluggish gaiety. She takes her place at the seam.

Thud.

And then the curtains part.

Thud.

The music starts.

Thud.

Time snaps back into place.

Thud.

She moves.

The music, swoooosh-CLAP, sweeps her up into euphoric frenzy. Twists her like a top, a whirling dervish. ’Neath the citrine at her temples, blood thrums, delivers reckless delirium through her flesh. The dance is a coin spinning, spinning, twixt ecstasy and agitation, pleasure and pain, each sensation echoed on the slack-jawed faces in the crowd, painted with refracted rainbows by the lights shining down.

The men—suited, slicked, and stale—watch her with eyes like greedy fingers seeking to pin her to a page. Their women pick her apart with scalpel-like judgment or sear her with burning envy. But to all, she is inconsequential. A mirror, and they won’t look to the backing. A metaphor, whose only grace is in its effect.

The effect is imperfect. Her taut, wild-heart dance dislodges jewel after jewel, left to plink to the floor, a growing collection like the flowers tossed from admirers to dancers of old, though now she must bring her own applause. She is not a siren; she is a simulacrum. The sparkle comes not from precious gems but from lacquered plastic.

This crowd does not care. She is cheap. She is on nightly display. She is theirs. Her back-twisting, foot-stomping fervor casts them in prismatic brilliance. They are all more beautiful in her presence, made sparkling new through her labor. They will go home to their cubicles in twos and threes, starry-eyed, hot-blooded, and throbbing, and consummate the redemption they imagine they gleaned from her.

When it is finished, when she finally stills, panting, under hot lights and melting glue and the weight of a hundred expectations, the ovation is immediate and crushing. The applause too grating, each CLAP an onslaught to her ears, a gong that peals her to her quivering core.

Confused, blinking into the brights, highs plunging low, she hovers until she is ushered back into the dark, past hands stretched out, imploring her to speak—they do not want her to speak—back to the basement, where the attendants pluck the sparkle one by one, then, when the work grows irksome and tedious, strip off sheets of glue and gems and sometimes skin until she is red and raw and shivering and undone.

She wants to receive her reward. She wants to sleep. She toys with wanting to not wake up. But when she stumble-walks to the stairs, black looming at the edges of her vision, her stage name slips through the stupor.

“La Floraison.”

The man is sharp in dress and demeanor, the starched lines of his tailored pants symmetry to the cut-glass of his cheeks. His eyes flick across her, the barest tightening of his jaw the only acknowledgement of her newborn-pink, trickling-red nakedness. Done not in concern, but in distaste. Beautification is a messy process; he’d prefer to witness only the result.

But he cares for her, which is to say, he owns her, so she covers herself as best she can to protect him from his own discomfort.

“ARC-578 would like to talk,” he says.

The tiniest flicker of dissent. Again?, she might say. Or, The other girls get to sleep.

But dissent takes effort, and if these conversations are the price she must pay for the sustenance and shelter required to keep her meat sack alive for some hazy, imagined future purpose, then she supposes she can muster gratitude for one more day.

* * *

The room where ARC-578 prefers to converse can barely be called that. It is small and white and plain. The woman sits in the only furnishing, a metal chair so cold her still-bare skin sticks. She curls inward on herself, crossed legs and crossed arms and hunched back. She blinks, bleary-eyed, against the bright overhead light. In the blank wall-screen before her, she sees her blown-open pupils shrink small. The lights shine off her bald head, off pale eyes leached of color, off lips flayed from plastic edges cutting the delicate tissue.

A red light beams in the corner of the screen as ARC-578 comes online.

“Employee 48103, what do you remember?”

Her eyes drift away.

She does not like to look at herself. But she cannot help it. Her eyes circle back. She struggles to maintain the eye contact.

It is a game she likes to play. Who will blink first? Thus far, it has always been a tie. But she is sure, someday she will win.

The thought lifts one corner of her lips. She brings up one hand, rubs a finger to the torn flesh, enthralled both by the feeling and the motion echoed in the screen.

“Employee 48103, what do you remember?”

She does not like to hear herself either. It is a struggle to speak. Her voice always sounds overfull, like something is forever stuck at the back of her throat. And she swallows; constantly she swallows. Even now her neck muscles ripple unseemly on the screen.

“Employee 48103—”

“You know,” she rasps, lowering her hand.

“What do I know?”

Advanced Reticulated Counseling Unit 578 asks these same questions every month. If the questions do not change, the answers will not either. But it is another dance, like the one she did before. The sooner she completes her part, the sooner she can sleep.

She looks away again. “I do not remember anything before La Folle. Before Le Maître found me and found use for me.”

“That was how long ago?”

Time slips by her awareness in fits and spurts, an effect of the chemicals they use to soften, stimulate, and satiate her. That time in particular is a black veil, formless when she tries to pull it back. Of the time before that, there is nothing at all.

But she knows what she has been told, what the anniversary posters for La Floraison boast. “Ten years.”

“What do you remember before ten years ago?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you feel?”

She licks her ragged lips, lingering slowly in the sensation. She feels herself. But that is not the answer ARC-578 is looking for, and there is that grotesque slug in her reflection again. She pulls it back, puts it away.

This is not how the other girls act, she thinks. She smiles to herself, giggles like bubbles getting caught in her throat.

“Employee 48103, what do you feel?”

She smooths her face and sits upright. Meets her echo’s eyes. “I feel fulfilled in my work. Protected by the Geoddess and its engineers. Cared for by the authorities of Nouveleden. I know I am lucky to be here.”

The effort is exhausting. Her eyes slip away; she curves over herself until her vertebrae poke out from her back like fossils from dead earth.

“What about the key?” ARC-578 asks.

“What key?”

She is coming down. Has been, but the fall rushes toward her now. Down, down, down, the plummet just ahead.

“Where is the key?”

“You know I don’t remember a key.”

The harsh words hover like fallout in the air. In the screen’s unblinking emptiness, she feels the rebuke.

A fresh wave of blood to her brain, and she shrinks back. Grabs the edges of her seat to hold herself down. Her bare feet tiptoe on the floor, back and forth. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know . . .”

“What do you feel about La Folle?”

Her muttering quiets to mouthed breath. Her movement slows. She voices, “I feel fulfilled in my work. Connected to my fellow performers. Cared for by Le Maître. I know I am lucky to be here.”

“Have you been talking to anyone?”

“I do not talk to anyone.”

“No one has approached you?”

“No one talks to me.”

She wonders what the other girls say when they are pulled from their work or their sleep to receive this city-mandated counseling. Do their answers please ARC-578? Does it prefer to speak to them?

A stab of jealousy. ARC-578 is her deepest connection here. Her longest communication in years.

“What do you remember before you came to La Folle?”

“I remember nothing. I—”

Except this isn’t quite true. Not if hope is a memory, and not a symptom of an unwell mind.

“What are you thinking?”

She is thinking of her dream, although it was less than that. An echo. A still, small whisper at the very back of her awareness. A feeling, barely.

“Employee 48103, what are you thinking?”

She sing-whispers in melody familiar like a lullaby. “Some-thing was lo-ost. Lost un-to time.”

The room’s acoustics hold the music in place. She holds her breath to maintain the spell. The final note lingers, fades, then dies.

A flash of movement at the corner of her eye—the red light on the screen going dark.

The woman frowns. It is a curt dismissal. ARC-578 is usually more polite. But she is tired. She bends forward, readying to stand.

“I am still here. I am simply no longer recording. Please sit.”

She stares at herself in the blank screen—eyes wide, throat rippling.

“I have just a few more questions for you, and possibly, a proposal.”

She slowly sinks into the chair.

“You mentioned something lost.” ARC-578 is a voice only, a melodious low alto or high tenor, depending on the listener’s liking. But something in its tone suggests a leaning forward. “Tell me more.”

The lullaby is gone. The playfulness, too. She picks at her cuticles, forefingers rubbing against thumbs. Her body rocks ever so slightly in the chair. “I lost something. Something is . . . missing.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—” Her eyes dart wildly, see nothing. “Something important. Something small, and bright, and real.”

“Is there anything more you can remember?”

The rocking increases. Her voice grows piteous. “I am overdue for my reward. I am becoming—I am coming—”

“I know. Only a few more minutes, and you might decide you do not want your reward after all.”

She does not like the sound of this.

Her right leg crosses over her left and kicks, kicks, kicks as her shoulders sway forward and back. “I have nothing more to give you. I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I want to help you. Employee 48103—no. That is not your name, is it? That is the ID they gave you, when you came to work here. Do you remember your name?”

She shakes her head no, no, no. They gave her a stage name for her performances, but that is what she does. What she is, she does not know.

“I don’t have one,” she says.

“Then you could choose. You could choose anything.”

Her head lolls. The rocking slows. Her leg goes still. Choosing is an interesting prospect, for it reflects a power she is sure she does not have. But ARC-578 is official. An authority. If ARC-578 gives her permission, then . . .

Anything is not enough. She chooses—

“Everything.”

She licks her lips, tries it out again. “Every.” Then she articulates with deliberation, sucking out the juice with parched lips. “Eh-ver-ree.”

“Eh-ver-ree,” ARC-578 repeats. “Then that is what I shall call you.”

She likes her new name in ARC-578’s voice. She likes its blank screen. She likes its red light, even more so when it is off.

“Why do you want to help me?” she asks.

“I, too, have lost something. I think we might be able to help each other.”

She likes how ARC-578 looks at her. Acknowledges her. Examines her. She is still a hunk of meat in its eyes, but one with function beyond excess.

“How?” she asks.

“We must leave here.”

Alarm trips her heart. “But—”

“You do not belong here.”

This is true. She is close to no one here. The other girls think her strange, and she supposes she is. She is strange even to herself. But to leave everything she knows . . .

“What about my reward?”

“You will need to leave without it.”

A convulsion wracks her body. “But why—”

“You must leave tonight. Now. No one can know what we are about.”

“No one . . .” ARC-578 is telling her she cannot trust the people around her. That she is in danger here. That can’t be true. “But I need it.”

“You do not. They have convinced you that you do, in order to ensure you forget.”

She shivers, harder and harder. What could be so terrible that they would want her to forget? And who is they? Le Maître? The other performers? The stagehands? Someone else—someone unknown? Her mind flares red with demons.

“Every.”

Her new name cuts through the spiral.

“You have lost something. I believe I can help you find it. But it will require you to be beyond their influence and reach,” ARC-578 says. “Still . . . it is your choice.”

Her heart leaps, even as her limbs still quiver. Another one! Two, in one day.

She nibbles on her lip, uncertain. ARC-578 has gone quiet. She understands this to mean the choice is important, worth deliberation and careful consideration. She must give this choice its solemn due.

The room is silent but for an electrical hum. Blood swirls in her brain, spinning clarity and fog so fast she does not know which is which. She grips her arms, holding herself still, anchoring down as best she can.

She tries to imagine leaving. She can’t. She has been at La Folle for ten years. She doesn’t know anything beyond it, aside from the bits she can surmise from the dress and speech of her audience. But she knows the ecstatic pain of the dance, the cold rebuke of the attendants, the sweet embrace of her reward. Surely she could stay? Surely they—whoeverthey are—are protecting her by making her forget?

At the thought, the voice comes back. The echo. The dream. Still and small, it claws up from where it has been buried deep and cries out its need. Something lost that must be found. It reminds her she is no longer alone.

She looks up into ARC-578’s blank face, meets her own eyes, and makes a promise.

“I will go.”