Chasing Death

Chapter 17

"People imagine death to be something opposite to and far from life. In reality, death is a part of life, entwined so closely that you can't tell one from the other."

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"Don't just stand there pretending to be a seamstress," Lachesis laughed, seeing me fidget with my fingers. I wrung my wrists, trying to bring up a proper reply for the words she had flung at me so casually.

"I..." I opened and closed my mouth like a fish gasping out of water.

"Try to find the password to the system of the records. I don't know that." She dismissed me with a wave of her hands. An intelligent person would have taken the opportunity to slip away, but the confused idiotic me needed answers.

"Aren't you afraid that if I find out the password, I can upset the entire operation?"

Lachesis giggled again, "O, child! I wanted to test our security process for a long time. That you ended up here, shows a lot about the loopholes in the surveillance. I want to see this thing up to the end, to note if any ordinary mortal can break in and dismay this system."

"So, I'm basically an experiment for you, a pawn in your game?" I met her eyes levelly. Somehow there was an unusual dose of adrenaline running in my system. It was making me forget all my fears for a while.

"You're an interesting specimen. I might want to keep you for eternity," she mused.

"If I wanted eternity, I wouldn't have come here in the first place," I mumbled.

Golden flames flared up in her eyes.

"Let's be clear about one thing," she hissed. "I may show you some lenience here, but I will not have some mortal reply disrespectfully to me. I expect you to behave."

"The truth is bitter," I retorted. "Let me get this straight. You don't like this new arrangement that Maya set up here. You want the system to fall. Everything else that you're feeding me is a blatant lie."

"That's a grave accusation." Her eyes smouldered dangerously, but I could see a smile playing at the edges of her lips.

"So. I am right. You prefer the old systems back. Why don't you say it? Doesn't your vote matter in all these decisions?" I interrogated further.

"It doesn't," she sighed. "It's only me against the two of them. Newer technology for them is like toys for kids. They don't understand the gravity of the situation or what could go wrong if we modernize things that weren't meant to be modernized."

"Could the machines replace you all finally too?"

"At this rate, it will. That is what they don't understand. The more gadgets you involve, the more there will be glitches. And someday Maya would supplant all of us with the automatons. Over the aeons, we'd cease to exist in form like her and just float around like energy, thriving in the core of newer technology. Clotho and Atropos do nothing but spin and cut. I'm the one that has to make all the choices, and assigning futures isn't easy," she admitted. "Imagine having destinies allotted by some random technology."

"Life would be chaos," I whispered.

"When it isn't chaos anyway?" She rolled her eyes, turning away.