The Utopia Project

Chapter 3

Tiana
I wake up lying in a bed. Once my vision becomes clear, I see that I'm in what looks to be a clinic. There are other beds beside me, all neatly placed next to each other. I'm wearing a hospital gown. A girl is sitting beside my bed. "Ah, you're awake." She speaks. "Lily." She mentions. "What's happening? What is this place?" I say hoarsely. "I know you want an explanation, so I'll take you to visit the leader. She's on the second floor." Lily directs. She helps me out of the bed. I feel around my body. No glass. And I don't feel as bad. The pain is dull, but it's barely there. She takes me to what seems to be the main lobby. There is a crowd in there. They are all huddled up together. There are about 12-13 people. Some are talking, and some are fiddling with computers. They're all staring at me. I feel uncomfortable, I don't know what to say. I feel the urge to run out of the room. "Everyone, please welcome our new member, Tiana Lake! A former commander of one of the many villages down in the wilderness." Lily announces. That gets the crowd fired up. They're all talking at once. "Former commander?" One of them asks. It's my turn to speak. "Yes," I clear my throat, my voice scratchy. "It was burned down by the government. I had to flee, and I ended up here." I quickly blurt out. There are more murmurs from the crowd. Dammit. Why did Lily have to make a big scene like that? I push through the crowd and make my way to the second floor. I see a door with the sign COMMANDER WILSON. I go in, and I see a woman. She is turned around, and her sandy blonde hair is at shoulder length. There is a large table in the center of the room, and there are chairs positioned around it. There is also a board with a map on it, along with many papers and folders. She turns around. "Well hello. You are our new visitor." She greets me and shakes my hand. "Yeah right, do you mind explaining to me what this is?!" I say furiously. "Of course. Sit." She orders. I sit in one of the chairs. "We are The Vanished. This is the Bunker. As you know, long ago, the government started the Utopia Project. Your people fled to villages in search of safety. But we did something different. We hid. Inside the city. We set up the bunker here and called it home." She explains. "Don't you think that's risky?" I question her. "And why would you choose to hide when you could've followed in our footsteps?" I ask. "Because we've been doing something you people haven't. We've been trying to stop the government. It is risky, but it's worth it." She counters my argument. "You've been trying to stop them. How?" I wonder, intrigued. "Well, I'll explain. There are three jobs: Runners, Hackers, and Scientists. Runners are people who sneak into government-owned buildings or android manufacturing plants, and they hack into the governments' computers. They search through the android database, and they select an android. They alter the android's command system in its brain, which causes the android to turn against its leaders. Usually, the android will come to us after it malfunctions." She tells me. It takes a minute for me to realize. Holy shit. That's why Dekan said he was different from the others. It's because of them. The Vanished. They've been causing all of the commotions with the androids and the government. They're the reason the leaders of this city have been after me for the last 6 months. "The next job is hackers. They essentially do the same things runners do, but instead, they do it at the bunker. They also help us break through the government's tough security. The final job is scientists. They work in our labs, and they are some of the brightest minds in this city. They help us advance, and soon enough, we'll be 10 steps ahead of the government thanks to them." She says proudly. "Does that clear things up?" She asks cheerfully. "Yes," I say. I feel satisfied now that I'm familiar with this place. I loved the village. It was my home for nearly 26 years. But this place is better. Here, they're doing something to stop the government's madness. They have a good system in place, and they're sticking to it. "I'll be a runner." I say, determined. I'm ready to put these bastards and their project in the ground. The ones who burned down my home. "Ok, but first you need the proper gear." She specifies. She exits the room for a minute and then comes back with a stack of clothes in her hands. She hands them to me. I go to the bathroom and get changed in one of the stalls. I finish and open the stall. I see my reflection. The clothes are sleek, with a black t-shirt and black and red gloves, along with some black leggings with white markings on them. Along with my short black hair and white skin, the clothes fit nicely. I step out of the bathroom. Commander Wilson is waiting for me. "You look perfect!" She chirps. "Thanks," I blush. "In two hours, you'll do your first run. You'll be escorted to your room for now. You're allowed to go about your leisure until then." She explains. "Thanks, commander." I salute her. "Call me Kara." She smiles. I go along meeting everyone. I'm not a people person, but it's important to make connections with people. There are a few runners. Tori, Lana, and Damien. I meet the hackers. Tim, Arya, and Derek. I don't go near the scientists. They seem too busy fiddling with things inside the lab. But there are the council members. There is a council, just like in the village. There are four members. Jack, Sophia, Kayla, and lastly, Kara. The leader. Then there are medics like Lily. They are all interesting people. The hackers are very reserved and uptight, but are skilled in what they do. The runners are daredevils, and are willing to get out there. They are efficient and precise in what they do, knowing that each move could cost them their life. The scientists work tirelessly, every day, to make sure the government is stopped. I appreciate them the most. After all the excitement, I am escorted to my room. There are two beds. I lie in one. This has always been my dream. To not be in power. To not have to worry. To be free. I will always be free now.
Dekan
I wake up. I'm still in my scattered apartment. It's 6 AM. But I don't have time to wait. I have to look for Tiana. I slept in my clothes, so all I do is brush my teeth and leave. I go out to the streets, with my hood pulled up. I look around attentively, scanning the world for any kind of evidence. No signs of her. Just androids and buildings. I continue traversing the streets. I come across an alley. However, there's nothing back there but garbage. I begin to get worried. I go back on the street and I bump into an android. "Sorry!" I say. He gives me an accusatory look. He scans me. "Intruder!" He calls. Before anyone can catch on, I drag him into the alley and begin choking him. He eventually stops struggling. I feel his pulse. He's dead. No. Oh lord no! I just killed someone. I can't let my guilt get to me yet. People are watching over me. They know I'm different. I run out of the alley and dash across the streets. Androids give me questionable looks, but I don't care. I still scan for evidence. I see blood on the ground. I follow it. It leads to another alley. I hide and catch my breath. The blood trail stops. There's no sign of a body. I fall on my knees and cover my face. She's dead. She has to be. They must've come in and cleaned up her body. She's gone. I waited too long. What will I do now? I need to stop the government. They deserve to die, all of them. How will I do it alone? What will be my purpose if no one is around to help me or guide me? But then, in my emotional distress, I see a door in one of the walls. I knock, and someone opens. "Come in." They say. We go down some stairs, and I am led into an abandoned apartment, which has been turned into some kind of base. There is a crowd in there. People greet me and I greet them back. A girl speaks to me, holding a clipboard. "Hello? Are you our second visitor today?" She asks. "Yes." I say. Second visitor? Who was the first? And what even is this place? "Okay, right this way." She guides me to the leader's office. I enter. It's a meeting room, much like the ones I was in before. I take a seat. "Hello. You must be our second visitor today." She says. I scan her. Kara Wilson. Leader of "The Vanished." She's been the leader for over 10 years. She's helped defy the government and try to stop The Utopia Project. Good. Someone I can trust. "Well, do you mind me telling you how things work here?" I ask. "Of course!" She smiles. She explains to me the jobs, what their goals are, and all the information I need. "So, the question remains," she takes a sip of her drink. "What role will you play?" She gives me a decision. The truth is that I'm not sure. I could be a runner, but it would be nice to be a hacker. I could do things behind the scenes and not worry about having people looking for me all the time. I don't want to be a scientist, so that leaves two options. "I'm not sure. I'm deciding between runner and hacker. I'll tell you when I've finalized the decision." I say sincerely. "Okay." She settles. "You'll be escorted to your room now." She states. The same girl with the clipboard is the one that escorts me to my room. We get there and I open the door. Someone is lying in the bed. That someone is Tiana. She gets up once she sees me. She's shocked. So am I. I hug her. "Woah, easy there." She accepts the hug. "I thought you were dead. I didn't know what I would do. I'm so happy to see you, you have no idea..." I trail off. "Well, I'm happy to see you too. And I'm sorry for what I said back there. I was so wrapped up in what happened, and I was going through a lot, but I've had some time to recover." She explains. "Yeah, and your villagers are alive, by the way." I mention. "Thank god. Where are they?" She asks, her voice desperate for an answer. "In the wilderness. I couldn't convince them to come with me." I recount the events to her. "Dammit. I wish they were here. These people are doing more than we ever did in the village for 20 years. Instead of avoiding the problem, they're tackling it and dealing with it. We are lazy compared to them." She declares. I can't do anything but nod. "I'm sorry. All we can do now is contribute to their cause." I decide. "Yeah." Tiana agrees. "What job are you picking?" I ask out of the blue. "Runner. Definitely." She says. "Me too." I make my choice. This will be a chance to get closer to her. "Oh," I remember. "Hm?" Tiana asks. "I wanted to give you something." I say. I take the necklace out of her jacket pocket and give it to her. Her face lights up, and she beams. She holds the necklace close to her. "Thank you. So much." She says excitedly. "Do you want me to hand over the jacket too?" I ask. "No." She says quickly as if the jacket means nothing to her. "Are you sure?" I ask. "Yeah, keep it. It looks better on you anyway." She compliments. Kara comes in. "Hello. Have you decided yet, Dekan?" She asks. "Yes, I'll be a runner." I announce. "Ok, Tori will be your instructor. Meet her outside." Kara orders. We go outside of the Bunker and go up many flights of stairs to the roof. Tori is perched on the edge, crouching lightly like a bird. She notices us and stands up. She has black hair similar to mine, but longer. "Name's Tori. I'll be your instructor today. I'll be teaching you the laws of parkour, different types of moves, and just the general basis of it. Now, let's begin. I'm going to teach you how to leap from one rooftop to another. Just follow my lead and copy me." She commands. She gets a running start and leaps to the next roof. Her legs spring up and stay tucked until she hits the next roof. Her feet plummet onto the ground. Tiana goes next. She tries to copy Tori, doing the exact thing she did. She moves gracefully. The way she moves is so...attractive. Her feet hit the ground at full force, and she stumbles back a little. I go last. I get a running start, bend my knees, and jump. I tuck my legs as I am getting closer and closer to the ground. And then finally, my feet hit the concrete of the next roof. I stumble forward quickly and face-plant. Tiana helps me up. "The next lesson is how to perform acrobatic moves." Tori continues. We turn our attention to two separate roofs with a handlebar in between them. "Your challenge will be to jump and grab the handlebar, and swing across it to the other side." Tori demonstrates this by running to the handlebar. She grabs it and uses her momentum to propel her entire body forward. She lets go of the handlebar, and lands on the second roof. Tiana does the same. She grabs it, but can't quite surge forward in the same way. Her hands begin to slip. "No, no!" I let out a panicked scream. I can't lose her. Not to this stupid training course. But she manages to swing backward, and then she can push forward. She lands on the other side. Phew. It's my turn. I grab the bar and pull myself forward at full speed. I plummet to the second roof and land on my hands and feet. Tori continues to teach more and more lessons throughout the morning, including how to vault, wall-running, climbing, dive rolling, forward rolling, jumping on and off ledges, and balancing. Eventually, we are both out of breath and have reached the end of the lesson. "We've arrived at our destination." Tori says. She points to a building. It's one of the government-owned buildings Kara talked about. I remember being in these buildings once. Some of them were android manufacturing plants where machines would be tasked with making androids by the dozens. I remember visiting one of them and seeing how it worked up-close. I remember the sights of factory machines processing androids, deciding their biology and genes, their body types, their ID numbers, serial numbers, backgrounds, ethnicities, and orientations. Finally, they would mark the android with a birth date as soon as the machine had finalized the results. I remember the smells of metal and dust. The other buildings were security buildings. Government official androids would monitor security cameras, spying on the many androids in the city, observing them, and making sure malfunctions would be prevented as soon as possible. I more I think about it, the more bothered I am. They were watching me. For most of my life. Since I was a baby, until adulthood. They have been observing every category of my life, unedited, front and center. They know everything about me. Even the things most people don't know. They even know that I'm a rebel. "How do we get in?" Tiana asks. That's a very good and practical question. There's nothing on the building that we can climb on. But then I see something. It's a lift. The ones that window washers use. "Hey, look! It's a lift! We can climb on that!" I propose my idea to them. "Good, you figured it out." Tori congratulates. I jump to the lift and grab the ledge. My hand slips off, but I manage to save myself. I push myself up onto the lift. I make room for Tiana and Tori to jump. They both do, and I flip the lever. We are all tightly packed together. If one person moves slightly, someone may fall off. The lift takes us to the roof. I see some stairs which lead down to a door. We go down, and we are led into another room. This room is like an office workspace, with cubicles. There are tons of androids sitting at computers, monitoring the entire city. They are all sat up straight with perfect posture. None of them are slacking off. They are all synchronized. "Ok," Tori plans. "We need to get to the control room. That's where they keep their highest security. We have to sneak through this room and get to those doors." She points to the doors on the other side of the room. "From there, we'll find the control room." She says. We all split up, going on different sides of the office. I pass cubicles, sneaking and hiding behind walls. I treat the office like a maze, zigzagging around corners. Eventually, I come to one of the cubicles. The android on the computer turns around and catches a glimpse of me. I hide behind one of the white walls. He turns around. I make it to the other side of the room. Tori is already there. Where's Tiana? I look around and I see her hiding behind a wall. An android is looking for her. She looks panicked. I motion for her to come here. She doesn't. She rushes to a corner and hides there. The android stops its search. I motion for her to come again and she rushes over to me. We open the double doors and we are led into a hallway. Doors are on either side with one door in front of us. "Which one do we go in?" I whisper. "This one." Tori opens the second door on the left, and we go down a flight of stairs. We are in the control room. There is one guard monitoring the computers. There are big TV screens. On them are many different androids, going about their day. It creeps me out, just watching them without them even knowing. I keep staring at the screen. Tori grabs the guard and puts him in a headlock. He flies out of the chair and she chokes him until he collapses. He's not dead. "Tim, hack the computers." Tori orders through her radio. The computers are hacked quickly. Tim gets to the android database. He scrolls through the thousands of androids in the city. He scrolls past my own profile. It shows my face, and below it is a name: Andrew Franklin. That name sends shock through me. I can't move. I can't speak. I see my birth date. 5/16/40. One year before the Utopia Project began.
Tiana
I look at the profile. It shows Dekan. But—Andrew? That's his real name? And I look at his birthday. He was born one year before the project supposedly began. How? He only looks to be in his early 20s. There's no way he could be born before I was. "Dekan—I begin to ask, before I hear a bang. The guards are banging on the locked door. They're going to bust through it. "Quick! Tim, pick an android now!" Tori rushes. Tim picks one and he hacks through the computer which allows him to alter its brain functions. He begins the process and there is a download percentage. The guard busts through the door and begin shooting at us. We duck under any cover we can find as bullets fly. The download bar gets gradually higher. Tori takes out a semi-auto pistol and begins shooting at them. She shoots a guard in the shoulder, and shoots another one in the thigh. I remember I have a knife in my pocket. A guard comes closer to us with his gun. He eventually gets close enough. I stab him in the leg which causes him to fall over, then I stab him in the side of the head. The download bar is almost full. Dekan presses enter and it's completed. "Go! Now!" Tori ushers us to the exit. There is another door we go in. We go up the stairs marked "ROOF ACCESS." We get to the roof and we find a zip line. We all go down in one by one. The wind whips through my ears as I cling onto the zip line. It's an exhilarating experience. To Dekan, it's terrifying. I see the terror in his face as he comes down. We parkour our way back into the bunker, with no resting or stopping. We finally make it back and slam the Bunker door shut. We catch our breath. "Good work today." Tori thanks us. "You'll be top-notch runners in no time." She compliments. "Tiana?" Dekan asks. "What is it?" I wonder. I'm not too excited to hear his secret. I'm worried what it will be. "Meet me in our room, and I'll tell you what you should know." He makes a deal. I accept it. I meet him in his room later that afternoon. "So," He begins. "I know what you saw, with my real name, and my original birth date. I'll explain it all to you, you deserve to know." He says. "Ok, go ahead." I say. "When the Utopia Project was first launched, it was supposed to be a good thing. What they were trying to do was they were trying to get people to live their best lives. There would be no jobs, no currency, no stress, no arguments, all of the bad things in this world would be gone, including death." Dekan says. "Androids would take over jobs, and the people would be able to get up to whatever they wanted to do. This failed. The crime rates skyrocketed, people were doing unspeakable things, and society was ruined. The government tried to fix this. They opted a new law that anyone who did anything remotely bad would be turned into an android. The way they would this was that they would transfer someone's consciousness into a chip, and that chip would be transferred into an android, which could do nothing wrong. Eventually, everyone was turned into an android, and the government made it a mandatory law. Everyone, including me. Everyone expect the rebels." Dekan explains. "I was born one year before the Utopia Project began. I saw things that no one should ever see, the awful things people did. Rape, murder, shootings, just about everything bad you can expect. And eventually, when I was around 12-13, I got caught up in one of these horrible things. I was part of a drug deal and I got caught. My life changed that day. I was chipped and turned into an android. I was drained of my freedom. My emotion. But somehow, my soul was still there despite what they had done. I lived the rest of my life obeying orders. Then, when I was on my deathbed, they gave me a choice. I could either die permanently, or have my consciousness transferred into a new android body. So I chose to be transferred, and then I began my second life. And then my third. And my fourth. And now I'm here. I'm able to think for myself again." He explains solemnly. "Dekan—I say before he cuts me off. "Andrew." He speaks for me. Andrew. It has a nice ring to it.