vengeful youths [ongoing]

IX ; Decomission Them (Part 1)

Written on March 8, 2023

IX ; Decomission Them (Part 1)

⚠️ Trigger Warning — Miscarriage, Mild Language

Thursday, March 11, 4860

The soft, iridescent hum of the care room's moonlight-powered ceiling lights was all Samanta could hear while the head doctor spoke. She knew what they were saying, what they were all saying—the flurry of nurses and doctors before her. Yet, all she could focus on was that damned hum, reverbrating through her like a torched terminal's static. 

She was too old to have another, they had told her. 

She would curse the bloodline, they had spat at her. 

She had spun recklessly against those krakenesque forces, tempting Mother Earth herself. She could never know if she was too selfish, or too motherly. Perhaps it was the same thing.

The blood was now cessant, only lifeless pieces of what once was still within her. She bore death in the literal sense, a realization that cascaded onto her like the bold, yet cold waters of her homecity Reign.

Samanta now stared at the head doctor with empty and tearlessly melancholy eyes. The lighting's hum had faded to the back of her consciousness, sitting like a discreetly haunting presence in the depths of her mind. The head doctor's name tag read "Wine", a distinctly Athenian surname. 

Of course.

"Mrs. Currant, this is undoubtedly incredibly difficult. Not only for you, but for all of us. Miscarriages are an extremely traumatic predicament, something that has haunted those who could carry children since prehistoric times." Wine breathed out sharply through his nose. "Once we've taken care of you completely, you may go. But please, I beg, make the wise decision of attending therapeutic sessions after your medical treatment is completed."

Samanta said nothing.

"We will refer you." Wine spoke a final time before leaving the room with his posse.

As they stepped out, Samanta let out a quiet, broken sigh. Her weakened fingers fiddled monotonously with the translucent wire attached to her right thigh, her ragged hair pressed loosely against the foam-like surface of the care bed. 

Her index finger, with remnants of abalone-silver polish speckled about, was broken diagonally. Samanta observed the flesh in that humble area where nail blockage once was, admiring its pink, ripe tissue.

Once fully cleaned, she would be taken in a transport, taken home. To the Cobalt House in Northern Reign, the Currant estate that Samanta resided in. The transport in question would be a government hovercar, one of those notoriously rough-seated ones that patients and criminals alike were transported in. Samanta had never sat in one. 

One of her two sons, Kore, had. 

When he was of 16 years of age he had been detained by a moondroid on the solemn streets of Reign's Analytic District. Why he had been there, of all places, it seems Samanta would never know.

Kore was undoubtedly the more coldhearted and rebellious of her two sons. Being the current youngest of the Currant lineage, he felt a sort of resentment not only towards his fallaciously-prestigious ancestors but also towards his immediate family, who still saw the spark of a small and innocent child hidden behind his moonlit rage. 

Kore had celebrated his 21st birthday just 5 days before Samanta's miscarriage. He had not changed one bit since the moondroid's stoppage years before.

Samanta thought of Kore with emptily blinking eyes. She was now watching the musky ceiling light above her, its presence almost corrosive in sensation. The once-banal hum now felt as if it rose and fell in volume, like a taunting melody, mocking her. 

You could have been such a great mother, it sang. 

You've let both your children fade away, it sang. 

This is what you deserve, you heartless whore, this is what you deserve for having had your first child at 19 years of age, it sang in its robotic refrain.

Her first child was Oracio. He was upbeat and endearingly rogue until he started teenagehood, where he was suddenly silent. Dulled. 

Over time, he remained a kind, corrosively mild boy—but now at age 23 he was so distant that even his affection was delivered vacantly. He seemed to loathe his younger brother's foolish actions, and having to bear that cross by association hurt him. Oracio was a young man of grey gazes and hollow words, of burgundy shorts and a beaded anklet.

Samanta had never seen Oracio out with friends or meeting with a sweetheart—he was always found unabashedly alone in the Cobalt House's gymnasium, holo-synth dumbbell in one hand and his dignity in the other. 

He always closed the gym door, but he would never lock it. If one walked in during his sets, he would not say a single hollow word, opting for a bitter ignorance of the tresspasser during his movements. 

A vintage idol-group's tunes would reverberate through the lower halls of the House as he worked.

"Mrs. Samanta Currant?"

An uncanny voice shot Samanta out of her reverie. She lifted her head to see a blindingly-yellow sundroid sergeant in full celestial fleet gear. On its wired face, a glass decalcomania-like design, erected from the mechanical crevices and nooks. It spoke in a deep and distorted dialect of Laquish.

"That's me." Samanta sputtered. It was the first time she had spoken all day.

"Call me Etta Brynjolf, I am a sundroid of androgynous programming. I have been assigned by Doc. Wine and his colleagues to transport you to the Cobalt House. A hovercar transport is waiting for you." Etta bowed with one golden hand over its chestplate.

"I haven't been cleaned yet."

Etta stood straight. "Is this a problem?"

Samanta simply looked at Etta in dismay. She had lost everything, her will-to-live seemingly ripped away like magnets creeping in opposition. She could no longer truly feel, her speech had become dim.

Etta seemed to understand the silence, at least to the extent that machinic life could.

"I see. There have been a variety of communication errors in our systems as of late, my apologies. Excuse me as I alert Doc. Wine." Etta's glassy mask began to shine from within. Light traveled through the design like cells in a bloodstream until the glass was fully lit, signaling that the sundroid was in communicative mode.

Samanta laid back against care bed's foam and closed her eyes. 

A moment passed.

"Forgive me once again, Mrs. Samanta. Doc. Wine's cleaning assistant will be with you shortly." Etta's glass powered back off as it quipped in its distorted language.

Ever so slightly, Samanta nodded in acknowledgment.

"I will return once more in an hour or so. I will assure that the hovercar has the most plush and accommodating cushions as reparations for the bother. I will provide a fashionable drink as well."

With that, Etta left the room through where it had come. It slid through the steel-lined oak doors.

Author's Note — Etta go beep boop