REQUIEM - Low Life

4. I Have No Memories

There was a knock on the door. Jeffrey phased in and out of view like a phantom. "Rex, you there?" he asked, before knocking again. "I know you're in there. I hope you're in there 'cause I wouldn't know where else to look for you."

There was a long silence. Jeff paced up and down the hall before stopping in front of the door again.

"Rex?" He sighed. "We've all been there, okay? I killed someone too on a patrol, things just get out of hand sometimes. You're not alone, man." Another silence followed. The projected footage spluttered and flickered as Jeff walked away, then it stopped. Rex waved his hand over the projector and shut it down.

"He was a good NFORCER," said the psychologist, whose hologram sat behind Rex.

Rex turned around. "He was my friend."

The psychologist stayed silent and started scribbling in his notepad. He looked back up at him. "Are you sure you want to be alone today? I could give Maxine a call."

"No, I spoke to her." Rex shook his head.

"You said you struggle with your memories. Are you going to remember this?" asked the psychologist. "The brain tends to discard bad memories, especially when under post-traumatic stress."

Rex took a deep breath and nodded. "I'll be fine." He gestured his hand again over the call and the psychologist disappeared. A silence filled the room. He laid down on the floor and looked at the ceiling. Memories of Jeffrey were haunted by faces he didn't recognise. Faces of other people he had lost. Someone cried, "Rex!" as they died in his arms. Someone cried, "Virgil!" as they died in his arms.

They held on tightly to him, burying their fingernails into his skin. Nothing hurt more than watching the life fade out of someone's eyes. "Do you remember Machina?" said a voice in his head, his own voice. "Do you remember, Virgil?"

It was morning when he got back up onto his feet. He opened his computer and looked the name up. "Virgil." He couldn't find anything. He looked Machina up and he couldn't find anything. Only traces that he couldn't access. "She's watching me," he said aloud as he came to the realisation. There was something Minerva didn't want him to know. That only drove him to seek it out.

All he did that morning was brush his teeth and get dressed. It was rainy, so he wore a clear coat over his outfit and took his hoverbike to an internet café in the Southern district, near Capitol. Onyx had always felt foreign to him. He could never quite recall it's gridded roads, so he always kept his GPS on. The café was empty when he walked in. "Please hang your coat on this wall," said the humanoid machine behind the counter, gesturing to a rack behind the door. "How may I be of service?"

Rex stood still and looked around.

"No one uses places like this anymore," said the machine. "At least not in Onyx. This is just an echo of when we were an 'old' city too."

"Is everything still functional?" Rex asked.

The machine nodded. "One hundred percent."

"You're an A.I.," said Rex.

The machine nodded. "One hundred percent."

"Hmm."

Rex walked slowly deeper into the room and sat down at a station. "Payment will be taken after your session," said the A.I. machine as he booted up the computer. It was an antique, with a glass monitor and a slim, physical keyboard and mouse, as opposed to the newer holos. It buzzed to life quicker than he expected then he got to work.

He worked from Machina, then backwards. It was a place, and a time, and it was more recent than he thought. It was too recent for something that felt like a distant memory to him. A group of militarised activists called the Vandals were attacked in their refugee camp, and training centre, in 2123. Onyx journalists wrote that the Vandals were an anti-government terrorist cell that recruited young, disenfranchised Atlas citizens. Social media posts from residents of the slums, and the Fringe, called the Vandals freedom fighters. Kids had been going missing for almost five decades in Atlas, the people were overpoliced, older citizens rotted, while everyone else turned to crime to make a living. The Governance had abandoned all of Atlas and left it in the hands of NFORCER. Before that, they had given the police free reign. The police who were exposed for corruption, crimes against humanity, and brutality, after they had accused four teenagers for the murder of a boy in the Fringe.