Somnia (Dream Corp.)

PART ONE / CHAPTER ONE

                                                                             

"GLASS BLOCKS DOWN IN 5 MINUTES. PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS."

The robotic voice boomed from the ceiling speakers. B3x glanced back from the window. Beyond the glass double doors behind her, separating the common room from the hallway, a security agent rapped his fingers lightly on the glass. None of the women in the room were ever curious to look outside. The darkness swallowed everything of what should be the rear garden, but what they didn't know or were rather never brave enough to find out was that the common room, as dull and uneventful as it was, faced east. If you positioned yourself in the right place - the corner of the third window on the left - you could easily see the first sign of the sky lightning up. In five minutes the sun will peak and the first rays will shine over the treetops that B3x was certain surrounded the grounds of the building, but had never seen them with her own eyes.

The countdown had popped up on the window glasses same as night after night and the hologram numbers were counting off the now 4 minutes and 12 seconds left, which rapidly decreased in a rigged sort of way. B3x stuck her face to the glass and cupped her hands around it. The light was very faint, but if you spent some time looking into the dark it became quite easy to spot it. For her entire life, and if the doctors of this place were being honest with her, that was a total of 19 years, she had never left the institution. Never seen the sun. Not with her own eyes, at least. The windows did stay open at night, and the Agents used to say that if they focused their eyes in the distance they could see the lights of the city. It was true. The city was there, so were the lights. And they stayed through the whole night. That gave comfort to some people, others it made restless and frustrated. And maybe the Corporation left the window open just to taunt the commons, maybe that was how they eliminated the untrustworthy ones, because those people always got tempted to escape and they always got caught. But the sun, nobody thought of it, people didn't remember it even existed anymore. When you keep something from someone long enough, they forget it is there. But she knew, she'd read about it, knew all the colours it imprinted on the of the sky, and she was going to soak in it today. Maybe this was a better motivation than artificial light.

"GLASS BLOCKS NOW COMING DOWN"

The voice, devoid of any humanity, sent the words echoing through the common room all the way out in the halls, the bedrooms, the whole B wing and A wing. Her time was up, but the sun wasn't. She stepped back, and a second later the blocks slammed down from the ceiling, releasing a loud clicking as the white metal shut in place on the floor, blocking the windows completely. The sound resonated, no one flinched.

B3x stepped away from the windows, which now resembled a wall, and walked to the only woman that sat alone at a table. With the sign of the window blocks shutting came the countdown of their last free hour of the night. Each night they got two hours at the end of it for internet which only meant that every website was owned and controlled by the Dream Corporation and, without any of the commons questioning it, the Corp could freely supervise, see and get to know everything they did. Every few years it had a habit of creating the perfect click baits for those desperate enough to escape the institution. In all her life, B3x witnessed seven women getting hauled out of the common room at the end of the night, never to be seen again. And a few days later, someone always replaced them. So the total number of women always stayed twenty-six.

The room was filled with quiet murmurs as all women conversed between each other. B3x settled on an uncomfortable white chair and propped her elbows on the same coloured table, looking at the little screens safely mounted to the top.

"How about today, Trix?" the woman spoke without looking up from her tablet, her face was set into a firm smile, fingers tapping away on the hologram keyboard in front of her. She looked tense, which made B3x tense. They knew each other for the whole of B3x's life, she was what B3x would call a mother.