Activation Sequence 103

Past Closed Doors

The loud blare of a horn shattered my dream. Groaning audibly, I placed a hand over my ears to muffle the noise, shifted my weight and tried to delve back into the realms of dreams.

‘Fredrick, wake up. There is an air raid!’ I heard Alga call from her position. That instantly caught my attention. Fighting of the last traces of sleep, I rolled over and sat up, rubbing the nape of my neck to remove a crick. I listened to the wailing of alarms cutting across the noise of the street festival.

The Guilds and Corps Festival was an annual celebration in the nation of Principes Omnipotens that honors hard-work and commitment. Customs dictated that it was obligatory for at least one representative from each guild or corps to attend. Each guild was required to create a display of their most remarkable achievements, developments and creations of the year. The Technicians found this especially irritating, having their technology on show, just waiting for toddlers to pass by and stick their spit-sodden fingers into any visible shafts and crevices.

For the past seventeen years, though, Emperor Xiao has been using our display as a form of propaganda. He’d erected large screens over our exhibit in the city centreshowing all forms of encouraging messages. Come join the army, the screens seemed to say, where you’d be guaranteed victory with all these hi-tech weaponry.

This year’s Guild and Corps Festival was especially grand, for it happened to coincide with the Emperor’s rise to power. We have two methods by which we measure the passage of time in our city. The Guilds and Corps Festival, being an ancient tradition, was measured with our Planetary Calendar. A year is based on how long it takes the Earth –the planet which we orbit- to circle the sun once. The Earth is supposedly our legendary homeland where our ancestors first labored upon our city before The Great Launching. I shuddered at the thought of living on bare earth, amidst all the muck and dirt.

The Emperor’s rise to power, however, is a more recent event, which took place in 982 A.L. (After Launch), therefore it is measured with our Satellitic Calendar (a year being how long it takes for the city to orbit the earth once).

The street dins seemed to fade as I tuned in to what Alga was saying.

‘-better get out of here. The alarms, they are probably connected to some sort of defense mechanism. We could be in danger.’

‘Relax Alga, everything’s fine. It’s probably just some drill, not a raid. We have one every couple of months.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘Pretty certain,’ I replied with absolute confidence. Alga, however, did not seem convinced.

I tried returning to sleep, but it simply seemed to evade me that day. Groaning, I rolled over and sat up, deciding that I might as well stay awake while those blasted sirens honked away. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately anyway, due to the lack of stimulation.

‘We could use this as an opportunity to escape. While everyone’s distracted,’ Alga said.

‘Good idea.’ I knew that it was futile, but decided to humor her for both our sakes. For the hundredth time or so, we began creating an absurd scheme to break out of here.

It was two whole minutes later when we first heard the piercing scream shatter across the noise of the carnival. The cry was rapidly picked up by others.

Boom!

Absolute silence. It was deafening.

The shockwaves soon followed, causing the chamber- and probably the entire city as well- to give a sickening lurch to starboard. I was thrown at the far wall, my body colliding against it with a meaty smack.