Fast-Tracked And Other Stories

Intelligrid And The War On Peace And Quiet

She wakes to silence. Merciful morning silence. Blinking groggily, she peers down at the bedspread then sends the impulse for a hand to come up and fold it back. Her right arm duly responds, the motion of it sliding between bedspread and undersheet softly breaks the silence, but that's okay--it's nice to hear things for what they are before the voices get going again.

She must've really knocked herself out last night; there's a fog of numbness in her wrist that the instructions from her brain directing her right hand to clench the top edge of the bedspread get lost in. So Pristina sits up, letting the sheet slip away on its own to pool white and indifferent around her waist.

The flat is still and unspeaking. It's always like this, she reminds herself. It's just that you don't get to hear it without dosing.

Her milky pale legs dangle over the bedside. I remember as a teenager, I thought these things were shaping up to be pretty eye-catching... it wasn't long until I heard otherwise from the voices. They're always so cruel and miserable, not like me.

She stands, wobbles, gains her balance. The fog is in her knees, too. Throughout the morning, it will lift and after that, the voices will seep back in. "How much did I take last night?" she asks the emptiness. "Doesn't matter--too many nights in a row. I need to cut it out for a while. Sure, it shuts my head up but it's also shutting my body down."

Sighing, she starts for the kitchen.

Pistoning ungracefully on legs that are half numb, Pris makes the familiar vow: "Nope, not worth it. Tonight, I'll lie in bed and listen to them. If I don't sleep, so be it, because then tomorrow night I'll be tired enough to doze off without dosing myself, and after a while, I'll be able to cope like everyone else."

She made the same pledge yesterday morning when she lost her balance and toppled into the bathtub.

Outside the grotty kitchen window,  the Big Smoke spreads to where its contaminating skyline mingles with the constantly toxic cloud cover. They are told it's always been like this. When working hours commence, the grimy Great Partition segregating eastside from westside opens to let the devout workforce pile in, then at the end of the day, they withdraw, knackered and useless, to rest up and be hungry to do it all again tomorrow.

And it seems more than just plausible that there has never been another way, you believe it's the unquestionable truth... at least Pris did until she started stealing some time to sleep and think for herself through dosing. What are we building towards? What are we working towards?

wonder if bobby remembers me

what's willie doing with himself nowadays

did carol bring a pack of cards?

the weather today--

"Easy girl, steady, that's just your imagination filling the quiet. The voices'll be back all right, but not this soon," she reassures herself. Sure enough, there's no response, just the beep-beep-beep of the provisions dispenser before it drops a piping-hot cuppa onto the worktop.

By late afternoon, the morning tranquillity is such a fragmentary memory that it may as well hail from a prehistoric time (like the undocumented period when the air of the Big Smoke was clear and clean); the fog has fully cleared from her wrists and knees and, regrettably, her mind, too.

maeve once exploded a train under the europa

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