I deeply apologize for not posting these sooner – I know it’s not actually the 17th. It’s been hectic, but I will eventually get all my days of writing up (before the 30th). I want to continue writing, however, as I’m a little behind and need to do some catchup.

Word Count: 32,912

We decided that sleep was what we needed most at that time, not action. It was through this that I discovered where I was – back in Tychon, in the Central Square building. As soon as I had left Maiya’s laboratory, walls faded away and floors became transparent. I was able to see up to the top of the structure I was within; the signature mark of the gargantuan Central Square buildings. Every district had one, and each one was a center of science, business, and life.

The walls were solid Slate, reflective and passive. The floating, artificial lights that ran across those walls soothed me, and put me further to sleep. Residential areas and apartments were on the six hundredth floor and up. Outside of Maiya’s laboratory, a light tram waited, open, just for me.

The architecture of a Central Square building is peculiar in several ways. The outside is rather dull; there is never much to see. It is rectangular, and you cannot see in or out of the building, as there are no windows. The building is made of galvanized Slate, which appears matte black in the sun. At night, the building is nothing but a column of darkness. Inside, each floor is a different shape, and the walls do not always meet the tile of the floor. For transportation of goods too large to move through a light tram, they are carried via robotic arm down the inner sides of the building. As such, each floor has a remarkable drop at its edge, with nothing but a fence to stop anyone from falling over to their death, hundreds of stories below.

Light trams take pedestrians up any number of floors instantly. You walk in, you walk out. You’d never know that Central Square buildings were so tall unless you looked at them from the outside.

Curie and I went up to floor 604. On the way to my room, I could only think about how I was inches away from my old haunts. My old office was in that building; everything that used to be my life came from that building. And yet, so much had changed in eight years. This building was not the same building I once knew. I glimpsed down at the floors below off the ledge of floor 604, looking for my old office. The puzzle-like structure of the floors below greeted me by blocking my view.

I turned to Curie. “Well, you got your fetch. I hope you’re happy.” I pulled open the door that led to the assigned living area Maiya had placed us in for the night.

It was just like before. The ceiling, with its holographic sky, showing a moonlit night. The twin beds, together – one for me, and one for Curie. I imagined that Derek would be in one of these beds, in another place and time.

We started cleaning up the room; whoever had been there last didn’t keep it very tidy. It was a full five minutes into cleaning the room that Curie spoke to me.

“I like it,” he said. “The fetch, I mean.”

“Oh, good.”

“I don’t blame her, you know.”

“Blame who?”

“Maiya, for doing this to me. We needed to escape. It’s what I wanted, anyway. Now I can go to Earth; I can pass through the Corpus Locks. I can finally see the green fields. Real, green fields… and animals. Vince, thank you. Thank you for giving me this.”

“Your welcome, I suppose,” I told him, not knowing whether or not he truly appreciated the fetch. I loathed it – I loathed the idea that they were founded upon and the reason for their distribution. And, most importantly, I hated that my fetch could be destroyed, but my soul could not. That I might die, only to be consumed as fuel for the planet. “Say,” I asked him, “who will build Corpus Locks once you’re on Earth?”

“Somebody who cares more than I do. Somebody who wants a fetch just as much as I did. They’ll have the drive to work and build those locks until they have an opportunity of their own. And then they will be replaced by someone else, someone better at making those locks.”

Silence. The false night sky on our ceiling blew false wind that bore no noise of its gust.

“There’s a reason why they have to be assembled by hand, you know,” he said. “The glue that holds the small parts together is made to be resistant to the portals that the lock generates. The glue only activates through an enzyme present in the oils of human skin. So, since I’m in a fetch, I can’t assemble any more Corpus Locks anyway…”

Curie slumped down on the bed; I knew he was going to miss his work. I knew that he would try to reconcile with himself that he had gotten what he wanted, but that there was a part of him that was now lost – the engineer within him. Since he was no longer able to build locks, he felt that he was of no use. I decided that it would be my job to prove to him that he had use still in the world, and that he wouldn’t have to be exiled to Earth to feel better about himself.

I told him to get some sleep in the meantime. That tomorrow we were going down into the mines, and that it might be shocking to him to see the strange society down there.

He listened to me, and fell asleep. I, on the other hand, remained awake. When Curie was in deep sleep, I picked myself up and walked over to the restroom. There I did nothing but stare at my face in the mirror, touching it with my hands, feeling for inconsistencies. It looked just like me. I was no different than I was before. I could tell that it had been Maiya’s handiwork – that she had intended to give me this fetch from the very beginning, and that I should have expected nothing less from the woman whose sole profession focused on creating artificial bodies.

And yet, it was still remarkable. I felt my chest for a beating heart, but there was no pulse. The body truly was fake.

I reached into the air and pulled down a glass panel., then looked into its clear, reflective surface. My hands could feel the cold glass, as thought it were a real object. My fingers would not push beyond the sheet, or through it. When I took my alternate hand and punched the glass, it shattered. I felt the stink of the millions of tiny fragments of glass sinking into my fist, which dispersed when the shards disappeared.

It was the strangest sensation I had ever felt. I was no longer sure if I was human. But I should have expected that on Cydia – a world with no trees, foliage or organic life other than us humans. Even we were destined to become inorganic at some point; it was just that point that I feared rather than embraced. I looked across the room at Curie, sleeping soundly in his bed underneath the false night sky. Why couldn’t I be so content with my life? Why were situations so much more complicated for me?

Sleep is what I truly need, I told myself. And so, with that thought process, I laid down on the rock-solid twin mattress that was placed next to Curie’s, and stared up at the false sky up above until I surrendered unto sleep.

The next morning we were rudely awakened by an alarm from the ceiling. The sky had turned red and the sounds of armageddon were upon us. Curie and I sprang up, wide awake, to find Maiya at the door. Apparently she had set the alarm of our room for five in the morning – whenever that was. She was in the door, motioning for us to hurry up. Without spending any time on personal hygiene, Curie and I approached her.

“What gives? It’s early, boss,” Curie said.

“If you want to enter the mines,” Maiya said, “you have to do so while everybody beneath the surface is asleep so as to not around suspicion. We’re cutting it close to the wire as it is, but I wanted you both well-rested. The light trams to the caverns are open now, so you’ll be able to enter; I’m not coming with you. I need to be up here to analyze anything you send back.

“Once you’re in the mines, I need you to track down The Embassy I used to work for. Vince, do you know where to find him?”

I shook my head no; he’d never led me to his new underground office, just his above ground one.

“I’ll give you a map.” She pulled down a panel, fiddled with it for a bit, then handed it to me – upon the sheet of virtual glass was a map of the district 137 area of the Slate mines, which I stored in my own data banks for recollection later when we were down in the mines. I’d been stripped away from district 137’s netherworld so quickly that I wasn’t even familiar with the area; I knew that the map would come in handy right away. “The map also has all the information you need to enter The Embassy’s office and speak with him.”

“So, what about the Renaissance Room?” I asked.

“We’ll get there. The first order of business is to find out what’s going on on Cydia. Talk to The Embassies around the mines, starting with this one. See if you can extract information from them, and use force if you have to. Something’s up, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of it. Now, follow me and I’ll show you the light trams you need to take to get back below district 137.”

Maiya began walking out of our room, and we followed suit obediently. She led us down to a floor we’d never been to – somewhere in the 100’s – and we soon realized that it was a department related to the Slate mines below. The floors were covered in gravel that had trailed from the shoes of workers entering and exiting the mines – workers with privileges high enough to do so, in any case. I was immediately observant of all the light trams around the premisses, each leading to a different sector of the mines.

Maiya walked in front of one, placed next to an empty cubicle, and nodded. This would take us back to district 137.

“Remember,” she said, “once you go in, there’s no coming back unless you have the proper authorization. Gates will block the light tram behind you.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Any chance we can get some ID data?”

Maiya shook her head. It looked like Curie and I might be going down into the mines for keeps, so we both breathed deep, nodded at Maiya, and stepped through the light tram.

Down in the mines, everything’s darker. You don’t notice it until you begin to enter and exit often, and when you do it’s not hard to realize what a cave you’ve truly been living in. As soon as we stepped out of the light tram, a gate closed behind us, locking us into the netherworld, and I caught a glimpse of where I had been living for eight years: the sparkle of the slate reflecting the artificial lights, the noise of drilling, the silence of sleep, and the emptiness of the caverns. It was all so coherent and planned out. These were the sounds of the battlefield that I remembered.

I looked around, and saw Curie fascinated by this underground maze, as if it had never existed beforehand. A brand new world had unfolded itself to him, and he couldn’t contain himself. He, like the child he was, began running around, touching and examining every little facet of the mines. I was just hoping a drone wouldn’t stop by and catch this suspicious activity. To guard us, I made sure to stand nearby or in front of him at all times.

“Curie,” I said, “we can’t fool around. We have a job to do, and a friend to find.” I pulled down my map to see where The Embassy’s office was. “The Embassy’s office isn’t far. It’s hard to believe that I missed it. It looks like it’s mostly nighttime around here, so we shouldn’t have any trouble walking around. Just watch out for droids roaming the premisses. If they see you, it’s bad news.”

“Got it, boss,” Curie said, and we marched together towards The Embassy’s new office. The powdered Slate – that toxic dust – it kicked up onto our skin and into our eyes. None of it phased us; we were immortal, we were all-powerful, and we were invincible. The fetches – those artificial bodies – they had transformed us into beings unaware of poison, treachery or death. The Slate dust meant nothing to us.

It was hard to believe that I’d missed his office before; it was far more obvious than his old location. In the residential area, a stairwell made of highly polished slate led to a lit area below, filled with a bright, warm light that exuded brilliance from every corner – it was far more impressive an entrance than his old, grim office. And yet the door to where the real man sat was just the same as ever; bleak, desolate, intimidating. It was a door whose handle I didn’t want to turn.

I pulled down the map and tossed it to Curie. “Read me the pass code, will you?” I asked him. He immediately obliged and read the alphanumeric pass code written atop the map Maiya had given to us, while I pulled down a panel and began entering it in.

Subservient to our whims, the door opened, and we entered into the room to have our final talk with The Embassy of district 137.