Memorize (Book One)

A Twinkle and a Friend

Jay had been on B24 for about a year. He had quickly ascended the steps of hierarchy in GloCo engineering teams, and had been assigned to a position in the Water Department. This was the most sensitive working sphere if there was any. Water was a big issue on B24. It had to be constantly monitored, recycled, tested, improved. Quantity was not a problem, but quality was a constant threat. It was an interesting job, one that allowed Jay to travel a lot.

Like all the colony-dwellers, Jay lived a peaceful, easy life. Yet he had remained somewhat lonely since his arrival. The number of friends you had, your outings, your activities, every thing you did, GloCo knew. Entertaining oneself was compulsory, because everyone knew what was good or bad for their physical and mental health, thanks to GloCo's continuous educational campaign. If your ratio of social or physical activity was too low, if your diet was unbalanced, if your thoughts wandered too much, you received instant notification.

Every week, Jay was provided with a more detailed account of how well he performed in his professional and personal life. It was all for the best. He was fit, had made a few friends at work. He practiced pod flight and had just passed his level 2 certification. He was actually getting very good at this. The only low assessment was his social life, where he barely reached average.

But the thing that Jay had managed to keep under the radar was the uneasiness that filtered through his body every now and then. Contrary to everything he knew and experienced, it was random and disorganized. Sometimes he thought he should tell the Composium. But then, was it a wise move? There was this nagging feeling that below the surface of his good-looking figure and his light-hearted spirits, something darker was bidding its time. And a little voice in his head kept telling him to shut the hell off.

"Better improve my social assessment," Jay thought. So he had planned to meet in the evening with Starling, his best friend on B24. For reasons that seemed impossible to grasp, things had instantly clicked between Jay and Starling. That guy was so easy-going, and had such a cold-blooded, cynical sense of humor. Starling made life look even easier than GloCo wanted it to be. The two of them had taken up pod-control lessons together, and they had passed their certification at the same time. So tonight, they were going to have a blast, looping and zooming in the air above the outskirts of the Red City. By the way, a bit of adrenaline was prescribed by GloCo and even vouched for a bonus on yearly accounts...

It was well past night time when the two friends met at the entrance of the Composium. They had been kept busy by their respective works. Starling, as laid-back and careless as he seemed, worked for the High Intelligence Department, a very selective bureau devoted to Life Improvement. Whatever Starling did there was confidential, and he had taken an oath. Even if taking an oath was somehow superfluous, Jay thought: after all, any leak would be instantly spotted by GloCo, because lying was chemically detected by the Composium's monitoring system...

"Bout time, dude... I mean, what were you doing?" said Jay.

"You know I cannot say a thing about what I do, right? Ah I forgot, you Second-borns are a little slow on the uptake, that' s right...!" Starling answered.

"Shut up Star, you're a baby. Aaaaah, little First-born... I could teach you a few things about life, you know!"

"You bet, you're even newer than me!! Come on, let's go." Starling patted his friend on the shoulder and winked as he often did. The next moment he was already outside, climbing into a service pod and waving at his friend to hop in. Jay followed suit, reflecting that his buddy was energetic all the time. He had this solar, shining nature, doing multiple things in an instant, while Jay himself was so dense and pondering more than necessary.

They both flew off to the Leisure Pod Centre, which was like all the buildings in the Red City, a very widespread arrangement of houses. The LPC though, had several towers overlooking the area. It was dark, the three suns had sunk below the horizon a few hours ago, and the towers were glowing in the night, with a fluctuating assortment of blueish lights. A few laughs and elevators later, they were up in one of the towers, seated near the windows and drinking space lager. Before their eyes, the northern part of the Red City was shining in all its glory, a distant patch of moving dots and flat rectangles. At that time of the day, many people were out having fun, or had locked themselves in a Dream Pod, allowing their mind to carry them into unknownw stories. The DP experiences allowed them to let the steam out and stored their wild impulses into archived mental files.

Jay and Starling were not really fans of the Dream Pod, although they used it occasionally. Their favorite leisure was actually to sit there, in one of the LPC towers, enjoying the sight, drinking, commenting on the pilots' last achievements. The LPC was a community, the meeting point for all types of flying addicts, whether occasional or professional. On the airfield, thousands of pods were landing or taking off, of all possible sizes and shapes. The Composium's managing system made it possible for everyone to fly at the same time. Collisions never occured. Jay was taking a sip of his second lager, when something suddenly caught his attention.

There was the faintest but most unlikely intermittent light on the border of the Fields, at the very edge of his retinal persistence. Well beyond the eastern fields, there was something that did not belong to the watering systems he knew so well. This was near the WDC3 section: a tiny spot of reddish orange hue. The next moment, without really knowing why, he was up and heading toward the boarding section, Starling almost running behind him and asking questions that he didn't bother to answer.