Saeva Alterra Hawkins

  Her life had been nothing but peaceful. I mean, if you compared it to more daring lifestyles, that is. She had her fair share of woes. Her life was a huge mixed bag of highs and lows, good and bad. Today, that was all going to change.

  “Good morning, Seta.” Saeva’s voice seemed to croak. Nothing happened as she slowly sat up, still bathed in darkness.

  “Seta…” Saeva repeated. “Good morning?”

  “Oh… Oh right. My bad. My bad.” Seta stated over the room's speakers. “Good morning, Saeva. Initializing Wakeup. Did you enjoy your sleep?”

  “I thought digital intelligence would have been a little bit more perfected by the year 2510.” Saeva said. She rubbed her eyes as the room brightened to a warm light. The entire sixteen feet of wall across from her bed slowly turned transparent. The expansive cavernous city showed outside.

  “Digital does not mean I’m a walking set of algorithms.” Seta retorted. Her voice was in her usual melodic tone. “I was distracted. An entity of my caliber can still partake in hobbies.”

  “You do know that you actually are much more simplistic than a set of algorithms,” Saeva replied. “I mean, neural networks don’t necessarily process like machines do these days. You are just a series of pings.”

  Saeva was up and out of bed. She marched into her bathroom. She disrobed and stepped down into the shower area, the center of the room where the floor had a five-foot square indentation. A series of glass walls appeared around her. Water began to bathe her body in a warm feeling.

  “And you aren’t any better? I mean, my layout is literally based on your brain structure.” Seta huffed in reply. “Living things are just as programmed as anything else.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Seta. As always, you seemed to be in denial.” Saeva sighed, taking in the heat of the mist as it passed over her skin. She could feel the dirt being pulled away. The thin layer of skin cells peeled off. She felt the hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements slowly leave her collective being. The carbon dioxide left her lungs and rapidly expanded away with each exhale. It was replaced by fresher air. Deep inside, she could feel these molecules binding to her blood, moving around her entire being.

  The water seemed to envelope her, guided by quantum and magnetic fluctuations created by the shower. Her focus shifted outward as she sensed the glass silicate barrier between her and the outside world. Blocking her view of the world beyond. The wall of infinitely spaced atoms stood unyielding before her. The small five-by-five room seemed infinite and yet simultaneously closed in around her. The exchange of atoms from the outside stopped as the water froze in the air. Heat unable to radiate was replaced by a cold chill that took over her body. It was an isolating chill that seemed to emanate from a void she hadn’t noticed existed until now.

  The bathroom seemed to reverberate as a voice spoke in incoherant sound. The atoms frozen all around her seemed to heat up as the energy passed into them. Yet they stayed perfectly still. Saeva felt terror as a feeling of disconnection passed over her.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “-piece-” The voice continued to reverberate. She couldn't make sense of the experience. It was the only word she could make out. The infinite void spiraled into an unknown paradox of deep, confining infinities.

  “Saeve!” A familiar voice filled the back of her mind. The infinity collapsed back on itself. The confining feeling expanded outwards. The two unknown forces pushed and pulled Saeva. Each moved back and forth until a familiar and known equilibrium took its place.

  “Saeva!” It was Seta’s voice. Worry seeped through her melody. “Saeva, I’ve shut off the shower. Can you hear me?”

  Saeva found herself naked on the dark stone of her bathroom floor. The walls around her were cracked. Glass and mirrors littered the floor. The perfect square of the shower the only place free of debris.

  Her mind went to the time on her fifteenth birthday, three years ago. How she had never manifested a level. When she had informed her foster mother, they reacted, but the shocked blank expressions of worry and anxiety had overwhelmed her. Out of fear, she registered as a negative one.

  Until now, this was the first time that Saeva had ever seen anything come of the situation. After all the hours she spent searching the libraries, she was never able to find out why she never received a level. And now here was this deep resonating voice that carried through to her from an unknown infinity.

  It was the morning of her exam, the day she needed the highest level of control. She needed all she had to pass tests that were meant to test her capability. Slowly, she climbed off the floor and proceeded back into her room. She ignored Seta’s request for conversation.

  “Are you all right?” Seta asked her. “Hello? Your vital signs spiked. You seem to be in healthy shape now, but I can't read your mind. Are you all right? Did something happen?” There was anxiety and fear in her voice.

  “I'm all right, Seta. Calm down.” She said in reply. “Can you open the closet for me?”

  Instantly, the right wall of her room, opposite the windows, disappeared. In its place, a wardrobe lined with clothes was revealed. She browsed and soon found the outfit she had planned to wear months ago at the start of the school semester.

  After getting dressed, she left her room and went into the large hallway that lined the back wall of the house. The windowless ceiling displays showed a star-scape and a view of the Milky Way. A sight that isn’t visible within the cavern.

  The kitchen was at the end of a large living space. The massive room overlooked a large veranda with an infinity pool and a beautiful view of the large cityscape outside.

  Her house was nestled along the far southern wall of the cavernous city. With twenty-five miles to the center, she was able to inhale the entirety of it. On the left of the upper cavern wall, she could see the main dock-port. A huge, towering glass structure that hugged the northwestern wall of the cavern. A place she had always longed to go. Until made a citizen, no one was allowed to leave the city. That was apparently a right earned.

  If you did not pass the AAL practical, you had only a few options. You could go down to the manufacturing areas far beneath the Earth, well into the mantle. Or you could live a life in the lower realm of the cavernous City, forced on a universal basic income.

  Saeva was not going to let this be her fate. She was finally going to be free and able to explore the Stars. She would apply for the Arteon project, the first interstellar space mission in the past century. Her goal was to leave this solar system and the Earth behind.

  She was a bird in a cage that longed to be free. She was someone who could only see the outside world through view screens and hollow rooms. She had virtual reality, but that world was a place that wasn't real.

  Without Level III adaptations, the Cavernous City had always been dark to her eyes. She didn’t have a heightened ability to hear, nor super strength like her friends and peers. She was instead someone who is left to be powerless in this world.

  She reached into the cupboard and pulled out a dry breakfast meal. It was a small pellet, that was plopped into the hydrator. With the press of a button, the smell of a warm grilled egg and cheese sandwich engulfed the room. She ate what would be her final meal in this house and left. Pass or fail, she was going to leave this city, today.