2050

Berlin 2050.

I was out on my morning walk along the river Spree when I saw her. It was a woman with the heart locket. The locket sat on its gold chain as she waved it around. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked her in a hushed tone, hoping my voice would make the twenty yard distance. ‘I am reliving my past love’ she said. ‘Put that away before the drones find you’ I said as quietly as I could. ‘But it’s a locket my eternal love gave me’ she replied. ‘Lady which planet are you from, love is dead, put that away’ I said once again, this time with higher volume. It was too late, the drone arrived. It did not need an excuse; the heart shape was enough for it to make its decision. The needle was inserted and the lady’s body collapsed. As the cold corpse let go of its grip on the locket, it fell on the paved ground next to me. The killer drone had left to continue its duties elsewhere. ‘The cleaning drone would be here anytime soon’ I said to myself. I had another brief look at the lifeless locket close to my feet. In a momentary lapse of judgement, I picked it up and slid into my dilapidated overcoat’s left pocket.

I resumed with my impassive face trying not to give away any signs of anarchy. I needed to get back to my quarters before I could open the locket and view the world that once was. It was a mile walk back through Friedrichstrasse and Unter-den-linden before I could reach my haven. That was the fastest way home and I figured it was also the safest. As I turned into Friedrichstrasse I realised it was the day of the sustenance market. It was packed with women and drones. It was too late to go back, there would have been too many cleaning drones back the way I came. I had to walk through, hoping that the minion drones and robots did not pick up on my heart heat signatures. I was unsure if they were programmed to do so but it was also hard to tell each drone's designated purpose. I thought I perhaps pick up a sustenance product to avoid suspicion.

I walked past the essential vitamin drone. ‘Three months of it please’ I said. ‘Identity card’ said the drone in its human voice. I swiped my identity card on the drones left reader when it moved it’s unieye camera to scan my face. ‘Last refill was two months ago, it is early for refill. Will you be using your monthly exemption?’ it asked. ‘Yes’ I replied. The drone pulled out the supply from its underground vault and held it up waiting. I grabbed at the supply to resume my walk as nerves started to ease. I now had an excuse to be where I was. I took a left on Unter-de-linden where I found the armed women’s guard patrol dressed in pure black performing random checks on two old crippled ladies on the side walk. Above them were the swarm of personal drones that served them with never failing faith. They were designed for that, each one dedicated whole heartedly to one individual master. I had a further five hundred yards before I reached my allocated personal space on the 7th floor of the new commoner housing space. I walked past the patrol at a uniform pace and gait. The patrol guards were examining the belongings and pockets of their victims as the drones scanned the chips in their arms. As I strolled past and neared my destination without being disturbed, my fear of drones or guards eased and inward thoughts grew.

I wondered how the locket survived the years. It had been 10 years since the Grand Separation. I was barely fifteen then, living with my mother in Berlin’s west. I lost my mother along with all close female members of my family to the great gender war by drones. If they weren’t killed by a drone in the war, they were killed soon after by the residual radiation in the war zones. I heard my father and brother were lost on the other side of the war but that did not bother me. As a member of the female only NAIS party, my mother had a dear hatred for all men so I never really saw them before either. Following the 'Gender Separation' pact of 2040 I was naturally allocated to the women’s wing of Berlin. When I wanted to be relocated to another city with no gender separation, I wrote a letter to the highest counsel of Berlin west. A unanimous reply came from all council members. It read ‘All world cities and all population has been separated, anyone seen in a gender space they did not belong to, will be killed’. I wondered what the world was like on the men’s side of Berlin. It was at the other end of Berlin separated by an empty dividing space. A separating line with a width of five miles that they referred to as the no man’s land; neither party was technically allowed to inhabit the space as per the separation pact. No one I knew could tell me how long the line was or where it ended either. I heard stories of women who escaped to the men’s side using manipulated drones for cover, but there was no way to confirm what went on out there. They may have just been killed on first approach as would be for any man who would appear in our zone. Or maybe the men were more accepting; we only knew what we heard on this side.

I was close. Ten more yards and I would have been in my building when the guard robot approached. ‘What do you have there?’ it said. ‘Vitamin supplies’ I replied. The robot pulled out it’s scanner to check the radio frequency codes encrypted into the supplies. It was content. It turned the other way to another woman approaching from the north. I kept steady as I entered the building and once inside, I ran up the flight of stairs into my personal space on the 7th floor. I turned the window taints on along with the only single light that lit up the room.

I pulled out the locket when I heard a knock on my door. I hid it under my bed and rushed to attend. It was Silvia, my young neighbour. I opened the door when she said ‘I heard someone run up to our floor’. ‘That was me’ I replied. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked. ‘Yes everything is, I just had to be careful’. ‘Careful of what?’ she asked again. ‘Come in’ I said pulling her into my room as I slammed the door shut behind her. ‘There was another execution next to the Spree today’ I said. ‘What was it this time?’ she asked.

‘A crazy woman was waving a gold chain with a heart shaped locket on it’

‘She must have recently gone crazy then, since she would have had the locket for a while’ said Silvia.

‘Yes, very likely’

‘But why were you running up the flight of stairs instead of taking the elevator’ she asked confused.

‘I wanted to avoid the robot in the lift’ I told her.

She followed with a pertinent question, ‘Why were you avoiding the robot?’

‘Don’t freak out, but I picked up the locket’

Silvia's eyebrows rose, pupil's dilated when she said ‘You really shouldn’t have, I should probably go’

‘I shouldn’t have, but I did’ I said. Silvia turned to leave but returned meekly, ‘Did you see what’s in it?’

‘I was just about to open it, when you knocked’ I said. She stared at me briefly. I pulled her onto the bed and picked up the locket from under it.

It had an engraving on the back which said 14th February 2041. A thin line of space that would open the locket was visible around its side. It was stiff and rusty. My delicate fingers could not pull them apart and neither could Silvia’s. I reached for my thin metal scale that lay on the table next to the bed. It slid into the thin crack of the locket, worked as a lever and there it went. Inside were two images on either side. She did not look the same, but the eyes did not lie, it was the dead woman smiling on the left. She had fashionable long hair which must have been allowed back then. Her cheeks were rosy and her eye lashes black. The pearls around her neck had tiny point sparkles that made her neck look delicate. Opposite her was an image of a man in a black suit with short hair, high cheek bones and a chiselled jawline. I was vaguely attracted to his image. The last real one I had seen was more than 10 years ago. ‘Is that what women looked like back then? He also looks different from the male robots we have at the brothel’ said Silvia. She was only 16 and would have been 6 when the separation occurred. He was different from the the fake male robots at the brothel and I wondered why. I thought perhaps the smile he had could not be replicated or the depth of the eyes simulated. ‘Could you pull out your mirror?’ asked Silvia.

I folded the bed space to look at myself in the only mirror attached to the underside. As I saw my shaved head, small eyes and short eye lashes in the mirror, I could feel a tear flow down my pale cheeks on to my thick neck. Silvia looked at herself and said, ‘Why can’t we have hair? And how lucky was she to have such pink cheeks and long eye lashes?’