Chasing the Light

Blinding white light. An earth-shattering roar. Then nothingness.

When the nuclear bombs were detonated across the globe, they wiped out the weak and solidified the strong as the trailblazers of the First Universal Order. Social Darwinism may have originated with the Old Kind, but here it was at its finest. FUOs (shorthand for the government officials) waited within the vicinity of every explosion across the globe, ready to sift through the rubble to find survivors. When survivors were found, FUOs swiftly implanted microchips into their brains while they were still unconscious. These microchips allow the First Universal Order to control everything that the survivors do and think, eliminating their free will and thus any possibility of recovering the life they once lived.

Post-insertion, the survivors – unconscious until the First Universal Order decided they should wake up – were transported to bunkers around the world, all of which house several thousand people. All of the First New Humans have their own rooms that remain unlocked, since no one with a microchip would do anything they’re not programmed to do anyway. The rooms are far from lavish, but they are comfortable: after all, the First New Humans need to be rested enough to procreate.

The process of deciding when a First New Human will procreate is simple: the FUOs go down the halls of the bunker, selecting a female from one side and the corresponding male on the other. The pair is then taken to the Procreation Chambers, where two FUOs observe the act to make sure that everything happens as it needs to for conception. Once a female becomes pregnant, she is transported to a different area of the bunker known as the Maternity Training Ward. There, she must watch videos created by the First Universal Order explaining how to raise a New Human. By the end of the nine-month period, she will have spent hundreds of hours watching videos explaining parenting during every stage of a New Human’s life; doing so will allow the New Human to acquire the right skills and behaviors needed to carry on the New Kind.

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Mira’s Story

Brain zap. Glitch in eyesight. Searing pain.

Wha…What is happening? Where am I? God, my head hurts…

I sit on the edge of my bed and put my head in my hands, massaging my temples in an attempt to rid myself of the blinding pain. As I lean forward, I feel something swinging around my neck and I grab hold of it. A heart-shaped locket.

Everything is so foggy. I feel like I remember this, but from where…? Why is my mind so cloudy?

I take several deep breaths and close my eyes. The pain in my head is so intense, it’s as if I’m seeing white…

White. White. An endless expanse of white light.

And then I remember.

The day of the explosion, I was sitting in my bedroom. It was October 14th – the day my mother died when I was just a girl. Even though it was twenty years ago, I still write her a letter every year on the anniversary of her death. As my pen scratched across the paper, revealing all the details of my life I so desperately wish to share with her now, I heard a deafening boom. Panicked, I looked out my window and saw a mushroom cloud billowing in the distance. My heart in my stomach, my mouth like sandpaper, I knew I had mere seconds before the force of that explosion enveloped me, taking me up into the sky right along with that mushroom cloud.

Or so I thought.

I never ascended into the heavens. I didn’t go anywhere even remotely resembling the afterlife I’d learned about as a kid. I have no idea what happened after the explosion or how I ended up here. What happened between the explosion and this moment? How much time has gone by? It’s like I’m a television and someone pressed the power button to turn me off for a while, and for some reason, the power button has been pressed again to turn me back on. But why?

My head is still in my hands and I again become acutely aware of the locket around my neck. All of a sudden, a wave of recognition crashes over me: it’s the locket my mother gave me before she died. She told me she had put a photo of herself in the locket so that I would always have her with me, but I’ve never been able to get the locket open. I suppose that’s ironic, my mother giving me a locket shrouded in mystery – she was always a mysterious woman. I never knew how, but my mother seemed to have a way of…knowing things. She’d always say, “I just have this feeling.” If only she’d had a feeling about her own impending death so that I could have saved her from it.

Pulling myself out of my daydreams, I get up from my bed and look through the floor-length window next to my door. The hallway appears to stretch infinitely on either side, room after room after room. In these rooms are men, completely deadpan, seemingly incapable of staring more than three feet in front of themselves. I gather that the women are on the other side of the hallway, where I am.

Speaking of which, where the hell am I?

As I peer through the window into the rooms across the hall, the faint sound of footsteps breaks the heavy silence. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I sit back on my bed, face turned away from the window. I hear two men’s voices.

“We need to make sure Numbers 2041 and 2042 go to the Procreation Chambers at 10:00.”

“We have half an hour before we need to take them. Did you already take Number 3299 to the Maternity Training Ward?”

“Yep. FUO145 and I took her at 8:00 and started the first video.”

Procreation Chambers? Maternity Training Ward? What the fuck?

Out of the corner of my eye, I see two men walk by in what appears to be some kind of military uniform. Unlike the almost lifeless men across the hall, these men have vibrant eyes and energetic gaits. It quickly dawns on me that they are guards in this apparent bunker.

But who are these prisoners? And why am I one of them?

Suddenly, I hear a loud clicking sound coming from the wall in front of me. The bricks slide apart to reveal a television, whirring to life. Images of a destroyed city flash across the screen, showing men wearing the same uniform as the guards hoisting bodies onto their shoulders. A true symbol of salvation.

Triumphant music and a voiceover accompany this footage:

“The world of today is light years away from the world of yesterday. Corrupt; destructive; incapable of self-government. This is what future generations will say of Old Humanity. The detonations cleared out those who were too weak to move forward. You survived because you are the strongest of the Old Kind and, under the governance of the First Universal Order, you will create New Humans and shape the world to be what it always should have been: compliant, productive, uniform.”

The television turns off and the bricks slide back into place.

I sit back on my bed, feeling like someone just kicked me in the stomach. So I did survive the explosion after all; I would have preferred any afterlife to this – probably including hell. I survived because I was the strongest of the “Old Kind” and was brought into a new phase of humanity in which I’m forced to procreate under the rule of a Universal Order? Oh, hell no.

I struggle to catch my breath as my head spins. I don’t understand how this could happen. So those men across the hall, the ones who seem like mindless robots – they effectively ARE mindless robots? But how did those guards (I heard one of them call another FUO, maybe for First Universal Orderly) do this? How are they controlling our minds, our actions?

Frantically pacing around and trying to wrap my head around all of this, I start combing through my long hair to examine my scalp for clues. Nothing seems out of the ordinary – but wait. My ears. Behind the left one, I can feel a distinct scar that had never been there before, one thick raised line that feels like it’s been there for quite a while. As I bring my trembling hand down from behind my ear, I look down and realize another new addition to my body art collection: 2043 branded on my left wrist. That’s when it dawns on me.

They microchipped us.

Now I really feel like I’m going to be sick. I run over to the trash can in the corner of the room and vomit. Hot tears begin to roll down my cheeks and suddenly I’m sobbing, overtaken by sadness and anger and fear all at once. I never wanted this life. I never wanted to “rise from the rubble” and give birth to new generations for the First Universal Order. I wish I would have died on October 14th.

And I’m alone. Why am I the only one who is suddenly self-aware? Why have I broken the trance when apparently no one else has?

Footsteps approach again. I realize that I can’t be lying on the floor in despair when I’m supposed to be under the control of a government microchip. After watching the propaganda video, I understand clearly that a freethinking person would pose a serious threat to the First Universal Order: the risk of an uprising would be too great. I quickly get back on my bed, wipe the tears from my face and resume staring blankly into space. I see the FUO out of the corner of my eye, but he keeps walking.

Panic. Anger. Terror.

The undertow of these emotions is pulling me under. Sleep, give me release.

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I wake up to the sound of my door opening. Two FUOs enter my room.

“Let’s go, Number 2043. Time to go to the Procreation Chambers.”

One of them grabs my arm in an attempt to pull me from my bed. I rip my arm out of his grasp, partially out of anger but mostly out of fear. The FUO looks stupefied, mouth agape and unable to comprehend what just happened. He looks at the other FUO, who is also bewildered, but who is much quicker to realize that my chip has somehow malfunctioned. As the two try to quickly make a decision about my fate, I know that I’m about to die. I grab hold of the locket my mother left me, desperate to feel close to her in my final moments.

Mom, I love you so much. I can’t wait to see you again.

I attempt to open the locket one last time. It finally works.

Just as the FUOs are pulling out their guns, a flash of white light envelopes the entire room. Then the power in the bunker goes out. The FUOs, in absolute shock at this point, leave my room to go into the hallway. As the lights come back on, an unbelievable sight unravels before my eyes.

Everyone is beginning to come out of their rooms, massaging their temples. While confused, memories of their lives pre-explosion are flooding back. All the FUOs, realizing the danger they’re now in, attempt to flee for their lives, but they cannot escape the mob of thousands.

When I opened the locket, it caused all the implanted microchips to malfunction, freeing all those in the bunker from the control of the First Universal Order.

This locket was given to me by my clairvoyant mother, who died on October 14th. The same day as the explosion. I can’t help but think that isn’t a coincidence.

Thank you for saving me, Mom. Oh, and the rest of humanity.