Resonate

She stepped out that day, happy as could be, everything was right in her world. Leaving that house, her brother, a Singularity, could not affect her or her status.

Elisia was on her way to meet her Viber. That person who so closely matched her resonance in the system. She looked down at her bracelet. The dull metallic band with its digital display around the piece, showed the message she had just received from him.

‘At the park’ it read.

She clenched her left wrist to activate the voice command response and held the device near enough to her mouth that it picked up her message to send to him.

‘Be there soon’

The day was bright enough, despite the general overcast. Brighter than it had been in days. Even in this area, where weather was mostly controlled, there were certain times when the climate at large didn’t allow for man’s meddling.

The four neat and orderly blocks she walked through, with their towering apartment complexes, with their organized pedestrians walking passed her on the sidewalk, and with all their uniformity, made Elisia felt safe.

When she made it to the park entrance, she took in the sight as if for the first time. She did this every time. Every nine days when she met him here, she stopped and enjoyed the view. It only changed slightly each time. It was a controlled change. She liked that. That’s what everyone here liked. Well, almost everyone. If only she didn’t have to have a brother who was a damned Singularity.

The flowers bloomed, the trees swayed, the overcast sky gave just enough light between the buildings surrounding the four-by-four block sized park that she accepted it as a silver lining of the sunshine that she would have to roll her UV protection sleeves down over her arms. Though, she liked feeling the air on her skin. She wore slightly more revealing clothing than most young women her age. Her shorts were rolled just above her knee. Her shirt sleeves tucked into a neat roll at her mid-upper arm.

The fabric was nearly perfected by now. It protected quite well from UV rays. She felt like such a rebel when she didn’t have herself totally covered. It was just enough risk that it excited her. There wasn’t much to be excited for at Here. She took it where she could. She knew that while everything was great, and fine, and decent, she would quietly suppress her intrigue when something didn’t go quite according to plan. Any time the Vibration and Resonance System Services (VRSS) had a glitch, she secretly felt alive that something was different. If only her brother didn’t make being that different such a slap in the face, maybe she would be able to express just enough of her excitement that it would be acceptable. But next to him, the whole family had to stay as expected as much as possible to avoid any consequence. This sort of change, she feared.

She was thinking about what her brother might be doing right now at the house when she found her Vibe sitting under their tree. Well, they liked to call it their tree, but only to themselves. They couldn’t really ever claim, even as a joke, to any of their friends that they had any remote claim to ownership of this blatantly public property.

“Hi.” He said with a tame smile. Jardie looked up at Elisia and even though the VRSS had put them together, he knew he liked her even without the system pairing them based on their resonance.

“Hi.” She said just sheepishly enough, with a quick tuck of her auburn hair behind her right ear.

He patted the ground beside him, and she sat. The cherry blossoms were beautiful. She looked up at them once she sat, to avoid looking at him so immediately. He looked up too and kept an eye to the side, waiting for her to relax her neck and lean into the tree.

Once she did so, he leaned in as well and they touched their heads together, relaxing against the tree.

“This place is perfect.” She said.

“It’s supposed to be.” He commented.

“You know what I mean,” she jostled him playfully, “I think it’s perfect. It’s beautiful.”

Indeed, it was perfect, at least, as perfect as would be largely agreed upon. Jardie had little concern for the perfection of the park, nor would he admit that he knew exactly what she meant. Elisia didn’t know Jardie’s father was on the committee that represented the people of Here in regards to decorative public vegetation.

That’s all it was too. While the plants, flowers, trees, and all were indeed real, organic, their purpose was moot. Carbon dioxide was controlled, as well as oxygen. Here had the cleanest air that could be needed.

As such, the gardens at every other corner along the odd numbered streets and then the park itself, were all carefully organized. Jardie’s relationship with his father was greatly improved once he got his Vibe.

Most people receive it before they hit puberty. He hadn’t been given his until he was fifteen. His father was near to losing his role on the committee. How could someone represent the people if they had given rise to a Singularity? Thankfully, Jardie had been matched. It would take time before they could meet however, as Elisia was only six years old at the time. That’s the age the VRSS first seems to be able to find Vibes.

Now it was almost her seventeenth birthday. Jardie had been asking his father to advocate certain flowers and weather for certain days based on Elisia’s preferences, unbeknownst to her. All she would know is the world lined up a little bit more for her than other people. He liked that she saw beauty everywhere. He didn’t mind she enjoyed certain unmatched things in society. He gave no attention to the excitement he felt from her when something was not right in society. He ignored her, albeit infrequent, comments on how freeing it was on the days the system was in maintenance.

He had none of that on his mind however, when he had requested for his father to make a plea to the committee for this day. Since they could only see each other every nine days, this meeting would be closer to her seventeenth birthday than the next. In just a few more minutes, he would give her such a surprise, she would surely talk about it for the rest of her life, even though his would end in less than five years.

He hoped that in her remaining years she would have this memory to hold on to. He hoped that he wouldn’t be taken when he was thirty. He hoped that perhaps there could be a change by the time she was thirty and she wouldn’t face the same thing. He hoped perhaps it could change even for him, even though he knew laws weren’t changed more than once a decade, and just last year, after nothing new for thirty-four years, a record, the motion to adjust weather more than five degrees but not more than ten degrees between days was granted to the committee. He hoped too much. He knew that.

They sat there, enjoying this fabricated day. Elisia’s mind wandered. He sensed it and turned to her.

“What’s wrong?”

After a moment of indecision as she tried to deny anything was bothering her, she blurted out, “My brother, I’m worried. He says he’s fine with being a Singularity, and it wouldn’t be so much of an impact if he didn’t hang around with those other Singularities. They just,” she stopped herself. She was getting too passionate about it. Her emotions were rising. The bracelet chimed. She took a deep breath and calmed herself down. Jardie put an arm around her shoulders. This was the extent they could touch.

It took a few decades after the VRSS was established for people to stop contesting the system. More accurately, it took decades for people to fear the increasing consequences of contesting the system. So, despite the age gap, they had been allowed to start meeting when she was thirteen, Jardie just shy of his twenty-second birthday. Common laws were otherwise still upheld from before Vibrational Law arose, but everyone could see it slowly eroding away. While individuals could make their own choices, it was still unsavory to engage in relations before the younger of a pair was at least seventeen. That said, it wasn’t too often the system paired people with such an age gap.

They sat quiet, each of them feeling each other’s presence and the warmth of the day. Jardie finally spoke up.

“I’ve heard of them. So, I know what you’re talking about. But, from what you’ve said, your brother isn’t all…” Jardie trailed off, wary of anyone within earshot “Tuned out… right?”

For a moment Elisia looked taken aback that Jardie would even ask if her brother had renounced everything about the VRSS, but she recovered and said,

“No, he’s not. He doesn’t seem different after we know he’s been hanging with them. And of course there’s the extremists, so mom, dad, and I feel safe knowing he’s still the same old guy we’ve always known.”

“Being an only child, I can’t relate like that. But especially being that he’s your older brother, and with what has been being spread around lately by the Information Dispensaries, I’d be worried he would get caught being around the wrong people, even if he didn’t have those leanings himself.”

Elisia sighed. She’d given this a lot of thought. If the ID were to declare her brother and her family an information risk, well, no one knew what happened to those who disappeared after that was established.

She and her parents had discussed it often. Being a younger sister to a twenty-four-year-old Singularity was hard. She was grateful that she had her Vibe so early or else she and her family would’ve suffered significant derision. True, she didn’t know nearly the precise activities her brother engaged in, but she trusted him enough to know he wasn’t one of those rebellious Singularities. As far she knew, for her brother it was just a group of people like him to hang out with. Those who would otherwise be lonely until they died. Those without whom they perfectly resonated with in the entire world.

“The Cacophonists.” Jardie said, breaking Elisia’s train of thought.

“What?” she wasn’t quite mentally back in the conversation.

“The Cacophonists.” Jardie repeated. “I heard my dad say that once, on a call with some colleague for an emergency meeting about those extremists. Some manifesto that was found. Those derelict heathens actually managed to carve some sort of slogan into the Here Monument at the doors to the city.”

Elisia was shocked not only to learn of this information, but that Jardie would share it with her. Information like this wasn’t known to the public for a reason. For Jardie to have heard something and then shared that information that was not disseminated by the ID, she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She was torn from her thoughts by a sudden blooming of every flower available to the committee. Every tree, every bush, every stem, a spectrum of colorful flora. Elisia was amazed. Jardie could see pleasure shining from her face. She stood and stared in awe. Her eyes wouldn’t rest on any single spot for more than a second. Her world was beautiful.

Then, she felt something cool around her neck. A stark comparison to the warm air.

“There.” Jardie said.

Elisia looked down at her chest. Something gleamed from a sudden burst of pure sunlight. Laying over her lavender City-wear was a crystal heart-shaped locket.

“I know you’re not quite seventeen yet but,”

She spun around, the locket refracting colorful rays of sunlight, and kissed him.