Author: Chippewa Livingston
Archive: Please ask
Disclaimer: I claim no affiliation or ownership of characters or material related to Dark Angel.
An Unauthorized Genetics Experiment: Host
The memories are people, places, events but mostly numbers- barcodes. There's a wide range of colors from the deep black of apathy to the glaring white hot of pain and a thousand shades of gray between. There were a lot of problems too, with complicated solutions. Those were solved with simple orders that didn't really solve anything. They are full of cold surfaces, hard edges and no emotion... unless you count fear as emotion.
Eventually the chain of memories starts to dissolve into numbers, strings and strings of numbers. The numbers are people with names and faces but always the
numbers come first.
############
Fortunately those memories don't belong to me. I've never heard the names and the numbers... well I never had much of a head for arithmetic back in school.
A man at the bar who'd been eyeing my little white uniform earlier called out, "Roxanne!" I tossed my head and sent my curls swinging in a maelstrom. A few stay behind my shoulders were I intended them to be. The rest swept over the tray of greasy food in my arms.
My patrons weren't the type to care.
Most of them were sour smelling men. Unshaved, unwashed and with rings around their eyes indicating that this was probably their first meal of solid food in a few days. They eyed the liquor bottles hungrily. But this was a respectable establishment and we didn't serve alcohol until noon. Or at least until someone flashed a 20.
I responded to the call with a sway in my step I'd perfected in a hundred junior beauty pageants, back home in Georgia, before the Pulse. In every single pageant I'd been crowned and had the sugary sweet smile to prove it.
Life was a simple round of waiting tables and gossiping with half-sober teamsters. I didn't mind men who tried to get a look under my skirt from the bar stools and was deaf to the condescending remarks of women about my skanky appearance. My biggest problems were the pains in my ankles and how to get the blue dye that bled from my highlights off my white collar. And at lunch I'd borrow a bottle of electric orange nail polish from one of the girls and touch up the chips in my coat of pink with some hastily painted flowers.
There was something sad behind my smile though (or maybe it was the white uniform a size or two too small) because men at the bar were always offering to buy me drinks. I lean on the counter top, painted three different colors depending where you sat. I'd smile and blush and touch my flat stomach with my free hand, saying I was expecting. For some, that was enough and they'd even leave me a generous tip, "for the kid."
Most of them, though, eyed me like they thought I wasn't the type to care about a thing like that. To them I'd add that whatever it was they were drinking went straight to my head and I was like to spill my next tray on the customer's lap. They mumbled "alright then" and I'd thank them for the offer, blowing them a kiss that left a ring of fuchsia lipstick on my fingers.
Then it was closing time and I smiled at the regulars, telling them I'd see them tomorrow. I walked the six blocks to my hole-in-wall apartment where I knew he'd be waiting.
If Roxanne ever laid eyes on him she'd have declared her willingness to marry him and spend the rest of her life having his babies on the spot. But somewhere on the climb up the shaky fire escape Roxanne ceased to exist.
I slipped in the window smelling deep fried as the food I served. We had a front door but the floor boards around it were rotten and neither of us trusted them with our weight. Roxanne had never seen the peeling paint of the apartment or the sparse mismatched furniture. She hadn't seen his face either because it came from the memories.
I depended on him to keep me sane. He was the only one who could look through the smudged lipstick and stained uniform and see me. Even if I was just a number.
That first night when I came home I'd had him right there on the floor. The mattress that came with the apartment smelled of liquor and violence, it made my stomach roll. I earned myself some vicious carpet burn that night but I needed to know that the memories were real. That the barcode hadn't reached its expiration date.
Archive: Please ask
Disclaimer: I claim no affiliation or ownership of characters or material related to Dark Angel.
An Unauthorized Genetics Experiment: Host
The memories are people, places, events but mostly numbers- barcodes. There's a wide range of colors from the deep black of apathy to the glaring white hot of pain and a thousand shades of gray between. There were a lot of problems too, with complicated solutions. Those were solved with simple orders that didn't really solve anything. They are full of cold surfaces, hard edges and no emotion... unless you count fear as emotion.
Eventually the chain of memories starts to dissolve into numbers, strings and strings of numbers. The numbers are people with names and faces but always the
numbers come first.
############
Fortunately those memories don't belong to me. I've never heard the names and the numbers... well I never had much of a head for arithmetic back in school.
A man at the bar who'd been eyeing my little white uniform earlier called out, "Roxanne!" I tossed my head and sent my curls swinging in a maelstrom. A few stay behind my shoulders were I intended them to be. The rest swept over the tray of greasy food in my arms.
My patrons weren't the type to care.
Most of them were sour smelling men. Unshaved, unwashed and with rings around their eyes indicating that this was probably their first meal of solid food in a few days. They eyed the liquor bottles hungrily. But this was a respectable establishment and we didn't serve alcohol until noon. Or at least until someone flashed a 20.
I responded to the call with a sway in my step I'd perfected in a hundred junior beauty pageants, back home in Georgia, before the Pulse. In every single pageant I'd been crowned and had the sugary sweet smile to prove it.
Life was a simple round of waiting tables and gossiping with half-sober teamsters. I didn't mind men who tried to get a look under my skirt from the bar stools and was deaf to the condescending remarks of women about my skanky appearance. My biggest problems were the pains in my ankles and how to get the blue dye that bled from my highlights off my white collar. And at lunch I'd borrow a bottle of electric orange nail polish from one of the girls and touch up the chips in my coat of pink with some hastily painted flowers.
There was something sad behind my smile though (or maybe it was the white uniform a size or two too small) because men at the bar were always offering to buy me drinks. I lean on the counter top, painted three different colors depending where you sat. I'd smile and blush and touch my flat stomach with my free hand, saying I was expecting. For some, that was enough and they'd even leave me a generous tip, "for the kid."
Most of them, though, eyed me like they thought I wasn't the type to care about a thing like that. To them I'd add that whatever it was they were drinking went straight to my head and I was like to spill my next tray on the customer's lap. They mumbled "alright then" and I'd thank them for the offer, blowing them a kiss that left a ring of fuchsia lipstick on my fingers.
Then it was closing time and I smiled at the regulars, telling them I'd see them tomorrow. I walked the six blocks to my hole-in-wall apartment where I knew he'd be waiting.
If Roxanne ever laid eyes on him she'd have declared her willingness to marry him and spend the rest of her life having his babies on the spot. But somewhere on the climb up the shaky fire escape Roxanne ceased to exist.
I slipped in the window smelling deep fried as the food I served. We had a front door but the floor boards around it were rotten and neither of us trusted them with our weight. Roxanne had never seen the peeling paint of the apartment or the sparse mismatched furniture. She hadn't seen his face either because it came from the memories.
I depended on him to keep me sane. He was the only one who could look through the smudged lipstick and stained uniform and see me. Even if I was just a number.
That first night when I came home I'd had him right there on the floor. The mattress that came with the apartment smelled of liquor and violence, it made my stomach roll. I earned myself some vicious carpet burn that night but I needed to know that the memories were real. That the barcode hadn't reached its expiration date.