Tw: Violence, death of an elderly person, mentions of ableism and classism
"Do it."
"But..."
"Do it. It's your duty. You have to do it."
The frightened eyes of an elderly woman in a wheelchair made it impossible for Ted to look away. The muffled cry of the little girl the lady was holding between her arms echoed through the room. A thousand eyes stared at him in a silent court of fear and judgment. In those eyes was a resigned terror that only those who knew they would soon face a inevitable death could have. The lady hugged the crying child and tried to comfort her by gently stroking her short hair, but it did not stop the little girl's desperate crying.
"I-I can't." Ted held the gun tightly in his shaking hands as the cold metal of the weapon seemed to seemed to pierce his flesh, as if to merge with him and become one mind.
"I can't do this. I can't do this." he murmured in a broken voice, slowly lowering the weapon with trembling arms.
"Not good. You are failing your training, Lutz. There will be consequences, you know?" said the man standing next to Ted, in a tone of voice that was nonchalant. From his words, Ted could sense how devoid of compassion or doubt this man, whose identity was hidden behind a black gas mask, was. As Ted looked at the two empty spheres that were supposed to be the man's eyes, it seemed to Ted that he was talking to a machine programmed to kill. The fact that everyone else on the team was wearing the same exact mask except him did not help the guard to perceive them differently.
"But how can you ask me to do such a thing! How can you think it is a normal thing to ask?" The guard's voice resembled the cry of a wounded animal. Completely crushed by the situation, suffering and frightened.
"The previous mission did not give you this emotional reaction."
"It's obvious! We went to an orphanage to distribute clothes and school supplies to the orphans! How can you compare that to this?"
Until a few hours earlier, Ted had been almost completely sure that Jake had been manipulated into believing that he was on the side of justice, on the side of revolutionary heroes ready to change a society that did not suit their personal needs. In fact, his first duties as a policeman had only required him to do charity work and useful community service, such as bringing food and blankets to people less fortunate than others, such as the homeless and orphans.
Now he began to understand why his superiors had ordered him to help certain people and leave others out. At first, Ted had not paid much attention to it, thought they had their own good reasons for not giving all the material to all the people they had seen. He never imagined that they had already divided those people into two distinct categories: those who were still potentially useful to society and those who were not. Homeless people with significant disabilities, children with severe relationship problems, elderly people. All were loaded onto trucks and taken away. Ted had naively thought that they were being taken to shelters.
Never would he have imagined that those people would be gathered in that concrete building to be used as human guinea pigs for weapons testing. Inside those gray, cold, bare walls, thousands of innocent people had had their souls torn out. The high walls gave a feeling of hopelessness, as if they made each victim smaller, who had the misfortune to be born into a society that did not tolerate them for simply existing.
"This is also an act of mercy," his faceless and nameless boss told him firmly. Perhaps it was easier to commit these atrocities by erasing one's identity. "By being used as human targets, they make themselves useful. They know it. We can test weapons that will make our society safer. Their alternative is to sit and rot in their useless and harmful existence. If you want to help others, you have to make sacrifices, even if it means getting your hands dirty."
"How can human life be worthless? The very fact of being human has intrinsic value! Everyone deserves to exist!" the guardian exclaimed, almost bursting into tears. He stared at his own miserable reflection in the black lenses of the gas mask in front of him.
"Not when resources are limited. We cannot afford to let everyone survive, Lutz. I can understand that this concept may seem absurd to a primitive like you, but if you do not conform to our rules, you will soon join the group of the undesirables."
"This is pure cruelty! I refuse!" Ted turned to the opposite side of the old lady and threw the gun to the floor, which made a dry noise that startled everyone in the room except for the masked men.
"Cruelty is useless. We only want performance," his unnamed superior replied before bending down to pick up Ted's gun. "I'm going to give you one last chance to understand the concept, Lutz. Let's see if you let your emotions get the better of you next time."
Ted did not even have time to react when he heard a loud bang and terrible scream coming from behind him. His eyes widened as he turned to see a river of blood running down the woman's injured knee. The elderly lady had a grimace of pain on her face as she tried in vain to to stop the bleeding with her hands. The child next to her seemed to be in complete panic as she held the lady's knee with her hands, while her gaze was fixed on an indefinite point in the room. Her eyes were glassy and expressionless, but her hands spoke for her heart.
"BASTARD! You cowardly bastard! What have you done?!" Ted shouted angrily, struggling against the grasp of two other masked men holding him back to prevent him from reaching their superior. The other prisoners stood huddled in the corners of the of the room, looking completely helpless and resigned. Like animals about to be slaughtered.
"I have made a decision." The boss replied glacially, slowly turning his head in his direction. "Which you did not do. You could have given this woman a quick, painless and dignified death. So as not to stain your conscience, you gave me the power to decide for her." He concluded this lesson by shooting quickly and accurately directly at the old woman's head. The lady collapsed in the arms of the crying child.
"Think about it. The next time I will not be so lenient."
~
"So, what do you think, Bruno?" asked Yutani, twirling a strand of her hair. She was sitting on the lab table, absentmindedly swinging her legs. The girl felt no desire to be productive or create anything that day.
"Hm? Sorry, I wasn't listening." Bruno replied patiently, trying his best to follow his friend's story while assembling the final pieces of his latest invention. He sat hunched over the table, completely absorbed in his work.
"Hey, Bruno, can you stop what you're doing for a second?" Yutani crossed her arms and pouted, hoping for a reaction from him.
"All right." Bruno sighed and put the screwdriver down on the table. "Tell me everything." he replied as his left knee began to shake nervously, moving up and down at regular intervals. Bruno concentrated on staring at Yutani's funny insect hood, clearly impressed by this bizarre choice of of style.
Yutani, in turn, began to stare at the strand of hair she had just tormented. She looked at the ends of her hair with an air of dissatisfaction as she spoke.
"Do you think I screwed up by kissing Jake?"
"Did you kiss Jake?"
"Gee, Bruno, I can see that listening to people is really your forte! I've been telling you that for for half an hour!"
"And I've already told you that I can't concentrate on two things at once." Bruno replied without any aggression in his voice, just trying to explain his point of view. "You can't be surprised if I don't listen to you. I don't do it on purpose, believe me. I care about what what you say. But if you want someone to listen to you all the time, you have to reactivate Tagbot. I think you can program it to give love advice. I don't really know what to tell you."
"Come on, tell me what you instinctively think, without thinking too much about it," Yutani urged him.
"I don't understand why you're asking this. How do I know if it was wrong for you to kiss Jake? Is there a manual on who is right to kiss?" Bruno tilted his head quizzically.
"No, you dummy! Do you think I got too emotional?"
"But why do you say that? I don't understand, really."
"Because he's been acting like nothing has ever happened since he came back, treating me like a friend again. I was hurt to be honest, I was hoping that he would behave differently after all the things he said to me." Yutani bit her lower lip and sighed. "I'm afraid I've been played by a stereotypical asshole who thinks he can use girls as disposable gloves."
"Disposable gloves?"
"In the sense that they use you once, then they don't care anymore, bye-bye. Never see you again." She frowned at her friend, hoping to get a satisfying response from him.
"I don't get the feeling that he doesn't want to see you again. You said earlier that he was sitting with with you before, talking about what Rain did."
"So you listen to me sometimes!"
"I listened to you partially, as much as I could." Bruno shrugged, a bit annoyed at Yutani's insistence on assigning him the role of the one who deliberately doesn't give a damn and doesn't listen to others out of superiority.
"Okay. But it doesn't seem very normal for someone to kiss you and then act like nothing ever happened. "
"What exactly do you expect him to do?"
"I don't know. Maybe that he should invite me up to the roof so we could talk privately. Or I was expecting that he would kiss me again. Or that he would say something sweet to me, or that he would tell me..." Yutani looked away for a moment, almost trying to hide he face from Bruno. "... I love you."
"Why don't you tell him directly instead of asking me? How will I know if he is teasing you or if it is just his just his way of reacting to certain situations?" Bruno asked while shaking his head. "In my opinion, your problem is that you expect others to react exactly the way you think is right. otherwise you get offended and make superficial judgments. People are driven by deep and complex motivations, it's absurd to think you can decipher someone's behavior without talking about it first. Yours are all assumptions."
"Hmm." Yutani seemed to ponder Bruno's words for a few moments before grimacing. "Yes, right. Now I'm going to go to him and ask him if he's just an asshole or if he really cares about me. I will also tell him that I'm heartbroken that he doesn't see me the way I want him to. Maybe I'll even get down on my knees and beg him to let me clean his shoes."
"Good, except for the shoe-cleaning thing, I think asking him directly what he thinks is the best thing to do. At least you know if there is a reason to be worried." Bruno smiled and nodded, not seeming to catch the hint of sarcasm in Yutani's words.
"How can't you see that I would just look like a loser who needs attention?" Yutani blurted out, rolling her eyes. "To make herself interesting in the eyes of a man, a girl should be cold, aloof and hard to reach! I don't want Jake to get sick of me or feel sorry for me!"
"Yutani, I really don't understand you. You want him to be kind and considerate to you, but you have to be the opposite? Don't you think he might misunderstand and realize that you don't care about him if you do that?"
"Not if I do it right." Yutani made a gesture imitating a chef adding spices to a dish. "A dash of flirtation, a dash of interest, and a dash of indifference. Never show your cards first. Otherwise, you're done, you've become the clingy, vulnerable one."
"But ... if no one shows his cards, the game doesn't go on." Bruno began to feel tired of trying to understand Yutani's convoluted reasoning. He didn't understand why people had a tendency to complicate things all the time. If everyone reasoned like Yutani, he was not surprised that he never had a girlfriend.
"Well, if he doesn't do anything, it means he wasn't interested in continuing the game."
"I still think you are complicating your own life. Talk about it clearly and stop these false antics. If there is a compatibility you can start a relationship with him. If you're not compatible, don't stay together. The end." Meanwhile, he had resumed tightening a screw. His metal arm creaked slightly with each turn of the young scientist's wrist.
"No way."
"Why did you ask my opinion if you have no intention of following it?" Bruno pressed a button on the metal cube he was modifying. Two long yellow mechanical arms appeared on the sides. Those arms had two metal bars attached at their ends, resembling big magnets.
"If you already know what to do... just do it, no?"
"Before I do anything, I want to make sure my intuition is right. I don't want to accidentally expose myself to an embarrassing situation and maybe even get rejected. I'm not really a big fan of of getting my heart broken, you know." Yutani replied, shaking her head. Her attention was was immediately drawn to the bizarre machine Bruno was working on. "What is that?"
"This." Bruno exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm, taking the strange square in his hand and raising it in front of him. "It's for you."
"For me?" Yutani looked stunned. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"I noticed that while you were working on Tagbot, you could never find your tools because they were scattered all over the lab. Now, with this backpack, you can pull them right at you with these two big magnets. You can also charge small electrical devices by by pressing another button. Eventually, you could even be able to gouge someone's eyes out, in case you need to defend yourself." Bruno had the air of a proud mother extolling her son's talents. He handed the strange backpack to Yutani with a satisfied smile on his face.
"Go ahead, try it on."
"I..." Yutani put it on herself and stared at it with astonished eyes. She turned around, admiring the sight of this technological masterpiece on her shoulders. "Thank you, Bruno.What's with the gift?"
"Now we're even. You invented Tagbot, I invented your gadget backpack." Bruno crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the device with satisfaction.
"What! Then I don't want it! I don't want to give up my advantage over you!"
"Are you sure you'd rather give up on this miracle just to get the better of me?"
"..." Yutani gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes, staring defiantly at Bruno. "...All right. You win this time."
"And I will continue to win," Bruno teased her with a smile.
"Impossible! Now, with this new backpack, I will be unstoppable again! You ruined yourself with your own hands, genius!" Yutani laughed mockingly and took wide steps towards Tagbot."Now you'll see: I'm going to program Tagbot to talk to Jake and find out about his feelings for me!"
"This will not end well." Bruno commented, rather amused. "I'll go get some popcorn."
~
A thick but fine drizzle fell on the neon sign of the bar. The red and pink light briefly intersected with the water droplets from the sky, erasing the drops and creating a slight blurring effect in the air. The environment was saturated with the smell of wet asphalt, while cars whizzing over the heads of passersby splashed more dirty water on umbrellas. The old guard allowed himself to raise his head for a brief moment, just to make sure he was in the right place, before he lowered his head carefully and let his black umbrella cover part of his face.
He entered the bar without thinking, as if on on autopilot.He did not know if he was doing the right thing. He just only knew that he had to do it.
Despite the late hour, the nightclub was quite empty. It was a cramped and dirty room, lit only by a few lamps that gave the room a strangely warm and soothing glow in contrast to the the ambiguous appearance of the place. Old plastic chairs were gathered around equally battered tables, adorned by the occasional beer glass left on them. Generic photos of celebrities were left hanging on the walls, while a small virtual reality gaming station placed next to the exit brought a touch of modernity to that place.
A long wooden table served as the workbench for a charming but unique bartender. At first, Ted thought he had not seen the face of the girl behind the counter correctly. But as soon as she looked up to greet him, a breath got caught in his throat.
This bartender had an extraordinary, unusual beauty. But her skin was completely green, as was her hair, which seemed to be styled like snakes and was held in place by a large golden barrette at the top of her head. Her feline eyes, yellow with amber highlights, stared back at him intently and shrewdly. She looked like a mythological creature from ancient Greece.
"I'm looking for Malika." Ted muttered, trying to sound as confident as possible. He tried not to show his shock at seeing such a person in front of him, reminding himself that he had witnessed far worse horrors just hours before to allow himself to be upset over a simple aesthetic appearance of a girl. The guard also hoped to correctly remember the name he had been told to say by Miss Maia, and prayed that Maia had not decided to play some kind of cruel joke on him.
The bartender smiled at him enigmatically. Her sharp teeth framed those soft, delicate lips and gave off an air of both wanting to maul him and wanting to reassure him.
"Welcome,darling. My name is Moira. Come on. Refresh yourself with a drink."She fiddled with bottles of hard liquor before handing him an elegant glass with an orange liquid enhanced by an inviting crimson cherry on the top of its icy surface.
"It's on the house." Moira winked at him. Ted sat down in the first chair he could find and swallowed his drink in one go, trying not to worry or think too much about what he was doing. The drink had fruity and velvety notes, with a touch of bitterness from the alcohol. He kept his eyes on Moira, who replied with a more serious smile.
"I think we should have a good talk now, the two of us."