Synchronized Shadows

Everything is better now. That's what they say. I usually think so. Somedays, I'm looking around like I don't know if I'm missing something. Can things be all right and all wrong at the same time? My teacher said something about the best and worst of times. Are we there right now? 2070 is supposed to be about fixing things from half a century ago. Or is it just the Upward Council blowing smoke?

"Watch your mouth, Bastion!", Mom yelled. "I don't want our neighbors tagging us as a Community Hotzone again. You’ve already gone to Social Rehab twice. They could take you away from me. No more Cretin Words. Extermihate them from your vocabulary. Oh, now don't cry, I want you socially fluent is all."

"FOGLEY!", Bastion called her. Not exactly an illegal diss crime because old people aren’t a protected group, and especially not Mom, who isn’t young but old enough to get dumpster fired up over being called it. Bastion doesn't know when to shut his grid. He's mostly stopped using diss crimes, but he's always losing harmony over Cretin words, labels that get him in the right amount of trouble, lots of negative attention but never hauled off. Ever since mom left our dad, old home, old lives. It’s never easy on the nextees. Better’s always somewhere else.

Actually, I like the word fogley. It shows how much we've grown. At least, I think so. Before the Upward Council and Community Hotzone Targeting, people were free to hurt people however they pleased. You can still hear Fogleys ranting about freedoms. Free to do what? Diss crimes? Some silence is truly golden. It's a small price to pay for not living in the hateful world of history books. What a world of chaos where society just made itself into whatever it wanted to be. We needed the Changing Days to bring things where they should be, controlled and steady. We will always need forces like the Upward Council empowering us to conform to our inner Best Self. Woah, I'm starting to sound like the harmony adverts from Upward Council. But who would know better than them? They're elected to reframe society by the communities with the least amount of Hotzone Targeting.

Who else would we put our trust in to make decisions for us?

I suddenly felt a little chill shiver up my spine. I cringed my neck and closed my eyes at the subtle and sudden shock. I had spent too long on the fire escape. They say there are barely any left in the city because most every building has fire shuttle tubes now. Not only do they shuttle you to the ground, but also out away from the building. But I like this fire escape, rusty and clanky, but a perfect place to feel the breeze coming over the buildings, close your eyes and think. Sometimes, that's the only harmony around here. Before going back into our loft, I opened up my H.E.A.R.T. (Harmony Elevating Authorized Readjustment Technology). Everyone had a H.E.A.R.T. Everyone but the Undoers. Who are they? I'll come back to that.

While H.E.A.R.T. originally started as a system to combat sickness around the world, it has become so much more than that. At the get-go, H.E.A.R.T. was used to help monitor pandemic surges. After COVID-19 came Bird Flu 23 and the worst was the dreaded DragonVenom Virus of 2031. People's skin turned tough and scaly looking, shedding skin like it was the worst sunburn of their lives, and they drooled black ooze. They went crazy, psychotically started attacking people. Think zombie apocalypse but with angry lizardy people and no cannibalism. Not much anyways. Anyways, between BF23 and DragonVenom, they started working on a system for containing the viruses. Some say it stopped DragonVenom . Others say the Dragonslayers did. Because of how aggressive the afflicted were and how easy it spread, even if you survived an attack, you became a Dragon yourself. The Dragonslayers were basically bounty hunters who went out and killed as many Dragons as possible. Think the Marines in homemade gear trying to kill angry civilians for money. Yeah, problems aplenty. Ain't nobody got time to go into all that though. The point is we had to stop all the pandemics. So, H.E.A.R.T. was developed.

At its heart, H.E.A.R.T. is nothing more than a way to monitor the health of a community, by monitoring all the individuals. Of course this only works if everybody does it. It took them ten years to devise the system, it took them about another thirty years to convince the majority to accept. Most of the rest were forced to comply in one way or another. It was for the good of the community. In the end, safety is more important than freedom, isn't it?

Anyways, H.E.A.R.T. is a two part system. One, a small chip is embedded under the skin of the hand. This monitors our vitals. It tells the Medical Mainframe Matrix (MMM) that an ambulance needs to be sent for a stroke or heart attack, or whether we have a virus in our systems. Now, generally, this means that they can track our whereabouts at all times so they can find us, you know, if we're in danger or something important like that. But it also helps in the government rounding people up, you know like dangerous criminals and such. So to make sure they can monitor the public, everyone gets a heart-shaped tattoo on their hand, which lights up when read by H.E.A.R.T. scanners. All first responders have them so they put sick people into wellness camps away from the general public, even police. They use electroluminescence named for electronic signals lighting them up. The chip sends a small electric impulse into the skin which causes the tattoo to light up. But the point is that the matrix, that is the MMM, knows where to find you. They had originally used heart shaped locket implants. It sat between the parts of the collarbone and monitored vital functions but with flawed transmission issues. Many people still have these lockets on their body and keep pictures in part of them. My mother still has one of my dad even though she left him years ago. She gets mad anytime I ask her about it. I don't know why. I guess she loved him, but they fought too much over The Changing Time stuff. That’s all she’ll tell me.

So, this is how they tracked illness, quarantined towns, and stopped pandemics. There were a few riots. More than a few. Some called it the World Civil War. People in lots of countries fought back against their governments having this much control. Governments took back control with martial law and The Changing Time started. They systematically made people get the tattoo or go to prison. Some fled and hid out. Some fogleys yell stuff on streets about bills of rights and Miranda somebody and how freedom isn't free.

....Um, what?....

....Oh My Council....

Holy Dumpster Fire, ok, so I'm not ok. I need a minute. . .

The serious travesty of what just happened. Some guy in tattered green loose fitting clothes just came through my window from the fire escape and fell into my room and put his hand over my mouth. “I won’t hurt you, OK, just don’t scream” I tried screaming through his hand. I tried biting his hand and he just covered it up with the other one. My heart was beating out of my chest, my H.E.A.R.T lighting up like crazy. “I have a message from your father.” I haven't seen Dad in two years. My pulse is still racing, breathing super heavy, but I return to normal, and he sees me calm down. He says, "I'll take my hand away, but no more screaming and no biting. Got it? I'm going to say what I have to say and go back out that window like I came in. Promise not to yell and scream" I nod yes. "Are you going to bite me again?" I nod no. He moves his hand slowly away, with a not totally convinced look of raised eyebrows watching me intently. He says my father is in danger and needs to meet me. He tells me the location. He tells me that my father needs my help. He hands me a flash drive. A bit archaic but this guy is totally fogley so it makes sense. He says I need to find a hard drive without access to the internet and read that information. If anyone catches me accessing it, then I'll be guilty of creating a Community Redzone, way worse than a Community Hotspot. And I have to do it soon. He refused to tell me what's on it because everyone's listening. I said, "Why does that matter if I'm not breaking the law, I shouldn't have anything to worry about." He said I had a lot to learn then called me kid. Ugh, I'm fourteen already for Council's Sake. I asked, “Why are you dressed like an Undoer. "I am one, kid." I said, "Pause the movie, does that mean my FATHER is an Undoer?"

He was just about to answer and then I heard the loudest bang I've ever heard in my life. The cops busted in our steel door, barely missing my brother and it thudded on the hardwood floor. My mother was screaming and cussing up a storm. The cops rushed through our loft apartment like a flash flood. They caught the man as he tried to make a dash out the window. I shoved the flash drive into my pillowcase. Two cops dragged him out. Another came in and stared through his neon green holographic visor and said, "Did he say anything?" “He just tried to get me not to scream. He held his filthy hand over my mouth. He might be a robber. He seemed like he needed some new clothes or something. I mean what would he say, “Hey I'm a robber?" The cop seemed suddenly disinterested in me and went to question my mom and she said she had never seen that man in her life. My eyes went wide. I could see through my bedroom doorway and she was lying through her teeth. The cop believed her but I could tell. She knew that Undoer.

But then came Mom's questions. She said, "Do you not know that you almost killed my son?" "I'm sorry, but he's a very dangerous man. It's a good thing that Undoer didn't kill you. You're safe now. Mom said, "Yeah, unless another criminal comes through the front door, right? Don't you roll your eyes at me. That holo visor is see through, you know? And how is that you are doing choke holds and no knock interceptions in homes? I thought this was all solved during the 2020s? Do you think you can do whatever you want?" He said, "Ma'am, the police answer to the mayor and the DA. For things to be different, change who’s in charge." Mom said, "How is it they can just take whatever freedoms they like in the name of bettering the community?" The cops eyes seemed to flash red even through his green holo visor, he said, "Ma'am, that's Undoer talk. Do I need to turn this home into a community hotspot?" She looked at me and looked like she was about to scream or cry or both. She looked at the floor and said, "No, it's fine. I'm just upset is all" The cop said, "Understandable. But watch yourself." She said, "Is this the best way to keep the community safe?" As he walked out he said, "It's a small price to pay.