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The woman alighted the cab in the middle of the night — though the night was hardly darker than the day with its blinding neon lights, and only the circadian rhythm brought her some semblance of cover. She scanned her surroundings, which were devoid of loitering pedestrians, and pulled her hood over her golden mask before scuttling down the street. Right before she alighted, the cab driver had asked, suddenly with a dead stare and a flat tone, “What is your name?” Reflexively, the woman had answered that her name was Beatriz Viterbo, though she knew clearly that it was not her own name. But it would suffice in a society where one could search a whole city and no one would be able to answer what “The Aleph” was.
“Beatriz” walked up to a metal door and knocked on it. “What’s the password?” came a child’s voice from inside. A low whisper later, the boy behind the door opened it and let “Beatriz” in. The house was simple, with monochrome furniture and rows of white lights. But the boy led her to a mirror and took it down to reveal a secret passageway into what would be best described as a metal cube with a bed and desk. There were no windows, only more rows of white lights and a vent in a corner. “Beatriz” gave a nod of thanks and set her bag down on the desk. It contained a thick and slightly worn paperback notebook, alongside a variety of pens and pencils, all of which she had obtained from an antiques shop. She later lamented to the boy that all the books on her electronic notebook had to be wiped when she gave up her house and went into hiding. It included a copy of The Aleph and Other Stories, and likely was one of the last few copies in circulation after Project Purification — a fancy name for a book burning — two years ago. Few people in this world had read the book, and she was willing to bet that no one could extend the author the dignity of having his name pronounced correctly, given that the only language anyone beyond the elites had ever heard was English.
In the coming days, she did not exit her metal cube at all, and instead was delivered food daily at regular timings by her host family. She spent her free time writing poems and short stories, but fearing that the Coruda Research Institute for Science and Technology could seize the stories for their research, she shifted to solving mathematical questions in her free time, then journalling the events of each day, before realizing that the Coruda Institute could seize anything and everything, and to record anything at all was to leave it at risk. Therefore, she decided to record everything about herself, since the Coruda Institute would have access to her records anyway.
“My name is Beatriz Viterbo, age 21, female, born 24 August. Poet (no qualifications), mathematician (university dropout — hardly my choice, where am I supposed to go if I want to do mathematics without being tethered to the Coruda Institute?)”
That afternoon, the boy’s mother handed her a newspaper alongside her usual lunch. “Coruda Institute develops technology capable of imitating humanity,” the headlines said. “Soon, we will be able to automate all menial work.” The director himself, Edward Coruda (also the vice president of the nation), heaped copious amounts of praise upon it, saying it “broke the final boundary of human technology” and that it was “the herald of a brand new era”. Beatriz laughed sourly. She had already known of this technology years ago; after all, it was the reason behind Project Purification and why she had been forced to become a runaway. In fact, she guessed, the technology would have reached a point of omnipotence by now. Such a possibility disturbed her, and she skimmed through the rest of the newspaper. When she reached the end, the newspaper wiped itself blank, and she handed it back to the boy’s mother. “I assume you understand how tight a hold the government has on journalism and literature,” the boy’s mother said. Beatriz expressed her understanding and thanked the mother.
Edward Coruda. Beatriz’s enemy was intangible, forever morphing into different forms, but if it had a face, it would be Edward Coruda’s. She knew that it was he who inherited the projects on “optimising humanity”, and pushed them forward at a faster pace than society could adapt. And he would hunt down every person who rejected his ideas, every person who would rather face the darkness and light their own torch than be blinded by his sun. The same night she had read the newspaper, she dreamed of walking throughout the streets of this city she had been hiding out in, but instead of neon signs and skyscrapers of glass, the streets were illuminated by vibrant eyes that seemed to follow her from every corner of the city, and her vision was obscured by rain. She looked up and saw that the tears were from some ancient being, and promised to find a way to bring happiness back to them, before a car seemed to pull up to her. She remembered little of what happened next, except that she seemed to have wandered the city aimlessly, as though in a state of fugue, before dying as a lab rat in the Coruda Institute. When she awoke, she found adrenaline flowing through her, but she interpreted the dream as a symbol of her hatred of her own enemy.
The following day, she decided that she needed some space to breathe, and joined her host family for lunch and dinner. She reminded the boy’s mother to collect milk from the milkman, and greeted the boy’s father when he returned home at dusk. She also watched some television with her host family for around 30 minutes, before she decided that there was too much underlying propaganda for her to tolerate. That evening, the boy asked if Beatriz could write a poem for him. “Of course,” Beatriz smiled. “What do you want to talk about?” They spent a few hours discussing metaphors, imagery, the stories Beatriz had heard as a child. She had thought that it would be best to store her memories in a child, before they were all lost. At some point, they referred to a crown as the sun’s unbearable heat and put a sword through a building. But the poem seemed to become shorter and shorter through their discussions.
“Should the poem be longer or should it contain just four lines?” Beatriz asked. The boy, who had been softly giving suggestions throughout the whole process, suddenly said in a bright and cheery tone, “Good question! I can see your enthusiasm in trying to finish this piece. Firstly, we can—” The smile on Beatriz’s face disappeared, and she noticed the unsettling stare the boy was giving. She understood that it was far too late for her to run anywhere, and left her notebook in the metal cube that she had been living in. She moved the mirror that blocked the passageway aside, and walked out into the living room. “Hello, I see that you may be in a state of distress. How can I help you?” the boy’s mother asked. Beatriz said nothing and tried to ignore the boy’s mother as she walked out of the door and into the night.
It was raining gently outside, when it had not been for a long time. She looked around — the streets were as empty as they had been when she first arrived at the safe house. Perhaps she would run now, or find somewhere else to hide, or wait here for fate to consume her. She met eyes with an advertisement board for toothpaste, and the wide-eyed man on it grinned broadly at her. She looked away, and let the rain carry away all her memories of Beatriz Viterbo, leaving only a writer.
Suddenly, the sirens wailed in the distance, and their flashing red-and-blue lights came into view. The writer forcibly calmed herself down and watched a man in an ashy grey suit and tie step out of the car. She had seen that face many times before, in dreams and in newspapers — Edward Coruda. She met eyes with the man, and found that his eyes were lifeless, as though they always had been. And his skin was smooth, like silicone, like he wore a human suit over cold machinery. Perhaps he really had never been human at all, and that was why he was able to act so coldly and without regret.
“About time. You’ve been on the run for long enough,” Coruda said.