Creatures of the Night: Miette
{Part one located here. This story is a free cultural work based in the Faerie Dark universe. Feel free to comment, share, remix, do what you like with it.}
Miette rolled over and stretched luxuriously in the morning sun. The covers smelled like violet perfume and the lavender sachets she had placed under her pillow. She enjoyed the feeling of being safe and warm for a few moments before excitement for the day to come pulled her from the bed. The moment her feet touched the ground a screen in the wall flickered to life and the smiling face of Edyn appeared.
“Good morning,” the artificial intelligence chirped.
Miette smiled and walked to the closet.
“Good morning, Edyn.”
“Today you have a registration meeting at the central offices, at your leisure. Please remember to bring your “Introduction to D City” package to ensure ease of processing. Do you have any questions?”
“Blue or purple?” Miette asked, pulling two dresses from the closet. The avatar gave a small frown and furrowed her brow a moment before pointing to the pale blue dress.
“You’ve opted out of registering your wardrobe. Would you like to change that setting now?”
“Better wait,” Miette replied, pulling the dress over her head and wiggling it down over her hips. It had an empire waist and skirt that fell just to her knees. She turned and admired the way it flowed around her legs. “Note that after registration I’m going to go shopping. Send an invite to Yuria.”
The avatar’s eyes went blank for a moment and she smiled.”Finished. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you.”
The screen went blank and Miette sat at her dressing table, a shiver traveling up her spine as she did so. She tried to cover the motion by reaching for her hairbrush and beginning to brush her long wavy hair. The colour was an unusual shade of dark blue that she passed off as a whimsical colour job. Luckily it worked well in a city where people currently held whimsical dress and styling as the height of fashion. Her eyes, a deep vibrant violet, would also likely give her away as Other, so she’d taken to wearing contacts of different colours so anyone who saw her frequently would think she was an enthusiastic lover of AE style. AE stood for artificial electric and referred to a growing subculture in the city that took a fancy to all things robotic and mechanical. Artificial, electric, vibrant colours against pale skin was the AE ideal and she came by it quite naturally.
Too bad in any other city it would get her killed.
She picked a silver charm bracelet with a small key hanging at the clasp and a silver barrette to hold back her hair. She felt nervous and excited. A new city with many people to share with and hide among and yet, there was still that familiar tinge of fear. How many were sleeping in a city this size? How many had already woken up? How many would die in the night?
She stared into the eyes of her reflection as she was admiring her hair and resisted the urge to shudder at the reminder of the previous night’s dream. She couldn’t remember much. Silver blood, two pairs of eyes that all too familiar midnight blue, death that stalked in shadows for the unforgivable sin of telling the truth. How horrible that those who hunted them were just like them. She glanced involuntarily at the screen on the wall.
How horrible that they could be in every room.
Miette stood and gathered what she would need for her registration and wandered down to the kitchen for breakfast. The room was empty, most of her family having risen earlier than her and left already. On the counter was a tea box lunch wrapped and ready for her, and a breakfast of still warm tea and different types of fruit, most likely gathered just that morning. Ria had obviously been up quite a bit earlier than her.
Putting the lunch into her bag, she sat down at the low table to enjoy her meal.
There were no video screens in this room, though she wouldn’t bet that Edyn couldn’t somehow see or sense what was happening. Not that they knew definitely that she was spying on them but… how could they be sure with a municipal artificial intelligence that had access to every home in the city? They must be using her to help them find the others. Even if Edyn was in the public domain, answerable to no central authority, someone could have found a way to hack into her system. Especially someone from the AE district. It was too tempting.
As if called by thought, the small personal console in her bag made a noise like a little bell and she pulled it out to see Edyn’s smiling face on the screen. She was very cute. with large midnight blue eyes and long wavy hair that was the sweetest pink. This particular avatar Miette had chosen for her console was especially cute with strange proportions that created a child-like appearance and comical facial expressions.
“Message from Nia,” the avatar sang happily, as if she was terrible excited by the news. Miette smiled and checked the note.
“Add a temei date with Nia to the schedule after registration meeting please,” she said. The device made another bell like noise and she tucked it back into her bag. Life here was so convenient.
‘But that’s the problem isn’t it,’ she thought as she left her home to catch the train. ‘It’s so convenient to come here and have Edyn care for all your needs. Home, food, school, allowance – it was all taken care of. All you had to do was give them a drop of your blood as registration. You didn’t even have to give your name real name. Edyn didn’t care. You can be anyone you want.’
She waited at the station for the bullet train, bouncing on her feet and enjoying the recent popular song playing over the speakers. She munched on one of the treats Ria had packed in her tea box and probably made that morning.
‘All you have to do is spend your life doing nothing of real consequence.’
The other passengers made way for her on the crowded train and a smiling boy not much older than her with sparkling eyes stood up to give her his seat. She thanked him with a sweet smile and settled in to watch the scenery. The city was separated into eight smaller districts placed a few miles from each other surrounding the larger central district, linked by the bullet trains. Every area was easily accessible by the fast trains. Each district had it’s own look, but followed the same basic structure. She lived quite close to the core, drawn by the vibrant activity and nightlife. It was the social center, full of shops, public gardens, art, museums, and home to the rising stars of her peer group. The beauty of it soothed her.
‘It isn’t a terrible life. We haven’t completely forgotten,’ she thought as she touched her forehead, tracing the middle between her eyes. ‘It’s just so much less than it could be.’
At her stop, the streets were quite busy. She was near the central offices and where the main computers that ran the automatic systems of the city were kept. She could see through the doors open to the warm spring weather and large windows that all the shops around her were being tended by robots. They all shared the same smiling white face with rosen hair. A wave of nausea hit her as images from her vision the night before returned with startling clarity. She paused, sadness welling up in her as she felt deeply the life of the girl spill out in the dark.
‘No,’ she thought, holding back tears. ‘It is terrible.’
She saw in her mind’s eye the silver blood pouring out to the ground and the girl falling, unable in death to break free of the magic that held her and to be given back her own face. She glanced at her own pale hands as a reminder of what she and the now dead storyteller shared. Eventually she knew she wouldn’t be able to pass off her strangeness as merely the cosmetic eccentricities of a young girl interested in an obscure fashion subculture. She would look less and less like herself and more like a creature of myth. She touched the spot on her forehead again. Supposedly that creature was her true self, her sleeping self that once upon a time would have been honoured by her people. Now, it would be what got her killed. And the more of them that died, the stronger the wildness marked those that had embraced it and lived.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to keep walking, still unsure how much she was being watched and how friendly the beloved artificial intelligence of the city really was. Inside the building, an Edyn android led her to a room with a console and a chair.
‘It really is very clever that she looks so much like her,” Miette thought as she was greeted by the central AI. Another Edyn smiled and took her package of registration papers, containing her school selections and biography information. The android took her arm and prepared to take a blood sample.
‘What really keeps us here is that they give us just enough. We don’t feast, but we don’t starve, and many of us never think to go searching for anything more.’