Sacrifice

I just realized I'd never posted this publicly. Then someone asked me to tell them a story; for some reason this popped into my head but I had no way to link it to them.

Dystopian near-future science fiction short story I wrote a while back. This literally popped into my head almost fully formed and I just ran with it. One of the easiest stories I've ever written. I need to edit this and clean it up for publication one of these days.

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Sacrifice

By Ben Bjostad

Copyright 2012 by Ben Bjostad. All rights reserved. Reprint this without permission and an army of ninja penguins will descend upon you and slay you like the plagiarist you are.

I won't take long to burn. Seconds, maybe a minute, and I will cease to exist but for the electronic records that litter the world, the empty words of my journals and soc-net postings, the belongings scattered through my shared apartment on the fringe of downtown, and the memories of those who once knew me.

I've written my letters, said my goodbyes, composed one final song, and loaded it all in my offline queue to dump into the net when it is time. We spend most of our last hours making love, Cassandra and I clutching each other in the bed that takes up most of our small room, littered with posters and electronics, implements of pain and implements of pleasure, books and videos and games. We'll leave it all, for our roommates to divide amongst themselves when they find us gone, for not even they know of our plans. This is tradition.

We spend most of our last hours making love, clutching and grabbing and clawing, pulling hair, reminding ourselves of the pain that is our shared language, our common fluency, our clarity. Glistening in sweat and blood, where her fingernails have raked my back and my grip has broken her skin, we hold each other, my fingers caressing her face that has captivated me for so many months since we met, drug-fueled and dancing in an abandoned warehouse on the east side, escaping this world that we share a disconnection from, only connecting to each other.

I hold her face in my hands, and we whisper our love and immortality, our shared universe that excludes this reality we are lost in. We share dreams of being born in a different age, a warmer age, in a year so much less cold where we are so connected and so alone.

She is so beautiful to me, and I hate this world that brings us to this place, where there is no escape, no way out. Wars across the globe, a government we can't believe in; I wonder if the world was ever the way they teach us it was in state-mandated history and patriotism classes. I wonder if anyone ever believed in the empty words carved in stone monuments and the front of government towers, if we were ever anything but numbers in a vast machine.

Eventually we rise, Cassandra and I, and dress slowly for the last time, my eyes drinking in the last sight of her in her pure state, no barriers between us. Our bags are packed and by the door, and I pull on my shirt, fasten my leather gauntlet to my right forearm. My computer fastens to my left arm, connection port clicking into place with the receptor implanted on my wrist, and as I clip my glasses into my temple-port, icons come up to indicate net connection. My aural implants beep softly to indicate readiness and I feed a playlist to them, feeding them to Cassandra's computer as she plugs it into place. We stand there, in front of the cracked mirror that fills one wall of our small room, in this three-bedroom flat we share with five friends in the student lofts of northside Atlanta, dressed in denim and leather, black alternating with a riot of color, her multicolored dreadlocks cascading down to frame the upper portion of her body.

We should have had a lifetime together. Maybe someday we will.

I want to smash everything down. I want to start a revolution. I want to destroy it all, the glass and steel tubes of the gleaming office towers downtown where the conformists go to slave in front of terminal screens, the holoboards that constantly remind us to be vigilant for terrorist activity, the teachers and classrooms that remind us of our duties to this fallen republic, the empty places between all of our souls. I want to set all these children free, that grow up thinking everything is so wonderful, only to wake up when they reach adulthood and realize how empty everything is. I want clarity.

I want a world where connection isn't a sin, where we can live as one.

My eyes twitch as I flash through soc-net sites, dumping messages and songs to my friends, letters to my family, who will never understand. Icons come up and disappear in my vision as my fingers flash across virtual keyboards, menus come up and disappear with blinding speed as I manipulate my presence on the Net and leave status messages on my site. This is goodbye, and I know that messages and calls will begin to stream in as our tribes recognize our intention, but no one will try to stop us except maybe our families, and they can't stop anything now. Our friends will understand.

This is tradition.

With the twitch of a finger, I set my communications to dump straight to my inbox. I don't want any calls, any interruptions. I dump a last set of messages into the Net, to the news organizations, both the official ones that will ignore our actions and the unofficial ones that will trumpet us as heroes. They are equally welcome to my martyrdom; I am not doing this for them.

Cassie hands me a pill and a bottle of water; I swallow it and pass the bottle to her; she does the same with her own pill. It won't kick in for thirty minutes or so, which is why we take it now; I want to feel this final walk before we reach our destination.

We sling backpacks onto our backs and clasp hands as we walk through the door; no one else is home. I turn out the light and we walk down the flights of stairs and onto the streets; we do not have far to go.

Wisps of cloud pass through the gleaming towers that stab into the sky, hundreds of stories tall; three blocks away from our converted warehouse, another tower grows slowly, support beams forming and autocranes crawling across finished levels, placing glass panels and chrome over the bare flexfuller. Helicopters circle overhead, and a billboard reminds us to report suspicious behavior to Public Defense immediately. On the wall of a department store across the street, a bright digital display shows one of the news channels, offering another optimistic progress report on the capture of a terrorist cell somewhere in Africa, American troops escorting haggard natives into a firebase for questioning. No one ever questions why the world hates us; America, China, India, Eurocon. My fingers twitch again to show historical photos of the destruction of Boston, the crater left by the nuke smuggled in and detonated. It is the first thing I remember as a child.

I erase the pictures from my glasses and close the visual port; my fingers feel the pressure of Cassandra's hand on mine. To the cameras that dot each block, to the orbiting airships and satellites that scour the streets for activity, we're just another pair of disaffected Crazers walking the streets of downtown Atlanta, separate from this world that surrounds us.

I think about my parents; they did the best they could, and I suddenly picture my mother reading the message I sent to her inbox, and struggling to understand. This is not an impulsive act. For a week, we've been planning, preparing, enjoying, blowing through the meager savings we have, eating sushi and drinking good wine and cheap whiskey. Cassie and I haven't left each other in six days now; we haven't been able to stop touching each other.

I wish I could believe in an afterlife, somewhere we could be together forever. Maybe there is one. I don't know. I don't know if I can believe in anything anymore, except for her.

I feel the street through my boots, feel Cassie's soul through her hand, feel the life of this city through the air; I've never felt so alive, so pure. I feel what it must have been like when the world was less empty. I feel connected. Cassie looks at me and smiles. Her eyes show me a promise of love everlasting, unquestioning; she can't live in this world without me any more than I can without her. This world is empty without her. She gives me meaning and context; the years before her feel like empty shells. She never doubted that she would take this journey without me, even when I begged her to stay behind; I almost snuck out in the dark of night to take this walk alone, but we had sworn an oath to each other; we would take this walk together.

This, too, is tradition.

We walk through the gates of the park; children are playing, parents watching idly, some of them with the distant gaze of those surfing the rivers of data through their net glasses, lost in simulation world or completing work. In the center of the park, a monument rises; Atlanta's memory of Boston, and the World Trade Centre; Yankee Stadium and a dozen subway trains and airliners, victims of terrorism, casualties of a shadow war.

Casualties like Cassandra.

Casualties like myself.

I toss my draft notice onto the stone step before the monument and unsling my backpack. I open visual port and send out a last torrent of messages. We have no time now.

I can already hear the sirens in the distance as police and Public Defense react to the messages I've sent. The drugs have kicked in and I feel like I'm floating above my body. Cassie douses me with kerosene and I do the same to her; bystanders stare on in horror, some grabbing children, some backing away, a middle-aged man walking toward us, now running, now stopping as he realizes it's too late to stop us. As we pour liquid over each other, helicopters circle overhead. The man pleads with us to stop, but this is the moment of truth.

The drugs have fully involved my bloodstream now, and I touch fingers with Cassandra again, calling out my love for her. I can see in her eyes that she feels the drugs too, that will keep us from dying in agony. We toss the cans of kerosene aside and pick up torches; my fingers flick the lighter, igniting them, and I hold my torch high, in defiance of this empty society, this hollow world.

I don't know if it's true that your life flashes before you as you die, but we had time, and mine did. I remembered meeting Cassie; the first time we made love, the first time I hurt her, her agony and her ecstacy. I remembered running across soccer fields, remembered the last time I saw my father, my mother, my sister. I remembered the good moments of this world, and remembered the day last week when my draft notice came in the mail, that it was my duty to fight terrorism, that I would leave my world, my friends, Cassie, behind.

I remember the emptiness.

I clasp Cassie, holding her tight, our torches held high, burning our defiance to this empty world that will not care when we are gone. We're just cogs in the machine. Our eyes meet, and everything we've ever felt together passes between us as we savor one last moment.

Our clothes catch fire first, then our skin, but the drugs do their job and I feel no pain. My whole world is Cassandra. My whole world is love.

We begin to burn, and as Cassandra and I embrace, my eyes meet those of a young girl, maybe seven years old; her mother clutches her tightly and tries to shield her eyes, but the little girl stares at us, and her eyes are full of questions, questions as to what could lead us to this moment, questions I have no answers to, questions no one can ever answer, and no one ever will.