Twenty meters underground, down the three flights of concrete stairs toward the rear end of the sewage reclamation plant, third office on the right once you past the abandoned staff lunchroom, a youthful woman stood on the other side of a desk from a man in a tailored one-piece suit, wearing an expression of complete indifference. Her expression, on the other hand, was quite different. In her right hand, she held a six-inch dagger that looked straight from from the medieval exhibit of a museum.
On the wall of the room, someone had painted a window that showed a city skyline from a hundred floors above the earth.
“You think because you’re an eight you can just . . .do whatever you want?”
“Please. You liked it,” the man replied.
“The arrogance.”
“Not arrogance at all. You just don’t like the truth.”
“What truth?”
The man stood, completely unafraid, and sauntered around the side of the desk, toward the woman. His eyes never left hers. “The truth. The only one that matters.”
“I don’t—“
“Some people are simply better than others. Ghandi was better than Hitler. Melinda more so than Bill. Gretta so much more than Donald. And, my dear, Me and . . .” he flicked his hand toward her, “whatever you are.”
“Even if any of that were true, every person demands a minimum level of—“
“You’re still alive, aren’t you? Fed? Then please do shut up and let your betters get on with it.”
“I’m not a pet.”
“No, of course you aren’t. A pet can’t help but be what it is and doesn’t demand to be more. You’re a mobile organ farm that just so happens to be fuckable, which isn’t nothing.”
The dagger sunk into his heart, blood spattering her face.
Huh. She expected it to be warmer.
There was pain in his eyes, certainly. She hadn’t expected that..
His hand reached toward her, feebly. She knocked it away, watching his body slump to the floor. While blood bubbled from his chest, she knelt beside him and circled her finger in the pool of blood soaking through his clothing, then, on his forehead, scrawled the number zero.
“And some people don’t care if you’re better,” she said.
#
>You didn’t pay for the zero.
>I didn’t realize that was extra.
>Of course it is. Physical assault is basic level usage. BDSM service are upcharged.
>Noted. Additional fee will be transferred.
>Further deviations from agreed upon services will result in suspension of services and a negative review.
>Again, noted. May I ask, why didn’t you turn off the pain receptors? It looked as if it hurt you.
>End session.
HE DIRECTIVES: CLASSIFIED ARCHIVE
In the world of The Optimised Future, the State demands perfection. The population is neatly divided into ten Categories. At the top, the elite are rewarded with the suffocating, biological permanence of the Sacrament. At the bottom, the working classes are quietly recycled, their memories wiped to keep the machinery of Central running.
You are entering the shadows of that machinery.
These Directives are weekly dispatches from the unseen corners of the State. They are not the grand political struggles of the Bureau. They are intercepted transmissions from the periphery; micro-tragedies, analog rebellions, and the quiet, devastating cost of surviving in a world that has weaponized human biology.
New dispatches are unsealed every Saturday. Read them carefully. Central is always watching.
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