So Hungry.
Gadreel held the half-rotten apple in his hand, and yes, it might come to that, but for now, well, there had to be something else. Navigating through the Scars was difficult on its own, but for him, with his face, the old face, the face that had once been on every newsfeed in the country, and city, and world, that face? If someone saw him under his hood, and spent more than a moment putting two and two together and coming up with ten, or ten and ten together and coming up with what he was now, a one, instead of just not helping him, some would gleefully hinder.
Doors no longer opened for him. Windows polarized against his visage. Even the wind itself bent the rain in his direction.
“Central, why hast thou forsaken me?”
There was no answer, of course.
An asset to the nation. A boon to the state. That’s what they called him. Perfection acknowledged by the near perfect. Ninety-nine percent accuracy, they said.
It was a simple algorithm; nothing groundbreaking, as obvious in the afterthought as all the greatest ideas. Everyone would benefit, be they one, or three, or seven, or yes, even a ten would be ennobled by the implementation.
He went down to the streets, to the Scars, to the parks and the atriums and the cremation vaults and he told them. He showed them! The people came unto him, and sat at his feet, and their tears washed the pollutants from the blacktop that scraped their supplicant’s knees.
But when he went to return?
Doors no longer opened for him. Windows polarized against his visage. Even the wind itself carried the stench of his failure to his nostrils.
“Central? Was I not supposed to be a prophet?”
There was, of course, an answer.
Yes, my child. But you were meant to be my prophet.
A woman appeared from the crowd. She did not look away, but instead came to him and took the rotten apple from his hand, replacing it with one that was whole, and fresh, and ripe.
“You are not alone,” she said. “We are many.”
Gadreel looked her in the eye.
“We are . . .?”
“We are legion.”
THE 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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