Projekt ☆M@rlene☆

It was a warm, sunny morning. 

Like every other morning, for that matter. 
The biosphere that protects Alma Mater ensures a pleasant spring temperature all year round, and makes sure that precipitation is concentrated at night, when only the landscape androids are around to take care of the green areas of the city. 
It was a school day, and as always I had gone out very early to enjoy the half-empty streets and the humid, crisp air from the rain that had fallen just before. 
Large puddles reflected the iridescent rainbow.

I enjoyed being the first to arrive at the Crunchy Baby Leaf cafeteria, drinking my whipped caramel and almond coffee and eating a double Student Toast with double bacon, in the total silence that preceded the arrival of the other students from the ‘Elon Musk Institute for Universal Knowledge’.
I was very hungry in those days, probably because of the hormones I was forced to take to facilitate egg collection, and maybe also because Mom was forcing me to do a lot of exercise, scared of the idea that I might put on weight.
In fact, it seemed to me that I was getting thinner and paler.
I was nibbling on the last tasty bite when I was hit by a small wave of regret: usually, these fantastic breakfasts I used to have in the company of Anya, the only person I could stand at that time of day.
But since Masao’s visit, our relations had cooled; as much as I regretted it, I couldn’t blame her: it was fun to play rebel, but I had pushed this game a little too far, and Anya couldn’t wish to risk the comfort of her life for something that didn’t even concern her closely. No one ever would. I was particularly annoyed, however, to see her more and more often in the company of Amber Roux, a girl in our year who had always seemed snobbish and fiercely conformist to me, especially since she was the daughter of a prominent Civic Police officer, Yoon Roux.

I felt a twinge of sorrow each time I passed them in the hallways or saw them sitting next to each other in the refectory, eating their lunch confabulating with each other.I couldn’t help but wonder if Anya had betrayed me by telling her new friend about what I had already done and planned to do.
Maybe she wouldn’t, in the name of our old bond, or maybe one day I would be called by the principal to his office with any excuse and find Yoon Roux surrounded by his men, ready to arrest me.
Of course Anya did not ignore me completely, she was neither unpleasant nor rude, but it was clear that our relationship had changed forever. 
For my part, I did not seek her company necessarily and told myself that I did so because I respected her decisions, when in fact it was only pride that prevented me from going to her and simply telling her that I missed her. 
I picked up the last of the burnt crumbs on the plate with my greasy finger, brooding uselessly over the matter. Looking up, I saw that it was still half an hour before the bell rang, and the place was beginning to come alive, with the tables stormed by groups of sleepy, ravenous youngsters. I took the visor and socked it on my head, begging the assistant to play some music and open the folder of documents I had downloaded from the old government website.
Among them, one file in particular had caught my attention: it was the profile of Julianne Amato, assistant and associate to Masao Pedersen. Her specialty was gynecology, a branch of medicine that dealt with women’s health.

 
According to reports, it was Amato herself who had closely supervised as a physician the surrogates’ pregnancies shortly before the practice was abandoned. There were six women placed in the program exactly fourteen years ago, all of whom had identification numbers that concealed their identities.
A few months after the program was cancelled, Amato had resigned, at the same time that Pedersen was recalled for writing the lengthy paper condemning the conditions imposed on surrogates and the government’s abandonment of all ethical principles with respect to birth policies.
The woman and Masao were the only ones who quit their jobs for good, while their colleagues simply asked for transfers to other areas of scientific research, or even to other countries.
Not that there was anything to suggest that Julianne had somehow been forced to resign, or that she had any reason to disagree with the government. 
On the contrary, just a short time earlier, perhaps in anticipation of Masao’s departure, she had been offered a major advancement, which she had initially accepted, only to resign on the spot soon after. Strange behavior.The assistant told me to get moving; it was only a few minutes before the bell. 
I removed my visor and glimpsed Anya at the counter, picking out a couple of croissants to go. As she grabbed the envelope and turned to leave, she saw me. 
She hesitated a little, then approached the table with a somewhat forced smile, “Hi, are you okay?”
“Hi. Yes, everything’s fine… I was just about to go. Do you mind if I walk the road with you?”
“No, why should it?” The tone was unconvinced, but I pretended not to.
We left the cafeteria and walked the few meters that separated us from the Institute’s wide staircase in perfect silence.
Here, small groups of students chatted among themselves, while others, with their visors lowered to their faces, participated in the role-playing game of the moment, ‘Dawn of the New Rebel,’ inspired by a hypothetical invasion of the Fortress Cities by the inhabitants of the Ghetto Cities. 

And then I glimpsed Amber, also with her visor down but all alone in a corner where the sun didn’t shine, probably to keep her diaphanous skin from tanning. She was going over a lesson with her assistant.
“Amber is waiting for me… Do you want me to introduce you to her? I think she would like to meet you.”
“Oh, very kind.. But. Maybe some other time. I need to brush up on something too before neobiology class starts.”
“I see. Sure, okay. Then I’ll see you in fourth period, right, resource-saving education…. What a hateful subject.”
“Yeah, who are you telling” 
“See you later then.”
I followed her with my eyes as she approached Amber, who slipped off her visor to greet her and rejoice in the croissant she had bought her.
Then I saw her eyes shift from Anya to me. She gave a shy nod of greeting, which I did not return. I rushed in through the Institute’s sliding door to mingle with the anonymous crowd of students. I was burning with shame and annoyance.
I arrived at android AMY245’s class still calling myself an idiot: who knows what Amber would have thought. I had offered her a reason to laugh at me with Anya, making me look like a rude socialite.
I sank into the pew making myself small.
Around me as usual was chaos, but I tried not to explode in anger even as Neil Brennan and his stupid micro drone tried to spy on me inside my shorts.
Jennifer Costa was gasping for my attention and asking me as always for clarification about the previous class chapter. Jennifer was trudging worse than me in neobiology, but I didn’t want to help her today. 
She withdrew in annoyance, promising me revenge in the next Chinese neolanguage class. 
I huffed, bored.
It was the most everlasting neobiology class I had attended, and I attended less than half of it. I kept thinking about Julianne, and how to find out what happened to her. Her file gave no further information; I would have to try to research the old Internet line on my own.
Also I was pondering the certainty that among those six surrogates was my biological mother. 
My birth happened only one year earlier, and as far as I knew surrogates were not replaced that often, as there were few women capable of getting pregnant. 
I was closer to her than I had ever been.
I just had to find Julianne, and I was sure I would get the name I was looking for.
I didn’t even want to think that she might have refused, or that she might have come to a bad end.
Classes went on interminably until the break. 
So I ran to the school infirmary, ordered a full cocktail of intravenous nutrients and vitamins, and settled into one of the few remaining comfortable chairs.
This express treatment was ideal for restoring energy levels; in fact, it was always full of students undergoing it. For those who were more discerning, it was possible to have a complete health check and have a treatment program to follow, or, another thing that was very much in vogue, one could undergo ultra-fast cosmetic corrections. 
Almost all my classmates did them during the break between classes, because at school these procedures cost less than at a specialized beauty salon.
I relaxed and put on my visor again; I asked the assistant to play the piece that was haunting me at that time, produced by an artist from Purgatory 99 named Akira Ivanov.

I was not the only one among my peers who listened to music produced by Purgatory artists; most of the pieces we exchanged in the metaverse through encrypted codes in the various role-playing games we participated in. Akira Ivanov was a favorite artist.
Then I asked the assistant to connect me with the old Internet line, where I started a search with the name Julianne Amato.
The only results all led back to the old government website; there seemed to be no other trace of the woman. Could it be that they had made her disappear?
I pondered, then tried the word ‘gynecologist.’ Here I had better luck; there were thousands of results.
But most of them useless and very old.
I sighed, scrolling down the search page. Then I saw something that caught my attention: one result titled ‘Purgatory 2 Gynecology Studies,’ and it was very recent.
Purgatory 2 was the old Los Angeles, the Purgatory that fed Alma Mater.
The gynecology studies presented here were not many, maybe a dozen. I was amazed that they still existed; what use could they possibly be if women were no longer fertile? 
In the Fortress Cities there were no medical specialists, in short, no doctors at all. 
The state-of-the-art AI and the robots it controlled took care of that, with no difference between men and women.
I scrolled down the list. Not one study was in Julianne Amato’s name. 
I decided to open each one, disheartened. 
I was just telling myself that I was wasting a lot of time when, lazily scrolling through the fourth site, I came across the picture of Dr. Francesca Pessoa, and I winced; she had aged, but it was her, I was sure. 
I intimated to the assistant to open Amato’s file for me and find her profile photo, then to compare the two images and tell me if it was the same person: “According to the analysis of the detectable biometric parameters, there is a 98.2% chance that it is the same person. However, I must warn you that your research may not be authorized and that I may have to report you to the proper authorities.”
“These are searches for scholastic purposes. I was thinking of using some of these for my end-of-year thesis on neobiology and the history of human reproduction. This woman has been working together with Dr. Pedersen. He and I had a conversation the other day that you recorded and submitted to my mother, again on this subject.”
“I will also record this research and reserve the right for a more in-depth analysis of your intentions.”
“As you wish.”
As I spoke with the assistant, I scrolled down the page looking for useful information; there was a presentation of the practice and the services offered by the doctor, then what looked like a telephone number. 
The telephone was something that absolutely no one had used for centuries, visors had come into people’s lives by around 2026, but I knew that in the Purgatories cell phones were still being used, costing much less.
My mother still had one among her things, I remember her making me play with it as a child. I had to find it.
With the ballpoint pen, which I always carried with me, I jotted the number on my hand, hoping it wouldn’t get erased before school ended.
I had just finished my cocktail that it was time to go back to class. 
Fourth period, saving resources.
I walked toward the classroom, shuffling my feet. By the entrance, smoothing her shiny blond hair, stood Amber.
It was an unlucky day, there was no doubt about it. I held my breath and forced myself to walk slow and tall, ignoring her.
As I passed her, Amber reached out a hand to brush my arm, “Marlene.. Can I talk to you?” I felt my face heat up and my body stiffen even more. 
I didn’t say anything to her, but she continued, “I don’t know why you are so angry with me that you don’t reciprocate when I say hello…. I would like to get to know you better. Anya always tells me so much about you..”
“To tell you what, that I’m a fool and that it would be better if she never dated me?” I spat out, in a voice that was not my own.
I knew Anya would never talk about me like that, or rather, I hoped she would. I didn’t understand why I had said something so childish and stupid. Neither did Amber, who raised an eyebrow in amazement, “… Actually all she does is tell me again and again how much she misses spending time with you like you used to…. She says that you’ve been through a very complicated time, and that you have strange ideas from time to time. She never told me anything more than that.”
“Ah, so you just want to mind my own business.”
“No, you’re misunderstanding me..”
“Amber, you’d better shut your mouth and keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you.”
“I’m sorry..It’s just that I love Anya very much and-“
“Good. That’s fine. I’m glad Anya has a new best friend with no strange ideas and no problems. Great. That’s what you all want, right? Good. I’ll be on my own, thank you, with my strange ideas and problems. Have your perfect loser life. I don’t give a damn.”
I had raised my voice, and Amber had stepped back, intimidated. 
Around us a couple of other students were giggling and asking their micro drones to film the scene. 
I pushed them aside and entered the classroom, furious.
During the class I felt everyone’s eyes on me, and I knew full well that the whispers I heard behind my back, the giggles and the sounds were all directed at me. I pulled my hood over my head and made an effort to ignore them, but a few tears fell anyway. 
I was crying because I was angry with myself, for acting like a small child unable to contain herself. 
Amber had done a nice thing, I could just tell her thank you but no, I didn’t feel like talking about it.
I was ashamed. I wanted to disappear. But I had to stay.
At the end of class I got out as fast as I could to run to the bathroom. As I walked quickly down the hallway that was filling with students heading to the next class, I heard Anya’s voice calling me. I did not turn around.
Arriving in the bathroom, I locked myself in a closet and sat on the toilet, my head between my knees.
Soon after, I heard the door open again, “Marlene, come out. We need to talk.”
Anya had followed me.
“I don’t feel like it. Leave me alone.”
“I don’t care. Get out of there. Amber told me what happened.”
“Amber wants to stick her nose in my business, and she shouldn’t do that.”
Anya knocked on the door, “Come out. I want to see your face when I talk to you.” 
The voice was altered with anger. Reluctantly I opened the door. The mirror behind Anya’s back cruelly reflected my weeping, red-nosed face and loose eye makeup on my cheeks in a green and black glitter slime.
Anya handed me a washcloth to wipe me off, “Now explain to me what has gotten into you. Are you really crazy or what?”
“Or maybe she just had to mind her own fucking business? Your new little friend?!”
“What is wrong with you, Marlene? Do you really think you’re the only one having shitty days? Amber just wanted to be nice to you, but evidently it was wasted kindness.”
I slammed the bathroom door violently and shouted at her, “Poor, poor Amber.. Too bad she’s not my best friend, but you…. What do you say, Anya? Who the fuck are you?! Oh, sure. You’re that coward who decided to abandon me when I’m in the hardest time of my life. I want the old Anya back, not this selfish bitch who shields herself from some random loser!”

Anya’s red hair looked electric and her face was a mask of fury, “How the fuck. You’re the one who started ignoring me, and do you know why, Marlene? You’re convinced you’re better than the rest of us, you’re standing there with that face, as if to tell us we should feel graced by your presence…. You feel special, don’t you? You and your functioning reproductive system, and your mental turmoil about finding that human wreck that crapped you into this world–“
Her words pierced my chest. 
Anya herself brought a hand to her mouth and stammered an apology.
I gathered my things scattered on the floor, unable to listen to her any longer. Her words were an indistinct murmur in the back of my consciousness.
I walked out of the bathroom without looking back. 
Without delay I reached the infirmary again and asked the android to dispense with the last two hours of school. I was sick, and I wanted to go home. He initiated a scan of my body to check my parameters, “I detect no problem in your physical apparatus. Your mental and emotional apparatus shows signs of severe stress, but I can quickly resolve it with a session of..”
“Please, I need to go home.”
“All right, but I warn you that school sanctions will be applied if you refuse the measures I deem most appropriate to your case”
“I know, but that’s okay,” and I presented my student ID number.
Finally outside the Institute, I began to walk the streets aimlessly.

My head was empty. It was an emptiness that felt like the end of everything.
Anya had hurt me in a way I didn’t even think was possible.
I walked for hours, ignoring my mother’s calls and my assistant’s constant warnings. 
When I re-emerged from my twilight state, I realized that I was on the edge of Alma Mater, in the landfill area, overlooking the outskirts of Purgatory 2. 
Not far away I could make out the massive corps of guarding androids patrolling the area, the only one in the city that was protected by the electromagnetic barrier alone.
A little river flowed through all that desolation. I sat on its banks contemplating the border that separated my world from the mysterious one out there, archaic and violent.
A world that very soon, somehow, I would come to know.