“Hey, hey! Aquila!”, called bitch number one. “Aquila!”, was she thinking that she as actually whispering? “I’m calling you, you fucking whore”, she pulled my hair, forcing me to point my chin directly to the ceiling up there. Of course, I was running a pain control program, so I felt nothing. “Who the fuck you think you are to ignore me?”

“Cut her hair!”, suggested bitch number two.

“Tear off her nails!”, added number three.

“Good idea. Maybe I will do it later? But, you know, Aquila, you better hope I will stop just by your hair and nails. Because I can make so much worse…! So be sure to show up behind the college after this” said number one.

In almost all of the Executive sectors, emotion control programs were forbidden, and there wasn’t any different; I looked to the teacher down there, at the center the room, all snobbish above a little kind of stage, and to all the other students around me, thinking: come on, there’s no way you aren’t listening to this, right? Teacher? Man, your profession is already meaningless, all of this is an idiotic lost of time, can’t you even show a little concern about your students? Aren’t supposed rich children to be well treated? But I didn’t need it. Those girls words couldn’t even reach me:

“...Okay then, I’ll go there when the time comes, and then you can beat the shit out off me as you please, so, can you get me to go now?”

“This whore, is lying!” pointed number two.

“You said you would show up last time too!”, remembered number three, as if they were all part of some kind of bizarre hive-mind, bizarrely completing each other’s phrases.

“Do you think I’m an idiot? That you can trick me the same way two times?!”, number one pulled even more my hair, and I felt her nails craving on my shoulder.

“Hey, Aquila!”, finally called the teacher. “If you don’t want to listen to the class, then, shut up and get out!”, he screamed with me.

All my colleagues laughed.

“...I’m sorry, teacher, I’m sorry”, I apologized; Well, at least bitch number one led my hair go, I shrugged it off and continued to listen to that endless bullshiting.

Even though the time just didn’t seem to pass; the redundant lost of time that was those classrooms about robotics; it did, and after just a few more annoyance from the trio of bitches, see my bag filled with rests of half-eaten food and scum, get bumped a dozen times on the corridor outside, I finally got out off the college building.

Sighing I finally found some time to think about what was important and reaching for my chin, I asked myself what kind of combination I would use today:

It’s true that I can learn a lot more techniques of the most recent technology in the same amount of time, but it isn’t just working, so, even if it’s hard to comprehend, should I focus on learning more advanced data? It’ll take a long time to truly understand it, but until now I had made just zero progress with quantity, so quality… No, well, I’m putting the cart before the horse here assuming that, in the first place, I can go against the Graphic of Decadence and all the people working on new technologies by myself...

Above me, a sky with only a few clouds and stained by an orange sunset, birds flying to somewhere, and, all around, big buildings with a lot of wasted space, filled with only trees, fences, and gardens, separating each other. Cars that couldn’t even fly took large chunks of the ground for themselves in asphalted roads; like one of those simulations that he-

…

It was an Executive city, an almost perfect replica of an old Earth’s city: even though the entire Dyson City and it’s inhabitants were made to imitate Earth in a lot of aspects, those sectors and their population were specially constructed to do so, taking years to a child grow up, having schools, colleges and a bunch of useless jobs.

This isn’t real-life, it’s larping... I felt like one of those people in that program where a bunch of clones was created and inserted in a perfect real simulation of any kind of fantasy without knowing it (that time where they realized a bunch of zombies in a medieval-like era was kinda cool, though) and the winner (those who stay alive to the end), no, those who donated their DNA for the winner clones (that were all properly exterminated) receive a bunch of money.

Yet, I can’t just ignore all of this: I need to blend myself in the population here.

I stopped at a “small” building that sold a mixed bunch of mechanic and electronic stuff.

“You again, Aquila?”, the old man behind the balcony smiled. “You really like robotics, hu?”

No, I started to hate it around three years ago, actually…

“Yes”, I replied, being probably his only frequent client. Not that he really cared about having or not clients, of course, or being old (he probably chose that appearance to look wiser), anyway, after all, if he lived in an Executive sector, he should have money enough to live a hundred or two hundred years without having to work.

“What you asked for yesterday arrived earlier today: it’s in the back”

“Okay: thank you, mister Jupiter”, I smiled again.

Giving my back to the old man, I sighed and dived into an endless ocean of pieces and bits in search for the stuff I came to get and more, without really knowing what I would come to need (probably everything, but I don’t want to waste money buying all of it at once).

Maybe, after all that time, I finally would come to find a way to bring him back?

I didn’t.

I had brought back home an entire box filled with robot parts, changed a bunch of codes on his Angel, installed and changed a dozen parts of his metallic body, and, yet, I got no reaction. Once again. It was already the thousandth time I tried to make him open his eyes, the fourth year, and I had failed again.

“FUCK!”, I shouted, bringing down my arm on the table and throwing all that was resting on it on the ground. “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!”, I repeated, biting my lower lip.

Looking to the exposed brain inside the transparent skull I had made along with other 60% of his body, I could see my pathetic reflex on it: I had long stupidly white hair now, a face entirely remodeled to fix in that society and don’t be recognized by the ones searching for us; pretty enough to be a fucking goddess between Workers, but so ugly and poor that I became an easy target between Executives.

Four years since I took his frozen body. One entire year studying. Three years since my first try. And no results.

...I wished emotional control apps were legal there: too tired, my eyes marked by swollen ugly bags under them, my shoulders fallen, I staggered to the bed. Letting myself fall to the cozy, fluffy cotton, I immediately felt the sleep call.

Tomorrow… I will, definitely… Make him open his eyes…

.

.

.

“DUM!”

“Who’s there!”, I woke up and jumped up, taking the gun from under my pillow, as soon as I heard the noise.

Did they found me? How?! I, surely, hadn’t made anything that could be connected to my past, nor left any clue to how I was looking now, so, how?! I thought, gulping, sweating cold, still pointing my gun to the door ahead, the corridor that led to it and the steps that were coming closer and closer. Then:

“Puff!”, my gun fell on the bed I was stepping on.

“Uh… I would like to be able to answer your question, though… I’m not” he said, scratching the look I had purposefully chosen to be similar to mine and, yet, seemed so much better for him; white hair, tall muscular body, eyes of deep gray. “I just can’t remember anything from… Well, anything from before just now”, my most important thing, my Altair, my little brother, my Heavy looked to me and asked: “Who am I? What am I?”

Feeling the tears coming to my eyes, I jumped from the bed and dashed to him, hugging him and burying my face into his chest.

“A- Are you okay?!” Heavy asked, worried.

“Ye- Yes, I’m”, I replied, just unable to control my stammering voice. Then, I finally answered him, smiling, my face all distorted in a so extreme happiness that looked just awful: “You’re my-”

I restrained myself.

“Your…?”

“My…”

A million, no, a billion, no, an infinite amount of ideas were crossing my mind. How would he react? What would he do? His personality should be more or less the same as before his brain froze, so he would want to fix everything, right? Help everyone, right?

He would hurt himself again.

I can’t let him know the past! I turned to bury my face on his chest.

“My boyfriend”, I said, widening my eyes.

…So, I just have to steal all your love, then.