Awakening

Alice’s hand fumbled around, clumsily.

“Come on… Where are they???”

Lumpy thing… Sharp lumpy thing? Something from ye– ee– eeww–

She grabbed hold of her glasses, her fingers splayed over the lenses, and pressed them up to her face. Vibrant colours flooded her mind, like rainbow needles tattooing images of life deep into her subconscious: connected.

“Verified. Good morning, Alice.”

-----//-----

The morning sun streaked into the kitchen, piercing the grit on the window panes with as much ease as it cut the tension in the air.

“Loulou, don’t forget to take her today, alright?” Alice’s mother slammed a drawer shut, almost for extra emphasis.

“I didn’t mean to forget yesterday! And besides, she’s your daughter.”

“…and your sister,” added Alice’s mother. “She’s only six. You need to be a responsible sister.”

She punched a straw into a juice carton. I didn’t choose to have a sister. Since starting university, remembering to detour to her sister’s school was much, much harder. Not to mention, inconvenient. Six-year-olds should be old enough to run errands for themselves.

She wished her Pa was still with them.

“…if we don’t get her glasses serviced before the end of the week, they will probably stop connecting again.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll remember today,” complained Alice, this time aloud so her mother could hear.

“Honey, she’s still running on Beta H5. You remember how much harder it was to concen–”

“I said I’d do it today,” snapped Alice, scrunching the empty carton in her fist before forcing it into an overfilled bin. “Milly! Let’s go already!”

Vermillion, who was sitting up to the kitchen bench, sat silently save for the gentle crunching of toast. Nothing changed at her sister’s command.

Alice stood there, staring at her sister, blinking; her sister replied by staring straight past her.

“You know what? I’ve had it with this family…” But as Alice said this, Vermillion slid down off her chair and walked quietly past her towards the door.

----//----

Vermillion kicked a small pebble as she walked, looking down at her feet, thumbs looped through each shoulder strap of her school bag. The grey pavement of the street stood in contrast to the vibrancy of the sky; its pitted and dusty surface had seen better days.

“Come on, come on, come on, Milly!” cried Alice, several paces ahead. She stamped her feet at the speed she believed Vermillion should be walking at.

God, she’s so slow! thought Alice to herself. Everything about this family frustrates me!

“Lishie?” squeaked Vermillion. It came out sounding much like it did the first time she’d tried to say her sister’s name. “After the update, do you still see pink lumps on things?”

“Pink lumps?” asked Alice. “I don’t think I ever saw pink lumps. On what exactly?”

Vermillion kicked another pebble, her slow walking pace taking on a seemingly new nonchalance. “Just pink lumps. They’re like, a part of things.” She trailed off.

It was hard having a sister more than ten years her junior. It wasn’t that she didn’t get along with Vermillion, but if they’d been closer in age things probably would have been different. Like, having things to talk about together. Life had been pretty good as just the three of them – the original three: her, Ma and Pa. And maybe that’s why they decided to have a second child; now it was still just the three of them, only a different arrangement of three.

Alice stepped off the road onto the footpath, pulling aside the curtain covering the store’s doorway. The curtain was only long enough to come down to her shoulders; seemingly, its only real purpose served to demonstrate there was a separation between the dusty street of the outside and the dusty shelves of Geminal’s store. And even then, ‘store’ was a term Alice only considered using loosely.

“Loulou! It’s been a while!”

The low rumble of Alos Geminal’s voice permeated from various piles of old tech that littered the shelves, floors and anything else that could be considered to resemble a surface. In fact, there was so much clutter, the chaotic contours of the store’s general interior successfully dampened the street sounds that surely regretted entering.

“Hi Mr Geminal. It hasn’t been that long. I was here last week.” Even Alice noticed her voice now reflected a lift in her mood. Something about Geminal’s avuncular demeanour had always put her at ease. He and her father had known each other since… actually, she couldn’t remember if they even remembered how they came to know each other. But his store had been like a second home to her growing up. In fact, sometimes it felt more like home than the numerous homes she’d moved between over her 18 years of life.

“Yaaaah. But it’s been a long week. Too many Bits to repair and not enough people to pay for them. Feels like they only pay for ‘new’ these days.” Geminal kept mumbling, adjusting his glasses as he poked some pieces of metal with a screwdriver of some sorts. “Your mother messaged to say… ho Milly, didn’t see you there!”

Vermillion was only just tall enough to peer over Geminal’s workbench. Her fingers clasped onto the edges as she pulled herself slightly higher to get a better view of what he was working on.

Geminal continued. “Says them glasses needs updating or some such?”

“Do you have time to look at them now?” asked Alice, her voice trembling momentarily as she sidestepped some scrap metal in the aisle, no doubt defending the store from possible intruders. “I really need to get her to school, and I’m already going to be late for my own class.”

“Late for class???” chortled Geminal, “You kids these days talk nothin’ but serious.” He tore his eyes away from his workbench and began to reveal some sort of old EDMR chair, probably dating back to the Old Earth. His store was a veritable treasure trove of past and forgotten relics. That is, if you could find them amongst the trash of scrap metals. He began wiping over the chair with a dirty rag, seemingly replacing century-old dust with century-old mechanical oils. He then patted it loudly with his gentle, bear-sized hands.

“Up you ‘op, my girl”, he gestured to the chair.

Vermillion dropped her schoolbag and clambered up. She easily defied the newly-applied greasy coatings before sliding into an enveloping seated groove designed for one-size-fits-all posteriors. She nuzzled in, staring straight ahead – as though at something.

“Ma says she thinks the update will help Milly’s concentration. She’s been saying she sees different things that the rest of us can’t.”

Geminal extended his arm and wiped the multitude of metal scrap across his workbench before clasping onto a large galvanised box hidden at the back. He slid it forward towards himself; the box scraped under its own weight, demonstrating the reason for the deep grooves in the benchtop. Like a stage magician, the box split apart diagonally, with a lid creaking upwards to reveal a plethora of coloured panels, metal knobs and loose circuitry: it didn’t look state-of-the-art, but then, nothing in Geminal’s store could fit that description; yet everything had function. He slid his hand down a side gap unmistakably too small for someone of his stature before the panels sparked to life with a misarranged glowing rainbow mosaic. The colours, and its gentle hum, took Alice back to when she was Milly’s age; Geminal’s store was a playground of mystery and a melding of the past and future.

“Milly”, barked Geminal, unintentionally breaking the homogeny of the white noise that had settled gently into the store’s numerous dust sinks. Vermillion flinched and gazed at Geminal, “…now you just relax for a few minutes while I take a look at these ‘ere glasses of yours.”

Vermillion stuttered, “…but lately I’ve been having nightmares when I take them off… things, changing…”.

“Wel’, sounds like we’d best take a look, then.”

Vermillion paused for a moment, lost in thought. As she reluctantly began moving to remove her glasses, Geminal moved all-too-deftly for a man of his size, gently clasping each side of the frames before sliding them off her face. Vermillion’s expression became one of a deer in headlights, or perhaps a newborn kitten; dumbfounded, her dark gaze drifted aimlessly before steadying and becoming listless... or perhaps lifeless... as she passed out of consciousness.

Alice watched her sister intently. The tones on her face seemed to become… unnatural. Watching people remove their glasses had always been a sight she struggled with: people just didn’t look right after they removed them. She had never been sure if it was the glasses, or just them. Nor had she ever fully understood how the glasses and retina implants really worked together, and despite having both herself, thinking about it always made her feel uneasy.

Geminal grumbled to himself. The glasses were wedged somewhere in amongst the galvanised box and its wiry maze, which now churned out an array of colour fades and gentle whirrs. He repeatedly palmed his own large round glasses up closer to his eyes, focusing intently on the images and messages they were sending him.

Alice glanced down at her watch. Too serious? She found the sound of the tick soothing: it reminded her of happier days; of care-free days. She used to spend so much time sitting with Geminal in this workshop while he explained how things worked on Old Earth; they would lose hours assembling things together. Sure, she could just glean the answers from her glasses now, but this other kind of time – it felt more real.

Geminal’s grumbling – now more of a grunting – broke into something that now loosely resembled language. “Maybe it’s her retinas?”, he mumbled. Levers moved and knobs turned, and Geminal jerked as he tore himself away from the box. “Yaaaah”, he started, wiping his brow with that same dirty cloth from before. “I’ve got some temp glasses around here somewhere. Theta D9 might be a good check”, he instructed, more to himself than anyone else.

Alice couldn’t help but notice a moment of seriousness on Geminal’s face – only a fleeting moment – before returning to his standard cheek-splitting grin.

“Lil’ Milly will need to try these for today. Looks like there’s more going on with this update than I thought.”