How He Learned to Distrust

***

One hour? I can survive one more hour, right? Humans are supposed to survive weeks without food, but I was already delirious from hunger. I tried not to think about it, but then I was thinking about not thinking about it all over again. One hour of waiting… I can do it, I can…

“Dom, can’t she bring back some fertile soil? With seeds, we could try planting here too,” I said.

“I think that’s impossible...” Dom replied.

I’m going to starve to death. It’ll be suspicious no matter what. If Alba comes in and out every week with food, they’ll notice.

“Isn’t there any organic substrate around you?” Rei asked, trying to help.

“The hard part is finding something organic that survived the mist and could serve as fertilizer...” Dom paused, then suddenly lit up. “I know! Your eco-toilet!” he said enthusiastically.

Oh no… not the toilet again. I could hear Rei laughing at my misfortune in the background.

“Dom… I’d rather starve than eat fruit grown from my own… you know,” I muttered, horrified.

“I’m kidding. We actually have fertile land here,” he said with a laugh.

“Not funny. Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because it’s a top-secret matter. Alba went there precisely to get seeds for fruit trees we don’t have here,” he explained.

“Where is this place? Is it far from here? Does this involve Chefe too?”

As I kept pressing, Dom suddenly became a man of few words, like I was stepping into a minefield. But I asked anyway.

“Is Alba’s free access to Nowy connected to those fertile lands?”

“You’re asking too many classified questions, Inertia.”

Dom’s tone grew more serious. Why wasn’t I allowed to know about them?

“And what’s the problem? Who am I going to tell?” I asked.

He pressed on, “Inertia, where do you study?”

“Why? I don’t remember...”

“And before waking up in your room, where were you?” he continued.

“I don’t know...”

“And why would I trust our most important secrets to someone who apparently can’t even remember yesterday? How do I know this isn’t all a ploy by the people at the center to infiltrate and destroy everything we have?”

“So, in the end, you don’t trust us?!” I shot back angrily.

The argument came to an abrupt halt as Alba opened the door, stepping right into the middle of it.

“I see you two are already close friends, huh,” she said, walking in with sealed bags and other things in her hands and slung over her back.

I went over to her to clear up what was bothering me... I had thought Dom trusted us all this time, and that’s why I trusted him so much.

“Alba, don’t you trust us either? Do you really think Nowy sent us?”

“Calm down. Where did you get that idea, Inertia? There’s no way Nowy could create technology as advanced as your body and drop it into such a hostile, dangerous environment,” she said, resting a hand on my shoulder.

See?!

“Why not? You know what they’re capable of, Alba!” Dom stood up from the couch, furious, clearly revolted by her stance.

“Dom, calm down!” Alba shouted.

She set the bags down on the floor and stepped toward him.

“Luna was here, looked at the situation, and ruled out that possibility. So calm down!”

But he was still furious; I could see it in his eyes. Then she placed a hand on the back of his neck, and he finally calmed down.

Had I brought up something I shouldn’t have? Just what was Nowy capable of?

“Dom, go cool off. I’ll take care of things here for now,” Alba said, trying to defuse the situation.

Dom lowered his gaze and nodded. He started toward the exit, brushing past me and murmuring, “Sorry, Inertia.”

I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.

He picked up a bag by the door and walked out.

“Don’t be upset with him; he doesn’t mean any harm,” Alba said.

“I don’t get it. I thought he already trusted us,” I muttered, still upset.

“Dom has some old scars when it comes to trusting others. I think it’s best if you hear the details from him,” Alba said as she opened a white sealed bag, pulling out apples, bananas, carrots, and potatoes, and setting them on the table.

“Here’s your food. There are some fruits and vegetables you can eat raw. I’ll cook the fish for you as soon as I detox over there,” she said, pointing to the machine — I’m just going to call it the detox from now on.

“Thanks, Alba. As for Dom, I doubt he’ll tell me anything,” I said, still upset.

“I know that boy… check Linkedia. If he left access to those memories open, it’s a sign he wants to share them with you. See you in 20 minutes,” she said, dropping the hint and stepping into the detox.

Indeed, if it’s open there, he doesn’t want to hide it from me. Maybe, deep down, it’s just his trauma speaking, but we’ll see.

I logged into Linkedia, and sure enough, it was there. Inside the folder labeled ‘memories’ were subfolders organized by emotions. One was called traumas, and within it were further divisions by theme.

That’s where I found the ‘distrust’ folder. I was starving, so I took the chance to eat while watching his memories.

“My name is Dom Costa. I was born and raised in Brazil, the only child of a single mother, Cristina. We lived together in a modest house on the outskirts of São Paulo. My mother would wake up before dawn to work as a cleaner at a school downtown. The commute alone took nearly two hours each way, and even after returning late at night, she still took care of the household chores.

I’ve always been grateful for my mother’s daily efforts. So while I was still young, I decided to use my talent in boxing to try to become a professional athlete and lift us out of that situation. I was first introduced to the sport through social projects in my community, which made it harder to stand out among other fighters.

My only real chance was through the championships, and I was in one of them when the world chose to grant ‘long life’ while erasing one soul after another from the Earth.

The Eterno is a fragment of a massive oval-shaped mineral that crashed onto the planet, wiping out a small village in the north. When it finally cooled, it split open, releasing a violet mist with a powerful affinity for oxygen.

Once word spread about the mist’s effects, I went back home to protect what mattered most to me — my mother. Much changed over the millennia, and against all odds, we came into possession of the Eterno and, with it, this so-called eternal life.

But we hadn’t been born into privilege, so our lives remained the same. We no longer fought to survive, but simply to keep on living. As the world stabilized, my mother’s dream was still for us to escape poverty. She saw something in me I couldn’t even see in myself, which is why she seized the first opportunity that came her way — the chance to help Nowy in exchange for a new life.

My mother was recruited to work at the center for a few years, and she promised me that with the money she earned, she would invest in me and we’d finally get out of that situation. I was against it, of course, since I was already chasing other ways to achieve financial stability, but she was stubborn and refused to let that opportunity slip away.

While she was away, I did my best here too.

Fifty years had passed since she left, and I hadn’t heard a word from my mother. I wasn’t allowed to enter Nowy, and even my contacts there had no idea where she was. Another fifty years went by, and by then I was financially stable, working for Chefe, the so-called “boss of the good hill,” and helping the whole community. Another fifty years slipped away, and still there was no sign of her. That was when I decided to try to enter Nowy, and my only chance was through the Mist Games.

I was good at boxing, but I was poor and didn’t have the technology or money to adapt my body for the fights. Chefe told me he had friends who could help, and that’s how I met Luna. She designed a personal combat weapon and shaped me into the best version of myself. By then, I already owed her half my life.

I trained relentlessly for years, pushing until I finally reached the finals and fought to become the champion.

I did it. For my mother, I won one of the Mist Games. I earned the greatest prize in Eterno and a passage into Nowy. Yet even with all that wealth and recognition, the only thing I cared about was finding her. I went through countless interviews and appearances, and yes, I became famous but I never wanted any of it. I just had to be patient; I was already inside Nowy. All I needed were the right contacts and the right moment to dig deeper.

It didn’t take long before I found my mother. She looked radiant, her body flawless, better even than when she was human. She seemed to be one of the most privileged people in the city. I rushed to her and called out her name, but the first thing she said when she heard me was, “I’m sorry, I’m not your mother. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

The first thought that struck me was abandonment. Of course she had left her past life behind for something far better here — but no, it wasn’t that. In that moment, she simply had no memory of me. What had they done to her?

I had no answers. I used my influence to dig into the migration of some people three hundred years ago, but everything was locked away under the highest secrecy.

After some digging, I discovered there had been a project that used populations from poorer regions as test subjects for research and technological advancements aimed at enhancing the human body. But why erase their memories? What was the purpose of that? When I finally gained access to the records, I saw everything that had happened there. It was inhuman, pure psychological torture. They had promised a new life, but at what cost?

I was enraged. I tried to restore my mother’s memories, but what was the point? It was selfish of me because bringing them back would also mean reviving all the painful memories of her suffering. My anger consumed me. I fought against the system, and in the end, I was expelled.

In that moment, I had everything, yet I lost what mattered most.

That is the memory of how I learned to distrust.”

End of Report 11