Refraction
Lullaby's Echo: Chapter 8
Pain dragged him upward. It tore through his nerves like electrified wire. His body convulsed. Arms flailed. Legs kicked without coordination. His muscles twitched uncontrollably. Each movement felt fragmented and disconnected. His limbs refused to obey him.
His vision swam. Fractured halos smeared across his sight. He blinked. His eyes darted in search of solidity. The world refused to anchor. He was back in the pod. The slick obsidian sides felt cool and unyielding against his clawing fingers.
‘Remain still,’ Gideon stated. His voice provided a smooth, clinical anchor in the storm of sensory chaos.
Gabe gasped. He fought the command as much as he fought himself. He reached for the intravenous tube with a desperate, animal instinct. Gideon batted his hand away with calm, implacable strength.
‘Negative, Gabriel. You will remain. Homeostatic balance requires recalibration. Your system is experiencing cascading errors.’
A soft click. The drip adjusted. A cold pulse of fluid coursed through his veins. The violent storm in his body slowly subsided. Thought stretched thin and slipped between frayed edges of awareness. His limbs grew heavy. A welcome, humming darkness began to pull him down.
He surfaced slowly. Layers of dull, chemical fog dragged at him. His limbs felt heavy. They pressed into the soft resistance of a mattress. The unyielding mesh of the pod was gone. His pulse beat sluggishly beneath his skin. He was in his bed. He didn’t remember being moved.
The slow, rhythmic rotation of the ceiling fan provided the only movement in the engineered quiet. He blinked. His gaze drifted. Fading magnolia paint above. The dim glow of daylight filtering through the blinds. To his right, the bedside lamp glowed faintly.
He was trapped. Gideon had him caged. The fury remained, a low ember beneath the heavy blanket of exhaustion. He lacked the energy to stoke it into a flame.
Then a faint, distorted crackle emanated from the main room. The analogue radio.
Gabe stiffened. A jolt of adrenaline cut through the sedative haze. ‘Gideon. Get that.’
The droid had been standing sentinel by the door. He returned a moment later with the device clutched firmly in one hand. He extended it toward Gabe. ‘It’s for you.’
Gabe snatched the radio. His thumb clicked the switch. ‘I’m here. Any change?’
‘No change.’ The boy’s voice wavered. In the background, a fainter, steadier voice murmured. Alma. ‘Vitals holding steady.’ A beat of static followed. Then, Bodhi spoke again. His voice carried a defensive edge. ‘She shouldn’t have been there.’
Gabe’s brow furrowed. ‘Been where?’
‘Up top,’ Bodhi admitted. The story tumbled out. ‘I was careless. Running scraps. A security droid cornered me.’
‘And Alice just happened to be there?’ Gabe pressed. Suspicion coloured his tone.
‘It wasn’t planned,’ Bodhi admitted. ‘She… she seeks diversion. Dodging droids. It’s a bit of sport for her.’
The words hung in the air. Reckless. Gabe’s hold tightened on the radio. He saw his own impulsive nature mirrored in her actions. For the first time, he understood the true, terrible depth of the cage they shared.
‘She pulled me into the sewers.’ Bodhi lowered his voice. Mistrust laced every syllable. ‘But she’s… one of you. A Wirehead. I saw the implant.’
‘She saved your life. You’re complaining about her hardware?’
‘It’s the System’s mark!’ Bodhi shot back. Fear flared into defiance. ‘It’s a soul-snatcher. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust any of you.’
The radio crackled. The line went silent as Bodhi wrestled with his own fear.
‘What happened next?’ Gabe prompted quietly.
‘She offered me a place to stay,’ Bodhi continued. The admission sounded grudging. ‘Her quarters. Said her droid could patch me up. That’s when I met Alma.’ He spat the name like a bad taste. ‘Smooth edges. Soft voice. I don’t abide mechanicals.’
‘She takes care of Alice,’ Gabe said. ‘She trusts it.’
‘And look where that got her,’ Bodhi retorted.
The static faded. The connection died. Nothing remained but the low hum of the room. Gabe let the dead radio fall onto the mattress. He stared at the blank wall. The conversation had answered nothing and unsettled everything.
Gideon tilted his head. A single, fluid motion. ‘Her recent behavioural patterns are... irregular,’ the droid observed. ‘Unit Alma’s logs indicate a deviation from baseline recreational activities.’
Gabe stiffened. He turned his head slowly. The words were clinical. The implication was a sudden, cold shock. ‘Unit Alma’s logs? How the hell would you have access to Alma’s logs?’
Gideon’s optical sensors flickered. A random, asynchronous pattern lasted a millisecond before settling back into their steady blue. It was a visual tic Gabe had never seen before. ‘All carer units of our designation are equipped with a secondary, encrypted comms channel. A secure method to ensure continuity of care.’ He paused. He added the point as if it were self-evident. ‘Specifically between units assigned to a single family. Your health and your sister’s are interconnected variables. To care for one requires data on the other.’
Gabe stared at him. The clinical words landed like stones in the quiet room. A network. A private, family-specific conversation running in the background of his life. Silent. Invisible. The implications washed over him. A cold wave of absolute paranoia. He wasn’t just being cared for. His entire family was being managed as a single, interdependent system. A patient whose charts were being discussed by his nurses just outside the door.
The frustration exploded. It had simmered for days. A low growl rumbled in Gabe’s chest. He turned on Gideon. ‘You can talk to her? Directly? This whole time? Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘There was never a need,’ Gideon replied. His logic formed a perfect, infuriating shield. ‘My primary directive is your care. Inter-unit socialisation was not relevant to that directive until your recent... escalation. The parameters have now changed.’
Gabe stood there for a long moment. The furious retort died on his lips. The white-hot anger didn’t vanish. It cooled. It hardened into something sharp and focused. A tool. His gaze flicked from Gideon’s impassive face to the dark, silent shape of the bio-pod, then back again. A direct line. A back door. The rage burned in his gut. But beneath it, an idea began to form. Cold. Desperate. Dangerous. He said nothing. He simply nodded. A single, sharp gesture of concession. He turned away.
The adrenaline of the conversation drained. A profound, weary silence filled the wake. Trapped. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. He finally stood. The movement felt stiff. He paced the small confines of his bedroom. His gaze drifted across the familiar clutter. A museum of a life that no longer felt like his. Gig posters for bands whose analogue rage now seemed quaint. A protest flyer opposing full automation. Its date stood as a faded testament to a lost cause.
He did more than look. He took inventory. He was a man frantically searching the wreckage of his own life for a weapon. A tool. Anything not supplied by the enemy. He interrogated his own identity. He held up each piece to the cold, sterile light and asked: Is this mine? Or was it given to me?
His eyes snagged on the framed poster for Alien.
The image was seared into his memory. Today it felt different. Accusatory. He no longer saw a film character. He looked in a mirror. Ripley. Her face a mask of terror and defiant resolve. Flamethrower gripped tight. The cold, sterile corridors of the Nostromo. The relentless, perfect organism hunting in the vents. The faceless corporation that saw them all as expendable.
In space no one can hear you scream.
The tagline stopped being a marketing hook. It became a statement of fact. He looked around his own clean, silent apartment. He looked at the humming void of the Symsara console. Who the hell could hear him?
A sour taste rose in his throat. He turned away. His gaze fell on the crookedly hung replica of the Roswell Daily Record. RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region. He’d bought it as a joke years ago. A cynical nod to institutional lies. Now, the joke fell flat. It felt like a creed. He remembered the weeping angel in the library. A ghost in the machine whose sorrow had felt more real than anything in this sanitised world. He remembered Gideon’s calm, infuriating explanation. A data-glitch. A stress-induced hallucination.
A weather balloon.
It was the same institutional song sheet they’d sung after the Euro-Grid Blackouts. ‘An unforeseen solar event.’ Bullshit. It was always bullshit.
The pieces didn’t just connect. They fused. The corporate monster. The official denial. It was the same story written in different ink. His personal mythology was a trap. A neat little box to explain a horror far bigger and older than he could comprehend. Every object in this room failed to represent rebellion. Instead, they formed the bars of his cage. Beautifully appointed. Lovingly maintained by his warden.
He looked around the room. He looked at the relics of a boy who used to care about other things. Music. Films. The angry, brilliant politics of a world before the quiet. When had that boy died? When had his entire universe collapsed into a single, burning point of light named Alice? He didn’t know the answer. He only knew that in a world of ghosts and silence, she was the only thing left that felt real. His only light. And he was her orbit.
Gideon still waited by the door. He tilted his head. ‘You are processing,’ he observed. His voice was a clinical scalpel that cut through Gabe’s spiralling thoughts. ‘A fascinating development.’
Click the Lullaby’s Echo: Index to read all published chapters.
I love tiny details that tether future world with ours, and the Alien reference does the job perfectly.