Entry Seven

This is Rewel. Often I am plagued by a sense of familiarity, but often it dissipates and I stand facing reality.

Speaker Matduke stands in the infirmary with me as I silence a screaming child. He places the child back into the crib and points to a door at the back of the white room. I walk to it and hold it open. It is not an exit but a well-lit stairwell breathes us forth. “I must make rounds today. You will join me.” The words drift through my head with no certain force. He stares down the stairwell, contemplating. “Yes. Join me,” the neuron waves reverberate as he looks at me, the blue light of his prosthetic eye narrowing on me.

He bounds down the stairwell with a strange energy until he comes to the bottom where another door waits. He holds it open for me, but stops me with his arm. The wires of his arm are dull in the fluorescent lighting. “Do not speak in this room.” The underlying threat is reinforced with his influence in my mind.

We move quietly into a new white room and a vague recognition trails us. Large machines line the walls and weave fabric from threads on spools. Some of the people watch the equipment, maintaining that it functions properly. We continue to another part of the room, where spools are being made. “In our zone we manufacture fabrics.” He continues through the room, coming close to large heated vats of solution. The smell is overwhelming. “Everything is synthetic. Silk, cotton, meat, vegetables, water.”

Synthetic is not a word I comprehend. I continue to stare out over the factory. “It’s not real, Rewel. The resources are dwindling.”

Still, I cannot understand. He tries to explain again. “It’s all fake; there is nothing you consume that wasn’t made in another factory somewhere else in the city.”

I stare dumbly at the factory, the workers, the people. “Rewel, our city has been dead for years.”