Bea. She traces the letters of her name onto the surface of her desk with a finger. B E A. The rest of her name was a number denoting the date of her birth: 27102890. A date she shares with exactly 25 others, names are given out according to their birth order to coincide with each letter of the Roman Alphabet. She’s not met anyone else from her birth pod that she can recall, though she assumes they were together for the first few years, being tended to by the care-bots. She’s watched the videos to know what happens when you Become. She’s also watched old videos about ancient traditions, about families, and archaic methods of birth. Things are much more civilized now. Minimal mess, no screaming, just Becoming.

She wonders how her name was chosen. No one ever talks about that part, what comes after the Becoming, the choices that are made by the Organizers.

A chime pulls her from her thoughts and she turns to watch a small panel in her wall slide open and a tray emerges on a spindly arm. Bea stands and moves the three steps it takes to reach it, then picks it up. She watches the arm quickly fold back in on itself into the darkness, and like every day before she leans in to try and see something, but there’s nothing but the small maw of dark nothing before the panel slips shut. With a sigh, she places the tray down on her desk and settles back into her chair. Two quarter turns of the clock is all she has to eat her lunch. More than enough to consume the tasteless offerings. Perfectly constructed to provide the exact nutrients she needs to make it through the rest of her day to the evening meal.

Bea turns her chair slightly, now able to stare at the wide pane of glass that makes up her one wall. There is a bottomless chasm right outside, but on the other side of that chasm is another person in another room that matches hers.

She knows his name is Raul, eventually figured out by carefully tracing letters in the air, and he has a kind smile and eyes and unruly black hair, or perhaps he never styles it. It’s not as if she can ask him. They share a smile across the distance and eat their meal. If she wanted to approach the glass, she would see rows and rows of window bays like her own across the chasm. She sees those people rarely, and they’re spaced far enough apart that it’s difficult to see them clearly unless they’re both pressed to their respective glass.

When the chime sounds again, the panel reopens and she pushes her now empty tray through. With a brief turn back to Raul, she gives a little wave before sitting back down and getting back to work.

They all work until the dinner chime sounds; or, at least that is what she has gathered what happens. She supposes other people in other spaces might work longer.

This time she eats settled near the glass. Raul mimics her posture. She wonders what it would be like to sit next to him, to be able to hear his voice instead of carefully reading his lips each evening. They don’t exchange many words, because of the difficulty of it, but it’s something, and it makes her feel less alone.

‘How are you?’

“Good,” she speaks aloud, “you?”

He frowns at this, glaring down at his dinner, stabbing at it more forcefully than necessary with his spoon.

“I need to talk to you,” he mouths carefully and now she’s frowning, but nods back at him. “I found something.”

“What?” she asks, dinner forgotten. She’s never seen him look like this before. Angry, downright furious even, she would guess.

She watches him stand and start to pace. He fists his hair in his hands and then pulls, then turns and slams both fists into the glass. Bea jumps as a ripple of gold current fractures out from where he struck it. She watches it branch across his glass, then up the walls and over the spaces next to his. Then an alarm begins to sound.

“Raul,” she breathes, wide-eyed as she stares at him in shock. When light spills into his room from behind him she scrambles to her feet. Three shadows stretch across his floor from the now gaping panel that appeared in his rear wall. She screams his name as they move into his space. He backs into the glass, sending another shimmer of gold across the glass. They are speaking to him, trying to keep him calm – she can see it in their gestures and their posture – but Raul remains unmoving against the sparkling surface.

One of them, a woman with long blonde hair wearing a white coat, looks up and catches Bea’s eye for the briefest of moments before reaching out to Raul. Bea screams when his body falls limp and they drag him from his room.

The alarm cuts off abruptly and the signal for lights out comes shortly after. Numbly, Bea showers and dresses for bed. She wonders what possessed Raul to touch the glass when every other month they receive an electronic missive reminding them to not touch it. For their safety.

Sleep doesn’t come easily for Bea. She’s haunted by the eyes of a woman she doesn’t know and worrying about her friend.

“Friend.” The word is whispered into the safety of the darkness. She knows the meaning of the word, of course, but has never been close to anyone to use it. Closing her eyes she can still see them all, converging on her friend. Four people in one room was unheard of, and Bea struggles with what it might mean. They were kept separate for their safety, to avoid the sicknesses that had plagued their ancestors to near extinction. It’s why they were carefully crafted and cared for as infants. It’s why there were only two birth pods a year. There are limited resources now, squandered by those who came before and now carefully monitored.

Four people.

In the morning a tingle dances over the back of her knuckles before the wake-up call chime sounds, reminding her that within her body, just beneath the surface of her skin, lies a system of technology that provides a steady feedback of everything about her. She wonders if anyone is monitoring her directly now if they know she’s sad and exhausted.

Bea stares across at the empty pane of glass. It’s dark now in Raul’s room and it’s far more haunting to see it like that than it would be to see it empty, and between that new darkness and the constant dark of the chasm, it’s easy to feel like she’s the only person left in the world. She eats her breakfast and dresses for her day: a clean pair of grey pants and a white shirt. It’s the same thing every day, delivered into her room like her food.

This is how her life has always been. And now it’s all wrong. A ringing in her ears begins.

She does her tasks for the day. It’s mostly numbers in columns and double and triple checking them. She doesn’t know what they’re for, but now she wonders. It always just seemed important.

The ringing grows louder.

Lunch comes and out of habit Bea turns, ready to offer Raul a smile, but there is only darkness, so she quickly eats and then paces her floor. She wonders what he could have found that he would attempt to speak to her about it; a long and arduous task when reading lips from afar. Whatever it was, it brought more people than she had ever seen at once into his space.

She feels like her eyelids are beginning to throb as an ache arcs across her forehead. It’s a sensation she’s never experienced before. She wonders idly if this is what death is, and if it is, the timing is serendipitous.

When the chime sounds to end the midday meal, Bea discovers that it is not death at all.

The woman from the day before, the one in the coat, enters her room through a panel in the door that matches Raul’s; one she’s never noticed before.

“Bea 27102890,” the woman speaks and Bea can do nothing more than nod dumbly at her. “Data scans indicate there is something wrong and we need to take you in for reprogramming.”

“Reprogramming?” Bea asks, feeling startled and scared. She pushes at the sides of her head because the pain is still there and so is the ringing.

“Not to worry, you won’t remember a thing about it. Same as always.” The woman’s mouth is smiling but Bea doesn’t like her eyes, how hollow they look.

“Same as always?” Bea asks, wanting to retreat, but the memory of Raul is still so painfully fresh she doesn’t dare to move.

“Of course! Everyone needs a bit of a tune-up from time to time. Normally we take care of it while you sleep, but given the circumstances, we want to bring you in.”

“What? ‘In?’ I am in. This is my place. I don’t go places. No one does. It’s not safe anywhere else.” Bea blinks as she catches up with what the other woman said. “While I sleep? This has happened before?”

“At least twenty-two times, according to the records I can pull up about you. The last time was when you managed to work through a backdoor in the network and discovered the truth.”

“The truth? What are you talking about?”

“Bea,” the woman says, her smile stretching wider. “I need you to come with me.” Bea stands her ground as the woman glances up and to the side before taking one step back. ‘Raul is waiting.’ She mouths and Bea’s mouth falls open in shock.

Hope blooms in her chest. Maybe he just needed a tune-up too. She steps into a brightly lit hall and from this side, she can hear her door slide shut. The hall is wide and across the shallow cut-out in the wall to indicate her door is another door. A name is on it.

Fran 27102892. The first four numbers match Bea’s.

“What is this?” She asks, even though she knows the answer. A different pod of people. Two years younger than her.

“A prison. An experiment, a horror story. Take your pick, none of it is good.” The woman clears her throat. “I’m Leah, by the way.”

“What’s your birth pod?” Bea asks as they begin to walk.

“I don’t have one. I was born on the surface, the traditional way,” she adds with a small smile.

Bea frowns, eyes taking in all of the names with matching numbers to hers on her right and the younger pod of people to her left. “On the surface?” she asks and she feels her stomach start to revolt. “The world is okay?” She stumbles into the wall with a sob. “I won’t remember any of this. What happened to Raul?”

“We broke him out, he’s acclimating top side. It’s messy work, and slow. We’ve been going pod by pod, but Raul got bumped up because he stumbled through the same backdoor you did.”

“Why? Why didn’t you take me out then?”

“I wasn’t here then. My team and I just gained access to this facility two weeks ago after reacclimating to Earth.”

“What? Why?”

“I spend most of my time on Mars.”

Bea laughs, sounding a little hysterical. “Mars.”

“Yes. There’s been a contingent of scientists and a handful of doctors stationed on the planet for the last several hundred years. Civilians have just begun to gain clearance to leave Earth to live on Mars. My team and I were brought in to help all of you.

“I thought I was being reprogrammed.”

“No. I said that for the monitors in your room to pick up. There aren’t any people beyond all of you in there. It’s run entirely through AI, so we can pull you out, replace your feed with your normal data points and if they ever catch on it will be too late.”

“What is AI?”

“Artificial Intelligence. Thirty years ago, this began as a humble experiment. To test the limits of AI, they were left with seeds. The plan was for them to become cultivators, to see if there were other ways to produce crops. They were left alone down here, only sending in reports that things were going well. Crops were being produced and sent to the surface. By the time we discovered what else they figured out what to do with the vast bank of resources they had been left with, well, it was a mess. They’re pretty tight-lipped, the people higher up, but there’s a lot of finger-pointing and blame being slung around. And that’s just the unforeseen adaptation of the AI. They’re still pouring over how they figured out how to create viable human life down here because it’s nothing like we’ve ever seen before on the surface. We think their end game was another potential food source.”

Bea gasps, horror filling her until she feels as if she is nothing more than a gaping maw of dread and fear. What if they had been testing that theory down here, but then quickly slams the door shut on that thought. Their meals were basic, things only meant to fuel them, they wouldn’t waste life like that.

“It’s fine,” Leah assures her, “so far every recorded birth matches someone in a cell.”

Bea nods and focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. “Why would no one come down here, though? To check on anything? That seems stupid.”

“That’s the point. It was an experiment, meant to run without human interference for fifty years. But the AI – we’re getting all of you out of here because we have to shut everything down and destroy it. The experiment failed, and the AI are adapting in a way no one expected or wanted.”

“Oh,” Bea gasps, stumbling ever closer to the end of the hall feeling overwhelmed, nauseous. “Something’s wrong.”

“Just a bit further. I know this is a lot, but you’re going to be okay.”

“I’m going to be okay,” she parrots. “Raul is okay?”

“He’s very healthy, still sleeping. He was very adamant we got you out, and I agreed with him.”

“I thought you killed him.”

“No! Oh no, though I suppose that did look suspicious. We had to sedate him. We knew he had found out the truth; his log activity was easy to follow, but we didn’t expect him to be so worked up about it, and we were on our way when he set off the alarms. It was a close thing. The AI ran a reset on his data last night, so they think everything is fine now.”

Bea nods even though nothing makes sense to her anymore. When two doors slide open she stumbles into the small room, feeling almost safe in the small space. “Leah,” she mutters again, “I think somethings wrong.”

“Here.” Leah grabs her arm. Bea jolts at the touch but lets the woman ease her to the floor. “Head down, take deep breaths. Everything is going to be okay now, Bea. I promise.”

Bea nods, and then laughs, realizing that today is the first time she’s ever heard another person’s actual voice and that they’re a stranger to her. “Okay,” she mumbles and then darkness overtakes her.

When she opens her eyes again she’s in another room. This one as bright as the hallway, but gentle noises of activity reach her ears. She’s gently cocooned, wherever she is, as comforting weight surrounding her body. There’s a little pain and she groans, which draws someone close to her.

“Hello, Bea. I’m Frank. A friend of Leah’s. I’m happy to see you finally awake. We removed two tiny, tiny processing and data chips that were just under your skin, here and here,” Bea’s eyes feel sluggish as they watch Frank point to a spot on the backs of each of her wrists. “The pain is normal.”

“Oh, good,” she slurs before slipping back into the nothingness of sedation.

Raul is leaning over her when she wakes the second time, and she might be convinced it was a dream if it wasn’t for the full-body pain she was experiencing, combined with the sunlight above him and the wind caressing her skin. His eyes are even kinder this close.

“Raul,” she rasps, reaching up towards him with one hand while her other hand curls into what she’s laying on.

He smiles down at her and over his shoulder stands Leah, looking just as glad to see her awake. He grabs her hand and helps her ease herself upright. Grass. Real grass is what she’s clutching, something she’s only ever read about. There are trees nearby and she can hear birds singing and the air tastes sweet on her tongue.

When Raul speaks it’s quiet and sincere. “Welcome to the world, Bea.”