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Description
Floating...

No, it was more like drowning. This all felt unreal, and yet real, and possibly surreal. My mind played over that word, trying to remember what it meant, meaning eluding me like the dreams I seemed to be permanently in. So much information ran through my head, being able to know everything, but not being able to stand far enough back to see it all. The human brain could only process so much information. I was drowning in oceans of information, information that I struggled to organise into any semblance of an order. Certainly whilst retaining consciousness it would have been impossible to even comprehend a tenth of this information, but like this, my mind was being instantly used to analyse hundreds of pieces of data.

How long had I been like this? How long had it been since I had seen the sun? How long had it been since I had felt anything other than the wires that kept me alive, sometimes being tugged at or reinserted? I knew so much, and yet I knew so little. Ask me complex algorithms and I could pull the answers, ask me for witness statements or call up video recordings and I could find them; ask me for my favourite colour and I couldn't even remember one. A living super computer, but a ghost in the machine. As soon as I had been born I had been trained for this position, using a mind that was beyond comprehension. Since being instated into this position, I had grasped the concept of childhood, and that I had had none. For eight years before they had put me into this state I had been trained, and only trained. Nothing else had mattered to my keepers. So long, I couldn't even remember what I looked like.

I suppose within any system like this, you give yourself some sort of user interface, something that for a time is you. At least, that's what I did for myself, though I can't say how the other seven that are a part of this system work. When in the stream of all the information, I don't see myself at all, but in the times when I look on as an observer, finding out the information I have sorted, I see myself as a small figure above the great blue virtual stream of data, and at this point, I see myself as what is described as an outer body experience. This virtual me, if that is what I really look like I have no idea, I only have my eight year old self to go on, and even I'm aware that I'm some years past that now. So there, this little virtual me, long silvery hair just hanging down my back. I don't really see much else; I always seem to be some way behind the virtual me. That's all I ever see, the data and the virtual me.

I mentioned the others, the seven others. I feel like I know them, yet at the same time I have not the slightest idea about them. They do the same thing as me, I would assume. Here in this strange life I can feel their presence, but never do we make contact. I only know there are seven others because when I was first trained I saw them, sleeping in the same sort of pods that I am now in, all laid out in a circle. It takes eight of us to process all this information, one person alone could not do it. Since becoming part of the system I had learnt why we had been chosen, after all I could see all the government and medical records. It was something to do with our minds, that they weren't stable enough to be amongst the population. In a city that worked on keeping everyone happy and having no crime, we would have stood no chance. This system, it tracked everyone's mind, making sure they were stable, and if they were not, actions were taken. At birth, one should have a stable mind, white to give it its perfect colour, possibly tinged if there is some complication. Throughout life the mind would never be as stable as it was at birth, experience changing and shaping it, tinging it with a whole host of colours. If it ever became too murky, then it became a cause for alarm. Part of the system was to find these murkied minds. The eight of us however, we were different, born different. We were the entire opposite of what we should be, minds born perfectly black, no way to add a colour. It was a mind that the system would reject outright if seen on anyone other than a new-born, marking it as a sign for elimination. For a new-born, it meant becoming part of the system, the only mind that could even begin to comprehend the extent of the data that went through the system.

It was odd to think that it was the very minds that the system was trying to stop which ran it. Perhaps it was because of the environment we were then brought up in, knowing that there was no external source to affect us and make us go off the rails. Eight of us, to be in this eternal sleep until we eventually died. We did die, I knew that much, I had been brought in to replace the one who had. Forever in this strange sleep, having no idea about how long I had left.

Or so I thought.

The dreams. Despite being in this strange state of sleep I was not quite there, for sometimes my mind just forgot about the stream of data and did what it may. When I had started to have them, I had no idea about what they were and so I had looked them up. Before entering this system I had never dreamed, or if I had, I had never remembered. These dreams though, they didn't really seem to follow the way a dream should work; they seemed as if I were awake. As they came to pass, I noticed patterns in the data, the visual content from the outside world. My dreams, they were playing out in the data before my eyes, maybe days later, sometimes even months, but they always played out, exactly as I had seen them. Again it was something I had to look up. The art of prophecy, but it was made about to be a load of superstition, people with lucky guesses, but was that really the case? I looked back into the data about the eight of us, looking for if any had recorded a dream before, had acknowledged that something they had seen had then actually happened.

And it had, right back at when the system had been created. It had been put down to an error in the data or a loop; but was this foresight actually possible? With our minds how they were, was it truly an impossibility for us to predict the future? I decided the next dream I had I would save and store it into the data, away in some private file, as evidence for myself.

My dream, it wasn't like any of the others. Always I had watched third person, as if I was meant to be some guardian angel over proceedings, though certainly I had never had the guardian bit down. This one was different; the sickening feeling of realising it was first person. It annoyed me how it inconsistently blinked. Everything surrounding me, the surreal feeling of being wet. Where was I? Staring up at a curved, slightly blue dome, possibly a white sky beyond it. No, tiles; I could see the breaks between each of the large tiles. The blinking of the image kept continuing, rapidly as it found the view offence, slowly cowering open after a quick series. It seemed so bright. Something felt heavy, ever so heavy, pushing down upon me. Everything hurt in a deep throbbing sort of way, body reluctant to move against it. Another blink, and the view shifted, staring down. Another dome was there, this time of some other material. It appeared to cover my mouth and nose. Another blink of my eyes and I was following the tube that led from it, following as it curved off to the side somewhere.

Body itched to move, but everything was so heavy. My eyes looked up at the ceiling again, looking up through the glass, through the water that surrounded me. As soon as I had started to try to move, I could see the ripples across the surface, working against my sight from underneath. Something then started, an odd sensation. Noise, there was a noise. Just how long had it been since I had heard something? The system was a place of silence, any sound on a video was just immediately changed into information in my mind, putting voices to a person, lyrics and music to a song, I had no need to hear it. This though, this was noise, my mind actually having to figure out what it was. Beeps, just a steady row of continuous beeps, like... medical equipment. Was that what it was; was it something hooked up to me, monitoring life signs? I tried to move, tried to get a look at what was outside the dome. All my limbs felt so heavy, so sluggish to even try and move. Finally I managed to move my arms enough, seeing the wires inserted deep into my wrists, doing what I wasn't sure. That beep, it was monitoring about me, but I didn't know what. Then suddenly there came another noise.

Footsteps, someone was outside the dome. I wanted to look and see, but just moving my arm a few inches had been a task in itself, never mind moving my entire body. The footsteps; slow, deliberate, steady, and coming closer. They kept stopping after equal strides, as if looking at something, but always they would start up again and come closer. My brain turned it all over, trying to come to a conclusion over who it was. Maybe some sort of keeper, or doctor. Why was I even in this dome to begin with?

The footsteps came to a stop, a golden haired man appearing over the dome. His hair, it was odd, cut all jaggedly rather than to one set length. His eyes, they looked so cold, and then those lips. From having no expression at all, his lips suddenly formed a smile, looking down at me, scaring me. None of it looked warm, none of it seemed inviting; in fact, it all seemed the exact opposite, that there was no good reason for him being here. He quickly disappeared, and I wondered if he had left. No footsteps though, only a slightly typing, somewhere off to the side.

Suddenly the dome lifted, and it felt like my ears had shattered from the noise. Everything hit me in a wave. The machine that had bleeped before had gone into a short cacophony of noise from my sudden change in environment. Everything, everything was so loud, it seemed as if I could hear the very air move about the room. The man, he was suddenly back, looming over me, hand coming down and grabbing at the smock I was wearing, dragging me up out of the water. I was gasping, despite the breathing apparatus. None of this felt right, none of this felt good. What was happening?

Darkness, away from the dream. That certainly had been a dream, no corruption in data. Data didn't feel lifelike. I had no idea what it meant, who I had seen through the eyes. It was only then I realised I was not out of the grasp of the dream, and in a swirl of colour I was back in it.

Time had passed, but not the right way, it had gone backwards, and I was now following the golden haired man like a guardian angel; however I did not see myself as being an angel at all in this case. Something was not right about this man, and hopefully the dream would tell me what. Along corridors and up stairs, taking service lifts for a few of the floors. I knew these corridors, and dread filled me as I realised where he was going. Following him, praying that he wasn't going where he was.

The frosted sliding glass door. It required a card and password to get through, something he shouldn't have, and yet he was typing in the passcode, and he was swiping the card. The door, it was opening, it shouldn't, he shouldn't be allowed in. And in he went, entering the outer ring of the system. The giant screens that surrounded the internal globe, blue data like the streams in my mind were running up and down their lengths, the text size so small. There were user interfaces at the main compass, he took the south one. I looked out across the walkway railing, looking at the great 'tree' that ran through the centre, the globe's axis. At the base of the tree I could see its roots, white peeking between them. The chamber beneath, the memory banks of the system. I was in there, in one of those pods, connected up to the tree. The tree brought in all the data; it was also the power core.

I turned back to the man, looking over his shoulder at the screen. He was looking into the workings of the system. That kind of information, it couldn't get out, it would cause chaos if it did. What they forced of us, it wasn't humane, an eternal sleep, not knowing most of life. If the public knew they would cry out against it, for that reason they could not. Those who were taken for this role were marked as dead; the public couldn't be allowed to know of our existence. He had to be stopped, but no one was around. Not that I could call for help in the first place, this was a dream. I couldn't understand where everyone had gone, there should have been at least someone on each of the user interfaces, as well as a couple of guards, and then the few that monitored us. Yet not one was there, something had happened.

The golden haired man had since left the user interface, and I was once again following, dreading where he led. Out of the globe and along more corridors, finding service elevators that seem to have gone obsolete some time ago. Down further into the depths of the system. Along corridors that had since lost their lights, an eerie red lighting the way from emergency lights. Still I followed him, knowing the way from old blue prints that had long since been locked into my head. Up some floors again via service elevators before we came back to the more modern walkways I openly recognised. His way, it wasn't the quickest, but it was a way that had avoided most of the security doors. Only two doors stood between him and the inner most sanctum of the system.

That last door had my stomach in my throat, a phrase that I had never really thought to use before, but now felt apt with the great sickness of dread I felt. He had worn some sort of glove which had given him the right set of finger prints to get through the doors, and he must have stolen someone's card as some point. That last door, how I willed for the light not to change to green once he had swiped the card. My heart actually seemed to leap when that light didn't change, but a moment too soon. For some reason it had taken the system slightly longer than at the other doors, but the light had changed green to let him past.

I did not want to follow as he entered the room, but the dream made me. Around the base of the tree we went, seeing the pods, each with their occupants. He would stop to pause and look in, quickly moving on. None could I truly recognise, I understood their presence in the sea of data more than I did their appearances. Finally he stopped, at the fifth pod, though not labelled so.

C-8

And despite not knowing, I recognised the person as myself.

A knife ripping into my breast, pools of blood pouring from me. This was pain and this was death, everything darkening around my eyes, the light I had so briefly known diminishing into the nothing that my own life had been. Every feeling, as if feeling it all for the first time again, all so powerfully being stripped away from me. A first breath with the torn apparatus away from me being my last, eyes blinking once on that golden haired man before closing. Warm blood gushing down my body, soon turning cold. A voice that had not spoken in years trying to rasp out a sound, as if to prove that it had had some form of existence, failed. Everything so vivid in that last moment, everything actually real, everything taken away...

And all of that dream stored away in a memory bank. My death, stored away so I could watch it over and over again, waiting until it happened.

The man paused at the pod, looking down at the occupant inside. All life signals were registering a comatose state. The occupant merely had the code C-8, though the interface upstairs had given her the nickname 'Cybele'. Perhaps it was apt, especially for someone who was part of a system that controlled everything. Each one of these beings had a different name, each one the name of some god; yet somehow for this system, it seemed apt for calling one by the great mother's name.
"Cybele," he said the name to himself, the uncommon word slipping somewhat uncomfortably off his tongue.

To call what he looked at human seemed unfortunate. They had long since been that. Mimicry of ancient robotics encased their bodies, holding them together, as I they moved the slightest they might crumble apart. Going from the data, most of them were over a hundred years old, forced to have been a part of this machine for so long. Quite literally the people who ran the system would do anything to keep their processors alive, even if it meant they ended up as a brain in a tank. The oldest looked like she might be getting there. Cybele still had yet to get that far, still within a normal lifespan; though for the supposed thirty plus years she had, she still looked like someone half that age, and would easily have passed for a fourteen year old. For the time being, the metal braces merely kept her in place, making sure that none of the vast collection of wires and equipment that was attached to her moved.

"Cybele," he once again said, this time the name sounding more natural. Beneath the blue glass dome she did not move, eyelashes not even batting, and he could only wonder what colour they were under those pale eyelids, possibly near red if her hair was anything to judge by. This place, so deep underground, no natural light, and her hair had gone a shiny silver, almost white, the slight grey probably being the last pigments of her natural colour. Such a small being, and yet she held the key to destroying the whole system. If only the people knew, all of this would be put to an end. No longer would people have to be in terror of a system that could predict their own moves before they had thought so, no longer would the people be judged by what they thought, no longer would there be a system that dealt judgement with evidence that had yet to happen. Destroy the system, and the people would be free.

And in this game, knowledge really was power.

Flicking his knife, he then pushed back his golden hair, contemplating the best way to remove her from the system. Opening the glassed dome he looked down at the comatose creature, grabbing at her collar.
"You and I Cybele, we're going to destroy this country."

Description
Floating...

No, it was more like drowning. This all felt unreal, and yet real, and possibly surreal. My mind played over that word, trying to remember what it meant, meaning eluding me like the dreams I seemed to be permanently in. So much information ran through my head, being able to know everything, but not being able to stand far enough back to see it all. The human brain could only process so much information. I was drowning in oceans of information, information that I struggled to organise into any semblance of an order. Certainly whilst retaining consciousness it would have been impossible to even comprehend a tenth of this information, but like this, my mind was being instantly used to analyse hundreds of pieces of data.

How long had I been like this? How long had it been since I had seen the sun? How long had it been since I had felt anything other than the wires that kept me alive, sometimes being tugged at or reinserted? I knew so much, and yet I knew so little. Ask me complex algorithms and I could pull the answers, ask me for witness statements or call up video recordings and I could find them; ask me for my favourite colour and I couldn't even remember one. A living super computer, but a ghost in the machine. As soon as I had been born I had been trained for this position, using a mind that was beyond comprehension. Since being instated into this position, I had grasped the concept of childhood, and that I had had none. For eight years before they had put me into this state I had been trained, and only trained. Nothing else had mattered to my keepers. So long, I couldn't even remember what I looked like.

I suppose within any system like this, you give yourself some sort of user interface, something that for a time is you. At least, that's what I did for myself, though I can't say how the other seven that are a part of this system work. When in the stream of all the information, I don't see myself at all, but in the times when I look on as an observer, finding out the information I have sorted, I see myself as a small figure above the great blue virtual stream of data, and at this point, I see myself as what is described as an outer body experience. This virtual me, if that is what I really look like I have no idea, I only have my eight year old self to go on, and even I'm aware that I'm some years past that now. So there, this little virtual me, long silvery hair just hanging down my back. I don't really see much else; I always seem to be some way behind the virtual me. That's all I ever see, the data and the virtual me.

I mentioned the others, the seven others. I feel like I know them, yet at the same time I have not the slightest idea about them. They do the same thing as me, I would assume. Here in this strange life I can feel their presence, but never do we make contact. I only know there are seven others because when I was first trained I saw them, sleeping in the same sort of pods that I am now in, all laid out in a circle. It takes eight of us to process all this information, one person alone could not do it. Since becoming part of the system I had learnt why we had been chosen, after all I could see all the government and medical records. It was something to do with our minds, that they weren't stable enough to be amongst the population. In a city that worked on keeping everyone happy and having no crime, we would have stood no chance. This system, it tracked everyone's mind, making sure they were stable, and if they were not, actions were taken. At birth, one should have a stable mind, white to give it its perfect colour, possibly tinged if there is some complication. Throughout life the mind would never be as stable as it was at birth, experience changing and shaping it, tinging it with a whole host of colours. If it ever became too murky, then it became a cause for alarm. Part of the system was to find these murkied minds. The eight of us however, we were different, born different. We were the entire opposite of what we should be, minds born perfectly black, no way to add a colour. It was a mind that the system would reject outright if seen on anyone other than a new-born, marking it as a sign for elimination. For a new-born, it meant becoming part of the system, the only mind that could even begin to comprehend the extent of the data that went through the system.

It was odd to think that it was the very minds that the system was trying to stop which ran it. Perhaps it was because of the environment we were then brought up in, knowing that there was no external source to affect us and make us go off the rails. Eight of us, to be in this eternal sleep until we eventually died. We did die, I knew that much, I had been brought in to replace the one who had. Forever in this strange sleep, having no idea about how long I had left.

Or so I thought.

The dreams. Despite being in this strange state of sleep I was not quite there, for sometimes my mind just forgot about the stream of data and did what it may. When I had started to have them, I had no idea about what they were and so I had looked them up. Before entering this system I had never dreamed, or if I had, I had never remembered. These dreams though, they didn't really seem to follow the way a dream should work; they seemed as if I were awake. As they came to pass, I noticed patterns in the data, the visual content from the outside world. My dreams, they were playing out in the data before my eyes, maybe days later, sometimes even months, but they always played out, exactly as I had seen them. Again it was something I had to look up. The art of prophecy, but it was made about to be a load of superstition, people with lucky guesses, but was that really the case? I looked back into the data about the eight of us, looking for if any had recorded a dream before, had acknowledged that something they had seen had then actually happened.

And it had, right back at when the system had been created. It had been put down to an error in the data or a loop; but was this foresight actually possible? With our minds how they were, was it truly an impossibility for us to predict the future? I decided the next dream I had I would save and store it into the data, away in some private file, as evidence for myself.

My dream, it wasn't like any of the others. Always I had watched third person, as if I was meant to be some guardian angel over proceedings, though certainly I had never had the guardian bit down. This one was different; the sickening feeling of realising it was first person. It annoyed me how it inconsistently blinked. Everything surrounding me, the surreal feeling of being wet. Where was I? Staring up at a curved, slightly blue dome, possibly a white sky beyond it. No, tiles; I could see the breaks between each of the large tiles. The blinking of the image kept continuing, rapidly as it found the view offence, slowly cowering open after a quick series. It seemed so bright. Something felt heavy, ever so heavy, pushing down upon me. Everything hurt in a deep throbbing sort of way, body reluctant to move against it. Another blink, and the view shifted, staring down. Another dome was there, this time of some other material. It appeared to cover my mouth and nose. Another blink of my eyes and I was following the tube that led from it, following as it curved off to the side somewhere.

Body itched to move, but everything was so heavy. My eyes looked up at the ceiling again, looking up through the glass, through the water that surrounded me. As soon as I had started to try to move, I could see the ripples across the surface, working against my sight from underneath. Something then started, an odd sensation. Noise, there was a noise. Just how long had it been since I had heard something? The system was a place of silence, any sound on a video was just immediately changed into information in my mind, putting voices to a person, lyrics and music to a song, I had no need to hear it. This though, this was noise, my mind actually having to figure out what it was. Beeps, just a steady row of continuous beeps, like... medical equipment. Was that what it was; was it something hooked up to me, monitoring life signs? I tried to move, tried to get a look at what was outside the dome. All my limbs felt so heavy, so sluggish to even try and move. Finally I managed to move my arms enough, seeing the wires inserted deep into my wrists, doing what I wasn't sure. That beep, it was monitoring about me, but I didn't know what. Then suddenly there came another noise.

Footsteps, someone was outside the dome. I wanted to look and see, but just moving my arm a few inches had been a task in itself, never mind moving my entire body. The footsteps; slow, deliberate, steady, and coming closer. They kept stopping after equal strides, as if looking at something, but always they would start up again and come closer. My brain turned it all over, trying to come to a conclusion over who it was. Maybe some sort of keeper, or doctor. Why was I even in this dome to begin with?

The footsteps came to a stop, a golden haired man appearing over the dome. His hair, it was odd, cut all jaggedly rather than to one set length. His eyes, they looked so cold, and then those lips. From having no expression at all, his lips suddenly formed a smile, looking down at me, scaring me. None of it looked warm, none of it seemed inviting; in fact, it all seemed the exact opposite, that there was no good reason for him being here. He quickly disappeared, and I wondered if he had left. No footsteps though, only a slightly typing, somewhere off to the side.

Suddenly the dome lifted, and it felt like my ears had shattered from the noise. Everything hit me in a wave. The machine that had bleeped before had gone into a short cacophony of noise from my sudden change in environment. Everything, everything was so loud, it seemed as if I could hear the very air move about the room. The man, he was suddenly back, looming over me, hand coming down and grabbing at the smock I was wearing, dragging me up out of the water. I was gasping, despite the breathing apparatus. None of this felt right, none of this felt good. What was happening?

Darkness, away from the dream. That certainly had been a dream, no corruption in data. Data didn't feel lifelike. I had no idea what it meant, who I had seen through the eyes. It was only then I realised I was not out of the grasp of the dream, and in a swirl of colour I was back in it.

Time had passed, but not the right way, it had gone backwards, and I was now following the golden haired man like a guardian angel; however I did not see myself as being an angel at all in this case. Something was not right about this man, and hopefully the dream would tell me what. Along corridors and up stairs, taking service lifts for a few of the floors. I knew these corridors, and dread filled me as I realised where he was going. Following him, praying that he wasn't going where he was.

The frosted sliding glass door. It required a card and password to get through, something he shouldn't have, and yet he was typing in the passcode, and he was swiping the card. The door, it was opening, it shouldn't, he shouldn't be allowed in. And in he went, entering the outer ring of the system. The giant screens that surrounded the internal globe, blue data like the streams in my mind were running up and down their lengths, the text size so small. There were user interfaces at the main compass, he took the south one. I looked out across the walkway railing, looking at the great 'tree' that ran through the centre, the globe's axis. At the base of the tree I could see its roots, white peeking between them. The chamber beneath, the memory banks of the system. I was in there, in one of those pods, connected up to the tree. The tree brought in all the data; it was also the power core.

I turned back to the man, looking over his shoulder at the screen. He was looking into the workings of the system. That kind of information, it couldn't get out, it would cause chaos if it did. What they forced of us, it wasn't humane, an eternal sleep, not knowing most of life. If the public knew they would cry out against it, for that reason they could not. Those who were taken for this role were marked as dead; the public couldn't be allowed to know of our existence. He had to be stopped, but no one was around. Not that I could call for help in the first place, this was a dream. I couldn't understand where everyone had gone, there should have been at least someone on each of the user interfaces, as well as a couple of guards, and then the few that monitored us. Yet not one was there, something had happened.

The golden haired man had since left the user interface, and I was once again following, dreading where he led. Out of the globe and along more corridors, finding service elevators that seem to have gone obsolete some time ago. Down further into the depths of the system. Along corridors that had since lost their lights, an eerie red lighting the way from emergency lights. Still I followed him, knowing the way from old blue prints that had long since been locked into my head. Up some floors again via service elevators before we came back to the more modern walkways I openly recognised. His way, it wasn't the quickest, but it was a way that had avoided most of the security doors. Only two doors stood between him and the inner most sanctum of the system.

That last door had my stomach in my throat, a phrase that I had never really thought to use before, but now felt apt with the great sickness of dread I felt. He had worn some sort of glove which had given him the right set of finger prints to get through the doors, and he must have stolen someone's card as some point. That last door, how I willed for the light not to change to green once he had swiped the card. My heart actually seemed to leap when that light didn't change, but a moment too soon. For some reason it had taken the system slightly longer than at the other doors, but the light had changed green to let him past.

I did not want to follow as he entered the room, but the dream made me. Around the base of the tree we went, seeing the pods, each with their occupants. He would stop to pause and look in, quickly moving on. None could I truly recognise, I understood their presence in the sea of data more than I did their appearances. Finally he stopped, at the fifth pod, though not labelled so.

C-8

And despite not knowing, I recognised the person as myself.

A knife ripping into my breast, pools of blood pouring from me. This was pain and this was death, everything darkening around my eyes, the light I had so briefly known diminishing into the nothing that my own life had been. Every feeling, as if feeling it all for the first time again, all so powerfully being stripped away from me. A first breath with the torn apparatus away from me being my last, eyes blinking once on that golden haired man before closing. Warm blood gushing down my body, soon turning cold. A voice that had not spoken in years trying to rasp out a sound, as if to prove that it had had some form of existence, failed. Everything so vivid in that last moment, everything actually real, everything taken away...

And all of that dream stored away in a memory bank. My death, stored away so I could watch it over and over again, waiting until it happened.

The man paused at the pod, looking down at the occupant inside. All life signals were registering a comatose state. The occupant merely had the code C-8, though the interface upstairs had given her the nickname 'Cybele'. Perhaps it was apt, especially for someone who was part of a system that controlled everything. Each one of these beings had a different name, each one the name of some god; yet somehow for this system, it seemed apt for calling one by the great mother's name.
"Cybele," he said the name to himself, the uncommon word slipping somewhat uncomfortably off his tongue.

To call what he looked at human seemed unfortunate. They had long since been that. Mimicry of ancient robotics encased their bodies, holding them together, as I they moved the slightest they might crumble apart. Going from the data, most of them were over a hundred years old, forced to have been a part of this machine for so long. Quite literally the people who ran the system would do anything to keep their processors alive, even if it meant they ended up as a brain in a tank. The oldest looked like she might be getting there. Cybele still had yet to get that far, still within a normal lifespan; though for the supposed thirty plus years she had, she still looked like someone half that age, and would easily have passed for a fourteen year old. For the time being, the metal braces merely kept her in place, making sure that none of the vast collection of wires and equipment that was attached to her moved.

"Cybele," he once again said, this time the name sounding more natural. Beneath the blue glass dome she did not move, eyelashes not even batting, and he could only wonder what colour they were under those pale eyelids, possibly near red if her hair was anything to judge by. This place, so deep underground, no natural light, and her hair had gone a shiny silver, almost white, the slight grey probably being the last pigments of her natural colour. Such a small being, and yet she held the key to destroying the whole system. If only the people knew, all of this would be put to an end. No longer would people have to be in terror of a system that could predict their own moves before they had thought so, no longer would the people be judged by what they thought, no longer would there be a system that dealt judgement with evidence that had yet to happen. Destroy the system, and the people would be free.

And in this game, knowledge really was power.

Flicking his knife, he then pushed back his golden hair, contemplating the best way to remove her from the system. Opening the glassed dome he looked down at the comatose creature, grabbing at her collar.
"You and I Cybele, we're going to destroy this country."