LITMIR.BIZ

       One Thousand, One Hundred and Thirty-Seven Years Ago

      In a storm of purple lighting where clouds look like egg sacs and the sky like a cavernous throat, a baby is born. Only the baby can see the storm, however. To the others the sky appears as it always does, a haze of light pollution and smog.

      They wonder why the newborn is showing signs of distress. Experts circle her glassy pod, examining. She seems healthy, a good strong set of lungs, a decent heart. All limbs appear in working order. The experts shake their heads, concluding it is just a temperamental issue, merely emotional. They dose the baby with calming drugs and, as expected, it settles down.

      Years pass and the baby is given a name, a gender and a social class. The baby becomes a girl, Massassi, and she is put into the lower middle echelons. Her supervisor is warned of her predisposition to irrational outbursts and authorised to medicate where necessary.

      The girl becomes an apprentice mechanic and proves skilful. At the tender age of eight, she is assigned work on the great construction mechs, crawling into nooks and crannies, repairing. It is dangerous work. The mechs are automated and held to rigid schedules. They pause rarely and never for very long. The girl must be quick or dead. She darts between pistons, removing blockages, replacing worn parts, squeezing into spaces too tight for adult bodies. For the first year, she is quick enough.

      Perhaps it is a mark of respect that she is trusted with such deadly work, or perhaps it is because she does not get on with her peers or her supervisor, or anyone else. Massassi is a brooding, angry girl. Too clever for her age but not clever enough, not yet.

      She enjoys the thrill of her work, finds the thought-invading anger that haunts her nights is sated by daily brushes with death.

      There is no time off, no holiday to take, but all workers have enforced downtime, carefully scheduled activity changes to maximise efficiency. More than anything else, she dreads the mandatory social gatherings. One day, after three consecutive events, the anger grows so strong that she starts to break things. Immediately, an alarm sounds on her supervisor’s HUD and he whispers an order.

      Implanted dispensers in Massassi’s spine go to work and anger fades, humbled.

      She remembers little of these times but doesn’t complain, even prefers it that way. When she requests dangerous levels of overtime, her supervisor doesn’t check too closely.

      Massassi is ten when she has the accident.

      Her thoughts are elsewhere, cloudy with free-floating emotion. She is supposed to be fixing the shoulder motors of Superior Class Harvester 4879-84/14 but all she wants to do is tear them apart. For the first time, she wonders why she is different, and if perhaps everyone else is not at fault after all.

      Preoccupation, however slight, is dangerous. Massassi combines hers with fatigue and a self-destructive streak. Too late, she realises the Harvester is reactivating. Massassi tries to throw herself clear but her sleeve catches on a piece of wiring, wiring she would normally have secured.

      She cannot free her arm.

      Engines roar with power, blades spin, lights flash.

      The Harvester moves.

      Massassi screams.

      Blood smears between metal plates, bones grind to chalky powder.

      On her supervisor’s HUD, an alarm sounds.