The relentless downpour had become a familiar backdrop in Iris's daily life, but it took her a long time to accept it. It bugged her for weeks. She knew her entire childhood was a detailed fabrication delivered through virtual reality, but it didn’t stop her from being silently unnerved. Reality ran afoul of her manufactured memories and she instinctively rejected the dull, sunless sky.
Her mind conjured a bright rooftop terrace and a vivid technicolor cityscape beyond, sharp towers gleaming gold under the sunlight. She felt the sun's warmth when she dreamed and she thoughtlessly yearned for it when she was awake. It was a strange need to cope with, but so were many others. Iris always had cravings that defied logic and earned a measure of surprise from people she knew. Not everyone was grown in a vat from a seed of spliced genes. Not everyone was designed to endure toxic chemicals and lethal doses of radiation. But Iris wasn’t everyone. Her idea of normal had been intentionally skewed by her authors.
Despite periodic, but mild bouts of depression, she always managed to find solace in unlikely places. Any time she rummaged through scrap piles for salvaged parts, she thoughtlessly started gravitating towards old nuclear batteries and would dismantle them in a daze. She liked the nostalgic warmth of radiation blanketing her skin. It was like a kiss of the sun hidden in a dark alley. Even in small doses, it seemed to lift her mood.
The rain stopped bothering her years ago, but she still kept a few spare batteries on hand to comfort herself on dreary days. She preferred the old units which used thorium salts. They had a spicy, earthy aroma which reminded her of incense. Iris had never smelled real incense before, but the memory was there and she knew she liked it. She always wondered if the dissonance bothered others like her, but a clench of fear and pity usually choked the words down before she could ask.
Lately, she had been salvaging pocket-sized reactors carelessly thrown out with the rest of the trash. They usually failed due to poor maintenance, but for Iris, they were easy to fix. More importantly, they were valuable enough to trade for food. Food in the poorer areas usually came in the form of a suspicious gray paste called “Nutri-gel”, which was excruciatingly bland. The ones with added flavor, like savory beef stew, were often more expensive than medical supplies. So, for the past week, Iris had been experimenting with arsenic as seasoning just to give it some kind of flavor. It kept others from stealing her food and she knew the swarm of nanites circulating in her blood would prevent any toxic side effects. Squeezing the tube, she gulped down her latest creation with a mix of wry apprehension and bitter resignation. Surprisingly, it tasted of almonds.
The greasy paste went down smoothly as she sat under a shingled awning and indulged in her new favorite pastime: people watching. Every day around dinner time, the underbelly of the city disgorged a shambling horde of tired, hungry dregs, who flocked to the young smuggler peddling rations across the street.
The man was likely twenty or so, but his round cheeks, larges eyes, and tousled hair made him seem several years younger. Thick skin on his neck swelled around odd, bony spurs--a clear sign of sloppy gene-hacking. Iris spied the prosthetic spine hidden beneath his jacket. The rigid links attached to his back protruded against the fabric, creating a sharp outline. Iris realized he would probably be is constant pain without it. She suddenly disliked his authors, whoever they were.
The abandoned shop behind him used to be a cyberware outlet at some point, but it seemed to have closed down years ago. Grime and algae has long since colored its cracked plastic frame in unsightly shades of orange and green. It’s walls stretched to either side of the throng of people crowded onto the sidewalk. Among them was an older man bent forward by age and wearing a prodigious moustache that bristled out like a prawn. A heavy layer of dust lined the creases in his face. For a brief moment, he seemed to be the oldest thing on the street.
Anger darkened her vision and formed a knot in the pit of her stomach. Irritated and anxious, she looked away. Avoiding not just the sight of the man, but the thought of her own mortality. The reflection of a holographic billboard in the glassteel windows suddenly caught her eye. When she absentmindedly looked up, a drop of water splashed into her eye from the awning overhead.
“Fuck!”
As she was rubbing her eye, the annoying whispers echoed in her head again. She could never tell what they were saying, but always knew what they meant. She shook her head in bewilderment, but the whispers only grew louder. Her ears started to ring from the intensity, but before she could react the sibilant chorus of voices died.
“There is no ‘end of the city’.” She mocked dazedly.
The whispers urged her to climb a tower at the edge of the known world. They taunted her with the feeling she might find some kind of salvation upon arriving. She had no idea if this was true. In fact, Iris had recently begun questioning her sanity, desperately hoping her brain hadn’t already started to deteriorate. Like the old rations being sold across the street, Iris had a definitive expiration date. As a courtesy from her authors, she was endowed with a genetic killswitch that would trigger on its own without regular treatment. The tiny black lesions had already started appearing around her nails. She figured she would survive maybe a few more months before accelerated necrosis reduced her to a meaty pulp. What disturbed her more than an agonizing death or losing her mind was the nagging feeling that the voices were real.
No. If she was being honest, it was real. She knew it. She also knew there wasn’t much for her to lose. She desperately wanted to leave and face the unknown, but leaving one's comfort zone was by definition uncomfortable. It’s difficult to take the first step. Yet, sometimes all it takes to move forward is a helpful nudge. For Iris, it was a naive hope: more than anything, more important than preventing her own death, she dearly wanted to meet the Sun.
Her chest tightened with apprehension as she eyed the factory at the end of the street. It stood out like sore thumb. Metal scrap and refuse had been piled against the twisted wreckage of the security gate to form a makeshift barricade. Among the rust-bitten apartments and the abandoning buildings, the factory was the only structure which sported a pristine metallic finish with unbroken windows.
No one has gone near there in a long time. Iris heard the story from one of the scrap traders before. That building used to be one of the auxiliary manufacturing facilities for the Kaba'yuta Robotics Company. The assembly line was fully automated and AI swarms handled both day to day management and drone operations. Only a had a handful of maintenance technicians stayed on-site. After a bad update to the AI’s security policies, all the assembly drones went rogue.
As the rumor mill tells it, the maintenance technicians quickly became dark stains on the floor and their remains were pressured washed down the drain. Kaba’yuta cut their losses and abandoned it. The robots may not be able to leave the factory grounds, but they seem obsessed with removing any filth from the premises. Humans included.
Iris knew there was an entrance to the upper layers of the city somewhere inside that factory. The noisy guests inside her head said as much. At their urging, she took to the street with an unsteady gait. A couple of local bruisers eyed her warily as one might regard a deranged person with a sharp knife. She was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice them. Her mind raced, thinking of ways to make it through the facility alive, while her imagination vividly explored the countless ways she could be reduced to an inconvenient smudge on the floor.