They Lied

The woman blinked a few times and sleepily rubbed her eyes. She sat up and took a moment to fully come awake. These night time awakenings were happening more and more lately, as the current situation unfolded. She looked down at the grey metal disc, about the size of a dime, that was embedded in the skin on the inside of her left wrist and sighed heavily.

She gently tapped the disc twice, stared towards the blank wall, and un-focused her eyes, (similar to the way people used to view an autosterogram, or what were known as “magic eye” pictures) . As she read the message, she worried, and not for the first time, that she was becoming too accustomed to the horrors of the world. It seemed the more information she downloaded, and the more news stories she subsequently broadcasted, the less she actually felt about it all. Perhaps she should request another posting from the overseer, before she became too callous and detached. She quickly and forcefully pushed the thought from her mind before it could take root, knowing full well that her position earned her enormous privilege. She had wealth and status, certainly, but also a level of comfort and safety that was unknown to the vast majority of the population. She would continue to do as she was told, and continue to enjoy living removed from the tragedies that befell most.

She finished reading, sighed again and then got up, drawing her wrap closed as she walked out of her room and into the main living area of her quarters. She tapped her disc once, said, “Room temperature, increase to 21 degrees Celsius”, and then put a kettle on to boil. She could easily afford an assistant, and the quarters she was fortunate enough to live in had considerably more features and luxuries than she needed, but she enjoyed doing some things for herself. The simple ritual of making a cup of tea gave her time to pause, often trying to remember what life was like before, and to try to understand how things became the way they were now. She reflected on distant memories of days passed while she brewed her tea and stirred in just a touch of real honey (another luxury most hadn’t seen for years). She raised the spoon and touched it to her mouth briefly, a mostly unconscious gesture that always calmed her, and then strolled over to her media area.

She sat down, placed her mug on the desk in front of her and laid her wrist on a magnetic pad on the desktop. She spoke the password aloud that would de-crypt information from the overseer, and then began to scan the information coming up on the holographic display as she downloaded it, already mentally prepping the message that would be broadcasted to the populace. She realised again that she was fortunate for her position, and for the trust the overseer had in her, and proudly thought to herself that her job was probably the most important one in their society, with the exception of the overseer herself, of course. She was a journalist, but what that meant in her life before was something entirely different than what it meant now. She used to observe and interview and report. Now her job was to take the reports that came from the overseer, and occasionally from a few approved high-ranking members of her militant forces, and prepare messages that would go out to the masses. Messages that would inform them just enough of what was going on outside the walls to ensure they continued to obey the rules such as curfews and approved areas and all of the other precautions (put in place for their own safety), but not enough information to cause any panic or discord. She took her job seriously and she was good at it.

She sipped her tea as the file downloaded, and barely noticed the slight blip that happened right as it finished. But she did notice. If she had even blinked at that exact moment she might have missed it, but she noticed. Glitches in the network were extremely rare, and errors in the download itself were absolutely unheard of, so the blip, as slight as it was, was still quite troubling.

She scanned back a few seconds and played the download frame by frame. Everything seemed fine, until the second to last frame, which she paused and attempted to decipher. It was an embedded image, and definitely did not contain the mark that signified the overseer’s authorization. She managed to open it and at first she wasn’t even sure what she was looking at. She slowly realized that it was actually an image made up of other images, terrible scenes showing violence and death the likes of which she had never seen. Oh yes, violence and death and such horrors had become a part of daily human life, but these images were wrong. The violators and the victims were all just people. Obviously, by the nature of the acts themselves, they were depraved, but still just ordinary-looking people. There was nothing inhuman or otherworldly about any of them. Her stomach churned. In the center of the horrific collage, super-imposed over everything were the words THEY LIED, in letters that were the colour of the blood in the images.

She was beyond perplexed. How can this be in the download? “It’s impossible!” her mind screamed at her. These downloads were un-hackable, they came straight from the overseer herself. She scanned it several times, and could find no evidence of how it was made or where it came from.

She realized that she had been sitting still for a long time, pondering everything, holding her spoon to her lips, and that the overseer would be expecting her broadcast to be downloaded to everyone soon. But she was frozen with fear and doubt. She was sure that the images were real. She didn’t even know how or why she was so sure, but deep down, in a level of her being she didn’t even know existed, she was positive.

She filed away all of the information in the download, except for the image. She sat looking at her screen for another long moment, and then said “Send to ALL”. She took her wrist from the pad to disconnect and sat back to finish her tea.

Her last moments happened in such a flash, she didn’t even have enough time to register surprise. She was barely aware of it when the door opened behind her, and the end of her teaspoon was driven through her ear canal and into her brain so quickly, she felt no pain at all.