Chapter 2 – The Order Algorithm
1197 Words
Clarity was always silent, Kai used to think. That's what the Academy instructors drilled into all the recruits — mind silence, emotion silence, self-silence. In the high walls of the Chromasphere, silence wasn't nothing but the sanitized thrum of the Central Governance Algorithm, the CGA, resonating in every hall, every room, every head. It was not laid upon them by chains or by whips but with precision — clean air stripped of chance, surfaces polished to smoothness until reflection bore no blemish, voices attuned to the same deliberate rhythm.
This morning, silence descended a little tighter. Kai stood in the observation chamber, its crystal walls clear to radiate with the changing light from above the domes of the Chromasphere. Across from him sat a twelve-year-old boy, tagged as Subject 274-K, his thin wrists bound with the holographic bands of classification. The boy's file whirled on the built-in console before Kai: anomalous cognition outputs, high divergence probability. Suggestion: Erase or re-synchronization test.
Kai adjusted his lenses, palms firm as he thumped at the interface. He'd practiced this process a hundred times. Watch, input, align, finish. The machine reduced every human existence to numbers, and numbers were what Kai was supposed to have faith in.
But the boy looked up at him with something the data couldn't capture — eyes open not with fright, but with wonder.
"Do you see it?" the boy whispered.
Kai blinked. “See what?”
“The color in your shadow.”
Kai frowned, glancing down. The polished floor reflected them both. His own silhouette was a precise outline, grey on grey. No color. Nothing that could exist outside the spectrum permitted in the Chromasphere.
“You’re mistaken,” Kai said, his tone clipped, the way he’d been taught. “Shadows contain no hue. They are absent, not substance.”
But the boy slowly nodded his head, lips curled up. "It's beautiful."
The word hit Kai harder than any alarm. Beautiful. There was no such word uttered here. Beauty signified difference, preference, disorder. The CGA had deleted those things years and years ago. To utter it aloud was to welcome erasure.
For a beat, Kai hesitated. His hand hovered over the panel that would finish off the boy's categorization — and likely his expulsion. Something uncultivated tightened in his chest. He could almost feel his pulse for the first time, not as a figure, but as a thrum.
He ought to have reported the anomaly right away. That was the procedure. But instead he silenced the file and stood, waving for the automatic attendants to bring in the subject. The boy's eyes lingered on him until the doors closed, still with that forbidden word.
Beautiful.
That night, long after the corridors had fallen into mechanical silence, Kai remained in his pod-chamber. His cot, his desk, the single sterile light band above them — all arranged in exactly the position required by the CGA. He should be reviewing procedures for his next deployment, but his thoughts kept drifting to the boy. The name teased him, dangerous and beautiful all at once.
When his interface pad beeped at an incoming message, Kai let out a relief sigh — distraction. But the respite curdled the moment he read the message. No signature, no encryption code. Just a line of words that shouldn't be:
Do you remember stars?
His hand trembled. Not the material itself — the memory-wipers of the CGA erased remembrances of the Old Sky long, long before. Few even knew what the word "stars" meant, except in fragments sealed away in unlawful records. What disturbed him was the implication: someone recalled. Someone had a means to track him down.
His training had told him to scrub it out in an instant, to file a deviation report, to send himself for recalibration. But his fingers wouldn't. Instead he found himself repeating the word softly under his breath, relishing it as something decadent and forbidden.
"Stars."
The lights in the chambers trembled, once, then settled.
A whisper percolated along the room, though no one was there. "You are greater than function, Kai. Do you want to learn what you've forgotten?"
He stood still, each hair on his body standing on end. The voice was not electronic. It was not a system malfunction. It was human — deep, desperate, unambiguously real. He spun around, but his quarters were vacant.
His eyes fell on a hairline c***k in the wall paneling, one he'd never noticed before. He was intrigued, pushing his hand against it. The surface slid, revealing to him a secret recess. Inside lay an object wrapped in a cloth with a subtle aroma of earth and age. Kai drew it out, catching his breath.
It was a book.
He had read the word only in yellowed old dictionaries. But here was one nestled in his palm, solid and heavy, its leather crackling from age, its pages unevenly yellowed. The ink inside shone softly as if it lived, curling into shapes that he couldn't decipher. Symbols, letters — a tongue older than the Chromasphere itself.
He stroked the words with his fingers and felt something run through him: others' pictures. An endless night sky full of endless lights. Wind across open spaces. Unlined, unmapped smiling faces.
For the first time in his life, he gasped.
He slept fitfully that evening more than resting, dreaming in visions which flowed out of the book and into his head. He dreamed of the boy's eyes, shadows blooming with color, voices calling his name over a horizon he had never seen. And above, stars — infinite, burning, alive.
His heart was racing when he woke. He sat up in his cot, clutching the book as if it would vanish.
The Chromasphere was unconquerable. Yet Kai knew with a deep inner certitude that something had shattered.
Suddenly, there was a harsh knock.
He hid the book under his cot, racing heart. The door creaked open before he could steady himself.
A woman came in — a tall, close-shorn woman, her eyes burning with something he had never previously witnessed: fire. She moved with the thrift of one who lived both within and without the system, her body coiled with purpose.
"Kai Irielle," she said, voice low. "You don't know me yet. My name is Juno Thale. I don't have time to explain, but you need to listen to me. The Algorithm has already flagged you. The fact that you found that out means you're not safe anymore."
His throat constricted. "You— you know about the book?"
Her eyes flicked to the cot, back again. "I know more than I believe you know. You've seen what they wanted to kill. And if you're to live, if you're to see why the boy wrote of beauty, why you've started dreaming, then come with me. Now."
Kai’s mind reeled. Every instinct drilled into him screamed obedience, compliance, stability. But beneath it pulsed something wilder, something new. The word echoed again inside him, bright as the boy’s gaze.
Beautiful.
He rose slowly, legs trembling, and met Juno’s eyes.
The Algorithm’s silence seemed to press tighter, as though it knew he was about to break it.
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- Writer
