Trials

Chapter 1

"We have a lot to cover, Lu. I need to know how this happened and what you intend to do about it because if you can't fix this then you are as good as dead." the gruff man said, with impatience.

"Your timetable means very little to me. If you want to know how this happened, settle in because it's a long story, and what you think you know is all fabricated. Even things you've seen with your very own eyes, Agent Porter," the woman said while staring a Agent Porter with disdain. "Let's start back in Aurum—"

Agent Porter stood up abruptly from his seat and interrupted, "I know what happened in Aurum, it's well documented. Skip ahead Lu, I don't have time for this bullshit."

I leaned forward, so he could see my eyes well when I said, "NO, if you want this account you will hear the entire thing without any of the spin, or you can just let me go, up to you."

Agent Porter gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head to proceed, which was all I needed to stall him long enough to get out of this mess.

I had a fairly normal life; I lived in a large neighborhood on the outskirts of the Aurum region. It was a beautiful city full of glass buildings, domed houses, and perfectly placed trees to keep all levels of oxygen at prime levels. Sometimes it felt like nothing happened in Aurum, nothing real anyway.

My best friend Keira and I would ride our hovo-skates around the neighborhood in the summer and admire the perfectly straight lines of houses and trees with the crisp breeze on our faces that almost made the heat bearable. Aurum was always dry, hot, and sunny. Winter and Fall were seasons we didn’t get to experience. As a kid, Keira and I would try to make dirt snowmen because we longed to play in the snow so badly. Rocks and dirt are a poor substitute for crisp white snow, but we made do with our imaginations. Once we entered high school, the dirt snowmen and hovo-skates seemed like a distant memory and ones that Keira and I were slightly embarrassed about, if I’m honest. We could sprawl out on my bed in my room for hours, listening to the latest music from Keira’s new favorite artist of the week, changing the colors of our nails with our AI Nellie ad nauseam, and just generally enjoying life without worry. Keira would talk about the cutest boys and I would pretend to listen while planning a new invention. I wasn’t really interested in any of the boys at Rialto High School. I always seemed to make it unbearably awkward with boys when I tried to discuss my latest invention or my newest read of advanced bioengineering. I usually lose them somewhere around “Have you read…”. Plus, I wasn’t conventionally pretty like Keira, she is absolutely gorgeous with wildly curly lavender hair that sits at her shoulder bones, blue eyes that are so light they are only a shade or two bluer than the whites of her eyes, and completely flawless bronzed tawny skin. She’s slightly shorter than me, with a curvy and athletic build, but she holds herself like she is 6 feet tall and a supermodel. I envy Keira’s confidence; I wish I had even a tiny bit of it.

Then there is me, the tall and lanky girl who's all limbs. I inherited my Dad’s rich brown hair and light green eyes. Keira has always been tanner than I have because I spend most of my time indoors reading or tinkering, resulting in a paleness that would blind you in the right light. Keira and I make an unlikely set of friends, this Human Barbie and her nerdy counterpart, but we became fast friends in the first grade when a boy pushed me on the playground and Keira walked over and punched him directly in the face. She got in big trouble, but the next day I brought her some chocolate and a homemade thank-you note. I told her she didn’t have to do that, and her response sealed our friendship. “I know, but I wanted to. I don’t like meanies.” Then she strolled into class with her head held high, without a second thought to judgment from others or getting into trouble. We grew up only a few blocks away from one another, so we spent the rest of our childhood together, making forts, pretending we were on big adventures, and playing with dolls (which was Keira’s first obsession). My parents, Nellie and Scott Hoster, were not the most loving or attentive parents, so I spent a lot of time at Keira’s. Her parents were Naturalists, and they had the most amazing garden and research books on botany. They were leading the way for the bioengineering lab in Aurum and were well liked among the elite of Aurum, but neither of Keira’s parents seemed to care much about prestige or influence, they just loved doing what they did. I would spend hours as a kid learning about healing remedies of different herbs. It was so different from my house where technology was the answer to everything, and I found it so fascinating as a kid that a completely different point of view existed like this. Don’t get me wrong, my parents weren’t cruel, they were just married long before they had me, and I was not planned. I often overheard them fighting about the strain that being parents has put on their finances, love life, careers, and even traveling. They never said these things in front of me, but I could always see it in their eyes…that exasperated look.

As a child, I would look at old pictures of them in various exotic destinations in the most expensive-looking hotels, and they looked genuinely happy. It was clear they had the life they wanted before I was born, or maybe I was just being too sensitive. My mother, Nellie Hoster (Cavanaugh) came from ‘old money’. Her parents were both from a long line of software developers and, in particular, my grandfather was on the 'ground floor' of the very first AI that was fully integrated into your ‘jack’ so it could be with you always. This technology was the beginning of a new era in AI, one that changed the way we lived (or so all the commercials said, and every single Cavanaugh family member agreed). I wasn’t as impressed with a piece of machinery attached to your body that knew you better than you did. It meant to me that none of us would remember how to think for ourselves. Cars do the driving for us, tablets do the calculations for us, and most jobs are automated. Even as a young girl, something felt ‘off’ about that. But those were problems from before, from a Luella that no longer exists, so maybe I should start at the beginning.