Beginings (old)

One of my original attempts of writing the full story of Tales from the Cyber Dystopia. Unfinished since 2022.

“1, 2, 3…”

Click

“Is it recording? Hmm.”

Click

“Ah! There we go! Ahem… Hello! My name’s Melody, and welcome to my very official, very professional and… very secret log of events. Hah… I really wasn’t supposed to do this, company protocol and all, but here I am!”

“Dude, you’re so getting fired.”

“Jaiden! Shush!... Wait, how did you get in here?!”

Click

Melody stood up so fast that she knocked over the chair, which spun around dizzyingly before falling with a thud to the ground. Her face reddened, and it became an ugly expression of fear, anger, and relief all at once. “Couldn’t miss out on this super secret, company protocol defying… thing.” Jaiden smirked, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms, picking at his skin like he didn’t want to have any. “THE DOOR WAS LOCKED!” Melody practically shouted while waving her arms in the air to emphasise her confusion on how the hell he managed to unlock the door without a key. “I didn’t have to unlock the door. With a key at least. Dummy dumb dumb forgot I can pick locks.”

Jaiden was a sucker for banter. He could nearly never be serious in any situation, even when he really, really needed to. He had previously had quite a high pitched voice, but voice training had changed it so that it was now very low pitched and hollow. He never took off his hoodie even for special events where he needed to dress up nicely, leading Melody to believe that he really just didn’t care about anyone's opinions. He always tied his hair up into a short, messy low ponytail, and had a pair of glasses that, 1) were not prescription and 2) far too big for his face.

Melody was essentially whisper-screaming as she spoke now, talking about how Jaiden shouldn’t say that out loud at work, how he needed to be more careful, and most of all, how much she despised it when he crept up on people. She didn’t even notice that he had slipped out of the room with his hands in his pockets, humming some random song about playing in the sand or something. “-please just try to be a little more careful about everything and- OH hi Trillion.” Melody’s train of thought screeched to a halt as she looked up to see that Jaiden was gone and that Trillion had been standing there listening to her rant to no one.

Trillion… they were difficult to describe, not nearly as much as Jaiden or Archer, but still… They were definitely very gifted in the sciences, with their office holding tons upon tons of awards, which the Company had promptly taken credit for. They never took off their lab coat in the building, which was strange because lab coats weren’t particularly needed for their field of work. They had chocolatey brown hair, and oddly shiny tan skin, and a strange love for pins, with nearly 15 adorned on their lanyard.

“Whatcha talking about in there?” Trillion mumbled, their morning voice coming off as rough and low. They’d obviously not had any coffee yet. “Uhhhhhhhh-” Melody began to stall, to think of anything that wouldn’t make her seem crazy, but nothing came to mind, as Jaiden had, as Archer called it, “No-clipped out of there.” “You know what, I'm not even gonna question it. We’re building robots designed to pick apart rope, that's weirder than this.” And they promptly walked off, entering the breakroom to make some cereal and a coffee, most likely.

“Looks like that’s waiting ‘til later.” Melody mumbled spitefully, knowing that there was no longer any time to begin her extra secret project. She flung her jacket over her shoulder, looking at all of the patches she’d bought to decorate it with, and smiled. A lot had happened over the last few years.

The break room was chock full of people all needing their various morning beverages to wake them up. Trillion stood out like a sore thumb though, seeming taller because of the platform shoes they’d bought due to impulse just a week earlier. Archer stood next to them with her eyes shut, and leaning against their shoulder, trying to get a tiny bit more sleep. “Arch, hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna have to move so I don’t burn you.”

Archer only groaned into Trillians shoulder, wrapping their arms around over their shoulder. They visibly flinched at this. They scrunched up their nose and closed their eyes. God knows what was going on in their brain, but it obviously wasn’t pleasant, or self-affirming in any way. Melody quickly walked over and used her abnormal strength to pull Archer off, holding her back from wrapping her arms around Trillion again. They thanked her with a nod and continued with their coffee, taking long sips and sighing every now and again, finally feeling content enough to join the very one sided conversation that had started between the other two.

“-YEAH, and he just… left”

“No-clipped.”

“Yes, no-clipped.”

“So, what's happening this morning then?”

Trillion interjected, stunting Melody’s train of thought immediately. “WELL, FOR STARTERS-”

“Other than Jaiden being Jaiden”

As if on cue, Jaiden walked through the door and gave a quick wave to a friend of his as they left. “Yo, what’s happening, crew.” “Well, first off, we have a LOT of paperwork to do, Trillion has a meeting with their therapist at 3, so they’ll be gone for about an hour… Archer, you have testing at 4:30, and I have some tests to do in the lab with some new chemicals over in the chemistry department at 1:25.” Archer's expression soured for only a moment, returning to a smile almost immediately, and thanking Melody for keeping her schedule so updated all the time. “It's no problem, really, I enjoy doing it."