In this story, fire is banned and everyone is connected to The Cloud (exactly like the Matrix, except that they're conscious of the connection.) The image of fire acts like a virus, spreading and creating loopholes in The Cloud's control systems.
I guess that's true, at least.
Brush Fire
Q201 was in the park. Home’s Central Park, if she thought about it. She wandered lazily through the soft, imitation grass. Her shoes were nowhere to be found. An invisible, undetectable network of fans, air-ducts, and micron-filters labored behind a replication sky to create a cool, crisp breeze. She guessed it was early morning, for Home had generated a fine mist over the grass and flowers. She wasn’t sure why this was the case, but she had only ever noticed it when scheduled for the first of the day’s volunteer duty.
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| After some research, the flower she smells will, for various poetic and literal purposes, be a Moonflower. |
Despite the breezy, moist morning chill, Q201’s bare feet felt cozy and warm. She crouched low to brush her fingers along the tops of brightly colored pansies and marigolds. She was walking a grassy aisle, lined with raciously colored patches of flowers in full bloom as though late-spring. The trees that loomed overhead, however, were exchanging their green leaves for yellows and reds. This, she’d learned, indicated a Fall Season Simulation. Though these leaves would never fall from their branches as real trees once did, Home persisted in re-creating the four seasons.
Q201 wandered, until she came to a particularly striking patch of flowers. The Cloud frequently programmed The Central Park Dream for her, and she’d become exceptionally familiar with her current path. However these flowers were unlike any she could recall seeing. She bent low to peer closely at them. Delicately shaped but boldly red and orange petals curling outward. Without thinking, as though on instinct, she touched her nose to the flower and inhaled. Immediately she gasped and sneezed, surprised and startled. Home’s smells fluctuated occasionally; she could program her shower to replicate any scent in the steam. She could set her printer to imbue any variety of foods she wanted her digestive solids to smell like. The plant-life in all of Home wasn’t life at all, though. It was fabricated to look and feel completely real, but had no scent at all. In fact, outside of showers and meals, q201 couldn’t think of anything else she’d ever smelled. This flower, though, somehow produced its own scent. Subtle, as though made of the flower’s own exhaling breath, but distinct from anything Home had ever re-created before. She tried to rationalize what had startled her so much, but the feeling had come without her bidding and was intangible to her rationale.
Blinking to cleanse her eyes of the sneeze’s stun, she returned her gaze to the flower. As instinctively as she’d leaned in to smell the flower, she reached out and plucked it. Again, she was startled by the flower’s response. Its stem snapped at her fingertips, and cool moisture leaked from its wound. She’d never done such a thing, because it was forbidden to harm other living things. Even the fake living things in Central Park. Besides, those flowers were made to be indestructible; she couldn’t have picked one if she’d tried.
But here was this dying, beautiful flower in her hands. She stared, taking in the flower’s every detail. While she did, it began to change. She blinked, trying to rid her eyes of residual sneeze tears, but it wasn’t her eyes. It was the flower itself. The dusty yellow core seemed to be morphing into something completely unnatural. A glowing, gyrating, orange and red and yellow and white. q201 thought it liquid at first, but it not only grew outward, steadily overtaking the petals, but upward as well. She touched it and recoiled immediately. Pain unlike anything she’d experienced.
Heat.
The word came to her unbidden, but she knew it to be unquestionably accurate.
The glowing, biting heat had spread the tips of the petals and was moving down the stem toward q201’s fingers. She watched, unable to move or think. The flower drifted to the ground, now just clumps of fragile dust. The heat travelled down the stem and burned her. Immediately, her fingers sprang open and the remaining stem dropped to the ground.
Fire.
Again, the word came to her as though someone else had spoken it. Though she had never seen it, she knew once again the word was accurate. Horribly, unquestionably accurate.
She ran.
The grass caught.
The fire spread.
Q201 ran until her lungs couldn’t sustain her limbs. She stumbled and half fell, half sat at the edge of the Fountain of Peace. The fountain, which trickled merrily outside of the Parental Council, was cool and clean. She sank her scorched fingers into it gratefully.
“Hello, little one.”
Someone had spoken to her. That wasn’t good.
She held her breath, and slowly looked up. Had she known the beast her eyes set upon, she might have been scared. But her ignorance kept her calm enough to remain still. When she didn’t respond, the creature spoke again. “I see you’ve burned yourself. Will you give me your hand?”
The scene was too strange to question. She pulled her hand from the fountain and held it toward the creature. “Closer, please,” it said. When q201’s hand was just almost touching the creature’s black, twitching nose, its lips curled up to reveal massive white fangs. Before she could pull away, its mouth opened wide enough to eat her hand whole. It tilted its head back in a great yawn, and exhaled a mighty breath against q201’s wounds.
Q201 fell backward and scrambled to put distance between herself and the monster.
“How does your hand feel now, little one?”
Q201 stopped. Her hand felt warm and tingly. The pain was gone. The blister was disappearing before her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly. “Who are you?”
“I am…” She growled low and deep. “I don’t expect you can pronounce that. You many call me Raa.”
“Hello Raa, I’m q201. Are, well, are you a dog of some kind?”
Ra bared her teeth, growled softly, then laughed. “A dog? Goodness no. I haven’t seen a dog in years. Once your race bunkered in, I suppose they didn’t last long. I’m a wolf, my dear. But we can talk about that later. Get up now, its time to go to bed. You need your rest. Before you go, though, I think it only fair you tell me your name. You know mine.” The wolf smiled warmly.
“But I have told you. I’m q201.”
“Oh no no little one, that’s not a name. That’s a number. A label.”
“Of course! My name. Well, I don’t know it yet. The Naming is several days from now. I haven’t named myself yet.”
“You were named from the moment of your creation, even before your conception. I assure you, you know your name.” Ra turned abruptly and walked away.
“Wait! Please!” q201 called. “What is it then? What is my name?”
The wolf paused and turned to look at the girl. “That, is precisely what you must ask yourself.” Without warning, Ra pivoted and charged. “You must truly ask yourself,” Ra said as she launched through the air toward the girl. “What is your name?” Ra’s massive paws collided with q201’s shoulders and the two slammed into the fountain.
Q201 was pinned beneath the water, but before she could fight back, she woke and found herself in bed just moments before her alarm went off.
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