Lydia's Run

Again I was struck by the contrast between these descendants of our ancestors and my City brethren. Small, naked forms who knew only a life of leisure, dwarfed by hardened men, heavy in their strange uniform clothing.

I'd been offered their protective wear, but it'd been oversized and awkward. Instead, I'd decided to stay naked and show everyone that these big men were not just invaders here to destroy or kill them, but that they came with the blessing of someone of their own.

The City people were curious at first. Fearful, but bemused by the intrusion. Shocked by seeing what we had all been told no longer existed. We ran through them, taking the least populated route. Shouts clearing the way. I was tiny compared to the soldiers and my shorter legs had to work harder to stay with them.

"Turn left." I shouted.

It was strange to see them follow my instructions. Even stranger for the onlookers to see one of their kind seemingly in control of ancient beasts. But that was exactly what I was trying to portray by retaining the Protector's garments.

All the while our eyes stayed skyward, watching and waiting for Protector to respond with the inevitable force.

The first drones were the usual watchers, nothing more. Their only power was through the collars and the soldiers had none. Nevertheless, precise shots took them down. The eyes of the City blinded to make it harder for Protector to pinpoint us for what came next.

The clatter of the machine guns was alien in the city and sent the residents scurrying. A few stayed. Bemused by this new magic and oblivious to the danger we could be presenting.

"Six o'clock."

Sharp and precise. I knew their ways sufficiently now to look behind me. To see the much larger quad drone with its deathly array of weapons. My heart lept into my mouth.

Now the City became a battle zone no one could miss. Before the drone could target us, a soldier had dropped, spun, and raised the fat tube he carried. In a deafening roar, it released a projectile to destroy the threat.

The noise was horrendous, and the signal for terror to grip the remainder of our audience. Shocked out of their confused but attentive observation, they became a scrabbling herd. All running and screaming.

More drones appeared, firing their projectiles. The armored clothing of the soldiers protected them. I was aware of how several closed around me, using themselves as a shield to protect my vulnerable naked body.

More missiles traced skyward, finding our attackers no matter how high they flew. Burning chassis fell around us. My biggest fear was the black smoke but so far they'd refrained from that.

"There."

I screamed as loud as I could to be heard over the noise. I pointed furiously at the base of the Tower.

They moved like a machine. Each with a purpose. A defensive ring swept around to defend us as two more soldiers placed their mysterious C4 in an arc on the Tower. It stuck to the wall in blocks.

"Fire in the hold."

A hand on my shoulder broke my mesmerized stare and I was pulled away, lifted from my feet by big hands that pulled me along before pressing me down into a huddle. I cowered beneath the four men tasked with keeping me safe. Their bodies pressed over mine as if to cocoon me.

The explosion was a deafening boom. Louder even than their other weapons. It tore away the wall and the soldiers moved as one through the open tear while smoke and dust still billowed upwards.

"Clear."

I was ushered in as soon as they were satisfied the area was secured. And just as the drones resorted to launching canisters at us, spreading the deadly black smoke. Too late. We were inside and sheltered.

I'm not sure what I expected but it wasn't this. Just an open space that reached upwards into near darkness. Tiny blinking lights like colored stars twinkled high up.

"There's nothing here." I said disappointedly.

The colonel wasn't so sure.

"We go up."

"How?"

My question was dismissed by more magic these people had amongst the kit they carried. I looked on in awe as a device was unpacked and assembled until it looked like a sophisticated version of a hunter's bow.

"Watch."

Even what the soldier loaded along its length was reminiscent of an arrow. A rope was attached and the device was raised. A moment later the implement sailed skyward inside the tower with its leading edges opening out into a three-pronged star. Behind it, the rope was pulled upwards at a frightening speed. Somewhere high above there was a clattering and the rope was checked for security.

"You're going to climb up?"

"Yes."

"I looked around nervously realizing, or at least assuming I'd be left behind.

"We'll pull you up as soon as the area is secure."

"What?"

That idea was more frightening than being alone at the bottom.

I watched as in turn they hauled themselves up. Covered hands gripped the rope while their legs wrapped around it. Like caterpillars climbing a stem, their bodies were a contraction of waves that propelled them upwards.

"I can't do that."

"You don't have to." One of the Troops said behind me.

Only my four protectors remained now. One of them wrapped the rope under my arms and tied it across my tits. He looked embarrassed as his hands brushed against my flesh.

"Sorry."

I'd learned the soldiers attached more mysticism to body parts associated with pleasure than anyone in the city. These people seemed almost afraid of seeing or touching those parts. It was still a mystery to me but their nervousness had put me in a halfway house of confusion. Should I be embarrassed by my body or not? Right now my concern was more with how I was going upwards than with who was touching my tits.

"Ready." He shouted up.

"Oh, my Lord."

My feet left the ground and I found myself swinging. My arms and feet kicked out instinctively looking for nonexistent support.

"Keep still. Let them do the work."

The man below called up as I continued to rise above him. I calmed and watched him shrink away between my bare legs dangling beneath me.

As the men grew smaller my heart rate leaped and I felt queasy. A voice from above called telling me, "Look up, not down"

It didn't help. I just became dizzy, breathing harder and deeper as I became convinced I was going to suffocate.

Then suddenly I was there. Hands hooked under my arms and hauled me into a platform. It was the Colonel. He undid the rope with the same nervousness of touching my body.

"What about the other men?" I asked, purposefully avoiding looking over the side.

"They're staying to protect our flank."

I glanced around. Behind me the semicircular drop, back to the ground. Ahead, a small army checked weapons, illuminated only by small flickering lights that came from behind an opaque screen.

"What's in there?" I asked.

"We're about to find out."

He gave a signal and two men gripped the paneling as the others took up a defensive position around me, their guns trained on whatever lay behind.

I held my breath as with one coordinated heave, the paneled screen came away, to be flung to the side.

I think we all stared. A collective shock when nothing happened and Protector was revealed. It genuinely was a wizened old man. And an AI.

But the old man was anything but kindly. He looked like the embodiment of an ancient evil. Old beyond belief and kept alive only by the array of the paraphernalia of tubes and wires penetrating his swiveled dry skin. His life force maintained by machine and his brain plugged directly into the City.

He seemed to float inside a curved container. Naked, shriveled, and unbelievably ugly. One thing struck me above all others. He smelt disgusting. Like death itself.

"Oh, my God."

The colonel was just as shocked.

The room was circular, the width of the tower apart from the platform we'd arrived on. Overhead a darkly tinted glass dome arched upwards towards the geodesic enclosure. Even closer that the platform I'd stood on outside.

Images of the city seemed to flicker in and out of life, floating in the air much as the images in my rooms were presented. Hundreds of them all once, existing only for fleeting moments before dying away to be replaced with others. Was he watching these?

I saw the Tower with its damaged wall from above, through a watching drone. I saw people huddled in their rooms. And I saw one couple mutually pleasuring. Hundreds of real-time views, all at once and rolling into another. This is what Protector saw. No privacy from him, or it, existed.

My eyes went back to the abomination of a man in the center of the images. Surrounded on the outside by banks of AI computers buzzing with the sound of electricity. They flickered with a blue hue that invaded the entire space. This was Protector. Man and machine combined in a grotesque symbiosis.

"You're all vermin. To be eradicated."

The voice came from everywhere. Synthesized and artificial. But I knew it was also the words of this decrepit grey creature. Defiant words from a being that had no defense here, hidden away in its chambers.

"He's dying." I said with sudden realization.

The recent drone attacks made sense to me. No amount of invasive technology could extend his life forever. It was the last throw of the dice for him. For the City. He was the City. An entity at its center that could no longer maintain it and intended to destroy everything else before his dream collapsed. Perhaps in the forlorn hope that his domestically reared pets would repopulate the world. An identikit race of pale-skinned blonde waifs refused diversity by controlled breeding. Or perhaps he didn't care if they died along with him?

"Unclean variants to be exterminated." The voice pronounced again.

"You won't be eradicating anyone." The Colonel responded.

He raised his weapon and with a short loud clatter, Protector was ended. It was brutal and final but I didn't feel any sorrow.

Then the Colonel swung the weapon to the computers. Tiny projectiles tore through the circuitry spitting sparks, dying with their human component.

Simple. Destructive. And anticlimactic.

I screamed at the movement.

"There." I pointed.

I was certain I'd seen it. Something in the shadows.

Lights quickly illuminated the dark recesses and hideous creatures shied away from the light rasping in pain.

"What the..." Someone voiced.

I was braver now. Confident in the weapons of my protectors and brightened along with the lights. I stared. Everyone did. Three humanoid abominations, naked and grey-skinned. Long hair hung dankly from their heads and genitals. Thin lips were drawn back that betrayed yellowed teeth and eyes that seemed overly large blinked and squinted in the unaccustomed night light.

One of them pointed. It could have been at any one of us but I was certain it was me it singled out.

"Protector."

The voice was little more than a hiss. A dried husk of a word like the thing uttering it.

"You. Become."

I shuddered as though a giant, cold hand had encircled my waist. Become? Did it mean to replace that rotten corpse at the center of the City with me?

A welcome voice broke through my woken nightmare.

"Not today Dracula."

The Colonel opened fire. A cacophony of clattering weapons joined him and the creatures fell with the deafening sound. Moments later only the horrendous smell remained. I retched and threw up.

Outside, everywhere had darkened. Only the dulled light through the opaque city dome remained. A hum, so constant and so subliminal I'd lived my entire time without noticing it until it was gone had also stopped. Like a great dying animal, the lungs and lifeblood of the City had ceased. All that remained was the frightened murmur of over two thousand souls. But there was something else. It felt less oppressive to me. I understood what this meant for the future.

Frightened, naked shapes cowered everywhere. Everything they knew had suddenly been torn from them by people that they believed, as I had, to be primitive destroyers. They had yet to learn what freedom was.

Some, the Disses amongst them thought differently. They were the ones tearing at their collars and Chasity garments, determined to embrace their release. They were turning to others, encouraging them. For the first time, I realized just how many had secretly been unhappy with their kept lives.

I saw an Enforcer clawing at his eyepiece. Confused by its sudden blindness. The ability to read the discrete physical signals everyone exhibited was gone. I recognized him. Only a while ago we'd pleasured together. I'd feared him, or at least what he represented. Now he was the frightened one.

I felt empowered. And responsible. I needed to make a gesture.

Pulling off the useless symbols of the City I stepped out in front of them. Standing with my feet apart and my arms held wide, I was naked for everyone to see. My smooth evenly toned flesh, my unrestricted pussy, my freedom to pleasure and breed as I chose, there for everyone to see.

Behind me, the soldiers would be staring at my butt. I knew that. They could see everything unhindered. But this wasn't for their benefit.

"You're free." I cried out to the crowds.

"Protector is no more.

The collars can't harm you. And your garments can't control your desires."

Some faces showed recognition. Others, more fear. But all of them could see I was without the binds of the City.

The Colonel stepped forward. He'd discarded much of his protective garments and carried no weapons. An attempt to look less intimidating.

"Lydia speaks the truth." He said.

His voice was authoritative and projected. It carried well into the crowd.

"She is one of yours. Listen to her. A city dweller that knows the truth. A truth that you have to embrace for yourselves now.

We and others outside will help you. Show you how to survive and prosper."

The mention of the outside sent a collective tremor through the mass.

"It's green." I called out.

"Trees and grass. There are birds in the sky. And insects. And herds of animals."

"The air." Someone shouted up in fear.

I could see heads shaking.

"It's clean. You can breathe it. It's fresh and filled with the scent of nature.

Everything Protector told you about outside was a lie."

That's not true." Came another distrustful cry.

"It is. I've lived there for over a cycle."

The Colonel turned to one of his men.

"How about you make a doorway? Let them see."

"Yes sir."

A group of five or six made their way across the City to where the dome met the ground. More of the magic C4 placed on a side wall would open a hole for everyone to see outside. No one would be able to deny the reality at that point.

Jareth found me at the top of the tower when he arrived from the base with others a few days later. I was looking out over the lifeless, spiritless buildings. There were still people below. They had nowhere yet to go. Not until more arrived from the base to help them. Everyone who could be spared was coming. But the City itself was dead. The sparkle and ever-present glow were gone. Now it seemed just grey and dull. And it felt cooler in here on my skin. I was missing clothes again. I would cover up when I went down again.

"It's not the same." I said hearing him approach me from behind. I was sat with my legs pulled up to my chest.

"This is where I experienced the nearest I could get to nature. The only place where air moved. Now it's lifeless up here. Just as below. Stale."

"Why did you come here?" Jareth asked.

"To remind myself. To remember how it was, and why outside is so much better.

I won't come here again."

He stood closer.

"I want to show you something. One last horror that Protector hid from you."

"What could be worse than those creatures?"

I picked up the only item of clothing I had with me. A jacket one of the soldiers had given me. It was massive, hanging so far below my butt it acted equally as well as a skirt.

We rode the elevator down and he took me to a place across the City I'd been to only twice in my life. A place where I'd said two sad goodbyes.

"This is the Hall of Remembrance." I said, stating the obvious.

It was a marbled chamber, circular with one entry and a curtain where the still bodies of those whose life force had departed glided through.

"Yes. Where we brought our family at the end of their life cycle.

I brought my mother and father here when their time came. And I'm sure you did the same."

I had. It was supposed to be a kind of joyful thing. It sort of had been. Mostly. Because I'd been conditioned to view it as that. But I'd also found it a sad experience at the same time.

On the day of everyone's fiftieth cycle, this was where they came with friends and family. Goodbyes were said and they remained as we went back to our rooms to sit in remembrance. It was what we did. No one asked why or what happened. We were programmed from an early age to accept it as normal that our allotted time was over.

"I want to show you what happens here." Jareth said.

"So you know the full horror of Protector."

He tore away paneled walls with his fingers. Thin sheets buckled and fell clattering to the floor. Like much of the City, it was a thin facade that no one had thought to poke behind in generations. We stepped through into what had been hidden from our eyes.

I saw it as the horror it was. Great grinders and fermenting tanks. A place where whole bodies were processed by machines into the stacks of innocuous nutrient bars and containers of what I'd once considered as just refreshing, healthy liquid feeds. We all ate and drank them without a thought.

Now I was seeing what was hidden from us. What Quillan had told me about around the fire in what seemed another lifetime. That first time I'd tasted the meat of the hunt.

"It's... disgusting." I muttered.

"Fifty cycles. That's what everyone is allowed. Then the collars contract, closing the blood supply to the brain. A quiet extinguishing of life. This is what awaited everyone until today.

Welcome to the afterlife."

I felt sick. An automated process. People turned from flesh and blood into food and served by unsuspecting workers to the populous.

"Fifty cycles." He said again.

"While that old man was kept alive by his machines and his... whatever they were, for who knows how long."

I thought about the old man. I was certain he'd been dying. That was why he'd hit out at the villages. One final act of defiance against a world he'd tried so hard to deny existed.

"The City was always doomed. Even he couldn't have lived forever." I said.

"Perhaps the intention had been to replace himself." He shrugged.

"Or perhaps he intended for everyone to die with him.

Who can say?"

The former seemed the most likely. I was certain that thing had pointed at me and called me Protector. I shuddered at the thought. Without others to help, the old man would simply have died with no one to replace him. And the City would have died with him. Those monsters, things that had once been human, had been Protector's servants. Perhaps maintaining the equipment. It seemed that on his death they would replace him with another unsuspecting citizen.

In hindsight, the old man seemed less of a mastermind and more of a victim. Perhaps one of several people who'd been used as a mere biological component in an AI.

I do t suppose anyone would ever know the full story. Knowledge of that technology was lost to us. Even the soldiers.

I shuddered again at the idea I could have been snatched in my sleep and fixed in that cocoon to have my brain used as a tool. Would I have retained my thoughts? Would I have been trapped in my own head unable to do anything but watch while I became a living analytical machine to maintain the City? I pulled the colossal coat tighter around me.