by Zac Strong
The Delta Project
Zac Strong
Copyright © 2021 Zackery Strong
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated to those who look from more than one perspective.
Chapter 1
Every twenty to twenty-five years I lose my mind. A thin, charcoal-colored box suspended from the wall in front of your bed has managed to do the same in mere minutes. The screen lit with lies squawks angrily in my direction. The people inside, perfectly adorned in their riches, give the illusion that this program is life or death for me – that everything is on the line. Don’t believe them.
You’ll see it everywhere. It’s constantly broadcasted from every possible perspective. Fear. They aren’t even trying to hide the fact they lie. They infuse you with terror and anxiety just to get more views, to increase their ratings, while simultaneously selling you their mind-numbing formula to ease the disease they installed in you - modern capitalism at its best. They are using us. It’s all so fake too, insulting really. They go back to pompous lives of gold and freedom, their perfect, symmetric existence, while everyone else is stuck here living in each other’s paranoia, trapped in the never-ending loop of humanity.
Today’s injection? More of the same. Propaganda from Olympia praising the Delta Project one frequency, the next they threaten you with another story on a possible asteroid collision thirty years away. It’s moments like these I wish another one would hit. End all of our suffering in a fiery blaze, finish the job, ya know? If something crazy were to ever happen again, they have cried wolf so many times no one would believe them, at least not anyone I respect. How did something created with the sole purpose of informing the general public, turn so easily into the insidious mouth of corruption itself? Maybe it’s always been this way as if that makes it right. I guess that’s all part of living the dream here in 34.
Outside your window an almost permanent grey overcast clouds over this city, yet it hardly ever rains. The land is barren, too dry for anything to survive naturally. When it does rain if you don’t filter it correctly, it’ll kill you. That’s one of the first things you learn. There’s no telling how many first times we’ve learned it.
Consumption of water from locations other than Lethe Corporation-approved facilities is strictly prohibited for your safety. Drinking radiation-contaminated water may result in irreversible illness or death.
LETHE CORPORATIONS
Safety Manual for the Reborn
Section II, Article 9
They tell us this is how the world perished. Toxic rain from the aftermath of the meteor, starving nearly every plant and animal on this planet. I’ve got my own suspicions.
The Lethe Corporation, despite the sheer chaos after the impact, found a way to create nourishment and clean water. With these advancements, they replaced natural death with everlasting, eternal life. They were prepared. By pairing the catalyst they use to produce the sustenance pills with their breakthroughs in stem cell technology, they essentially created immortality or something close. The Lethe catalyst saved the world, and at the perfect time too.
The shit is in everything, the pills, the water – I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a way to saturate the air as well. If you’re the only company that has the resources to exist, then I guess you can do whatever the fuck you want. And they do. At our expense. They have owned nearly every aspect of our lives for the last couple of centuries. I suppose all that was left to own was our deaths.
Immortality has a price. That price is what we call being reborn - our own little fucked up reincarnation.
The catalyst made it possible for our frail, decaying bodies to keep grinding through the tedious, everyday motions we call life, but at the expense of our minds. Death has been replaced with rebirth. People no longer perish from diseases of the old, they’ve been cured. The goal of every civilization since the dawn of man was reached forever ago by Lethe, and with this achievement, they gained all the power in the world. Science and fortune did what any myth could not. Eternal life.
Disease, famine, religion, entire nations… erased. While the world was unraveling at the seam, Lethe built an empire. They are in full control of everything now, owning nearly every resource left. However, they don’t force anyone to obey them. They don’t have to. If you don’t like living under their boot, you can always starve in the Outlands, and believe me, Kalli, you don’t want to be out there. Nothing but sand and death outside the city walls, along with the occasional savage raider if you believe the mongering of the news.
Personally, I think would’ve liked it better when the whole world was fighting over a tiny fraction of oil and imaginary debt. It’s not that I have a problem always being healthy... with each pill, millions of cells are rewritten and repaired. It’s just at least back then there was a chance at bettering life. The meteor changed all that. The world was on fire. Arising out of its ashes, our savior and enslaver – The Lethe Corporation.
They’ll explain this to you better when you wake up, but the stuff they put into our bodies - the stuff that cures any sickness has a bit of a side effect. You stay healthy no matter how old you grow but, after a while, you start to forget things. Little things at first, then faces and names, until you can barely recognize anyone, including yourself. The worst of it lasts a few days until you wake up reborn. You lose everything. Everything that makes you, you. Each mind cycle lasts about twenty to twenty-five years depending on the person. You made it twenty-six strong. You were always the resilient one.
Whatever miracle poison they put into us makes its way into our brain and replaces each neuron one by one over the last year or so of the cycle. People don’t really die anymore as long as they have credits for Lethe pills; they simply forget and are forgotten. But, don’t take it the wrong way. Lethe doesn’t care about us. The immortality pills aren’t them being nice. Dead citizens don’t contribute very much, and with fertility slowed to a halt, it’s in their best interest to keep us alive and working. We make it possible for them to exist. They need us, at least for now.
“Visitation ended 25 minutes ago, Palin. You’re going to break curfew again. It’s already dark.”
The nurse is back.
Reeling me back from the depths of my mind, her words summon a sigh from my lips. The feeling of urgency in the stale, lifeless air becomes a little more potent. She’s a brief blur in a city out of focus, and I haven’t rested a blink in days. How could I?
My guilty eyes are drawn to her smoothness for less than a second before they shoot back to the bland, tile floor. Her skin is young. Her short blonde hair pushed behind her ears contrasts the faded black uniform loosely sprawled over her shoulders. It’s not much of a uniform, a few pockets here and there stitched on a worn piece of fabric. She waits patiently for vitals to appear on her screen, content. Sapphire eyes that look as if they could pierce steel stare off into the striped texture of the paint haphazardly slapped on the block walls around us. Humming to some shit Olympian song, her mind is as absent as Kalli’s like she’s somewhere I’m not. I miss being that carefree. It’ll quickly fade. Always does with the fresh born.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” I ask already knowing h
er answer.
On her machine a sound chimes. She silences it with a few touches to the screen and looks up. “Obviously, I remember you, Palin. You’ve been here at the infirmary every day for two weeks now.”
“No… I mean from before? You’re still going by Jacee, right?”
She touches her tattoo of the same name on her inner forearm.
“You used to be a friend of Kalli’s... I don’t mean to startle you-”
“No, you’re fine. I’m just, you know, still trying to get used to… everything,” she says half smiling.
We let silence drift through the thin air that reeks of chemicals and sorrow.
“Can I ask you something?” I mumble before she reaches the door.
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”
“What do you remember? If you don’t mind me- I’m sorry if that came off as intrusive or insensitive.. I just need to know.”
“Well, I don’t remember anything. It’s like I’m a totally different person… just borrowing a body that I’ll eventually have to pass down to my replacement.”
“Were you afraid? I don’t want her to be afraid.”
“I don’t know what I was to be honest with you, Palin. At first, everything’s a white nothing. In every direction, nothing. Like I’ve never existed before that moment, yet my instincts acted as if I’ve always been. I don’t think I was afraid. I was just… aware. Kalli will be fine though, she’s in good hands and she has you protecting her. That’s more than most people have.” Jacee turns back before leaving, “Like the manual says, this is life now.”
Every single day these tired walls wear their same shade of blue with the most depressing stripes of grey imaginable as if someone is forcing them to exist. The abundance of chipped paint and scuff marks of rubber-wheeled gurneys tell me they’ve been standing for quite some time now. I wonder how many times I’ve been in this same room and have simply forgotten. How many times have I sat beside Kalli in this very chair during a past mind cycle? Did we even know each other before? The hair on my arms and neck rises to attention as a wave of vulnerability surges through me. Suddenly, I feel small. I wonder what it’s like to remember.
“I’ll be here tomorrow when you wake up,” I say aloud, hoping deep down Kalli can hear me somehow and feel at ease. The words drift in the empty air while I reach for the remote on the infirmary’s version of a nightstand. My anxiety steals one last glance of her before I kill the TV and force myself out of this softened reality.
She looks so calm resting. Absolute serenity. Her flowing brown locks twirl down her chest and around her linens. Soft, pale hands lay peacefully at her side. It’s like the universe stands still for her. I can’t lose her. I’ll make her remember. I will.
I’ve done the math. The odds of me finding someone this amazing AND on roughly the same mind cycle as me are damn near zero. Maybe if I escaped this hell hole and find my way to the capital, which is never going to fucking happen. Even if it did, and they gave me the chance to go to Olympia freely, set me up with the nicest gig credits can buy, I still would turn it down for my Kalli. Just wouldn’t be worth it without her. How cou-
The door flies open slamming loudly against the block wall.
My heart skips a beat.
My body refuses to run or scream or make any decision.
A half dozen Lethe officers invade the room shouting all at once, blasters aimed at my forehead. Their uniforms are all the same, corporate black, matching the color of their hearts, with the addition of the red Lethe Corp eagle branded on their vests. The first one sends his boot into my chest, leaving me gasping for air. As soon as I hit the hard tile, they all swarm me. I don’t even have a chance to defend myself.
“Stop! Stop it now!” pleads Jacee rushing back through the doorway, but it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.
They beat me into submission and drag me down the infirmary hall like a tattered mop. Being pulled at each wrist, I can’t escape if I had the strength to.
“What seems to be the issue here?” asks a menacing voice, stopping them dead in their tracks.
“This one’s out past curfew. Second time this week, Sir,” answers the lead officer driving me to the ground to face his superior.
One glance at his shiny black shoe and I already know what he is. Ice flushes into my bloodstream with unforgiving relentlessness. The acidic taste of my stomach burns in the deepest depths of my throat. There are countless stories of their terror. They are by far the most dangerous humans alive.. if they’re even human.
My gaze rises and briefly locks with the cold dark glare of the Suit. His black jacket is as dark as a nightmare. His hair is just as black and slicked back, wet-looking. The same chiseled jawline they all wear. Suits are the strong arm of the Lethe Corporation. Corporate muscle. The label Suits comes from their predictable attire. I label them scum. Those that enforce tyranny are worse than those that write it.
“Why did you break curfew, citizen?”
“I.. I lost track of time,” I stammer, my voice cracking.
“Is the curfew not at the same time every night, citizen?”
“Yes.”
He’s silent.
My heart beats louder against the walls of my chest. I feel his gaze all over me, scanning me. What is he searching for? With our eyes locked, the sound of the clinical bustle seizes. The artificial lighting seems to focus solely on this personification of Lethe Corp. The recycled air impossibly grows even thinner as breathing becomes one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish.
“Give the citizen a strike and send him home. If he chooses to commit another violation this cycle, exile him from 34.”
“Yes, Sir,” snaps the lead officer.
As I’m limping out of the infirmary, I find Kalli somehow still at the front of my broken mind. Every possible scenario for tomorrow occurs simultaneously within my imagination. It’s a shame they don’t have some kind of catalyst to quiet an anxious mind. I mean I can always buy some drugs at the exchange like everyone else or try something homemade if I’m feeling stupid enough, but numbing my brain isn’t really the same as curing anxiety if that’s even a thing. Once you think about it, ridding anxiety is pretty much doing to yourself what Lethe forces us to do with their poison – become a different person. Well, I suppose it’s not forced. Only nature is forcing me to take the only form of nourishment that exists or drink the only uncontaminated water around. I could always fucking starve or die of dehydration. Weirdly, anxiety helps make me, me. If you look back at life and think about all the thoughts you ever had and all the actions that were a consequence of those thoughts, you begin to realize if just one of those thoughts were to change, your entire life would be different. You wouldn’t be the same person. One thought, even an anxious one, being altered during one’s mind cycle can make you a drastically different person. I think I’ll pass on the drugs. My brain is fucked enough as it is.
I remember that knife Kalli got her hands on years ago. Its blade’s a deep shade of midnight. About the size of my hand and razor-sharp. Its handle, wrapped tightly with blue rope, knotted, with the symbol omega engraved in the metal where it meets the handle. She doesn’t even remember how she got it or where it came from. Which isn’t unusual, really. We would forget our names if they weren’t tattooed on our arms. Inconsistency is one of the only constants here. We had only known each other for a few months then, but how could I ever forget that day? She stared at me with the most innocent yet mysterious look I’ve ever seen in probably all my lives. Her eyes burned like quasars that I found myself lost in at every opportunity. She bowed playfully, presenting me the knife like a queen. She told me she was about to blow my mind. I remember thinking she already had each and every day, but I played along.
“Close your eyes, Palin,” she smiles. “You have a beautiful mind, but you’re stubborn as hell. Think about it! If you believe you have any control over yourself, then you should have no probl
em not thinking about this knife right now.”
I closed my eyes and of course, the first thing that kept rushing to the front of my mind was that damn knife as she made no attempt to hide her laughter. She has the cutest laugh.
Eventually, I gave up and went with her rants. I stopped trying to control everything, I quit trying to make sense of the people’s actions. When it all felt like too much, like I was suffocating, buried under the weight of the world, she was my breath of life.
I remember lying in bed with her one night. It was one of those quiet nights where everything was eerily silent. Even the machinery at the plants seemed to rest. She lied in front of me with my arm draped over her side. My face was lost in the mystery of her brown curls. I could just hear the air softly leaving her mouth. That is the single most calming sound a man can hear, complete tranquility. I’m looking out the bedroom window, drifting further into the light reflecting off the scattered debris making its way to our crescent-shaped moon and back. Floating masses of planet and pieces of asteroid trapped in an elegant struggle between us and the moon. Deep inside my head, I find my way back to ask her something I had on my mind nearly all day. She liked philosophy, and I liked pretending to know what I was talking about. I would spend the entire workday thinking of some deep life question to impress her.
“So, you think the characters of a book have free-will, or are they subjected to the will of their author?” I already know what she was going to say, but I can’t pass on an opportunity to hear her sweet voice.
She reaches over with a sleepy little smile, placing her gentle hands around my face. Her fiery crimson irises peer effortlessly into my mind. In the most beautiful voice a person can imagine, she says to me, “Of course not, silly. The characters have the same fate as you or me.” Then, she steals a kiss before turning over and backing her warm body into mine. “Except with us, the universe is our author, blind and without end.”
