Atlas Of My Heart: Chapter 3

Welcome to 2157

The first thing I notice is the silence.

It’s not the quiet of an empty house or a library. It’s a heavy, pressurized silence, like the air inside a jar that’s been vacuum-sealed.

The second thing I notice is the light. It’s aggressive. A flat, clinical white that pushes against my eyelids, demanding I wake up.

I groan and try to roll over, but the surface beneath me is hard. Not concrete-hard, but smooth and unyielding. My stomach does a slow, sickening flip, like I’ve just stepped off a spinning carnival ride.

“I can’t do it anymore.” My own voice echoes in my memory. The boiler room. The blue light. The fall.

My eyes snap open.

White.

White ceiling. White walls. White floor.

I scramble backward, my boots squeaking against the pristine surface. Panic spikes in my chest, hot and fast. I’m not in the school basement anymore. There are no rusted pipes, no water stains named Bob, no smell of mold.

Here, it smells like… nothing. Or maybe like new electronics. The smell of ozone and static.

“Hello?” My voice cracks. It sounds too loud in this room, bouncing off the surfaces with nowhere to hide.

I check myself. I’m still wearing my mustard-yellow wool coat – warm and dry now, the rain gone. I’m still wearing my faded black jeans. I still have my hands, my feet. I pat my chest, feeling the frantic rabbit-kick of my heart.

Okay. I’m alive.

I push myself up. My legs feel like jelly, trembling under my weight. I spin in a slow circle. The room is a perfect cube. No furniture. No visible light fixtures, just a glowing ambient radiance coming from everywhere at once.

And no door.

“Okay,” I whisper, the word shaking. “Okay, Nessa. Think. You fell. You hit your head. This is a hospital. A very fancy, very minimalist hospital.”

But deep down, I know that’s a lie. Hospitals have noises. Beeping monitors, squeaky gurney wheels, nurses talking in the hallway. This place has the silence of a tomb.

I take a step toward the wall. It looks like plastic, but when I touch it, it’s cool and smooth, vibrating with a faint, almost imperceptible hum.

“Is anyone there?” I shout, banging my fist against the white panel. “I need help! My name is Vanessa. I think I’m hurt.”

Nothing.

I rest my forehead against the cool wall, fighting the urge to vomit. I wanted to escape, I think. I wanted out.

Did I die? Is this what happens? You ask the universe to make it stop, and it puts you in a white box for eternity?

A soft hiss behind me makes me jump out of my skin.

I spin around, fists raised – though I have no idea what I’m planning to do with them.

A section of the wall that I could have sworn was solid has slid open. And standing in the opening is a boy.

I freeze. He freezes.

He’s tall – taller than Kevin – with sharp, angular features that look like they were carved out of marble. His hair is dark, cut short and precise, not a single strand out of place. He has the kind of face you see on billboards for expensive cologne, the kind of face that usually comes with a smirk.

But he isn’t smirking. He’s staring at me with wide, dark eyes.

And he is entirely, completely gray.

He’s wearing a fitted tunic made of some matte fabric, slate-gray pants, and gray boots. Even his skin looks pale, washed out under the harsh lights.

For a heartbeat, neither of us moves. We’re just two statues in a white room.

Then he blinks. He looks at his wrist – where a thin, silver band glows with data – and then back at me. He looks confused. Not scared, not angry. Just... baffled. Like he’s found a penguin in his bathtub.

“Identify,” he says.

His voice is smooth, calm, and utterly devoid of inflection.

I lower my fists slightly. “What?”

He steps into the room. The door hisses shut behind him, sealing us in. The space suddenly feels much smaller.

“Identify,” he repeats, taking a step toward me. “You are not designated for this sector. Your biometrics are not registering on the local net.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I say, backing away until my shoulders hit the wall. “Where am I? Who are you?”

He stops five feet away from me. He tilts his head, his eyes scanning me from my damp, frizzy hair down to my scuffed thrift-store boots. His gaze lingers on my coat. He winces, actually winces, as if the color physically hurts him.

“Your outer layer,” he says, pointing a long finger at my chest. “It is… discordant.”

“It’s wool,” I say defensively, clutching the lapels tight.

“It is yellow,” he corrects. “Extremely yellow. Why would you choose such a pigment? It serves no camouflage or thermal regulation purpose better than standard issue.”

“Standard issue?” I let out a breathless, hysterical laugh. “Dude, I got this at Salvation Army for twelve bucks. Look, I don’t care about my coat. I want to know where I am. Did I get arrested? Did the school call the cops?”

He frowns. It’s a small, precise movement of his eyebrows. “School? Cops? Your dialect is archaic.”

He taps the silver band on his wrist. A holographic screen projects into the air above his forearm – blue light scrolling with numbers and symbols I don’t recognize. My jaw drops. I’ve seen holograms in movies, but this is crisp, solid.

“No record found,” he mutters to himself. He looks up at me, his expression shifting from confusion to something sharper. Suspicion. “How did you bypass the perimeter sensors? There was no breach alert.”

“I didn’t breach anything!” I push off the wall, anger starting to override the fear. That’s the thing about the worst day of your life – eventually, you just get tired of taking hits. “I fell. I was in the basement at Northwood High, and there was this blue light, and I fell, and now I’m in this… Apple Store nightmare room. I just want to go home.”

He stares at me. “Northwood High?”

“Yes. Northwood. Off Route 9?”

He lowers his arm, the hologram vanishing. He looks at me with a strange intensity. “Northwood is a historical district. It was repurposed for habitation units forty cycles ago.”

“Repurposed?” My stomach drops again. “What are you talking about? I was there ten minutes ago.”

He shakes his head slowly. “That is impossible.”

He walks past me. I flinch, but he doesn’t reach for me. He moves to the wall I was leaning against. He waves his hand in a specific pattern, and the opacity of the white wall dissolves.

It becomes a window. Floor to ceiling.

I turn to look. And the breath leaves my lungs in a rush.

I’m expecting to see the parking lot. Or the football field. Or even a hospital courtyard.

I am not expecting the sky to be the wrong color.

It’s a pale, violet-tinged gray, thick with clouds that look like spun metal. And below…

“Oh my god,” I whisper.

There are no trees. No uneven asphalt roads. No strip malls.

The city is a sea of silver and white needles, towers stretching up so high they seem to pierce the clouds. They’re connected by translucent tubes where pods zip back and forth in perfect, silent rhythm. Everything is clean. Everything is symmetrical. Everything is moving, but there is no noise. No honking horns, no sirens.

It looks like a computer chip grown to the size of a metropolis.

I press my hands against the glass. It’s cold. “Where is this? Is this… is this New York?”

The boy steps up beside me. He looks out at the view with zero interest, as if it’s the most boring thing in the world.

“This is Sector 4,” he says. “The year is 2157.”

I freeze.

I hear the numbers, but my brain refuses to process them. 2157.

“That’s not funny,” I say. My voice sounds very small.

“Humor is inefficient,” he replies automatically. “I am stating fact.”

I turn to look at him. Really look at him. The gray clothes. The perfect skin. The tech on his wrist. The way he speaks.

I think about the blue vortex. The feeling of time unspooling.

“No,” I breathe. I back away from the window. “No, no, no. I have to go back. My mom – the electric bill – I have a shift at Murphy’s tomorrow.”

“Murphy’s?” he asks.

“The diner! I have to work!”

He stares at me blankly. “Work? You mean your assignment? You are too young for a labor assignment. You should be in Education Module 7.”

“I’m seventeen!” I yell. The panic is clawing at my throat now. “I’m a junior! I have a life!”

I grab the front of his gray tunic. The fabric is smooth, synthetic. “Send me back. You have to send me back.”

He looks down at my hands clutching his chest. He doesn’t push me away, but he goes very still. “You are making physical contact. This is unregulated.”

“I don’t care!” I scream.

And then, it happens. The dam breaks.

All of it – the fight with my parents, the humiliation in the cafeteria, the dollar bill hitting my desk, the fear, the cold, the hunger – it all crashes down on me at once.

I let go of him and wrap my arms around myself, sliding down the wall until I’m crouching on the floor. A sob rips out of my chest. It’s ugly and loud and wet.

I bury my face in my knees, shaking violently. I’m crying so hard I can’t breathe. I’m lost. I’m literally lost in time. I’m never going to see Kevin again. I’m never going to fix things.

I cry until my throat hurts, until the silence of the room is completely shattered by my jagged gasps.

After a long time, I realize the boy hasn’t moved.

I lift my head, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my mustard coat. My face feels hot and swollen.

He is kneeling in front of me.

He’s not touching me. He’s just crouching there, watching me with that same intense confusion. But there’s something else in his eyes now. Curiosity.

“You are leaking,” he says softly.

I sniff, a wet, gross sound. “I’m crying, you idiot.”

“Crying,” he repeats, testing the word. “Biological response to physical trauma. Where is your injury?”

“I’m not injured,” I choke out. “I’m sad. I’m scared.”

He tilts his head. “You are expelling hydration because of… emotion?”

“Yes.”

He reaches out, his hand hovering near my face. He hesitates, then touches the track of a tear on my cheek. His fingers are cool. He pulls his hand back and looks at the moisture on his fingertip.

“That seems… inefficient,” he says. But his voice isn’t critical. It sounds almost filled with wonder. “To lose resources because of a feeling.”

“Well, in my time, we have feelings,” I snap, though it lacks any real heat. “We feel things, and we cry, and we wear yellow coats because we want to.”

He looks at the yellow wool, then back at my face.

“In my time,” he says quietly, “we have safety. We have order. We do not have… this.”

He gestures vaguely at me. At the mess of me.

“It’s chaotic,” he says.

“It’s life,” I whisper.

He looks at me for a long moment. Then he glances at the door, and for the first time, he looks worried.

“The perimeter drones will cycle back in three minutes,” he says, his tone shifting back to brisk efficiency. He stands up and offers me a hand. “If they find you here – unregistered, discordant, leaking fluids – they will detain you for sterilization.”

I stare at his hand. It’s pale and perfect.

“Sterilization?” I squeak.

“It is unpleasant,” he says. “Come with me.”

I look at the window, at the gray, alien world outside. Then I look at the boy. He’s the only thing in this entire terrifying future that has looked at me like a person, not a glitch.

I reach up and take his hand.

“I’m Nessa,” I say.

He pulls me to my feet. The grip of his hand is firm, grounding.

“I am Unit 7-Atlas,” he says. Then he pauses, and adds, “Just Atlas.”

“Okay, Atlas,” I say, gripping his hand tighter as the door hisses open. “Get me out of here.”