Over the Ice

Berlin was a mess back then, eighteen years before the Fall. It was another cold summer, and there had been snow storms almost up until April. Even then, at the turning of July, some days you would wake up to find a small layer of ice had formed on the streets during the night. Berlin, the city around which modern history was built, seemed like a freezer gone mad. It’s almost incredible to me now that, back then, people wouldn't bother speaking too much about the climatic change, and only mention it from time to time, even though even places far to the south like Spain and Italy now had long icy seasons.

But I wasn't there for that. For a change, the workers were again on a violent strife, and had already caused some major damages in several hypercorporate offices and shops. Now they were heading to the Reichstag in an attempt for their voices to be heard, and that the local government could raise their pleas for work and better social conditions to the European Union's government. It was the tenth time this year that they tried, and each time they had no positive results.

And so, there I was, deployed together with the rest of my unit in front of the entrance to such a historical building. Hoping for them to calm them down, or anxious to control any attempt to turn the strife into a full fledged riot again; I’m not sure which of those two feelings was stronger. Southern Berlin had already burned partially during February due to a similar protest, and the local government had asked for some of the stretched resources of Brussels in order to be able to face the growing tensions... it hadn't worked. Long had the time of a strong European Union gone by, even I barely remembered those times with my long years of life. Now, the whole Union government was barely more than an emptying and failing shell, under a growing pressure for resources it could no longer even pretend to satisfy.

And so, there I was with my companions. Two hundred police officers in different combat morphs and riot equipment... pretending to be able to control a situation with up to five thousand potential rebels crazed and increasingly violent. We saw them come as they turned the corner of a nearby street, a tsunami of people raging for money, food, clothing, work, or proper heating. An earthquake heading to us, willing to crush with full strength.

And they did. God heavens, they sure did! One moment we were standing, side by side, as our muses scrolled all the tactical information in front of us... and the next one we were each pushed in a different direction by the strength of despair, of need. I started to fight for my life, but I hadn't downed more than a couple of them before a bulky metallic hard-labor synthetic morph crushed my knee. I was swept aside, thrown into the masses of people, as they pushed through to enter. They broke both of my arms just by stepping over me in their attempts to push through, and I would have asphyxiated if I hadn't had my own supply of oxygen inside my body.

Finally, after an infinite number of hands and feet had hit me or gone over me, while pain made it hard for me to see and Wintermute continued to send alarm signals calling for an ambulance that wouldn't come, I found myself pressed against a column. I'm not sure even where the hell I was. I only know they kept on going beside me, heading to an entrance I could no longer see, much less guard.

And then I saw her. She was small, frail, maybe not older than eight or nine. She showed the signs of famine, as probably her parents weren't able to feed her properly, and her face was marked with small impurities that showed she hadn't been genetically cleaned. She tried to hold on to her mother's hand, in a world completely maddened that she could no longer understand. Tears were falling down her face as she cried her soul out, but probably not even her mother could hear her with all the noise and shouting surrounding us all.

I probably only saw her a couple seconds, but her face was all I could remember when my eyes opened again in an infirmary unit of the Re-Gen Corporation. I felt small, maybe a bit lighter, and had the expected urge to vomit. It always happened to me after reinsleaving. Still, that small face hung in front of me, like an AR projection, just memories trying to call my attention to something. What it was, I have never found out.

Wintermute kept on reporting on the developments of the last few days, the time it had taken for the government to be able to reinsleave the cops that had died that day. They couldn't even offer me anything better than a splicer, because the contract with the corporation had been toned down due to an increasingly obvious difficulty for payment. Probably we wouldn't have all the riot equipment next time either. That's how bad things were back in the day.

And yet, as I left the reinsleaving facility trying to adapt to the small difference of length between both legs, I couldn't help but think about the girl.

I never saw her again in all the years I remained in Berlin after those events. From riot to riot, from combat to death, attempting to control a world increasingly out of control, her face remained with me. Even now, after so many years, I can still recall it: small, red, covered in her tears, with her golden hair dirty and badly-cared, her blue eyes wide open with incomprehension. I don't know what it is that still draws me to her, but I know it took my life away.

Maybe she was a ghost. Maybe she was a projection of my soul. I don't know. All I know is that something inside me broke that day, something much more important that the rib that pierced my heart and caused my death. Since then, I haven't had any normal relationships. All of them break or are incomplete, or don't work for any other reason. I'm left alone, here, for all eternity, for death is something we can't even fear anymore.

All I fear is not ever finding whatever it was I lost that strange, violent and painful day.