GFP 016: Mirror, Mirror
Kass Brawne’s eyes burst open.
A waterfall of green boot-up code cascaded down her left peripheral, ending in a blank command line with an angry blinking cursor.
The sharp, sterile smell of stainless steel, clean white bandages and alcohol stabbed at her.
That’s when Kass jackknifed herself up in a cold sweat.
What the fuck is happening?
Her body ached all over. She felt cool, flat metal beneath her. It pressed up against the soft flesh of her palms, buttocks and heels. She found herself in a paper thin hospital gown.
Am I on an operating table?
There was a flickering florescence outside her… room? Her cell? A cage?
She shuttered her eyelids and quickly flipped them again. The code was still there. The command line stared back. The cursor tapped its ontological foot.
A dull throb pulsated inside her shapely skull, like a demon gnawing at the rind of a grapefruit. It twinged.
Kass shot a hand up to the left side of her head to rub it, and was startled to find it clean shaven where the pain was. When she started to rub her scalp, it felt like sandpaper with unusual bumps and ridges. Her fingers smarted at the touch.
And then the epiphany sucker punched her. It was an exposed circuit board. And a tangle of wires were still jacked into her I/O ports.
Oh my god… What have they done to me?
She bundled up the wires in a vengeful fist and tore them out. They popped and scraped. Monitors whined like hungry newborns with their umbilical cords just cut.
Kass threw her legs over the table, made contact with the concrete floor, and got up. Blood rushed down her flank, her shanks and into her feet.
The sudden drop in blood pressure threw her vestibular system haywire. Blinded and dizzy, Kass fell to the ground. She almost breaks an arm, but luckily, doesn’t.
Defeated, she laid there, body low to the ground, like a wounded spider contemplating its next move.
She spied the wheels on a surgical utility cart, the prison toilet in the corner and the copper pipes of a sink.
Glancing under her bed and saw a chrome plate with fake strawberry blonde hair on it. Maybe that’s mine?
Kass pulled herself up. Gave the room a once over and headed for the mirror above the sink.
Once there, catecholamines flooded her bloodstream, her stomach churned rapidly into a tight tangle and Kass threw up.
She held on to the sink, head down, heaving. After a few more labored breaths, Kass ginned up the courage to look at the mirror again.
An older lady stared back at her in the reflection. Mid-thirties. Blue highlights, two railway spike studs, a rhinestone collar.
On her left shoulder, a dreifach Siegrune tattoo. A barcode on her right. A magnum revolver peeked out from inside an English tea rose above her right breast.
She craned her neck, quarter-turned and caught more. Two in the shape of computer keys at the base of her brainstem. “Esc” on the right. “Ctrl” on the left. Frayed angel wings, some plucked, others burnt on her shoulder blades.
Kass’s last memory slammed into her. I was on my first date with Peter Buckley last night. We were having ice cream. I was worried about the gigantic pimple on my chin. He said I was girl-next-door pretty. I didn’t know if that was a compliment or an insult. He was awkward, but I liked his shyness.
The woman in the mirror was twice Kass’s age at least. Maybe even her mother’s age, if Kass knew who her mum was.
What Kass couldn’t shake off was the vague resemblance to someone she knew. A distant aunt from the States she had met once. Maybe.
The reflection had crow’s feet, ungainly lines, brown freckles on her arms and face… and an indescribable look of exhaustion.
Kass looked closer, forefinger shoving her cheeks to one side, pinching her chin, tussling her hair. She couldn’t deny it. They both had the same snub nose, pale brown eyes and widow’s peak.
It was her. Twenty years from now.
What the hell is going on here? Was I in a coma? Why do I have all these tattoos? Why do I look like a punk? I was… I am an honor roll student! I date geeky boys like Peter Buckley.
Kass looked behind her, back at the mirror again. She grazed the frame with her fingertips. It’s a trick. This is a prank. Madison’s stupid clique got some nerds to program this.
But Kass knew it wasn’t. There was a computer lodged in her head. She saw lines of code wherever she turned. Everything felt like the finely articulated clockwork of hyper-reality.
Kass breathed slowly. Fragments and ghosts in her memory called to her. She studied the wall of neon lime text. It’s gibberish! I don’t know what any of this means! … Or…?
A thought surfaced. She directed her mind to the command line:
KassBrawn8779:~ KBrawn$
And focused gingerly on the letters “L”, “S” and “-L”. They appeared:
KassBrawn8779:~ KBrawn$ ls -l
OK, Kass. Think “enter”.
The OS spat out lines:
total 656
drwx------ 4 Kass user 130 Aug 27 09:48 Applications
drwx------@ 18 Kass user 612 Jun 24 03:33 Cloud
drwx------+ 12 Kass user 408 Mar 12 15:16 Desktop
drwx------+ 9 Kass user 306 Jan 10 21:21 Documents
drwx------+ 9 Kass user 238 Jun 10 04:46 Downloads
drwx------@ 72 Kass user 2448 Apr 01 07:02 Library
drwx------+ 13 Kass user 442 Jun 05 20:08 Movies
drwx------+ 6 Kass user 204 Oct 10 05:34 Music
-rwx------ 1 Kass user 1024 Aug 29 09:48 NOTE_README.txt
drwx------+ 18 Kass user 612 Feb 16 15:39 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 Kass user 170 Mar 12 05:49 Public
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 Kass user 136 May 02 06:06 Sites
Something felt wrong. Something niggled at Kass. She focused again on the command line and “typed” in…
KassBrawn8779:~ KBrawn$ ls -laxo
The same directories showed up again, but there was a hidden one amongst them:
total 656
d---rwx--- 13 Keats staff 616 Dec 13 13:47 .ICE_sequences
Who is Keats and why is he in my head? What’s in the readme file?
KassBrawn8779:~ KBrawn$ vi NOTE_README.txt
vim opened up with three singular words:
DON’T TRUST KEATS ☣