The newness
Title: Amaranth
Summary: "They called her Amaranth, the never-fading flower..."
Fandom: Original
Word Count: 621
Rating/Warnings: PG
Pairing: N/A
A/N: A character sketch for a vaguely cyberpunk thing that is forming. I realize that the Book People are from Fahrenheit 541; my characters named themselves after those characters. A prog is sort of akin to a geek, short for programmer. The Port is... think biosofts, if you've read Gibson, or something like the Construct-on-a-chip, for Matrix dorks.
She can’t remember the operation. All she can remember is waking up, sweat drenched, every synapse screaming pain. An eternity passed, and the blackness slipped up around her again.
It was her father’s finest work. Every bone, every sinew, every hair, every molecule remade into the consummate human form. She was trotted out for the press and the fashionistas before she was even healed. Arrested development, highly increased immunity to both disease and physical injury, face perfectly composed to be the most beautiful imaginable. The perfect girl, mankind’s greatest achievement.
But the most spectacular thing was the Port. It itself was nothing more than a socket, disguised as a flesh colored bump just about her left thumb. But like everything else, her father was most concerned with presentation. The connection from the socket to her brain was a study in green and gold circuitry, laid out in delicate vines that twisted their way up her arm. The crowning glory was a brilliant metallic flower that exploded in purple across the left half of her face, a stunning reinvention of the company’s emblem. The extra circuitry did have its storage capabilities, but it was mostly show. The real business of the socket ran through an almost imperceptible blue wire leading directly from her thumb to skull.
The first time her father had put a chip in the sockets she’d thrown up. The awful vertigo sent her to her knees. Then he’d asked her something arcane about astrophysics, and she’d responded effortlessly. It felt so wrong. They’d gone through American history, linguistics, and Shakespeare before the vertigo rescinded. But the wrongness never did. It was like plundering a temple, trespassing on hallowed ground.
And she hated him for it. What kind of father makes his daughter his guinea pig? She remembered faintly a life as a plump brown-headed prog. She remembered being happy. Her father had taken that. She wasn’t delicate. She wasn’t beautiful. But above all, she wasn’t a flower. She had dreams, simple dreams of being loved for who she was, of learning and being wise. She hadn’t even known they were dreams until they were lost.
And so she had run. Her parents let her go, at first. Everyone knew her; where could she go? Every billboard screamed her name; the hateful flower bloomed on almost every piece of electronic equipment. She had lived in back alleys and flop houses deep in the City, but she couldn’t run away from her face. She’d scraped together enough black market money to afford a back-room hack job, but the surgeon had broken down, saying he’d rather take an ax to the Mona Lisa. It was then that she heard about the Book People.
But fashion caught up quickly enough. Hundreds of flower girls sprang up, and limitless designs asides, though none could rival the craftsmanship of the first. It was then that her father had gotten desperate, locking her in the house whenever she came home and sending guards out to bring her in when she ran. Finally, she had slipped away, hidden under a burqa in the back of an overcrowded bus.
That was years ago, but she didn’t know how many. Some days, it seemed like it had barely been a year, some days, twenty. She had been eighteen at the time of the surgery; she would be eighteen until her parts finally gave out. She could feel tears spring sometimes at the sight of old women, knowing she’d never have the luxury of change.
When she came to the Book People, they all knew her name, but after their fashion, none of them ever used it. They called her Amaranth, the never-fading flower; but she called herself Mara, bitter.
Summary: "They called her Amaranth, the never-fading flower..."
Fandom: Original
Word Count: 621
Rating/Warnings: PG
Pairing: N/A
A/N: A character sketch for a vaguely cyberpunk thing that is forming. I realize that the Book People are from Fahrenheit 541; my characters named themselves after those characters. A prog is sort of akin to a geek, short for programmer. The Port is... think biosofts, if you've read Gibson, or something like the Construct-on-a-chip, for Matrix dorks.
She can’t remember the operation. All she can remember is waking up, sweat drenched, every synapse screaming pain. An eternity passed, and the blackness slipped up around her again.
It was her father’s finest work. Every bone, every sinew, every hair, every molecule remade into the consummate human form. She was trotted out for the press and the fashionistas before she was even healed. Arrested development, highly increased immunity to both disease and physical injury, face perfectly composed to be the most beautiful imaginable. The perfect girl, mankind’s greatest achievement.
But the most spectacular thing was the Port. It itself was nothing more than a socket, disguised as a flesh colored bump just about her left thumb. But like everything else, her father was most concerned with presentation. The connection from the socket to her brain was a study in green and gold circuitry, laid out in delicate vines that twisted their way up her arm. The crowning glory was a brilliant metallic flower that exploded in purple across the left half of her face, a stunning reinvention of the company’s emblem. The extra circuitry did have its storage capabilities, but it was mostly show. The real business of the socket ran through an almost imperceptible blue wire leading directly from her thumb to skull.
The first time her father had put a chip in the sockets she’d thrown up. The awful vertigo sent her to her knees. Then he’d asked her something arcane about astrophysics, and she’d responded effortlessly. It felt so wrong. They’d gone through American history, linguistics, and Shakespeare before the vertigo rescinded. But the wrongness never did. It was like plundering a temple, trespassing on hallowed ground.
And she hated him for it. What kind of father makes his daughter his guinea pig? She remembered faintly a life as a plump brown-headed prog. She remembered being happy. Her father had taken that. She wasn’t delicate. She wasn’t beautiful. But above all, she wasn’t a flower. She had dreams, simple dreams of being loved for who she was, of learning and being wise. She hadn’t even known they were dreams until they were lost.
And so she had run. Her parents let her go, at first. Everyone knew her; where could she go? Every billboard screamed her name; the hateful flower bloomed on almost every piece of electronic equipment. She had lived in back alleys and flop houses deep in the City, but she couldn’t run away from her face. She’d scraped together enough black market money to afford a back-room hack job, but the surgeon had broken down, saying he’d rather take an ax to the Mona Lisa. It was then that she heard about the Book People.
But fashion caught up quickly enough. Hundreds of flower girls sprang up, and limitless designs asides, though none could rival the craftsmanship of the first. It was then that her father had gotten desperate, locking her in the house whenever she came home and sending guards out to bring her in when she ran. Finally, she had slipped away, hidden under a burqa in the back of an overcrowded bus.
That was years ago, but she didn’t know how many. Some days, it seemed like it had barely been a year, some days, twenty. She had been eighteen at the time of the surgery; she would be eighteen until her parts finally gave out. She could feel tears spring sometimes at the sight of old women, knowing she’d never have the luxury of change.
When she came to the Book People, they all knew her name, but after their fashion, none of them ever used it. They called her Amaranth, the never-fading flower; but she called herself Mara, bitter.