[He waits several minutes, but honestly, he guesses she isn't going to reply within the first of them. He thought she might not when he sent it. So he doesn't wait overly long, and maybe she'll respond eventually and maybe she won't, but the next time she picks up her communicator there will be an audio message from him: his voice is even, and quiet, and as steady as he can make it.]
The marks on the back of my neck, the lines, are called a barcode. Back where I come from, there used to be stores full of supplies: food, water, furniture, paper goods, technology anything you can imagine you could buy if you had the money, anything you needed to have a comfortable life. And each of these items had a barcode, too, so the computers that scanned them would know how much each item was worth.
That's what I had instead of a name for most of my life. I was raised to make the lives of humans better, to fight so they wouldn't have to bleed, to die so they wouldn't have to grieve. I was raised in a facility where we were locked in every night, supervised all day, coached, trained, and changed to fit the specifications of the untouchable, unknowable entities that ran the program, with the eventual intent that I would trade everything I am so that people I would never meet could have a better life and a second chance. I wasn't a person. I was a bargaining chit.
A week before I died and came here, I escaped. I got to be just a person, with my own name, my own intentions, my own freedom, my own life for eight days before I was hunted down, killed, and came here.
It's not the same. I'm not trying to say it's the same. But I know a thing or two about thinking you're done with something you hate, that you actually get a chance now, and then waking up with it staring you in the face every day of your life, and not being able to explain to anyone around you how that feels so they can understand it. To know that they're facing it now, too, and just don't know it because it may never happen to them.
[ Private : Audio ]
The marks on the back of my neck, the lines, are called a barcode. Back where I come from, there used to be stores full of supplies: food, water, furniture, paper goods, technology anything you can imagine you could buy if you had the money, anything you needed to have a comfortable life. And each of these items had a barcode, too, so the computers that scanned them would know how much each item was worth.
That's what I had instead of a name for most of my life. I was raised to make the lives of humans better, to fight so they wouldn't have to bleed, to die so they wouldn't have to grieve. I was raised in a facility where we were locked in every night, supervised all day, coached, trained, and changed to fit the specifications of the untouchable, unknowable entities that ran the program, with the eventual intent that I would trade everything I am so that people I would never meet could have a better life and a second chance. I wasn't a person. I was a bargaining chit.
A week before I died and came here, I escaped. I got to be just a person, with my own name, my own intentions, my own freedom, my own life for eight days before I was hunted down, killed, and came here.
It's not the same. I'm not trying to say it's the same. But I know a thing or two about thinking you're done with something you hate, that you actually get a chance now, and then waking up with it staring you in the face every day of your life, and not being able to explain to anyone around you how that feels so they can understand it. To know that they're facing it now, too, and just don't know it because it may never happen to them.
That's all. Good luck.