Natural

The first thing I noticed was a strange sound: a sound like the repetition of laboured breath, close but not too close. It had a deep timbre which I couldn't place. I didn't notice anything else. I sometimes think about how, in the absence of things, a certain emptiness of senses washes over me. That was what it was like. Not too hot, not too cold, not in pain, not, not in pain. Not anything, basically, just a person, listening in the darkness to a low-pitched, repetitive sound.

I opened my eyes and that was when the senses began to rush around me, like an augmented reality being built, brick by brick. The room was a pale colour, off-white, which made me instantly feel cooler. Tiny lines wove their way up the walls, intersecting and running out like roots, reaching up to a mottled ceiling. Cracks. The place was dilapidated. I was sat on the ground, which made me feel a dull ache sinking into my bones, as though I had been sat in the same position for a long time. Cautiously, I reached my hands beneath me, placing each palm flat on the marble floor and using the stability to push myself to my feet.

Now, I could have accepted the sound I was woken up by. I live in the kind of world which is full of noise, meaning I rarely dwell on the origin of the soundtrack of my life. However: marble? Really? Marble was the stuff of Ancient Greece, of cartoon Hercules confronting the statue of his father. It was durable in a way that no one bothered to seek out anymore. The coldness which crept around me felt partially linked to the properties of marble itself, and partially from a sense of disconnect and connotation.

My curiosity made my movements laboured somehow. I'd always expected a quick-paced panic to possess me in a situation shrouded in mystery, yet here I was, eyes narrowed, moving with hesitance and controlling my breath. The sound continued in the background. The room that I was in was small. Neglected. Relatively empty. There was a window, through which light was seeping, putting a spotlight on tiny particles of dust as they danced around me. Naturally, I tried to tug it open, a layer of dust transposing itself onto my sleeve in the process. It took three pushes for me to force the lower pane upwards; once it was free from its catch, it gained momentum and swung up to hit the upper frame. The sound suddenly stopped, to be replaced by wings, violently flapping their escape. The stray, mauve feathers clustered on the sill made me think perhaps I'd dismissed more than one detail I should have been able to process.

When I spun back around, the floor was no longer empty but rather littered with copious papers, all sepia stained and flickering in the breeze. I sat back down, against the wall, using my hands to turn the pages into less of an incoherent mess and more of a pamphlet. 'Not the window', 'Not the window', 'Not the window'... each page repeating the same phrase, not written, whispered, my hands speeding up, tossing each to the side until the last. 'The door'. The words echoed. From where, I couldn’t tell. With one eyebrow raised, something I have never been able to do deliberately, I cast an eye at this door. It was nothing special, old but not ancient, incredibly plain but heavy set. With nothing to lose, I got back to my feet.

Yesterday (maybe?)

"This is your final warning." The statement came out with little drops of spittle, which I watched until I realised that would land me with the knowledge of where they fell. "We have made plenty of defences of your decisions and it, frankly, is not sustainable..." Here, I opened my mouth, and was preempted by a look and a hand, outstretched to say no. "You are going to walk back out there and do your job, live your role, properly, professionally and without complaint. Do you understand?"

I have always found it quite interesting how often we are asked whether we understand, when the real question is whether we will comply.

I stood without saying anything, lips pursed, head bowed to signify a posture of compliance, and left the office. This was the office of Ms Cally Windstrup. She was not in charge of the department within which I worked, her seat was much higher. However, I had been on her radar for quite some time. I had been known to question everything. Sometimes verbally. Sometimes with actions which 'reflect poorly on the company'. On one occasion, I was even told that I had questioned the morals of the company with my choice of attire. I couldn’t pretend that wasn't a satisfying moment.

The route from Cally Windstrup's office to my booth felt to be a well-trodden path, you could almost see the tracks of my Doc Martens in the soft carpet. I trudged through several departments, unnoticed by anyone. Each department here was comprised of: the aforementioned soft carpets, part of a scripted ‘office’ physical aesthetic; a bank of booths in which workers could carry out their daily tasks and the whirring tech of a machine at work. Inside each department's monstrous cavern of computers existed the reason I was here, the world how people now knew it: 'Net6', known to some by its name, known to most, nowadays as purely 'The Internet'. As I passed 'Intelligence', I gave a monitor a nudge. My least favourite department. I thought of them as 'spies with no eyes'.

The computers took up most of the space, and most of my time. A forest of bulky boxes rimmed with flashing lights and labelled buttons. Knowing which to press was now hardwired in my mainframe, though I probably couldn’t explain it.

I walked around this office on a ridiculously regular basis. There’s a phrase about familiarity where the claim is made that the action could be done blindfolded. I genuinely had. I’d zoomed around it on my wheeled desk chair once, only to find that, when I came back the next morning, it had been replaced with a mahogany chair with four solid legs. That didn’t bother me too much, considering they’d been replacing the wheely chair every day to cover up the fact I’d been picking out its stuffing. One morning, I’d dug around in a cupboard, found a megaphone and staged a lone revolution. The next day, even the room where the cupboard had been was gone. I’d entered this office in a short tartan one-piece one day which I’d sewn together from my dad’s old suits. That one got me an almost instant demand to Windstrup’s office, and I’m sure it didn’t help that I treated the walk that day as a catwalk.

The reason that this particular memory has stuck was not the request to Cally Windstrup's office, that was a regular jaunt. I had been tracking the changing shades of her nail varnish in my journal. They changed weekly. I would also not have remembered the trek back to my booth. I am surprisingly mobile for a Net6 employee. No, when I got back to my booth, and I eventually managed to find a position on the solid chair which was close to comfortable, I found a letter on my desk which was not typed. I remember this letter, its stiff manilla envelope and the blotted curve of its cursive. I remember its sharp corners and the heaviness which readjusted its sense of gravity as I rotated it in my hands. I don't, though, remember opening it.

title: Natural

genre: Light Sci-Fi

age range: YA

word count: 80,175

author name: Hannah Keogh

why your project is a good fit: It's new, it's fresh and it's taking a look at the way tech is heading in the future

the hook: Where is the world heading and is it healthy?

synopsis: Darcy, our young non-binary protagonist, wakes up in a room. As their memories return to them, they try to work out where they are and, more importantly, why. Only days ago, they had been administering the inner workings of the alternate reality technology that has come to dominate their world, 'The Net'.

Through corridors and rooms where experiences don't seem to add up, Darcy is allowed the freedom to experience life in a way they never have before, especially when they bump into Niccolo, a cynical young man who seems to have even less of an idea than Darcy themself. The pair embark on a journey through a slightly chaotic world, building a relationship that may not have been possible in the ruins of the world they had both been accustomed to.

A story in two parts, 'Natural' is a love letter to all that is human- the tiny things that add up to make life real.

target audience: young people who care about the world

your bio: I am an educator from the UK, currently living in California. I used to be a teacher and now I work in educational policy. I read a lot and write book reviews which I share on Instagram

platform: Instagram @hanreadslots

education: Master's level education in politics in the UK

experience: amateur writer

personality: ADHD extrovert

hobbies: reading, writing and outside exploration