The Forever Ones (The Iduna Project) Read online

  Today’s preacher is a real narcissist called Atala – a girl with super shiny ringlets and a face like a sun kissed doll. Apparently her mother and father donors were big movie stars in their day and she never misses a chance to show off their holograms to any adoring follower. She’s already starting her sermon as I pass by, eyes down and concentrating on the lid of my smoothie cup. Out of the corner of my eye I see Junius in the back row of the Followers, his arms held up in the air, his body swaying as Atala starts to chant.

  “Old age is a tyrant, a black devil, a cloaked assassin who forbids,

  under pain of death, the beauty and pleasures of youth - but we say no more

  ugliness, grey hair, wrinkles, aches, pains, sagging bodies…”

  It’s always the same kind of sermon – some cheesy quotes from the library followed by a detailed and gruesome description of old age. I try to close my ears to it and think of the sad old woman in Lynette’s story when the Followers surge backwards and almost knock my drink out of my hands. I stumble forwards and feel someone touch the pocket of my jeans then in an instant they’re dancing forward again away from me.

  I’m confused and a bit shaken as I compose myself and hurry along towards the Med center, but as I straighten my shirt I’m shocked to find a small folded piece of paper stuck into my pocket. My name is scrawled across the front in writing I recognize as Junius’s. I turn back to look back at the followers but he doesn’t even glance back. He’s in the same trance dancing and chanting at Atala’s feet.

  I touch the paper again and feel a small thrill charging through me. Today will be a better day. I can feel it in my bones.

  2

  On the way to the Medi Centre I think about Junius. The smell of the coconut smoothie reminds me of the feel of his cheek next to mine and I realize with a jolt I’ve been drinking coconut drinks every day. I push the paper into the bottom of my back pocket. Nobody uses paper messages any more – it’s just something we did at the school as part of our handwriting crafts unit – and I don’t want anyone to find it. Secrets are hard to keep here since IdunaCorp likes everything open and above board. I’ll look at it later - somewhere far away from prying eyes.

  At the Medi Centre a new tech introduces herself as Borna and fills me in on her life story while she attaches me to the extractor unit and sucks 450 mils of blood up into the Apheresis machine where all my miraculously immortal stem cells will be skimmed off. I have no idea where they go or what they’re used for.

  “I used to sell lingerie at the Fantasy Store,” she says watching the rising stream of red. I can see the ends of her hair are pink – standard hair colour for Fantasy Workers. “I’m growing this out – should’ve cut it off now I’m doing a serious job. I studied every night for a month to pass the Med Tech exam. All day spent with lace panties and mesh boxers and all night with hematology textbooks. Before the Fantasy stint I was lifeguard at the Olympic Pool but some twelve year old brat drowned and they reassigned us after a stint in the Hypno Centre to erase the trauma of being an eye witness to death. It didn’t bother me really – he looked sort of peaceful floating face first in the water – bobbing along like a life-sized doll in the wave pool.”

  She releases my arm and her eyes dart around the cubicle. “Sorry – shouldn’t talk about death – I just get carried away sometimes. By the way I love your hair.”

  “S’okay,” I say, “ and thanks I like it too.” I hop off the stool and watch as she tinkers around with valves and stoppers, the tip of her tongue licking her lips in concentration.

  “All good until next cycle,” she says, passing a wand over my wrist tattoo. “They’ll let you know when.”

  She sprays my arm with sticky white stuff, then flicks a remote and I watch two metal doors close over the containers of my blood and there’s a whooshing sound as they’re sent somewhere for somebody I know nothing about.

  “Where does it go?” I say.

  “They don’t tell us that,” she says, biting her nails.

  “What do they tell you?”

  “Not much. Just how to use the machines.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  She turns her head from left to right and starts to look a bit edgy. “What’s with all the questions?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “Dunno – just wondered. Hey wanna backstage pass for Chale’s show today?”

  She brightens up right away. “Do I ever. He’s smoking hot – used to be a regular at the Fantasy Store with all kinds of cute girls. But he never looked at me.”

  I hand her a small silver band and she just about has a fit when she fastens it onto her wrist. “Now you’re guaranteed to meet him,” I say. “The pass guarantees at least one personalized photo op.”

  She does the darting movement with her head again and then leans in close. “I can tell you this much. When the blood transporter machine malfunctions – which it does quite often – some weird guy in a red and black uniform and a face mask drives up in a kind of armoured cart and collects the samples. Like clockwork just before supper time. I don’t know where he goes and I’ve never seen him anywhere else.”

  “Does he say anything?”

  “Nothing – just muscles his way in and we all stand back while he picks up the medi-pak. Two other people with weapons stand guard and then they all get back in the vehicle and drive away.”

  “Thanks for the info,” I say, thinking I’ve never seen any weapons in the compound – except in some of the virtual games we play.

  “Keep it to yourself,” she says, settling back onto her stool and beginning to chew her nails again.

  Chale and his band are setting up their stuff at the Fountain stage just outside the Rock Bar, a real throwback to the old days. Guitars in glass cases and rock posters plaster the walls. Lynette can’t leave her glass case but she says it sounds like something called the Hard Rock Café which she used to go to with her friends to eat quarter pound hamburgers, fries and salad with blue cheese dressing. Since there’s no meat in the Iduna Compound we have to make do with burgers made from black beans, mushrooms, lentils or sweet potatoes in a flax seed or spelt bun. I can’t complain though because The Rock Bar’s the closest I can get to real – when the music’s playing and everyone’s dancing and sweating close together I imagine it’s the same as those rock concerts from years back.

  Chale watches as I walk up to the bar and nods at me with wordless confidence. He’s a Keener so I guess you could say he’s younger than me but technically he isn’t – he’s nineteen too. His donor parents were both musicians – his father donor was Ray, a wild looking guy with waist length hair, a full beard and dark sunglasses and his mother donor is Tania, a pale, angelic looking woman with a bald head and a tight black sparkly dress. Their holograms are different from any I’ve seen because they actually sing. We – the juicers - were all at Chale’s place and he made us sit quiet when he put them on the table. As soon as their feet touched the wooden surface Ray took the guitar he was holding and started to strum it, then Tania began to sing a strange and haunting song with a voice so velvety I felt my throat thicken and my eyes begin to sting. The notes were long and strange and she sang in a language I couldn’t understand, but I loved it and couldn’t get it out of my head.

  “They knock me out every time I listen to them,” Chale said, flicking his braid back over his shoulder. “One day I’m gonna write the end of their song.”

  Now he turns back to setting up the equipment and I wonder if he did and if I’ll be able to listen to it without getting that sad feeling again. Things haven’t been the same for me since the Psych Centre. I don’t know what they did to me in there but I feel like I’ve forgotten lots of things from before – for example people who say they’re my friends are like strangers to me. They smile and say hi and try to get me to go party with them but I just draw a blank and then they go away thinking poor Paige, she’s lost it. Only Lynette’s stories seem real and vivid, living in my head like scenes from a lost world.


  Chale is very tall, wears black all the time and tames his hair into one long braid. Since he turned nineteen girls have flocked around him like bees to a honey pot, Lynette says. That’s what they used to say when there were real bees around but Lynette says there were problems with the bees even when she was outside.

  Chale thinks we have some kind of bond because we both got pierced on the same day and with the same three earrings in one ear.

  “Just like Ray’s earrings,” he said, his green eyes squinting as the laser needle poked his ear lobe.

  “And same as Johnny,” I said, enjoying the sharp laser sting after the weeks of flat tranquility in the Psych Centre.

  He sat up all excited. “Hey – do you think they knew each other? Maybe they were in the same band together.” New Forevers were known as Keeners since they were more enthusiastic than the long time ones who tended to get a bit jaded about life. That’s the only way you could tell the difference. “I mean isn’t that a possibility?”

  “I guess,” I said, wishing I could feel some of that Keener energy. “But Johnny was a writer.”

  He’d jumped up by that time almost knocking the piercer out of the way. “Well maybe he wrote songs for Ray and Tania,” he said with that wide, white smile. “I mean – that would be really cool – we could write some songs together.”

  “Maybe,” I said, feeling the cold, lumpy feeling in my gut that always came along when I was with an uber-happy person. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You don’t talk much,” he said, grinning. “But you’re still interesting and kind of mysterious.”

  I didn’t want to burst his bubble and tell him there was no mystery about me – I’m just a person who thinks too much – about the foggy haze of my past and the uncertainty of the future. I’m Paige the daydreamer who can tune out in the middle of a busy crowd. I must’ve inherited that from my dad since I read somewhere that most writers were introverts. But there is a small side of me that comes from my mother. Given the right situation I’ve been known to burst out from the haze and do impromptu somersault routines and I can balance on a railing with my eyes shut. That’s always good for a party trick.

  I work in the juice and smoothie section with two Forevers named Svein and Sven who’d found an instant bond in their names. Svein has a round pink and white face, blue, glassy eyes and a chin covered in red, fuzzy hair while Sven has large red ears, heavy brown bangs and eyes fringed with thick eyelashes.

  “Sleep late?” asks Sven, activating the veggie spray. All our herbs and veggies are grown on site in special enviro-cabinets. Only pristine, nutritious food is allowed in IDunaland.

  “Had to go to the Medi Centre,” I say, slipping behind the glass counter.

  “Cool,” says Svein sleepily. He doesn’t say much, probably because he’s always drinking AcaiBrew on the side. Too much of that stuff lulls you into a kind of dreamy half-sleep kind of existence. You don’t feel much, I’ve heard, and life goes by as if you’re walking through a thick fog.

  “Chale’s gonna start soon,” Sven says, “so we’d better get the fruit ready.”

  The slow rhythm of the chopping machine calms me down and takes my mind away from the note in my pocket. Every time I think of it I feel a little flutter. Some excitement – something unexpected for a change.

  “Vern’s disappeared,” says Sven and the thrill disappears. Vern is the other juicer that works here.

  “When?”

  “He’s vanished into the great blue yonder,” says Svein. “Left my place two nights ago and never made it home.”

  “You looked for him?” I say.

  “Everywhere,” says Sven. “Then I went to his place and there was a new Keener living there who said his name was Verne with an e.”

  People go missing every week from the compound and after every disappearance there’s a message from the CEO.

  “I guess we’ll be hearing about it soon then,” I say, listening to the distant sound of guitars tuning up.

  “D’you ever wonder when you’re gonna disappear?” says Svein, patting my pixie hair. “Just poof and you’re gone – vaporized – and you’ll never see our friendly faces again.”

  “I don’t think about it,” I say, busying myself again and pushing the blank, dark thoughts away.

  Just then there’s a loud, beeping sound as all the video screens go blue and the gold IDunaCorp logo snaps up. We’re all trained to stop whatever we’re doing and watch as a familiar face appears. Nobody’s met the real CEO but what we see on the screen is a perfect nineteen year old girl with shiny black hair cut in a short bob, scarlet lipstick and eyes like blue mirrors. It’s the same face each time but the hair and makeup varies. The voice is soft, hypnotic and deeper than any I’ve heard before. Could she be older? Does age sound different – richer?

  “Once again we must remember our Forever brother Vern who left the compound yesterday. Our sources tell us that Vern has been secretly plotting to escape and was tricked by criminals on the outside who offered him freedom but instead kidnapped and enslaved him as a Feeder. They will tear his body apart to access his cells and organs in order to achieve the immortality that you all take for granted.”

  The screen changes to a gruesome picture of a mangled up body – the stomach split open, innards bulging out like bloated sausages and wild red-eyed people feasting on the blood. When I see it I feel like blackness is about to suck me in again and I have to grab the wall to steady myself. I don’t want to go back to the Psych Centre.

  “You already have freedom – freedom from death, freedom from the agonies of old age and an eternity of perfect youth to pursue whatever you wish for. Do not keep secrets. Live for the moment secure in your safety and comfort. Forget about the constraints of time. IDunaCorp has given you that gift. Do not try to escape. Torture, pain and death lurk outside these walls just waiting for you to step out and be the next victim.” Then the screen clicks off and the music starts again.

  “I didn’t know he was planning anything,” says Svein in fuzzy confusion as he swigs a gulp of AcaiBrew.

  “He didn’t talk much,” says Sven polishing the counter with frantic energy.

  “I gotta get some more blueberries,” I say in a hurry to get away somewhere on my own so I can stop the sudden beating of my heart. I can’t believe all these disappearances are just a coincidence. Why would someone choose such a horrible fate?

  All the fruit is kept in refrigerated storage containers in the back room of the bar and if I squeeze in between them nobody can see me, besides it’s the only place without cameras. My teeth are chattering in the cold as I fumble for the note, afraid to read it because the anticipation will be gone. I open it and read.

  Vern didn’t escape. They sold him as a FEEDER to someone on the outside. We could be next. I have information. Come to the filter room in the swimming pool after supper.

  J.

  P.S Don’t drink any more smoothies.

  My whole body is shivering now and I’m not sure if cold or fear is causing it though I’m puzzled by the smoothie bit. I should probably destroy the message and I’m just about to shove it under the water tank when I hear footsteps. I push my way out from between the containers and find Sven standing there with an odd look on his face.

  “What’s up?” he says in a strange, hollow voice.

  I try to relax so the blood won’t rush to my cheeks. “Thought there was a leak so I went to check it,” I say, pushing past him. “Nothing to sweat about.”

  “No secrets,” he says, as if he’s rehearsed it many times. “Besides the band’s starting up.”

  “Cool,” I say, pushing the door open and stopping dead in my tracks as Chale launches into his first song, a haunting familiar melody that soars up into the fake blue ceiling.

  He’s finished Tania’s song.

  3

  Chale’s eyes are closed in perfect concentration as his voice soars to reach those haunting notes. The sweet, strange melody fills the air an
d everyone stops to listen – trying to catch the strange, foreign words. Even Svein and Sven have come out to watch. I have to hold onto the plastic palm tree because my head is swimming again – as if my whole body has lost its grasp on solid ground and I’m standing on water.

  I have no idea what the words mean but I imagine them travelling beyond the walls of our compound to the unknown places on the outside. Places I’ve dreamed of. Suddenly I’m filled with such a longing to break out and away from all this fake garbage I have to bite my hand to stop myself from shouting out.

  Chale’s cheeks are wet when he finishes the song. He cried all the way through it, and so have I – my eyes filling with tears. He’s probably longing for Ray and Tania and thinking how he’d loved to sit cross-legged on the floor while they sing their hearts out.

  Then the cheering and clapping explodes so loudly I’m afraid it’ll burst through the ceiling. Crowds rush towards the stage until it’s an island in a sea of bodies. Girls reach out their arms to grab a piece of Chale who stands there arms hanging limply at his side, head bowed in exhaustion.

  “This is gonna be some concert,” says Svein. “Betta bring out the brew.”

  “And extra cases of all fruits,” says Sven bustling back into the juice bar.

  I’m about to join him when I notice security cutting their way through the crowd. Only Forevers over six feet tall can join the squad and generally they stick pretty much to themselves. Hogan, a blond haired brute of six feet six has been the head security guy for as long as I can remember. He was made for the job. Right now his second in command is Sulia, a raven haired Amazon with bulging biceps. They’re followed by four other bullies who muscle their way through the tightly packed bodies until they reach the stage and grab Chale by the arms then drag him over the edge. The crowd jeers and boos as Chale struggles, his feet scraping along the ground. I lunge forward. I have to try and stop them but a strong hand clamps down hard on my shoulder. Svein is right behind me and when he speaks he’s lost some of his grogginess. “Don’t interfere,” he says, holding tight. “They’ll just take him somewhere until the crowd cools off.”