LOST IN CHROME

Examining the importance of community in humanity

BY MAHATHI RAJKUMAR

Bedazzling light surrounded her as she looked up at the sky.

The blackness dissipated. Opening her eyes, Lyra fell into shock. She wasn’t in her bedroom, with the transparent white curtains that let in the sun and viridian vines that wrapped around her bed frame. Instead, Lyra found herself on a white bed in a chrome room. There was a window, but there was no radiant sky looking back at her. All she saw was a desolate darkness.

She closed her eyes and thought of what happened right before this. She couldn’t remember. Only small glimpses of weeks past remained in her memory. She stood up,walked to the door and left the room.

She was shocked at what she saw. The strange place seemed to be endlessly large, with large pools, spacious kitchens and living spaces. The place seemed to have everything a person could want. But something was missing. Perhaps, the chrome walls. Or maybe, another human beside her, to share emotions and feelings. Days passed and soon grew to weeks. A sense of dread slowly grew upon her, as it had been a long time since she came to the spaceship, but still had no idea why she was there. As she moved through the days, Lyra felt increasingly dejected. She missed home: the warmth of the sun hitting her face, and the moments she had shared with others. She had never felt grateful for the sun and the people before it was all gone. Though she was surrounded by books, a gym, a pool, and a movie room, nothing could replace that void. Often, she didn’t have the motivation to leave her bed; instead, she lay there in the warmth of the comforter and remembered all the warm moments that she had shared until she fell back into the darkness of sleep. She woke up on tearsoaked pillows.

She often pondered upon why she was there. Why she was chosen to lose all that she loved. Why she couldn’t feel the warmth of life anymore. Maybe if she had done something different, maybe if she was kind to one more person. But there wasn’t any reason, really. It just had to be her.

As more time passed, years, then decades, Lyra still felt as lost as ever. Her emotions slowly drained away. All she felt was the suffocating monotony that finally matched her chrome surroundings. She didn’t feel happy after mastering her macaron recipe. She didn’t feel sad when she dropped the book she was reading into the pool. She was the void that surrounded her and kept her trapped. There was no return to the place she once called home, and she knew that.

Eventually she settled into a routine. And slowly, Lyra forgot who she was: where she came from, what she felt, what she could feel. She lost all aspects of her identity. She lost herself. She could do everything she used to. Yet she wasn’t human. Not anymore.

BY AASHI VENKAT

The night you were born, stars hung over the night sky, embedding diamonds into its black velvet. As my eyes lingered out into the darkness, focusing on the nothingness rather than your face staring up at me, all I felt was joy. Had I known how you would have turned out, maybe I could have changed something that night.

Five years later, you’re still unable to sing your alphabets. Instead, you look up at me, curiosity flooding your emerald green eyes and tears hanging onto the sides for dear life. Tears hanging on, sparkling like diamonds, as I shout at you.

“She’ll learn eventually,” I tell myself, forcing myself to believe this is true. You will learn. Eventually. And learn you did. By seven you had nailed it. But by seven, others were reading and writing, manipulating the 26 characters of the alphabet to create the word world they lived in. Whereas you, you were sitting alone on the slides, notepad in your hand. Your sketches looked more like scribbles; each line was hard and seemingly unintentional, whereas the final result seemed vague and uncertain.

You started writing too, writing your first essay at the ripe age of 19. By this point, others were writing research papers. Others were discovering new innovations, creating things once unheard of. Others were earning patents and winning prestigious awards. You were in your room, putting pencil to paper, drafting an argumentative essay comparing cats to dogs.

The summer sun beat hot on your face, dripping pearly drops down your forehead until they made their mark on your paper. You were on paragraph three of five, twirling the wooden pencil around your

As I sat in the waiting room, legs pacing and heart racing, I searched up what they were doing to you. I knew they’d be putting a synthetic chip in your head, and that it’d somehow make you come out of the procedure a smarter person. Something with the frontal lobe or temporal cortex. I mean, the terms were complicated. And I couldn’t comprehend the procedures. So all I could do was pray that you’d come out alive.

An hour later, I was called in to see you. At first I was guilty — there you were, lying down with bandages around your head and a glassy look in your eyes. It took you a few weeks to completely recover, at which point you spoke to everyone but me.