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Olympia

 

It is the year 112 aE (after Earth) and I live in a perfect world. Today this world seems to me even more perfect because everywhere I go my friends and family have this expectant look on their faces.

 

We all prepare for my Fulfillment-Day. This day is the most important day in our lives. When we become 18 Olympia-turns old, as I will tomorrow, our avatars come to life and I will finally get my name. In the moment I am only a number in the system of Olympia. I am 53028.

Everything here has a number. Whether the places our beds are standing or the pills we take to stay healthy, everything that is used by us or our avatars is numbered. But back to my most important day and when I say “my” then I mean “my“, because it is only me who’s Fulfillment-Day is tomorrow. No one else’s. Well this is what my mother says, Athene. She says they want to keep the number of people living here low. Only one child per day may be born. Back to our ancestor’s days, when humanity lived on a far away and long ago planet called Earth - which I only know from 5D-pictures - there lived too many humans, my mother said, so that this long ago world collapsed and just a few survived. Only by luck and the knowledge of the Big our ancestors were rescued and brought to Olympia. Those Big are the only ones with two avatars for themselves. One they got like normal on their Fulfillment-Day but the other one they earned for their competencies and inventions as greatest possible honor by their masters. The old masters pass along their second avatars to their trainees, so that the trainee can pass along his own avatar to his trainee, when he is an old master himself.

My father Poseidon earned this honor and my older brother Hercules is a trainee for three Olympia-turns now. If you are one of the Big you get the right to do whatever you intent to, but you also have burdensome duties. They are the only ones to protect the Rome and the only to legislate. Nobody ever doubts the laws because our avatars only have the purest of our personality natures. Negative feelings and thoughts are as strange to them, as breathing is for a fish.

I hope the avatar I get tomorrow is alike my brothers because it has always been a dream to me, to become a master of my own. But I also think that is the dream of all Olympian children as we all want to have two avatars for ourselves. Even the look of our avatar is a mirror of our best attributes. A kind of perfect copy our self’s…This way I am puzzling over my new me since days. I hope my new avatar has straight hair and not the shaggy brown locks I own. And I really hope he is a little taller than my not-so-perfect self.

I jolt myself out of my thoughts, as I stub my toe against the metal gate of Morpheus’ island. Without knowing it my legs had let me in direction of the dream-places, where we put our bodies to sleep and refill our avatar’s energy. Like every Olympian I have a permanent dream-place with the number 53PA33112K2. The PA stands for Poseidon and Athene, K2 for their second child and 53 is the beginning of my number and 33112 the date of my Fulfillment-Day.

Meanwhile I have found my chip in the deep of my trousers’ pocket and press it at the sensor. The gate opens and I enter. Just a blink of an eye later Hermes approaches with his avatar. Nearly one Olympia-turn ago he had his Fulfillment-Day and since then he was the watcher of the gate. I don’t like him because he thinks that makes him worth more than me. After explaining him for ages what I did and why I arrived so late –only 25 units of time after the days begin – I am allowed to pass through a second gate and finally I enter the entrance hall of Morpheus’ island.

The entrance hall is a breathtaking sight and every day I pause for a moment. All of the hall’s four sides are made of glass and due to the fact that Morpheus‘island is an actual island, I can see nothing else than never ending emptiness and the supernal light of the six moons, that circle around Olympia. Four of the six moons I already visited with my brother and I could spend infinite time to watch the eternity of space.
I turn away from this sight and walk to the Air Board Station to fly to my dream-place which is located in the seventh High. On my way up I see many people already dreaming, who look like they would randomly hover in the air. Arrived upstairs I park the Air Board directly in front of my dream-place, a magnetic field hidden in the level.

While my thoughts turn back to the upcoming Fulfillment-Day I feel that everywhere around me the sleeping gas is sprayed and I drift off to my first dream.

In the morning I wake up from my dreams earlier than I normally do and feel strengthened and recuperated. Finally I am ready for my Avatar and a thrill of anticipation hits me. I fly my Air Board down to the entrance hall where my whole family and all of their avatars are waiting for me already. It is a big honor that my physical parents have come in person. Normally only the avatars appear to communicate with me, while my family members stay in their dream-places. The avatars then act as autonomous human beings in the names of their owners while their corporeal bodies stay permanently dreaming through the help of the sleeping gas. The gas also gives them anything they need to stay alive. Only with their lives and thoughts avatar and human are connected but this prospect does not frighten me. My avatar will be a part of me.

But today, on this day of mine, everything is different. Together we leave Morpheus' island and muster up at the Olymp again, the place of Fulfillment.

As the ceremony starts I am a little disappointed: without any pomp I get placed in front of a scanner which seems to register everything of me, even my thoughts and feelings. Afterwards a test is following which shall determine the maximum of my brainpower. Finally the part everyone fears the most on his or her Fulfillment Day expects me. Another appliance, the avatarisator, bottles me up with his cold metal arms and comes up with another metal item to removes a piece of skin of my forehead quickly and painfully. I make an odd noise because I have never been hurt before. Then I observe the red liquid running down between my eyes. I am fascinated. Never in my life have I seen blood before because injuries or violence do not exist in Olympia. Our world is the most secure world ever known, my father always says. Someone hands me a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding and I press it on the wound. Of course we also have a lot more efficient medicament which would make the wound disappear after a few seconds, but this scar shall become permanent to sign me as a human being with an avatar.

Now, the high speed computer starts to work, to calculate and to create an avatar fitting me. Normally this takes six to eight units of time and therefore the celebration already begins. To honor me we eat real food today instead of our casual tablets. Only because of my family’s prestige we are able to afford such a luxury and everyone is in best mood, while they eat pie, fresh vegetables and small cakes. More and more units of time are passing and I start to be anxiously. I have heard of cases where the generation of the avatar had taken longer than unusual. This sometimes happened when the person’s talents are very unevenly spread or certain characteristics are not present enough to become a good member of our community later in time. Never in history had a Fulfillment-Day taken longer than ten units of time.

In the eleventh unit of time my nerves are quite frayed. Meanwhile my parents have left to watch the computer’s work while Hercules speculates, which of my characteristics could be too low developed.

In the twelfth unit of time even Hercules keeps quiet and my parents return with an inscrutable look on their faces. They all stare at me for long. Then the time has come. Accompanied by my immediate family I walk to a separate area and keep pressing the piece of cloth on my forehead. Even if my parents have seen the calculation process, they know as little as I do about what my avatar will be like. In front of the 5D-printer a sensor is installed, on which I shall now hold my chip to get to know the result. All follow my doing with their eyes, either with an expectant or concerned look on their faces and I need a moment to collect my thoughts. Then I press my wrist against the sensor and we all hold our breath and wait taut on the 5D-product that will live my life from now on.

The result chokes, blurs in front of my eyes and sharpens again; blurs one more time and I still can’t breathe. I hear the others make confused and a little anxious noises and my own mother backs away from me. There is no avatar, no perfect self of me. Only one sentence, black on red written on the monitor: “No matching avatar found.”

 

 

 




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