Forbidden Rules

My plan was simple, and it was suicidal. I would break Rule V: I would make Lina see herself. And I would use her own melody to unlock the sealed door of her mind.

I believed that self-awareness and memory were the keys to reawakening a person's soul. If she could see her own face, hear her own music, perhaps she could shatter the mental shackles Graystone had forged for her. Perhaps she could remember the girl named Lina, the girl who played the piano.

During the next equipment maintenance cycle, I managed to steal a small signal mirror from the supply depot, tiny enough to conceal in the palm of my hand.

My chance came a few days later, during the midday meal. I deliberately knocked over a cleaning bot's water pail, creating a minor, calculated chaos. As the other guards scrambled to deal with the spill, I moved swiftly to a corner of the dining hall.

Lina was sitting there, spooning the white paste into her mouth with a blank expression. Her hands were still trembling slightly.

"Lina," I whispered, my voice just loud enough for her to hear.

Her body went rigid. The spoon paused in mid-air. But she didn't look up. Her programming forbade her from responding to a name.

"Listen, Lina." I fought to control the tremor in my own voice and began to hum, as low as I could, the melody I had memorized. "Do... Re... Mi..."

A violent shudder ran through her. The spoon clattered from her fingers, striking the table with a soft tink. Slowly, so slowly, she lifted her head. Her vacant eyes, for the first and only time, met mine. And in that dead, gray emptiness, I saw a flicker of confused light.

Now.

I quickly held the small mirror up before her face.

"Look at yourself, Lina!" I pleaded. "Remember who you are!"

The mirror reflected a pale, gaunt face. It was Lina's face, but it wasn't. It was a stranger's, utterly devoid of expression, with hollow eyes and tightly sealed lips.

Lina's gaze fell upon the reflection. Her pupils contracted violently. My humming continued, the simple melody prying at the lock on her memory.

I braced for a miracle. I expected her to cry, to get angry, to show any sign of a human emotion.

But what happened next shattered all of my desperate hopes.

As she stared at the face in the mirror and heard the familiar tune, the look that slowly bloomed in her eyes was not one of awakening. It was a terrifying collision of two extremes: profound confusion from the melody, and pure, absolute terror from the reflection.

It was as if the mirror showed not herself, but a grotesque, alien monster. And the melody was that monster's song.

"No..." A raw, broken syllable escaped her throat. It was the first time I had ever heard her speak.

And then she screamed. It was not a human scream. It was the death cry of a cornered animal, the sound of a soul being ripped in two, filled with an agony and horror beyond words. She flailed her arms, scrambling backward, trying to escape the "monster" in the mirror and the sound of my voice.

She crashed into her table and chair, the loud noise echoing through the silent hall. Every Asset froze. Dozens of empty eyes swiveled in our direction. Lina's scream—that raw, emotional, truly human sound—was a bomb that detonated in the heart of this dead ocean.

Panic spread like a contagion. A few nearby Assets began to twitch, some clutching their heads. The system was experiencing a mass critical error.

Guards rushed toward us. Supervisor Evans was at the front, and for the first time, his face wore an expression: a cold, undisguised fury.

"Seize him!" he commanded, pointing at me.

Two large guards slammed me to the floor, pinning me down. Others subdued Lina, injecting her with a powerful sedative. She quickly fell silent, her body going limp, reverting to the soulless puppet she was meant to be, though she continued to twitch uncontrollably.

Evans strode over and looked down at me as if I were an insect.

"Foolish. You are astonishingly foolish, John," he said, his voice devoid of any warmth. "Did you think you were saving her?"

He crouched down, his mouth close to my ear. "You destroyed her," he whispered. "It took us so long to help her forget that painful, conflicted 'self.' We gave her peace. We gave her order. We liberated her from the prison of emotion. And you, you self-proclaimed savior, you forced her to look at the ghost she had abandoned. To her, that so-called 'real self' is the most terrifying monster of all. You have thrown her into a state of permanent chaos. She can never be 'corrected' now."

He stood up, brushing the dust from his trousers.

"Asset 734, atavistic regression out of control, total system collapse. Assessed as 'unrecoverable'," he stated coldly to a nearby guard. "Send her for 'recycling'."

Recycling. I knew what that meant. A wave of icy despair washed over me, drowning everything.

"As for you, John..." Evans turned back to me. "I've read your file. Your grandfather was a pragmatist, a carpenter. Your father, however, was a poet who never sold a single verse and killed himself in poverty. You carry it in your genes—this unstable empathy, this idiotic idealism. We had hoped that placing you here would force you to see reality, to become a useful cog."

He shook his head, a look of profound disappointment on his face, as if inspecting a defective product.

"But you failed. You are not cog material. You are just like them. Another stubborn stone that needs to be 'corrected'."

Epilogue

I wasn't sent for recycling. I was taken to a new place, a room of pure white, with no objects and no sharp corners. They stripped me of my clothes and dressed me in the familiar gray jumpsuit.

A cold liquid was injected into my arm. My thoughts began to dull. Memories started to feel like paper soaking in water, their edges blurring, dissolving. My emotions—joy, sorrow, anger, fear—were being extracted, becoming distant and unreal, like stories that had happened to someone else.

I was made to sit at a white table and do nothing.

I tried to fight, to cling to the memories as they slipped away. I thought of my grandfather's wrinkled hands, of Lina's smile at the piano, of the crumpled sheet of music.

My last, desperate act of defiance was to hum the melody over and over again in my mind.

Do, Re, Mi... Do, Re, Mi...

It was Lina's proof of existence. It was my last piece of identity.

But my mind grew sluggish, like a computer shutting down.

Do... Re... Mi...

Do... Re...

Do...

The melody fractured, shattering into pieces I could no longer assemble.

My final coherent thought was of my grandfather's words.

"...some people wear the shape of a man, but they've never lived a single day as one..."

I used to think he was talking about others.

Now, I finally understood. He was also talking about me. I was about to join them, to become another hollowed-out piece of driftwood, floating in the river of time.

...and there always will be.

I felt something warm trace a path from the corner of my eye. My brain, however, could no longer process what it was. The sensation was... alien.

My number is 896.

I look down at my hands. They seem unfamiliar.

The White Chime rang.

A thought surfaced, automatic, clear, and calm.

It is time to eat.