"Waking Up"

I can still see my last dream. Fading very slowly, as the sun rises and invades my sight one last time. Almost as if I were still sleeping right now. I didn't want to wake up. I wish I could have slept forever. At least then my life would still be real.

But they told me, finally. I've known there was something wrong for a while now, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Memories suddenly slipping away, that used to haunt me for years. New memories of a life I had never known. All entering and leaving my mind at random. A malfunction. Who were they kidding? My whole life had been a malfunction. My youth had been a lie. I wasn't who I thought I was. I had never been born. I had never learned to walk. I had never stared at the ceiling late at night. I had never been a twelve year-old girl. I had never witnessed the fire that claimed my father.

My father.

He had been a lie too. Just another memory, placed inside my mind by them at my inception. That was how they controlled us. With memories. They called it the OverMind system, but "over mind" was a poor choice of words. It was all about what was inside. What you needed, to "think" you were just like everyone else. Even if you were like everyone else. It was what kept you stable. It was your conscience. It was your soul. But it had never belonged to me. It had been uploaded from a data unit. A data unit that I had never actually possessed.

But I had lived. Just a couple of years, but like they told me, I had done more in two years than most did in a lifetime. I had fought them, and won. And by winning, I had helped them find out what was going wrong with everyone. They thanked me and that made me smile. They thanked *me*. Moments like that made it hard for me to tell what was real and what had been an implant.

My brother had been real enough though. He sure seemed that way when they dragged him away, kicking and screaming. But I don't have a brother now, according to them. He's been deactivated. It's strange, that I don't feel sad. It's a relief actually, to know that I haven't lost anyone. What does make me sad, is that I never had anyone in the first place.

"Your usefulness is at an end," I heard one of them say. I had served my purpose, and now there wasn't a point to my existence. The others would carry on, until they were deemed no longer useful too. Or until they started to break down, like me. But even as they began the process to put me to sleep, I struggled against them. Like I had all my life. That made me smile again.