The Disparate One

Somewhere in the middle of the ocean floor lay a giant dome, shimmering with its significance of an engineering marvel. It was one of the best places in the facility to hold such a jaw-dropping view. With that, it was decided to be where the operations of the management would take place for the entire lifetime of the facility.

The dome wasn’t also just glowing, something was penetrating, shaking its thick glass panels and into the sheer pressure of the ocean. Music.

The new head of the management was, no doubt, in love with music, mostly orchestra, classic ones. He always did this during these hours of the day. Why? No one in the facility knew.

His beloved turntable connected to the speakers placed throughout within the dome played one of his favorite classical music composed by Antonio Vivaldi. Hearing this particularly made him feel more powerful and indestructible. Of course, he was. He was artificially immortal.

Standing in the middle of the contoured rows of podiums was Cal. He wore a gold cape that glided on the gold floor behind him together with a pair of glistening epaluatte, both of which had the logo of the facility engraved on them. His left metal fingers on his gold cane tapped in sync with the beat. His right hand grasped the glass of wine, which was, you guessed it, colored gold.

He stood straight in silence, letting himself indulge the music surrounding him, remembering the old days when he used to attend these types of events. He could still hear the claps of the audience, the comfortable seats, the atmosphere filled with the scent of old instruments that aroused him.

He had his eyes closed as he shifted his weight onto the cane. His entire gold body reflected everything around him as clear as day. His sharp ears, enough to cut through bones, were erected as he slightly tilted his head towards one of the speakers hung above.

The giant double-door cast out of two giant blocks of gold swung open noiselessly behind him. Another robot walked in with a tablet in his grasp. It was Cal’s newest assistant. Unlike Cal, he had no trace of a single speck of gold on his body. Not a single robot in the facility had one. Instead, his assistant was decorated with pure silver.

The assistant walked and stood behind Cal who stood tall while standing motionlessly. The assistant looked back to the door where two groups of guards stood next to it and shook their heads simultaneously at him. He gulped as he raised his right hand and tapped on Cal’s shoulder.

Immediately, Cal’s square eyes appeared on his face before turning around to his assistant with an utter look of disgust. Keeping three fingers on his wine, he waved the other two gently in the air, pausing the music.

Once silence took over, Cal glaringly raised a brow at the shorter one.

“S-section 8 have been dismantled as you requested, sir,” the assistant stuttered, fighting the urge to hide behind the tablet.

Cal remained his death stare as if lasers would start shooting out of his eyes. The assistant returned his eyes to the tablet and resumed reading.

“Facility Two reported suspicions of another rebellion, we received at least 8 trillion dollars of investment for the first quarter, and… we are just months away from completing Project New Age,” the assistant gave a tiny smile, but it did not affect.

Cal’s ears softened when he sighed away from the other’s gaze. He swirled the wine still in his hand before turning and walking down the slope, straight to the door. The assistant pursued and the guards at the door returned to their position in time when Cal passed them with his cape flowing.

“Anything else… necessary?” asked Cal as he walked straight across the hall where the offices of the management were adjacent to the dome.

“Division 49-73 has discovered a lot of things lately apparently,” said the assistant when they entered the main office, Cal’s room.

The room was bigger than the rest of the offices because it was reserved for the head management. The desk in the middle, casted out of gold, looked identical to the Resolute Desk. Behind the desk was a giant portrait of Cal, its frame was gold, showing all of his glory and authority, the same one they had been using throughout the facility for decades. On the left side was a minibar, always replenished with fresh and expensive bottles. Opposite it was just a sofa and some armchairs. The walls and the ceiling were decorated with carved wood.

“Oxford’s division?” Cal finally glanced over his shoulder while walking behind his desk, placing the glass of wine on the gold coaster and his cane on its holder fixed onto the wall below the portrait.

“Yes, sir. A-and… Oxford walked into that place again…”

Cal looked down at his assistant when he heard that statement.

“Hm… anything else?”

The assistant shook his head No. He was then simply asked to leave the office, and he did. He closed the door shut before walking away, leaving Cal alone in the room with his growing thoughts.

He tapped in the middle of the desk where tiny holograms formed, meanwhile he moved to the bar to grab the exact bottle of wine to refill his glass, even though he hadn’t drunk it for years since he took office.

The desk displayed Oxford’s division with his team’s profile circling the number 49-73 when Cal made his return. He popped off the cork while staring at Oxford’s profile, which opened without saying any command. That was because Cal was wirelessly connected to the mainframe of the facility in exchange for ease of use. There were times he regretted syncing himself though.

Cal waved his hand and fingers in the air, bringing up the latest surveillance of Oxford’s recent movements. He watched noiselessly when Oxford’s pin moved across the satellite image. Fortunately, not a single soul had found out about the microchip that acted as a GPS buried deep into their brains. It was designed to be compact and efficient while also being difficult to detect by any existing devices in the world.

“What are you doing there…” whispered Cal when Oxford’s pin approached the abandoned manufacturing plant kilometers away from New York City.

“What are you hiding…” Cal made the image larger, but he could only go far to the point where Oxford’s shadow was visible, going further would pixelized everything. Pathetic man-made satellites.

His square eyes turned into rectangles when Oxford’s pin stopped in a small area, making sudden movements in the middle of the building. He fast-forwarded to the end without seeing anything that caught his attention. It was almost the same movement as the previous ones. Enter the building, walking around, then leave.

Cal shook his head in confusion before pouring fresh wine onto the glass. Out of curiosity, he moved Oxford’s surveillance and profile away from his view and opened their document about their test subject.

A few pages appeared and scattered into the air, perfectly aligning themselves to one another. With only one glance, Cal froze in his posture when his eyes locked onto the test subject’s image.

Haven’t I seen that face before? he thought, seconds later, he was brought back to reality when he felt something showering on his feet. He stepped back and found the glass filled to the brim, overflowing to the desk and cascading to the floor, ruining his freshly waxed foot.

While walking to the bar to grab a towel, Ray’s image remained visible at the bottom right corner of his HUD. His actions slowed down as he scavenged his mind for any memory of seeing that face.

After wiping everything clean and pouring his glass until half empty into the sink, he returned to his desk where he started reading all of their discoveries, maybe something could ring a bell. He first read Chap’s laboratory results, then he moved on to Tria’s, nothing interesting shamefully. Then he got to Ony’s. This gave him the same ideas as theirs: was Ray used to be one of us?

His suspicion about this test subject grew disturbingly when he found surveillance footage from C-1. There was a camera near Ray’s quarter which conveniently had a clear sight of Oxford and Ray talking about an occurrence from P.G.P.

He carefully listened to Ray’s story about his time with Sion, the one with the glowing staff. While his voice was playing in the background, Cal hurriedly brought up another surveillance footage from one of the cameras in the P.G.P., searching for that specific moment. He turned the dial fast, turning the footage into a timelapse until his eyes caught two figures standing near the staff.

He let go of the dial and watched Ray and Sion interact near the glass case. He grabbed another holographic dial and turned it to zoom in, enough to see their faces. Then, his eyes widened when Ray mentioned to Oxford about the moment Sion pushed him which was at the exact time of the footage showing it.

Within seconds, he brought more footage of everyone’s interaction with Ray, he found a few that caught his interest. These were the moments when Sion pushed Ray, Oxford pushed Ray, Ray knowing all objects Oxford presented from the trolley, and Ray building the robot. What caught his attention was the time when Ray approached the staff.

Cal stared at Ray’s image once again before letting out a big sigh. He glanced at the condensing wine glass nearby.

“Why do you look so goddam familiar…” whispered Cal, moving his chair away from the desk to give himself more space.

This was the first time he became this curious ever since taking office. He knew he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes tonight if he didn’t find out who Ray looked like. He pressed his hands on the edge of the desk, fingers tapping, looking at the individual pictures and footage that had Ray in it.

Then he got an idea.

“Scan his face, see if someone matches him,” instructed Cal to the mainframe that immediately grouped all photos and footage to the side, scanned Ray’s face, and began comparing with millions of faces per second. This included everyone outside the facility.

Cal resumed pouring his attention to the hovering documents, reading the part where Oxford wrote Ray’s dream on his first night. Finally, something flicked. A flashback from years ago.

They were on the tarmac along with other members of the management. He wasn’t a part of them at the time, he was, in fact, an assistant to the previous head of management. They were boarding a custom-made, private jumbo jet in some airport. He could still remember what their voices were like. Some were raspy, old, and someone somehow young. Their entire bodies were blurry, like staring through a rushing current.

Once they were in the air, flying above the clouds, Cal was in his quarter, unpacking his stuff, when someone came to his door, it was the one who had a young voice.

“You really like traveling light, huh?” said the figure.

Cal nodded, then suddenly, he brought out a pistol and aimed it directly at the person, pressing the trigger many times. A few minutes later, he found himself in the cockpit blaring warnings, both pilots unconscious, then his vision was filled with a blaze and deafening explosions.

He shook his head, peeling himself from his memories when he heard the mainframe made a sound similar to the ones he heard from the cockpit.

“’No result’?” read Cal, giving a doubtful look.

He was frustrated from the moment he saw Ray’s image. He was confident he saw him in person before. He had to put in much more effort. This was one of the reasons why he regretted syncing himself, losing some of his memories from the past. He knew one of them had Ray in it.

He was about to commence another scan when someone knocked on his door. He waved his hand on it, unlocking it. His assistant returned. As usual, Cal gave a menacing look.

“Oxford requested to have a discussion with you, sir,” said the smaller robot.

“Is he at the dome?”

His assistant nodded.

“Alright. You may leave now,” replied Cal.

When he was alone again, Cal grabbed his drink and cane when he asked the mainframe if it included all archived profiles. It did not. Cal ordered a retry, but this time to include all archived profiles and non-profiles for a wider field. He left the mainframe to do its job when he left the office to head back to the dome where the mysterious man awaited. Minutes later, the mainframe pinged.

Two results.