Tomorrow

         The day began as usual for Alithia, with the sounding of the great alarms calling for the factory workers. She didn’t need to get up that early, she really had nowhere to go seeing as she was confined to the temple grounds, but she always got up none the less. Their movements fascinated her; they looked like multi-color ants, coloring the grey streets of the city with their brightly colored uniforms. It looked like one of those wonderful paintings that the priests were always painting, especially with the light of the rising sun illuminating the ever-changing horizon. Great clouds of steam billowed out from the gigantic engines that powered the city’s forward movement, turned brilliant shades of gold and red by the rays of the sun, and turning the sky into a reflection of the ground below it.
         She wished that she could just look on that view forever, a dream always shattered by the coming of the coming of day and the shrill calling of Matron Eliza.
“Alithia,” she would always begin, “come down here immediately! Come down or I’ll flog you so hard you will wish you were a leper!”
         She always wished that she could respond, her airways aching to activate her long dormant vocal cords, but she knew that it was to no avail. No matter how hard she tried, the medicine keeping her alive would always keep her silent. So she instead stood up and walked quickly down the hall. The cold steel chilled her bare feet as she came down the hallway and the air was freezing, spurring her to a quicker pace and a larger step. Tapestry after tapestry depicting the old world hung from the walls, their elaborate weavings depicting the old warriors and gods, standing silent vigil over the equally silent girl, while the metallic walls mirrored her every move.
         Drifting down the hallway, she came down to the great foyer, and met her shrieking guardian. The Matron was a wiry woman, her skin clutching tightly to her old bones, with eyes that burned with old envy and pride.
         “What took you so long little worm? Were you trying to sing again?” she sneered.
         Looking at Eliza with a carefully blank face, she nodded in agreement. She found out long ago what would happen if you didn’t respond correctly.
         “Well you ended being lucky today, we can’t be having any bruises on that pretty face of yours for today’s ceremony. The Patriarch is coming today, and I’ll be damned if I lose a sale of a genetic goldmine like you.”
         Looking at the Matron with her ceramic face, Alithia suppressed her horror. She had watched as others were taken away from this place, only to find them “expended” on the occasional outings that the Matron brought her on.  She didn’t want to be filled with the city’s toxins, her wings stained black with their decay and her liver a lump of coal. She knew that was her destiny, the sacrifice made by her forbears in order to secure passage on the great ships fleeing the old world, and that her role as Purifier was a necessary one, but that didn’t make her any more willing to die in such a horrible way.
         “Now,” the Matron continued, “go and make yourself presentable. He will be here in one hour.”
         Nodding silently at the Matron, she walked quietly back up to her room and screamed silently into her pillow. She had to get out, had to get away. But her genetics were fighting against her, calmly telling her that it was her destiny, that until all of the filth had been purified from this city, she would absorb it. So she simply sat, struggling against her programming, and planned for a tomorrow she thought would never come.