Align

By Alledria Hurt

On a future desert Earth, humans can only be one of three things: Ascended, Descended, or Middling. Brought up, like all children, as a Middling, Audacious Carr drives of her day of alignment when she was ascend and join her family aboard the space station, Faithful. When she fails the alignment process and is relegated to the undercity of Disaster, Audacious is devastated. But only then does her true story begin. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alledria Hurt
• Release date: Jan 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215805626

Alledria Hurt

Alledria Hurt is an African-American author of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction novels. She currently resides in beautiful Savannah, GA with her two cats. 

Book preview

1

Audi pulled her headphones off to better hear what was going on around her. She thought she heard the curfew bell. Sitting on the edge of the campus wall with her sketchpad in front of her, she didn’t want to miss curfew again. She’d already been dinged for it twice this week by getting too caught up in her drawing of the desolate landscape beyond the school. However she looked at it, the desert dunes called to her with their sheer emptiness. Not a living thing to be seen for miles. She turned back onto the campus, stowing her sketchbook as she moved. It was time to go in. Daylight might have been dangerous, but the night was outright deadly. Descended roamed freely at night and though the school was ostensibly safe ground, no one wanted to be a victim.

The Middling Academy housed all the remaining children of what was left of Earth’s population within its five square miles. Warehouse-like barracks kept them out of the weather and allowed them their few personal possessions while the classes for the world they would be entering were taught in what had once been old college buildings of faded and crumbling brick. The story of the world before didn’t interest most of them anymore. There was so little of that world left. A drone buzzed by, undoubtedly scouting the perimeter for those like her who had chosen not to go in after the evening meal.

She hurried across the campus, aware of the distinct difference of grass and gravel that made up their space. Grass was unheard of out in the lost areas around the campus. However, they tried to make this place as much like the once upon a time Earth as they could. Audi made it to Camp C, her warehouse, without running into anything that could get her into any trouble.

The bell had definitely been for curfew. People were trickling in through all the doors, getting ready to get into their beds. The camps were arranged by age. There was a story they had once been arranged by sex, but that wasn’t the way anymore. Audi could imagine why.

Cosmic, her blue-black hair kinky around her shoulders, dropped onto the end of Audi’s bunk.

Audacious. Cosmic was the only one who called her by her full first name. I wanna see what you drew.

Not now. It’s time for bed.

We can chat for a bit, Cosmic said. They won’t turn the lights out until they’ve counted us, again.

I know, Audi said. But still.

Oh, just show it to me.

To her credit, Cosmic didn’t snatch the sketchbook and begin leafing through it. They were close, but not that close. Instead, Audi sat down on her bed and opened the sketchbook to her most recent creation, a documentation of the dune structure not far off the south wall of the school—where the wind always seemed to be coming from. Cosmic suitably ohhed and ahhed. Though she hadn’t an artistic bone in her body, Cosmic enjoyed the classes they took on the art of what had once been. Audi preferred the landscape paintings over the paintings of people. They all seemed so plain and unrealistic. The supposed natural colors of hair and skin that had once been so popular were out of style now.

While Cosmic continued to look at the pictures, Audi changed into the simple brown shift the children wore at night. It no longer fit her well since it had been issued while she was still an adolescent and was less well-endowed, but she refused to get a new one. The invasive manner of being measured for any new clothes kept her from going there. Her body was her body and she wanted to keep it to herself for now.

The counting bot, as they called it, a spider-like thing that detected heat signatures crawled in through a high-up window and began scanning the room. When it had determined the appropriate number of heat signatures was in the giant room, it would turn out the lights. They would all be expected to go to bed at that point.

Cosmic changed into her own shift, which hung long off her thin frame, and she crawled into her bed at a diagonal from Audi’s. Audi stowed her sketchbook away in her bag and hung it on the end of her bed. You could only keep things if they were kept out of the way. No one really kept track of what you did or didn’t have as long as you didn’t allow it to become a distraction from lessons, or a mess that others would trip over. So far, Audi had done neither with her drawing habit, though pencils were getting harder to come by. It was an argument for switching to digital, but she preferred the feel of a pencil in her hand. She was just going to have to find more.

The counting bot must have found the right number because the lights doused, suddenly leaving them in the faint glow of what came through the windows. The broken moon and the far-off space station, Faithful, hung in the sky, giving off little bits of light.

Audi would drop off soon enough, but it wouldn’t be sooner than Cosmic, who seemed to be out instantly any time someone turned out the lights. That had made it quite interesting when they had damped the lights for anything being shown on the screens in the classroom.

Lying awake, staring at the bunk above her, Audi considered what they were to talk about the next day. They had been selected for orientation now that they were old enough. Tomorrow would be the first day of hearing about what life was like beyond the Academy. Dread and excitement ran through her in equal measures. Of course, no one stayed at the Academy forever. Once you were twenty, you were physiologically able to withstand the stress the nanotechnology put on your body and you could move into the next phase of life. Audi twisted one of her dreads close to the scalp.

Her mother and father were Ascended. They lived on Faithful. In her few interactions with them, she had learned they expected her to ascend as well. It would be the family together, they said. Perfection in their eyes. She fought off the urge to get up. She didn’t need to go to the bathroom, so it would just be to walk the perimeter of the room and try to calm her nerves.

Her parents.

Her father was a genetic engineer. He worked on the nanotechnology that had saved humanity from destruction and starvation several decades ago—when the Earth had been unable to truly support them anymore, leaving behind nothing but a desert wasteland across most of the landmasses. Her mother, an artist, sang to everyone and painted. That was where her artistic talent came in. Audacious Carr, their only child, had been at the Middling Academy since she was five, unlike most children, who were literally born on the Academy grounds and raised there. Her parents had kept her for several years on the space station. Her first birthday had been in zero G. Of course, she didn’t remember that, but her parents remembered. Whenever they communicated, they reminded her she was special.

Now she was nineteen, almost twenty, and they were probably preparing for her alignment. When she aligned, she would be given a new life and a new job and a new home. One couldn’t stay at the Academy once he or she aligned.

Audi swallowed over the lump in her throat and pressed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. Though she had spent her entire life preparing to leave, now that it was almost time, she wasn’t so sure. Now that it was time to begin orientation and hear about how the nanites would affect her body, she didn’t want to know. The filtered light of the night offered her no solace. She sat up in bed and hugged her legs to her chest.

There would be nothing here for her once she aligned. She would take her few things, what little she had accumulated across her short lifetime, and go on to bigger and better things. At least that was what the tapes said. Ascending was the ultimate goal.

Except.

Except there were those who didn’t ascend. They descended, becoming monsters and brutes. The same nanotechnology that offered increased humanity to some took away the humanity in others. Scores of people had been destroyed. Those who survived the transformation into a Descended were sequestered in an underearth colony called Disaster. Chucked away like human refuse.

If ascending was going to heaven, then descending was going to hell.

No one wanted to descend, but it was a possibility with every person who aligned.

Curling up on her side, in a position unsanctioned by their robot keepers, Audi tried to sleep. Dwelling on what was to come would do her no good. It would come whether she wanted it to or not.

2

The morning bell went off at sunrise so that the children could don their protective gear against the sun’s rays. Though a person could probably still stand in the sun for an hour or more without protection, those of the Academy were taught to keep their protective gear on at all times when the sun was out. Audi’s goggles tinted the world green as she slipped them on. Her headphones went under her hood and she covered every inch of her brown skin with an even browner robe. Then she slipped one arm in Cosmic’s with a smile no one could see through the face mask.

They were going to orientation. Their lives were slated to change.

The orientation building was the smallest on campus and required a DNA sample to enter. Audi had to pull off one of her gloves to present to the scanner, which pricked the end of one sensitive finger and then after a moment allowed her entry. Behind her were Cosmic and a young man they knew, Drag. The three of them hunched in the hallway together.

Those who were close to their alignment didn’t take the same classes as the younger children. At the end of your nineteenth year, you were moved to the orientation building so that you could be taught how to act with those who ascended or descended. There was tell they let an actual Descended in the building with you and you had to learn how to defend yourself against it. Of course, that was probably just a silly rumor.

A robot, tall with thin equipment attached at what appeared to be odd angles, swept toward them on rollers.

This way, it issued from its voice box. Cosmic giggled. Her favorite thing was robots. She planned to be one of their programmers one day, making them do all kinds of important things. It led the way down the bright hall to a classroom where a few others already sat.

Since their class was so small, Audi recognized everyone’s faces. They had been together in one way or another nearly their entire lives. They were all almost the same age. Soon they would all align. Not together, but separately. Mass alignments had stopped years earlier when a Descended had slaughtered those who stood with her. Now they aligned individually so that there was no chance of that happening again.

As Audi sat down, she realized there was a note for her on the pad on the desk. She stabbed a finger into the pad to light it up, and she let her eyes scroll across it. Ware, who was sitting another row behind her, had left her a note in her assigned seat.

Glad to see you made it -Ware.

A little bit of color rose in her cheeks. Ware and she had shared a consensual mouth kiss, but nothing more. He thought it was something and she wasn’t sure if it was. They had their entire lives ahead of them. Did she want to tie herself to someone just before her alignment? It seemed a little silly. Of course, things between humans often were.

The bot at the front of the room whistled at them for attention and she swiped away the message into the trash. If he wanted to talk, he could come and talk with her.

Today you begin your orientation for alignment, the bot said. Does anyone have any questions before we begin?

If it had been a human asking that question, Audi might have raised her hand, but knowing what she did about the subroutines of robots, she didn’t bother. It would only be able to tell her so much and none of it important. Another young woman, Mia, raised her hand.

What happens if we don’t ascend?

That was an easy question. If you didn’t ascend, you descended. If you descended, you were banished to the underearth colony of Disaster. Mia should have known that already, but the bot started into the much longer explanation of what happened to the body when it rejected the nanotechnology and descended to the baser instincts. Audi pulled out her sketchbook and set it on the desk. She wanted to be outside, sketching the earth and sky. It might have come in monotonous colors, but it was more interesting than this dry lecture. Others shifted in their seats as the lecture went on. That first question’s answer went on for thirteen minutes. By the time it ended, more than one person was rolling their eyes with boredom.

Are there any other questions?

When the thing heard silence for a few minutes, it started the official lecture.

You are aware that you are some of the few remaining children of the human race. Every history lesson began with that. Children were a rarity. Especially since everyone didn’t ascend and only the Ascended could bear children. Those were the facts. Descended, though most could stand to be around each other without ripping anyone limb from limb, were known to be infertile. Perhaps that was for the best. Though the nanotechnology was inherent in the mother at the time of birth, no one was born with nanites in their blood. The filtering process of the human body kept it from happening.

Audi put her face down on her sketchbook and let the words wash over her. If there was anything new in this, she hadn’t heard it yet. None of it mattered anyway. As soon as they aligned, they would all change. If they ascended, then they would become productive members of society. If they descended, they would become beasts, good for nothing.

Cosmic tapped her on the shoulder from her seat and indicated the tablet.

She had a new message.

How many days do you have left? -Cosmic

Of course, there was an official counter, but Audi had been keeping track on her own. She had three days left at the Academy. The orientation class would be over in two and then her family would collect her. She opened the message and typed her quick response.

Three days. -Audacious

Thinking about it, that wasn’t very long. She had only a limited number of days left in which she was largely left to her own devices. Her father would expect her to be sorted according to her aptitude for the work that he did. She had scored well in the sciences, but that wasn’t where her passion lay. Audi wanted to be a painter like her mother. Someone who brought joy to others through the work of their hands. The orientation drone stopped as if it had reached the end of the lecture and Audi looked at the time. They weren’t due to be out of class yet. Why was it stopping? Glancing up, she noticed a light flashing on the drone’s head. It beeped a few times before it intoned,

Audacious Carr, please report to the landing pad.

Getting those kinds of messages wasn’t completely unheard of, but to have it in the middle of orientation and to tell her to go to the landing pad, where it was strictly forbidden to go…well, Audi had questions. Lots of questions. The drone started up again where it had left off, talking about some form of genetic mutation that caused humans to become almost completely infertile. After the loss of the planet, their sudden loss of population also added to their near extinction. But it was again, common knowledge—they’d learned most of this in first year at age six. There was little reason to go over it again. Audi bagged her stuff and headed for the door. No one else’s name had been called. She was singled out. The door opened with a beep when she got near it and she went out into the hallway with her questions. The others would stay for a while yet. The class wasn’t slated to be over for at least another hour.

Her steps were a slow slog through the campus in the direction of the landing pad, the flat place where hovercars landed when they came to the campus. Most of the grounds were too bumpy for their use on the campus itself. However, that didn’t keep them from coming to the campus and then just summoning whomever they wanted to talk to. Her green-tinted goggles made everything appear growing, but not much really grew on the campus either. There was the sickly grass and the occasional tree, but nothing worth talking about.

When she reached the eastern side of campus, where the landing pad was, she quickened her step slightly. In the distance, she recognized the personal hovercar for Head Scientist Carr, her father. Had he come to see her or come to collect her? She didn’t know which. She hugged her bag a little tighter to her chest and moved across the distance between them.

Once they reached the edge of the landing pad, the occupants of the car got out. Though they wore the protective gear of being in the atmosphere, where the sun was practically toxic, she knew them without them removing their face plates. Her mother and father had come to the Middling Academy. She rushed to her mother and threw her arms around her, dropping her bag as she went.

Many of the children at the Academy didn’t really know their parents. Audacious Carr, a girl with a last name, knew exactly where she had come from. They had kept her until they were required to let her go at the age of five to join the others at the Academy. Ever since, there had been rumors of favoritism because she was the Carrs’ daughter, but it didn’t amount to much.

Everyone got into the car. The AI driver meant neither of the Carrs had to drive it, so they sat in the back with their daughter.

It’s almost your day, Sherri Carr said, removing her headgear. So soon it comes. Audi loved the sound of her mother’s voice. It sounded melodious and deep at the same time.

I know, Audi said, looking at them both. But why are you here? You didn’t come to collect me already?

No, her father, Jean, said with his usual no-nonsense stern demeanor so at odds with her mother’s. You’ll be collected in three days by the authorities for the station, same as any other with a birthday the same as yours.

No one has a birthday the same as hers, her mother interjected. That’s why she’s special.

Sherri, Jean admonished his wife. She’s not special. She’s our daughter, but that’s the same thing that can be said for any parent-child relationship.

Sherri sighed and then broke into a beatific smile before taking her daughter’s hands. I cannot wait to be able to show you all of the station. Faithful is so beautiful and you’ll love it there.

Audi blushed. She didn’t know how she would feel living on the station. It had been so long now. Fifteen years since the last time she was allowed to be there. Jean allowed himself to smile as well.

"You’ll be quite at home there, once