Detective Mertens - Personal Audio Journal. Entry 007.
Recorded privately. Not submitted for review.
Our boat struck land today.
When it did, I looked up to watch thick fog roll back as if by an invisible hand, revealing what I thought couldn’t exist. Color. Everywhere. Buildings painted in reds, greens, and blues filled my vision. Sunlight bounced off windows and spread over rooftops, a crown of photons on top of the city.
Then, I noticed them. Thousands of people. Some moved with purpose. Others strolled, unhurried, as if the State had never controlled their lives. Maybe it never had.
So this is where the rebellion lives.
Back in the State, I’d heard rumors about this place. Tales passed around by bored coworkers over shitty coffee. We treated them like fun fairy tales. We were wrong.
To my right, a woman coasted by on a bike, groceries in front and a toddler in the back. To my left, children raced across the street, laughing, while two men inspected a sunhat, judging its quality.
In my thirty-two years on Earth, I had never seen anything like this place. The sense of freedom was unbelievable. No cameras overhead. No one looked over their shoulders. No hushed voices. It felt strange and magnetic.
I stepped off the boat. The silver-armed people said nothing to me, only pointed up the hill and began walking. I followed, the painting still tucked under my right arm, a precious artifact I would guard with my life. Even in a place like this.
At the top sat a yellow building. It looked simple, forgettable. Like a town hall forty years aged. Modest and quiet. But the way people moved around it, you’d think it was a temple.
When I walked inside, people stood and nodded, smiling. At the center of the room, a youthful-looking woman with long silver hair sat cross-legged on a carpet. Her necklace of strange wooden carvings nearly brushed the floor.
I studied her. She felt ancient, as if she’d lived several lives. The same kind of ancient I saw in the woman who had painted the original. I wondered if they were related.
“Detective Mertens,” she said. “Nice to finally meet you.”
I held my breath. “How do you know who I am?”
She smiled gently, “We’ve been watching you for years. That crude sketch you found during your inspection wasn’t placed there by accident. You were chosen.”
“Chosen?” My voice cracked.
“Your curiosity. Your rank inside the State. You were the perfect conduit.”
I shifted. The rolled painting suddenly felt heavier in my arms. “So this was all just a way to get the painting? What if I had turned you in?”
“We knew you wouldn’t,” she said. “We needed you to, not deliver the painting, but to feel it. And you did. Now you understand.”
She was right. Dammit.
I set the canvas against the wall carefully. My hands shook like the criminals’ hands I had interrogated over the years. “Well… here it is.”
“You’re not done with it yet. You’re going to help us restore what the State erased. Emotion. Art. Humanity.”
“How?” I glanced down at my Vox-Coil. “You think I can take on the entire State with this?”
She laughed. “Not with weapons, but with truth. We don’t need a soldier. We need a signal.”
“You want me to go back there?”
“Yes,” she said carefully.
I looked at the painting, then at her. I was afraid. I wasn’t a hero. Or a rebel. Most of my life, I lived by the Chinese proverb: “The bird who sticks his head out gets shot.”
“You’ll enter State headquarters and broadcast to the world what they’ve lost through oppression, control, and fear,” she said.
“But I’m wanted. Cameras will spot me the second I step foot inside.”
“No. You won’t go back the way you came.” She turned to the painting. “You’ll enter through that.”
I didn’t speak. I just stared at the canvas, still rolled, leaning silently against the wall. Its frayed yellow edge pulsed in the dim light, like it was breathing. Like it was alive…because it was. Sort of. This was my door back into the State.
She stood. “And I’ll be going with you.”
That's what I remember. Detective Mertens. End entry. Destroy transmission.
