Prompt used: 8. While exploring a closed-off area of the city, you learn a little bit of how life used to be in decades and centuries past. 

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The lights were blinding. I counted the seconds, trying to pierce through the fog of shock which settled deep in my mind.

A large, rectangular speaker flashed red, and a mechanical voice spoke. "Recording. It is the Official Year of 2010. Sitting in the isolation room is Larina Narmielle. Alright, let's start with something easy. What was your early life like?"

I frowned. Where were they going with this?

"Miss Narmielle?"

I nodded.

"I remember, years ago when my sister and I had all the time in the world to play. We would sneak into the little hidey holes in the playground, imagining that we were participating in some grand adventure. I never thought things would fall apart like this."

Silence.

I gazed at the cold, metallic walls and waited for the person behind the mechanical voice to think up their next question.

"When did you think it all fell apart?"

I turned my head, shifting my body in the uncomfortable, black, plastic chair. "What do you mean?"

"What happened to make you want to sneak out to that place?"

I looked down, scrutinising my worn-out shoes. What happened? It was obvious. My sister was the root cause. What happened to her created a catalyst for my actions. Yet, despite this thought, my mouth moved of its own accord.

"I think it really started when my parents disappeared."

Another moment of silence.

I frowned. Why did I say that? I looked down at my palms, calloused and cracked. My mind swirled through recent memories and then to the past.

It was another day. I was about twelve, just old enough to understand the bare bones of the situation. I remembered waking up, feeling as if the whole world just tilted on its axis. I remember sitting up, doing my morning routine, when my sister burst into my room.

She looked frantic, brown eyes wild with panic. Then she cried. I walked towards her, reaching out, holding onto her cold, shaking form. It wouldn't have been longer than a few minutes; time seemed to slow down at that point.

I remember almost not registering the trembling whispered words from my sister's lips.

Our parents were gone.

Funnily enough, confusion was what entered my mind first. Before this incident, we were a happy family. There were, of course, some times of disagreement but those times when we smiled in the sun and celebrated small achievements. We were far from a perfect family, but we were happy. It just didn't make sense.

I think that was what got to my sister.

"What happened afterwards?"

I closed my eyes.

"Silence. It was like that for a while. We didn't really talk much and just tried to do our best to live, but-"

"But?"

I exhaled. "But I guess we couldn't ignore reality. I think it was about a month into the disappearance when my sister began looking into any explanation. Of course, we could not believe they would just walk away without a trace, but I think she got obsessive."

I opened my eyes and nodded to myself. Yes, April 2000 was when I first heard of The Central Complex.

I was halfway through my first midterms. I was busy, but I still noticed my sister leaving her room less and less. The only reason she left was to work. I was all alone. Then, like the day she burst into my room announcing the disappearance, she opened the door with an energetic push.

I turned around, taking in the dark circles under her eyes and the half-crazed smile she had splitting across her face.

"I found it," she said.

"Found what?"

My sister looked at me dead in the eye. "I discovered a way to bring them back."

After that, she disappeared for a few days.

There was a loud, high-pitched whine, shoving my thoughts from the past to the present. The red light of the right rectangular speaker no longer flashed. Instead, the small, circular speaker on the wall shone a continuous blue.

A gruff voice spoke. "If this was about your sister, how did you become involved in all this?"

I smiled wryly. "My sister changed again. I assume she tried to look for that place. She disappeared for a few days, you see? When she came back, she became...strange. Sometimes she was snappy; other times, she tried taking me out on all sorts of trips around the city. We visited the scenic sights like tourists on their first visit to a new country."

I still remember that desperate smile lit up by the illumination of the fireworks. We were happy but not relaxed. There was an oppressive air of something looming over our shoulders. There were times when she would disappear. Then, she would come back, shut herself in, and take me out on scenic trips again.

I never really interfered or tried looking into what exactly held her thoughts hostage. I guess I just wanted to pretend that everything was fine.

"Miss Narmielle, you didn't answer the question."

I nodded. "Sorry. As I said, we visited all parts of the city. It was like that for nearly seven years, and then she disappeared too. There was a note. Apparently, she couldn't take it. It was then I decided to take my own actions."

At that point, I learned that days that felt wrong were wrong. Something always happened. This time, my sister decided to disappear on the eve of the Official Year of 2007. This time, I couldn't pretend. Not anymore.

I clenched my fist, swallowing down the residual wisps of disbelief and betrayal. I remembered my shaking cold hands as I read through the note for the fifth time. I remembered sobbing to myself in the dead of night. It took me a week to gather myself together.

At first, I was at a loss, but then I saw her computer.

I scoured through her search history and found it. It was bookmarked, a cheap free site template with an old city map. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the red circle at the corner of the page.

Central Complex - a place of miracles.

The second thing that drew my eye was the date. It was dated March 18th 2459.

"Access to The Central Complex is not possible with 2010 transport technology. So how did you even enter that place?"

I blinked. "I assumed my sister had already found a way. She had some shady sites in her search history, and I'm not surprised if she acquired stuff from there."

The computer was not the only thing I dug through. I found a box I gifted her a while back to store sentimental items and saw something strange. It was a simple, metallic bracelet but had glowing blue lines pulsating on the surface. It was something out of a sci-fi novel.

With that box in my hand, I called a taxi to drop me off at the nearest street. I almost regretted it. Faded police tape closed off the road. Beyond it was a dark and narrow space, lined with stacks upon stacks of little buildings cluttered onto one another. Sparking wires connected them all in a weird web. I looked at my map and back at the street. This was the only way in.

The first weird thing was when the box began shining blue. I opened it and watched as the bracelet morphed into a ball with four spikey legs. I had to stop myself from dropping the box and running away. I had to remember my vow to uncover the mystery of my parent's disappearance and what exactly drove my sister to do what she did.

"And that's how you tunnelled through the Underweb? You used an old access key?"

"Yes"

I remembered following the little thing through the street and watching with disbelief as it stopped at a brick wall. It tapped on it, dissolving it in a flurry of zeroes and ones. It was then I formed the belief that I was either going crazy or living in some kind of simulation.

I was partially correct in that assumption.

A smooth, white path made itself out of the curtains of zeroes and ones. There were many intersecting paths above and below me, but the thing only scurried forward. After some time, we reached a large, flat intersection, and that's when I stopped.

I could only describe the scene as a digital land of the dead. Spectres of people glitched in and out of the intersection. Some faded figures dissolved in a shimmer of RGB, while others just gradually disappeared.

Floating above the intersection was a large, flat disk.

The thing flattened and drifted upwards. Once level with the disk, it reached out with its spindly legs and, upon contact, condensed the disk into a tiny point in space. After a second, it expanded into something that looked like a rip in space.

Electric rings of blue circled around the rip, and beyond it was a dark, desolate room. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. Pieces of glass littered the floor and broken wires brushed across the floor.

With a deep breath, I stepped out.

"Don't you realise that, by calling us, you have only two choices? You can either opt to be erased or have your memory wiped."

I blinked, attention focused on the present. Then I nodded. "I understand."

I walked around for a bit, realising that something was off. The whole place was dusty, but nothing happened as I walked into the room. No thick plumes of dust nor any sounds of glass crunching beneath my feet. I caught a glimpse of myself, and that face that stared back wasn't mine.

Wrinkles lined themselves across my skin, with bright blue eyes staring back. I then..seemed to glitch for a second, and I think that was when it dawned on me. The stacks of boxes around the room were servers, and that image of whoever this person was, was a hologram.

Some were off, and others were on, flashing and humming. I focused on the scene outside the window and remembered everything.

Though the sky was cloudy, memories that stirred deep inside indicated that it was once a boiling blood red. Forests surrounded skeletons of metal but the image burned into my brain was a cruel artificial hand tearing at the sky.

The air was barely breathable. Those who sucked in a breath of unfiltered air had their lungs burned in less than a minute. The last human effort was that of the last resort. Those that were deemed necessary downloaded themselves into servers located around the world. The rest were chosen by lottery. The process was not perfect, but we still retained our sense of self.

At least for a while.

At first, people walked in their ideal images of themselves. The old were young again, and the youthful retained their looks. However, after a few decades, people gradually became mad. Murders became weekly, and suicide rates were on the rise. Yet, despite that, no one died. We were both convinced by our own immortality while fearing an inevitable end. After all, the sun would swallow the earth after a few billion years.

It was then that the admins decided for everyone to forget.

"Why did you come to us? You could have returned to your normal life, and we would have been none the wiser."

I smiled. Normal? After all that?

Once I saw myself, I discovered who I was. I was a digital engineer, and so was my sister. Perhaps, it was for that reason that made me fear the servers the most.

I remembered taking a closer look at each server, watching the lights flicker. I then stopped at a silent server. It had no lights, and no humming emanated from the box. Somehow, I knew that was where the data of my parents were stored. They did not go missing because of some crazy conspiracy; they disappeared because the server, after hundreds of years, finally broke down.

We would end before the sun would even begin to expand.

Every functioning server was gradually building errors. That was what forced them to shut down in the first place. It might be the next minute or the next century, but I too, would disappear.

Suddenly, my sister's actions made so much more sense. I understood the silent desperation behind her smile every time we went on a trip.

The knowledge of what happened before exhausted me to the core. I wanted to rest and not feel that burden. Yet, at the same time, the more recent memories urged me to live.

I shook my head. A normal life, after knowing all that? "I can't live like that."

My mind went back to my sister. "Though I have a question."

"Go on."

I clenched my fist. "Did my sister contact you?"

There was another moment of silence.

"Yes."

I took a deep breath. "Why did she want to be erased?"

"This wasn't her first time finding out. Your sister sought us out to forget four times over several years. Each time, she asked to forget, but the last time, she asked to disappear."

I closed my eyes, pushing down the sudden flash of pain. "Why didn't you stop her?"

"We administrators only have limited power. We can help someone forget or erase their data, but we can't look into a person's memories. We can't control them either."

I nodded. Truthfully, I was not surprised. My sister was always curious.

After that, there was a beep. "Have you decided?"

I nodded. Opening my eyes, I saw the image of myself running back to the portal, shaking. I saw myself staring at the faceless glitches before gathering my scattered thoughts. I had resolved to contact the admins. By then, the portal had closed, and the metallic thing became just an ordinary bracelet.

Focusing back on the present, I looked up at the circular speaker. "Before we get to that, can I ask you one last question?"

The light flashed. "Sure."

I looked down, unsuccessfully holding back tears. My chest tightened.

"How do you deal with this burden? How can you bear the war of wanting to live and having enough? How can you make people forget or disappear while resolving to remember?"

There was silence.

"We don't. I'm one of the last remaining administrators. At this point, I'm just waiting for the end."

I turned my gaze upwards, feeling the tears fall to the side of my face. My sister was doomed to repeat her discovery, my parents disappeared without even knowing what happened to them, and I trailed after them, dragging myself in.

I closed my eyes.

"Go ahead," I whispered. "Let me forget."

I will live, if not for myself, then for them.

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Word Count: 2477