On our third date, I offered my arm at a right angle and she took it. We were walking through town and she motioned me over to a bench and we sat down. She said she wanted to tell me something and I could tell it was big because her voice cracked with emotion. That was the moment she told me she was a TRU-D. But I could tell that wasn’t all. It’s 2123, she said. And I’m 23 next Tuesday. It was her way of telling me she was born in 2100, a year after the TRU-D experiment was outlawed. Trudy Truax was the boss and had been at the helm of the experiment for years. She found a way of making it go ahead and she went to prison for it.
I bought Alice a silver necklace with an amber pendant for her birthday. Your Granddad once told me to do my best to hear beyond the spoken, to see the quality of light in another’s eyes. As Alice looked down at the small piece of amber at the end of the necklace I could see her hand shaking and that bit of advice rang in my ears. When she was caught up in high emotion, she always looked over my shoulder, and that’s what she did it that moment, but that’s always when I saw the light in her eyes the most.
When Alice was 29, her Mum wrote to me and asked whether I’d go and visit. The encryption of the message was high and had likely cost her more than she could afford. But measures like this were increasingly becoming part of everyday life for them. Alice and her Mum were having to move around a lot for Alice’s safety, so it was a big risk to reveal their address to someone they hadn’t seen in three years.
I knew I’d see her again. I always had a feeling the story wasn’t over. An unspoken dialogue continued through the memory of the way we looked at each other, the way we cared for each other. We were connected through all these unseen wires of friendship and love and understanding and respect that they were bound to pull us back together. It sounds like hippy rubbish but it’s true. It proved itself to be true.
After a month of peaceful marches in the north and some not-so peaceful ones in the south, Trudy Truax, having been released from prison, formally stepped down as CEO of TRU-D. The news made everyone’s heart beat a bit faster. It was chaos in the airport. A fight broke out at the departure gate when a man found out that three TRU-Ds would be on board. Calm was restored, but only just, and the flight went ahead. I bought a bunch of orange and yellow roses at the airport when I landed. I thought I had to fight myself out of there and I was almost certain I wouldn’t get a driver. But the sight of a man wearing a black suit and holding a bunch of flowers seemed to part the waves and I was able to flag someone down in seconds. I didn’t want to have to lie to the driver, but thankfully no questions were asked.
Alice’s Mum answered the door. She gave me a hug and whispered a thank you in my ear. The house was a two-up two-down mid-terrace. It was small but it was homely. I suspected the town had been built for refugees before a shift in policy sealed their fate and they were turfed out. Alice was standing in the middle of the living room. She remained rooted to the spot as I handed her the roses. She didn’t take them so I placed them on the coffee table as if that was its intended destination. She was wearing her amber necklace. I smiled and kissed her on the cheek. I’ll show you to your room, her Mum said, and I followed her upstairs. When I came back down, the flowers were perfectly arranged in a glass vase on the dining room table. I didn’t know how to stem the tide of building hostility towards TRU-Ds, let alone reverse it, but Alice did. And so that was the beginning of it: with me and Alice and her Mum at that dining room table.
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