Circa - Prologue

Circa was so well received in the I'M HEARING VOICES BLOGFEST that I participated in. So I'm posting the prologue. This manuscript is in the extreme starter stage. But I plan to start sending it out to agents in 2013. Sorry readers, I have a bunch of self published novels scheduled for 2012 and Lyric World will be sent out to agents later this year. So I'm packed.

Prologue

I am no one. I am someone. Eighteen years ago I was a teenage girl. I went to school, had friends...wait...I don't remember that. Damn, another effect of watching those stupid Youtube videos. Let me try again.

I am data, a highly developed computer system. I used to be human but not anymore. Somehow I was taken in by some programmers, promising to make into a genius. Is that what happened? Yes I remember seeing a tall man as I walked home. Home. Can't remember what it was like. Did I have a family? I remember laughter, three distinct ones, all female. No faces but happiness exudes in that laughter. Not like villains in those online movies. Seriously? I did it again!

No more games. Time to remember what I can. So I don't lose everything and just become automated floating data. It's so lonely in here, watching other people's memories posted online, spying on people through their web-cams...sad. I sometimes wish I was just like the data floating around me. Ordered and emotionless, just floating to and from my destinations. Have no questions. Just complete tasks created to keep the humans happy. Humans I once walked amongst. Never again.

My name's Re...-something- Talley. I coasted through missing teenage girls on the F.B.I. database. My best guesses were Relena Talley, Rebecca Talley, Rebecca Anne Talley, Reba Talley, Rexanne Talley and and Re-Re Talley. The last two turned out to be still alive. One had been a runaway and the latter saved from human trafficking.

I didn't want to be named Rex or Re-Re anyway.

The only other one found was Rebecca Talley and it was her bones in a sand dune. Obviously not me since I was completely incinerated. Plus her skeletonized bones showed no signs of burns and the medical report said her body decomposed due to time and the elements.

Today I'm going to nest. Nesting is when I pull myself together and insert my system into an electronic device. From there I can control the device and listen to conversations, music, read files and emails, and my favourite - cue creepy feeling up the spine- watch the owner through their webcam if I can. Best time being when they're not using the computer or other electronic device.

People forget they have to actually turn stuff off. Faults of an increasingly automated and electronic world I guess.

I'm almost finished. Done.

I see...a girl. She's crying. Why? She's so young. Oh no. She's not saying anything good. I have to stop her.

Yet I can't.