Two

Yet again the bus ride assaults my senses. The ride was incredible smooth compared to what it used to be like driving these roads. Back when people had private vehicles the roads were bumpy and rough and the bus rides often left me with back aches and sore muscles from holding on to the bar to stay standing. But ever since private cars were outlawed and the roads repaved, you barely knew you were moving while riding the buses. No one was exactly surprised when the cars were banned, for a society that values efficiency; cars were far too... unorganised. A man wolf whistles at me as I get up to exit the bus, all the rules and guidelines in the world can’t stop idiots. I pull my jacket around me tighter and grip my coffee cup as I walk towards the door to the facility. I really do not know where I would be without coffee.

“Miss Taren Sian, just the woman I was hoping to see. Could I have a word?” Doctor Green bombards me the second I push open the large glass doors to the center.

“Yes sure what can I do for you?” I answer politely despite my growing anxiety about his tone. I would like to keep my job.

“I noticed it had been over a year since your mark fully developed and I can’t help but wonder why you haven’t put your name into the program yet.” Green pries as I stare at the gold symbol on the tile floors.

A golden world map with red lines running every which way served as the familiar symbol of our company. I expected this conversation today but I hoped I would at least be allowed to finish my coffee before it began.

“Yes, as I have told you before I am not at a point in my life where I wish to meet my match.” I explain in a very well-rehearsed monotone.

“But surely you do not wish to keep that special boy or girl waiting. Statistics say that they have most likely already signed up and are waiting for you.” The smug grin that crosses his features makes me want to wipe it off his face with my knuckles, or maybe burn it off with the hot liquid still in my tight grasp.

“Actually if they are perfect for me then odds are they haven’t…” with that I walk away, proud of myself for my witty, yet respectful remark.

“Taren, we still on for lunch today?” Luka calls to me from across the lab floor as I enter farther into the facility. A thumbs up serves as my answer as I don’t feel like disturbing all the workers with another scream. Luka obviously doesn’t have the same reservations as he yells back a time and place to meet as I hurry out of the room red faced. Once safely back at my desk two levels up I turn my computer back on and stare out at the floor. The whole facility is basically a big circle with all the offices looking out at the main lab area, or “the floor” as most workers call it. My job is unbelievable tedious. I am what we call an analyst; I review pictures of different people’s marks all day. When the computer finds more than one match for someone, all three pictures are sent to me and my colleagues to find the miniscule differences between the marks to find the true match. Sometimes the difference is nothing more and the tiniest black line that you have to zoom in almost 300x to find. So…tedious. I lean back in my chair to give my eyes a rest after about an hour of inspecting a man form Norway’s mark and find my fingers absentmindedly tracing the black ink on my wrist, the simple circle with eight small squares enclosed within it. I was lucky that my mark wasn’t complicated like some peoples.

 

“So did Meg stay at your place last night?” Luka asks me as we set our trays on our usual table. Lunch at Café posh, just down the street from work, used to be a once a week thing with Luka. When he married Meg it became an everyday sort of thing. As I got closer to Meg, My relationship with Luka followed.

“Yes, I thought she contacted you.” I say a little defensively. Luka may have been the one to have known Meg first, but I definitely know Meg better than her so called “soul mate.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Luka, he is a great guy and I have known him since we were in school together, but me and Meg just…click.

“Oh she did. I was just making conversation. You seem…off.” The blond runs his fingers through his immaculate gelled back hair as he speaks, his eyes boring holes in my skull. Luka has a way of looking at you that makes you feel totally vulnerable, like he is staring through you and knows all your deepest fears and secrets.

“Off?” I question his statement and focus on the pasta that coats my plate in front of me instead of looking at him any longer.

“Yes, off. Wrong, disorganised, not yourself…off.” He smirks and the gleam in his eyes irks me.

Shaking my head I answer. “Green cornered me this morning. Talking about signing up and how someone is waiting for me…all that s**t.”

“Did he…make any progress?” Luka knows he is walking on egg shells and could set me off at any moment so he lowers his tone.

“I can’t believe you Luka, seriously, progress?” I throw my fork onto the plate with a clatter. “You could at least pretend to support my decisions.”

“But I don’t support this decision Teran. You deserve to be happy.”

“I could be happy if everyone would stop pushing me towards diving head first into these self-indulgent social categories. Why am I the only one who wants to belong to myself and not someone else?” I push my chair back and grab my coat to go. Turning towards the door I hear Luka call my name from behind me but I don’t register it. Is that even my name? It sounds familiar but has no meaning to me anymore. Because I see him.

 

He stands in line on the other side of the Café, I notice him as he brushed his dark hair to the side. Shifting from side to side on his feet as his eyes studied the menu that hung on the wall. But me…I’m unable to tear my eyes away from him. My brain seems to cloud over with this impenetrable fog and I forget to breathe for what seemed like a life time. That’s him; that has to be. I start towards the boy that I am convinced will share my mark, determined to grab his wrist and show him what I already know. I’m half way across the restaurant when the redhead rears her ugly head in the face of our soon to be love. The petite woman who entered the picture ran up to this boy and firmly attached herself to his lips. I stop in my tracks fast enough to make the laws of physics question their own truth. My head fills with images of the ugly and violent acts I would perform on the girl who was kissing my soul mate, before I noticed his arms wrapping themselves around her waist. And while my attention was drawn to his arms I happened to notice the wrist wrap. I learned in history about back in the primitive ages people used to wear small metal rings on their finger to show that they were unavailable. Now-a-days people wrap thin clothes around their marks to signal that they had found their soul mate. Once you had your match your mark became…personal, something you didn’t show to just anyone. So in that moment, standing in the middle of my favorite café and being stared at by more than one curious person, I knew the boy on the other side of the room couldn’t be my match, because he already had his.