The Glass Eye

The small red dot blinked above the subway door. One beat. Another. Slow. Relentless.

My jaw was so clenched my temples ached. I looked down at the screen embedded in my forearm. 942. Green. I swallowed, my throat dry. Everything was fine. I was invisible. I was within the lines.

In Car 4, Line B, only the metallic scraping of the wheels could be heard. No one spoke. To speak was to breathe too loudly. It was to attract the attention of the microphones hidden in the ventilation grilles. My hands were clammy, buried deep in my pockets. I tried not to look left or right. Stare into the void. Keep my face smooth. Show nothing. Above all, feel nothing.

The evil eye. That's what my grandmother called bad luck. Today, it's made of silicon and glass. It's everywhere. It scrutinizes the sweat on my forehead, the dilation of my pupils when I pass a poster, the micro-hesitation in my step. It knows when I'm scared. And I'm always scared.

I grew up with this cold knot in my stomach. The fear of making one gesture too many, one wrong word. The System is my mother, my father, my jailer. It dictates everything to me, and in return, it lets me live. But to live like this is to constantly hold your breath. It's walking on a layer of ice so thin you hear it crack with every step. If I slip, if the Eye judges me non-compliant, it's the fall. The void. Exclusion. Asphyxiation. I cling to my 942 like a drowning man to a buoy, terrified that the icy water of anonymity will close over me.

The train braked with a screeching sound.

In front of me, an old man in a threadbare coat swayed. A clear, metallic sound echoed on the linoleum. Coins. Physical currency. Forbidden for three years.

The silence in the car suddenly became sticky, suffocating.

My stomach knotted. Acid rose in my esophagus. I felt the peripheral glances of the other passengers freeze. No one moved. Air was scarce. To help this man was to touch the plague. It was immediate algorithmic infection. My 942 would collapse. I would lose my apartment, my rations.

The old man scraped the floor with his dirty nails, breathing wheezily, trembling all over as he searched for his coins.

I looked up. The red dot of the camera. It was fixed on me. It was recording my blood pressure, the immobility of my muscles. It was waiting.

Thirty-five years I'd been swallowing my bile. Thirty-five years I'd let others die to save my own skin.

And suddenly, my fingers moved. All by themselves. A spasm. A foolish, uncontrollable reflex.

I bent down. Blood pounded in my temples with the force of a hammer. My hand closed over a cold coin. I held it out to him.

Our eyes met. His eyes were wide, dilated by absolute terror. He knew. I knew.

I straightened up, almost stumbling. The train started again. I felt nauseous. My legs were like cotton. What had I done? Damn it, what had I done? The Eye had seen everything. I was hot, terribly hot under my coat. Sweat ran down my spine.

Bzzzt.

The jolt in my wrist made me jump, like an electric burn.

I didn't dare look. I closed my eyes, praying, silently pleading. Please, not this.

I lowered my head.

Index: 815. Status: Yellow.

The air left my lungs in a rush. My knees buckled. It was over. The gear. The curse.

Arriving at the office, the security gate hesitated. Three seconds. Three seconds where I stood there, breathless, feeling my colleagues' gazes quickly turn away. I was contagious. In the cafeteria, the machine spat out an insipid block of nutrient paste. I tried to swallow it, but my throat was constricted, tight as a vice. I half-vomited in the restroom, hands clutching the sink, forehead covered in cold sweat.

That evening, in my apartment, the temperature had dropped. Twenty degrees. I shivered, wrapped in a blanket, curled up on the sofa. I stared at the black lens in the corner of the ceiling. It didn't blink. It absorbed.

I began to tremble. An uncontrollable tremor that made my teeth chatter. I wanted to cry, to scream, to crawl to the camera and beg it to forgive me. Take me back. Tell me what to do. I'll do anything. I'll smile. I'll denounce my neighbors. Anything. The terror of exclusion, of that icy, nameless 'outside,' gnawed at my bones.

The next day, I dragged myself through the streets like a hunted animal. I forced my lips into an obscene smile before each lens. I felt my facial muscles twitch with fatigue. In front of an advertisement, I widened my eyes until they burned, mimicking ecstasy. I bought books on “Algorithmic Solidarity,” my hands trembling so much that I dropped my card on the counter. I was pathetic. A pleading wreck.

But the machine smells fear. It detects sweat, erratic heart rate, lies.

At noon, my wrist burned again.

Index: 680. Status: Orange.

My account blocked. My transport pass deactivated.

I walked home, in a driving rain that chilled my clothes. I walked with my head hunched into my shoulders, fleeing the giant screens that screamed their synthetic joy at me. Every glance exchanged was a dagger. I was a pariah. A walking corpse on borrowed time.

The third day, the dismissal notice arrived.

Sitting in the dark of my living room, I looked at my wrist. The number bled in the darkness.

Index: 210. Status: Red.

The silence of the apartment was deafening. The Eye no longer asked anything of me. It had spat me out.

And it was there, in that glacial stillness, that fear shifted.

The terror of the System evaporated, replaced by something infinitely vaster, darker. An anguish that no longer came from the cameras, but from my own guts.

The System had unplugged me. I had no script. No identity.

My hands, resting on my knees, suddenly seemed to belong to a stranger. My breath, hoarse in the silence, resonated like that of an unknown beast. If I was no longer citizen 942, who was I?

A chasm opened beneath my feet. Nausea seized me, violent, physical. I leaned forward, gasping, hands clutching my hair. It was me. I was alone with myself. With no one to tell me what to think, what to desire, how to act.

Freedom was not a light at the end of the tunnel. It was a free fall into the absolute void. It was the crushing responsibility of every second to come.

I sprang up, my heart pounding against my ribs like a frightened bird. I paced around the living room, bumping into furniture, my breath wheezing. I was afraid of my own thoughts. I was afraid of what I was going to do the next moment, because no one had programmed it for me. I wanted to tear away this freedom, I wanted my chains back, to be locked up, to be told that I still existed!

I stopped dead in front of the entrance mirror.

A man stared back at me. Eyes dark-rimmed, wild, hair plastered with sweat, mouth agape, breathing shallowly. A stranger.

I looked at him. I looked at his terror. I felt it burn in my chest, acidic, devouring.

I closed my eyes, fists clenched, nails digging into my palms.

I'm afraid of myself.

The confession tore through my throat in a dry sob.

I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid to be free.

And in that sob, the tension released. All at once. Like a cable snapping.

I reopened my eyes. The man in the mirror was still trembling, but he was no longer fleeing. He was breathing. The air entered my lungs, cold, sharp, real. The stranger was not a monster. He was just a man flayed alive, who had just been born.

I turned towards the kitchen. My steps were heavy, but resolute. I opened the drawer. The metal of the meat knife was cold against my clammy skin.

I returned to the living room, under the camera's black lens.

I wasn't smiling. I wasn't pleading anymore. My heart was still pounding, but it wasn't panic anymore. It was life knocking to get out.

I placed my left arm on the table.

I gritted my teeth until my enamel cracked, and I plunged the blade in.

The pain exploded in my skull, dazzling, atrocious. A guttural, animal howl escaped me. My muscles contracted violently, but my right hand held firm. I rummaged in the flesh, slicing through fibers, hot, thick blood flooding the wood, sliding over my fingers, sticky, real. Alive.

With a sharp tug, with a sickening sucking sound, I ripped out the module.

The small screen, stained red, flickered on the table, pathetic, before dying.

I collapsed to my knees, gasping, my head spinning from the shock of the pain. I bandaged my arm with a cloth tied so tightly it cut off the circulation. Blood stained the fabric. My blood.

I stumbled to my feet. I took nothing. I left.

In the hall, the doors remained closed. I grabbed a metal chair and, with all my strength, with a grunt of mixed rage and pain, I smashed the bay window. The glass exploded into a thousand sharp shards.

The alarm tore through the night.

I rushed into the street. The icy November wind struck my face like a slap. The rain washed the sweat from my forehead.

I walked, limping at first, then finding my rhythm. I moved away from the lights, the screens, plunging towards the dark wasteland, towards the eyeless alleys.

I was still trembling. The pain in my arm radiated throughout my shoulder. The fear of the unknown, the fear of myself, walked beside me, clinging to my skin like a shadow. It tightened my stomach, it dried my mouth.

But it no longer paralyzed me.

I felt it. I let it pass through me. I had named it: it was called Freedom. It had the metallic taste of blood, the smell of cold rain, and the sharpness of broken glass.

I raised my head to the black sky, starless, cameraless.

The air rushed into my lungs with incredible violence.

I was alone. Terrified. Flayed.

And I was alive.