The One Rule
In the city of Halden, where polished towers kissed the sky and roads hummed with silent electric grace, there existed only one law—a rule so absolute, so deeply woven into the lives of its people, that its very mention struck reverent silence.
“Do not speak to the Forgotten.”
No one questioned it. No one challenged it. It had always been there—etched on every school wall, broadcast on every public screen, and repeated like scripture by every parent. The Forgotten—those who vanished overnight, whose names were struck from records, whose homes were sealed like tombs—were not to be spoken to, of, or about.
They were not dead.
They were just... erased.
In Halden, silence was the currency of order. And the rule was what held society together. So they said.
Mira Tran was a historian—one of the few remaining in a city that rewrote its present as often as it discarded its past. She lived alone, in a modest capsule apartment, surrounded by sealed archives and carefully curated newsfeeds. Her job, as defined by the Central Governance Unit (CGU), was not to study the past, but to manage its absence.
That suited her fine—until the day she received a package with no return address.
It was a thin envelope. Inside it: a photograph.
Old. Cracked. Real.
Three children sat on a stone bench, arms tangled in friendship. Mira’s heart stuttered.
The middle child was her.
She remembered nothing of the photo.
But the boy to her left—his face stirred a strange ache. He had bright eyes, always laughing, always defiant. Her mind snagged on a name that hovered like a ghost over water.
Aaren.
The name slammed into her like thunder, and with it—memories. Forbidden ones. Laughter echoing in underground tunnels. Secret books. Whispered ideas of truth. And then: his disappearance. Overnight. Like all the Forgotten.
Only now, she remembered. She remembered him.
And that was dangerous.
She should have burned the photo. She should have filed a sanitation report with CGU Archives.
Instead, she slipped it beneath her floorboard and began to search.
Her descent was cautious at first. Whispered questions in data nodes. Inquiries through forgotten backchannels. The CGU had purged the net clean—but not perfectly.
She found fragments. Code threads. Glitches in old surveillance logs. And then, one night, her screen flickered and displayed a single message:
“Do you remember me?”
She shouldn’t have responded. She did.
“Yes.”
They met on the edge of the city, where Halden’s glow bled into forest darkness. Aaren had changed. His eyes were tired, but the fire remained. He wasn’t a ghost. He was real. Alive.
And angry.
"They lied to you," he said. "To everyone."
He spoke of the CGU’s great erasure—of citizens who had asked too many questions. Teachers, scientists, artists, rebels. All declared Forgotten and made unmentionable. Not executed. Recycled. Assigned to factories below the city, behind biometric locks, building the very systems that enslaved their world.
“But we’ve grown stronger,” Aaren said. “We’ve waited. And now we’re ready.”
“For what?” Mira asked.
“To break the Rule.”
The plan was simple. Speak to a Forgotten—publicly. On record. In front of the CGU. Expose the lie.
“The Rule only works because it’s never been broken openly,” Aaren said. “No one knows what happens if we do. That fear keeps them in control.”
Mira hesitated. Breaking the Rule didn’t just mean rebellion. It meant exile, madness—possibly death. Or worse.
But something deeper stirred in her. A memory of who she was before fear defined her. A child who once believed in truth.
She nodded.
The broadcast was scheduled during Founders’ Day—a celebration streamed city-wide. Mira, chosen as a speaker for her “loyal service to Historical Compliance,” stood on the marble steps of the Capitol Hall. The crowd was dense. Surveillance drones buzzed overhead.
Her speech began as expected. Platitudes. Data. Praise for unity.
Then, her tone shifted.
“I want to tell you about someone I knew,” she said, voice clear.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
“A boy named Aaren. He was my friend. He was brilliant. He disappeared when we were twelve. Not because he died—but because the CGU erased him.”
An alert klaxon began to whine.
She kept going.
“He is not Forgotten. He is here.”
From the crowd, Aaren stepped forward.
Silence fell. Even the drones hovered, uncertain.
Mira’s voice broke the spell. “I am speaking to the Forgotten. I am breaking the Rule.”
And then—nothing.
No explosions. No sirens. No soldiers.
The city stood still.
Then the sky darkened—not with clouds, but with black drones. Hundreds. Thousands.
The CGU had been ready.
Mira was taken.
Not executed. No. That would be too messy.
She was declared Unstable. Assigned a new identity. Placed in the Core Processing Plant below Halden.
Recycled.
She spent her days assembling memory chips she was forbidden to read. Nights passed in a cell of glass and steel. She heard nothing of the surface. Nothing of Aaren.
Until one night, a whisper came through the vents.
“You were the spark.”
More voices followed. From the walls. From the shadows.
She was not alone.
Three months later, Halden changed.
A message hijacked every screen, every system.
“We are the Forgotten. And we are many.”
Citizens looked up from their routines. From their silences. And remembered.
Mira, in her glass cell, smiled.
She had broken the Rule.
And the world had finally listened.
React
