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My name is Medila.
Well, no, that’s not quite the right way to start. It’s more than that. I am Medila.
Since you may be wondering exactly what that means, I’ll explain myself. It’s a bit of a long story, so I’ll start at the beginning.
I was born to a poor family, the daughter of Merida and Josen, and with a whole litter of street rats to contend with. There must’ve been about fifteen of us, crammed into that tiny little two-room apartment—and we were lucky to have two rooms. Most of the families on our block had one, if they had a room at all.
It went on like that for a good while. I was five when my older siblings started to move out. I don’t know who was a brother or sister and who was a cousin; they’re all siblings to me. Anyway, Rodelle moved out first—got herself a husband who could afford things. After her was Jartis—he got a job. A good job. I don’t know what it was, but at least it paid the bills. They went like that for a while, until it was just the young ones left, and the really young ones on the way. Seeing as I was old enough to understand the world around me (to an extent, anyway), I spent more and more time out of our cramped home and on the streets. It wasn’t long before I picked up things most girls my age would never dream of knowing. I learned that if you bump into people in crowded settings, they’re not as upset, and they tend to not notice if you take their wallets in the process. I learned that there were other ways to make money than steal it; you could sell things, for instance, that people wanted but didn’t want publicized. And I also learned that there were children in the world who had fifteen rooms and two siblings, who had enough food to last the week and more, and who had parents who actually gave a damn and a half about what their kids were doing. The last one stung the most. From that, I learned to hate those more fortunate than myself. It would take a long time to break that habit.
I was twelve when STAG (Special, Talented, and Gifted Children), Inc., discovered me. Something about the way I finessed my way through the world enticed them and made them test me—and hey, it turns out, I’m smart. Don’t know where that came from. I have a knack for figuring things out, they said. And then they offered me a future.
The standard invitation involves a stay at the STAG boarding school (and I’ll say it now and get it over with—the first person to make a “stag party” joke gets to meet the business end of my fist) and a first-rate education by the professors the company employs. Being twleve at the time, the choice was not obvious. I had to think about it. It didn’t take long for me to decide. Just a few weeks in my old life was enough for me to want to try something new.
The first thing I hated was the uniform I had to wear. There were three, depending on how far along you were. I detested the idea that we all looked alike. The one thing I had retained during my youth was my independence, and I wasn’t about to give it up that easily. It took some doing before they could finally get me to wear it, but before long I came to love that I was part of this group, that I had found somewhere to belong.
Let me take a moment to comment on this. STAG, a subsidy of Epiphren, is fueled by private funds, but has a contract with the government. That’s the only way I could get in, by the way—the government awards a certain number of scholarships every year to needy students like me. Now, the government of Ardrin isn’t the most liked in the world, and for a good reason—there’s a lot of suspicion of a single ruling party that’s using its clout to forward its own agenda. Most of the kids in my grade didn’t know about the contract, or care much, but we heard the whispers of the older kids, the ones who knew what was going on. It made us scared. And a scared animal is harder to train than a submissive one. Ultimately, that worked in our favor.
STAG taught me everything I know about technology. I may have never laid eyes on a console except to lovingly covet outside of shop windows otherwise, but my professors had me assembling and disassembling them in less than five minutes by the time I graduated. I could make them do anything, and that was a very powerful feeling. They were my servants, and I was the master, for once. Naturally, my teachers wanted me to use my skills to work for either Epiphren or the Ardrinian government, but I had other ideas. I was going to be famous. After all, from everything they told me at STAG, I was a genius. Why shouldn’t I get to be rich and famous? Why shouldn’t I show off what I could do to those who couldn’t? Why shouldn’t I get to have fifteen bedrooms when I only needed two?
Of course, my ideas were squashed by the Vanishings, but that’s later.
I eventually graduated (with honors) from STAG and moved on with my life. Getting a job in my field was harder than I imagined, and I took several menial jobs to keep myself afloat. STAG was a consistent factor in my hectic life, appearing when I least expected them to offer me a place in the company. At the time I was still a jaded little smark, but I wanted nothing to do with the company. Ryidu made me change my mind, on both accounts.
I met Ryidu one sunny afternoon as I was walking to the lot where I had parked my car. Since my car and my work were a good ways away from each other, I had struck a leisurely pace through the city park. Still in my work clothes and feeling a little sweaty, I wasn’t prepared to meet the love of my life. But life has a funny way of doing that to you.
Ryidu was sitting on a park bench when I met him—well, when I sort of fell on him. You see, I had just spent a good eight hours or so on my feet, and they were no longer taking instructions from my brain. Thus, when an unexpected boulder (okay, a tiny rock) was factored into the equation, my whole system of balance went kaput and I tripped and fell… right onto the park bench containing Ryidu. To say I was embarrassed would be an understatement. I was mortified.
Despite our unfortunate start, though, we managed to flourish. It started the day Ryidu came into the restaurant and tried to order me, stating that I was delicious and that he hoped he could spill a little more of me on himself. Bad pickup line if I’d ever heard one, but I took pity on him and gave him a free side dish, courtesy of my employee benefits. He took this as an invitation to never leave me alone, ever. He’d still be here now, if not for the Vanishings. But as I said before, that comes later.
It would be a lie to say I’d forgotten my humble beginnings. I thought of them every day. Every time I saw someone who even appeared to own a vast sum of money (probably just an average amount; I have a tendency to exaggerate in these matters) I would feel the old jealousy rear its ugly head. But whereas before I had nothing but my sarcasm to defend me, Ryidu was now the balm to my rage. The first time he caught me at it, his look of disapproval was enough to turn the lion into a housecat. Before long, I found that it was on fewer and fewer occasions that I would become jealous, and I began to view rich people as simply fellow beings. They were no better or worse than me for the money they owned, and neither was I better or worse than they. Ryidu proved that. Oh, he wasn’t rich, but he was richer than me, and that was something. Furthermore, he wasn’t evil—or at the very least, he wasn’t very evil. That small part of me that had learned to hate started to forget.
And then the Vanishings started. It was slow at first—a few people of Ardrin disappeared without a trace. Most people thought they had been killed, kidnapped, or fled the country—but then it started to grow. Tens, hundreds, thousands disappeared, with more going every day. Cities were shrinking, ever so slowly. People were afraid. Nobody knew what was causing it. And nobody could stop it.
Epiphren had kept in contact throughout the whole ordeal, and this time they had a new offer—work on Project Gatherings. The purpose was obvious, even before they explained it—they wanted my help to unravel the mystery that was the Vanishings. I was still skeptical, knowing it wouldn’t end there, but I was tempted—this was the fame and purpose I wanted when I was younger. It may have been tempting, but still I refused.
Until Ryidu became one of the Vanished.
How could I refuse the search when one so integral to my being—daresay the one I love—was on the line? I was immediately set to work, running diagnostics on the events, trying to figure some algorithm that would explain it. And amazingly, a slow pattern began to emerge. The numbers were adding up. We were days away from being able to predict where and when the next Vanishing would occur.
We were so close to a breakthrough, but I’ve solved the case.
I’m one of the Vanished.
The cause? Well, I never said I didn’t have questions, did I? There’s still a lot I don’t know. But I know they’re not dead, and that’s all that really matters in my eyes. They’re just… displaced. That’s how I ended up here. As for getting back? Well, that really depends on how things go here. It’s not so bad; I’ve made some friends. And as for Ryidu? Who knows; we may have floated to the same island. I at least have to look. I get the feeling there’s a lot of ground to cover.
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