Cured

Cured.

Part One of The Olympia Trilogy.

By Diana Clarke.

Copyright 2014 Diana Clarke

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter
Twenty-One

Chapter
Twenty-Two

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Chapter
Twenty-Six

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter
Thirty-One

Chapter
Thirty-Two

Chapter
Thirty-Three

Chapter
Thirty-Four

Author’s Note

About Author

Acknowledgements

To my family, my friends and my flatmates.
Sorry you had to put up with my craziness whilst I wrote this. And
thank you for loving me anyway.

Chapter 1

January ninth of the year 2118
wasn’t a particularly remarkable day. In fact was a very ordinary
day. One of those days where the sky is grey and vowed to stay grey
all day. There wasn’t going to be rain; the clouds are not so dark
to suggest they had committed to a downpour. But there wasn’t going
to be sun; the clouds said they would not rain, but they were just
as determined to remain sewn together, covering the city in a sheet
of grey.

It was just one of those grey
days where everything was meant to be ordinary and I was meant to
wake and eat and learn and talk and drink and laugh and sleep. That
is why one should never trust the whether. When Mum says take an
umbrella because you never know what could happen, she is right.
You never know. You never know when that resolute greyness will
abandon all promises and tear, thread by thread, right through the
middle, to reveal what could either be either a brilliant blue, or
a thundering storm.

It’s interesting that we trust
the sky, really. Because all of its oaths to stay or to storm are
sworn from nowhere but within our own imaginations. And when Louisa
drew my curtains that grey morning, the sky made no mention of the
events that were to come on that grey, ordinary, grey day.

I winced at the blinding
greyness that the comfort of my curtains had prevented, well, not
prevented, but concealed from me at least. Sometimes grey is more
blinding than the most brilliant sun.

Then Louisa wrenched the duvet
from my clutches, exposing my pyjama-clad body to the four maids
that stood, bowed into deep curtseys, at the foot of my
four-poster.

I grumbled at the unwelcome
interruption to my slumber, and my stomach responded with an
echoing growl.

But then I caught whiff of the
enticing aroma of fresh cheese scones floating upstairs from the
kitchen and into my bedroom, and my mood was instantly lifted.

“Scones?” I asked Louisa, who
was instantly forgiven for her alarm clock behaviour.

“I baked them fresh this
morning, ma’am,” she replied, reaching for my hand and helping me
to my feet.

I kissed my favourite maid’s
cheek in thanks and jammed my feet into my favourite bunny rabbit
slippers.

“My name is not ma’am, Louisa,
my name is Avery,” I said for the billionth time. Louisa, as usual,
simply winked, her rosy complexion becoming redder and her broad
smile stretching her already very plump cheeks.

I had just made it my bedroom
door when,
“Avery. Is that you, my dear?” came
the soft croon of my mother’s tone from the bottom of the stairway.
An involuntary groan escaped my lips. It was too early to handle my
mother.

“Avery, dear, a lady never ever groans,” she
glided up the staircase and scrutinized my appearance before
scrunching her powdered nose, “And nor does a lady arise from her
slumber without preparing herself for the day.”

I began to
grumble again, but, upon seeing the expression on my mother’s face,
quickly disguised it as a cough. Mother frowned. I rolled my eyes,
and retreated backwards. It wasn’t worth the fight.

In
my room, the Norm maids were already bustling
around, making my bed and vacuuming the carpet. When I returned
they stopped cleaning and curtseyed so low that I thought they
might topple over. They apologized profusely for no reason all
whilst refusing to make eye contact. I always felt uncomfortable
when they did this, so I ignored them and walked over to my
WallScreen. I touched the Wall and it flickered to life.


“Good morning Avery Rose,” it said in its
animated voice. “What can I do for you at eight-fifteen, January
ninth?”
I waited patiently for the wall to finish its spiel and
then touched the ‘WallDrobe’ button. “Clothes!” said the Wall
cheerfully, “What would you like to wear today Avery Rose?”


I touched the
‘Randomise’ key and an outfit appeared on the screen. Black denim
shorts and a plain white singlet with my favourite white leather
sneakers. I longed to wear the outfit, but I wanted to be on
Mother’s good side today in the hope that she would let me see my
friends tonight. I pushed the ‘Formal Attire’ key, which was sure
to come up with something more to Mother’s taste. The next outfit
that appeared on the screen was a ridiculous, frilly pink tunic
that looked like meringue. Mother would have been thrilled to see
me in such a gown, but I couldn’t stand the thought of spending an
entire day resembling a dessert, so I pushed ‘Randomise’ again.
This time the Wall produced a light blue summer dress with a white
lace hem appeared, accompanied by a pair of white sandals, I
shrugged, Mother would approve and it wasn’t too offensive. I
pressed ‘Accept’.

A whirring noise started up as the WallDrobe
prepared my outfit. Finally the draw under the WallScreen sprung
open and the clothes appeared, perfectly ironed and laid out for
me. I quickly threw them on, aware of my growling stomach and
dreaming of cheese scones with raspberry jam. I dashed over to the
mirror and scowled at my unruly blonde waves, before grabbing a
handful of hair and twisting it up into a messy bun. It would
do.

“
What do you
think, ladies?” I asked the crouched maids.

“Beautiful, Madam.”

“Amazing.”

“The best,” came their chorus of compliments.
I grinned.

“You’d say that even if I looked like a pig’s
backside.”

They didn’t laugh at my joke.

“
No, Madam.
You look nothing like the backside of a pig,” one of the maids
assured me. The others shook their heads and smiled politely in
agreement.

I sighed. Checked my appearance one last
time, and decided it could have been worse. So I hurried back past
the maids, who remained frozen in curtsied positions, and scrambled
down the stairs towards the scone aroma.

Upon reaching
the kitchen, Mother stood waiting. Naturally, her hair was the same
shade of dark blonde as my own, but I hadn’t seen it that way in
years. She was obsessed with staying young, and took YouthSerum to
help her stay that way. Today her locks were nearly white with a
sparkly golden shimmer. She looked like a Christmas tree
decoration.

“
Why, Avery
Rose, you look beautiful.”

I grabbed a scone off the top of a pile of
freshly baked goods on the bench top and took an enormous bite,
before grinning at Mother and hoisting myself up to sit on the
bench. 


“
Thanks Mum,”
I said, only my mouth was so full that it sounded more like “Fangs
Munph.”

“Avery Rose, what have I said about speaking
with our mouths full?”


I scowled.
“Um, to not
?”

She nodded curtly and perched on a stool at
the kitchen bench. “And what have I said about sitting on the
bench?”


I growled under my breath and slid off the
bench, slumping onto a barstool, Mother staring at me expectantly
all the while. 


“What?” I asked her, using all my self
control to maintain a polite and cordial tone, “What am I doing
wrong now, Mother, dear?”

“Nothing darling, I was just wondering
whether you remember what day it is today?”


I thought for
a second. “My WallScreen said January ninth. Is there something on
toda….” my voice trailed off as it dawned on me. 
Mother nodded
approvingly.

“
It is Cure
Day!” Mother’s face lit up with a repulsively genuine expression of
delight. Her BeautySerum addiction meant that the skin on her face
was constantly taut, so although she was attempting a smile, only
her lips straightened into a perfectly horizontal line, whilst the
rest of her face remained stationary. I turned away. The eerie
smile-like-thing got creepy if you looked at it too
long.

Our family always hosted the biggest party of
the year on the night of the Curing ceremony. I scanned the kitchen
and noticed that the Norm maids were bustling around, in even more
of a hurry than usual. There were large platters of hors-d’oevres
covering every inch of the bench top, and in the dining room our
usual enormous refectory table had been replaced with a dozen
smaller ones. My mother already had her party-hosting makeup on.
Her eyes were glittering with an abundance of purple and pink
shimmer, and her cheeks each had a circle of scarlet blush. It was
quite terrifying. I repressed a shudder as she finally let the
weird expression fall from her face.

“Go into the Cinema Room and get a Norm to
switch the WallScreen on, Pumpkin Pie, I will be there in just a
moment.”

I felt sick
to my stomach. There was something about The Cure that didn’t sit
right with me. Although I had grown up with it, and it was all I
knew, it still seemed wrong. When I voiced my concerns to mother,
she had shushed me, explaining that The Cure was a natural way of
life. She had said that it was important to help people realize
their true potential and their natural strengths, and to help
everyone be the best they could be.

It sounded all good and well in theory, but
what my Mother had failed to mention was that people had no choice
as to whether they were Cured or not, it was compulsory, mandatory.
And once one was Cured, they weren’t granted any choice as to the
area of expertise they entered. The Cure decided for them by
measuring which part of the recipient’s brain was the most active
and advanced, and then exaggerating it further. But whilst the Cure
expanded one segment of the brain to near superhuman ability, the
remaining segments were dulled to near incompetency, leaving the
Cured Norm basically brain-dead in all but one area of expertise.
The area that was enhanced then determined the Field in which the
Norm would be employed for the rest of his life.

I always wondered if there were people who
were forced to work in a Field they hated, day in, day out. The
thought made me sick. Still, it wasn’t like I had to worry, I
wasn’t even involved in the Curing process because of my parents.
Descendants were exempt from The Cure, so I was destined to live a
life with my own brain, as a human, a state of being that was a
rarity these days.

Even Primes, like my parents, didn’t truly
have their own brains. Primes were those who took the Cure but then
didn’t react to it in the way that the majority did. Usually, the
pill dulled all areas of the brain except for the one in which the
person was naturally most gifted. However, there were some people,
those whose brains were naturally so evenly distributed in talent
that the Cure could not locate the most prominent area, who reacted
differently to the pill. Instead, all parts of the recipient’s
brain were enhanced, leaving them essentially superhuman in every
field. After being Cured, Primes lived a life of luxury on Olympia,
with their only job being to ensure that the Fields remained
obedient and peaceful. My father was the chief of the Security
department. He managed the surveillance teams as well as the police
and the armed forces. Mother was a Prime too, but she was more
interested in hosting than contributing to society. They met during
their Prime training, where they worked together to finish all
their tasks in record-breaking time. They still held the record,
which was the reason for our celebrity status.