Finish the Fiction Story Contest - WEEK #6

This is a writing contest run by the infinite @f3nix. Each week there is a new story. You read the storyline and add how you think it should end.

               The Treble Clef

The tower n. 19 was among the first built as well as one of the highest. The purple shades of the morning had something sacred when it began to embrace its glass walls. The clouds were iridescent drops of cochineal, dipped in a basin of water.

The Chant des oiseaux laps between a cerebral hemisphere and the other of Lucien's head, swaying in a crescendo of pressing voices. The morning light, accomplice of the melodic joint, presses through his indolent eyelids, pulling at the same time the sheets from the foot of the bed.

In the monthly planning, Lucien likes it when he's awakened by Mothergrid with this music. It instantly makes him feeling productive and optimized, plus something else that he can not totally grab.

A sinuous raku porcelain cup emerges from a niche on the granite wall next to the bed. The Wednesday pills slide into a watery bolus through the esophagus, while the hologram ends its daily programming routine. Three point five minutes of preselected Entertainment. This is followed by an 8-minute fitness cycle.

"Good morning Lucien, your circadian rhythm has been optimized during sleep to increase your productivity by 2.75%. Select 1 for performance statistics. Select 2 for the parameters related to the circulatory system. Select 3 to know your hormone levels. Select 4 for last week trend in cortisol secretion.."

Janequin's polyphony mingles nicely with the female voice, while the latter reels off the repetitive rosary of available options.
Lucien smiles seraphic, welcoming the harmonious dressing of the home-daemona that, dancing around him, resembles rites and vestiges of past times.

The integration between man and machine had been a slow but unstoppable process and, for how much ironic it may sound, completely natural. Take an electronic device, make it useful, then indepensable, then vital. Small and powerful amplifier of human faculties. Wonderful extension of the senses, joyous inventor of infinite divination, indomitable improver of the lives of billions of laborious ants.

In the beginning, the devices had passed from hands to clothes, then from clothes to direct contact with the skin. Then, as obvious as it was, from above the skin to under the skin. Down, sinking deeper inside us, to make our lives better in a sparkle of electronic subsidence. To give us optimized and publishable experiences with the maximum of upvotes on the most relevant social media.

A lifetime of guaranteed and constant broadband connection. Many things had taken on a different perspective and value, the world had changed skin very quickly.
The Entertainment was now recognized by the United Nations as one of the first basic human rights.
The search for optimization of work performance and life in general had grown in a directly proportional way to the need for integrated leisure, directly inoculatable in the cortex.
Soon, it seemed to everyone spontaneous to totally rely on apps for obtaining the best performance during all kinds of work, academic training, activities. Everything was done better thanks to an army of automatic pilots, well anchored to the brains of the citizens. Then came Mothergrid and, only then, everything was really perfect.

It is half past seven in the morning. Lucien should have been away from home since five minutes, injected into one of the monorail pods headed to the workplace. Instead, there he is still, in his full anthrax color in front of the door, the man in a bowler hat of a Magritte's painting. Between him and the entrance, on the cold slate of the floor lies a yellow sticky note. What the fuck is doing a post-it there. These things are no longer used since decades.
Lucien can not understand how such an irrational disturbing element may have jeopardized the harmony of his apartment on the top floor of the tower n. 19.
Approaching that yellow spot, bathed in the purple light flickering from the windows, the scribble on the note takes shape before the eyes of the man, who observes him less and less perplexed and increasingly dismayed. A treble clef stands out in the center of the paper and, further down, a strange tangle of signs.

From the mind of Lucien, a memory surfaces just in time before the darkness closes on his field of vision. That scrawl was once called a "signature". His signature.

Lucien awoke in his office. He has no recollection of how he got there. He tried to remember the past few minutes since leaving his apartment. Then he decided maybe he needed some coffee. He liked that he could listen to his all time favorite music within his head. He doesn't know much about his past, but somehow the music has always been a part of him.

As he heads back to his desk he passed by a few members who seemed to be in a trance. He looked at his watch and with a sigh walked faster. He sat at his desk and turned on computer. He was almost late for the rebooting session.

"My apologize Mothergrid. I had not realized how long I had been offline."

"Lucien, your vitals have peaked again. You must be more careful. Please pick one of your options to complete this cycle. May I suggest option 2? We need to know what caused the spike."

Lucien pressed the 2 key and then focused on the music in his head again. While listening to Le chant des oiseaux, he found himself moving his fingers on his desk in perfect rhythm. All of a sudden he stopped and wondered how his fingers seemed to flow perfectly, as if playing a piano.

He then remembered the note in his trouser pocket. He took it out and stared at it in a state of confusion. It looked familiar, but then it did not, all at the same time. The last time he looked at this strange marking, he was put in shutdown mode. Something began puzzling him.

Towards the end of the work shift, he was given a manila envelope by a young woman. "Excuse me," Lucien said, "have we met before? I don't believe I have seen you here on this floor."

With a blank stare she replied, "I am Nalune. I am from floor 39. Please go over the file I gave you, and deliver it to Martin on floor 43 tomorrow. Speak to no one of the contents."

Lucien sat down on the couch after his evening meal. He grabs the envelope off the coffee table and proceeds to open it. As he pulls out the contents, there is a sticky note telling him to go offline before proceeding. He has been here for 5 years now and this is the second strangest thing that has happened recently.

He puts the note and contents back in the envelope. Then Mothergrid shows up in a hologram. "Lucien, your vitals are spiking again. Are you alright? It is near time for rebooting, would you like to start early?"

"I'm just tired. Everything is fine. I'd like to wait till regular scheduled reboot please."

"As you wish." Then the hologram closes, but not before he sees her eye the envelope. He stands up and paces the floor for what seemed hours. He reaches out for the envelope again and pulls out the contents. He goes to his computer and pauses before hitting the shutdown button.

"Lucien, if you are reading this, I assume you got the packet and did as told. Please look carefully through this. Mention this to no one, and do not let anyone else see it."

"Too late for that," he says to himself. He saw the eyes grow dark as Mothergrid noticed the envelope. Nobody takes work home. There were a handful of strange looking papers with pictures on them. Lucien caught his breath as he was holding one that looked just like him. He turned it over and there were markings on it. Then he began reading from a file. He set the papers down and held his head. "What is all this? What is happening?" "Why d...

"Crap," he said as the alarm started going off. The red light was flashing, telling him he needs to reboot immediately.
He tossed all the stuff back in the envelope and put it in his dresser drawer. Then he turned computer back on just as Mothergrid showed up via her hologram.

"Lucien, you are late for reboot again." He replied, "Seems I had fallen asleep on the couch."
"Then I suggest you go to bed sir. You must stay focused. Would you like a full reboot this time?"

He shakes his head and says, "that won't be necessary. Have a good night Mothergrid."

The next day, Lucien heads to floor 43 to speak to whomever this Martin is. As he steps off the elevator, he searches for the name on the doors. He heard footsteps approaching and as he turned to look, he was hit from behind.

A few minutes later he was holding his head. "Sorry about that. It was necessary to do, as was shutting your system down. I'm Martin. Place this on your head, you will feel better shortly."

Lucien grabs the ice pack and asks, "What the hell is going on? Who are you?"

Martin hands him a picture. Lucien stares at it with a confused look. He looks at the photo and back to Martin.

"Lucien, that was us 5 years ago. You were kidnapped after a concert you played in. It took me years to track you down. The AI's wanted to have full control of you and would do anything to get that. They implanted trackers in all the ones who we hung with, just to find you. Now they are turning everyone into robots. We are real on the outside and turning into machines on the inside. There is no control what we do now. They control everything we do or think. I found a way to stop it. I know the real Lucien is still in there, in that body of yours. What do you s...

Alarms started going off in the building.

"Damned it, they must have a second tracker in you. Here stand up so I can run this detector over you."

"There, right there. We need to cut your thigh and dig it out."
Martin runs to flush it down the toilet. "That was a close call. We need to get out of here. Follow me, and whatever you do, don't bleed a trail."

They head into a secret tunnel inside the trap door. Lucien says, "You build a tunnel behind your bookshelf? Seriously?"

Martin pats Lucien on the back and replies, "We did a lot of crazy stuff."
..
Wow, I almost wanted to keep going. Hope you all liked it.