The Myriads: A Short Story

Loss is often sudden and painful, like a kick to the gut, but the pain eventually fades leaving you with only a memory of the past. Sometimes, though, it is not a kick. It is a rusty razor gash that opens up your belly leaving you desperately trying to stuff slippery innards back into a yawning wound. Even when it heals there remains a jagged scar and a dull ache as lingering reminders of what has been lost.

I once counted Professor Gregor Szaranev as a close friend. I suppose I still do even though Gregor has never forgiven me for that one day in Plymouth. The day OWON’s razor finally found us and cut Irina out of our lives.

Gregor, Irina and I were all baked right about the same time when there was a need for researchers. All part of the “Pentas”
Her slightest smile could lift the most downtrodden spirit and give it strength. She found joy in the simplest things and would readily share that joy with you. In all ways, she was the opposite of Gregor.

I remember about the same time that Obore Daniels started becoming popular among the Myriads, Gregor took to calling them “common stock.” The Myriads were the first large group of mnemosynes the council ordered created to fill the need for semiskilled and unskilled labor. They were cooks and farmers and custodians and the like. Irina thought the term common stock was demeaning, which it of course was. Gregor detested what he thought were mnemosynes designed for their muscles and not their brains. He's always been a bit of an intellectual elitist.

Though Gregor and Irina shared a sibling bond and would support one another even if they knew the other was wrong, they disagreed on the issue of Obore Daniels. Gregor saw Daniels as a malcontent attempting to disrupt peace and stability by agitating the Myriads. Irinia saw Daniels’ growing popularity as an affirmation that the council had begun to alienate people they considered something of a servant