Character

Mira Eden didn't know she was raised in a cult.

Her early life was a simple one. Her world was the compound she lived in, surrounded by walls and the forest beyond. Her family were the people who lived within those walls, uncles and aunts and siblings. There were no computers, no television, and even electricity was a precious thing to be used for only the most important things.

And above them all was the man she knew only as Father. Their leader, their protector, their guide to happiness. The one who would show them the way to paradise. So long as they lived correctly and obeyed the laws of the compound, they would certainly claim their divine reward.

Mira believed in this fervently. She did all that was asked of her - caring for children, cooking, mending clothes. In warm months she would take to the fields to pull weeds and watch livestock, and in cold months she would share stories and songs to entertain. What the world beyond was like didn't matter - she was happy here, secure in the knowledge that she was chosen.

And then in one day it all ended in sound and confusion.

The raid of the Eden Compound dominated the media for but a short time - they could only speak so long about the anti-technology cult, of its charismatic leader that controlled his followers with fear and committed unspeakable acts against those he took particular interest in. There could be only so many interviews with those who had escaped his grasp, so many tours of the ramshackle community that squatted on federal land. In time, the story of the Edenites faded from the public eye.

But it never ended for Mira, one of many thrust into a world full of things she could barely understand. There was media and technology and the endless flood of questions about who she was, where she came from, if she was happy, if she was free.

Fortunately, she wasn't alone. Social workers and teachers and a kind foster family to help her adapt to the world, to separate the truth from the lies she'd been raised on. Slowly, she learned how be a 'normal' person, someone who go shopping at the store or use a computer or file taxes with some help.

But she'd never truly escape her childhood, the fact that she'd for a brief time been the face of a cult that people were hungry to dissect. The time came where she was asked to speak about her experiences to an audience - the first small, but soon she would be asked again, and again. She would tell stories of her childhood, of hard times on the farm, of the things her 'father' would say to her as she grew older.

Then they would give her a sum of cash, and she would return to her home with its electric lights, its television, its computer and VR headset. She would sit, watching meaningless programs on the TV, and wonder if the father had been right about the world beyond the walls. If she had already been corrupted by it.

It was a late, sleepless night when she received the email. She didn't know what 'Terrasphere' was, or why she had received the message. Her email was one monitored by another, to protect her from others, and from herself. That it had reached her meant that it was safe, right?