Rebels of Shenzhen

» Chapter One «

• DR. DANIKA WINTERS •

Occupation: DidiTechs' Chief Neurologist - Artificial Intelligence Unit

Location: Shenzhen, China

"Danika. Let's be honest. You are a woman in definite need of a good going over." – Admiral Jayden Ridge (ADM of B2Base Planetoid)

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Date: 29th of November, 3073

Danika stared beyond the neuro-analysis, rotating hands-free on the glass window. The strobing, blue lights of the touchscreen display made her head pulsate and eyes glaze over, deepening the turquoise of her irises.

She was yet again, disengaged: a disposition mutually shared amongst her colleagues; the negative morale proportional to the high turnover rates that accompanied the monotony of her profession.

Drowning out the debilitating silence and routine automated signal, Danika manually discharged the metal wire bracelet from her right wrist, switching off the network's access to her cerebrum.

She was not in the mood to have her hormones monitored and emotions analyzed by DidiTech's board of directors. Not when she could feel herself commencing the downward spiral into the abyss of her depression.

"Sealant laser." Authorized Danika; the monotone of her voice revealed nothing of her internal turmoil.

Kit – the office nanomite hovered over her shoulder; all six of it's rhodium, bug-like legs haphazardly carried a granite, metal gun. Danika's brows furrowed at the dull buzzing, zipping around her ears; the molecular motors attached to the microscopic hull of Kit's back, intensified her headache.

"Release." Danika commanded, suppressing the exaggerated roll of her eyes. She had been here for two years and still, found it ridiculous whenever she conversed with an artificial bot.

Snatching the device, she gripped the cool, platinum handle and pointed the laser's tip at the two puncture wounds on her wrist. Pulling back the trigger with her index finger, her breath hitched and her jaw locked, as a white laser seared her skin, sealing the lacerations shut.

Unadulterated relief flooded through her veins as Danika's mind fixated on the blistering pain; the welts of her burnt skin, shredded through the tightly woven blanket of her mental anxieties. She had no doubt, not an infinitesimal fragment, that the pain accompanying the 6pm clock-off, was the hour she longed for the most.

In a world where feelings were artificial and facial manipulation was the norm, self-elicited pain was the only primal emotion that Danika felt she had left. On her good days, which were becoming few and far between, she felt quite ...proud of herself, at her unwavering resilience – resisting the urge to point the sealant laser between her own two brows.

Unfortunately for DidiTech, her resolve was beginning to deteriorate, dwindling away at an ever-rapid pace with each algorithm she constructed and cyborg she programmed. She did not predict her company would have her for much longer.

Nevertheless, this was her reality now: a routine, her every action recorded as a sub-routine. It was her father's dream, not hers: to live and experience life unhindered by disease, in a world no longer governed by the unintelligent, the sub-par.

Danika's chest constricted, as she strode towards the glass elevators; her heels lightly striking the concrete polished floor. Her father: Dr. Michael Winters, would have applauded this alternate reality: the vilification of the average, the eradication of the middle class. If only he was the one to survive the cyrostasis chamber, instead of her.