Genetic Anomaly

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 Where I am now

I woke with a yawn and a languid stretch. I was definitely not a morning person. I walked down the stairs of our middle class home provided by the Core as compensation for my father's 2 decades of service to the Core Workers. Quite ironically, my father had worked for the Core for many years and only resigned for paternity leave. From the 3rd trimester of the pregnancy to 5th month of the newborn, people were obliged to take maternity and paternity leave in order to give all their attention and effort into raising the next generation. Once the paternity resignation was handed in, 4 months before the time of absence, they would be given a substantial raise in order to provide for their child.

Even though parenting counsellors would verify potential parents wages and savings accounts to ensure that the child would be well provided for, they still gave a helping hand to start new families off. It was the Core's pleasure, no, more like their duty to give as much as they could to the well being of the children and a flourishing start to the next generation. I trumped my way into our modestly sized kitchen. The ironic part of my father working for the Core was that now, my father who had been a loyal and appraised worker for the Core, now harboured, unknowingly, a precious anomaly elite. Even if he had known the extent of my powers, blood came before duty, blood came before anything. The Core had engrained that lesson into our heads. Which was quite contradictory when it came to their manner of dealing with hidden or secluded anomalies. They enthusiastically encouraged us to report any suspicious looking people, be it neighbour, friend or family, to the Core, especially if they were in any way a possible elite.

I hummed to myself in a sleepy doze and once my mother routinely placed my breakfast on the table, I sat and dug in hungrily. It was the simple, eat well guide dietary required meals we, as middle class families, were supposed to eat religiously. Eating regulations were emplaced by the Core for as long as I and my parents' generation could remember. They taught us about why we must have healthy dietary suggestions from the Core. Back in the Dreary Days, before the Reformation, children and adults in many countries never had the right nutritional balance. In countries to the north that were bountiful and rich, people gorged themselves on salty, sweet, fatty foods that caused more than half the population to be overweight, obese or have serious health problems. Also in these privileged countries, there were strange side effects of their cultures and especially their media or social popularities. People were supposed to be stick thin and have hour glass figures at the same time which confused me to no end. However, these influences of media caused, especially in young girls, to develop eating disorders that crippled not only their body functions but also their very spirit. They lost their will to live and their psychological states were left shredded, which is why the Core decided to have dietary requirement laws. In a ridiculous contrast, countries to the South were starving and many children were malnourished since birth. The fact countries in the North used to waste tonnes of precious resources while people of the South could barely scrape enough for one meal a day, the Core decided to make sure everyone, especially children, needed to have a dietary guideline emplaced for their own safety. Nowadays, health problems connected to bad dietary or nutritional intake are rare, which also means the Core use their funding for more important departments in the Core Society Health Services. The Core always stated that they learnt from the mistakes of our ancestors.

My breakfast today consisted of a piece of wholemeal bread with seeds for extra fibre, a generous layer of butter and a small dribble of the naturally sweetened rose honey jam, which was my little luxury from time to time. We were given our weekly rations and our meal plan for the week which was more of a guideline for those who didn't know how to cook a nutritious, delicious but simple meal. My mother let me have my own diet, I got to choose what I liked to eat and quite regularly she let me cook for myself and them. So this morning I packed my pre-prepared lunch of wholemeal pasta in a fresh tomato and vegetable sauce and no cheese since I disliked cheese on pasta. I kissed my mother farewell on the cheek and made my way to my father's study to give him a morning kiss.

Leaving my home and walking down my symmetrical street of houses, I came to the Core Transport. The road public transport is similar to the 20th century bus transport however the engines are more advanced and environmentally friendly. Back in the days before the Reformation, transport caused a huge negative effect on the environment and threatened the very existence of life on Earth, so they created a safer, healthier method of energy for motion and living.

The transport, which are called Ports, came up and I got on. As a youngling, a child under 20, I didn't need to pay anything to the Port driver. I sat down in a seat at the back and buckled in for the 30 minute drive to the school. Looking out the human height windows, I watched in a fuzzy daze as the scenery of all the identical housing of the Middle Class area passed by. All the houses given to the Middle class were practically identical inside and out. They all had the white picket fences and the side garages. The front doors were the only difference. They became a multi coloured blur as the Port quickened it's pace. Finding the scenery boring as everything was basically the same, I extracted my portable screen pole, swiping out the screen, I chose one of my favourite playlists of classical music that are calming and let myself day dream. So often with my day dreams, my premonitions started forming again.