Institute baby

Chapter 1

Waking up at 6:30 in the morning, showering at 6:45, and being in the cafeteria dressed and ready for breakfast no later than 7:05 is something I have been doing for as far back as I can remember. My name is Diane, and I am an institute baby.

No, I guess I'm not really a baby anymore, being fourteen years of age, but that's how we (the institute babies) refer to ourselves. There are five of us: me, Caleb, Jeanie, Adam, and Alana. At least, we're the only ones we know of, there might be others in different sub-divisions of the institute but we wouldn't know about them. To tell you the truth it wouldn't surprise me if there are other institute babies, but we're part of the psychological branch off. We've been stripped of all but two emotions: joy and sadness. We have no sense of fear, love, guilt, excitement, hope, curiosity, the list goes on.

We live on a strict routine schedule, there is no change between the days. It is exactly the same. Breakfast ends by 7:30 and after that we go down to the basement gym to work out. Whether you swim, jog, play basketball, lift weights, they don't care as long as we stay healthy. Exercise goes from 7:35 till 8:45, when we go back upstairs for physical exams, between the five of us this normally takes until 10:50, each exam takes about 25 minutes cause they ask a bunch of pointless questions.

We go back to our rooms and nap for an hour before we're woken up for 12:00 lunch. After lunch we go outside for about a hour and come back inside around 1:30 for a mental exam, pretty much this means they want to make sure we're still void of emotions by asking us more pointless questions. These exams take a bit longer than the physical and normally go on till 3:00. From then till 5:30 was our free time in the entertainment room. We have video games, board games, puzzles, movies, books, whatever we want.

At 5:30 we're called to dinner, which lasts until 6:30. Then from 6:30 to 7:45, we're put through group bonding. Not that we need group bonding, but it gives us a chance to hang out. We've all known each other our whole lives, we were raised in the institute since we were infants (hence the nickname) and as baby's had our emotional growth stunted. I have no idea what happened to my birth parents. I like to think they died. That would be better than leaving me in some experimental group, right?

Anyway, at 7:45, when group bonding ends we go back to our rooms, shower, and have lights out at 8:30. This is the same cycle that had continued my entire life, and probably would have continued until my death if it wasn't for that morning that changed my life. The morning I met Chloe.