Mindless

Chapter One - 008

"Your heart's in the ground, frozen over; my heart's in the sky, supernova." -Ansel Elgort

Agasthi: A name meaning one who is highly intelligent and knowledgeable, clever and wise.

Song: Normal by AJR.

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Our society is functional. In fact, it's more than functional, it's one of the most efficient moonBases. That is why we are moonBase 001, the first of exactly one hundred life-containing biomes.

MB2.1s3.1pc.1pm.1, to be exact. Sector one. Top class.

My identification is h-008r, or 008. I am in the continued education, and so a month from now I will be only three years away from beginning work. The work classification sector will transfer me to a job they see fit, based on my test scores three years from now. The probability of me getting assigned to technology is 95.00%. The probability of me getting assigned to the military branch of technology is 99.00%.

When I woke up this morning, there was a 00.01% chance that today would be any different than any other day.

And even off of those statistics, I would never have been able to calculate nor fathom just how affected my life would be by today.

I took off the soft gray shirt and pants that I sleep in (uniform), put on my (work) uniform, getting ready for the day like I always had. Then, I practiced testing on my tangiscreen until the door slid open. Like any good student, I was expected to pass the tests with upwards of 98% if I wanted to keep my ranking. I myself was predicted to be in the 99th (very top) percentile of all the reds but still I ranked 8th, if for no reason other than my age compared to the other people with scores commensurate to mine.

Once the door was open I set down my tangiscreen and put it in low power mode, since the with-you-at-all-times-outside-of-lessons mandatory tablets don't turn off completely unless they're broken. I walked along the bright red line moving across the floor, watched as others did the same. Some people's lines twisted or broke to make way for other lines-- but nobody ever hit each other. That'd result in a mark.

We went to breakfast. Sat down in our assigned seats at our assigned tables and quietly, brainlessly, nearly monotonously discussed testing and what jobs we were most likely to get, eating the gray mush out of the small, cold metal trays with spoons.

When I got to class, we were given an assignment no different than what we would have had any other day. One assignment for every subject. Science, math, tech or some other task like engineering, reading, language. Sound absorbing speakers slid down out of the ceiling so that should we need sound to do something, it wouldn't affect anyone else's work.

We then went to lunch, everyone sitting down in their assigned set. I was swimming in a sea of colors, everyone's uniform colored in a different way to represent scores. I was in the top ten-- my uniform was red.

Then, more classes, dinner, and I went back to my assigned room. I took out my tangiscreen and practiced testing until the lights overhead slowly dimmed to darkness.

I looked up at the camera, still paranoid as usual even though I killed the thing six years ago, before turning the tangiscreen off so that it wouldn't report my absence. Or, I guess, more, I hacked it off. It wouldn't turn back on unless I connected it to my voice distorter, which carried the virus removing software-- and the key to making the main system database think the tablet had been on all night like it should have been.

There was only one voice distorter that this tablet would respond to, and only one distorter that could alter the nature of a person's voice while discreetly tucked into the back corner of their mouth: mine. When I wasn't wearing it I kept it hidden below my dresser under a floor panel that I hacked away long ago to stash things.