Amanita: Poison Shot

Chapter 3: Tagged as a Lousy Flirt

*NOTE:
Please remember, when you're reading this book in its entirety, that she's narrating this story of her past from a future moment in time. She's REMEMBERING what happened and writing it down. That means that nobody can come after her for her thoughts at this moment in time. 

Some hours later that Friday evening, Daniel and I went to Old Sue's Clearing to party.

We were chatting and laughing with our friends while we were gathered around a bonfire in front of a rusty, old bus. The sun had long gone set.

After what I had been told at my annual check-up, I wanted to be somebody else and disconnect from reality. I felt my mind was poisoned, with a countdown on my head.

But in Old Sue's Clearing, I felt free. We used to bring a radio, dance, socialise, and drink. That evening, my former classmates Jean, Lola, William, Diego, Amber and Angel were there, and also others teens who belonged to my high school but not my former class.

I spotted Daniel and Chloé dancing. I preferred to chat and find out who had a driving licence, about the cars and motorbikes they had, their brands, whether they needed anything repaired, stuff like that. It was my passion.

We felt safe there. No clones had been in the area in a long time, since that car graveyard was in disuse.

Part of me thought that the ghost of good Old Sue was watching over us with motherly affection during our parties, not like an evil, old witch. She was obviously not alive. She was said to have lived a long time ago, before the war. To me, she was more like an invisible presence from the old world, and her mansion in ruins was a visual reminder that it would never come back.

White clouds rolled onto one another high over our heads, like a long, white mane of hair combed by the air. A soft, warm evening breeze caressed our skins as my friends and I went on talking about our stuff and laughed and drank by the fire. A few minutes later, I saw Daniel disappearing behind some bushes with Chloé. I chuckled.

We were listening to the music on the radio when it got interrupted by a news broadcast. All programs were controlled by the government. The news was the most obvious example of such meddling.

"Today, the President has had a meeting with the representatives of all the provinces in the world," a female journalist on the radio said with a sweet voice, "hoping to develop a firmer alliance as regards how to minimise climate change."

"There we go again," Amber said with sarcasm.

"Careful, Amber," William warned her.

Since our thoughts were being monitored thanks to our brain nanochips, Amber's sarcasm might've called the attention of the Global Security NanoSoftware (GSNS for short). The journalist then introduced that company because she would be interviewing its CEO in a minute.

"Brain nanochips became a marvellous technological breakthrough," the journalist explained. "They were initially sold as a cool healthcare device."

But there was an underside, I would've added. We were being monitored 24/7, like it or not.

Those chips allowed the clone government to control the health of the bearer in real time, besides copying and sending all the data, like geolocalisation, tasks performed, thoughts –either good or bad and about anything at all– to the software company which had created them, the GSNS.

"The creation of the GSNS and nanochips had been a government-funded project. Thanks to them, we can now boast of great public health and global peace," the journalist added, but everybody knew that nanochips had enabled clones to control all humans in the world, both clones and traditional humans alike. GSNS was made to collect all the data and report back to the clone government security forces. In case of a threat, then the cops would take immediate action.