It's 2141. Clones have taken over as the dominant species. Using brain nanochips to surveil thoughts and actions, they have pushed traditional humans down to a status of low-class workers in a discriminatory dystopia.
A nineteen-year-old aspiring me...
"One of my targets is here?!" I asked with a shaky voice. My eyes went wide open.
"Eros Nevermore, obviously," Agape added with a smirk. "The son of the Secretary of State comes here to Amanita every weekend with his friends. I just saw him thanks to the security cams."
She pointed at the security screens hanging at the top of the wall in front of her. I turned my head to them. She zoomed in Eros' magnificent, drop-dead gorgeous face as he made his way into the crowd on the dancefloor.
"Hello," Siegfried said in a hurried voice as he opened the door without knocking. "I'm back. What did I miss?"
"Nothing. You weren't meant to come back at all, sweetheart," Agape replied with a smirk full of mischief. "Haven't you got work to do?"
With her arms crossed over her chest and a mocking aura, she stared at Siegfried, who was standing right beside me, just as before.
"It's nothing, really," I said before he had the chance to reply. "Just saying that one of my targets is here. That's all."
His eyes left mine to stare at the zooming images of Eros smiling and chatting with his friends.
"Agape, don't tell me you're sending her after this clone right now," he told her without hesitation before I could say anything. His fists were clenched. "She doesn't need to see what happens here when..."
"Stay out of this, Sigi," she cut his speech in a warning tone.
I sensed a huge amount of dread in his voice. It was obvious he didn't want me to witness something awful. I wondered what that was.
Then, Agape turned to me with an agreeable voice and said, "Pay attention, Daphne. This is Eros Nevermore, clone prodigy. The most expensive baby to be born in the BioBank. The best genetic fingerprint to be ever designed there. Straight As in all the subjects he's taken so far in the Business School of Thalis. He's recently taken an interest in Biology. On top of that, he's drop-dead gorgeous. I mean, look at these bright blue eyes and this light blond hair," she said with a velvety voice.
He was handsome indeed. But I knew he was not for me. Besides, he was a clone. Mixed couples weren't allowed, like many other prohibitions in my life. I could be a fling – tops. Therefore, I didn't know what was Agape's aim then.
"It might be interesting to meet him before you go to his home as a maid tomorrow," she added. "I want you to gain his trust. That way it'll be much easier to sneak into his father's home office to get the information I need. Are you up for this job or not?"
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A few minutes later, I was already upstairs wandering in Amanita.
Siegfried was not amused by my decision to hunt my target on my own in the club while he had to stay out on the street, by the entrance, doing his job as a bouncer.
Amanita was amazing from the inside, so much mesmerising, wilder, and overwhelming than I had ever imagined.
The coloured lights, which bounced everywhere and filtered through the windows in the curvy ceiling, were blinding if you stared too directly at them. The main area had been designed as a round dance floor, and created for such a visual effect: it was as if the coloured lights got intertwined with each other as they were shot in different directions around the room until in the end they poured into the sky as if the mushroom-shaped roof were a strainer placed upside down, and an inverted gravity force pushed the lights up into the sky. The decoration was nature-related also, following a forest theme, with flowers, leaves, huge mushrooms, and even some artificial insects placed here and there as small statues.
