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...
I hid the USB in my fist, hoping Miss Radica had not seen me or the device I had stolen. Then, I turned my face to her, only to see her frowning at me.
"Stop touching those magazines, you idiot!" she exclaimed. "I've told you a million times not to touch them! I don't want your filthy hands on them. Go clean somewhere else if you've finished here!"
Luckily, she was only angry at me for the usual reasons, not because she had seen me steal data from her computer.
"Go sweep the hall on the ground floor," she ordered condescendingly.
She knew I hated sweeping the hall because it was a busy place and everybody stared at me with disgust.
"Right away, Miss Radica," I whispered obediently.
"And don't forget to smile."
I rolled my eyes when I had my back to her. I went to the stairs.
Once I was alone, I hid the USB device in my bra. I sincerely hoped that there would be no problem with it, since I had taken it out of the socket in a hurry, not properly disconnecting the device from the tower as I should've.
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When it was lunchtime, I took a bus to Amanita instead of going home. I was too nervous to be hungry, anyway. Luckily, my father was having lunch with his colleagues from work.
While on the bus, I heard the bus driver complaining to another passenger about the latest robots that the GSNS would launch into the market. Apparently, those new robots were smarter, and they would soon be driving all buses and trains. He was afraid of being out of work.
So, the GSNS had done it again. They had been able to recover some of the lost technologies due to the Prevalence War thanks to the generous grants that the government had set aside for that aim. That time, it was a milestone in robotics.
While he was complaining, I could also overhear two girl friends sitting behind me on the bus. They were talking about a girl they had known from school. She had gone missing. She never came home from work. The parents called the police, but a search warrant was never filed with the GSNS in order to geolocalise her.
Great. Another missing girl. It was always the same. Only young, traditional human girls went missing from time to time. And the police never cared, since all the agents were clones.
The driver turned on the radio.
"As regards the terrorist attacks," a female news reporter went on with a formal voice, "it is still unknown who is behind them. The police forces are carrying out an investigation while the opposition in Parliament is complaining about the security protocols..."
Those attacks were the first serious hardship ever since the Compulsory Insertion of Brain Nanochips Act of 2110. An unknown enemy who had managed to escape from the neural network was something to be truly afraid of. The clones would be looking for us rebels, to arrest, torture, and kill each and every one of us – and that gave me chills all over my body.
