Like every day, I played with the tags on my clothes and inspected the new skin grafts to make sure they fitted properly. I'd had my skin scarred and tattooed many times, so I wasn't actually afraid of the surgery, it was just a hassle to have to have someone do it. That was one of the many problems with the NHS: they wouldn't give me a robot nanny, which was really only a matter of money (my parents had been too poor to afford one setting me up in their house) and not the right politicians placing their views on the NHS on the books. The government wanted the UK to be a Capitalist society, and if this was how the NHS was going to be run, I was going to have to do it the 'boringly correct' way.
I'd only just finished off a 'you really shouldn't have drunk that' lecture with Sarah the other day and it was time to go look for the boarder. My parents', on the other hand, didn't have problems getting what they wanted. My dad would go to the boarders and get the latest and best technology just to keep him happy because I think my mother loves him. My mother loved me, but she wasn't crazy about her only daughter, and this was because I wanted to be a poet. I was maybe the first to want to be a poet as a job, so she probably didn't like the idea of it, but hey, I was happy with it because I knew I could get at least a living from it, and I didn't need to wear a stupid suit and tie.
I was outside and it was fine in the early autumn breeze that blew across the quintessence of buildings on the street that were carefully constructed to keep the illusion of privacy and 'human nature'. I passed a group of teenagers who were kissing and hugging in the street in front of the corporation buildings that look down on the rest of the city. There was one guy with his hair spiked up who was sunning himself in the autumn sun and was wearing a shirt covered in infrared LEDs. It's not that he was a body chiseller (and it wasn't an urban myth that people like him really existed) but really, he was quite a hypocrite, since he obviously didn't have the guts to show people that he had the technology to control his body temperature so he'd just cover his shirt with LEDs. I just let the teenagers kiss and hug, because it was fun to watch people be happy. I stood watching them in the shadow of a building, until I saw something suspicious.
I couldn't think of any reason why someone would want to peep on them, it was just a kiss, but I saw a camera eye poking out of the street, surrounding the building across the road. I pulled out my pretty blue suitcase to match my eyes, complete with a mini-display screen, and walked towards the camera, zooming in to see if it was watching the teenagers. The camera eye was moving slowly towards the teenagers and I slowly moved my suitcase towards it to get a better view. The eye was an infrared camera, which was detecting their body temperature in their kisses and then tracking the changes. I knew that the company maybe able to use that information for something somewhere, but I didn't know what. It was kind of a waste of time and effort: the teenagers would get fed up eventually and move on to an adult relationship, which was as far as my parents would allow them to go. I zapped the camera with my suitcase and the suitcase quickly turned into a shield that stopped the camera's lens.
As soon as this happened, I could hear people shouting at me to stand still; they were wearing very official clothes and they had passes to prove they were security officers. I didn't do anything, because they were behind me, so I calmly strolled across the street, grabbed the camera eye and ran around the corporation building, where I dumped the camera in a nearby rubbish bin. I then ran home and hid my suitcase in my garage. I would have to dispose of the charity box earlier in the week to get properly rid of the evidence. I went in and told my parents what I'd done and they were shocked, but they stashed it in some drawer, very carefully, and didn't say anything else about it.
I went back to my room, changed into my night clothes and went to sleep. I don't know why anyone would want to spy on one of the happiest, most beautiful moments of my life, but all I could do was hope that it was a mistake.
A mysterious man called Ian came up to my room seven hours later. He was wearing a suit, had his hair dyed black and was clean shaven, which was a rare thing these days: people often got rid of their anti-ageing gadgets, maybe to enjoy all the freedom and the way the software could accelerate their productivity, but they all had the same look in their eyes. I could tell Ian was a synth, like me, because he was cut out of the same wood, so to speak, but he was a far superior synth. He was rich and I was poor, but that was only for the sake of appearances. I wasn't actually poor and he wasn't actually rich. He did some work for my parents and they couldn't afford not to let him work for them anyway, because they were respected people. Ian was some kind of law enforcement officer and brought me a rather large bag of flour, which was my birthday present. I thought it was a weird present, but I opened it, Googled its uses in rather diverse dishes and set up the ingredients in a precise order, which included: a dash of paprika, a scoop of salt, a teaspoon of baking powder, three eggs, a cup of filled milk and a cup of oil. I was making an omelette and it burned on the second side, I was so worried about it getting burnt, because my parents would be angry. I called the number I'd had before the last time I played with flour and got through.
I had many call-backs from this number. I could tell they'd been researching me. They were good games. I could feel a headache coming on, I had just barely played with this game before and I'd lost. I was a bit scared of calling them next time, as I've been a bit confident as of late. The voice at the other end had a funny metallic accent, which I'd heard before and the number rang through. I was sat on the bed. I'd left the laptop on, which was always off, so there was no risk of me being disturbed, even though it was midnight, but I was still incredibly stressed. I was texting my parents, who were just around the corner, but I didn't want to text anyone else. I pretended that there was a different call coming through. I got through. Another synthetic voice asked me a question that I could easily answer with the question itself, because the two were very similar. I answered the question and was informed that the game was remotely stopping the game on all devices, except my phone, so I would need to log on to my phone again and then continue where I'd left off.
