Daughter of Zeus ✔

2

Inside the house, Ada's mother, Gemina Corentin, watched a television set at ear-splitting volume. Ada was used to it. She recognized her mother's need to escape from reality.

Old dishes were strewn across the hallway table in the living room, and laundry waited to be folded on the kitchen table. In a few hours, Ada would clean up the mess herself, or at least the old Ada would have. Current Ada didn't care about the ascetics of where she lived. Other tasks demanded her time.

Gemina waited until the front door was closed before harassing her daughter. "Ada, where were you?"

She kept silent.

"Ada?" The television quieted. "You're really not going to tell me where you've been all day?"

Ada popped briefly in the archway of the living room. "I was at work. What else you wanna know?" She disappeared back into the kitchen, opening cabinet doors.

The television resumed, volume at a comfortable roar. "What am I supposed to think? You stay in your room for months, not talking, not eating. Goodness knows, I understand why you felt you had to do that, but..." A pause after Ada slammed the cabinet doors shut, then, "Suddenly, you start going out every day, all day and all night, and I can't ask you about it."

Ada heard mumbling as Gemina wondered aloud if her daughter was on drugs or in training to be a Sammie. In answer to her mother's muttered lecture, Ada rolled her eyes. If anything, she might make it to Statie training, but Sammie training was complicated. Or so she'd heard. Speculation surrounded the elite group of armed authoritarians who usually only showed to haul off Undesirables. Still, she held her tongue, not wishing to debate the difference in State authority figures.

She waited, and two minutes later, her mother's tirade was done. Ada joined her in the living room, settling next to Gemina with a tray of food in her lap.

"No drugs or Sammie training involved, I promise."

"But they took you away before." Tears glistened in Gemina's eyes.

"That was different. August had just died," her mother winced at the word died, "and they wanted to assess my loyalty."

Two Sammies had come to the apartment door one particular afternoon, smiling as they told her she needed to come with them. The oddest thing about Sammies was the...sameness. Though they came in all shapes and sizes, there was an element of repetition to them that unnerved Ada.

Mindful of her status, and wishing to keep it, she had nevertheless complied. The re-education camp wasn't as awful as the rumors promised. She took part in the group meetings, the private disclosure sessions, and the virtual re-integration scenarios. Eventually, Ada tired of the propaganda. In the end, she overrode the sensors remotely, like flipping a switch in her head, tipping her results from deviant to normal. After a couple weeks, she'd been sanctioned to leave, but with a downgraded status two notches above N.A. Mastering a hack of the intricate Prominent database was out of reach for an amateur. Her inability to prevent the loss of status resulted in the simultaneous loss of her salaried position and furnished apartment, luxuries reserved for middle-ranking Prominents.

"I'm dealing with things in my own way," Ada said.

She chewed her food, mulling over the nothing-ness status to her life. At least, she had her mom. Good ol' mom.

"I've dealt with things, but you, sweetheart, you need to—"

"What's on tonight?" Misdirection was the only weapon she could think to employ against her mother's reasoning.

Though Gemina cared for her daughter's well-being, television programs also rated high on her list. Without a beat, she described the anticipated speakers of the night. Many of them were political, religious, and sometimes both.