Lucid

Chapter 2.0: Hyden

"Hyden James Keating get in here!" A deep voice bellowed. I ran in quickly and made sure to salute my father. What did I do now?

"Hello father." I said.

"Where are your debriefing papers?" Father asked.

"Almost finished, sir." I said, making sure not to make eye contact.

"I expected them on my desk yesterday!" He shouted. "Just because you are fifteen doesn't mean that you can shirk your duties. The Rosetta Experiment is 2 weeks away and you are the reciever of the participants, understood?"

"Understood, sir." I said. I took the silence as dismissal and I left.

This is my life. Mindless clone by day, mindless clone by night. The Rosetta Stone company doesn't have any use for personality, at least for the soldiers.

I went back to my quarters and opened my drawer. There was a list of the participants that I had to memorize.

Pax Chemming

Grayson Teo

Amber Hamilton

Nicholas Row

Kylie Manson

Graciela Esperanto

Madison Jaquet

Thomas Valdez

Claire Krane

Magena Oke

The contest was only for the U.S. There were other divisions around the world, but this branch is for the schools in the United States of America. There were many other pages of contestants but one girl caught my eye. There was a picture with each name. I paused on Kylie Manson's face. She was contestant 33 and she had golden hair and freckles. She had deep green eyes and a beautiful smile. However, the smile was distant. She looked almost angry.

"Have a girlfriend, Keating?" James asked. Nice.

"Get lost." I snapped over my shoulder.

"Well you are drooling over the picture!" He said, hardly containg his laughter.

"Shut. Up." I snarled. If my dad ever found out that I was looking at one of the contestants, I'd be dead. Worse, I'll be out of the program.

"Looks like you're out of luck, anyway. Says here she's only 13." James stated.

"What- what are you talking about? I never- I-I-" I stuttered.

"Dude, it's cool. She is pretty hot." James nodded.

"Now who is looking at the 13 year old." I said, raising my eyebrows. He shoved my head away.

"Finish your debriefing. Yeah. I know about that." James smirked. He is five years older than me but he acts like a ten year old.

I finally memorized the participant list. Time for debriefing papers.

When I finished my debriefing, I decided to call Rosie, my sister.

"Hey."

"Hey, Hyden." Rosie said. She sounded tired.

"How are my nieces?" I asked.

"Misbehaving as usual." I smiled. Leave it to Clarissa and May to make Rosie crazy.

"Listen, Hyden, I can't talk long because Paul is coming home." Rosie sighed. Paul was her husband but he was always on buisness trips.

"Okay. Just checking in. Bye, Rosie." I ended the call. So much for talking. This job isn't coveted for its social activity.

I studied Kylie's picture again. She was beautiful, but I don't think of her like that. She looks cold and calculating, not someone that should be messed with.

My next job is to monitor the participants' reactions when they see the video on the website. I logged on and watched each of their reactions. This was actually a quite comical job. What they didn't know was that there was a camera link in the video that allowed us here at Rosetta to make sure that they got the information.

When I logged on, there were recorded videos of all of the reactions. The three that were most entertaining were Madison, Graciela, and Kylie's videos. Madison jumped and squealed, her short curly hair bobbing around her face and glasses, Graciela looked like she didn't even give a crap. Her brown eyes just stared at the screen as if she was waiting for something. Kylie, well Kylie was hilarious. She wasn't as excited as Madison, but she kept shouting random words and before she even found out what the experiment was about, she was packing a duffel bag of clothes. By the end of the videos, there were tears in my eyes and my sides hurt from laughing so much.

"Shut up Hyden!" James yelled. Next thing I knew, I was being tackled. James rolled off of me and couldn't stop laughing. "Loverboy, it's lights out. Captain came in and ordered it while you were doting over Kylie Manson, ooh!" He flapped his hands around like a little school girl. I scowled and put my laptop in my drawer.

"Shut up joker. Or I'll tell fathe- captain about those drinking detours after security detail in town."

"Blackmail to blackmail. Well played, little man." He messed up my hair and went to his own bunk. I looked at my watch. 12:50. It was getting pretty late and I had morning shifts. I turned off the light and layed down. I fell asleep, thinking about the Rosetta Stone Experiment and what it has in store for Kylie.