2100: Perfect Unhuman Heaven

AM I FREE YET?

"Where have you been, Dona?"

There is her sharp voice that makes my skin crawl. I am such a loser. Why do I fear her? Maybe because I associate her voice with a lack of food. If I displeased her, I didn't get to eat, and that is a basic human need. If you take someone's food, you turn them into an animal. It is worse than beating them.

The pain from lacking food for a child, you transform them into a little animal that would do anything to please you to get the treat. Just like the animals at the circus in old movies. The forbidden movies that Aunt Stella and her husband, Dean, still watched.

If I was a good girl, washed the dishes, cleaned the house, cleaned the bathroom, the toilets, the garbage, the yard, everything had to be spotless. Me and the robots of the neighbouring houses, I was rewarded with fried potatoes. Yes, those oily, cheap fried potatoes that my cousin Dora left on the counter after she filled herself with the burger were the best. I would make the moon shine for them.

So I studied hard. I was top of the class. As bedraggled as I was and starved, I studied hard because I got an extra 200 credits from school every month, and I stashed them away. Aunt Stella didn't know about them.

I could not spend them on anything but food. If I had bought myself clothes or something special, she would have noticed, so I just bought enough not to go hungry, and the rest I stashed away, waiting for this 18th birthday, for this New Year, like a salvation that seemed never to come.

"Did you hear me, Dona?"

That was when I felt it, the first blow. My cheek was burning, my head was ringing. I bit my lip, and I felt the metallic taste of it in my mouth.

"How dare you hit me?" I screamed. "The authorities will punish you for beating me."

"Aww, Dona dearest, I CAN HIT YOU ALL I WANT NOW. YOU PASSED 18. NO AI ROBOT WILL COME CHECK YOU OUT FROM NOW ON. And since you are under my roof, I can do whatever I want to you. You can go to the police, but those damn AI bots won't help you out in a million years, and by the time you get to a human police officer, your bruises will heal, and nobody will believe you, an orphan, over me. A renowned math teacher at a prestigious school."

"Math teacher, my ass. More like a stand-in. These days, mostly the AI board teaches the children, and the teacher is just a stand-in so children would feel psychologically comfortable in rich schools. In my school, there isn't even one like that, just the AI robot and the board."

And then there was Uncle Dean. I didn't hear him behind me. I didn't see his shadow looming over me until it was too late. I turned, but there was no time to react. The baseball bat came down, and everything went black.