Geminus

Prologue

150 years ago a lethal plague threatened to wipe humanity from existence. There was no cure. Abstention of a simple touch was the only hope for avoidance, and even that didn't guarantee your safety. Once our world was at it's knees, governments everywhere fell.

Cities became empty shells filled with the air of death and decomposing bodies. The 'kissing' disease took only 3 years to wipe out more 99% of the population. Three underground bunkers were built in different places around world to house the survivors for two years, to segregate them from the infected and allow the disease to die out with them. It was meant to give the human race a fighting chance, to help us survive the plague and start again from scratch. The disease eventually found it's way in to two of the bunkers and those survivors perished. At the end of the two years, only one bunker survived.

150 years ago there were 250,000 people left in the world. Living inside a bunker, hiding from the outside.

Of course, after living through a disease so potently lethal, the survivors were fearful of any human contact. With no real government left, the survivors elected a man named George Scott to reign as King. The vast majority had decided our governments had failed us, and he had been the one trying to save us long before the world crumbled. He'd been the one to first discover the disease, and everyone turned to him as the prophet with the knowledge to keep it away.

George formulated the Absolute Law to protect the human race. To ensure a future for us all. George Scott probably didn't realize when he made that first law, that with time they'd change like they did.

Back then the 'Absolute Law' consisted of a ban on procreation until the isolation inside the bunker was over.

Of course once the two years of confinement was over, 250,000 people were stricken with particularly bad cases of OCD. George Scott died from a heart attack a year after the survivors reentered the city above them. His son Byron Scott inherited the throne, and that is when everything changed. Some say George had been about to lift the bans, that he deemed that any trace of the disease was gone and it was safe to once again live like they had. Then there are the conspiracy theorists who say he was murdered so that it couldn't happen.

Byron Scott changed the way the world worked. He introduced a new system that would minimize the chance of such an outbreak again but more importantly for Byron Scott, give him complete control. No longer would you see a happy couple walk hand in hand through the green and luscious park, hopelessly in love. He created a world that began to lack free will.

There are five Absolute Laws now and failure to abide by any of them is punishable by death.

1) Copulation without the proper licensing is forbidden. Only those who had been through rigorous testing are allowed to copulate. If the 'kissing' disease hadn't happened, I'd imagine society would have staged a protest at Byron's laws. Scared and afraid of dying, instead they accepted and revered his motions.

2) All offspring are to borne to licensed parents. Each licensed parent is allowed two children. These are to be born simultaneously. One boy, one girl. The creation of children is much the same. Once licensed, a specialist would impregnate you with two heavily inspected embryos. One of each sex. Once born, the children would receive certification of their twin status, signifying that they were created legally.

3)You may only enter a marriage with your match as determined by the lottery. Each twin enters the matching lottery at the age of 25. Once their match is found, they are lifelong companions. However, the arranged marriage doesn't signify a license to copulate, or have children. Many couples, especially those with little money to take the tests, live loveless, sexless, childless lives.

4) All women of child-bearing age must have the W0m3 inoculation unless licensed. The inoculation W0m3 isn't a contraceptive. It is an intelligent tracking chip, embedded in to all girls arms at the age of 12. It's job is to feed back data to the crown, so that any illegal pregnancies are found and dealt with.

5) All children born from illegal relations are to live in exile within the confines of the underground until the age of 18, from this time they are eligible for mercy from exile.

The last law is why I am where I am. Why I live in the dark and dusty doldrums as an orphan with all the other misfits of society.

A little over 19 years ago my parents met. They were born as citizens of Geminus. My parents were matched to others people at 25, but each marriage was loveless. They met at work and committed their first crime by falling in love outside of the matching system.

Eventually they broke another, the most Absolute Law and conceived me.

I was conceived out of love, but the Absolute Law saw that as an abomination

The inoculation helped the drones track my parents. The intelligent W0m3 chip knew my mother was expecting even before she did. They were both imprisoned immediately. My father was sentenced to death three days later, and my mother was locked in a hospital cell until she gave birth. A day after I was born, she too was executed.

Upon the age of 18, we are available for purchase. They refer to buying us as mercy from exile. They even call themselves philanthropic. But upon our 'release' we have no rights, we live to serve our owners. We are slaves.

Today I turn 18. Today it's my turn to go on the auction block. Today I begin my true imprisonment.

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This is my new secret project. It's mostly in the planning stages right now, but what do you think... should I continue?