Implanted - Chapter One (Edited)

There are just times where it all seems hopeless. You see all of these pictures of how it used to be. Green grass, trees everywhere, children running bare foot in the grass and climbing the trees. The only time I take my shoes off is when I’m in bed and even then I’m wearing socks.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been taught about the dangers of wandering outside the walls. No one goes outside the walls apart from the soldiers. Only once has someone else been sent Outside and he was a scientist. I daydream about the Past often. That’s what we call it, the years before the walls were created. No matter how long before, it’s just the Past. I dream about when people where apparently free to go where they pleased, where they chose their own jobs, but most of all when they could choose whom they married. Of course, when I day dream I’m staring out the window, straight at yet another concrete wall.

“Athena!”

And now I have once again been caught doing said daydreaming. Crap.

“Athena, would you please answer the question for me?”

“Erm, yes of course Madame, the answer is…. Never?” Please let that be the right answer. If not and my mother finds out I was caught daydreaming again, she will make me clean the bathroom for at least a month.

“Lucky for you Athena, that is the right answer.” Madman has recently perfected her look of disappointment just for me and she is using every chance she gets. She looks down her pointy nose, and over her glasses that can only be described as huge. Before she can torment me some more though, the class is dismissed with a vibration of our implanted trackers. But they’re not just trackers, they’re also day planners, phone and, well it does everything you could possibly think of. Including finding the person we’re supposed to marry. One vibration signals our dismissal from class. A sharp reminder that we have five minutes to move onto our next designated activity. Today I’m designated to go home and start cooking dinner for my family, while my mother is still at her office. My father hasn’t come home for dinner in nearly four years. The government tells us he’s still alive but I no longer believe them. Four years ago they sent my father out on an assignment to somewhere outside the walls. My father was the scientist they sent Outside. I still have no idea why, or what sort of work my father did. It was all top secret. As I’m running out of the classroom door, I’m once again struck at how bleak and grey the school is. At least the monorail station has a little colour from all the propaganda posters about the Government. I’m heading there now, rushing, trying to get a seat.

Potatoes? Cooked and currently adding them to the pot. ‘Now add the cooked carrots’ Carrots? Carrots?? This is why I hate it when I’m assigned cooking dinner. It’s not that I don’t like cooking, I actually love cooking. It’s that I’m told exactly what I have to cook and how I am to cook it. No room to be a little bit creative, like when I’m making a little snack for myself. Just as I’m rushing to try and find some carrots that I will just end up adding to the pot raw, my implant vibrates. It starts vibrating and doesn’t stop for ten seconds. I look down at my wrist, at the vibrating implant. This can only mean one thing. The Government is about to announce a change in Policy. I start pleading to the ancient God that my teachers say the past people used to worship, though according to those teachers, there is no such thing.

“Please don’t let the change affect me” I just keep muttering to myself aloud. I know that everyone inside the walls will be hopping for the same thing.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this announcement is very important and it is mandatory that you listen with great interest. Currently the Policy is for children to leave their parents and enter their training at the age of 20”

No, they have to be extending the age. Oh please let them be extending the age. I have two more glorious years at home to look forward, before I am forced into training for the job I was designed for.

“The Government now feels that this is too old and wastes some of our beautiful young people’s talents.”

NO! And what an excuse! This means that the current people in the jobs are getting too old to complete the jobs anymore. They wouldn’t have this problem if they hadn’t changed the Policy to control the number of children each family has.

“Therefore I am pleased to announce that the age has been lowered to 18. Effective immediately. All personnel will report to their assigned jobs tomorrow as dictated by their implants”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I would find out what job I was to be assigned for the rest of my life. Tomorrow I would be kicked out of the house I grew up in, the house that holds all my memories of my father.

“Athena!” my mother is calling my name from the hallway sounding delighted. It breaks me out of the trace of shock, I was in.

“Athena did you hear the great news? Oh of course you have! Isn’t it just so exciting? Athena? Athena what is that smell?”

How long was I standing there for? Long enough for the all the liquid to boil out of the stew I had been cooking. Of course the second it started to burn the stove automatically switched off, however the burnt smell still lingered in the air.

Just as I spin around the try and fix the stew, my mother waltzes through the doorway. She’s smiling, as always she is thrilled with the Government and anything they do. Apparently even if it involves kicking her own daughter out of her home. She stands before, looking up at me. Expecting, of course, for me to be delighted.

“Oh what do you think you will be assigned?” The woman is practically singing with happiness.

“I’m hoping that you get designed to something in fashion. What do you think about that, hmm?”

Nothing could possibly be worse. The ‘in’ fashion changes almost every month. One month it’s all about colourful silk blouses. The next it will be all pitch black tight pants. Looking at the history books not much about the fashion has changed, since the Past. Although now woman are a tad more modest. Well that is, they don’t show the skin. They just have the material clinging to it so tight, it may as well be their skin.

“I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, Mother”

As unlikely as it is it will happen, I’m secretly hoping to be assigned something with animals. It is rumoured they are getting the soldiers to capture the wild horses, left free from the Past. The rumours say that the soldiers plan get them trained, so they can use them on patrol. I’ve never seen one in real life before. Only in photos or sometimes even movies. In fact the only animals that have survived inside the walls, and dogs and cats. The rest all died out, well the ones that weren’t put in the one of the zoos. That’s what they tell us anyway. But it’s likely the Government killed off some of the ‘unrequired’ species.

The rest of the night went by so fast. After we ate the slightly burnt stew, in our very minimal dining room, my mother went to her office to work some more. I sat in my room, contemplating about what was to come. No one outside of the top levels of Government actually knows how they chose which jobs to assign us. There are many rumours, as always, but who knows which one to believe. The most common one, is that they observe us throughout our school years. Then choice based on our personalities. Another common one, is that they actually start training us secretly whilst we are at school. That is the one I think to be the most likely.

After what seems like hours of worrying about tomorrow, I finally fell asleep in my own bed for the last time. Tomorrow my life would truly begin. Or it will start to end.