Serial Designation REBOOTED

Chapter 1

Humanity should have probably guessed that something was up the moment the Designations were introduced to the world by BenCORE Technology in 2034. I mean, humanoid robots programmed with actual feelings and can blow stuff up? Seriously, how stupid can people be?

I guess, pretty stupid.

I guess I should have also guessed that our parents hated us when they named me Icelene and my sister Veronix. Like, what kind of names even are those? So stupid. Anyway.

Me and my family had sat down on the couch to watch the livestream of the release on my dad's tablet. My sister and I had just fought over who sat on which parent's lap; I was around six at the time, and my sister was around eight. The man in the video, Bennett Cash, explained that humanity has been so reliant on technology that really doesn't do anything for us in the real world.

"I want you to think," he said in a bold, I'm-an-entrepreneur voice, "about what exactly your cell phones have done for you over... say, the last week. Nothing, right? Today's technology does almost nothing for humanity. Alexa can put things on your shopping list, but can she go and get it? No. Google can't use the Shark vacuums that you spend hours looking at pictures of." The audience laughed at this, and my dad let out a small chuckle and turned up the volume on the tablet.

"So what if we had technology that could do all of that?" Bennett stopped pacing, at the far right side of the stage. On the far left side, a spotlight lit upon what looked like someone under a white tarp. "What if... we had something, or rather, someone, to clean our homes, get our groceries, pay our bills, like a normal human being, without having to worry about being paid? Well, ladies and gentleman, I have the solution." He walked over to the thing under the tarp, the camera zooming in and following him, and gracefully removed it.

"Behold: the new Designation!" No one applauded. The person under the tarp looked like a completely normal girl, aside from her unnaturally red hair, which was tied into two curly pigtails, one with a bandana tying it so it looked almost like lopsided rabbit ears. She looked around sixteen or seventeen, and was about five and a half feet tall. She wore a black leather crop-top jacket over a purple-and-magenta shirt that said DEATH TO BARBIE. Her short-shorts were slate gray, and another bandana tied around one knee above knee-high steel toe boots. But she also had eyes like glowing red X's.

"That's... just a girl," said someone near the cameraman. Others in the audience started saying the same thing. I looked up at my parents; they looked just as confused.

"Now, now," Bennett said, chuckling, "I know this looks... scandalous. But let me tell you that this is the birth of a new generation of technology. This is Designation-V10, or Violet. Say hello, Violet."

"Hey," said the girl. She even sounded normal. No one was impressed.

"Violet, do a facial recognition of anyone in the audience."

Designation-V10, or Violet, looked around in the audience with a thoughtful duck expression and shifted her weight to one foot, digging her hands in her pockets. "You. Jose Montoia, forty-five years old, you have a wife and two kids. You immigrated here from Mexico in 2014, legally (congrats), and you got a car recently."

The man in the audience that she basically just interviewed looked a little freaked out.

"And watch this," Bennett said, and gestured to the right of the stage. A metal baseball bat was tossed to him, and he caught it and promptly used it to whack Violet's shin. There was a loud metal clannnng sound, and Bennett held up the bat; it was now dented into what was almost a cricket paddle. Violet slowly turned her head to look at him, and the look she gave him was honestly a little unsettling. Bennett didn't notice. The audience clapped this time.