In a futuristic society where people are differentiated and valued based on the purity of their genes, can a person define for themselves who they really are? Or does The Gene Test provide the answer for them?
Depression... Addiction... Criminality...
A line of buses shuttle students towards the Rosamund Technologies compound. The front few buses — new vehicles with plush seats, television sets, its own bathroom, and other facilities I can only imagine (I've heard rumors of a drink bar and a mini pool) — arrive first and alight students clad in blue silk. The next dozen standard yellow buses drive bumpily to catch up.
I stare blankly out the window, taking in the enormous compound, completely high-tech and modernized. Its magnificence fails to amaze me, since my mind is miles away from this place.
In one of the other buses, Athena, Colette and Alex are probably wondering where I am — I'm on the wrong bus. I accidentally weaved myself into the queue of another class as we were lining for our respective buses, in my dazed state. Or maybe it was on purpose, I'm not really sure, but right now I'm relieved I did. Just the thought of being trapped in a bus with all the people who think they know me gives me chills. Imagine what they will say when they find out the truth. I'd rather not be reminded of all the people I've lied to.
Right now, I just want to be someone else, somewhere else. A stranger: to others; to myself; to the world. In this bus packed full of students who don't know my name, I feel safe — a cocoon of alienation.
The bus screeches to an abrupt halt, throwing the students forward. I take a deep breath, feeling the dread growing in my stomach once again, as I take the first step out of my cocoon, onto the pathway of my damnation.
We are herded in groups through the compound. It's even more impressive on the inside than my external view from the bus window, making Trinity Institution's right wing look like some rundown orphan home. The entire building seems to be made of clear crystal, reflecting light in a symphony of sparkling luster.
Standing in the middle of the main foyer, looking up at the towering ceiling eight-floors up in all its scintillating resplendence, you feel like you're standing right in the core of a diamond.
Each group of twenty students is appointed a Rosamund Technologies escort who guides us through different branches of the testing block. The groups are split by alphabetical order of first names, which means that I had struck a jackpot and been grouped with Kera Rosamund.
"Oh, joy," I mutter under my breath.
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She walks right at the front, flaunting her knowledge of the compound and competing with our escort to see whose eyes are detected first by the system as we make our way through a series of locked doors.
"My mom had my eye's retina registered in the system so that all the retina-activated doors in Rosamund Technologies compounds recognize my eyes."
The other students gasp in amazement as she thrusts her face in front of a large steel door that takes up the whole breadth of the hall, and it beeps before instantly retracting sideways into the walls, providing a large doorway for us to walk through.
