Linda stumbled out of the waiting room in a daze. She barely heard the whoosh of the door as it slid open, didn’t recognize the slight momentum as the walkway whisked her along to an unknown destination. Several minutes went by before her head cleared enough to realize that she was almost in front of her office building in the downtown sector.
Other faces passed by on the belts; dazed or not, they all wore the same blank expression. Another day had begun, life continued on. Tomorrow had become today, written in yesterday’s ink. If left to her own imagination, Linda might have pondered the point of it; as it was, she couldn’t.
Signs extolled the virtues of constructive teamwork, placed at intervals deemed beneficial to the hive of human drones. Linda paid scant attention to them, forcing her mind to remember what she might have lost. In the deepest hours of the night, she’d perfected the recall trigger that allowed her to compensate for the early morning invasions.
Sitting down at her desk, Linda plugged her interface into the console and waited for the day to begin. A thought surfaced briefly; one to be savored before carefully tucking it into that secret compartment. Despite the electroshock treatments, she would pursue her forbidden dream. Some day, she would be a writer.
