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CHAPTR ONE

ERROR: REM DISRUPTION
Her hands shook as her consciousness emerged from the darkness. Having never experienced a dream in all her 19years, the color red still lingered mysteriously in her mind’s eye.

“Graycev, get up!” Her mother's tone echoed down the hall, “Fischerd?” Sounding devilish and irrational at the same time, her mother, Sovia, shouted to her husband, “Fischerd! Where‘s the quota? I don't want to do research.”

“What quota?” Her father’s tone floated down the hall.

“For plasma... It’s due.” After a long pause, her mother’s tenor bellowed again from the kitchen, “5playbacks from the past two weeks, you said you would file!”

Fischerd was in their bedroom, his eyes activated-glowing green, receiving five linear playbacks of himself stating exactly that which he could not remember. While shuffling past his daughter’s doorway dressed in his olive-colored coveralls with a navy handkerchief haphazardly stuffed in his chest pocket, his uniform was already wrinkled as he threw a loose grin in her direction. He was a code sorter, a mostly sedentary job inside the B.C.C. (Birther Control Compound), the mysterious set of buildings that shared zero details with the human collective. Fischerd’s memories of work duties were wiped at the end of each day. Constant resets had greatly degraded his short-term playback capabilities. He could access around 53% of stored information; statistically low.