[Pink Choice] Memoir of an Orphan

We mostly wanted freedom from oppression. The accident that took our parents was not kind to us teenagers and the system was much worse. Being passed around like nomadic children, it was hard to set down roots that would serve to support us, stabilize us, and such an action was fleeting, as there was no fertile soil about in those homes. They said it was our attitudes, our insistence of **** to enact youthful justice, that told our would-be guardians we were lost causes. But in the end, I guess it was our drive, my determinism to support my younger brother, my dear Andrew, that saved us.

Juvenile detention hardened us. They would call us punks or thugs, young men thrown by the wayside, left to fend for themselves in an unforgiving Undercity of Neo-Tokyo. But to our Benefactor, we were warriors. With nothing to lose but our own lives, we were ideal soldiers that were able to survive the underbelly of the city. If it wasn't a loving family, with foster parents who unconditionally loved and cared for us, then it was the Benefactor's Hand that fed us. Doing his bidding pleased him and if we pleased him, he'd reward us.

There was an upsurge of adoptions by the time I was of the age that orphanages were no longer going to support. I was an adult now at 18 and had no purpose waiting for a hand to feed me day in and day out. It wasn't foster families looking for lost boys to nurture and become phoenixes that rose above the neon-lit Surface Cities. It was the filth of the Undercity. They'd send a phony mother and father who would turn a blind eye and offer top dollar for what seemed fuel for the fires of the platform dynamic, the power struggle between the low-levels and the Surface. Were we but cattle for the slaughter of an Undercity war, lowly pawns to be defeated on the frontlines?

I was fortunate enough to not see it that way. I was adopted in a group of twelve, like little disciples who had crossed the line between childhood and the real world. I was not put in a home just yet, as I was put into a seedy hotel room overlooking the brightly-lit Ruby District. I was told to rest, wash up, look presentable and ready myself for an appointment. They told me it was a clinic, a place where we would be immunized and vaccinated from the diseases of those who gave up in life and wasted away in some dank corner of the Undercity. An appointment of Orientation, they said.

We were abruptly woken up by our faux foster parents and each of us were assigned to an escort, that sported so many tattoos, you'd forget that they were hardly dressed. They intimidated us, but those who learned, learned to look up to them, strive to become them, to one day be intimidating like them. The clinic was large and run-down, but business was thriving. We each reported for our appointments, given slips to a particular room and escorted by a soldier to that very room. They entered the room with us. No words were exchanged, just the grunts and mannerisms by those around us. The man at the desk was old and seemed to be impatient, not even addressing me by a name due to us never even getting new names. I knew my name was Charles. He was doing this to get over it, to get to the next appointment in as little time as possible.

He produced a small pink pill and a small cup of water. He gestured me to take it and thinking it was something that would help me get one step closer to a future I wanted, I took it. I was naive. I was gullible. But with a man that looked like an old-school Yakuza member watching my every move, the last thing I wanted to do is not take the pill. I took it, chased it with what little water the cup had and immediately felt my body change. I was tall for an 18-year-old, but what the **** did to me, it caused me to shrink. My short black buzzcut was now becoming a long mane of black hair, flowing straight like an old-world waterfall, the kind that are mainly fantastical holograms in large Chinese restaurants. It flowed down to my waist. In my confusion, I did not observe everything that changed, but as soon as I was pulled to my feet, I was much shorter than the old man and the soldier and immediately experienced an alteration of balance. I didn't even register my legs walking out of a pair of pants that was several sizes too big.

Quickly, I was assisted onto a stool in a lame excuse of a photo booth. The old man did his best to control my long black locks, keeping them out of my eyes as I groggily looked at a camera. There was a flash and then another, blinding me momentarily. The old man pulled me off the stool and pushed me into the arms of my escort, who seemed much bigger than me and much stronger. He went to his desk momentarily, writing something onto a tablet. He proceeded to leave the room, saying the only sentence he would ever utter in the short time I was in his presence. “I have another appointment next door. Please be sure to make sure everything is in working order for Miss... Charlene. Just close the door when you are done,” he called out, but it wasn't to me of course.

Before I knew it, I was being bent forwards, my upper body horizontal with the surface of the desk, pinned there by a single large hand of the soldier. The soldier had his other hand all over me, as if to paint with the oils of his palm and fingers. He was deliberately trying to produce a sound from me.