Nine Years Earlier

Suburbs outside The City. April 19th, 2095
Nine Years Earlier

Isabelle Albright flicked the holographic fidget spinner across her bedroom, watching idly as it arched over the antique dresser and returned like a boomerang into her nimble grasp. The translucent knobs continued to spin with simulated momentum as the energy sizzled between her fingertips. She pressed down hard, wincing through the pain as the blunt needle pricked into the raw flesh on her right arm.

"You're going to hurt yourself," her friend warned, lounging sideways across Isabelle's desk chair and painting her toe nails against the wooden desk.

"I'm already hurting myself," she sneered at Sam. The harder she dug her fingers into the hologram, the fiercer the emitters fought back with their projected, magnetic fields. "I just find this pain more distract--Fuck!"

The sleek, robotic arm grafted into her side table recoiled. Blood dripped from the needle pinched between its slender, metallic fingers.

"What the fuck, Hyde?"

The floating white orb doting over her arm recoiled as well. "Apologies, Mistress," it hummed. Its black, hexagonal lens spun left and right as it focused on the blossoming red blot on blood on Isabelle's bicep that bloomed over the fresh tapestry of pinks, blues, and greens. The florescent band around Hyde's pancake shaped body faded from blue to green. "We are almost done here," it said, its voice carrying all the inflection and personality of a person but with just a faint, mechanic hiss.

"You've been saying that for an hour," Isabelle moaned, clenching the tender muscles down her arm and giving her holographic spinner another whirl.

Sam didn't so much as flinch as it phased through her auburn hair streaked in florescent greens. "Only so fast you can give yourself a tattoo with a sowing needle," she said, and gave her big toenail another slick coat. A maze of blue lines sizzled in excitement across the sole of her foot. Even this close, in this light, her long, smooth, toned leg looked authentic.

How much easier her life would be if she had a leg like that, one that could brace itself from a fall of over fifty meters. Or that could smash through a wall of pure concrete. Maybe she'd be able to make it over those towering, electrified white picket fences that encircled the Suburbs. Maybe she'd be able to leap even further.

The needle pinched her again and Isabelle missed her spinner. It crashed into the wall behind her and evaporated into a shower of harmless sparks that rained over her body. She had just turned 18. She was wearing a pair of scantily torn jeans and a tank top deep enough to fry The Suburb's securi-cam's modesty policing subroutines. Sam had teased that her "rebellious" look was very 20th century. What a thing to say. The entire facade of The Suburbs was a twisted facsimile of the "simple" life of the 20st century middle class. What else did she have to rebel against?

Another pinch, and she bit her lip so hard it almost bled. "Please," she gritted. "Hyde. Tell me. We are almost. Done."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Hyde. Please tell me I am almost done listening to this ceaseless and pathetic moaning."

The mounted arm wiped away the blood with tissue from her nightstand and incinerated the evidence with an quick, electric spark. Under the auspices of her "guardian" drone her father had "gifted" to her for her 14th birthday, the arm got back to work. Isabelle clenched her teeth.

"So," Sam ventured, not looking up from her own little project. "You worried?"

Isabelle shrugged. "Kinda late to worry now, isn't it?"

"You don't want to check?"

"I'll check when its fin--fuck Hyde, come on!--done."

Sam looked up. Faint lines of circuits, well camouflaged by attention grabbing make up and eye-liner mastery, criss-crossed over her irises. Eyes designed to detect whether someone is telling the truth. Something every young, professional managerial aspirant needs. "I just don't get how its worth it."

"Try being the daughter of a trillionare and you'll know."

"Even if it goes green, he's still gonna see your arm. Someone will."

Isabelle balled her fist through the next stab of pain. "Maybe," she seethed. "Maybe not."

"What? You gonna wear a sweater when it's a hundred degrees?"

"Maybe I won't still be here next time it's a hundred degrees."

She realized that was the first time she'd ever said something like that out loud. The forbidden thought that had first flashed in her mind two years ago, on her sixteenth birthday when her father had first revealed his plans for her arranged marriage, and had bubbled up again the first time she'd seem the picture of the disgusting, blubbery, forty year old man she had been betrothed to. She'd learned to keep it buried, smile, act dainty and delightful at the elite parties where her father showed her off to his leering colleagues. She'd even learned to say "thank you" like she meant it when they complemented her for how "pure" and "natural" she was. She could weather all this because she knew, when she got home, when she was alone in her room and her father was spent on displaying her, that she could lock the door, close her eyes, and open up the deep recesses of her mind where this secret had been kept safe and stroke it, fantasize about it, let it run wild in her imagination where she was free and self-possessed and not just some peon in for some corporate marriage to a "very important investor" who we simply "cannot afford to offend."

She'd never said it out loud, not even to Sam. Even for a middle class, "tainted but respectable" family like hers it'd be scandalous to imagine wanting to live outside The Suburbs. But in the concern and pity of her friend's gaze, there was no surprise. It was a public secret around here.

The final prick hit her right in the center of the skin etched so raw from the improvised implement, it almost seemed soft. She looked down at her shoulder as the final dab of ink squirted into her skin, and seeped beneath the veil to join the patterns of pigment surrounding it. From shoulder to wrist, she was a mural of color.

Isabelle marveled.

"Task complete, Mistress," Hyde buzzed, scooting from the bedside table and over to the foot of her bed. "Can I interest you in a mirror shot?"

Isabelle closed her fist. The seamless metal band glistened on her other forearm. "Yes."

Hyde's lens spun and a projection of her, reflected, materialized above her bed. Her arm, seen from further back, was not as red as it was up close. The reds, greens, and blues of the women, pedals, and signs contrasted beautifully with her skin, transforming her from a plain, white brunette into something deviant, even if it only ran as deep as a few millimeters of flesh. She reached down to touch and trace it, but her raw skin sizzled from the faint heat of an approaching finger. She pulled back.

Sam sat up, attentive and apprehensive. "Moment of truth?" she asked.

Hyde dematerialized the projection and floated obediently.

"Moment of truth," Isabelle repeated. Reluctantly, she raised her left arm. The grey, harmless looking bracelet revealed no seams, no protrusions, no depth, no reflection. She raised her finger above its face. Moment of truth, she thought.

Tap, tap.

Its surface glistened. She counted. One... Two... Three.

Then it flashed green.

Once. Twice. Pause.

Her heart stopped.

Then a third flash.

Relief erupted inside her.

"Jesus," Sam breathed, a whole lungful of air expelling from her chest. Her hand pressed against her heart. "I thought you were a real gonner there."

Isabelle gave it another two taps. The green flashes matched her rhythm. "Hyde?"

"Downloading results... Yes, as shown. Subject is the verified product of one hundred percent natural means of procreation, contains no artificial components, no marks of genetic alteration, no internal scarring, is free from synthetic ****, enhancers, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogenics. Disease free, fracture free, never penetra--"

"That's enough, Hyde," she shot, sneering at her artificial companion. She then returned to marveling at the irremovable bracelet. At times she had wondered if there was even any skin under there. The band had covered the same spot since before she could form memories.

But there had to be skin. She was 100% organic, wasn't that what it said?

Her gaze met Sam's, and they both smiled.

"Organic ink," Sam said, grin spreading across her face like a deft flick of her brush.

"Organic ink," Isabelle repeated in awe and gestured for Hyde to return and begin balming her arm.

"You're right, Isa. I have no idea what it's like being the daughter of a trillionare." She tapped the side of her hip and a metal drawer in her flesh popped open. She dropped the bottle of nail polish inside and it closed on its own.

Isabelle looked down again at her own alteration: featureless, codeless, but nonetheless the product of her own will.

Sam kicked herself up from the chair. "Now, is the daughter of the trillionare ready to sneak out to the meanest hackathon this side of the rail?"

"Oh, aren't I ever. Hyde?" He chirped. "Power down for an hour and then, on bootup." She intoned, "return to the deep."

The careful utterance triggered code buried deep in his circuits, just as deep as her own secrets. After they were gone, her helpful electronic aide and partner in crime will have awoken as the robot her father had gifted her, an omnipresent, doting, and indefatigable guard dog named Jekyll designed to watch and "protect" her at all times. Her father would ask it what Isabelle was up to, and as far as Jekyll's stored memory would tell him, she was sulking like an insufferable teenager in her room, and it would be for the best if she "was not disturbed until she was in a better mood." Not that her father would ever want to see her when she wasn't useful.

If he had wanted her to be obedient, he should never have taught her how to code. But that was his own misguided pride's problem. Isabelle grabbed a sweater, covered her cleavage for the cameras, and slipped out the window with closest, dearest friend.