"Something hides in every night

Brings desire from the deep."

- Tamino.

7 am, 10th of March, Friday. 2541. NovLondon.

A bright light shone into her eyes like a sword slicing someone's flesh open. She honestly didn't know why she thought of such an association. But the Sun had grown larger in the past few years. And with a lot of other contributing factors, just getting ready was getting harder with every day.

It was not the fact that the exoskeletons were too expensive. She didn't want to lend the entirety of her actions to a body that automatically moved her limbs. No, she liked her freedom. The problem was elsewhere. Somewhere in her soul, but not her body. But she didn't know what it was.

You might ask: how does someone like her still recall a thing such as a soul in the year of 2541? Well, she was different. She wasn't the kind of "different from other girls" type; no, in fact, she seemed quite very normal. But there was a desire she always wanted to silence, a desire she strongly disliked, but which always seemed to persist despite her efforts to cover it by behaving perfectly ordinary. But what do I mean by ordinary?

"What-the-world-ing?" she sleepily murmured, hoisting herself up on the bed and closing her eyes because the sun was still so bright. LowMinds recommended having at least a moderate amount of sun each day. But her temper often spiralled downwards when she saw such vitamin C first thing in the morning; spending most of her time inside with the artificial "zero-harm" lighting had done her more worse than she had imagined. Sun was much more pleasant if you lived in its façade, wasn't it?

"Good morning Talissa Mercedell,..." a female voice announced out of the blue. Oh no. Here we go again. "Here is your personal daily psychological therapeutic astrological,..." yep. Tags were pretty much spoken aloud since people usually got "interested" when hearing about some "psychological" ad. Or maybe their attention spans just needed frequent breaks in form of these "tags". "...technological prediction for astronauts, Geminis and Tauruses born on the 21st of May, 2516, for the 10th of March 2541, Friday."

She fell back into her bed. Having a "psychological prediction" every day was just obligatory for carrying on her job as an astronaut..

"Miss Mercedell, room five-five-five-five-five-five-five-five," (how many would they add?) "five-five-five-five," (the population on Earth was ever-growing), "five-five-five-five-five." (finally) "Today you'll be visited by AI Roxanne."

Immediately a hologram appeared and sat on her bed. It was of an old woman.

"Good morning, Talissa Mercedell! Or should I call you Tally?" the woman started, and Talissa instantly knew her life was like the quote "I wake up every morning. I open my eyes and think: here we go again". Ancient quote, she knew.

"Morning," she replied. She just had had a spacewalk a few days ago and "morning" just didn't seem good for "Tally". In fact it didn't seem good any day.

The nickname Tally that her little sister, Clarissa, had chosen for her when she was little had somehow been found by the authorities. She didn't like having everything she ever knew public and findable; but, well, that was life. She had to deal with it.

"Tally, then, it is! Tally, there is a special thing I have to cheer you up! Do you know what today is?" AI Roxanne inquired.

"Friday," she replied. InsWorkers, which got their name from insieme – together, in Italian – but were unofficially called insane, always did a great job of giving robots young attitudes, no matter whatever age they were programmed to look like. In her opinion, they sometimes didn't fit.

"Friday! Daily Friday meme intake, speed 2x casual," some memes flashed in the room, bound by her default preferences. But they were the same as usual. And most were about Lenne Darren.

"Friday will be good, don't you worry!" the AI automatically voiced, perhaps noticing that that day's client reaction was a bit anxious due to the furrowed brow angle being a few degrees smaller than the past days.

She was supposed to be smiling right now. But truth be told, it wasn't enjoyable smiling first thing after a few days in open space.

"How are you feeling, from 1 to 10?" AI Roxanne smiled.

"10."

Talissa forced out a smile. She didn't like to smile because it was usually fake – she hated to be fake – but that was the cost of normalcy, and she didn't want to bear the weight of changing something in her attitude. There was something wrong with her, but she didn't want to do anything about it. It had gotten on for four years, after all. And she was already twenty-four.

Anyway, after the AI had finished telling the usual - basic questions and prospect less promises – it had finally left and Talissa was free to start preparing for work. This psychology assessment was only asked to be done in the latest decrees by the most famous LowMind and councillor of the Mind Lenne Darren, who was the factual president of Engel and a significant part of Europe, Lana Smith. The Mind had, unfortunately, died unexpectedly during a War in which all the five Minds took part; however, that was a story for another day.

Was Talissa Mercedell normal? Well, maybe she was. But the desire to do something other – like, maybe, do something not for money or material benefit for her poor family but for a dream of sorts, that would not bring her benefit in the short plan, sadly or happily, was sometimes recalled by her, maybe during an "it is one of those evenings" sad brain frequency or whenever she let herself think about herself, but at those times, she only made one derivation and clung to it like her life depended on it. She wanted nothing out of the ordinary, her sole purpose for living was her parents and sister (with another one on the way) and, although deep inside, she wasn't worthy of even trying to do something for herself. One couldn't disagree with the importance of the second virtue – family, which is, by itself, sacred. Nonetheless, I still want to emphasize that she never did anything for herself apart from buying clothes, if they were needed, or coffee, which she loved so much. She didn't think for herself, because her sole purpose was to make people happy.

But, she sometimes admitted, though hating herself for it that the purpose wasn't working for her. It didn't help her get rid of that strange desire.

Yet she carried out her duties working two jobs like it was nothing and masking it behind fake, but normalcy-approved smiles.

Let us return to her story in just a minute.