Chapter 1
"I hope you remembered the glasses, you always forget something Jen!" Lucy said as she smirked knowingly at me. I cast my mind back to the kitchen table and recalled getting them ready. I was sure I had packed them into the picnic basket.
"We will see! If not, we'll just need to neck it from the bottle." I replied, knowing full well that she would probably end up drinking from the bottle anyway. "Thanks for coming outside for a chat Lucy, there's a few things a chat would help me iron out."
"What's on your mind?" asked Lucy. She knew that I only drive her up here for a a picnic when I need to offload my problems onto her and don't want the information to be fed into the system.
I tucked the car into a passing place on the winding country road and checked I had left enough room against the flowering blackberry bushes for the passenger door to open. "I'll tell you when we are there. You know my rules, screen off and watch off!" I instructed, making sure that she did so and tucked her devices into the glove box, and grabbed the picnic hamper from the boot.
We started walking down the narrow towpath alongside the abandoned canal and headed to the disused coal washing factory, this was our favourite hiding place away from the all knowing mainframe and the nests of WASPS.
The bedraggled brickwork was crumbling as interwoven ivy creepers and bristling ferns eroded the fading memory of a distant age, the wilds of time and nature had worn it down since it's closure in 2025. Both the location and natural habitat made a great buffer and barrier from the many observational stations and hives which possessed and observed every inch of the limitless urban zones of the UK.
I set the picnic hamper upon an embankment overlooking a deep waterless coal cleaning pool and admired how nature had reclaimed the once industrious edifice. It felt as though nature was fighting back against the state and bringing chaos to the manufactured order that was consuming every element of our lives.
I gazed into the amber sunlight dancing around Lucy who seemed lost in a fairy world of dappled sunshine and neoteric decrepitude as she was rummaging around the rusted steel framework which once hoisted tugs of coal through the spring-fed dousing pit. She was such a tomboy at heart and was never one for embracing her latent frowsy feminine magnetism.
"I've got the glasses!" I happily called over to Lucy as I pulled out a bottle of white Zinfandel from its frozen chiller cuff and poured us each a glass.
Although she was not my genetic sister, I loved her as if she was, we had grown up together as sisters from birth, her mum and dad lived with my mum, all I knew about my dad was that he was a phantom who donated his semen.
Lucy's hoydenish ways and boyish appearance were completely opposite to how I viewed myself, the curator of all things pink, pretty and sparkles, but despite being so at odds with being a girly girl, I deeply valued her insights and opinions. She was more like a big brother than a little sister to me. I raised the glasses, catching her attention and gestured for her to come on over and join me.
"You were really quiet on the drive up here, what's on your mind?" Lucy probed, searching for the cause of my reticence.
"Wine? Come, sit." I said as I lowered myself onto the red checkered picnic basket. She joined me and admired the view.
Lucy was always outright and direct when giving her opinions, and loathed it when I faffed to get to the point with her. We lived in a world where every action was judged, where each interaction was monitored and nearly every conversation was analysed and stored in the data banks. Lucy always felt it appropriate to keep things direct, nothing lost to poetic license nor could any misunderstandings be used against her.
"I really need to complete my profile this summer. I want to get it finished so the worst bit is out of the way, and I can then forget all about it."
"OMG Dad is going to kill you when he finds out! You do know you don't have to do that? You can pay for an override! That's what Dad expects of you, not to publically humiliate yourself!"
"I know Luce, I don't want to do it, but, it's the only way I can keep my options open. If I pay for an override, I can only marry someone from the upper two classes. If I complete my profile with the right grades, I can marry the man if my dreams. It's how the system works since LifeLog got into power." I tried my best to explain.
"But Dad has said he will pay for us both to get an override. He doesn't want his little girls being used by the corporate state to make ad revenue. Besides, is marrying someone from class and money a bad thing? You're smarter than this, Jennifer! You know you're better then the average citizen." I could feel her anguish penetrate through my soul. "Please don't tell me you've met someone and fallen in love?" She exclaimed as her first thumped down on my thigh.
I blushed, I hadn't planned on imparting so much information to Lucy, but I had indeed fallen for, and become close to Benji, the cutest boy at Uni. "Sort of." I said as I placed my hand upon hers, squeezing it firmly as I tried to reasure her that I knew what I was doing.
"Fucks sake Jen. You can't go and whore yourself out to the State just so you can marry someone from the lower classes." Lucy was obviously upset with me for even considering such a public invasion of my privacy, but perhaps more so that I would be happy to marry whom I wanted.
"I see Lucy, I had hoped you would be a bit more supportive and maybe a little excited that I'm in love."
I took a swig of wine, disappointed that her response was ruled by logic and chastity and not of romance and lust. If I could not turn to my best friend, my little step sister for support, I would have to achieve my aims alone.
Awkwardly, neither of us bought the subject up again for the remainder of the picnic, but I could sense that it was playing on her mind as we ate. All I could do was let her mull it over, and hope she wouldn't think bad of me forever more.
As I started driving us back home, she found the confidence to open up slightly. "What grade will you need for the marriage license?"
I cast my profile page data onto the windshield of the car, and scrolled to the marriage license requirements section, and gasped as I read out loud. "An average of 4.5 stars out of 5, and a minimum of 10,000 votes!" A queasiness flooded into my stomach, I hadn't expected that my body and venereallity would be judged as harshly as that.
"My friend, Sonia, only needed 2.5 stars and 1,000 votes. I'll send you a link to her profile. What have you done wrong to get penalised?" Lucy exclaimed as she swiped through my various statistics and collated personal data, trying to find some form of rationality.
My heart felt hopeless, I had no chance of getting that rating. Not boring, plain me. I needed to get to the bottom of why the requirements for my marriage license was so high. They seemed impossibly unobtainable; it was futile.
"Really Jenny?" She said with a simper, "Only twice in the past 30 days!"
I glanced up to the windscreen, and scanned for what she was teasing me about. "That's personal!" I snapped quickly at her and clicked the hologram to a close before she had chance to read the corresponding automated description and thought narritives. "That has nothing to do with you, forget it Luce!"
A silence sunk through the car, as I mulled over the grade I needed.
Lucy squirmed slightly in the passenger seat, her gamine smile beamed brightly as she blushed and turned crimson. "I need to do it that many times before I can get out of bed in the mornings. Just saying!"
