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Once Upon a Time in the Dominion
In That Haze — No8 (Micro)
Hallelujah, called Hallie by her friends, rarely did more than go to and from work like the good citizen she had made herself out to be. What more could one do in a well-constructed machine like the Dominion? You had to follow the rules to have a good life. That was the universal creed determined by the Overseers and their mandates.
Hallie had never given the system much thought. Why should she when she couldn’t do a thing to change it? Even though she sat in front of a screen each day and entered in useless information that would be inaccurate in a few months, she still felt she did her part. And her quarterly reviews always came back with impeccable marks. She was rarely ever critiqued for mistakes in data entry.
“But don’t you long for more?” her friend Astara once asked over the comms they used to stay connected even in their bubbles of existence. “Remember those hijacked videos we used to watch? About people dating in the Before? Sometimes I still want that.”
“We’ll be matched,” Hallie had said breezily, “and what else could we want? We’ll have our perfect partners.”
Astara had sighed. “You don’t get it. Where did that spark of yours go? I mean, really, Hallie. The system didn’t used to have its claws in you.”
