The Living Read Online Free PDF Page A

will be sent to the SPO medical department
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    caution: you are now in sleep mode…
you have 3 new
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messages…
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    1
while you were away from
socio,
you missed the daily trailer
    attention: trailer loading…
    …Every day after sunset we watch our favourite series: ‘The Eternal Killer’ and ‘Festival Passions’! in the next episode of ‘The Eternal Killer’: the Butcher’s Son has broken free again! He’s looking for a new victim! Seventeen-year-old Kate has no idea that she’s got an early, painful pause ahead of her! But then, who does… Super-sleuth planetman Pete is already on the trail of the Butcher’s Son. He’ll stop at nothing to catch this correctee! in the next episode of ‘Festival Passions’:
socio-
designer
Don has not appeared in the Reproduction Zone at the appointed time. Disappointed Anne plans to give herself to three strangers. Who knows, maybe one of them will treat her to a world of unforgettable sensations…
    which show would you like to watch today?
The Eternal Killer Festival Passions Both shows
    2
while you were away from
socio
information was collected for you regarding your search request ‘cleo’ what would you like to do with this information? open in viewing mode save in memory
    3
While you were away from
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, user cleo invited you to meet on
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Zero
    From the age of five I visited the local natural development group: Hanna took me to a shining round building, which looked like a ball of natural cheese, with oval holes for windows . Of course, no one did any developing there, that was just a name. But I liked it. I liked the cheese house. I liked the poor kids, who since birth had had neuron chains that didn’t join up right, making it impossible to install SDP, the Standard Development Program, or anything else for that matter. They had ugly faces with big foreheads and tiny chins, they had drooling mouths, they had eyes weeping with sores, but their gaze fascinated me – it was direct and intense, tenacious, not like other people’s.
    They looked at me in amazement. I was absolutely healthy. I could have had SDP installed without any problems, if it weren’t for one ‘but’.
    I was dangerous. So they wouldn’t hook me up to
socio
. At all. The decision was made at the highest level.
    I was dangerous. I was surplus to requirements. I was unknown . I might violate something somehow… Of course they didn’t mention any of this to Hanna. They just announced that an additional cell would be required for me to be hooked up to
socio
. ‘Unfortunately, the creation of an additional cell could lead to a malfunction in
socio
.’ I remember her face when she got the message. Or I think I remember, I was very little – in any case, I’m sure that that’s what her face looked like at that moment. Frozen, grey. Like it always was when one of the departments contacted her about me.
    I liked talking to the other children from the development group – they didn’t know who I was. And if they had known, they would not have understood. I liked lying. I lied and said that I had known my incode for ages, that I knew everything about myself, that I had managed to listen in to the adultstalking. And I liked listening to them lie too… We told each other cock-and-bull stories about our lives before the Pause, in which we were all heroes and were all awarded the Order of the Living; we chose the most prestigious ranks and professions for ourselves: we were all secretaries of the Council of Eight, architects, entomologists, or farmers or fruit growers.
    And so I was a farmer. When they gave out the little boxes of natural food (I don’t know how it is now, but at that time children under nine were given a hundred grams of natural animal food produced by a Farmer of Merit in that region, it was part of the