Canary in the Cage (3)

I rarely have reason to go outside District 49, so this may be confusing, but this world was a mad place that seemed to blend utopian freedom with dystopian insidiousness.

Because its entire foundation was built on an extreme capitalist ideology, with enough money, you could buy health, youth, and even life at a discount.

Not only could you replace body parts with bioware bodies made through gene cloning, but by adding serum treatments, hormone manipulation, and DNA rearrangement, you could whip up an entirely new human.

These days, the cyber web shorts I watched would show people of different builds, ages, genders, and races one after another….

- All the people appearing in this video were actually one person!

Then an ad would often pop up with a retro sound effect.

I wished it would get off my algorithm soon.

Just as the types of vegans in my original world ranged from fruitarians to flexitarians, there was also a prevailing opinion here that anyone who went no further than adjusting their serum, hormones, or DNA code was still a purist, so it had dirtied my algorithm, which was just as purist.

For the record, not checking the box consenting to the collection of personal information (optional) did not seem to matter much.

It was not as though this were a country where everyone’s national ID numbers had been leaked to another nation...