I almost laugh out loud. I feel like I’m in a movie, acting like it’s been scripted. And maybe we are all just robots, programmed to behave in predictable ways. If that’s the truth, then Eric Smith won’t be able to stop himself from talking up his grand plan, even though he could take Jinx right now and destroy him before my very eyes.

I almost breathe a sigh of relief when Eric’s eyes turn slightly misty. He looks almost proud of himself when he says, “Ah, my announcement will take care of itself. I know you don’t like it, but it’s a good plan. Most people accept the status quo, remain in their dead-end jobs, their miserable routine, their nine-to-five that makes even the interesting seem mundane. Moaning on a Sunday afternoon, waking up with dread on a Monday morning, enduring hump day, celebrating on a Friday—same old, same old. Except they don’t really want to change it. So, why not allow people to keep that routine and yet be happy? All we do is make a little tweak to their ambition. They get to live their normal lives, without uprooting themselves in pursuit of some unreachable, impossible dream, and—most importantly—they can be happy.”

I swallow, my mouth so dry with fear I can barely speak. “How do you know they’re happy?”

“The bakus are the biggest data mine in the world, and Moncha has the best scientists to analyze it. By any metric available to us, the volunteers under the update are happy. And you know what? There was only one thing we needed to tweak. Ambition. That was all. Once that was gone, everything else fell into place.”

I shake my head. I can’t control my emotions any longer, and a trembling that began in my feet travels all the way up to my body. Our bakus record all of our conversations and all our movements; they’re with us every hour of the day. I never realized just how sinister that could be, until seeing what could happen when that data became the property of someone like Eric.

“That’s sick. If people knew…they wouldn’t stand for it.”

“Of course they would. In fact, they will. Don’t you realize? We haven’t just implemented this all at once. This is something I’ve been working on for years. Almost a decade. Your mom has just had the very latest upgrade. But her department have been our guinea pigs for years—the next stage of volunteers after those at Lake Baku, of course.”