The Slave. Luigi Passarelli

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      Ivano pointed his mobile phone at his friend's forehead as he had been asked to and was very surprised to see a figure which was three times higher than his own. He didn't make anything up but he refused to allow his friend to check what he was worth.

      “Why not? I will let you see the display. You can even do it yourself, I will give you the phone and you can delete the data when you are finished. You know how to do it don't you?”

      Ivano convinced himself, he actually wanted to check himself, to know once and for all.

      He took his friends phone and checked how much he was worth. It told him what he already knew.

      He didn't delete the figure from the phone and feeling a bit ashamed he gave it back to his friend who reacted with a mixture of compassion and disgust.

      “My father was right,” he said.

      Ivano told his friend about an ethics lesson he remembered: once you reach maturity you are able to drive a hydrogen car. On the road you have to be precise and disciplined. However, you need a good amount of luck as well. If a tree falls in front of you or someone else makes a mistake you could end up dead and it would not be your fault at all.

      “But mine is not just luck. It is down to merit. Calculated merit.”

      Ivano said that basically the secret was to make simple things complicated.

      His friend told him to be quiet and not to say things like that any more. There would be no more secret words or shortcuts, they were not allowed. It was time to put up and shut up. It was all down to merit. Just like him.

      His friend remained silent for a while until he blurted out something about how if Ivano carried on saying things like that he would have to report him to the authorities.

      Ivano was not exactly surprised at the fact that the two of them had not spoken to each other for five years.

      In any case, it reassured him. He thought about how he could triple his credits. It would need tactics.

      The two of them walked along in silence, crestfallen, each with his own thoughts being probed by the microchip.

      Ivano was thinking about when he went to visit his grandfather at the retirement home. His grandfather had fought in the last war. He was posted at a missile silo. He had seen a little of the world, even if it was mainly through the servers and satellite scanners, the little that he was allowed to see anyway. That one time he visited his grandfather, he had hardly told him anything, but he had wanted to know everything. The war had taught him that a sunrise and a sunset can look the same through pained and experienced eyes. He had now become convinced that there was no realistic way to enjoy life. Too much input on either a microscopic or a macroscopic level can affect our conscience. And the strongest factors, which are the ones which affect us for ever, are always the negative ones. There was no getting away from it. Don't fool yourself Ivano, don't fool yourself, you won't make it either.

      Anyway, the memory of his grandfather was interrupted when he received a message on his mobile: activity not allowed!

      Already! They had now arrived in front of their destination. They both smiled and said that it was strange that they had never noticed it before. It was only now that they realised that this cube which had no real windows, only virtual ones was a Container. The friend said that he had walked past it several times without even realising it. They both felt pride in their chests. They wanted to go up to the entrance, hoping that it would be open. They were disappointed.

      There was a three metre tiled garden around the building along with a slightly larger space in front of the entrance which had two staircases.

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