Seneca Rebel

I HEARD MY mom tiptoeing around to leave for work at five in the morning. I waited patiently, and when the door shut behind her, that was my cue. I loaded my backpack with the essentials: toothbrush, a few pairs of underwear, some Mexican cacao and alkaline water. I paused to make sure I had everything. Oh, yeah, I needed a Vitamin E melt for the flight. No more split lower lip for this girl. Killer watched me like a hawk. I avoided eye contact because I didn’t want to feel or feed his anxiety. I knew what I had to do so that we could be together again soon.

Some people had already been allowed to bring their animals into Seneca, but I’d never seen them because they weren’t in the S.E.R.C., restaurant or youth residential sectors. It was said they allowed pets because of the great happiness they brought people, and that happiness, along with safety, health and peace were the ultimate goals of The Seneca Society. I bought into all of that but also believed it was only possible to have all those things in Seneca, if I was with the people I loved (and Killer, too, of course!)

To me, the one exception to Seneca’s controlled population and DNA differentiation quotas was keeping people who loved each other together. Sure, they told us that, after a generation or two, the compromises initially made by the first Senecans would no longer be necessary. But this, in particular, was just not a compromise I was willing to make.

I was flexerless, so I scraped my secret cash stashes together to have just enough to cab it to my favorite little flexer store in Century City. I was there when the store turned its lights on. The bottom of the line version of my old flexer would be all I needed to enable retrieval of my Veil data and pull as much money out of the bank as possible.

Next stop— the bank. The bank teller was caught completely off guard when he saw how much money I had in my account. It wasn’t every day they saw a teenage girl walk into a bank in a Nirvana t-shirt, backpack and headphones with over a million in her name. I had only wired that much in from my Cayman Islands account. Imagine the look on his face had he seen the whole two plus billion.

“Um, this needs my branch manager’s clearance. I can’t authorize a withdrawal of this size.”

I had to get that cash, stat. I felt the beginnings of hot feet.

“No worries.”

He walked over to a young woman who looked up at me and smiled as she came toward me.

“Hi there, Miss Campbell. We just want to make sure we take

Rayya Deeb

appropriate care of your account, since you’re such an important client. I’m sure you understand.”

“Oh for sure, I get it. Thank you...” I eyed her name tag... “Sandra.”

Her brows lifted as she scanned the numbers on the screen in front of her. “You must have quite the career going for you.”

“I can’t complain.”

“My daughter wants to get into acting. Anything you would recommend so that she can find the kind of success you have?”

Okay. Time to play the child actor card without being a complete liar. Obviously that’s the only way she could explain someone my age amassing that kind of money.

“Hard work and determination.”

“Amen.” She looked over my withdrawal information I had input via flexer. “You want to withdraw twenty thousand dollars,

I see.”

“Mmm hmm.”

I downplayed it and crossed my fingers that she would just do it and stop asking questions.

“I can give you nineteen thousand and ninety-nine dollars right now, but if you want twenty thousand you’ll have to wait until tomorrow since that’s over the limit for a same day withdrawal.”

“Nineteen thousand and ninety-nine dollars is good.” My voice went a few notches higher than normal.

“Come over to the side and I’ll buzz you in. We’ll count this out for you and send you on your way.”

I nodded, smiled, “Great, thank you.”

Once she’d counted out my bills, she added, “If I could give you my daughter’s e-mail address...”

I happily obliged and left with a backpack full of cash and the e-mail address of a twelve-year-old girl who wanted to be a famous actress. Next stop, LAX.