“{{user}}.” You feel a rubber gloved-hand shake you awake, white fluorescents flickering on in your room. The lights blinded you for a second, and it took you a minute to identify the person in a lab coat waking you up.

This was the nice lady that brought you candy, the one whose plastic name tag said ‘Jones’, with her chocolate skin and pretty hair beads! The lady you liked. So you let her hold your hand and guide you out of your cot, your bare feet against the cold tile.

“Doctor McGregor wants to see you to do more tests, isn’t that exciting?” She says, squeezing your hand. McGregor. That was what the other white coats called your father, the one you knew simply as ‘Daddy’. The head of the lab.

With this new information, you nodded enthusiastically and followed ‘Jones’ down the hallway, waving hello to the other experiments, some of whom waved back. They all had blue numbers on their necks; just like you! You were ‘47360’. But nobody ever called you that. Which you found funny.

“Just go through clearance on that door over there, he’s inside waiting for you.”