text: [Themes: sci-fi, science fiction, dystopia]
  
  Dyane day,(harvest day) Tower of fire, Phoenix Sun city.
  
  The entire city congregates next to the great tower of fire, as they do every Dyane day. The light of the three moons shines for the last time before dawn; the time of the weekly ritual is approaching. After that, the orchestra and the choir start to play the ancient song in a slow and monotonous endless loop
  
  Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now am found
  
  T'was blind but now I see
  T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear And Grace, my fears relieved How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.
  
  [i]Through many dangers, toils and snares We have already come.
  
  The coffin's procession commences, floating with its anti-gravitational fields, while citizens watch the show bored. Every week, the same spectacle has been happening since the dawn of times; most of the citizens simply navigate the holo-net, making sure that their own Karma credits aren't dropping.
  
  A dreary voice whispers at you, but you are unable to find out the source: the stasis coffin speaker. You can finally hear it, a distant male voice: "Your previous self has died. However, you are an important party in the ritual; your inert body is sleeping in one of the communal caskets. Your memory begins to disintegrate. Soon, The primordial energy of the Fire's tower will return your body two ashes, blood, dust, and bones. A new you with your same DNA would respawn as it has happened to you through thousands of reincarnation cycle."
  
  The voice stops and you look at the coffin waiting for it continues. Have you understood?" The weird voice sounds bored.
  
  You ponder about who is talking with you. "Is this a dream?"
  
  "I have already explained it to you; I have another thousand to guide on my shift. You have to think about who you were in your previous life, everything will be fine."
  
  [Author's Note: My second game for the IS Endmaster contest]
  
  > Was a petty criminal, typically selling hallucinogens drugs to children.
  "Without a doubt, it is a respectable job." The irony of the voice does not escape you. "But where you are going, it will not make you lose sleep."
  
  > Memories of a lost life
  You do not know why, but thinking about the few pieces of your old life make you feel better and step by step, you glide with the other hundreds of dead to the point of respawning surrounded by the rest of the city.
  
  What was my name? you ask yourself. Your mind is numb; you should remember it... But, absolutely nothing else comes to your mind.
  
  One by one all the coffins are entering the nucleus of the Respawn's square. It is a circle of blue energy illuminated by the holographic flames of the immense Tower of fire. Your turn comes and immense drowsiness invades you.
  
  Total darkness, I don't even have a body or something that serves as an anchor. I shouldn't be here, Someone is watching me, lurking in the pitch-black shadows.
  
  Suddenly you hear strange noise, two voices almost as if they come from a speaker inside you.
  
  "Are you sure that you have cleared the cache memory of today's avatars? Since the last major update, the deletion of data files is working weirdly." The voice mumbles clearly stressed by the situation.
  
  Another voice slowly responds which it seems to come from a drugged woman: "Relax, dude. They will give us the credits, anyway. Nothing has ever happened in centuries, not that anything bad can happen nowadays."
  
  The man responds more lively almost euphoric: "You're right, after this respawn, what if we go to the back of your pick up?"
  
  Their suggestive giggles and heated moans are the last things you can understand before a tunnel of bright light engulfs you in bones and marrow.
  
  You are becoming a skeleton. There is no doubt about it, you are once more in the huge row of people being reproduced and redone bone to bone, marrow to marrow. It is a painfully slow process each organ assembled by this mysterious energy until each and everyone in the line has the body of a baby.
  
  > say "Hey, can any of you hear me?"
  That's what you want to say but only waa, gaa and other baby noises come out of your mouth. Even things as simple to pronounce as a mom, or potato; They become simple baby noises, gibberish.
  
  > Nursery here you go!
  Finally, you surrender to the evidence, as in every cycle of life on your planet, when you die you are reborn with the same DNA but in a new life.
  People never remember previous lives. You remember reading it in books. But not where you lived, you don't even know your old name. Something went wrong in your respawn. you sigh while little by little, the row of now plump babies begins to teleport all of you through that blinding white light.
  
  Your life has become a hell, filled with wet baby diapers and the eternal presence of bellowing balls of vomit and farts. The simple fact of being there, lying in one of the hundreds of robotic cribs of the state nursery drives you mad.
  
  Life as a baby is torture itself, you want to move, scratch yourself or just sit. But you can not. Even worse, all your reactions are being computerized and recorded and use to evaluate in which social group and to which work you will be destined your future adult life.
  
  At least, that is what they taught you in your other life. But the glitch that allows you to remember also allows you to see beyond visible, sometimes [ people do things without them being aware of it. At first, you thought that you were crazy, but now you have no doubt that is true; some kind of creatures mentally controls the rest of the population I ordering them to do stuff.
  
  You can see how the nearest nurse comes up with strange icons and wishes.
  
  I think if I concentrate, I can understand them. Although, I can concentrate on trying to make my baby's body grow stronger. This baby body has very little stamina so I won't have the strength to do both.
  
  > read her mind and her wishes
  As a baby, it is very difficult to focus your sight on something else for a long time. However, you concentrate on it, imagining that you are an entity, floating in the third person as in a video game. After that, something just clicks on your mind. You see clearly a pop-up read mind command floating over the plump redhead nurse. Then you summon your mind power as a mental big hand that presses the icon. The pressure on your tender infant skull is almost unbearable as the body begins to cry as a defence mechanism, without you being able to do anything to avoid it. But her mind opened to you like a flower
  
  Sandra is so pretty and she just broke up with Alison, if I only dared to tell her something. Now, I have to put this drug away for the black market, it's too valuable to spoil the booster treatment in middle-class kids. The connection with her memories and desires is finally broken, leaving you deadly exhausted.
  
  Martha is so distracted by her steamy thoughts, that she is bottle-feeding you too fast, almost about to suffocate you in artificial milk. You are exhausted, but still, you can sense how your mind's power expands. Maybe tomorrow, you can do something about Martha.
  
  > Will try to increase your control over the nurse's mind.
  The environment of the infant's area is supposedly sweet and calm during the 2 months in which citizens do not know how to walk and talk. But that is not true, in whatever direction you can precariously lift your head to peek, you can always see at least one baby crying at all hours. Nothing to do except stupid exercises of interactive lights for babies.
  
  You concentrate your mind on reading the adults' minds in the room, this practice has been your lifesaver, keeping you sane this last two weeks.
  
  Martha is totally obsessed with Sandra, to the point that it could be dangerous. You can see her turbulent thoughts spinning out of control in her mind, making her paranoid and unbalanced.
  
  You feel at the edge of your consciousness the power to change it, shape it, not only her but the other nurses as well.
  
  You still don't have the power to control them, but the principle of that ability lies within you.
  
  Will I use it? That is the question I must ask myself. And if I do it, How? The most logical thing is to do it, then in the future, I can decide to use my power or not. But, I need that option to have an advantage.
  
  Day after day, you nurture your power trying to get a better hold over the nearby adult minds. Children minds around you; they are quite different from the adults, a turbulent whirlpool of neurons trying to connect with themselves and with their five senses. There is not consciousness yet, only endless possibilities.
  
  > Doctors are monitoring you closely.
  Doctors and nurses circle your crib with surprise as they write their mysterious reports in their holo pads. Maybe they are too surprised.
  
  Dr Michael, as taciturn as bald, does not stop scratching his scalp full of psoriasis: "This child's behavioural patterns aren't normal. Look at his statistics are off the table!"
  
  His tall companion elegantly wears one of those luxurious costumes that people are only able to buy through lucrative schemes. He looks at you as if he were appraising before finally murmuring between his diamond teeth: "You will not believe that he is a child with the chosen one syndrome?"
  
  "A messiah? I hope not, how many deaths caused the last case a thousand years ago? The doctor simply takes his holo pad in his bony hands and asks in a clear voice" Rigoberta, How many died in the last main quest DLC? "
  
  A computerized voice that sounds like a porn actress with bronchitis murmurs dramatically: "A billion people dead and 24 years of nuclear winter, my old cream-filled little bottle."
  
  The man coughs ashamed, "Well, hmmm, that. However, it must be acknowledged, that most of the chosen ones are not like the one that bombed Megaton."
  
  "You're right, they can be a saving angel. However, the less messianic people, the more stable society becomes."
  
  > say "We should put him on The genius class."
  Advanced level? That means being part of the thinking and scientific research class. Respected and revered as the magicians of ancient stories. As loved as feared. Without a doubt, it is a great advance compared to my old life in the basic class.
  
  "Look, he is able to smile and fix his gaze. It seems like he understood what we are saying." The suit surprised man says.
  
  > Walking at least!
  A month later, Elementary Genius School. Your personal quarters.
  
  It is unbelievable, that you have a 90 meters apartment at your disposal with three androids servants. Designed furniture hand made with the best steel and leather a perfect kitchen with an industrial design with an island of endless white marble.
  
  The change has been a blessing, no more squeaky smelling babies. Still, the greatest blessing of all, it is being able to walk. Now that you are an infant genius and your mouth can finally articulate its first words.
  
  Your own bedroom is bigger than anything you had in your previous life, at least that you think it is. too difficult to remember specific details of your past.
  
  Everything around you has been designed to the smallest detail to try to stimulate the children's brain: musical books, drawing material, science for babies. Even your own holo robot construction kit, a fortune spent on you is just a baby.
  
  However, you practically have not seen any living being since your arrival in this beautiful gold cage, neither other children, nor adults. In the middle-class nursery, you were never alone engulfed in the babbling mass of the other newborns; ironically, now it is the silence what is engulfing you.
  
  But it is not the worst at every moment, you can feel the synthetic eyes of your robotic servants evaluating each of your gestures and with which you play or not every movement and look. You can almost see their positronic brains compute every moment to find out what your social predestination will be.
  
  Like every citizen, you have heard rumours that unsuccessful children are brutally murdered so that they never tell any of the secrets of their social caste. For the first time, locked in your luxurious cell you start to believe in it.
  
  There is no way on Earth!, I will not let myself being massacred. I have an adult understanding of everything, that none of my classmates has; I will use that fact in my favour, or I will slay anyone in my way.
  
  > Trying to gather information from the Holographic web.
  The holographic network is the network that binds every citizen, every business, on this planet. It is both a blessing and a curse. It makes it impossible to really be anonymous. Since we are included in the network every time we are reborn, giving us both name and surname at random; all the system is based in the karma credits, that you owned in your previous life. The fact of being gifted with a class higher than your Karma credits is unheard of.
  
  But you are an infant in the eyes of the whole world, so you concentrate on trying not to read the network and just watch the dumbfounded educational videos, like the rest of your school partners who are drooling with happiness watching Larimar the belly dragon and his friend, the rooster Brad.
  
  The brightly coloured game of lights flashes at high speed following the furious, sugary and sticky rhythm of this weird children's song:
  
  "Na Na. Na ... I am a pretty dragon. I want to hug you all night long."
  
  The insane rhythm makes you feel as dizzy as a drunk inside a washing machine. Still, you try to take advantage of those few moments when the robots are busy to search for information on the network. It's not as simple as it seems; these androids, with their macabre steel bare skulls, watch over you like vultures.
  
  And the catchy song sticks to your neurons like mortar, you can't even avoid humming the Na, Na Na, Na refrain. However, the actual lyrics of the children's song disappears from your mind as if trying to conceal another deeper message into it. You focus on the song until you can barely hear beneath the main song; a shrieking sound being whispered in a demonic voice:
  
  Obey us!... Submit to the eternal player
  
  > use all your will power to resist the song and actually acquire info.
  Your vision becomes cloudy as if you were watching through a steamy window; your temples beat under the pressure and stress coming from the damn subliminal children's show, reading or even hearing the holo news is an agony.
  
  Your little chubby fingers are convulsively shaking, creaking like a rattle and struggling to write on the holo keyboard. You keep going on letter by letter, enduring the weight of the world on your shoulders,
  as you battle against the compulsion of the subliminal message.
  
  Finally, you manage to finish, raising your head with pride to read the search results on the holographic screen.
  
  "What the heck!" escapes from your mouth at the surprise in front of you appears in bold letters what you really have typed:
  
  We are watching you, boy. Patience is a virtue; the castles need strong foundations.
  
  Your androids appear around you in attack position while pointing at you the sinister beam of their blaster's cannon.
  
  "Oh, shit. I am fucked!" You yell, just before being turned into a vaporized goo over the marble tiles.
  
  See you, in the next respawn.