You may think people have a right to make their own choices, but where I come from that is all but true, every morning I was told when and where I was going to go today, every morning government computers would calculate the clothes that would be most fitting for a child of my height, weight, and age. I never got to eat what I wanted; never got to talk to the people I wanted to. All because of one man,

my father.

My father was a scientist, before he went insane, he was one of the best, not to brag (believe me) he invented what we now call the Stage. It was the most advanced piece of equipment ever. But what we didn't know was, it was lethal. Every day my dad would tell me not to put one on. Every morning he would look me in the eye and make me swear never to touch one of his creations, that was, before he left.

My father planned the lethal dose into every Stage monitor he made. It was a disease detector. If you coughed, sneezed, burped or even exhaled slowly it took all your measurements of every possible thing in all your organs blood vessels DNA and anything else you could imagine, and it hurt. Every time a person would buy one and hook it onto their wrist, they would become attached. It was like an internal drug, never letting you take it off without going through the most painful, awful sense of…... well you get the idea. When my father created this thing he had good intentions, but after he made himself the lab rat he decided to change the Stage monitor, for the worse.

After everyone found out what the Stage did to them they all tried to quit, but just like drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes (times 10) it's almost impossible. Few were lucky and managed to get through the withdrawal. But everyone else either died trying, or decided to leave it on and face the risks. Another discovery was made a few months later, this "stage" that was causing so many problems, DIDN'T cure disease! It never had! All it did was insert another way to die into your system.

I was about 4 when all this happened, now I am 17, I have never seen or heard from my father again. The choice-maker, as we call it, was an invention by Thomas Grean, the man I loathe almost as much as my father. Thomas and I worked together at the Mechanical branch of intelligence, or as I call it MBI. After 17 years of knowing him he still hated me. I didn't know why, he was older than my mother by a few years so why would he have such strong feelings against a 17 year old?

I work at the mechanical branch of intelligence or as I call it, MBI. We live on the planet Kinco and because our race, the Kincians have the most advanced technology known to the galaxy, our planet is becoming uninhabitable. Most people have left Kinco. The people who have not left have become infected, with what the few doctors left call "fisea" it's a sickness that makes your brain forget things easily, but its doing something else. I don't know what yet but I feel different somehow. The stage still exists and all the cruel sick people of the world still sell them. – Brian Drel