"Begin wake up cycle, Lulu."
As the lights grow brighter. I sigh. It's not like I am the Queen's daughter with the ability to stop this madness. Oh, there are some narcissistic girls that think they are the next generation of the Plan, they are usually very pretty and just as mean. We've got one in our year, but just thinking of her puts a sour taste in my mouth.
Think of something else.
I look around my room. When the Plan started it would have housed five girls, but now it's just me. The other beds have been long taken apart and reused for some other purpose. My bed now sits in this large room by itself. My window, like all the windows in the orphanages faces the center of this dome where the Creators Tree stands in the very center.
"Please come to the shower now." The AI says calmly as a door that was hardly noticeable before slides open revealing the wash room. All other thoughts leave my head as I walk in the door sliding shut behind me. This is my favorite part of every day.
Because bleeding gets you kidnapped by hunters and every, shall we say product of the human excretory system, is filtered and reused somewhere else in the dome, this is the only time we get to be free of our second skins.
The second skin covers everything except below your neck, but it's so fine that a stranger to our dome probably wouldn't notice, but it's there, absorbing all the, stuff, by some magic that is beyond me. Wuji would know, but I've never really felt like truly know the "process".
The wash room is the only place you get to remove this skin and actually feel the world around you for a moment. I set mine in the alcove in the corner and relish the ability to actually feel the texture of the wall.
Really, it's the best.
"Wash cycle, starting in 1,2,3..."
A vortex of warm air and mist surrounds me cleaning me from head to toe. I feel like I'm flying. I seem to remember reading somewhere that these washrooms were designed especially for the dome and insuring cleanliness as well as efficient collecting of any "recyclable wastes". Before the dome they would just use water, but I have no idea how they could have gotten totally clean with just water. I mean how could you reach your back to clean it all by yourself.
"Drying mode commencing in, 1,2,3..."
The mist is gone and the wind begins to slow and get a little warmer. Washing is much better this way then before the dome. I guess that was one good thing in this society of orphans, everyone gets a good wash every day.
The wind stops and the alcove opens revealing my clean as new second skin. I sigh before reaching for it. "Lulu don't be late for... for.... for..." The mechanical voice says. "Your breakfast, sweetie."
Wuji must have upgraded our AI again. He was always trying to get it to sound like less of a robot and more of a human. After all she was the only "parent" we had as a foundling family group. Why not pretend it's an actual Mother waking us up in the morning.
The "your breakfast" was so close to sounding human, but the, "sweetie" sounded very off. The official language of the dome is Manda-Engren. It is a combination of the two languages spoken by most of Humanity. Mandarin for the technical stuff and English for structure. There are lots of words that sounded the same, but when written in the formal characters are different.
Dressed in my second skin and my students suit, a light grey suit with my name and group number easily visible on the chest.
Mine reads ErShi Liu, but my "family" calls me Lulu.
Yes, you read that right. My foundling nurse thought it was funny to just number the kids who were under her care. Thus, she named me ErShi Liu, Twenty-six. I met ErShi Wu once he's four years older than me and about to take the end of school exam where they place you in the job you will work for the rest of your life.
ErShi Qi was four years my junior, and though I knew there was an ErShi Ba and an ErShi Jiu out there I have not met them yet. ErShi Jiu would still be in the nurseries taken care of by the same Nurse who had raised me.
The nurses were our caregivers until we could listen to the AI well enough to be put in a Foundling room. If you've read any of those old books about boarding schools that's probably the best equivalent. All children found on the same day would be grouped together in their own common room with bed rooms off to the sides.
As I said there used to be more kids so at some point this had housed Twenty boys or girls till they were given jobs and sent to their job who provided housing until they were unable to work. Now there are so few that there are only four of us.
Two girls and two boys one assigned to each of the four bedrooms. After the first year when we all camped in the common room, the AI made sure that only girls went into girl rooms and so on. Wuji and LiBang never kept their doors open and the "one time" I tried as a kid a huge blast of air shot me back into my room where the AI informed me, I would be kept for the next several hours as punishment.
I could however have a sleepover in Hong-er's room as long as she told the AI to allow it. Usually, we stayed to our own rooms. It was nice to have a space that belonged only to me. No one else could touch it, at least until I finished school and that was four years away.