The year is 2050. You're an 11th grader. You wake up early in your boarding house bedroom in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa (where starter homes now cost >$1M), to study as quietly as you can, so as not to wake up your parents in the other bed, who have been together for almost 20 years now as part of a state-assigned marriage. They didn't really want to have you, but couldn't afford to avoid Emperor Barron's tax on "heritage American" unmarried couples and needed a housing voucher badly. At first they thought they were safe, but then Emperor Barron changed the definition of "heritage American" to encompass Asians like you.Four faded framed diplomas grace the wall on the other side of your little room. Two for UC Irvine, two for Rutgers, one per parent. Both in tech: one BS, one MS. Dad stocks shelves, mom serves at a Sichuanesr restaurant. Your current boarding house is part of an initiative for them to work off their debts. Both have suggested the army, but you always refuse, terrified of being deployed to India and getting shat on.Through the drywall, you hear the manchildren next door blasting AI-generated YouTube Kids videos again. You groan, and wish they'd turn 21 soon so they can finally get Internet licenses.You open your school-authorized AI-monitored Tesla Tablet, and start reviewing your AP Artificial Intelligence notes. You hope you can be part of the 29% of applicants who get into U of Iowa (and have heard good things about their Electrician program), for the alternative is a lifetime of drudgery in Amazon's quantum sludge factory. You skim through your notes, as well as those for AP Quantum Computing. You concentrate, yet struggle to learn 1 page worth of content; the communal GPT subscription has run dry for the week. Instead, you decide to brainstorm ideas for your civics presentation for Bible 11."Oh well," you think to yourself. "Maybe my Chinese ancestry and Mandarin fluency can help me qualify for China's K-VISA lottery."
>>217185269Interesting premise anon I enjoyed this read. Can I give the kid a name?
