Riding the mostly vacant Transport Unit, destined for who knows where, I can't help but think about what’s happened, but mostly worry about what else could happen now that I was out: ‘How did I get here? Were things always this bad? Could things get worse? What else could that ‘NectoGram’ (big, evil megacorp) do to my family in their attempts to gain political power over the oligarchy? Or me?’ Just to name a few. Perhaps if you were more like this when you were a normal human, you would never have had to worry like this and NectoGram would have been unable to harm you and your family this badly. After all, the superintelligent AI driving this transport, I call them C.A.T., pointed out, continuing, If you had thought to look outside of your personal struggles, and perhaps made your stubborn husband listen to you, you wouldn’t have been caught napping like that. It’s YOUR fault we’re in this mess– You think I don’t know that already? I responded quite irritably.
~~Three Months Prior~~
“Lizzy, no, don’t eat that! Gregory, I’ll help you with your math in a moment!” I called over to my oldest child and only son as I forced a formerly newly cleaned sock out of my three-year-old daughter’s mouth. Guess I'm washing this again. Oh well….
“Alright, Gregory, you carry the two here…. And add the six…. Yes… perfect!” And that’s how things were: Simple. A mom parenting her two kids all on her own, since their father was far too busy doing ‘The work of a king’ (Which, the handful of times he was ill enough that his wife had to do his work for him, she had finished in about two hours, not days) to even consider, spending time with his children or helping said wife wrangle said children. Once the children were put to bed their mother simply sat on the couch, so exhausted from the day’s work that she needed a moment to sit down, rest, recuperate, and just be. Unfortunately, her husband had decided that now would be a prime time to sit down adjacent to her and try to make small talk.
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“Y’know hun, I think you could use a break from the kids, you're exhausted. The servants handled my education, and could handle our two’s as well-”
“No. I don’t know any of these people personally, and if you take an entire day to get tax reforms that take me a couple of hours to get done, then I'm sorry, but I don't want the people who taught you to teach our kids. It's just not an option.”
“The tax reforms don't take me that long.”
“Then what does? I have done a week's worth of your work in about six hours. Do you just not want to see your kids? Is that it? Because if so, I just don't see why-”
“That’s enough, Ella, I'm going to bed. good night.” Louise said, attempting to ignore his wife’s fairly tired and fully furious face, and quickly left the room. In truth, he was scared of the prospect of parenting, as any and all fathers are when their children are newly born. The only difference is that, unlike most fathers, Louis never faced said fear. He never had a reason to. After a few furiously fuming minutes more, his wife followed suit and went to bed. Neither of them realized what cruel forces would permanently alter both their lives and the lives of their sleeping children that very night. Almost the moment her head hit the pillow, the woman known commonly as Cinderella was fast asleep.