Marina at the support group. You’re not allowed to bring your GM into the church hall, they had to stay in the cloakroom like naughty children. People sat in a circle on red plastic chairs and scratched at their implant sites. It was cold, and the coffee was shit.
“Welcome everyone!” said Amanda, bubbly as always. “Thank you all for coming, who wants to tell the group about their week?”
A dark haired woman directly opposite Marina huffed, and spat “I keep seeing my dead husband.”
“Oh that happened to me too,” said an elderly lady two seats away from her. “My husband, that is – not yours.”
“Great,” said Amanda, even though it definitely wasn’t great. Marina shuffled her feet and tried to be inconspicuous. “Marina!” beeped Amanda, zeroing in on her. “Marina, you’ve been very quiet the past few weeks, tell us what’s going on with you!”
Marina wanted a hole to open up and swallow her. She wanted her GM unit back. She wanted to throw the GM in the canal. She wanted to throw Amanda in the canal. “Not much,” she muttered, “nightmares, usual stuff.”
“We should SUE them!” bellowed a pink-faced man in a polo shirt. “Sue the bastards for doing this to us! Hit ’em where it hurts!”
Amanda, de-escalating lip-gloss and vanilla perfume. “But Steve, we’ve been over this. The Institute hasn’t broken any laws, or even the contract you all signed, you have no legal recourse my love.”
“We should bomb the place,” whispered Marina, but nobody heard.