“There! That’s perfect!” GCH11878 nodded to itself. It narrowed its eyes and studied the angle of the decoration that now hung from the top of its sleep pod. It had found the shred of shiny paper on garbage duty and hidden it away in its smock pocket.

“Not quite there,” it whispered and repositioned the bright red, blue, and white scrap so the markings in the center were in a straight line.

Twwoooeep Twwoooeep, the alarm reverberated throughout the Domicile. The whir of a Watcher sounded outside 11878’s pod.

“GCH11878,” the Watcher buzzed. “We have detected contraband in your pod. Remand yourself for reconditioning while your pod is sanitized.”

11878 gripped the outside of the tiny space and pulled itself out.

“Ouch,” it said as its fingers scraped against the markings on the outside of the pod.
G-I-R-L C-H-I-L-D H-U-M-A-N, the strange markings felt familiar, but it knew it would never remember what they meant.

(Yikes! Dystopia seems to be my inclination recently. The tough part about today’s micro-story was figuring out how to reveal what GCH stood for. I hope you liked how I did it and that it wasn’t revealed too early.)

Oh and if you are curious about the piece of paper? It was this: