I tidied up her ID, birth certificate and printed out her death certificate. She looked desperate for it, as if her life depended on it - not that she's going to have any afterwards.

  "Alright, here's your ID, your death certificate and your clone bay number, go to the second room on the left for your brain imaging. Remember that after the cloning process, you will slowly cease to be Noelle Peters. Next!"

  A washed up seedy adult materialized in the void. For a moment, memories flashed through my eyes, memories of us running through snow, through deserts, through marshes, dodging gunfire while dishing some back. Building a base for the squad, eliminating aliens...

  Yet, I do not remember ever seeing you before. Hallucinations? Perhaps I'm falling asleep, I haven't gotten a wink of sleep since a week ago, as applications continued to pile onwards.

  We have a lot of reception rooms, so why is it that applicants keep overwhelming us?

  Unlike most newcomers, you strode through the void with great confidence. Pleasantly surprised, I repeated the same protocol all over again. "Morning there, welcome to The Hexagone, please show me your ID and birth certificate so we can get the registration process going."

  "Miguel? You're Miguel, aren't you? What are you doing, working for those psychopaths?" You asked with much dread in your voice, as if I'm serving you a tomahawk steak when you already went out of your way to tell me you're vegetarian, and would like to have a bowl of salad.

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  Yet, I am not Miguel. I am E-032224, a kiosk staff member working for The Hexagone. We test experimental weapons to ensure humanity's safety, and I don't see how that would make our researchers psychopaths.

  "ID and birth certificate, please." I repeated myself, "there are people after you, please don't make this process longer than it should be." With a furrowed brow, you reached into your pockets and pulled out the documents.

  "Miguel, listen to me, these people ain't saints, they're filthy demons who get off of clones dying for their entertainment. It's the Colosseum all over again, but instead of Julius Caesar it's a jerk-off ring of sadistic scientists. You're not testing experimental weaponry over here, these guns are specifically engineered for this, never to be made public. You're just providing entertainment to pseudo-gods."

  "Thank you for your insightful advice and speculation, take back your ID and birth certificate, and here's your death certificate and your clone bay number. Go to the third room on the right for your brain imaging. Remember that after the cloning process, you will slowly cease to be Edwin Sung. Next!" Maybe you realized that you were just wasting everybody's time, you took your documents and left for the third room without bringing up your arguments again.

  I brushed off the incident as just another crazed man's rambling. After all, the Hexagone is a particularly strong magnet for nutjobs and hobos.Yet, your words echoed inside my head over and over, as if trying to resonate some sort of memory inside my soul.

  I am not made to question my makers, my neural pathways were rerouted specifically to ensure absolute obedience.

  Besides, your words are fundamentally wrong, this is a research compound specifically made to repurpose deadbeats of society, who would otherwise be an ever-growing liability to the world. Weapons that are tested here eventually get released to the military, and humanity is therefore safe from the ongoing war with the invading aliens.

  And I am not Miguel. I was never Miguel. I never fought aliens.

  I am E-032224. My job is to screen applicants.