Hi! My name is Eric Mohammed. I’m homeless, paperless, appless, and a very recently penniless, high school dropout.

I should have joined the military while I had the chance.

Now I have to go… somewhere, prove that I am me, a legal citizen; and get replacement papers to prove my identity.

Piece of cake. Especially because paper trails haven’t existed in like fifteen years. It’s all digital nowadays.

But wait… I still have my phone!

That’s proof enough of my identity, right? It has all my shit, digital ID included.

I raise the phone and unlock it, only to find a new message staring me in the face.

Your session has been signed out from all devices. Please, sign-in again.

I grit my teeth. Nice try, fuckers. I’m not typing my password on the unsecured public internet for you to steal.

It’s obvious. Whoever is doing this is after one thing: my identity. The last fucking thing I have of worth, although that’s debatable at this point.

I packed my things, slept till morning, and exited the trailer park. I kicked a trash can into more heaped trash on the way out, cause fuck this neighborhood. There’s nothing left for me here.

I went back to school.

“Oh look! It’s Eric the Manual Cleric!”

Very punny. You’re gonna have to try something stronger pal. Your game is weak.

“Oi! Mecca!” A nickname? How funny.

“Eric! Wait!” Fuck. Not this… anything but this.

It was Fuchsia.

I speed up on my way to the vice principal's office.

“Eric!” She shouts reproachfully and I stop and turn.

“What do you want, Fuchsia?”

“Did you quit school yesterday? How could you do this? And not even a word before you leave?” She asked, looking furious.

I contemplated what to say to that. I’d honestly forgot I was supposed to do that, as is socially acceptable between friends.

Friends? Is that what we are? It was a one-sided friendship on her behalf to be honest, and it made me feel like a charity case she took on.

That was Fuchsia's thing though. She liked to do good, like perhaps taking on a charity case like me.

I would have been all for this budding friendship and all, except for one thing: Fuchsia is a special kind of aug, the biggest kind of aug out there: a streamer.

Fuchsia is a popular streamer, and that meant that my face was being broadcast live to millions of people around the globe, like right now as we spoke.

Just what I needed.

She couldn’t turn it off either. It was right there in her contract with qTube or whatever service she’d signed with. She couldn’t turn off her streaming except for reasons like bathroom breaks and… well, I didn’t know exactly, but I kinda assumed it: sex.

She was stuck perpetually broadcasting her life, in real-time. Like the most fucked up game of The Sims in existence, with… millions? of people watching every passing moment. What’s worse was that her “show” was distinct in that it featured a “unique” hook. A non-aug. Me. At least that’s what I gleaned from overhearing conversations around the school.

Which frankly made me doubt the whole friendship thing, to begin with. What would a streamer have to do with a complete loser like me? Other than boosting her ratings that is?

Yeah. You can call this paranoia, but I’m not buying it.

“Look Fuchsia…” I began as I reached for my phone. Normally, I’d idly play with my phone, all the while stealthily trying to access her stream and see the chat messages fly by—which I couldn’t really keep up with due to the sheer volume and lack of the superhuman processing speed of an aug—for a hint at what people expected me to do, and then I’d act my part and leave in peace. Today, though; my phone was not accessible. I’d forgotten about that. God damn it.

I had to leg it anyway, “…look. I don’t really want to talk right now. Could you please let me be?”

Lame. I know. But it was all I could come up with on short notice. I should have thought of a good excuse, in hindsight.

Because she started crying.

“You suddenly quit school without telling me, and now you want me to leave you alone? What did I ever do to you?” She starts sniffling and tearing up just then. I knew it was likely an act, and that I was being made to look like the insensitive appless asshole here. Great.

“Look…” I began.

“I thought you were my friend. I thought… maybe we… had some things in common and…”

At this point, she started getting flustered. Oh no. What the fuck?

“What?”

“How… how dare you!” Her face took on a new flush. As if embarrassed by what she just said. Then she slapped me on my cheek and left with a huff.

I stood there for a whole minute, speechless. What the fuck just happened?

People who witnessed the spectacle kept giving me dirty looks. None knew me personally, thankfully.

I put it all out of my mind and rushed off. I had more important shit to do.

Walking into the principal's office, after dodging two or three persistent bullies, I looked around to observe the mayhem.

And it was mayhem. The desk was stacked full of unfinished paperwork, I saw a couple of cigarette butts strewn about. He was apparently smoking on the sly since the school was a strictly no-smoking area. Hmm… blackmail material? Not really, he didn’t give much of a fuck about anything.

The problem with principal Arthur was that he gave no two shits about the rules. He simply did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

Like now, for example. He wasn’t here.

I was still salty about the special-ed thing, to be honest, that’s why I thought of blackmail just then, but it wasn’t really his fault, in the end, I had to admit that.

I took a seat, and waited, and waited.

It took his lazy ass about thirty minutes to show up, and only God knows what he’d been up to. I stood up and greeted him.

“Hello, sir. I—” Just as I began, he interrupted me.

“What do you want?” Abrupt and to the point, as usual.

“I seem to have lost all my documentation. I was hoping the school could—”

“Ah, you’re that non-aug, right? I remember now.” He lit another cigarette and looked at me archly, “What if I told you…” he said slowly, “…that I was told to specifically deny your request?”

“What?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“What if I told you,” he repeated, “that a man visited me this morning and specifically advised me against giving you any form of documentation?” I could practically see the air-quotes around the word ‘advised’ in his sentence.

I sighed and sat down without his explicit permission.

“Let me guess: they have something on you,” I asked resignedly.

“Oh yes, they have quite the dossier on me,” he motioned for me to come closer, and I did. He spoke again with a smirk, “and on you.”

“What should I do?” I whispered back as I inhaled his smoke and coughed. He noticed me being affected by the smoke but made no motion to put out the cigarette.

Instead of answering my question, he responded with a throaty chuckle, then put his finger to his chin in a mocking gesture.

“What should you do? Hmm…” he started pacing, “What should you do?” he stopped and looked at me seriously, “you should run, you idiot,” he leaned closer, “whoever is doing this is after your life, not just your identity.”

“My life?” I asked in consternation.

“Of course, your life! Do you think they just want a new identity card? How are they going to keep you silent?” He lowered his voice, “how do you think they’re going to keep that identity intact when you come to someone like me asking for new paperwork to prove your identity?”

My fingers clenched around the arms of my chair an involuntary motion. I felt the world spinning around me. What could I do?

He seemed to almost hear my question because, in the next sentence, he gave me a solution.

“You’d better run to your streamer friend, and ask her to help you. I heard you made a scene today on your way here.”

Holy shit! Fuchsia! She’s my ticket out of this. If I can stay in the “broadcast range” of her, no one would dare to come and kill me.

All I had to do was keep her close… but then what?

I asked him that very question, and he responded, “You take this,” he pulled out a shabby-looking and somewhat worn plastic-headband that had a tiny digital display attached to it, “and you go to this address”, he gave me a crumpled paper with scribbles on it, “and you ask to see Mrs. Dana, then hand it to her. I’ve taken care of everything for you. She’ll tell you what to do next.”

“But what about you? Are they going to hurt you?” I asked.

He grabbed me by the shoulder, “You don't have to worry about me,” he said as he pushed me towards the door, and spoke again as I left with the form clutched in my palms, “and Eric?”

I looked back. He’d remembered my name all along.

“Don’t let any bastard out there tell you what to do, or who to be.”

I overlooked that odd phrase, so I didn’t comment. I wish I’d known what he meant at the time.

I left.