chipped: something i didn't finish what the fuck

1: Appraisal
I can tell by the parents’ faces that they are heading to the Center of Enhanced Intellect. Presented is a distinct mix of fear and joy, the excitement and anxiety of having their one-year-old child evaluated. The husband grips his wife’s hand tightly, and constantly looks to today’s greenish sky. The wife, blue-eyed and pale, steals glances at her daughter, who full of innocence, is blissfully unaware. Will she be worthy, and join a prestigious few? Will she fail, but be given a second chance, like the majority of other children? Or, to the horror of her parents, will she be deemed defective?
Playing the guessing game is quite the hobby of mine, which is why I hang about the neighborhood. I record the family in my notebook, and add them to a list of the others I’ve seen today. The couple can’t tell what I’m doing; in fact, they haven’t noticed me. I’ll take that as a sign that they are both chipped. Chipped people never seem to notice or care about the rest of us. I’m going to bet that their kid won’t be chipped, but will come quite close. The parents will be dismayed. They won’t be destroyed though; they’ll come back in fifteen years and their little girl will pass.
I don’t remember the first time I was appraised by the Center- hey, I was a kid. They declared me a fine baby boy. Healthy, no birth defects, no apparent signs of mental illness. My intellect was not extraordinary, however, and thankfully I wasn’t chipped at that time.
The second time, at age sixteen- that was a nightmare.
The Center is a very white place- it is sparkling clean, and unnaturally bright. I’ve also concluded that it has the world’s worst architecture. Everything is set at right angles. The building itself and all the rooms inside are an unsettling cubic shape, lined with white square tiles. The hall is a long rectangle, and the elevator is yet another cube. The whole building is maintained by robots, here and there, sweeping and scrubbing. They work in opposing rhythms, producing a kind of white background noise. God, everything about the Center is unnatural and eerie. I suppose that chipped people like it though. It’s predictable, clean-cut, and simple.
Anyways, when I was appraised at sixteen, I had high hopes of getting chipped. I was a handsome, straight-A student. Additionally, I had been preparing for months for this test. I knew exactly what to expect on the standardized testing portion. At the time I was not worried about the psychological exam, brain scans, and interviews.
I took my AAT’s with a group of about ten people in one of the white cubic rooms.