18 years old

The Prompt Center looks exactly as it sounds, entirely made of glass with a million prompts scrolling across the translucent surface in a consistent, steady rhythm, as if they were religious mantras being silently chanted by the walls. You had seen no one after leaving home this morning. Your high school teacher should have been calling your name right about now at graduation, your principal waiting with your diploma rolled up in a preservation tube. You had lied about the date, time, and location so your parents wouldn’t show up. The only way they could even know about graduation would be if they had heard about it from someone else, from her. Hopefully, by the time they realized, you’ll be gone far enough, with a new name, in a place where no one will be able to find you.

Each step you take inside the Prompt Center, toward the help desk, weighs like wet sand. Prompts scroll endlessly across the dome-like interior. If you were to focus on them, you might sway from dizziness, and you might fall. So instead, you focus on your feet, on the unmoving white floor beneath them, one step at a time, until the front of your foot almost hits the help desk.

“Appointment?” the worker at the desk asks as you halt in front of them.

“Yes, for 2:15.” In 15 minutes.

The worker nods, “To double confirm, your name is—” they look up, face temporarily masked in confusion. You offer your answer, and their attention returns to the screen.

“Take a seat on the left,” the worker gestures to the waiting area littered with parents and their children. Some look as though they were born just hours ago, others are perhaps kindergarten-aged, some might be past 10. There are few who look your age, only one of whom is alone. Maybe they’re here for the same reason as you.

When you and the other late teen catch each other’s eyes, you grimace in an attempt to offer an encouraging smile, and they nod back, stoic.

The help desk worker calls your name, and you enter a soundproof booth on the far side of the center—opaque glass in the shape of a pyramid covers the outside, but it’s translucent from the inside looking out.

WELCOME, is what scrolls across the screen within the booth, and the large tablet hovering at the height of your waist automatically pairs with your brain implant.

WOULD YOU LIKE THE PERMANENT REMOVAL OF THE PARENTAL PROMPTS SYSTEM?

For a moment, your parents’ faces flash through your mind in glaring clarity and detail, reminding you of them, and of your “friend,” her, of your last year in high school, which has passed in a blur and also, somehow, excruciatingly slowly.

You let yourself linger on the reason you’re running away, and you can’t decide, at least not at that moment, whether you’re fleeing because of your parents, or because of her, or maybe both. They taught you what pain was just so they could inflict it upon you. They taught you what love was just so they could take it away. They handed you sorrow just so they could watch you wallow in it. And they extended happiness and hope in their hands just so they could smother it between tightly clenched fingers. Or at least, that was what you had come to believe over the past year.

When you stare down at the tablet again, the question glaring from the screen, you fixate on the prompts that have brought you the most pain.

1.     学如逆水行舟，不进则退: Learning is like rowing against the current; if you don’t keep moving forward, you’ll fall behind.

2.     一寸光阴一寸金: Time is money.

3.     誰知盤中餐，粒粒皆辛苦: Every grain of rice in our dishes is the result of sweat and effort; don’t waste it.

4.     百善孝为先: Of all the various virtues, filial piety is the most important.

5.     熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

6.     择其善者而从之: Choose the good and follow it.

7.     入乡随俗: When you enter another region, follow the customs there. 

8.    良药苦口: Good medicine tastes bitter.

Your parents had given you both lessons and warnings through classic proverbs: prompts active in your system since you turned 13. Even without the implant, you wonder if their voices will still echo, still linger, against the static silence where the Prompt System used to be.

You hunger to be free from the shackles of your parents’ coded commandments, free from your role as both an unwilling and willing prisoner.

When the tablet asks if you are certain about your choice, your finger hovers over the YES—

13 years old

The first time you were exposed to the Prompt System was before you graduated middle school and left for a new country with your parents. Back home, there were nanny bots parked in the nanny zones of school yards or buses.

 “I don’t understand why they have to take up spaces on buses. Can’t they just have flying functions with wheels or metal limbs?” your friend once asked.

It was when your parents were out and you were left at home with your nanny bot that you went against your parents for the first time—before they’d implanted a Prompt System in you. Your nanny bot was heading out for drinks with the other neighborhood nanny bots.

“Don’t let your ’rents know, okay?” she said in her robotic voice, tinny and at moments laced with the sort of static that fills the space between radio channels. She hovered by the entrance, offering you a wink. “I’ll be back before they’re home.”

She swiped off her apron, leaving her titanium body bare. “You can take the night off, too. Watch TV or something. Skip homework if you want. Eat some snacks. Whatever.”

At that moment, you wondered who she was modeled after. Then it came to you—she reminded you of your aunt.

“Just stay outta trouble, okay?”

And you had been doing exactly that for the longest time. And for the longest time you’d wondered what would happen if you didn’t—stay out of trouble, that is. A part of you buzzed with adrenaline at the thought of rebelling against your parents. So today—

Instead of doing as she suggested, you decided to escape your home to find your best friend down the street. You were in such a hurry you’d forgotten to change into your outdoor shoes and clothes, flying down the sidewalk in your house slippers and pajamas. Your mom would certainly have a fit, but in that instant, you didn’t care.

Your friend peeked out her living room window when you rapped your knuckles against it, her eyes twinkling as they landed on you. Then she disappeared, and you could hear the clicking of bolted locks unlocking.

But when your friend tried to leave her own home, she took one step out the door and started shrieking. She crouched down with her arms over her head and ears, her pigtails trembling with the rest of her as she shouted, “Don’t leave home without permission!” She repeated the sentence like a mantra, in Mandarin, as if possessed.

By the fifth time the words flew with spittle out of her mouth, you’d fled, panicked, away from her and back home, feet slapping bare against the pavement, your slippers lost somewhere between the two houses.

But your parents had arrived home early and were already waiting by the front entry with your rather sober-looking nanny bot. At that moment, instead of worrying about consequences, the first thought that came to your mind was, Could bots even get drunk?

The next day, they took you to the Prompts Center, and you left it with a string of voices not your own that echoed in your mind, bouncing around your head, sometimes several times a day.

You did research when you got home about what would happen if you went against a prompt, if you didn’t know how you should carry them out. The internet brought you down a dark spiral of people who had gone mad by consistently going against a prompt, and others who developed a glitch, stalling in place as if buffering when faced with a conflicting situation. You recalled what happened to your friend when she tried to step out of the house and couldn’t.

You never did get to see your friend who lived down the street again before you left, so your last memory of her, one that would linger with you long after you left the country, was her crouching on the ground below you, mumbling as though possessed and then screaming like a demon.

You heard later that she had attempted to run away from home several times after, always failing, until she became despondent and refused to leave her room. Even after her family removed her system, when the voices had gone from her mind, she would whisper the prompts to herself, over and over, as if they had never left.

14 years old

Her name was Mal. You met her the moment you stepped into the ESL class of your new school, and she had smiled at you so widely, so familiarly, that you almost believed that you had met before. To others, she smiled demurely, elegantly, gently, like someone destined for royalty rather than someone sitting in a scratched-up chair behind the worn desk of a public school classroom.

Sometimes you imagined what it would’ve been like if the teacher hadn’t placed you in the seat next to hers, if she hadn’t leaned over and introduced herself in half English and half Mandarin, holding out her hand to shake yours with the type of charm very few could refuse. Even the teacher, who had already begun class and didn’t tolerate chatter, said nothing as Mal whispered to you beneath her breath throughout the period.

Mal was the kind of girl who went to church on Sundays and Chinese school on Saturdays, who spent her winter break doing charity jobs like collecting food donations. She ranked first in most of her classes, except PE, because she said she didn’t care to sweat, and it would look gross, too. You didn’t agree, but you also didn’t disagree. You loved sports, but Mal didn’t need to know that.

A Golden Child, the neighbor’s kid, “Bie Ren Jia De Xiao Hai,” was what everyone outside of her parents called Mal. A carefully crafted image only the ugliness of envy could ever hope to mar, to wound, and thus reveal the innards that had been left to rot for years.

But back then, she did nothing but glow in your eyes.

How could someone be so perfect? The longer you were friends with Mal, the more you wondered. Especially when she told you that she had no Prompt System installed, and what you heard coming from her mouth instead was that even with a Prompt System, you couldn’t be half of what your parents wished for, half of who she was and would be destined to become.

She was just the kind of person with the kind of pedigree your parents would want you to associate with, to learn from, to become exactly like. Mal, too, came from the same land overseas as you had, from a hometown so close to yours that they might as well have been neighbors.

Mal was both the smartest and most cunning person you knew.

“I like you. I think you have potential,” she said to you shortly after you became friends.

Potential for what? You had no clue. But you liked the sound of it, because no one else had ever said anything like that to you before. Back then, it was so easy for others to lie to you, wasn’t it?

30 years old

With a freshly brewed tea in hand, I make my way into the lounge of the international school where I work. Several of my colleagues have collected around a table, including the head of the marketing department. Our branch sits in a building detached from the actual educational institution, and our main aim is to attract students globally to both our domestic and exchange programs. Our team is also one of the only ones that hires based on skill and portfolio rather than educational background, as ironic as that may sound, given that this pre-K to grade 12 school is among the world’s most highly ranked.

“I’m almost entirely certain that Assistant Lam is in the prayer room again.”

“But she’s not religious,” I say, blowing into my tea.

“I know. We all know,” the department head sighs. “She’s taking a nap. I’ve told her many times that she isn’t allowed to unless she’s on her official lunch break, but she won’t listen.”

“If the institute suddenly decides to implement the Prompt System for all its employees, Assistant Lam will be in big trouble,” Assistant Lorry says, shaking his head.

“Both fortunately and unfortunately for us, it seems only those at the bottom of the performance review will get those, at least for a probation period. Poor Rem,” Assistant Amber mutters.

From what you’ve heard, Rem is currently on a six-month probation and has recently received the Prompt System implantation. Arrive at work promptly by or before 8 a.m.; meet work quotas by the end of the week; aim to exceed work quota by the end of probation; work comes first, life comes after. The last prompt is only rumored, and seems a little harsh if true, but Rem does seem less social than before. We see him less and less in the lounge and can’t imagine what his life has been like outside of work. I heard it’s similar for the students at the school who rank in the bottom 20 percent. I shudder at the thought.

I look toward the prayer room at the back of the lounge. Though the door is fogged, I can make out a faint, resting shadow behind it.

Assistant Lam is somehow still here even though everyone believes she was going to be fired a long time ago. But she’s never at the bottom of the list in terms of our performance reviews—not at the top, either, but usually somewhere in the upper-middle of the pack. She always appears as though she’s slacking off, doing the bare minimum even though she could be working much faster, much harder, doing more overtime like some of the others (me). But it seems she feels no need to climb, while I’m here hustling for the same amount of pay, always on the cusp of promotion, near the top, but never quite there.

Assistant Lam seems like the opposite of Mal, but I try to avoid her when I can. Associating with her would only take me further from the promotion I’ve been working so hard to get.

Then, as if on cue, as the rest of us are preparing to head back to work, Assistant Lam emerges from the prayer room, not bothering to cover her mouth as a big yawn stretches her lips wide open. She combs a hand through her hair, obviously matted down in the back from lying down.

Instead of heading back to the main office like the rest of us, she walks over to the coffee machine with her back turned and starts brewing coffee as though she’s just beginning her morning.

“One of these days …” the department head mutters before leaving in a huff.

There’s little she can do, because the promotional posts and videos Assistant Lam has turned in and pushed out are some of the ones that garnered the most traction and landed the institute a good number of students—high-paying and high-profile students. Even though some of the marketing materials she produces don’t reach a wide audience, she does enough to keep her higher-ups content. Sometimes, I wonder if she does this purposefully—strategically feeds out both the viral hits and the flopping duds.

Before I make it back to the main office, someone taps me on the shoulder.

Assistant Lam.

Her smile is sheepish. “Got a moment?”

16 years old

It was after school when Mal convinced you to lie to your parents that you had a math club meeting even though you hated math, so that was exactly what you told them. They were skeptical, of course, but they would rather leave you unquestioned than risk you backing out of your new interest.

Mal brought you to the bleachers next to the soccer field, offered you a cigarette, and pulled out a lighter before you even accepted the cig from her hand, before you even had a chance to decline.

“You want to break free, don’t you?” she asked in English, twirling the cigarette in one hand.

“Break free?” you asked in English.

“The prompts, I mean,” she said in English. “I can teach you.” There was mischief in her eyes, and you couldn’t refuse her. A part of you wished to please her, hoped desperately that she’d like you the way you admired her.

As if hypnotized, you took the cigarette from her hands, let her light it for you, and took a deep breath that resulted in endless sputters, the plumes of smoke suffocating in the chambers of your lungs. That was your first mistake. Because as soon as you lowered the cigarette, Mal looked at you with disapproval. “You don’t want to waste it, do you?” she said in Mandarin.

Immediately, within your mind, a prompt activated, causing your hands to curl, your eyes to squint with ringing discomfort: 誰知盤中餐，粒粒皆辛苦: Every grain of rice in our dishes is the result of sweat and effort, don’t waste it.

When the prompt’s effects subsided, you plastered a smile back onto your face. “No, of course not,” you said in Mandarin as your free hand curled into a fist.

You attempted to even out your expression as much as you could, but knew with each deep drag you took, your lips turned downward in a frown, your eyes twitched, your cheeks crinkled. Mal watched from the corner of her eye, gaze roaming across your face, over and over, in search of something you couldn’t guess.

After you finally finished the cigarette down to the filter and put out the embers on the metal of the bleachers, leaving it on the scratched surface instead of tossing it into the grass of the field, you said in English, “I think … I should go.”

But as soon as you tried to rise, Mal grabbed your arm. “Didn’t you say your parents would’ve wanted for you to have a friend just like me? To have a daughter just like me?” she said in Mandarin while baring her canines.

In your mind, your Prompt System echoed, 择其善者而从之: Choose the good and follow it. You took a deep, agitated breath, trying to dispel the prompt from your mind, but it continued to scroll across the back of your eyelids, now closed—over, and over, and over, and over. Then, instead of dispelling the prompt itself from your mind, you tried to dispel your mother tongue, to dispel Chinese. Perhaps if you forgot the language, the prompts could no longer bind you. Perhaps if you could no longer understand them, they would be meaningless to your mind. You’d heard of prompts diminishing in power through this method before. But it would take years, it would take too long—time you didn’t have.

Your prompts: It should have been obvious that she was able to guess them all.

You wanted to scream NO, but there was a warning rising in your mind. There was a fervent look to Mal’s eyes, almost manic. Danger, was what your mind shouted. So, you sat back down as she handed you a second cigarette with a smile, and you took it with a grimace.

You wouldn’t realize until later that this was a different form of control, more subtle, yet more sinister, because she didn’t have your best interests in mind, not like your parents. And somehow, she had warped your prompts into something entirely different, giving them new meaning.

17 years old

Mal introduced you to her new friends, and by now, it was much easier to force a smile even when you weren’t happy, pretending you enjoyed someone’s company even when that was the last thing you’d ever wish for, which was most of the time when Mal pulled you out of class, flagged you down in the middle of the hall, caught you after school.

熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

Though Mal had found a way to use your parents’ prompts against you, you, too have figured out small ways to rebel against Mal’s control.

It was at a karaoke bar where her friends had gathered. You and Mal were the last to walk in. At first, you’d thought perhaps it was because Mal was the most important of the group, but that was far from it. She had arrived last because she was at the bottom of the hierarchy. The gathering was already in full swing, and Mal was more of an afterthought invitation. Yet she pretended as if she were the closest of friends with the people smoking and drinking and singing without a single flickering glance in her direction.

The air was musty, and even though you were more acquainted with cigarette smoke by now, your eyes still watered. The smile, your practiced smile, remained neatly on your face without falter.

熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

When you didn’t move, Mal leaned toward you with one arm across your shoulder.

“Don’t waste my time,” she said in Mandarin, and immediately a prompt echoed in your mind.

一寸光阴一寸金: Time is money.

You flinched when she continued to speak, aiming at the target of your Prompt System and hitting bullseye.

Every.

Single.

Time.

“You don’t want to be left behind, do you? Don’t you want to fit in?” she continued.

学如逆水行舟，不进则退: Learning is like rowing against the current; if you don’t keep moving forward, you’ll fall behind.

入乡随俗: When you enter another region, follow the customs there.

For a moment you wanted to slap your hand over her mouth, scream at her to stop talking. But no, you couldn’t let her figure out she’d been hitting prompt after prompt. So, you smiled again. Beamed, even. In an attempt to throw her off.

熟能生巧: Practice makes perfect.

Then, a vibration cut through your thoughts, and your hands flew to your pocket. Relief shivered down your spine at the sight of your phone’s caller ID. It was your mom.

You wanted desperately to use it as an excuse to leave, and it turned out you didn’t have to because a prompt echoed.

百善孝为先: Of all the various virtues, filial piety is the most important.

“Sorry, I’ve got the take this,” you said in English, in the most apologetic tone you could muster, tapping at your head to signal at the prompt. No one paid you any attention except Mal, who glared daggers first at the phone in your hand then at you.

“Don’t take too long, alright? You wouldn’t want to keep everyone waiting,” she sneered in Mandarin, smile sickly sweet as she gestured at her “friends.”

“Of course,” you muttered and ducked out of the room.

“Where are you?” your mom asked in Mandarin.

“With a friend,” you answered in English.

Not a lie, exactly.

“Friend …” your mom’s tone suggested suspicion.

“A straight-A student. Top of almost every class. Perfect. The kind of friend you would endlessly compare me to. Isn’t that what you wanted? For me to hang out with more people like this?” You were breathless by the time the final words hung in silence between you.

Then, she said, with disapproval in her tone, “Speak Mandarin.” And you almost wanted to laugh: Nothing you did was ever enough.

For a moment, the relief of her call was replaced with rage rising within you. Your mind spiraled, blaming your parents for the exact situation you were in now. If not for the prompts, you would’ve been able to escape Mal a long time ago. Or so you told yourself.

“Then why have you brought me here? In this place where there’s only English? Told me to learn it? Told me to call it my home?” You spat the words like they were something bitter.

Instead of answering, in a quiet voice, your mom said, “Maybe you should be spending less time with your friend.”

In your mind, you screamed, Yes. Yes, of course. Anything you say. But right now, the anger spoke louder than your desire to escape.

So instead of saying, Yes. Yes, of course. Anything you say, you said, in English, “She’s at the top of the school. A good influence,” even as the thump of karaoke continued pulsing in the background—something your mom could clearly hear through the phone.

“Nu’er—”

“I have to go. My friends are waiting,” you said in English and hung up, but as you turned to leave the bar, Mal stood at the end of the hallway with a wide, wide smile, head cocked to the side.

“Well?” she said in Mandarin, crossing her arms over her chest. You stood, stunned, unable to move, her words like cold water tossed down the back of your shirt as the blood drained from your face. “Your friends are waiting.”

You had thrown your only chance of escape in the trash.

In your mind, your Prompt System echoed, and you wanted to laugh at the irony.

良药苦口: Good medicine tastes bitter.

30 years old

I look back toward the sliding doors leading into the main office. One of the workers at the desk closest to the exit stares out at the two of us. I turn so I can shield both my own face and Assistant Lam’s from view, just in case anyone is nosy enough to read her lips.

Everyone at this office is.

Nosy, that is.

Even me.

But I suppose we have to be for our job—marketing, knowing people, knowing what they want and what they want to hear, knowing just what words we can use to control. I frown at the thought.

Assistant Lam taps her head and tilts it to the side with a strange, prodding smile.

“You’ve got a Prompt System implanted?” she asks.

I blink, and blink again, because to ask such a thing is considered rude, demeaning even, the way some might ask whether your parents have raised you properly or not, if your parents even bothered raising you. If you can’t break free from them, live without their guidance at every step, if you—

“Of course not,” I say, miffed, and resist the urge to curl into myself, to hide from Assistant Lam’s curious gaze.

“Huh,” she says, then shrugs. “Sure seems like you do.” Then, she turns, heading back down the hall. “If you don’t, then never mind.”

“Hey, come back,” I shout after her. “What do you mean by that?”

She stops, but doesn’t answer.

“Why … does it seem like I’ve got one implanted?” I ask, but a part of me doesn’t want to hear the answer.

After a moment, Assistant Lam turns back. Instead of answering my question directly, she says, “I overheard you’re next up for promotion.”

“I—” I start, until the reality of her words washes over me. “Where did you hear that?”

My pulse hums at the prospect of a promotion, of getting a raise, of moving up in the company. It’s what I’d hoped for ever since I started working there. It’s been almost a decade. Then, my hope plummets, because Assistant Lam seems like she’s analyzing my expression, gauging my reaction. Maybe she’s only said this to see what my response would be. Paranoia causes cold sweat to trail down my back.

Assistant Lam hums. “You’re a people-pleaser, aren’t you?”

Suddenly, as if doused in rain, my mouth falls open, a bobbing fish on land. It makes me angry, how many assumptions Assistant Lam is making about me, and yet I can’t bring myself to speak in my own defense because she isn’t wrong, and that makes me even angrier.

“Out of all the workers here, even the department head, you’ve been here the longest, haven’t you?” Assistant Lam muses.

I don’t want her to know that I have few options elsewhere, and that leaving would be a risk. Or perhaps it’s become so comfortable here that I don’t want to leave, having racked up the years of experience that would make my resume enticing to another company. But the title … If I leave now, I would have to work up from the bottom again. But if I get the promotion …

Assistant Lam considers me. “It’s a lie, you know. The promotion. That’s why everyone leaves the company before it happens. It’s not worth it,” she says.

I want to shout back, How would you know if you’ve never been promoted? But before I can, Assistant Lam taps her own head, and what she says next completely silences the thoughts churning in my mind. “I’ve never had my Prompt System removed.”

“Then how—?” There are so many questions I have. How is she able to bypass the prompts? Work the bare minimum? Take naps when she shouldn’t? Cunningly control the quality of her work? How? How? How?

“Don’t think of them as rules; think of them as lessons. Don’t think of them as shackles; think of them as guides,” she whispers, as if finally worried that someone else might overhear even though there isn’t anyone around. Assistant Lam even goes as far as ducking her head low, perhaps to prevent the security cameras from reading her lips.

“Guides,” I whisper to myself.

I have heard of those who attempt to bypass, to find loopholes, to break out of the prompts in rebellion or to end vicious and traumatic cycles, or perhaps to even continue spiraling through their lives by lying to themselves, by tricking the Prompt System, but I was never good at that, at lying. But this, the way Assistant Lam has reframed the system, as a guide, has the potential to change my life, and the lives of those living with the Prompt System, entirely. I marvel at my coworker, at the way she’s whispered her secret to me as though I’m worthy, someone she could trust, or perhaps someone whom she pities. 

Then, Assistant Lam turns once more and continues down the hallway, toward the lounge, likely heading back to grab her coffee, or take another break in the prayer room.

“Good luck with that promotion,” she calls over her shoulder.

When I’m alone again, I don’t return to the office immediately. Instead, I laugh to myself. Assistant Lam’s words swirl in my mind.

Even without my Prompt System, it seems I’ve unconsciously turned my parents’ rules into my own living prison. Assistant Lam’s words make me realize that it was never so much about the prompts themselves but how we understand them, interpret them, come to live them. I think of my parents, the way I have always believed that they implanted the Prompt System as a punishment, but thinking back, I realize now that it was out of fear, out of worry—something I didn’t want to admit because the guilt and regret of running away from home would eat me alive.

They wished for me to be able to navigate this world, even when they couldn’t be beside me, especially when they could no longer be beside me. And I threw all their love and care into the wind and spat as it drifted away.

I think back to one of the prompts I saw in my system while I was getting it removed, one that never echoed like a mantra in my mind while the system was active, only after it had gone:

世上没有后悔药: There is no medicine for regret.

I laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and wonder if I should call my parents, and if they pick up, what would I say, what would they think, what would they say?

And then I realize that none of it matters as I take my phone out of my pocket, even though we aren’t supposed to during work hours, because the only thing I wish for now is to hear their voices, not just the echo of their lessons in my mind that have lingered and followed me all these years I have been away. Still in Chinese, rusty and broken from lack of use, but never losing meaning.