It wasn’t fair. Just because his parents were rich enough. Just because he was so fortunate to be born into a rich and powerful family, a wired family… It wasn’t fair. We being stuck here, just a group of wireless lads, discovering that we had been fooled into joining this club. The club was decent enough, the blow only came when we realized that he, our leader, had been lying to us all along. He was wired.

Neither was it our fault, though. It was not our fault that we did not have a Memory Chip, or MC, implanted in our brains. MCs could store hundreds of terabytes of data. Those wired people did not have to study for the exams, of course. Only we, the wireless people, were the muggers. However, no matter how hard we tried, we could never beat those wired guys. They spent five minutes uploading whole textbooks into their MC and scored full marks for any exam they took, effortlessly.

So the wireless club was formed, to support wireless people like us. We had a team of wireless people working on creating an alternative MC, just for us to use. We called them the lab muggers. They spent much time and effort in the lab, running experiments, recreating the MC. For the formula to it was only known to the only company which manufactured the MC, kept under lock and key. Our leader, Ray, was always encouraging us, always giving us the will to go on. And now, to our extreme shock and dismay, we found out he was – wired.

How did we find out his secret? All MCs have a special function. If you wave a particular magnet near the right part of their brain, where the MC is located, it would give off a beep to signify that its working condition. One of the members of the lab muggers had gotten hold of one of those particular magnets. It was only used for the lab work, but somehow, Ray was extremely against it. This got us into suspecting him. Then, one night, when he was asleep, a few of us managed to sneak up and place the magnet next to the right part of his head. There was a beep.

We began making plans on how to take revenge. Ray did not know a thing. He never smelt a rat. That insolent fool was completely ignorant of how much we knew about him. The lab muggers started developing an MC – destroying device. They figured that if a piece of magnet could set off a beep, a slightly more sophisticated device would be able to destroy it. Not much harm would be done to Ray, though. Apart from a splitting headache when his MC was destroyed, that is. The ultimate price was learning to survive without his MC. We wondered how he was going to carry on pretending to lead us.

The day came when the lab muggers got us a prototype to try on. It involved wearing a helmet, much like a virtual reality one, quite big and clunky. It was supposed to contain a usable, alternative MC. The catch was that it contained an MC destroyer too. This, of course, was unknown to Ray. He was invited to try it on together with us.

All eyes were on Ray when we helped him to activate the device, after he had worn it. He was clever; you almost couldn’t tell that he was having a migraine at that moment. However, we all so it very clearly: he was breaking into a cold sweat. His eyes were not focused when you looked at them, as if he were in a daze.

Ray was completely shaken after the experiment. He never said anything; he just retreated into his room. The rest of us carried on the experiment to test the alternative MC part of the device. After a while, it was my turn. Wearing the device, I activated it. Immediately, I felt a splitting headache.

What was happening? How could I possibly an MC? Why had my parents kept this fact from me? I looked up. Through vision blurred by my tears, I saw everybody staring at me.

That was how I realized. I am wired. It isn’t fair.

I am wired.