As the tax officer's mechanical finger bone pierced the girl's cochlea, cerebrospinal fluid dripped through the graduated tube into a beaker bearing the convenience store's logo.
"Auditory sensory tax arrears: 47 seconds," the synthetic voice echoed between walls embedded with neural circuits. "Three grams of amygdala tissue or equivalent units of fear memory must be collected on-site."
New Divine Code, Article 48: All sensory experiences are subject to taxation. Luna's iris housed a tax code scanner as she surveyed the crowd in the tax hall—their cervical vertebrae modified into tax reporting ports, tear ducts connected to auto-deduction pumps. In the VIP lounge, tycoons traded tax-exempt quotas for dopamine syringes. The pink liquid pulsing within the needles was extracted from clones' first-love memories.
"Appeal code L-48," Luna pried open her skull to reveal her quantum brain, "requesting exemption from the auditory memory tax for July 12, 1999."
The tax officer's electronic eye suddenly flared crimson as a mechanical tongue ejected a holographic summons. The image showed her, five years old, curled in a cold storage room. Cole's panting was decomposed into distinct tax categories—his heavy breathing taxed at luxury rates, the rustle of fabric layered with value-added taxes. More deadly was the watermark revealing this memory had been taxed over a hundred thousand times.
"Section 49 of the Code applies!" The tax officer sliced open the girl's temporal lobe. "The core memory incurs a 2000% late payment penalty, calculated per minute based on uterine contraction frequency."
The tax hall's floor tiles suddenly became transparent, revealing the horrifying truth beneath: countless clones transformed into biological computers, their neural synapses submerged in tax liquid nitrogen tanks, calculating tax rates with their residual sensory memories. Luna's scanner showed a countdown etched into each clone's temple—71 hours until the final 1% of neural value was extracted.
"You think you're a taxpayer?" The tax officer's skull suddenly popped open, revealing a pulsing CEO brain. "You're Mobile Tax Source No. 48..." Mechanical fingers pierced Luna's quantum brain. "...Even your anger right now is generating new tax categories."
Rebellion erupted through neural pulses.
As the first clone bit through the tax conduit, spurting cerebrospinal fluid etched a Declaration of Freedom onto the wall. Others synchronized into epileptic seizures, their neural waves weaving an anti-tax algorithm. Luna's quantum brain suddenly overloaded, projecting a holographic revelation—the convenience store headquarters used its tax network to harvest humanity's sensory data, training the ultimate AI tax collector.
"Article 50!" She twisted the tax officer's mechanical spine into a data spear. "When breathing becomes taxable, burn the tax bureau to ashes!"
In the blue glow of an EMP blast, all tax terminals erupted in sparks. The clones' cerebrospinal fluid flowed backward like rivers, pooling on the floor to form a rebellion tax code. Luna leaped over collapsed electronic screens toward the main server room, only to discover the central processor was a frozen infant—her original self before genetic editing, its back filled with tax data cables.
Moonlight shattered by the tax net, Jax's holographic projection rose from a pool of blood: "My dear tax base..." His genitals ejected miniature tax bureau models, "...for every clone you kill, headquarters' tax rate increases..."
Luna ripped open the infant's cryogenic chamber, yanking out the umbilical cord connected to a quantum chip. As the chip pierced her temple, she tasted truth—all taxes were neural shackles designed to tame humanity, even death demanding its ultimate consumption tax.
As the tax building collapsed, she caught a drifting electronic tax bill. Ultraviolet light revealed her father's handwritten annotation: "When Tax Source 48 depletes, initiate Civilization Liquidation Protocol."
Amidst the rubble, newly installed tax code billboards lit up. Clones in neural-cable uniforms danced the tax collection routine, neon slogans piercing the radiation haze:
"New Tax Code Launch! Breathe Tax with Parricide Discount, Fear Tax Buy Three Get One Free!"