Chapter 46: Neurocolonization of the Sensory Tax Bureau

Cerebrospinal fluid was dripping down a graduated tube into a beaker labeled with a convenience store logo when the tax collector's mechanical phalanges pierced the young girl's cochlea.

"Auditory sensory tax is 47 seconds in arrears," the electronic voice echoed between walls riddled with neural circuits, "three grams of amygdala or an equivalent amount of fear memory is required to be collected on site."

Rule #255: All sensory experiences must be taxed.Luna, tax code scanner embedded in her irises, watched the crowd in the tax hall-their cervical vertebrae converted into tax filing interfaces, their tear ducts connected to automatic deduction pumps.The VIP room's rich and famous were redeeming their tax exemptions with dopamine syringes, the pink liquid sloshing around in the syringes made from the clone's memory of his first love extracted.

"Grievance code L-48," Luna ripped open her cranium to reveal her quantum brain, "requesting exemption from auditory memory tax for July 12, 1999."

The tax collector's electronic eye suddenly burst into red light and a mechanical tongue ejected a holographic summons. The image shows the five-year-old huddled in a cold room, Cole's gasps broken down into different frequencies for tax purposes - ragged breathing taxed at the luxury rate, the sound of clothing rubbing superimposed at the VAT rate. More fatally the watermark on the screen shows that the memory has been taxed over 100,000 times.

"Rule 256 addendum!" The taxman sliced through the girl's temporal lobe, "The insta-memory is subject to a 2,000% late fee, accruing interest at the rate of the number of contractions per minute."

The floor tiles of the tax office are suddenly transparent, revealing the lurid truth of the underground: countless clones have been transformed into bio-computers, their neural synapses submerged in tax liquid nitrogen tanks, and are calculating the tax rate using their residual sensory memories.Luna's scanner shows a countdown etched into the temples of each clone - in 71 hours the final 1 percent of their neural value.

"You think you're a taxpayer?" The Tax Collector's skull suddenly popped open, revealing the throbbing President's brain, "You are Mobile Tax Source #48..." Mechanical fingers plunged into Luna's quantum brain, "... Even your anger at the moment is generating new taxes."

Riots erupted in neural pulses.

As the first clone bites through the tax pipe, gushing cerebrospinal fluid corrodes the walls in a declaration of freedom. The other clones began to have synchronized seizures, their neural waves forming anti-tax algorithms.Luna's quantum brain suddenly overloaded, projecting the holographic truth-that Convenience Store HQ was using the tax net to gather data from all human senses to train the ultimate AI tax collector.

"Section 257!" She transformed the tax collector's mechanical spine into a data spear, "When breathing starts taxing, burn the tax office to the ground!"

Sparks burst from all the tax terminals in the blue light of the EMP bomb. The clones' cerebrospinal fluid flowed backward into a river, pooling on the floor in a revolt against the tax code.Luna stepped over the collapsing electronic screens and leapt to the mainframe room, realizing that the central processors were actually frozen babies-her original body before she was genetically edited, with the back of her head plugged full of tax data wires.

Moonlight is torn from the tax net as Jax's holographic projection rises from a pool of blood, "Dear tax base..." A miniature model of the tax office pops up from his genitals, "... For every clone you kill, HQ's tax rate goes up..."

Luna cuts open the baby's cryopod and rips out the umbilical cord attached to the quantum chip. As the chip is inserted into her temple, she gets a taste of the truth - all taxes are neural shackles designed to domesticate humans, and even death is subject to the ultimate excise tax.

As the tax building collapses, she catches the electronic tax bill floating down. Ultraviolet illumination reveals her father's handwritten endorsement, "When tax source #48 is depleted, initiate civilization liquidation procedures."

The newly installed tax code advertising screen lights up in the wreckage. Clones dance taxing drills in their neural-beam uniforms, and neon signs pierce the radiation cloud:

"New tax code online! Breath tax for patricide discount, fear tax buy three get one free!"