CHAPTER 1
Ava was a member of the elite. There was rich, then there was very rich, and then there was her family. The level of rich where you never hear about any member of her family on TV. Old money and raised in England, her family was rich enough that the public never saw her. Raised in silence, if not secrecy, she was given every chance to excel, both natural and otherwise. Conditioned and medicated from infancy, she was the apex of deliberate perfection. Her hormones exactly monitored and 'adjusted', she was the picture of beauty, with a shapely, ridiculously generous body, and yet the physical conditioning of an Olympiad. She learned six languages fluently and a dozen more conversationally, played several instruments to performance level, and performed ballet and gymnastics, to a level that would get her a gold medal, if not for the public exposure. And did so easily, no less. Always searching for a form of stimulus, instigated by careful and secret manipulation of her reward hormones. Simply put, she thought everything was fun, and that made it all too easy to learn too quickly.
She received a trust fund endowed to the level of full financial autonomy the moment she was born. She never would have to work a day in her life. If she ever felt the need to work anyway, she earned multiple master's degrees in her teenage years that would cover a spectrum of career accommodations.
By the time she was twenty, she was just shy of six feet tall. She had large breasts and curvy hips, and yet a seemingly impossibly skinny waist, reflecting her father's over-embellished tastes. Her face was so beautiful, that when combined with the general visage of her entire figure might trigger the average person's uncanny valley response, in that she was too impractically beautiful. Her eyes were blue and her hair was blonde, but to natures and degrees seldom ever seen in nature. Her hair hung to her waist, and was pristine.
Such a thing was possible, with enough money. And those with enough money knew better than to let the smallest fraction of the public to learn what was going on behind the scenes, let alone flaunt its results.
And yet, humans were only merely human.
CHAPTER 2
By 21 years old, Ava was still the picture of perfection, with no temptation to party, sow her wild oats or otherwise act out at all. This was all part of her conditioning. She simply thought herself to be utterly elite, and that was simply how the elite were -- and technically she was correct -- but her physicality, mentality and every half of her independent thought was a careful orchestration of a team of scientists and doctors that she hadn't met since she was an infant. And she would stay docile, serene and perfect throughout her life, as she was introduced to a future husband raised in probably similar fashion by more of the secret world elite. If not for the divorce.
Her parents, despite everything they had, developed irreconcilable differences. They were old money, and yet without the technology that reared their daughter existing during their generation, they were all too vulnerable to regular human imperfection. Both her parents were young, when they had her. Now barely in their late thirties, they still had strong opinions that only grew over time. And their differences didn't even involve Ava, naturally, and yet each developed different ideas on what direction her life should take in this new development. Namely, she was a multi-billion dollar investment, beyond their daughter, and so neither parent was willing to give her up in custody. And shared custody was a rather... pedestrian thing. She was already an adult -- the custody they discussed was the sort of custody that royalty planned a thousand years before.
The thing about imperfection in those that perceive themselves to be perfect, is that it is all too often exponential. Before Ava could turn 22, her parents were derailing. Her father was knee deep in alcoholism within the span of months, and her mother was partying in the Caribbean.
Without any particular signal inside Ava, an anxiety grew inside of her. She had never felt such a thing. She was feeling an element of chaos being introduced to her life that she never felt before. And it was the sort of feeling that sheds light on her vantage point itself -- take away a person's guardrails, and it becomes easy to recognize where so many have always been. As if she were a rogue AI, Ava was becoming self-aware.
Her daily schedules become more and more bare, and gradually her teachers were dismissed, one by one, including the ones that were who she considered her 'anchors'; those she went to for wisdom (Parents provide wisdom by bringing it to you, not by just TELLING you themselves, of course). She had infinite credit and could buy anything without exception, but her placid personality prevented her from wanting. She simply played, her entire life, and never knew want as an experience. This situation, too, was at least somewhat accommodated. --If freed from her guiding paths, she would not easily feel any sense of 'adventure' or 'curiosity'. However, the technology, the program that orchestrated her development, her being the first generation produced, was ultimately new. The sentiment of controlling one's children, especially in the social elite, was ancient, yet this new iteration was too much of a sprint to cover all circumstances.
Ava disappeared.
CHAPTER 3
Ava had a multitude of free time, and this induced another anxiety in her. She never had 'free time' before. She ought to do something, and once her last teacher left for lack of being paid properly, and she was left with nothing but her mansion and her servants and maids, all who merely waited on her beck and call, she wondered what she ought to be doing. These anxieties were minor issues, easily corrected quickly enough - She would likely embrace control like a greatest comfort.
Thinking of what she ought to do, when she needed nothing, she only could assume that she could and so should make the world better. The flaw in knowing, being led your whole life to know you're perfect, is that you would believe you ought to behave perfectly. And benevolence was pretty perfect.