9. Do you have a SIN now? If so, what's your legal status? If not, did you ever have one, or were you born SINless? How do you feel about people on the opposite side of the line (SINner or SINless)?
Before I ever became a SINner, I was just another slot with a Social Security Number (SSN), which is what they tagged you with upon birth as a citizen of the United States of America. Of course, Union Day happened when I was a kiddo, and they issued all of us UCAS citizens (the Canadians, too!) a shiny new SIN in 2036 when they finally got around to overhauling the nuts and bolts of the governing system. If I tried, I could probably even remember my old SSN, since my parents made me learn it by heart when I first entered elementary school.
But that's not the question the SysOp put before us, is it, chummer? I guess I sort of answered part of it: I have a SIN, by virtue of being a law-abiding 12-year-old citizen when they handed the things out for the first time. That SIN followed me through my years in college, the military, law school, and even during my brief stint at Ares Arms, when the corp "mirrored" my ID onto their database, which permanently linked my already established UCAS SIN to their internal records of me. Eventually, though, that life ended up behind me, and more than a decade of life in the shadows has taught me the value of possessing a fake ID and the benefits of changing it habitually. Speaking of which, if you need some ID work, I happen to know a guy...
As for how I feel about those on the other (SINless) side of life, I think they fall into two groups: victims of the system and those who actively seek to avoid it. Among the average sprawl dwellers, I'd say most SINless fall into the former category, due to a variety of circumstances, and mostly resulting from limited economic capability. Complementary to that, I suspect societies where the Awakened have powerful influence (like some parts of the NAN, Amazonia, Siberia, etc.) have many "citizens" who would not see the need for something like a SIN, nor would they particularly care to have one forced on them. Don't believe me? Try telling dragon you've provided it with some arbitrary metahuman-appropriate identifier while I'll call my street doc friend to see if she has any spare clone bodies for you, 'cause you're gonna need one, omae.
But my reaction to SINner or SINless is largely the same: you live your life, and I'll live mine, and hopefully we can each do that without having to make enemies of each other somewhere along the way.
-Rake