Arron slowly opened his groggy eyes with the sound of the NerViz morning alarm still ringing in his ears. With a swipe of the hand, he silenced it and rolled over onto his back.
The sterile para-steel ceiling of Arron’s new apartment reflected his shabby face as he groggily stared at it.
He couldn’t remember anything that happened after ordering his food the night before. Whatever he ate and drank last night still had his stomach feeling like it was on fire.
It was a surprise that he made it back to his apartment in one piece and was able to remember the holo-lock gestures.
Arron parted the curtain next to him and looked at the ever-dark ceiling of the first level.
It was still covered with the fake starry night sky. As he watched there were even a few holographic shooting stars that shot through the simulated night sky.
His mind was now starting to work through his morning grogginess and all that he had learned the last few days came back to him.
For him, life in the Mega-city Neo-Tokeyo was exciting and full of new experiences… but danger lurked around every corner both figurative and literally.
‘Everything seems to have regulations or a specific law written for it. Mother and father are keen on making sure nothing goes unregulated,’ thought Arron while standing up and stretching.
He walked out of his room and headed towards his sterile para steel bathroom which had a simple sink, recycler toilet, and a cold shower that used no water or liquid. Cold showers were created for the first level after the water regulations were put in place due to the high population.
A personal liquid bath or shower in one’s home was impossible to have unless you were a politician or lived on the 4th level.
A few minutes later Arron exited the bathroom completely clean, shaved, and now wearing his dark blue M1 uniform.
Since this medium-sized room was the other room besides his bedroom, it acted as the kitchen, dining room, and living room all in one. He was lucky that he had an extra room and was not living in a studio apartment that made up a large percentage of the first level.
Currently, the room was completely bare except for the installed kitchen appliances. Things like the infrared cooker and the fridge with a small freezer that was embedded in the wall.
Now that he had a chance to look around his apartment more thoroughly, it all made him like it was a prison cell.
He had not had any time to buy any furniture for the apartment or even food for his fridge. So, he sat down on the floor with his back resting against the wall and then used his NerViz to access the first level’s holonet.
[Verifying SCS… Access granted!]
“Hmmm… what to buy?”
He started to quickly scan through the local restaurants and stores that had 24/7 drone food delivery.
His stomach was still not feeling well, so he decided to pass all the hardy breakfast food and coffee.
A minute later he found a nearby store that was selling what he was looking for…
…Jelly Vitapouches. He felt quite lucky when he saw that they had 2 flavors! Original, and Pickled plum.
“Well pickled plum should be better than the original…” said Arron.
He added ten of them to the cart and pressed the holographic [Complete order] button.
[Verifying SCS…Verifying credit balance… purchase complete!]
[Ten credits have been deducted from your account.]
“This stuff is cheap, let’s hope it doesn’t taste that way as well,”
Ding! His NerViz notified him of two new messages he had received after successfully placing his order.
[Estimated delivery: fastest 5 minutes, delayed 10 minutes.]
[Based on your recent purchase, we are happy to inform you that you can now pre-order a new Jelly vitapouch flavor that will be launching next month! ‘Pickled Pickle’ 2x the sour pickle flavor.]
Arron shook his head and deleted the messages. While he was still connected to the holo-net he decided to order the newest wrist datapad to replace his current wrist datapad that was ten years old.
He found that all of the newest generation of wrist datapads were sold out and the only option was to pre-order and wait for the next batch.
On the ground next to him was a transparent E-newspaper that was the only other thing that came with the apartment. It had a one-month free subscription to level 1 E-news companies that were Approved by Mother and Father.
With nothing else to do he picked it up. When he unfolded it, the morning’s current news articles appeared. The list of articles was constantly getting updated as new pieces were added in real-time.
A hot new viral article that had just been posted a minute before caught his attention.
The headline read: [Funny memer in hospital: He is now in a hospital after being attacked due to a brutal hit piece article written about him.]
Before he could tap on the article to expand and read it, the Headline changed and it dropped to the bottom of the E-Newspaper under several older news posts.
[[Correction] Former Funny memer deemed not funny: The unfunny memer is now in the hospital after an unrelated expose all article.]
Not even 5 seconds later the article disappeared from the front page.
Arron sighed and folded the e-newspaper which went back to its blank clear material. He used his wrist datapad to access the News clips database to pass the time while he waited for his deliveries.
“This day in history, many of the greedy farmers were replaced nearly 12 years ago. But unfortunately, the new farmers continued to sabotage Mother and Father’s efforts by not doing their jobs correctly and over 6 million died that year.”
Arron waved his hand, closing the news. He was now in an unhappy mood. “What a bunch of rubbish.”
At that time he had just started high school. He knew that it was not the fault of the farmers, it was just the result of the many new regulations and the high quota demands set by the Office of Reason’s collectors.
Ding! [Delivery has been completed!]
Arron opened his front door and found ten jelly vitapouches were placed on the ground with no sign of the drone that had delivered it. He had no idea how it got inside the building.
He picked them up, brought them back into the apartment where he placed 9 of them in one of his empty cupboards.
After double-checking that he had done everything he needed to do he grabbed onto the metal case that held his cleaned ERF heavy armor v.16 and exited his apartment and made sure that the door was locked behind him.
Seeing the lock jogged his memory. As he walked to the Mag-Shoot, he accessed the Holo-net and purchased two sets of Holo-locks for 200 credits. He had to spend another 50 credits for them to be able to have them sent to his parents and Mel.
Ding! The Mag-shoot doors opened as he finished his order and closed the holo-net.
He stepped onto the Mag-shoot joining nearly twenty other people. The majority of them all had their heads buried in their E-newspapers.
A female standing next to Arron was more interested in inspecting his uniform and metal case than the E-newspapers.
A mocking grin formed on her face as she looked at him, but she did not say anything and only quietly laughed at him.
Arron quietly ignored her and slowly sipped on his extremely sour [Pickled Plum] jelly vitapouch, while he waited for the Mag-shoot to reach the ground floor.
The jelly, although extremely sour, was actually soothing his burning stomach. It also was fully erasing all the fuzziness from his mind and filling him with energy to tackle his first day of work!
The Mag-shoot stopped once again at floor 298, where Kix and Toothbrush entered the Mag-shoot to join Arron along with several tens of other people.
All three of them were sipping on their [Pickled Plum] jelly Vitapouch. Seeing this caused them to let out a soft chuckle.
The female standing next to Arron looked at them with distaste and tried to hug the wall and get as far away from the three as she could.
Several minutes later the three had arrived at the MagLev station and were in one of the many lines to get onto the packed MagLev heading to Sector 12.
At each entrance to the MagLev, several security bots were hovering in the air scanning the faces and NerViz cloud chips. They were doing their programmed task of searching for any irregularities, criminals, or D SCS citizens who might try to enter the MagLev.
When only ten people were standing in front of Arron, a loud robotic voice echoed out from above the MagLev.
“Criminal located! Crime… Violation of speech code against Mother and Father… Begin Normalization!”
Four security drones swooped down with extended metal claws crackling with electricity and grabbed onto a female’s arms and legs. The female target was knocked out immediately from the high voltage.
The four security drones flew away carrying the limp body through the air above everyone at the station platform.
The surrounding people had only stopped what they were doing for a few seconds as they watched it all happen. Then, everyone continued with what they had been doing as if nothing had happened.
Or maybe they just didn’t care since they had other things to worry about, such as getting to work on time or buying a certain fresh food item that was on sale.
Arron watched it all with his mouth wide open.
“Hurry up! Stop holding up the line,” said Kix as he gave Arron a push from behind.
The security bots scanned Arron as he walked to the entrance. He waved his right hand over the scanner on the door and paid for a spot on the MagLev before quickly entering the MagLev.
He spent the rest of the cramped ride packed like sardines. He did not pay much attention to the ride since his mind was still on the woman that had been taken away.
They arrived at the back entrance to the M1 HQ ten minutes after getting off the MagLev. The three of them entered using their NerViz cloud chips to open the door and record the time they arrived.
Kix and Arron separated from Toothbrush and headed to the ERF locker room. Before they could get there, Miska from the front desk added both of them to a call which was picked up immediately.
“The chief wants to talk to the two of you immediately,” she said before ending the call.
“It’s only your first day of work and you already have the chief calling us to his office? What did you do?” asked Kix, as he looked at Arron.
“Don’t look at me like that, I have no clue what is going on!”
The two quickly made their way to a Mag-shoot and shot towards the chief’s office.
Ding!
The doors opened and the two stepped out and respectfully saluted Chief Chesty.
“Chief, Officer Arron reporting.” “Chief, Officer Kix reporting!”
“In a few minutes a reporter from one of KNN’s E-newspaper branches will be arriving here,” said Chief Chesty as he looked up from the morning e-newspaper on his desk.
“Do you want us to escort her around somewhere?” asked Kix. He was relieved but also still confused at why they had been called.
“She is coming here to interview new members of M1. Arron, you were randomly picked. I had no say in this as it was a direct order from Mother and Father,” said Chief Chesty.
“Which reporter?” asked Kix.
“Kellery Heaton.”
“Her?” asked Kix with a grim look on his face.
“Who?” asked Arron.
“The author of many complaining expose all articles. The most recent article was about the former funny memer, who had made a meme about her.”
