Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Science Fiction

    I awoke to the sound of an alarm. I reached up and pressed the button on the side of my head, stopping the loud noise. The button was part of the implant that everyone got as a child, and was what I was instructed to press to turn my alarm off by the manual that been sent to everyone after the recent update of the implant. Our implants got updated about every month, and when they did, the government sent out packets that told us how to use all of the new features. The alarm was a recent installation, and it had taken a while to add because most test subjects who tried it ended up with splitting headaches, sometimes for weeks at a time, or the alarm wouldn't shut off and the subjects would have to listen to the constant beeping for hours before the government bothered to have someone reset their implant. 

    Immediately after I pressed the button, the beeping ceased and I got out of bed. As I was getting dressed in the simple uniform of the school I attended, I sent my breakfast order to my kitchen. The implant let us do this too, by turning and dragging the button that stuck out from behind our right ears. The button turned and had small notches on the side of it that made it easy to drag up and down, too. Everyone above the age of five had the optical implants, since it was determined that the children above that age had finally adapted to be able to handle the implant that they got immediately after they were born, though it is  useless until you have the optical implant, since you can't do anything with the button until you have the small chip that is placed in your right eye at five. It is mandatory to visit a surgeon on your fifth birthday, or else you will be denied a chip unless someone else calls ahead and reschedules. It's a pretty rough process, since of you miss the date, you have to live the rest of your life without a chip, unless you apply again at 25 and get accepted, though that requires a lot of paperwork, so it's best to not miss the date you get assigned when you are five. 

    I twisted the button all the way to the right and held it there for a few seconds and my optical chip activated. I saw a small green circle, spinning in the bottom of my vision, telling me that the chip was starting up. After a few seconds, I heard a voice in my head, telling me that the chip was done starting. 

    “Hello, Elijah. What would you like to do?” It was a robotic voice, signalling that I could now pick my breakfast. I twisted the button to the left, selecting the small picture of a fork and knife, though no one used utensils anymore and any that were found were considered rare artifacts and were sent to museums, as they were so uncommon. After a green glow had appeared over the icon, I pressed the button, and a small screen covered most of my vision. Then I heard the voice again, as I did every day. 

    “First, pick your drink.” I dragged the button down until I found the Blizzard, an energy drink that was designed to help you stay awake and sting you if your melatonin levels got to high. Next, the voice told me to pick my breakfast, and I dragged the button down the path that was carved into my head and pressed it on the option that read, “Frorealm”. It was a common food made of compressed meat and leaves from trees, sometimes mixed with plastic, but only by the Cleaners, the humans who had adapted to eat plastic in an attempt to keep our planet from dying. It was a last attempt to keep us from killing our planet and wildlife, but far too little people had been willing to become Cleaners and it hardly makes a difference. 

    By now, I had finished putting on my beige shirt and shorts. No one wore shoes anymore, and pants or long sleeve shirts were a luxury that no one could afford. The government was sure that they were a waste of materials, and I agreed. Why wear long shirts, pants and shoes when you can just build up some muscle and calluses and be fine? After I had gotten dressed, I walked over to my kitchen, where a Blizzard and Frorealm were sitting in the tube, were all food did. Food was sent this way, since the government decided that not everyone needed to cook when we can have a small group of people do it and have the same results, though now our options are extremely limited since we only have a small group of people trained to cook certain things, instead of everyone having different recipes, or “cookbooks” that we have been told existed years ago, with hundreds of recipes that anyone could make. 

    I chugged my drink and swallowed the Frorealm, since it was only, really a small cube made with some filling additives to make you feel like you had eaten a good meal. After I had finished, I walked over to my front door and walked out. We didn't need bags or anything, since we could store everything in our implants. As I walked over to my solar bike, I got an alert that traffic was pretty bad near my school. I sighed and got on my bike. I pressed the button again on my implant, since it had shut off again. Again, I got the greeting from the robotic voice, and then the main screen. This time, I selected the picture of a bike and plugged in terms coordinates of my school. Then, I synced the bike to my implant, and after a minute, my bike took off. It was extremely hot out today, and the wind on my face felt nice. My head was bald, as everyone's was in summer, even the women. In winter, we grew it back, but in summer, it was hot and a lot less of a hassle. My hair was grey when it grew, though I was only a 17 year old male. Most people had grey hair though, since dye stopped being manufactured many years ago, and no one cared about their appearance or hair, so no one took care of it. Younger children had blond hair, but after a few years of being outside almost all the time, the sun took a toll on their hair color. 

    A few minutes passed, and eventually, my bike stopped. I wheeled it over to the bike rack in front of my school and activated my implant again, opening the bike app and shutting down my bike so the wheels wouldn't move and the weights in it would activate. I walked into the school and walked down the hall, to my class. The government considered giving lessons through the chips, but decided against it because too many kids would skip the lessons, deactivate their chips, or just not pay attention. School is the only thing that hasn't changed in the past hundred years, we've been told, and I don't doubt that. My grandmother told me stories about how her great grandma drove everywhere, but driving has since been outlawed in the attempt to preserve what is left of the earth. 

    I walked I to class and sat down at my desk. I still had about ten minutes until class started, so I turned on my implant and chip and, again, was greeted with the, “Hello, Elijah. What would you like to do?” This time, I started playing Jump Down 4, a virtual reality game where you try to escape a large pit. My friends had recommended it, but I found it boring, so I shut my chip down. After a few minutes, my teacher walked in. Everyone was in their seats now, and we began our first period, history. The school day continued as normal, with my classes being boring and trying to resist the urge to activate my chip and play a game or send an NM, or neuro message At around 1, everyone was dismissed to lunch. All the grades went together and we all ate the same thing. Today was Shorogyt, a tree bark with cream cheese, supposedly “healthy and good for the environment.”

    I grabbed my Shorogyt in my hand, since plates were also uncommon and most things were served in small cubes or meant to be less messy, and walked over to where I normally sat, under a small tree that had shriveled from the heat. I didn't have many friends, and the ones I did have were Cleaners, and worked from a young age, so I never saw them. My Dad was friends with a Cleaner and they sometimes visited and brought their children, and we became pretty good friends. After that, my dad passed away and now we don't ever see each other, unless we are talking though NMs. My mom recently passed away, too, and the government has given me a house. I may stay in that house for free until I am 18, which is only a year away, and then I must get a job and pay for it myself, or change houses. I am in my last year of school now, so I plan to finish and work a little best a job as I can and save all the money I make so that I can pay for a few more months in the house before I have to move. I wouldn't call it much of a house though, as it's just my bedroom, a bathroom, a closet and the kitchen. I prefer to call it a house and not an apartment though, because it makes me feel better about my living arrangement. 

    I realized that I hadn't even bitten my food yet when the bell again rang. Sighing, I placed the food back on the serving platform, since the lunch servers requested we didn't throw away food, even if we had already eaten part of it, since it was, as almost everything is, “a waste and bad for our environment”. This time, when I placed my food back on the platform, the lunch servers gave me a dirty look. I raised my eyebrows, and noticing that I had seen them, the server asked, “Why didn't you eat? It's good for you! You need your energy… sir?” 

    “It’s Elijah. And I had a Blizzard this morning, and I feel pretty good. I got a little lost in my thoughts, but thanks for the food anyway. Why don't you eat it?” I replied, scooting the Shorogyt towards the server. It was a female and she seemed hesitant but took the Shorogyt and held it up to her mouth. Suddenly, I heard a teacher calling my name to get me to come inside. I turned, and in that second, I heard a plop from behind me. I turned again and saw the server had dropped the Shorogyt on the floor. 

    “Woops.” She said, sarcastically, seeming annoyed with me. “Now get inside. You might miss something important.” I saw her smile a little and I was about to ask what she was talking about when I heard the teacher call me again. Frustrated, I bolted away from the serving platform and inside, back to my class. My teacher didn't seem to care that I was late, which was a relief. A few minutes into class, the teacher stopped dead in the middle of his sentence. I was in Algebra, which seemed unnecessary because I had a computer embedded into my brain, but it seemed like the teacher just paused to think, which he sometimes did, so I didn't think much of it. A minute passed, and the teacher hadn't even moved. I looked around the class to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on, but no one else was moving either. Confused, I nudged the girl next to me. Her name was Emma, I think, and she didn't budge. I nudged her again and she fell to the floor, still in the same position. I was scared now, so I got out of my seat, going to get help. In the hallway, I found a few other kids. I didn't know any of them, but they all seemed panicked, like I was. 

    I ran over to the nearest person. It was another boy, I think, and I tried to ask him, “What's going on? Is your class…” I tried to find the right words, “Stuck too?” The guy, now I could tell it was a guy because of his facial features, turned to me. 

    “Yeah. What's going on? We need to get out of here.” We ran down the hallway, and luckily everyone else followed us. When we came to the front entrance, we found that it was locked. Scared for their lives, we immediately headed to the nearest exit, which was near the side of the building. It was locked too, and by now, some people were crying. On man stepped on a chair that had been there that was used to make sure the door didn't close and lock behind you if you needed to get something you left outside. He said, “Everyone! Calm down! I have an idea. Someone is trying to trap us in here and we need to get out. I have a plan. You,” He pointed to a girl next to me, “Come here. I'll help everyone get into the vents. Maybe we can get out that way.” 

    We didn't have a better plan, so the girl came up the where the man on the chair was standing. He lifted her up and she reached up to the vent above her. She grabbed onto it and pulled it. It wouldn't budge. Frustrated, everyone looked for something to pry it open with. Someone went into the nearest classroom and grabbed a pair of scissors and a ruler. They said that we could try to twist the bolts out and pull the vent lid off so that we could then climb in. Willing to try anything, the girl took the scissors and stood on the man on the chair's hands. He helped her up and she stuck the sharp point of the scissors into the bolts. It took a lot of effort, but eventually, the bolts turned, and from there they came out. The girl tried to just pull the vent, but it was heavy, so she accepted the ruler and used it to pry the lid of the bent out of it's place by sticking it in one of the openings. After a minute, it popped out and almost hit the small crowd of people, but someone caught it. 

    The vent was luckily big enough for us to fit into and, one by one, the guy on the chair helped us into the vent. I was the last since I was trying to help people get into a line and climb in. Eventually, he helped me up and I climbed into the vent. It was a tight fit, and the person in the front had already been pushed pretty far into the vent system. We all scooted up more and the guy who had stood on the chair pulled himself into the vent after everyone. Slowly, we made our way through the vents, all of us trying not to fight about which way to go and the poor person in the front getting confused by all of our command and leading us in a circle at one point. After lifting himself in, I had thanked the man who had stood on the chair. He introduced himself as Nick and we talked for a while, trying to ignore the fact that we were crawling for our lives through a school vent system with no idea where we were going. Nick seemed like a pretty nice guy and he told me there was fifteen of us, including the two of us and he had counted while helping everyone in. After a while, we came to a halt. When asked what was going on, and the question was echoed up to the front. Then we got an echo back of, “We found the vent that leads to the Janitor's storage room, and there's a ladder to the roof. We think it's our best chance.” I looked to Nick, since he seemed to be our proclaimed leader and he nodded. Then, the line of people again echoed our consent to the front and the scissors and ruler we're passed up. After a loud clanging noise filled the vent system, there was a loud clang and the ruler was passed back. Apparently, it was easier to open from the inside, so the girl had just kicked the vent open with her foot. 

    Everyone climbed down, and the fifteen of us quickly filled the small Janitor's closet. Nick pushed his way towards the ladder and climbed up it. He wrestled with the lock for a minute and then asked if there were pliers anywhere. Luckily, after a few minutes of searching, someone found them and handed them up the ladder to Nick. He cut the weak lock, which was rusted and obviously hadn't been used in a while and pushed open the swinging door to the roof. He climbed through, and again, I stayed behind until everyone else had gone, holding the ladder so that it wouldn't fall under the weight of three people. When everyone else had gone, I stepped onto the ladder, about to climb up when I heard a bang on the door. I want sure what to do. If it was another student and we were, in fact, in danger, should I help them? What if it was something else? What if it was the thing that did this to everyone or one of the people who was affected? I decided to take my chances. If someone was on the other side of that door that needed my help, it was now my responsibility to help them. If it was whoever did this, then at least I would die knowing that I helped the others. Another bang on the door, this time quicker, almost urgent, brought me back to reality. I took a deep breath, gathered my thoughts and whatever courage I could muster and clicked open the lock on the door. It swung outward and revealed a figure, standing there, holding what looked something in their hands. When I realized who it was and what they were holding, my jaw dropped and I hurried up the ladder as fast as my aching legs would carry me. All the way to the roof, I heard the footsteps behind me.

    When I had reached the top of the ladder, I climbed out the still open hatch. I was about to lift my leg out and pull myself onto the roof when I felt the hand of the person behind me grab my foot. My grip slipped from the ladder and I fell to the ground below. All I could do was watch as the figure climbed up the ladder. They gave a look over their shoulder and smiled, and then kicked the ladder to the ground, it landing on top of me, hitting me hard in the head. Slowly, everything faded to black. 


End of Part 1