She looked up at the purple-blue sky, observing the swollen grey clouds. The wind picked up, lifting strands of her curly hair. She smiled and inhaled. “It’s going to rain, Alec.” She turned to her companion, a young man. He met her eyes with his own, and nodded. Thunder rumbled in the distance, the low trembling filling their bodies.
“It’s going to be some storm,” Alec agreed, excitement clear in his voice. He looked around at the surrounding skyscrapers, each as tall as the distant mountains. Spires on top glowed with different colors, serving as messages for the numerous airships. The couple stood on a platform outside the Epsilon Theatre.
The young woman shrieked in delight as a lightning bolt lit the sky in bright orange. Rain began to pour, the small drops stinging any exposed skin. “Let’s get you inside, Gisele,” Alec smiled indulgently at the young woman, who was watching the gale with an expression of delighted rapture. She nodded her agreement and they returned to the theatre.
Theatre arts had become so antiquated; for the longest time, no one attended plays or even acted. Everything was centered around the cinema, and the rather new development of StorySimulation. The thinking was that, why watch others act out stories when you yourself can act them out with virtual reality? But then, about a year ago, one of the Manager’s daughters found an archaic text on playacting. She became so enamored with the art that she demanded an acting troupe be organized and put on plays, for they were “sophisticated.” As a result, the Epsilon theater was constructed, and people joined the fashionable pastime of watching plays.
“Psst! I love this part,” the woman tapped the man on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, taking him from his reverie. He simply nodded; this was the fifth time he’d watched The Sacred Nothing. He was growing tired of watching the character Lena agonize over her life of nothing---whilst sipping colorful drinks and foolishly hounding every man she saw. But as with every woman he dated, this was all they wanted to do. Forget dining at Sky Lounge, or watching the light bike races at Faulkner Downs, it was all about attending Epsilon Theatre.
“Oh, Alfredo, I don’t know how I could possibly be expected to live without you!” The amateur actress gushed, not forgetting to bat her eyelashes and jut her lower lip.
“Lena, you must. The Imperial Fleet needs me. We must win the war against the Hadoleks,” the actor playing Alfredo Sausz reasoned, taking her hand and pressing it to his chest.
The man grumbled to himself; he’d seen better acting at the StorySimulators. Who names a character Alfredo Sausz, anyway? What next, Chicken Parme-Sean the 21st century war hero? he coughed into his black suit jacket sleeve to mask laughter as he imagined a giant chicken breast, fully cooked and covered in melted cheese, hefting an awkward rifle from a hundred years before.
Thankfully, after one more scene of contrived nothingness, the play ended. People applauded and whooped enthusiastically, standing as the curtain came back up. Alec remained seated, pretending to type a message into his CompUnit. His companion, Gisele, ungracefully stuck her two pinkies in her mouth and whistled shrilly. “That was absolutely brilliant!”
They left the theatre arm in arm. The storm had passed, leaving only small puddles of clear water to collect in the steel drains, and that particular scent of the air. The night sky was a murky blue-black; the stars were blocked from view. Airships buzzed around the sky, ferrying passengers from one part of the city to another. Above them, people leisurely strolled along the suspended walkways. Below the couple, Managers and Planners stood in line for the lifts on the ground. At least, Alec assumed they were Managers and Planners. He’d never heard of anyone else leaving the city to go undergorund. In fact, if it wasn’t for them, he would never know that anything outside of the city existed. The duo turned to the left and came upon a bank of stairs. These stairs conducted people up them without people needing to climb. It was an outdated way of navigating the many city levels, but often afforded an individual more privacy.
“What are your plans for tomorrow, Alec?” Gisele looked up at him, her greenish eyes rounded in hopeful question. To Alec, it was quite obvious she only stuck around because his family were all Managers and Planners, he himself a promising young Planner.
He managed a wry smile, preparing to feign regret. “Brunch with Ophelia Marks, you know, the book collector? Then watching a light bike race at Faulkner Downs. And then lunch with the Planners, and whatever else. I’m going to be quite busy, unfortunately.” He felt nothing but fortunate.
“Oh….” her voice trailed off, not bothering to hide her disappointment. She nodded as they reached her level, a neighborhood called Daybreak. She turned and hugged Alec, lingering longer than was typical. He sincerely hoped she did not wish to have him take her back to Epsilon anytime soon. If he had to witness Lena wallow over Alfredo one more time, he would gouge his eyes with an old metal spoon.
“Good night, Gisele,” Alec murmured and continued to ride the conveyor path to his own neighborhood, Getriebe. Though not as bright as Daybreak, Getriebe was an affluent district. It was mainly inhabited by Planners, the inventors and innovators of the city. Alec thought it was absolutely marvelous to wake up in the morning, venture to the balcony, and see other Planners and their children demonstrating the newest gadgets Bluelight had ever seen.
He stepped off the stairway, and proceeded in the direction of his smallish apartment. Though small, it was still quite grand for a young bachelor who hadn’t even gotten his Badge yet. Alec pressed a sequence of numbered keys to unlock the iris scanner. He leaned toward the sleek box, his eyelids widening. The non-invasive beam swept over his blue eye, processing it. A small beep, and a green light lit from within. Passed. The door slid to the right with a faint hum, and Alec passed through to his apartment. He remembered just a few years ago, all one needed to access a housing unit was an ID card swipe, or the usage of a PIN. But now, with card theft being a problem, security measures had been heightened, though crimes hadn’t been in decline. As he flipped a switch and soft blue-white LED panels lit the main room, he made a mental note to mention the persistent criminal activity to his father, an influential Manager. Sometimes the managers were too occupied with building the next cyber arcade to remember that people still committed crimes, and at an increasing rate, lately.
Alec sat on the leather couch, propping his left leg up on the metal coffee table. He took off his shoes hastily, remembering how much it cost to have a cleaning worker come in if he managed to get some sort of debris on the furniture or the pristine tiled floor. The Proletarians were increasingly demanding more pay. Alec was all for fair treatment, which was why he was against increasing their pay anymore. Their work required very little education, and even monkeys were capable of many of the tasks they completed. Why should they deserve more money for work that an animal could accomplish? It wasn’t like they were Planners or Managers…or even the manager/planner crossbreeds of physicians and the city engineers. They completed the most uncivilized tasks, cleaning for one. Waste disposal, repairing the more simple items…tasks like those.
Alec felt one didn’t deserve as much money for that work as for spearheading a renovation project of Phoenix Hall, Bluelight’s premier auditorium.
Pressing a smooth button on the edge of the table, the television set on the wall turned on. A dark skinned woman clad in fuchsia spoke to the general audience, reporting on the day’s happenings. A ticker ran across the bottom, reporting on less important information, and reminding people about upcoming dates, such as the gaming expo, but that was only relevant to some.
“And now we go live to Garrett at the Central Market, where Proletarian families are gathering at the gates. Garrett?”
“Thanks, Tatiana.” The screen cut to a clean cut, pale-skinned male, perhaps in his thirties. He droned about Proletarian relations with the town, adding a brief history, quickly boring the ever-impatient Alec.
“It seems they are begging Planners for help. A hydroelectric mill in the Proletarian village has malfunctioned and all power in the industrial sections are cut off. This means, in a few days, no power for Bluelight. Will the Planners lend aid to the Proletarians? Back to you, Tatiana.”
Alec swallowed. No power for Bluelight? That spelled disaster. As a Junior Planner dabbling in hydromechanics, he quickly typed a note into his CompUnit. His brow furrowed in thought. Why isn't anything being done?
“Thanks, Garrett. After the break, we’ll take a look at the current laser tennis standings.”
Alec frowned to himself as an advertisement for the latest CompUnit blared on the screen. He touched the outline of a square on the table, lowering the volume. He wondered why advertisement companies seemed to think that the louder an ad was, the more convinced people would be to buy the product, or use the service. A lurid ad for upcoming attractions at Epsilon made him shut off the screen.
He tilted his head back against the couch and exhaled loudly, thoughts of the hydro mill and the peculiar fact that no Planners had gone to help clouding his mind.. He was so tired of being in Bluelight. The crazy politics, the stupid Proletarians, the boring people. He’d never left the city. It wasn’t that they weren’t allowed, it was just so difficult to obtain the proper visas, especially after The Outbreak. But that was ancient history. The outbreak was contained--within the major cities, and in Bluelight's own underground area. Outside…well, no one could really say. No field investigator has ever returned. Not to Bluelight, not to Blackmore, not to any city.
“The hour is one, ante meridian,” a feminine computerized voice spoke from the wall behind him. Instinctively, Alec turned to gaze at the wall. White digits glowed from a large wall clock behind him. 1:00. Of course the computer was telling the truth, it was incapable of doing otherwise. It was so late it had become early again. The young man stood and walked down a short hallway to his room, stripping his suit off as he went. Lazily pulling on a pair of running shorts, Alec fell into his bed, made up of a rectangular depression in the far wall. A memory foam mattress covered the bottom, and micro fleece heated blankets were strewn lazily over the top. Tiny LED panels shifted through the color spectrum on the back wall of his bed. He lay staring at the top of his bunk, unable to think about much else other than the Proletarian gatherings. He wasn’t worried so much about how much damage the Proletarians could do if they became violent, because as a separate class, they were virtually powerless--especially compared to the manipulative Managers and resourceful Planners. No, he wasn’t worried about them usurping his comfortable place as a ruling force in Bluelight. He was worried about a city without electricity. There would be mass panic, food would spoil, and the hospitals and emergency stations would be unable to function. What are the Planners up to? Alec turned over, attempting to find sleep.
This made me laugh.
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