For a moment, he found himself flopping around like a real octopus out of water. He jumped back as soon as he found his legs and slammed his back against a wall, clutching the backpack to his chest. His brain couldn’t even process all the sounds that he wanted to make.
The girl stood barefoot. She had long dark brown hair, and she wore an orange translucent raincoat. She was leaning towards him, and he could see her skin beneath the thick raincoat fabric. At a glance, there was only skin.
This fucking kid wearing anything else?
With a more careful look, he noticed that it wasn’t the case. There were sleeves around her wrists and ankles. She was wearing some sort of bodysuit, like a skin tone thing that gymnasts wear.
Is she running away from a competition?
After making sure this was an actual child, he grabbed her shoulder to shake some fear into her. She deserved it for ruining his entire morning. He’d had enough of these kids bothering him over the years. It was much better to be feared than loved, and what happened this morning was the best case for it.
“You! I’m gonna-” His hand slipped when he touched her. He didn’t even feel the fabric, or anything solid underneath for that matter. His palm simply slid over the raincoat right away. He found his hand drenched in a disgusting, slimy liquid. He tried two more times to catch her, but she slipped away like an eel.
A fish? An amphibian!? A snail!? Did anyone ever turn into a fucking snail?
She didn’t have any visible parts of a fish, frog, or snail. She had perfectly human-colored skin and no visible mutations, like someone who slept through the Mayday. All this oil and her weird eyes made way less sense when they were part of a body that was this intact. It wasn’t rare for perfect survivors to exist because the Mayday light never touched them; in fact, his own sister was one of them. It was unheard of for such perfect survivors to have mutant traits.
Unless she actually climbed out of an oil tank?
He seriously considered this as an option. This situation was just that bizarre.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he asked, unable to keep his voice calm. He’d not been directly harassed for his looks in almost three years. He thought the society he was part of had grown past those things already. He wasn’t going to let a barefoot ten-year-old bring it all back now.
“You’re a Mayday’s chosen! So I just thought I’d say hi!” she said, extending her oily hand.
He didn’t want to get more of her oil on himself.
“A what? What did you call me? I swear, kid, if you call me a squid again!”
“Octo boy then! I get it. Squid are kinda stupid. Sorry about that, sir,” she smiled awkwardly, trying to sound halfway polite while still insulting him. The way she pronounced the word ‘Sir’ was quite peculiar. She rolled it to make it sound ‘Sur’, saying it louder like an over-eager cadet.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that this kid was just mocking him with every word she spoke.
“Fuck off before I give you something to cry about!” Arcen groaned, flinging his backpack over one shoulder as he stood.
“I have a bunch of those already, sir!”
Sir me again, and we both might end up in the fucking news.
Arcen grunted and pushed her out of his view. His hand slipped right off her again, and she didn’t even budge. “Move! Get out of my way!”
“I’ll leave you alone, sir, but I just wanna check something real quick—” Her demeanor changed suddenly as if she remembered something.
She jumped about two feet off the ground and slapped his forehead with her extraordinarily slimy hand like dunking a basketball. He felt her thick oil slowly drip down his face as the hum returned, faintly than before.
“... .. . . .....:.... .. . ......??∴?∷”
His entire world flickered for a split second, and a blue interface came up from the corners of his eyes. He knew it was a Helviter Industries user interface by the blue color gradients and sleek letters. He’d seen it daily for several years now.
At a glance, he thought it looked like his employee dashboard.
┌──═════════──???──═════════──┐
HELVITER INDUSTRIES
︾
EMPLOYEE PROFILE
──────────────────────────
?INFORMATION?
──────────────────────────
ID: 1768-C
NAME: ARCEN HENWICK
DEPARTMENT: FERTILITY
POSITION: LEAD SORTER
──────────────────────────
?PRODUCTIVITY?
──────────────────────────
SORTED: 30,342
GROSS:: $65,181,400
SAVINGS: $23,348 +0.08%
──────────────────────────
?CONTRACT?
──────────────────────────
CHRONOS
GLIMPSES OF THE FUTURE
──────────────────────────
?STATS?
──────────────────────────
╭──────╮
ERY
[L-5]
[H-8]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
HER
[T-9]
[D-8]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
MAO
[O-7]
[C-6]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
PAN
[H-5]
[D-8]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
BRA
[C-6]
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
[D-2]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
APO
[L-5]
[D-8]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
OSI
[L-7]
[D-6]
╰──────╯
╭──────╮
CHR
[F-16]
[P-3]
╰──────╯
──────────────────────────
[Condensed Mode]
Internal Use Only
└──═════════──???──═════════──┘
Wait, this is not the employee dashboard?
Arcen frowned. A closer look at it showed him things he’d never seen before. This wasn’t even titled ‘dashboard’ this was a ‘profile’ that he didn’t even know he had. He couldn’t tell where this pesky child had pulled it from.
What the hell are these letters and numbers?!
“Ah, you’re already a lead sorter? Cool! That explains a lot!”
He heard her voice more distant, behind the blue UI that obscured his vision. He turned his head sideways to see where she was, and he noticed she had somehow slipped past him and was now sitting cross-legged on a seat with two fingers pressed on her right temple.
He knew mind hackers were rare, and a mind hacker child was definitely something he never expected to meet. A mind hacker child gymnast who escaped from a lubricant tank is a combination of words that he never could’ve put together without taking psychedelics.
“You don’t know what all these letters and numbers mean, do you?” She asked with a menacing grin spreading across her face.
“What is this and where did you pull it out from?” he asked, trying to see more of her. The gap between them was too great for a lunge. He had to get close without alerting her.
“It’s straight from Helviter. That’s the profile they keep on you without showing you too many…let’s just say, unnecessary things,” she said, raising her voice slightly. “It’s been eight years. Do you remember anything that you saw or heard on Mayday?”
“Mayday? I don’t even remember what happened last week,” Arcen scoffed, lying as he inched closer. Of course, he remembered that curse of a day in vivid detail. It was all he ever saw in his nightmares.
“Shame, we could’ve talked about the Rootsong if you did, you know, the original system they layered over with the Mind Matrix to keep people like you in line,” the girl sighed loudly, standing up on the seat.
What original system is this little shit blabbering about!
It didn’t matter what she was talking about. He pushed the Helviter UI off to the side with a flick of his eyes. It was getting in the way. He couldn’t just let her go after hacking into his Mind Matrix so easily. He needed to teach this brat a life lesson.
Wait right there...
His foot slid on an oil slick, the squeak alerting her immediately. She raised her head. “Anyway, have a nice day, sir! Sorry about all the oil,” she said, smiling at him with her yellow-tinted teeth. It didn’t come across right. She smiled like someone who didn’t know how to smile.
After maintaining eye contact for a bit longer than she should have, she turned around and bolted away at a speed Arcen had never seen anyone run. He couldn’t even tell if she jumped over the seats, crawled under them, or squeezed through the gaps. However she did it, she was several rows ahead of him in less than a second.
That’s definitely not a fucking snail!
“No! You get the fuck back here!” he yelled, launching himself at her and somehow managed to grab her with both arms. She slipped away like a hairless raccoon manufactured by Vaseline, disappearing into the next carriage.
“You get back here and tell me what the fuck that was about!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Two more steps and he slipped hard on the oil trail that she had left. He barely managed to keep himself upright, gripping everything he could hold for support like a drunk ape. When he dragged himself to the next carriage, she was gone.
“?∷?....:... ........ .. . .”
“Fuck!” He kicked the door, nearly slipping on an oil slick all over again. He sniffed his oil-stained white shirt. It didn’t smell like anything. On the plus side, he didn’t have to rent a new suit.
He was pretty sure he was the target of some new racist attack. It happened on the six o’clock metro of all places.
On a goddamn Tuesday, fuck my life.
His phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, and it slipped from his oil-drenched hands. His attempts to save it only made it flip three more turns in the air like a tossed coin before slamming face-first onto the ground. He picked it up in a hurry, as if picking it quicker could save it.
There was a spiderweb crack all across the display.
Fuck. Me.
He could still read the letters through the cracks. It was from Karnic, his superior at Helviter Industries.
Well, shit.
“Morning, Henwick,” a venomously sharp voice came through the speaker. “So, there was an unauthorized access to our employee database. It came through your ID and it only accessed your ID. Can you explain how this happened?”
“It wasn’t me!” Arcen howled. “It was a-a mind hacker! Log me out! Do something!”
“What! Where are you?!”
“The metro! There was a girl!”
“Fucking hell, Henwick,” Karnic hissed under his breath.
It was 7:00 AM when he got off the train at the Wensik station, twelve kilometers away from New Manning. Karnic hadn’t called again, and it hovered over him like a rain cloud. He wasn’t going to get fired, of course. He was rather irreplaceable to his department, and this mind hacker fiasco wasn’t his fault. At worst, he could be forced into OPSEC retraining, wasting his Saturdays for a month.
Regardless of the rain clouds, he was in a much better mood when he stepped out of the train. He wanted to salvage this curse of a day, and getting off at Wensik was the perfect opportunity to get something delicious for cheap.
He gazed hungrily at the stalls lining the main street as he walked out of the station. Ever since Mayday, he had an infinite appetite for foods that punched him with flavor in some way. Restaurant food rarely hit that hard. He felt a familiar tickle on the roof of his throat in sheer anticipation.
Wensik had a lot of street food vendors because it was a tower city. All the streets were full of climbers, raiders, miners, and laborers clambering on their morning commute to nearby towers. These people never wasted money on restaurants, giving rise to a bustling food market that no restaurant could ever compete with when it came to price and value.
It was rare for him to see the towers this close, looming in the far distance of the Wensik skyline. The lines on the horizon had looked thinner from New Manning. They were about as thick as candles now.
The ecosystems inside these black cylindrical structures were treasure troves of resources. Tower Gold—the new world’s most valuable mineral—could only be found inside towers.
The post-Mayday economy had a lot to do with it.
On Mayday, an estimated three billion people were wiped out from the global population, either dead or turned into trees. A population collapse on such a scale should have sent the civilization back to the Stone Age—and it almost did.
The trains were still running, carrying kids to schools, and street food stalls dodged taxes by selling for cash—these things didn’t happen naturally.
A new global economy backed by Tower Gold made rebuilding civilization possible as part of a new society governed with an iron fist called the GGC, the Global Governance Council, that was created from the ashes of the old world United Nations.
In that way, towers made the difference between having a civilization and the end of it.
For Arcen, however, these towers were best admired from afar. He was a salaryman with a lifestyle to uphold, balancing debt, exorbitant rent and a lot of bills to pay each month. He did everything he could to live in relative comfort with his siblings near the wealthiest new city in the same country that he was born in—a privilege in the dire times post Mayday.
He built this life while avoiding anything to do with towers. He didn’t care for tower adventures, nor did he care to protest the totalitarian politics of the GGC. All that he ever wanted from life was a big enough paycheck, and a place where this new world couldn’t poke him.
Hurrying along with the crowd, he joined the queue for a spicy ramen stand. It was more packed than he thought. All sorts of people sat around anywhere they could sit, vacuuming noodles out of steaming disposable plastic containers. Some didn’t even stop to sit, they just slurped their breakfasts as they went along.
The tickle at his throat was gone by the time he got his bowl.
He’d wasted almost half an hour on it, and there wasn’t enough time to savor the food without running too late for work. He took two proper bites packed with beef slices and swallowed all the rest in a single gulp.
Gold veins danced in the corners of his eyes as he did. This ability to swallow came from his mutation. He never had to chew through something that he didn’t want to eat. Everything was one convenient gulp away from the furnace in his stomach. He ended up getting more nutrients from undesirable foods as a result—a Mayday gift, for an unhealthy picky eater.
Washing the lingering taste of spice with an energy drink from a nearby vending machine, he rushed to hail a taxi. It was almost school time. He had less than ten minutes left to avoid the traffic.
He joined a gathering of people in a similar predicament, waving furiously at taxis. Several cars rushed by with passengers already in them.
He started waving his hand like everyone else. As he waved mindlessly for any car to spot him, he saw a taxi coming to a halt across the street. Two passengers got out of it, a father and a daughter. The child was wearing an orange raincoat. His face twisted into a deep frown.
Can’t be that fucking kid, can it?
He tried to take a proper look through passing vehicles. It was highly likely someone else with the same color raincoat. He was getting too paranoid. The taxi that dropped them off sped away up the main street.
Several minutes later, a similar taxi came to a screeching halt right next to him. He couldn’t tell if he was just that lucky or if the driver picked him out of the crowd. Either way, he jumped inside before anyone could steal it from him.
“New Manning, Helviter,” he told the driver as he closed the door. “Appreciate it if we can avoid the traffic.”
“Sure thing, boss!” The driver was an old man with huge reptilian hands and emerald green eyes with no pupils. He wore a cap that was too small for his head.
“Ey, don’t touch that other side.” He pointed one of his sharp claws at the seat next to Arcen. “Last one left a mess, got to dry it after you.”
“Ah, I got it,” Arcen kept his bag on his own lap instead of placing it next to him. “That’s not pee, is it?” He couldn’t smell anything wrong inside the car. The last passenger had left a wet print of their butt and legs on the seat.
“Nah, some frog skin thing, I think. Super wet.” He twisted his head back at Arcen. “You aren’t leaking like that, are ya?” He chuckled. It was a fair assumption. Cephs always looked wetter than they really were.
“Oh no, I don’t sweat that much.”
They arrived at Helviter Industries in twelve minutes. Arcen got out and walked to the driver’s side window. The car suddenly moved. He tapped on the door.
Did he step on the gas pedal by accident?
“Hey! Your money!” he shouted.
“Huh? Your friends paid for you already?” The man yelled out of his window. Arcen stopped where he was and stared at the man with his mouth half open.
What friends!? Someone from Helviter?
It was highly doubtful Karnic would pay for a taxi to pick him up. The word was ‘friends’ plural. He didn’t have that in life anymore, and he definitely didn’t have that at his job.
“Who?” he asked, completely baffled.
“The last two, they paid for you. Pointed you out before they got off. Anyway, I should get going. Have a nice day!” The car jumped forward, and Arcen slapped the door again.
“Wait! Where, who were they!?”
“Just call your friends, man!” The taxi screeched out of Helviter Road and drifted around the corner.
He suddenly remembered the two passengers that he saw when he was trying to hail a taxi back in Wensik, the ones that he thought of as father and daughter. He couldn’t forget that orange raincoat. There wasn’t enough time to tell if that child had long hair or if she was barefoot or not.
Was it that mind-hacking brat?!
He wanted to kick himself in the head when he realized what just happened.
The wet patch on the car seat!
This was the same taxi they got out of. The driver had circled back around to pick him up because his previous passengers told him to. He stared in disbelief at the empty road before him.
It’s that fucking kid again.
Groaning to himself, Arcen hurried through the gate. He was already five minutes late.
