The night weighed down with the sort of darkness felt in a death camp, deep within the concrete cells of the most dangerous prisoners. Screams cried out nightly with the dying breaths of innocents being mugged and murdered, and police shambled helplessly by with their eyes alert and their fingers triggered. This city may not have been a death camp, but its convicts inspired a fear in its citizens as potent as the panic felt on the discovery of a fresh corpse whose murderer lies hidden in the unseen corner. All too often, this city's corners were bursting at the seams with murderers ready to lay claim to an innocent life and drug-peddlers ready to lay claim to an innocent mind.
The most recent drug to hit the streets was moda, a modular psychotropic adrenal inhibitor that hooked the sap for life before he hit the pavement. The drug slowed the reactions, thoughts, and emotions of the user while simultaneously showing them the inner workings of their own minds, or so the peddlers claimed. The stuff hit any taker with a high a hundred times more potent than ye olden drugs--your LSDs and your MDMAs. The feel-good drug of the century, and it was only 2113. Apparently it was worth the ride, even when the chances of getting back up from the pavement went down from 50-50 after the first hit. Worse still were the houses dedicated to the substance. Dregs of societal leftovers would come together to take their last bows out of this world, sitting in a corner taking hit after hit of moda until the house-suppliers dragged their corpse out so that a new addict could take their place. It's no wonder the city ended up the way that it did.
"Ah shit," sighed a patrol policeman. "We've got another moda-case."
"This early in the night? Let me take a look," said the other policeman as he walked into the alley. His face wore a mask of practiced detachment. He had witnessed too many horror stories to let a simple moda-case get to him.
He bent down to investigate the trash heap into which the moda-user had collapsed. It reeked of month-old meats and rotten eggs. He turned over her upturned hand, searching for the tell-tale moda-signs--little scorch marks along the thumb and forefinger from where users hold the joints of their makeshift moda-boxes together.
"Strange..." he said as he rummaged through her jacket for contraband or other telling signs. "She doesn't have any moda-marks." The more he looked through her belongings, the more uncertain he became about the crime scene. This girl didn't have any relationship to moda like any of the usual suspects did. In her jacket there was nothing, not a drop, of moda or any other illicit substance. Her purse contained a wallet, a makeup kit, and a few loose bobby pins, but he couldn't find anything suspicious.
"Charles..." said his partner with an argumentative note in his voice.
Charles stood up and brushed off his pants. "I don't know about this, Frank. She doesn't seem to be the type that usually ends up with these moda-boxes." He turned around and started scratching his neck. "She might just be--"
As he turned around, Charles saw Frank drawn up by three thugs, one of whom had an arm wrapped around Frank's throat.
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Sorting through the filth reveals pockets of the greatest contrast -- people whose lives are good and whose eyes are kind. From one such family comes a man in the prime of his years and with a fullness in his heart. His parents were two of the city's kindest inhabitants, giving all that they could to the poor and all of their time to charitable works. From them he learned to be kind to the weak.
Practicing this kindness, he made friends with the meek and the feeble, giving them joy and easing the burdens they bore. Others did not share his view of the weak, and grew to resent the boy as they also resented the poor. These wicked folk could not bear the boy's kindness or the poor people's weakness without feeling pangs of fear. They knew in their hearts that the poor possessed more in life than the rich possessed in wealth. They pursued an alternative solution to the poor.
The wicked folk began to attack the boy and his friends, and beat them until they fled from sight. In this way, the crowd was granted their wish to be rid of their conscience and guilt. However, the boy -- in his kindness for the meek -- grew tough and became strong, and soon the wicked people relented in their attacks. From this the boy learned to be valorous and defend those who could not defend themselves.
On this night drowned in darkness, the now-grown boy wandered the streets in seach of an old friend. His last conversation with the man took him by surprise. His friend was beaten and bloodied from head to toe.
