The Twins

Chapter 6: Wounds

(Part 1: Silver)

    That Saturday was mostly a relaxing one. Matthew had stayed up late and woken up late, like a lot of teenagers his age. The next day though Marie struck again, trying, as always, to get Matthew to socialize. This time it was at about 9:00 in the morning, a reasonable time for most people, but torture for Matthew.

    "What the fuck do you want?" Matthew asks his sister coldly as she smirks at him.

   "My friends and I are going skating. You're coming."

    "Why?"

   "Because life is there for the taking and so far all you've been doing is sit on your ass stubbornly. Be ready in 10 minutes." Marie says curtly then steps out of the room. Matthew watches her leave angerly with his hands out. Everything about his expression saying "What. The. Fuck."

    Matthew did, surprisingly, get ready in 10 minutes. And was waiting by the door at 9:15. Marie was already there and messaging her friends on her phone. Soon the two had said goodbye to their dad and left, walking down to the nearest teleport station.

    The red box on the side of the street looked awfully like an old fashioned phone booth, something that had not existed for hundreds of years before this. The Windows on the sides were clear and pristine. The booth itself was almost sparking as well. The company that maintains these machines, the same one that the twins' mother works for, makes sure that each booth was in perfect condition.

    Marie pushes Matthew forward and into the booth. He rolls his eyes at her and starts to press buttons on the control panel. It's box shaped, like a 21st century ATM machine, and words scroll across the screen.

"Please select your destination."

   A search bar pops up once Matthew starts to type in the small keypad.
"District 44"

  The automated voice of the machine speaks the command clearly and prompt Matthew to accept this as his destination. He presses the "yes" button and swipes an ID card past the scanner beside the keypad. The card is accepted and soon the surroundings around Matthew seem to disappear.

   Teleporting doesn't hurt. It feels exactly as if you had closed your eyes while on a road trip to take a nap and woken up somewhere else. Just a brief moment of absolute nothingness, and suddenly Matthew was somewhere else.

    District 44 was laid out the same as any other district. Neighborhoods scattered around the different parts of the district, Entertainment stores and services places on the west side, government buildings and schools in the centre, health centres at the east side and youth centres just north of the schools. The only difference between each district was the variety of options for each part of that district. District 44, for example had the treasury and banks for the government, and had more sport related entertainment options.

    Matthew was leaning against a wall by the time Marie had teleported in. Soon her friends had arrived too and were talking incredibly loudly. The group began to walk towards the ice rink in the entertainment district. Matthew stares silent the whole way, looking around st the buildings in front of him. The amount of colours was incredible. 20 different shades of blue, at least 40 shades of red, and hundreds of other colours, some too beautiful to describe.

   One of the first things citizens of Edis are taught is about the beginnings of Edis. All about the "holding of gods" and the war that caused the nuclear disaster to happen, the war that made the surface so dangerous. Most of it was reasonably dark material and teachers elaborated on how much better off human is up in Edis. One such example of that was how when Edis had first been built, the architects purposely decided to paint everything a bright colour. This was to help lift people's spirits, bright colours being proven to do just that. This foresight was something that caused many to praise the architects for making the city as wonderful as it was.