Streets are crowded of unclean people passing by, bumping shoulder to shoulder, causing some to have an up-rise of anger and commotion. I ignore this, walking disgracefully to the apartment where I've been stuffed my whole life. Just as my apartment, all of the other buildings in The Dumps literally look like, well . . . dumps. There is garbage and trash of all sorts littered everywhere. Feral cats, stray dogs, and rabies-infested rats line the roads, which here are not grassy and luxurious. Instead, they are concrete as they were on DirtyVille. Things haven't really changed much when you compare that old, lost planet to The Dumps.
From my left, as I continue down the cramped road of filthy humans, the smell of something ferociously retched fills my lungs and sinuses. For a minute, while I continue walking, I feel like throwing up. It has happened to me a few times before in the past but the stench I smell now is much worse than I've ever experienced. I cover my mouth with my scarlet-colored scarf, relieving myself of most of the awful odor. I don't know what is drafting up such a horrible fragrance as that; nor do I want to find out. But I wouldn't be surprised if it were something dead, rotting in the sewers below. Things like this are never found in the Mediums or Towers regions.
The city of Valor is divided into three distinct districts – the Towers, the Mediums, and embarrassingly, the Dumps. I happen to live in the Dumps; honestly I would much rather live somewhere else. But once you are a citizen of the city in your district, the only way to transfer to one of the others is by marriage, but in all of Valor's history, a person from the Towers or Mediums would never marry one from the Dumps. But boy, do I wish I could live in the luxuries heights of the shiny, glimmering towers where the richest reside.
My own apartment building is still a couple more blocks down. With my clear case of refrigerating eclairs in hand, I continue down the broken, cracked concrete street, keeping my purse of tablets close to me. If I lost them, I would be in some serious trouble . . .
Library tablets are unique and they can't be replaced. That has never made sense to me though since one would at least think of a backup system where their rentals can be stored if something were to happen to them, whether it would be damage to the tablet or if the tablet itself were lost altogether. But instead, the government thought that it would be great to throw those in jail would could not recover what they damaged or lost. Consequences for the mistaken and clumsy, yes. Valor loves to discipline in whatever way the government can. It's how they keep situations uniform and settled without disruption. Once before, a former leader of Valor tried all they could to create the city into a utopian wonderland. Soon after they started making the needed changes, they realized a utopia could never be accomplished as long has humans were to continue making mistakes. They're not wrong though. Utopianism is perfection, something impossible, such as breaking the laws of MIT. That is my goal – to become the one who solved the jigsaw puzzle of modern imaging transmitters.
Below the hot, burning sun, my slowly-degrading apartment building shadows where I stand below, outside the entryway doors. Garbage bags filled with the nastiest items (some unrecognizable) overflowing onto the ground are piled outside less than three feet away. As I wait for the manual elevator to come down, I sneer towards the trash, kicking a stray banana peel from beside me. It lands in the pile of waste and a spooked rat scurries out. My spin shivers at the sight of such a nasty creature. But are humans any better?
Once the elevator has descended to the main floor where I wait, somewhat patiently, a man with a little bell that makes a chime sound, opens the metal door, and motions for me to step in. The man himself is thin and frail, though he must only be in his early 30's. Already balding, shoes so worn that his toes stick through the dirty fabric, clothing torn to almost shreds, and eyes that have seen so much pain and misery, drooping lower every floor we rise, he's the definition of the lowliest people in The Dumps. The Outcasts, I call them. But I never say that out loud. They deserve at least some respect.
YOU ARE READING
Breakeven
Khoa học viễn tưởngWhen Lily discovers she has a twin, everything goes haywire. Grown up in The Dumps, now with a cryptic poem from her lost twin, Lily must try to solve the lost and forgotten, while learning things about herself she never knew about.
