Citizen L: The Labyrinth Series, #1

By Adrian A.

Welcome to the Labyrinth, formerly known as Earth. A man in L682, a megacity in the North West, sets a date to take his own life. A woman, his neighbor, is at the pinnacle of her career. What happens when two unlikely opposites meet, in a post-apocalyptic world run by corporations?
An experimental novelette which explores themes of love and reality in a dystopian corporate-governed Earth, where the ways we communicate and interact nowadays are relics of the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrian A.
• Release date: Dec 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386485353

Book preview

CITIZEN L

PRODUCE

CONSUME

DECYCLE

A NOVELETTE BY ADRIAN A.

Citizen L Copyright © 2017 Adrian A.

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the publisher and author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published in the United States of America

AA Publishing, 2017

www.AdrianAshwah.com

Table of Contents

1 August Ruskin

2 Gina Marseille

3  August Meets His Boss

4  Gina Dines with Dr. Jackson

5 Awakening

6  Us and Them

7  Dream Tower

1

August Ruskin

SOMETIMES IT IS HARD to separate what is real from what is not. Even when the neighbor is out this evening walking her little dog, and as I watch her put leg after leg, I wonder if she is real. Of course, I would not dare to make things easy for myself by simply asking her.

Hey there! My name is August, your neighbor across the hall in 1-4. What is your name?

I'm Gina.

Gina, I have a question for you.

Oh, sure. She draws a timid smile.

Are you real, Gina?

Of course I'm real. Is this how you pick-up women?

No, Gina. I can't pick you up. You see, the reason I asked you that question is because I watch you every night walking this little dog around the block. You walk it with such a radiant smile, which for a moment reduces this cesspool of a city, heck the entire Labyrinth, to nothing more than the snowflakes perched on your tender eyebrows. You turn the dismal streets into rivers of wine with your elegant heels; your smile shines on the dark, damp alleyways and transforms them into little magical kingdoms.

She smiles but does not know what to say.

But you can't see what I see. You want to belong here. For that very reason, Gina, I cannot pick you up. Goodbye.

That's how the conversation with my neighbor would go, at least in some variation every time I play it in my head. I hear her walking across the hallway now. She is fumbling with her keys, she always does that. Finally, she locks the door behind her. One, two, three locks.

There are a few things you need to know about my world. I will start with what is real. What is real is the fact that we have come to call our planet the Labyrinth. L682 is the mega-city where I was born, where I currently live, and where I will probably die. You might imagine L stands for Labyrinth, but in truth it stands for the Lotan Corporation. This particular megalopolis, or mega-city, is run by Lotan Corp. 6 stands for North America, 8 for the north western district, 2 for the 2 billion that exist and slave here. But L682 is not the only city in the Labyrinth; hundreds of other cities across the Earth turn and churn; M-cities, B-cities, and G-cities – all run by different social management corporations, all start where another ends, all look the same, all feel the same, and all carved and chiseled the same.

I am content dying here, however, and I have a date. Exactly a year from tomorrow, on my thirty ninth birthday, I will put myself to death. I am still trying to figure out how to do it since the corporation has nearly suicide-proofed the habitation blocks and all public spaces.

I did try to find a way to live. Three years ago I filed a transfer request to move to B241 where it's at least rumored that the fallout is not as bad as in the other megacities. But no L citizens are permitted to leave an L city without an entire hard-drive's worth of documentation. The transfer request records contain everything from the record of your birth, health, productivity, relationships, and spending habits, to your bio-signature on the transfer application. Of course, there are no guarantees that a transfer would be approved; price negotiations on a citizen's contract between the buying and selling social management corporations, although largely automated, can still take years. I guess it is far more realistic to hope for a day of real sunshine, not the simulated sunlight crap, than it ever will be to prophesy the tardy approval or rejection of a transfer. At least I gave it a shot and cleared my conscious.