Gravity Seed

By Gregory Sotir

The world is in ecological collapse. Social structures are fragmented and diminished. But there are unseen forces at play. Jinny and Leo flee a crumbling city, holding on to each other in desperation, on a dangerous voyage through the deserts and mountains. Even as they are separated, their lives become entwined with a hidden force energing from the land itself.

In this edgy, acrtion-driven novel, with many twists and turns, the importance of what is near, and dear, overcome confusion to re-create that which was almonst lost.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory Sotir
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781724165190

Book preview

Prologue

Tamiko swept the stringy black bangs away from her last spider-leg pair of fake eyelashes. He blinked her eyes looking across the river in the night, listening for the telltale clop-clop-clop of helicopters. The water of the river flowed past her kayak in a quiet chatter, as fluent as ever, even in this drought ridden time.

He was, once again, completely alone. Wondering now at her own strangeness, her own sense of constant and unending displacement, and yet her own remarkable survival. So many had lost all, had disappeared, but here she was floating into a new existence. Why? Why her?

A few pulse bombs lit the horizon upriver from her stern, glittering off the flow of the river. One more sanctuary was gone. Another door closed. She scanned the water, searching the dark flow for the next open door, for telltale currents to show her the way.

The river, in its own time, barely noticed Tamiko. Time is lost. A different grammar, falling from great heights into mountain torrents and flowing into a distant sea, whispered around her. A voice always sounding yet seldom noticed. Water moves beyond time, the most human of structures, following older patterns etched like cuneiforms in the dusty earth.

Tamiko dipped the tip of her paddle into the dark flow and joined the river moving downstream, away from the explosions, the Pirates, the disordered past, and into the unknown. The current caught her small boat, pulling her into the river’s flow. She began then to form a plan, a purpose, to record the dramatic series of events from Diminishment to now, to the UnBalance and the Launchings, not knowing that her words, written in tattered notebooks, would be found again and read by those left behind.

Horticulture 101

The First Fall

The Oort Cloud is an example of the power of Balance. Perched in the distance beyond Pluto and Charon, the Cloud counters the opposite heliacal force. The solar bodies, including our Earth, are balanced in between. In my prison cell, a vision appeared. A huge geometric jet-black superstructure hurtled out from the Cloud, pulling and looping like a vast winch. As it sailed through the indigo star-field it fed off of carbon stored from its pan-galactic origin. With acceleration, the carbon folded itself into itself over and over. Along one side of the great oblong hollow cube, black polymer plates flew up and down, clicking between the metallic beams, creating dark spiderwebs along a vast superstructure. Etched hieroglyphs flared from these strands against the passing asteroids, comets and moons, in light trails fading to dust. The pull was seeking to correct an UnBalance. Like a flute left on a windowsill catching the gale, it was not heard. For there is more than one motion in Balance. It is now a language of the stars, here beneath us, insistent and impossible to ignore. —from The Code of Ned, compiled by Tamiko of Arcadia

The 10:32 AM passing -bell sputtered staccato, the cardiac ring slowing into a depressing arrest. The 59 students in room 121 slogged their books shut and started to move. Leo Halson, teacher, yelled over their voices. Continue working on your robotic projects tonight for homework. He watched them walk out, jostling each other at the doorway, and into the crumbling hallway. Only four more hours, he whispered to himself.

The wall-phone rang and Leo picked up the receiver. It was sticky with something he tried to ignore. Mr. Halson, he barked into the phone.

Leo? It's Jinny. Want to get some coffee? Jinny Cantares asked. She was the Patriotism and MCYE Doctrines teacher, and his sole friend at General Petraeus High School, one of the few lottery schools left in post-Diminishment Los Angeles.

Oh, hi there. Sure, I'll meet you at the front of the building in about five, okay?

Good, she said with a heavy sigh, I need to take a walk and get some air.

What happened? Leo asked, hearing the frustration in her voice. Did the class get to you?

No, it wasn't the kids, she said, just the same old bullshit with Haarp.

He visit you? Leo asked.

Yes. The whole period, Jinny continued. The kids were fine, most of them, but he's watching me and taking notes. Constantly. I feel as though I'm being set-up in some way.

Haarp, Leo said, he’s just pushing and pushing. It will only make things worse. Well, let's go get some coffee and we can talk.

Yeah, I need a break, Jinny said.

He hung up the phone, grabbed his coat, an old thin microfiber, patched on one elbow, and his 1960s Italian-styled sunglasses and walked through the halls to the front foyer. The hallway was dark, littered with empty LifewaterXtendElixir algae-plastic bottles, and broken holovid fixtures. No one cleaned, or even cared to repair anything anymore. He pushed past it all and out through the sheet metal doors.

Outside, the wind whipped up the last civilizations dust, and more recent trash, off dry streets and wafted them high into the sun-shocked sky, striped with hourglass purple-gray clouds. Leo’s watch said the temperature was 108. The clouds, as usual, were high in the stratosphere keeping moisture above the city. The dry heat made everything seem fragile and brittle.

Jinny arrived, pushing open the dented door, and a strong gust of wind caught her blondish brown shoulder-length hair and whipped it around as she struggled to put her own daisy yellow sunglasses on and stop the heavy door from slamming her. She let the door go and stood facing Leo as it sprung shut behind her. Ugh, let's go.

They walked out to the street, silent until Leo said, Wind sure is blowing today.

Yes, Jinny said, Lauren was talking in homeroom about how frightened she was last night. She said that the plastic squat next to her apartment shattered with the wind and slammed it into their windows.

Wow, did it break them?

No. I guess it woke them all up though. And scared them. She has, like, ten people staying with her family in her apartment, Jinny said with a despondent tone. I don't know how some of these kids can survive.

That's why we give them drugs, Leo said, with heavy sarcasm.

They walked on to the coffee outlet. Around them the hot wind blew through windowless shopfronts, making the hollow concrete holes sing like sad horns and plastic clarinets. It was strange sound, filled with ghosts of another time eroding away, like everything else.

The world was beyond the blindness of the past, and this dry and broken urban landscape was the new scenery of the Southern continental cities. The people had adapted. Survivors always did. Some had moved on, leaving all behind. Others, having no place to go, had staked out their territory in the now unmanaged apartment blocks, the Freezones as they were called, cracked and expectant terminals where refugees and survivors waited for relatives arriving from places more wasted, where the water had just disappeared, the rivers run dry, and the jungles turned into deserts.

So, what happened with Haarp? Leo asked.

Just the same—it seems to be getting worse, Jinny answered. Homeroom had just let out and I was letting the Second Period in, and then there he was, demanding to see my plans, right in front of the kids. Staring at me with that sick pushy leer. Unfuckingbelievable.

Yeah, well he knows he can get away with it.

But seriously, what does he expect us to do? I have 65 kids in that class. All of them are on some neuro-control drug regimen. Half of them are wired up, and the other half just stare at me bored out of their mind.

Well, Haarp wants you to quit. If you try to fight back...that's when you really get attacked. Turning to look at the younger Jinny, he said, What, you have about five years in the system? You're still open season. When you get up to eleven, like me, they start to leave you alone, Leo said.

I'm so tired of this, she said, her voice deflating. And then he sat down in the back and stared at me the whole class...and Julia and Juan were doing their thing, trying to get me to kick them out. You know, I don't even blame them. Teaching the MCYE Defense Doctrines isn't the most interesting thing, or even useful.

Crossing the deserted street, Leo and Jinny reached the blocks drinkbot, right next to the foodbot, and the waterbot. These robotic machines, plastered with holovids of colorful farms and dancing cattle, had replaced the old stores. They were able to take orders, deliver products, and debit or make credit. The products were uniform and bland, vat grown and genetically modified. With the exception of LifewaterXtend Elixir, the XtaVaxCorp’s patented anti-plague drink that was available everywhere, they were never the true product as advertised, but people still wanted to believe so. A little bit of self-delusional nostalgia, sometimes it almost worked.

There was a line. Different uniformed members of the paid-class stood unmoving in the swirling trash-wind, their gaudy jewelry-like sunglasses covering their eyes against the purplish glare. They were workers, and fortunate. No one who lived here in the Freezone could afford a sandwich, or even a coffee. The school kids were given low-grade algal synth-food, and Freezoners had to scrounge for whatever they could scavenge, or trade for. Jinny and Leo joined the silent workers on break in the bleak line.

A mangy dog came up to the waiting citizens. It was a sorry sight of a dog, emaciated, with it's ribs showing like a bird cage through matted dirty fur. The dogs black eyes searched pleading into the sunglassed faces. One of the men in line, wearing aviator style sunglasses, bent down and gestured to the dog, C'mere boy. C'mere!

The dog wagged its tail and looked at the man and came hobbling over with that canine happiness of complete acceptance. The man stood and with a swift and vicious kick, struck out at the dog. He had on steel toed cowboy boots, like the soldiers from the East Pacific front. The dog caught the boot on the side of its head and for a moment it looked so sad and confused, and then went down onto its side and started to shake in a spasm.

Jinny gasped and grabbed at Leo's arm, who was about to say something, to intervene, when the dog, now splayed on the ground and whimpering, was hit by another stomp from another man, who stood next to the first attacker.

Leo felt the rage in him burning, just below the surface, smoldering. But he knew it was useless. The dog whimpered like a goner, as the first man pulled a knife from his waist band and stabbed at the dog quickly like he was chipping a block of ice. He stomped with his foot again, this time smashing the skull in a sickening crack.

The other people standing in line all backed away. No one said anything. The dog killer turned to his friend and said, Hold my place in line. He grabbed the dogs hind legs and carted the dog over a concrete road barrier that separated the foodbots from a parched dirt lot. He threw the limp carcass over the barrier and returned to his place in line, slapping his hands together. Looking around smiling he said, One less rabid dog to worry about. One more free meal for the Freezoners. The other people shuffled back into line.

His friend continued, These dogs are just pests, begging mangy strays. Plague carriers. He looked at the line of people and spoke as if he were some kind of authority. Not like the ReGens, those robo-canines the TSU has. The ReGens are fine with me, they’re our protectors, beautiful clean Dobermans, not like these mangy mutts.

The TSU use those ReGen dogs to protect the gated communities more than anything else, Leo said quietly to Jinny, as they moved forward in the line. At the drinkbot, with the flower and smiling bee logo of the XtaVaxCorp, the plastic debit cards were inserted, buttons punched, and a steaming chicory coffee-like beverage, or the omnipresent LifewaterXtend Elixir, was delivered to them by a robotic arm with a human-sounding Thank you for your purchase, emanating from somewhere in the machine. Jinny and Leo stayed silent, got their coffee-like beverages, and turned away.

That was pretty repulsive, Jinny said.

Yeah, another day in our modern city with modern sophistication and manners.

Turning back towards the school, Jinny spoke again, He tries to cozy up to me from time to time.

Who? You mean Haarp? Leo asked.

Yes, it's like he almost wants to ask me out or something.

That rat bastard. I thought he was just watching you and taking notes for your termination file.

Well, yes, she said, wiping her hair away from her sunglasses as the wind swooped down suddenly in a minor gale, becoming a small tornado in the middle of the street. They both stopped to watch it, sipping their bitter coffee as the wind swirled paper and other detritus up into a small funnel, a strange and miraculous beauty in the wilting heat. But, it seems more than just cataloging my mistakes. He wants something from me, like he wants to bargain with me. My job for what? If I refuse, he'll take it out on me somehow.

He wants you to—? What? You think he has the hots for you? Leo asked.

I don't know. It's just a feeling. I hope it's not real. I don't want to have anything to do with that sleazy bastard. He gives me the creeps, the way he lurches around, and ogles the female students, and me.

That does not sound good, Leo said. We’re so powerless now. Write everything he does and says down anyway, so if he does file a violation against you, at least you will have some backup.

Yeah, she snorted, frowning into the wind, like I really have time for all that, or it would do any good. Sometimes, I feel like I just want to get away from it all. Quit. Leave this place. Start something new somewhere else.

Where? Leo asked. There are no jobs anywhere, unless you want to go off world to Luna, but you know it's supposed to be pretty awful up there. You take early retirement here and you'll starve to death, they keep cutting our pensions for some space project. I know things seem pretty bad right now, he continued, trying to control his anger while sounding comforting, but maybe Haarp will back off. We don't really have much choice anyway, we might be stuck in this rathole for a while.

Well, I am getting tired of the rats, Jinny said with a sharp edge in her voice. I need a new beginning—again. To reinvent myself. I feel like my life is just bleeding away, she sighed. "Look around us. Where are we? There has to be more. We survived. Right? We survived the plagues. We survived the Diminishment. Getting here and getting a job. Didn’t we? Shouldn’t there be more? Or, at least more than watching old dogs getting tortured and killed and then going back into a pit with a balding lecher out to get you? I don’t know, sometimes I feel I’m getting climate psychosis, even though I know it’s not real, like I feel everything is falling away and I’m all alone and no one can help.

Not you, Leo, you really are a help. You’re a real friend. But everything else. It’s lurching from one terrible event to the next that’s an even worse one than before. I feel like I am walking through very thin, very frail panes of glass that are breaking in shards with every step I take. I need, I need something to break me out, to set me free.

Leo looked at the broken asphalt ground as they walked and said nothing.

Pinkish-red lightning started to spark in the brittle sky. Shit, Jinny said falling back into her usual banter, looks like another lightning storm. That's going to mess up my drive home.

Alex Haarp sat at his desk. It was a nice desk, new and functional, blue leatherette and chrome, covered with books and reports, letters and complaints from various bureaucrats, and messages and business cards from vendors trying to restart their crashed businesses. Piles of paper perched on blue tabbed post-it stuck books.

The office was an attempt to create an image of a professional devotion. Haarp’s dedication to the image had just now paid off, too. The new desk was an emblem of that success. It had taken weeks to arrive, after reams of paperwork and delivery delays, but it was, in its own way, an indicator of better things to come.

The window blinds were, as always, drawn. The room, a white oblong cube with the desk bisecting it perfectly in the middle, was cramped. The desk was really too big for the narrow office, and crammed into it in a way that made a hard-edged passage between it and the wall. One had to turn sideways and sidestep through to get to the seat behind the desk.

Haarp's new desk faced the doorway, which opened into the main hallway of Petraeus High School. Alex sat there tapping a sharp pencil onto his new desktop, his eyeglasses perched onto his nose, trying to look scholarly, thinking the big thoughts that escape most peoples starved imaginations.

He was bored. He looked at the clock and coughed audibly to no one. It was a quarter to noon. Still fifteen minutes until lunch. He allowed his thoughts to wander back to his visit this morning to Miss Cantares, or Jinny, as he liked to call her, although she had insisted, a bit too emphatically in his opinion, on being called Miss Cantares. Alex didn't like her style of teaching too much. Too easy-going. He did like the way she looked, though. She had just changed her hair from straight and golden to a bit of a curled shag, bouncy and somewhat saucy. He loved to describe her in his mind. Let's see, he thought, she was 31, teaching for five years, about 5' 4". She had a few extra pounds on her but that just made her look more delectable when she dressed like a tomboy, in jeans, the way he liked her best. She had nice sized breasts, and even with the few extra pounds maintained a bit of an hourglass. She needed to be watched, he thought, and he had pledged to visit her at least once a day, to help her become a better educator. As far as he could tell, she wasn't following the Mellon Commission on Youth Education Defense Doctrines, the MCYE, or 'mice' as it was called by most. That was a dangerous thing, he frowned.

In her Patriotism class, she was supposed to be teaching about the additions to the Constitution after the TSU Convention in St. Louis, where the MCYE Defense Doctrines were enshrined as primary Articles of the New Constitution of These States that are United (TSU). The Doctrines defined the new world, after the Diminishment, and codified how the surviving children were to be trained. Haarp picked up a print-out. His students ended up either in the military, the TechGoo factories, or the refineries and mines. And, in a few small instances were allowed into the trade colleges. Education was tightly molded to industrial needs. Jinny was lucky to have a job teaching, Haarp reflected as he peered out into the empty office, just as the students were lucky to be in this school, chosen by the XtaVaxCorp administered Federal Schooling Lottery.

Haarp saw the drug nurse-bot, plastered with pink smiling fish decals, wheel by in the hallway. Another MCYE doctrine, thanks to XtaVaxCorp, included the young charges becoming compliant and functional drug-addicted worker-citizens. Originally designed to ward off climate psychosis, a debilitating depressive disease whose cause and etiology were uncertain, yet predictable, the drugs were now distributed to all of the lucky kids who made it into Petraeus.

Alex Haarp’s monitoring of Jinny’s, and the other teachers, implementation of the MCYE doctrines was why he was here, behind his new desk. While a devout re-constructionist in full support of the newly emerging religious-industrial state, he also saw himself as a mentor, where personal supervision of younger, often female, teachers was an essential part of his job.

Glancing at the wall, Haarp read aloud from a framed poster, The Warrior Savior leading, your survival is happening! Yes, it was all about survival. The blood and fang. Everything he did, everything that the TSU stood for.

The MCYE Defense Doctrines mandated that the Regent-inspired Absolute Ablatives adorn all of the rooms in every school, and were broadcast over loudspeakers in public food distribution centers, medical clinics, and reclamation centers. They were meant to express hope and rebirth after the Diminishment. When broadcast they were always introduced by a purring female voice, Salvation is for the chosen! That first Absolute Ablative referenced the Regency Prophet, who had stood his ground in the Texas wastelands with other Regents, against the invasive hordes of climate refugees. For survival: The Warrior Savior leading, your survival is happening.

Haarp eyed the First Absolute Ablative as he poked at the new blue leatherette desk-top with his pencil. Leading...survival, he thought. But his train of thought turned, and the wholesomeness soured, as he thought of that other teacher, Leo Halson, that troublemaker, and faster than the plague had devastated Manila, he veered into anger, Oh, the teachers here at Petraeus, he snarled to himself. They think they’re so smart.

Haarp knew he was disliked. If only the teachers respected him, and did as they were told. That's really all that he asked for. And, for those who refused? Well, they would soon know what they were up against. His observations and notes were impeccable, and he'd use them. The real education going on at Petraeus, he reflected sagely, was in the reordering of society, each to their place, as each to their ability. Maybe that should be a new Absolute Ablative, he thought. His ability was to lead, to mentor, to prod the reconstruction of society after the Diminishment. For his own eyes were on bigger things. He was on his way upward.

Tap tap tap. His pencil followed to the turning of his thoughts. Jinny's annual teaching review was just one month away. He could make life difficult for her. Or not. It was up to her. Tap tap tap. She hung out with that troublemaker, Halson, who had driven the last Administrative Assistant out with a flurry of complaints about drug thefts. That wasn't going to happen to him. No, Alex Haarp ran a clean ship. Tap tap tap. When, and if, he had to console and correct a troubled young female teacher who was in danger of getting a poor evaluation, well, that was between him and that teacher, and if Halson tried to get in the way, the upper hand would still be his. Tap tap tap. He knew he had to get something on Halson. He smiled at that thought and let his mind drift towards the coerced confessions of failing students in need of an extra drug fix.

The phone rang, jarring him out of his reverie. Picking it up he said a broad Yes?

Hi honey. It's just me, said Joni, his wife.

Hi Joni, he said with dramatic tiredness, what are you calling about?

"Oh, there's another storm coming in, and it looks pretty bad. The lightning is red and there are a lot of strikes out here," she said, her voice emphasizing seemingly random syllables.

He could hear the fear in her voice and grimaced, Any rain?

No, no rain, she said, her voice fluting up into a high pitch, and then bottoming down into at least not yet. The random cadence and syllabification of words continued, "Honey, I'm scared. This is the fifth storm this month and I am all alone up here."

He stiffened in his seat. In her birdlike voice he could hear only one thing. Constant criticism. There, just beneath the surface. Of him. Of his decision to buy a place out away from the city flatlands, in a safe place far away from where starving refugees and insane drug addicts prowled stabbing and raping. Oh it will be all right. Look, I'm very busy right now, hon. Why don't you go visit Sandra down the road if you are scared?

"No, it's not like that, it's just, oh sometimes I wonder why we ever moved up here at all."

There it was, he thought. There it was. Every time they talked it had to appear, like a foul oil, rising up from the depths of a submerged rupture. The constant judging.

"And Sandra is not even home, his wife continued. She went to visit her daughter in Santa Barbara. Now there is a place we should have moved. It's safe, and it has people!"

Santa Barbara, sure, Santa Barbara, behind the barbed wire fences and security checkpoints, behind viral barriers and ReGen dogs, with its own nuclear power plant and those syntho-flesh immortality salons. On an Education Administrative Chiefs salary? I don't think so, Alex thought to himself, and besides, all those rich hippies up there disgusted him with their stinking avocado idolatry. But he maintained himself, Now honey, you know we have already discussed this. Hey, here’s an idea! Watch a video, or play with the dog. Take him for a walk.

"In the storm?" she asked.

Honey, I really do need to get back to work now.

"Well, all right. Come home as soon as you can. I love you." As she spoke, a deep rumbling noise from thunder came over the phone line.

Sure, sure. Although I do have to meet with the Superintendent downtown after work.

"Oh, no. So what does that mean, when will you be home?" his wife cried into the phone.

I told you this already. We have productivity benchmarks and the teachers here are goofing off. We have to review some new research out of DarparRand. Why are you being so clingy? You know I hate that. I’ll try to make it by seven, if the traffic is okay. I should be able to make it by seven.

I'm sorry, she said, "I—I just don't know what to do up here all alone—with this storm coming in. I miss you. And I—I'm just tired of another night eating alone."

Fine, he said, without much feeling. Look, I really need to go. I've got all this paperwork and a bunch of parents are waiting for me outside my office right now.

Okay, his wife said, "I know you are busy. Please, though, get home as soon as you can. I—I love you."

He hung up the phone. Staring at the door for a moment or two, he listened to nothing.

Sometimes he questioned his own internal reasoning, the swings from happiness to anger, the boredom, and the duality of his own inner-voice regarding Joni. He took it all as a given. He was a fully formed and a reflective person. It wasn't that he wanted to hurt her. Their relationship had come to a dead end, a cold path disappearing into the undergrowth of self-pity. A sixteen year marriage. Neither of them wanted children. He thought back to the time he had rescued her from her crazy mother. Joni was then a pathetic pill popping waif. Her even crazier step-father, an evangelical Deacon, was obsessed with three things besides her mother: Julius Caesar, the apocalypse, and the rapture. He rescued her from that madness. 

Now Joni’s outbursts were starting to obscure his life, and any career advancement, with a littered horizon of toxic emotions. Joni, he deduced, had started to show signs of a deep infantile need, one that he could not help but to interpret as a type of insanity.

She should be happy, he thought, and grateful. Their house up there was safe. With a pool and jacuzzi, and a view of the mountains, Joni should kiss the very ground that Haarp had provided for her to walk upon. All those gains weren't easy. Joni had everything she needed, and that should have been enough. It didn't seem to be though, and her whining phone calls were annoying. She must accept her place, and reality. She was an aging pill popper and had nothing to barter with in this new harsh world. Why couldn't she just be content?

Maybe she was, Alex thought again, challenging himself to be contradictory to his own perceptions. No, that didn't make any sense, he thought feeling the rage ballooning within him again. Time for her to grow up, he intoned while exhaling loudly to no one. In this harsh new world. Still, Joni did serve a purpose in the larger galaxy of which Alex was the center. He could not appear to be unattached, even if he was as much as one could be unattached. People might suspect him of being a sociopath, and that would slow and maybe even stall his rise upwards.

Back in his office he surfaced from these deep thoughts. The walls and the door stared back at him. The new desk was nice, so shiny and attractive, so blue like the skies of his childhood. He stretched his arms up above his balding head and yawned loudly.

It's not so bad, he thought to himself, this post-Diminishment. Maybe I'll take an early lunch.

He got up, skirted his new desk, and strode out of the office and down the hallway to get his car and drive up to the Foothills Tavern for a cocktail and some kim-chi fried rice.

The hamburger wasn't hamburger. There were brownish red tube-worms poking out of the middle, slippery and greasy and seemingly on the move when you chewed them.

She sighed as she's chewed, gagging a bit. The 'hamburger' was like cardboard in her mouth. She knew the tube-worms originally came from the ocean, but now were grown in the vats at the XtaVaxCorp chemical reclamation plants. The jellyfish and plankton salad too. That stuff ended up giving her cramps and terrible smelling gas. She knew it was not normal to eat this stuff. The holovids of older times told her so. It was a normal lunch at Petraeus High School. And, at least it was food, she thought again. Kind of.

At fifteen, Lauren wore her black hair in an Egyptian cut, just like the holovid stars, and its straight Mayan inkiness matched her liquid black eyes. She chewed at the tube-worms methodically, feeling the familiar lurching in her tummy. Hunger and the world outside made her shut off her sense of taste, smell, and the pre-nauseous feeling in her stomach. Even when drowned in plastic-pouched Tangy Tiger catsup, the acrid seaweed scent came through. Who knows what this shit is, she thought to herself looking up at the peeling green paint on the ceiling, and forced a few more bites down with a gulp of the ever present and freely available LifeWaterXtend Elixer4Kidz.

Fake. Like everything. Lauren looked around the school cafeteria, the shimmering holovid posters of brown-skinned soldiers, climbing over dunes under an over-exposed sky, shaking hands with young girls dressed in drab fabrics while younger boys played behind them on tanks. Other non-moving posters showed smiling workers wearing head-nets and lab coats in the space factories, making the rockets and machines for deep space satellites and the space station.

The school lottery system had saved her from a