It’s been fourteen years since the “Void” appeared and turned the whole world upside down. It was on February 16th, 2058, when it appeared out of nowhere and people died or got diseased. And this is the world I live in. Somehow humanity was able to survive through all that chaos and live better lives than before the Void, but most aren't that lucky. Cities fell from the disease that plagued the world, but people still survived. Only 3 billion people still live in this world. But enough with the weird background explanation all you need to know about me is I am a scrapper or tinkerer for my uncle's junkyard. You’d think it's all runned down but it’s the opposite, people all over come when they need parts for whatever. Being a scrapper in this day and age is the best thing going for me.
As I walk into the junkyard and pass all the broken down cars and pieces of mech parts the garage that is like home and looks like a factory inside with pieces of mechanical junk and scrapped car pieces around every corner, and you can see a pair of ragged mechanic boots under a armored muddied truck with modified tires and bass boosted speakers that’s at least forty years old.
“You’re still trying to fix her Unc, she’s not gonna run?”, Unc replies, “boy! She’s gonna run, just you wait! ” “Sure”, I replied sarcastically
As I walk past him and his favorite truck he calls “Sally”, I don’t know why and I don’t think he wants to tell me either. I walk past him and all the pieces of used Void adapters and go to the spot where I am stationed in the whole junkyard. I murmured to myself, “home sweet home”, It isn’t all that great but this is what I love to do, it's full of schematics all over the place I don’t really clean that much. But there’s a good reason for why it’s messy right now. I want to make my own Rift Rider. It’s like an old school skateboard but it uses the Void energy in the area to float and use it for energy. The company that invented the Rift Rider made their products cost too much for a ground earth like me to obtain legally. That’s why I am making one, it’s gonna be a long time until it’s done but I can make it. I have time, it's just school starts in a couple of days so there's going to be a lot of commotion.
I finished my shift after selling some parts and finishing up some orders that were requested. There were a lot of people wanting tracers. They weren’t popular, all they did was trace remnants of rift particles. After I cleaned up after some mess I made in the shop I left it hard to find an odd but somehow familiar looking rover in front of the yard. I felt a bit uneasy because there’s no reason to be parked next to a fully secure futility unless you’re suicidal. I proceed to shout out to them
“There’s no need to creep on the junkyard.”
The Rovers lights turned on and the stranger that was in the darkness lurking became one of my best friends, Kent. He’s always covered in dirt and wearing ragged electrical clothing with overalls on and I don’t know why. Him and I have always been together ever since we’ve met. We met in school and we just hit it off. His father works at my uncle's Junkyard so we have always seen each other and got to know each other. He’s basically my brother. But for some reason he is outside of the junkyard in the beat up rover that we scraped together and was a birthday gift for himself. I profoundly yelled at him,
“What the hell are you lurking in front of my work for dude?” Kent chuckles,
“Bro, I’ve been waiting for hours, we're going to miss it!”, “miss what, I got to get home, school starts soon and I need to get ready”, I used an excuse so I can get out of whatever trouble Kent’s trying to get us into.
“Nah dude, we’ll be back before you know it. Even tonights the big event and I found a spot”, after saying that Kent smirks while looking at me and says, “it’s the Rifter battles and its with all the attackers we like”,
He’s really trying to sell me on this, after a few minutes just standing right outside the yard I’ve given up and decided to go. The event that Kent’s talking about is the battle of the century after the Void scientists and people all over started to tinker with the new element that appeared in our world. People made mech suits with Void element weapons but not guns. For some reason scientists and tinkerers aren't able to compress the Void enough to where it's used as a bullet. Even though it isn’t possible now it can be in the future. People still try and fail but they also create something new and that's what this event is about, people fight with their new creations to try to make money and be seen by the people in the flying world. It’s only a distant dream for a kid like me to partake in.
“Fine I’ll go”, I crumley replied while rolling my eyes, acting as if I wasn’t excited.
Kent in excitement gestured with his fist closed and his arm close to his chest and said, “Yes!”
I closed up the Junkyard for the night and turned on all of the security systems and turned off all the lights inside the place. Kent was waiting for me while I closed up and looked very excited, and so was I. We headed out to the Rifter Battle and we were going fast in the rover passing all of the buildings that were abandoned at the fall, they were all left alone once people couldn’t fill them anymore and now vines and plants started to grow inside them and we were passing by them. Kent told me that we had to head over right now or else we would miss the start. I didn;t know but Kent’s been preparing this and he knew I always wanted to be in the arena with all the elites but we’ve got no invention that would get us there but he got us a way in he said to watch the elites fight. After rushing it to the arena for twenty minutes I could finally hear the loudspeakers in the distance, the announcer was telling everyone to get seated and to get ready, Kent started to push on the pedal more and we started to feel the air pushing against us harder. After a minute we finally made it to the arena. Kent parked the rover near the mountain that was next to the arena. We started to run and we could see the bouncer for the arena standing in front. He was the guy we needed to show our tickets to. Out of breath I forgot to ask Kent about the tickets
“Wait, do you have tickets?”
Kent just looked at me with a grind, “nope.”
“WHY ARE WE HERE THEN?!” I yelled at him while we were in front of the bouncer.
The bouncer laughed in a weird way after I yelled at kent. The bouncer looked at kent and send,
“So this is who you were trying to get in for, he seems to be lively” Kent grind and looked up at the bouncer that was taller than bear that I have seen in textbooks, “Yup he’s my brother”
The bouncer laughed again in his weird way and said, “Ok you can go in”
I was in a state of confusion as if I was supposed to make a decision to move or not but Kent told me that he did this for us. As we walked passed the giant bouncer Kent walked in front of me unable to see what face he’s making. We went inside a giant arena able to see all of the stores inside with all kinds of trinkets with people of all kinds. There were people with mod replacement of body parts or full cyborg people even had some mech suits for sale. I had seen so many new tech ideas in a span of a few minutes. Everything was just different from what I have seen in my whole life. Kent was walking in front of me and still hadn't looked at me since we entered, and I started to feel a bit suspicious of why we got in without tickets. He led us past all the booths and to a small chained up fence that was in the very corner of the arena where there were pipes leading in and out of the place. It wasn't a big enough space for people to go through but big enough for a single person. Kent kept telling me it was cramped but we could still go through as he kept leading me down this kind of tunnel, there pipes almost everywhere that seem to lead all around the arena like a tunnel system. We finally arrived to a room like space in the tunnels. This room seems to be viewer spot for a person that would fix the pipes, it had a long gap that wasn’t that wide to where you could go through but you could still see through it. Kent finally looked at me and said,
“This is it.”, I looked at him and in confusion, “you did all of this, why?”
“Bro it’s because we are brothers and brothers do stuff together and you think I’d forget.”, I knew there was a reason he did all of this but I couldn’t find out why. Kent turned around and grabbed a box that was laying on a small table next to two chairs.
“Happy birthday,...”
