Challenge The Proud

Item Discontinued

"This item discontinued" - Challenge No.6

THAT DAY WAS just like any other day in the A.I. controlled environment of the H-113 District - a pleasantly warm, shiny day.

Farina hurried out of her house, still nibbling on a piece of toast. She hopped on her Ultimate Hover with her spotless white shirt fluttering open and revealing her pink Katrrina top. Since she was a huge fan of Katrrina, she often listened to the audio-books on her way to work.

Hovering on the empty gray streets, the breeze danced through her black dyed locks - of course, she had her hair styled just like Katrrina, but not the motion picture version, the animated version, with the long pink strand hanging over her right cheek.

Life was simple and good. Farina was happy, even if there were times when she felt that something was missing - her therapist had said that it was just a normal fluctuation in her mental state, a sign of a healthy mind simply demanding more and more media to consume. Farina's therapist knew her better than anyone and she liked to call him Hal the Hologram, even if he was just a model TRLX-34 Super Computer assigned to do her mandatory weekly mental health check-ups.

Farina was crossing the Long Bridge - it took her a little over five minutes to get to the end of it, but those were the best five minutes of her morning. Almost as good as the daily hours she spent on her M-pad account, immersed into Katrrina's awesome world.

The view was a dashing mix of cold colors wrapped in warm glimmers. On her right, Farina could see the tall buildings and high towers that were the H-115 to H-120 Districts where they built the M-pads. And on her left, she could see the H-121 to H-130 Districts where other people just like her worked every day to keep the Stream Alive.

People just like her...

Farina couldn't remember the last time she had actually spoken to a person. Sure, she had a Stream account (who didn't?), with hundreds of friends, and she saw people every day when she came into work, but she didn't really talk to any them.

Streaming was great, but nobody was logged in to actually talk, and after the fifth guy she had been dating, had suddenly disappeared - probably on a new account to get away from her - Farina had given up on Stream socializing altogether. And at work, the dozen or so people that she saw around the building on her way to her station, seemed busy with their M-pads - listening to music or audio-books, reading or watching videos. It was just the way it was.

She arrived at work in time and made her way to assembly station 19 where she tested and assembled microchips used in M-pad production.

Facing her desk was an old school sign with flickering lights made out of light bulbs and colored glass that she had constructed and connected to the digital message board in the main lobby.

No one ever looked at that message board - the only messages were famous quotes about resilience, and images of Admiral Dorian saluting the work of machines and offering his allegiance to the A.I. District that controlled all Districts.

But Farina looked at those images and quotes and she liked their flickering and colors when they translated into thousands of small light bulbs in front of her desk. The words could barely be read and the images made little sense, but she was proud of her retro contraption and sometimes glanced at it to remind herself that she could do other things than the same menial job, day in and day out.

But why bother with other things? Everything was fine. Everything was in control.

Farina was only 30 years old - too young to remember the old ways, but she knew from her parents that the world had been in chaos for decades before the A.I. had taken over, bringing order and prosperity back.