Shadow Slave - After the Third Nightmare - A different Story

Visit in the outskirts

A poor man, still in his teens, was wandering on the streets of the outskirts. He was wearing isolating clothes made of synthetic threads made specifically for the purpose of preventing suffering from the chilly winds. Cold is dangerous these days. He didn't wash the clothes for quite a bit. For that he needed relatively clean water, and the only water he could use was coming from his filter. If he used his filter for something as trivial as washing clothes, it wouldn't last long.

He spent many years living in bad conditions, but it wasn't always like this. People usually don't live in the outskirts, because they were born there. They are put there when there's no place for them in the main city. Or rather he would believe that if not for the fact there are also whole social classes of people that not only live in much better condition, but are met with all kinds of luxuries that shouldn't exist if the goal was to provide living for everyone.

Resource management was a convenient lie. Higher classes were still living unreasonably wasteful lifes. Why lie to him? Because in the Government's regard he's unworthy of the truth! They feared that if he learned that the Government doesn't want to provide him a good living, he would be angry. And indeed, he is angry, but also utterly helpless so he would take it.

After all, there's nowhere else to go. If you don't like this government, there's no other. The whole world is united. Even if he tried to make it to the Domains, and try to make a living there, he can't travel that far. Chances are rather that he would die on the way to another city. So he was stuck. Not only that. Most of the resources that could sustain his misery were coming from the industries possessed by the Government or the clans. If he wanted money to pay for something, the best place was the factory. The working conditions were far from easy, but the payment could let him delay the harrowing specter of hunger.

He was eating poorly. Thin figure, significant lack of muscles, and fat, faintly outlined bones, all were signs of that. Often he didn't even feel like wanting to eat. Bland crackers, and muddy synthpaste couldn't whet much appetite. But hunger still could. Usually he would forget about such things like taste, and texture, because eating could at least make him satiate some hunger.

He wasn't living alone. He had a good brother, and some flatmates. While they were poor, and desperate they still had each other. His parents passed away many years ago leaving them as teenagers. His uncles, and cousins still lived there behind the walls of the main city, but somehow they had long forgotten about them.

Today he was with his brother on the way to the park. Some rumors his brother got from his friend, which he got from his friend, which... he learned from a bizarre chain of rumors, said there's someone issuing soup, a rare sight these days, but he was compelled to see this, and if it was a joke... For now hope was that, if things went right, they could eat quite a meal that actually has some taste. It couldn't be right to pass on that.

They were walking silently trying to not bring too much attention, and sneaking to hide from the sight of local inhabitants, and gangs, or the police, making sure most of them didn't even see them while those who saw didn't have time to process the fact.

The closer they were to the park the more formalized structures appeared. The park was a remnant of the time, when the authorities of the city still were trying to build environmental protections over all settlements. The same could be said about some unfinished domes. Unfinished construction marked the sudden change of priorities, which were apparently somewhere else.

Only recently he could see some change, workers resuming the construction, and some segments of the slums being demolished in order to build a new district. He could only guess that the resident will be expelled, and forced to live somewhere else, while the new buildings would be taken by those from Antarctica.