Chapter 1 –

The room was dark and gloomy, light rain pattered against the tin like roof as the biting cold threatened to coat the furniture in a layer of fine frost, a figure sat in an armchair that was tucked into the corner of the room; His face donned a half grown, untended beard that resembled a thorn bush and his eyes were a deep blue, yet the light never reached his pupils as they were barely open.

*Clank*

A small object fell to the ground, the empty metal container rolls across the dirty floor before knocking into a table leg, it was a can of Regulated Bitter.

Simple, Reproducable, Tasteless, Soulless.

The only reason you’d drink it was to get drunk, to forget the pain of your daily life so you could live another day in this mundane world.

The man’s head shifted, and his long, filthy, chestnut hair followed suit as he breathed out steadily, his booze laced breath and unbrushed mouth’s stink wafted through the air, but it didn’t bother him.

He didn’t care, not at all.

He had decided, after all.

Decided to end it.

He shifted his body as he attempted to lift his slovenly body off the sofa before he remembered that he had lost that arm, he silently cussed before struggling to push himself up, stumbling over and falling to the floor on his hands and knees.

“Piece of shit body…” He grunted, pushing himself until he stood up shakily as he looked around the room, a long time in the past this place was his home, a place of warmth and joy where he could live happily.

But now it was just a reminder of this prison he lived in, nothing that he loved remained.

He swiped a can off the edge of the table and brought it to his mouth, tearing into the thin alloy with his teeth, cutting his gums in the process as the taste of mass-produced beer and iron slipped down his gullet before he crushed it and chucked it across the room.

It joined the rest of the cans in a crumpled mess of a pile.

He shambled through the room, the room that was his home in its entirety, and approached the stall that he had clumsily dragged across the floor, and just in front of that stall was a fine brown rope, one of the most finely crafted items in this room.

To the man, it was the most beautiful one as well, it even had a masterfully tied noose that awaited him.

Well, he tied it himself of course.

He steadily walked towards it until he was stood before the fine loop, his eyes passed right through it and for the first time he felt a sense of belonging, a path to salvation, he took a step up on the stall and gently placed the noose around his neck like he was handling a newborn baby.

He breathed steadily, relaxing himself as he flicked through his memories like a picture book, trying to recall his fondest moments to bring with him in his last moments.

“Mom, Dad, sorry; Your son is coming early.” He spoke gently before taking a small leap, his body fell but never touched the floor as the rope tightened and dug in to his skin, his limbs went taut as the flesh around his neck and face started to turn red, black, and then white.

He felt bliss, there was a crazed smile plastered on his face.

‘It’s over’ was his last thought; Or it should have been.

*Crack*

A sound echoed from the roof of his home.

*BANG*

And the next moment, the support beam broke in half bringing part of the roof down with it, the rope that had lost its support went slack as his body fell and smacked against the hard stone floor.

There was silence for a few seconds, before violent coughing sounded out followed by incessant moaning of pain.

Where the support beam had broken, a small hole was made in the roof and from that small hole the light of a fake moon illuminated a patch of the room as light rain poured through down on to the man below.

He shuddered, tears began to fall down his cheek as he huddled up like a baby, babbling from his mouth a series of incomprehensible words, yet all he could think was-

‘Am I not even allowed to die?!’

…

The man’s name was Arthur Four, the name Arthur was given to him by his parents and was inspired by a story his father had liked from the old-world archives, ‘Four’ however was not a name they could choose, it was designated based on the district one was born in.

He lived in ‘Lower District Four’, one of ten lower districts in the Epsilon Citadel, the people who lived here were all normal people that didn’t have any skill in particular, they lived their lives in a sheltered environment that was almost completely artificial, doing jobs that would never benefit them or advance their career.

Of course, where there was a ‘Lower District’ there would be an ‘Upper District’, five of them to be exact; However they weren’t relevant to him at all, he would never be able to visit there, let alone live there.

And there was one reason for that.

He was an ‘Unattunable’.

Long ago, over two centuries now, Humanity encountered the means to a new type of energy, not only could this energy serve as an incredibly powerful, efficient, and clean power source, but it could also serve as the means to grant humans abilities beyond their normal means.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

However because of this, a society was formed around the energy that was dubbed ‘Aether’, and only those that can ‘Attune’ to the Aether can use it, so those that couldn’t do so were dubbed ‘Unattunable’ and relegated to a lower class.

But, to Arthur, this was ancient history.

He only cared about his own life, what he could do, and unfortunately that amounted to nothing.

He was a single child raised by his two parents, his mother worked as a seamstress for the lower district, that isn’t to say she made the clothes herself but rather worked with the machines that did the work, making sure everything was fine and deciding what needed to be made.

His father was an assemblyman, a common job here, as much as automation was used some jobs required a human’s judgement to perform, and many parts used by the upper district were such things.

When they were alive, the three of them lived as happily as they could in this little home, that is, while they were alive; It was when he was a young teen, barely 13 years old, his mother got into an accident with one of the machines which proved fatal on the spot.

After that, only 6 years later, his father died of overwork while on the line, the damages caused by his death was saddled on to Arthur putting great pressure on young adult that was still grieving.

He took over his father’s job as an assembly man while also taking on machine repair jobs within the lower district, most electronics here weren’t provided by the upper district but rather made by the inhabitants and sold, so a repairman was a potentially ludicrous job.

However the debt was massive, so he had to overwork himself, and then he ended up making a similar mistake as his father only a few months ago, he lost his arm to an industrial saw and because he was now disabled, he lost his job.

All the positivity towards life he had had dried up by that point, he had no hope left for the future, so he had begun to drown himself in alcohol and pleasure, trying to wash away the sorrow he was feeling; It didn’t work.

And so he tried to take his life, but it failed, so now he was stuck in limbo, his future undetermined.

…

The rain poured incessantly, but Arthur didn’t move an inch as he sat a bench with a packet in hand, this time it was ‘Regulated Vodka’, it was basically just pure alcohol though.

He had failed, yet he wouldn’t try to kill himself again, he was too much of a coward to do that; It had taken him 27 years of his life to build up to the first attempt, he didn’t have it in him to go again.

But…

“What am I meant to do now?” he asked the sky as his listless eyes stared at the projection of the moon.

A small buzz sounded in his coat pocket as he weakly reached in and pulled out his holo-terminal, it was a small device that was a metal frame with a glass centre, words were displayed on it.

[ Mild downpour will end at 22:00 ]

He tapped the screen, and a list of applications came up, he stared at it for a minute before placing it back in his pocket and leaning back on the bench, he wasn’t in the mood to mess around looking through the archives or reading the news right now.

He cracked open the top of the packet with his teeth as the strong scent of alcohol assailed his nose as he downed the entire thing in one go, the burning sensation crawling down his neck embroiled his mind in a sense of comfort.

“Bwaaaagh!” He breathed out heavily, his hot breath clashing against the cold air as he chucked the packet to a nearby tube that was a rubbish bin before sitting up slightly.

‘I guess I need to find more repair work… It’ll be tough with one arm, but I don’t have much of a choice…’

The thing about the lower district was that there was no shortage of people, if one person dropped dead on the job they could easily be replaced by another person, because of this someone like him who had lost an arm was chucked aside without a moment’s notice.

And… because of this there were also many people like him, disabled or incapable of working living with the bare minimum funds issued to them, suicides were common, if someone died their house would be cleared and given to someone else within a day.

It was depressing, but that’s just how it was.

At the same time, alcohol and recreational drugs were provided cheaply so those that were out of work were either too inebriated or high to bother others, it was a strange, twisted state of equilibrium.

To Arthur, this was normal.

That’s why he could bounce back so quickly, what he felt was nothing short of a common sight, he had seen so many in his same situation that he felt there was nothing to think about it other than to move on.

He stood up, preparing to go back to his house, he needed to patch up the hole, some cheap scrap metal should do it; But as he as thinking that he heard the quiet rumbling of a motor behind him, so he turned to look.

A large pole like machine was moving across the pavement, the obvious sound of an electric engine buzzed clearly under the pitter patter of the rain.

‘A maintenance bot? What’s it doing here?’ Arthur’s brow dropped slightly.

These robots were manly used to repair official machinery that was damaged, restock them, or update their firmware, the former was a rare occurrence since whoever did it would be saddled with a massive debt, so it must be one of the latter reasons.

Except it wasn’t carrying a container for items to restock the vending machines with.

‘Is it here to install some new advertisements?’ He scoffed slightly, the only thing that was shown on the vending machine screens were expensive items the upper district tries to down sell to them or some shady news.

The bot went up to the vending machine he had just bought his alcohol from, and an arm extended, entering a slot on the vending machine as it went dark and a progress bar flashed on the screen, it didn’t take more than 10 seconds before it was done, and it went on its way while the vending machine rebooted.

The Citadel had its own intranet, he could access basic information from it on his Holo-terminal, the thing he read the most were old-world archives which were textbooks and stories recovered from before the great war, a lot of it was irrelevant these days but it was still worth reading some of it.

There was also a wider internet between all of the Citadels, but no lower district person was able to access that, they were limited in what they could learn.

The machines like this vending machine were not part of the intranet however as a precaution towards those that might want to use them maliciously, like as a backdoor to the internet for example.

Because of this, they were updated manually like now.

Arthur walked up to the vending machine out of curiosity, wondering what exactly had changed and as he did it finished rebooting and an advertisement was placed front and centre on its monitor.

The image was of a generic soldier wielding a standard rifle with the G.U.N (Global United Nations) logo in the back.

The advertisement read:

[ Participants wanted for a new military unit, able bodied or disabled, all accepted, full living conditions provided and high pay, apply on your holo-terminal]

And just below that was a tagline:

[Leave behind your mundane life!]

Arthur stood staring at the screen for a good five minutes without moving.

“Military?” He looked with disbelief once more, making sure he was reading it right.

‘But they basically never recruit us unattunable for the military! They proclaimed it was a waste!’ he was immediately suspicious.

‘But then again… what else do I have to lose? I already tried to take my life…’ He pondered for a moment before deciding to follow up on this impulsive feeling he had, he didn’t really care whether it was the alcohol talking.

He pulled out his holo-terminal and scanned the dot code on the advertisement, he was quickly brought to the page to sign up on his terminal, but all he really needed to do was confirm his entry; Holo-terminals were given to every person once they turned 16, or when they left their parents care, they served as identification, so it had everything about him on it.

He looked at the small white circle on the page before pressing his thumb to it, his terminal scanned it and quickly let out a beep to notify him it was complete.

[Thank you for applying! You will be contacted at a later date on how to proceed!]

The screen read. Arthur felt his shoulders slump as he felt like a weight had been lifted off of them.

‘I guess my future is decided just like that’.

And, it was, but what he didn’t realise was just how much his future would change from this one little choice.