China. Groundbreaking work in miniature robotics has taken place as a team, led by prof. Lin ShaoQiao delivered proof of concept on the promising Fungal Cell Engineering (FCE.) This new technology will allow for large scale production of robots measuring in the micrometers. Critics of the technology warn of unpredictable “black swan” incidents, but have thus far lacked substance in their theories. It is ,however, proven that micro robots could pollute the environment, as they are smaller than most air-vent filters.
These “controllable risks” are nevertheless “vastly eclipsed by the prospect improvement in medical treatment and nano scale manufacturing,” according to mr. Lin. Who also points out that silicon particles surpassing 5 mg/m3 is impossible outside of a heavy industry setting.
-The Daily Swipe, early second millennia.
Will woke up, his only lung burning as always. Ever waking up again wasn’t expected, but he opened his eyes anyways. The room was a dark blurr - It was likely night. He tried to stretch his body, but he couldn’t move...much… at all. His rattling still stirred some commotion however. Steps came his way. Steps? There shouldn’t be steps in his room, not at this time.
A stranger touched his head and whispered something that was definitely not english. What the... He had sort of come to terms with dying, but those terms didn’t include shadows in the bedroom. As anyone who’s ever been four years old at least once can tell, shadows in the bedroom is about as bad as it gets. As the stranger mumbled, something lit up in his blurred vision. He wanted to scream, but a paralyzing chill quickly spread though his body. He was agitated, but this chill... it was so comfortable, so relaxing. The strange light was quickly blocked by a curtain of well-sealed eyelids. He hadn’t felt this sleepy since before he got sick...
---
“Hello kid, how are you feeling?” a voice rang, piercing the land of dreams.
“Can’t you cast the spell again? This one’s sleeping like a bear.”
“I think we should wait a bit, the spell is lightning based…”
“Just do it man, this takes ages and i’ve got a date with Jenny!”
A strange touch jolted Will awake. His heart pounded like never before, panicking in his half awakedness, he let out a defensive roar, ready to punch whoever had startled him
What the heck was going on? His room was… this wasn’t his room. Gone was the hospital setting - he was in a fancy stone building with a wooden floor and roof. There were no lamps in the roof, instead there were torch sticks stuck to the walls, shining with an eerie green light. He wasn’t even in the bed he remembered falling asleep in, and why had someone covered him with an animal fur? This barely registered to Will though, as all his focus scrutinized the men in front of him. They were very much not doctors, nor nurses for that matter.
“Dude, you totally over-did it, what the fuck?” the first man complained.
“I told you it was a bad idea!”
“Well, Peter did it to me twice when i was hung over, and it worked perfectly. How bad is your spell, really? Level three?”
“Level one. Who the heck levels a wake-up spell?” the second man countered, follow by a short and very weird silence.
“Fine, I’ll deal with the mess you made here anyways. Don’t you have other ice boys to wake up?” the first man grunted, turning to the hyperventilating brawler in the bed.
“It’s fine, no one's gonna hurt you, you’re safe and all that. You can lower your guard kid. “
“What the fuck is this!!? Where is this!? Who the heck are you?! And no! You stay back!”
“Alright, alright. Well, first of all, welcome to the future…-ish. My name is Dennis, and I’ll be your guide.
“What?”
“Secondly, you’re alive, cured and well. Ya cancer’s gone. Boom! Just like that. Congratulations! It’s okay to be confused. I was surprised too! Cryostasis man” The stranger shaked his head. “Who the heck thought it would actually work?”
Will glimpsed through his guard. The man seemed honest, but his words didn’t make sense. He had been asked to consider cryostasis... or mind-uploading a few weeks back, but he had declined that quackery. That snake oil salesman had been hella suspicious. Was he behind this? Panic struck. Will reached for his stomach. No, no new scars on his stomach. Both kidneys were definitely still there. A well known impulse stole his freedom; He coughed uncontrollably into his hand - no blood this time.
“What the heck man, why are you lying to me? This is clearly not the future, and I’m still coughing! Cancer cured, my ass!” Will burst out, coughing a second time. His heart was still beating like crazy.
“Oh, the coughing?” The man asked. “Yeah. It sucks, doesn’t it? But it’ll pass. Your lungs just aren’t adapted for mana yet. Oh, when on topic… EY, RICKY, GET BACK HERE FOR A SECOND!”
Stranger number two walked back Will, leaving a woman that seemed about at least as upset as Will was.
“We gotta show him some proof, or he’ll look at us as if we’re from the cuckoo's nest all day.”
“I don’t know man, I was pretty low on mana to begin with, and there’s three more to wake up. Druidic sleep spells, they’re the real deal, I’m telling ya!”
“Jesus! And you actually got this job!?” Dennis pushed the man aside,
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Opening his palm demonstratively. His moved his fingers slightly. It was just twitching, really. Then, he began murmuring, still glaring at his hand. Slowly a feint sphere of light, the size of a snookers ball, materialized above his hand. Will was caught off guard. It’s surprisingly hard to be confused and furious at the same time. The the glowing orb was captivating. Shining with delicate tendrils, but also spinning somehow. It was as beautiful as a plasma globe, but more gentle and fragile looking.
“As you can see, there’s a lot of questions to be answered,” Dennis explained. “ And I’m here to make sure you don’t walk out there as a complete jackass without anyone warning your about it first. Now first of all, are you familiar with fantasy video games?”
Will got even more befuddled, he lowered his guard, hunched his shoulders and replied: “Well, I guess?”
“Alright, you’ve got that thing going for you, great...” Dennis said, giving him a smile, but as he did, the sphere of light flickered. Its sides disintegrated like burning paper, and it quickly imploded into a shining blue mist. “Oh, fucking hell!” Dennis spat.
He shook his hand around the smoke and stared at it intently. The smoke turned and twisted, but not much else happened.
“Oh, great! Now i gotta conjure a new one too, don’t I?”he sighed.
Will hunched his shoulders again, suprised by what he had just seen.
“Oh well, screw it... As i said, we’re in the future now. A lot of water has flown since America had an Orange for President, so to speak. Really. A lot! I don’t know how you imagine the future to be like, but at least I can tell you, I couldn’t have been much more wrong myself when I woke up... It’s the mana, everything has changed with it, it must’ve. The future is like a god damned video game, I’ll tell ya.”
Have some clothes, will ya!” He threw a ball of cloth at Will. He put them on. Was it...linen? They were a bit itchy, had a few holes, but at least not in the wrong places. He was given a wooden mug full who knows what. Now to think of it, he was starving. He stood up and took a sip.
*Cough* “What the…”
“It’s fine man, as i told you, you’re allergic to mana. We’ll fix that tomorrow, but I would still drink that if I were you. You’ll need the energy - you and I are going on a little sightseeing.
Hesitantly, Will followed the man. Things were weird, but he was hardly kidnapped, was he? Wait, he was walking…? He hadn’t done that for weeks! Dennis led him out of the bedded corridoor, down through a set of stairs and out to the blinding light of noon. He was in a great paved plaza, filled with medieval looking merchants, and surrounded by beautiful buildings in white stone. A medieval reenactment week, perhaps? Will still had a hard time making sense of things. He definitely felt neither drugged, nor dying, but the surroundings were of another world.
Taking a fresh breath of air, he looked up into the sky. Breathing still hurt, but it was somehow different from before. Talking about different… the sky wasn’t as he remembered it. Twas greener than it should be - cyan almost. Yep, definitely cyan, just like the color you’d use to reduce red hues in photoshop. What bizzare weather would change the color of a cloudless sky?
William was perplexed, but if the sky startled him, the next thing in sight straight out shocked him.
An enormous man with godlike physique crossed the street. Towering above the masses, he had to be at least three metres tall, and that was if you didn’t even count his horns, yes, the man had horns - huge pieces of bone spiraling out from his skull. He was awe reincarnated. Contrasting his handsome body though, his jaw and nose were severely malformed, together almost snout like in appearance, and his eyes sat unaesthetically far away from each other. His ears were pointy and curved, more those of an animal than the elven variety you’d find in a fantasy movie. The beast of a man was a freak of nature, but no one around seemed to notice him.
“Dude, it may be the future, but it’s still impolite to stare at people.” Dennis shook him back to his senses.
“Sorry…” Will responded, acting as normally as anyone trying to act normal could - not much at all in other words. The new things to see instead of the giant wasn’t helping his composure either. The giant wasn’t alone towering above the masses, and the masses weren’t as normal as Will had blindly assumed. Eyes were weird. Noses were too big. Hair grew on places it definitely shouldn’t be. And then there was the smell. The people on the streets were as non-human as human could be.
As they walked down the alley, the houses changed. White stones were replace by grey ones, and eventually wood. Everything was smaller as they went on, including the the people. The only thing that grew in size as they walked was an enormous wall of stone. Whenever Will though they were close, he looked up to see that no, they still weren’t, but the wall had yet again grown a few metres.
As the wall towered higher and higher up towards the sky, faces on the ground turned more and more normal, fewer and fewer had their faces distorted by animalistic traits. Eventually, they came to an enormous gate, with hunky guards to match. These were as big as they came, it seemed. One of them had an impressive set of tusks, protruding a good two decimetres from his lower jaw; the other sported a mighty set of antlers. Neither of the guards even seemed to notice Dennis and Will.
“Alright, we’re finally here! Welcome to Eastgate!” Dennis smiled.
The left side of the gate was crammed with wooden shacks - big and small. Some of the buildings could maybe pass as houses, but most landed somewhere in between house and shack.
“You might think - oh no! A Slum. But I ensure you, kid, this is much better than what it seems like. This is a ghetto! A ghetto for people like you, me, and our kind...and our kids…and their kids. Come on!
They had arrived to one of the bigger shacks, or house? At least it had two floors. It was the only inn of Eastgate, Dennis assured him. Was it an inn? What was an inn supposed to mean anyways.
The inside was noisy. A combination of bar, youth center and home cooking restaurant. The place was like a 24/7 dorm party, and perfectly equipped too! The furnishing was made out of wood so thick, you’d have to really go at it if you wanted to break anything.
“Alright, the owner here is second generation, so his english is kinda good.”
“Second generation what?”
“Second generation whatever you and I am. HEY WALT!”
A fat bald man approached them. He wore a spotted apron, from his pocket hung a somewhat cleaner towel. The man himself could use a good round in a laundry mashine himself.
“Is this the new kid?” the man said in a funny accent. Dennis nodded.
“Welcome to mcDonald’s!” the fat man said with a proud smile on his face.
“My dad was just like you, he told many deprived time stories,” he continued.
“He means deprived of mana,” Dennis filled in.
“Listen up guys, you two seem to get along, and I’ve got an appointment to attend, so you better not make any trouble. I’ll be back tomorrow morning. You… what’s your name by the way?” Dennis asked Will.
“Alright, William, tomorrow is your big day. You’ve got an appointment with a higher up druid, and you’d better not miss it. You could work your ass of for years and still not afford a meeting with one of those, you with me?”
Will nodded, what else could he do. The druid would supposedly help him with his “mana allergy” If he was offered an opportunity, he’d take it.
“Great, I’ll pick you up in the morning. Be there”
“Aah, you have mana allergy? the fat man asked smiling.
“Funny, just like my old man,” he chuckled, shaking his head.
“Just like my old man,” he smiled, pointing at a large oil portrait hanging from the ceiling.
“Have a seat, no one leaves mcDonald’s with a flat belly. That’s my family’s motto.”