Hey guys, Falcon here with the first PR edit chapter.
Credit to FirstDragon for his very helpful ideas in the comments
Cheers
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The world had ended. It fell in fire and ice, destroying the land, sea, and air. The countries that caused it also fell, drowning in their own arrogance and mistakes. However, humanity endured; it’s top minds managing to hid themselves and prepare for the disaster ahead. When the dust settled, they came and united the survivors, working together to build a new world.
200 years later, the land was now a thriving metropolis ruled by the 3 factions of strength. When the scientists came together, they had recognized the problems that had torn the world asunder: Deeply ingrained prejudice, corruption, overpopulation, and ignorance. They solved these problems by completely changing how the world worked.
Over the course of generations, deeply rooted cultural issues were weeded out by the process, resulting in a new humanity not influenced by the past and deeply connected with each other. The population grew from the few thousands of survivors make up to the millions in the 100 year that had passed. Thanks to the mandatory education, new technologies were created and rediscovered, resulting in 3 beautiful cities and the central academy, all connected by magna-trans lines.
Children were raised in the academy from age 3 to age 18, where they would graduate and be placed in the faction they scored the best with. Their future depended on their strengths and how to apply them. The ruling body of this world was led by the top people in each of the 3 strength factions. The 3 strengths were factions made up by the 3 ways a person could have power in the world: Strength of body, Strength of mind, and Strength of soul.
Of course, some things would always be exceptions.
It was a normal day at the academy, kids and teens walking home from their classes, laughing and talking to each other about their respective experiences. This included a boy name Plat, who was currently backing up slowly into a wall while a group of boys closed in on him threateningly.
“Hey Brad, how you doing?” Plat said weakly, unable to move back any farther, “You seem well, been working out lately?”
Brad smirked at Plat, taking the time to flex his muscles with pride, “You know flattery won’t get you out of it this time, Splat.” He glared at him, “We told you last time what would happen if we caught you checking out our girls, didn’t we boy?” His posse nodded eager to get on with it.
“Come on Brad, I was checking your girl out, I was just admiring her friends and their fit bodies.” Plat said weakly.
The jock cracked his knuckles, “Now Splat, you and I both know your S.B. ranking is down in the dirt. You can’t lift for jack, your stamina is nothing, and even you speed is mediocre at best. So I’ll tell you again, you are not worthy of looking at out S.B. girls, and you have to be punished for it. Get him boys!”
The group fell upon smaller teen, proceeding to beat him as best they could.
“Stay down loser!”
“Yeah, Splat, roll on the ground where you belong!”
The group of boys laughed and hooted as they beat and kicked on the figure on the ground. Curled in a fetal position, he took the beating as best he could, trying to block the kicks to his chest and his future children as best he could. Being Strength of Body rankers, their physical ability was the best at the academy, and he could feel their strength with every blow.
It only took a few minutes for the boys to back off, Plat lying on the ground bruised and bleeding a little. They had no desire to kill him or permanently injure him, which would hurt their S.S. ranking, which was the hardest to regain out of the 3 ranks.
Brad, the tallest teen in the group, put his foot on the downed boy’s head and leaned down, whispering.
“Listen to me you little splat, right now your nothing. You aren’t strong, smart, or pure of heart, so never forget this: people like you merely exist for our use. As long as you are weak, this will keep happening. You don’t get to enjoy girls of higher status, so if I catch you looking at our girls again, I’ll make sure you won’t be able to touch your worthless dick again, understood?”
Bloody and bruised, the boy nodded weakly.
His oppressor smiled down at him, then got up and said, “All right boys, I think he’s learned his lesson; let’s go have some fun at the game-torium.”
Hooting, the group left, racing off to play games for the rest of the day. The beaten boy lay there for a while, letting the pain recede so he could move again. Some people passed by him, but they didn’t even glance in his direction.
He chuckled inwardly to himself. All actions done by a student were recorded by the wristbands on their arms. Acts like beating Plat would improve their S.B. ranking, and leaving him with a hint of encouragement would prevent the actions as being classified as bullying, which prevented their S.S. rankings from falling.
‘Have to hand it to Brad; He always knows how to work the system.’ He thought ruefully.
That was how Plat’s world worked; the rankings. Each person’s actions and words were weighed on three different scales: Body, Mind, and Soul. It was completely voluntary, as anyone could choose to not wear wristbands. Everyone usually took them off and turned them off in private, unless they wanted themselves to be recognized for things.
Plat slowly got up into a sitting position against the wall, breathing in slowly as he watched the clouds go by. He was a smallish boy at 17 years of age, barely breaking 5’6 in height. He was skinny, and years of abuse had left his natural posture slightly bent over. Plat was one of the few that the system didn’t work well for. Every person had a ranking in all three factions, but everyone focused on their best strength to increase their faction rank. Plat didn’t have a strength; he was one of the few that focused on all three strengths. As a result, he didn’t have a high rank in anything, and was picked on as a result.
‘I really should try to do something.’ He thought to himself, ‘But nothing speaks to me.’ He wasn’t lazy, and he had talent fixing machines, but he had a hard time learning new things. A past doctor had once told him it was a mental thing, but it wouldn’t play too big a role in his life. ‘Heh, what a load of crap.’ He chuckled to himself.
He went over the three possibilities in his head:
The boys from before had specialized in the Strength of Body faction. It was fairly straight forward: physical strength. They were good with their hands and tools. He was good with tools, but his hands were shaky when it came to using them by themselves.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The other two were the Strength of Mind and Soul factions. Mind was pretty straight forward; get good grades or make new things and you were golden. They were the brainiacs and book keepers. Soul was the hardest of the three to increase, as it judged on the morality of the actions and words. It was also tricky, as having a high Soul ranking meant more trust could be given toward the person. Someone who always wore the wristband, for instance, would gain more morality than someone who took off their wristband before they left go someplace.
At the academy, the curriculum was divided into classes that fell into each faction. From age 3-8, children were taught primarily Soul classes with Mind and Body classes to fill in the gaps. This allowed for the kids to mature morally before being given knowledge and strength. From age 9-13, the kids would be taught equal amounts of each faction to allow for complete learning. Age 14-18 teens were allowed to pick their own schedule, as long as they had a minimum to hours in each category.
The system did a wonderful job of fixing many of the problems that had plagued humanity for generations, but there still existed issues that had to be put up with. Some people still committed crimes, others created new sources of prejudice, and some people were able to get ahead in job positions without the skills to back it up.
Not that any of that mattered to Plat, he was just trying to make it through the academy in one piece. He felt his clothes beginning the outside healing process, covering the bruises on special material that increased the healing speed in small areas. He smiled down at the uniform; just another benefit of being a student.
His mind dwelled back to the cause of the beating. One’s strength determined your best friends in the academy, your class rank, your potential as a mate, and who cared about you. Those like Plat who had no strength were looked down upon as either lazy, or a lost cause. His current beating was due to him getting caught admiring the bodies of some Body Strength girls. He couldn’t help himself, S.B. girls had the fittest bodies on campus, and the inner uniforms were skin clinging under the other clothes worn on top.
“Really”, he thought, “They were really worth it.”
After 30 minutes of healing, Plat was finally able to get up and return to his dorm. Thankfully, the dorms were equal and did not depend on rank. However, as no one wanted to room with him, Plat had his own room in the basement. He liked it fine, being used to the drips of water and occasional rat. The Mind and Body strength workers had even taught him how to fix the various machines down there, so the school even paid him for the occasional maintenance work.
Plat moved slowly into the gates, taking his time to admire the landscaping and flowers the Soul strength gardeners had planted in the dorm gardens. The flowers always made him happy, even on his worst day. Trudging through the garden, he made his way to the basement entrance on the side of the dorm.
The basement dorm rooms had been originally made for higher rank students who didn’t want or couldn’t room with other people. With the creation of a new dorm, however, the basement had been largely forgotten until Plat had come along.
The entrance was nice enough, an antique oak door that opened to a staircase that led down into darkness. At the bottom, a small hallway led to two doors, one to the dorm rooms and one to the various machines used in the dorm. Both had their own wristband scanner to keep intruders out, not that Plat was concerned any would come.
As he swiped his keycard to enter his room, he heard a loud beep, followed by a pleasant jingle. Groaning, he pulled out his transphone and hit accept. A holographic face appeared, one of a certain person that immediately brightened his outlook on the day.
The person calling him was one of the prettiest girls in the dorm, Sarah Brighteyes. An honors student in Mind and Soul, she was the nicest person to him outside his small group of friends, and also the source of his secret crush that he kept to himself.
A tall girl, Sarah stood a few inches higher than Plat, with wavy brown hair and soft neon eyes. The rumor was her family had mutated the unusual eye condition after the wars, as all Brighteyes had unusual eye colors that glowed. Beside the smile the often covered her face, Sarah also had a cute body, more to inspire protective feelings than lustful ones, except for her legs that seemed to go on forever.
Plat quickly shook himself to pay attention to what she was saying.
“Sorry Sarah, the reception is quirky down here, what did you say?”
The beautiful girl smiled at him, “I said could you check on the water heater down there for the women’s bathroom? Some of the girls were complaining on the lack of hot water and the hot spring bath is cooler than normal.”
“Sure, I’ll make my way over there now.”
“Thanks a bunch, I’ll call you if the problem goes away!”
Putting away his transphone, Plat swiped into the machine room and made his way inside. The machine room held most of the equipment used to keep the comfort level of the dorm high. From gas for the kitchens to water for the bathrooms, Plat had control over everything down here as long as he didn’t abuse it.
Walking past the fusion reactors for the temperature control, Plat found the heater. The water heater actually used the excess heat from the reactors to heat the water, making it very energy efficient, but prone to mistakes every once and awhile. Plat could see the problem immediately; the heat condenser had melted off again. Sighing in annoyance, Plat put on his working gloves and removed the melted plastic from the condenser end. Reaching to the replacement shelf, he took a new plastic end and reattached the condenser. Reading a clear path again, the machines whirled to life and restarted their task of transferring heat.
After making a note of the event, Plat exited the machine room and heard a click. He checked his transphone, and saw a new message from Sarah
‘It’s working again, thx ;)’
Smiling, Plat went into his room and lay on hi bed, wincing at some of the bruises on his back. He gazed up at the poster on his ceiling, advertising the game that would change gaming, or so they said.
“Everlife.” He whispered up at the poster. He couldn’t wait for it to come out, because he could be whoever he wanted in the game. He rolled over and closed his eyes. He had work to do tomorrow.
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Okay, 7/22/15 and chapter one has been edited and fixed. What do you guys think?