Frontline City is an urban city built upon what was once a private resort. The large crescent coast cradled a large man made island just over 10 miles wide, flaunting a former display of wealth. This shoreline provided the space with an abundance of locations to store boats, and transfer resources. It was originally built by a group of Chinese businessmen, who were trying to establish a resort on the shoreline of California.
Right before the opening of the resort, the businessmen were convicted of various crimes. It turned out that the entire resort was being built using funds embezzled from both China and the United States. After covering up the scandal, the two governments agreed to give the United States ownership of the resort so long as Chinese trade could occur unimpeded for 50 years. This created a rapidly growing city between LA and San Francisco with a massive Chinese population, producing an entire city that was akin to HongKong with the soul of an American Chinatown. Many companies flocked to the new port city as goods from China entered the country more freely than ever before. With the arrival of these companies, many people also staked their future on this new city. Here we find a young man in his car celebrating his first paycheck in the center island.
"Thank God it's Friday night and I ♫
Ju-ju-ju-ju-juuuuuust got paid ♫"
Jing was celebrating his first paycheck from JadeWind Trading. It had been months since he had graduated when he was finally given an offer across the country on the California coast. At this point, his rapidly declining bank balance was beginning to scare him. The company had offered a decent enough salary, but more importantly, offered him a large enough sign-on bonus to travel and keep up with his loan repayments. Without his parents, he had made his way through college on what seemed like a set of scholarships, but all of a sudden, debt collectors had started knocking, citing different numbers and legal codes that he didn't understand. Altogether, it wasn't an insurmountable amount of money that he owed; he just felt like these people had come out of the woodwork to claim what little he owned. He had spoken to a lawyer, and while he had managed to get some breathing room on the repayment schedule, he was still very much on the hook to deal with these loans. This wasn't a unique story, small news sites reported a plethora of people -who felt like they had paid their loans off- suddenly finding themselves on the lists of debt collectors. The amount of money was comparable to some drops in the ocean when it came to the total student debt, so the news hadn't gotten much traction.
Jing continued to dance in his car until the song ended and he suddenly deflated in his seat. He flipped through his emails and found the most recent notice for his loan repayment.
"I get to have this money in my account for a WHOOOOOOLE 90 minutes!" He said with sarcastic cheer.
At least I have enough to eat out today. he thought, And at least every restaurant in the area looks fantastic.
His debt status was approaching quite a dire situation. The due date for his next payment was today (his payday) and if he missed today, there'd be a whole slew of late fees they'd maybe seize his car, and everything else he owned. His car was the one thing of even minimal value that he owned. He had owned it for many years now since high school. It was still holding up quite well due to his meticulous care.
He gave the wheel a few good pats before he set his navigation to the bank so he could pull a cashier's check to bring to the loan office on the mainland. He headed east towards the only completed bridge in the city that connected the island to the center of the crescent. The view of the shoreline was chaotic.The city - formerly a super-resort - had a large number of beautiful buildings and open plazas crowded the shorelines brimming with restaurant spaces. What made it the busy city that it was today were the massive changes made to accommodate the amount of trade coming through. Large chunks of the crescent shoreline had a number of piers added to it, with trading ships coming in and out of the bay. There were fewer piers added to the center island, as it had become the business center for the city, and had a number of high rise buildings constructed instead, creating additional business traffic for the city. The massive amount of business going through the island in particular gave it a nickname. Citizens now called it ‘New Gold Island’ similar to how San Francisco’s Chinese name was ‘Old Gold Mountain’.
While not a long drive by distance, the trip became increasingly slow as traffic got more dense. It had taken him nearly an hour to get from the center island to the northern section of the mainland where the office was.
"Damn,I left 90 minutes ahead of time and I'll barely make it before 6" he mused as he looked at the clock which had just turned to 5:30 pm. He pulled into the parking lot and made his way towards the building, which seemed a little dark for this time of day. His face froze and his heart lurched as he ran for the door and pulled on it. The door rattled but did not open.
Now that he was closer, he finally saw a small sign on the door: "Closed early Friday", the sign seems to have been put up quite recently.
Jing's hands started shaking as he remembered what his lawyer told him after settling his case with the debt collectors.
"We got you some time to pay it off, but the consequences for even missing a payment are quite severe. They'll probably start seizing your assets the day after".
With his hand still on the door Jing jumped when it opened in front of him.
An older gentleman who was holding a mop stood in the door. He was wearing a new outfit but a worn hat that said: "Joe's Cleaners", and a name tag that said, "Yep I'm Joe".
"What you standing out here for, boy? Sign says business is closed for the day".
"I... I needed to make a payment today. and I think I missed it".
"Well, that certainly sucks but it can't hurt to have it delayed a day right? Just pay the fees and whatnot"
"Well... no I really needed to do it today... Uhm, sorry to bother you I'm gonna... go"
Jing took a couple steps away from the older man and walked towards his car until he heard from behind him.
"Hey kid! I know that the clerk was heading over to the bank to run some deposits before they closed, maybe if you catch up to him at the bank he'd let you pay?".
Jing thought for a moment whether he could make the drive in the amount of time, and decided that he had to at least try.
"Thank you sir!” Jing said, barely even looking behind him as he ran back to his car and rushed to pull out his phone.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He opened up a different app on his phone. Rather than Foofle maps,he opened an app that would let him see where the policemen in the area were. There was no way that he was going to make it without moving a little more quickly than he felt like the police force would be okay with. That being said, he had never used the app while driving, and had only fiddled with it at home. He figured he could just retrace the route he took while making sure that he slowed down around the cops.
"I need to make it to the bank in like 20 minutes if this is going to be possible..." Jing muttered to himself. Not expecting an answer, he jumped a little in his seat when he heard a voice respond to him "Finding route to Frontline City Bank in 20 minutes".
...
"Please follow the route".
Jing paused as he noticed that the route pointed him away from the bridge that he had come from, and instead pointed towards the north, towards one of the bridges that he could have sworn was not completed yet. He was going to simply turn off the app when he saw that it had also calculated the duration of the original route "15 minutes slower" it said over the gray route.
"Well I guess we have to try", Jing thought as he started driving towards the other bridge.
He drove for a few minutes in silence, not even willing to put on music while he drove, keeping an eye on the app.
Oddly, he felt like his car was moving faster and faster while his speedometer was still, the outside seemed to get darker. Before he could think any more about it, he heard the voice dictating the new instruction:
"Please take a right, and enter the Prismatic Bridge".
Jing looked to his right and saw an on-ramp that he could have sworn was not there a moment ago.
"Dude I need to eat something and then take a nap, bridge has a weird ass name and I'm almost missing the on ramp" he said to himself as he took the ramp.
"And I could have sworn this bridge wasn't going to be open for another few weeks". The ramp continued to turn, and Jing felt a growing sense of unease.
Looking around to the sides of the car, he finally put a finger on what was really bothering him.
He'd been on a ramp for nearly a minute. Instead of evening out towards the top, his eyes were telling him that the ramp was getting steeper. He glanced at the water bottle in his cup holder. Contrary to what he saw outside, the water inside was perfectly level.
Before he could mention that he really needed sleep again, he saw something that made him question his sanity rather than his need for sleep.
The railings on the sides of the road had completely fallen away, and he now had a better view of the area around him. He saw the horizon to his right; The only issue was that the horizon line ran straight up and down his point of view. The road that he was driving on was equally distressing. It looked as if it had been ripped out of the ground, and was suspended impossibly into the sky. In fact, he thought he saw chunks of concrete and metal fall off of different segments in front of him. In the rearview mirror, the road in the distance behind him was crumbling to pieces and falling towards the earth.
Jing's mouth went completely dry. Unsure if everything was a hallucination, he nearly froze in shock when he heard the voice from the app:
"Please prepare to twist to the right".
Twist? not turn?
Jing's eyes snapped back to the front as he realized that the road in front of him was doing something that he had never seen before. It was moving and bending. He noticed that in the distance, he could see the center island of Frontline city as the destination. He wondered for a moment what exactly would happen to him if he stopped at this time. Would he fall off? Would he magically stick onto this twisted piece of taffy that was the road he was driving on?
"If you stop, or even slow down too much, you WILL fall" the voice interrupted his thinking.
"Great" Jing rasped, surprised that he could even make a noise considering he felt like his mouth was drier than a desert when he realized how high off the ground he was.
He did the only thing that he felt like he could do in this situation. He pressed the gas.
His head pressed back into his chair as his car rocketed forward at a rate that made no sense compared to how much he had pressed the gas. The view on his sides began to blur slightly. The road and the car on it twisted and soon the setting sun in the horizon was directly overhead.
"That being said, I didn't expect you to hit the gas~" The voice went. Jing swore that he could hear the voice giggle.
"Anyways~ you don't have much time now because you sped up! Follow the right curve, and you should be pointed right at the city".
There indeed was a right curve in front of him. He dug in, and moved his hands which had been knuckle white for what felt like minutes already and made the turn.
"Oh god please no" he whispered to the view in front of him. The road was twisting one more time, this time ending in a position that would leave him completely upside down. His eyes began to tear up as the stress of the drive was finally starting to affect him physically.
"Just don't slow down and you'll be fine!" The voice cheerfully said back to him.
Frontline city was approaching at an alarming rate. He felt like he was flying like an actual meteor across the sky. Instead of driving, he felt like he was on the craziest roller coaster of his life. The tears on the corners of his eyes didn't seem to want to move down, instead tracing warm lines up towards his hair. His sense of gravity still told him that he was upright, which made this much more confusing, and he felt a sense of nausea beginning to build.
For the next few minutes, Jing did a number of shallow turns and finally felt like his heart was no longer lodged directly in his throat. He saw that the city was rapidly approaching, and the clock still only read 5:40. It had only been 10 minutes since he had left the leasing office! Jing cracked a small smile as this horrifying experience would at least let him pay the loan office on time.
"Just one maneuver left! a slight left into a hard right and we'll be right there!"
This wasn't normally a particularly difficult movement, but this would be the first time that he had done this kind of maneuver at whatever ludicrous speed he was currently moving.
He made the slight left, and realized that there was going to be no way that he could make the following right, and his heart flew back into his throat.
“I’ll help you here, just think of digging in as hard as you can” The voice said to him
He wasn’t really sure what the voice meant so he just pressed his body into his seat and held his wheel to the right, when suddenly the wheel suddenly turned in his hands, and the pedals seemed to move on their own for a moment. His car suddenly began turning much harder, creating a terrible screeching sound and he felt himself slamming into the side of his car. The view had changed once again, and he was looking at the city once more.
“Creating exit, please re-enter the upright position and find the next exit”
Jing wanted to question the voice again, as he was really unsure how he was going to make the road obey his whim and return upright again. He opened his mouth but his parched mouth made no sound. Before he could swallow and try again, the road began to slowly twist in front of him, revealing to him a familiar looking highway, and the following highway exit. He was where the completed bridge connected to the center island. He could see silhouettes on this road, as if ghostly drivers and their cars were driving alongside him. There were enough ghost cars to fill the entire highway.
“Merging will begin in 5… 4… 3…” The voice counted down. At the same time, the cars around him became more opaque, and before the timer finished, Jing found a gap in the ghosts and made his way towards the exit.
Now back in the downtown traffic, albeit for only a moment, Jing took a moment to catch his breath as he pulled back into the lot of the bank. He saw the clerk that handled his loans on the steps looking at something on their phone.
Clutching the check in his trembling hand, he quickly parked his car and ran up to the clerk.