Waking up early was a ritual she had grown accustomed to throughout the years. Before level 1, she would wake up early to prepare for the academy. Now, the nightmares woke her. The stress woke her. The glitching doorways and buzzing mechanisms kept her from sleeping long enough to feel rested. And it seemed like the low buzzing mechanical noise only bothered her.

Safety wasn’t guaranteed here either, and living under that kind of stress had ways of messing with your sleep. Here, you tried to keep your head down and avoid attention whenever possible. This is why, even though once she had chased the latest fashion, she now dressed simply. Few people tried to attract attention here—mostly prostitutes and witless gang leaders.

She wore black cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket. Once, she tried to follow the latest fashion, wearing pristine black dress pants with perfectly ironed creases and a white blouse with a ruffled collar. Back at the academy, a fusion of noir and Victorian was in style. It was a strange sight, the stark contrast of some historical time against the canopy of technological advancement. What was in style now on the upper levels, she did not know, and she did not care.

But she still had found memories from then—Oh, how she had begged her father to get her the newest clothing when she had first started at the academy. She annoyed him half to death before he relented. They had gone shopping together, a gift for her hard work. Even though her father came off as cold and awkward, he would have done anything for his little girl. The pain in her heart grew, but she still smiled at that memory. The last few days seemed to open old wounds.

Back then, before the sun had even started to rise before her parents would begin getting ready for the day, she would get onto the bus, scanning her entry pass to the 7th level, and would sit back to enjoy watching the scenario change as they passed two levels from her home at 5 to 7. Level 5 was well off. The streets were clean, the buildings modern, and there were enough green zones to enjoy yourself, but level 7 was something else. Words could not describe the wealth and technology that filled the upper level. Bio-domes with mansions hung above the skyline. The business district had new skyscrapers whose peaks would get lost in a canvas of clouds. Flora was everywhere, it crawled up buildings and traversed the levels within the city. Expensive cars floated by, and people dressed in pristine clothing walked on the streets. Level 7 was magnificent and enormous in a way that was hard to process. She had loved to sit down and just watch life go by on level 7.

Waking up early and getting to the academy before the day started was also a way she kept herself disciplined. Sometimes, she studied before the day began, and other times, she helped professors with various tasks. It had taken hard work for her to get to the academy. A task not many were able to accomplish. The academy was a powerful entity, having connections and locations all over the galaxy. Getting into the academy had meant that all doors would be open for her. It was her father who had taught her to work hard. He had worked hard and raised his family up a level.

But little did he know that hard work only took you so far in an academy filled with students from old money who, at a whim, could purchase a planet or two. Even she had not known that navigating her years at the academy would be different than anything before that. These were people unreachable to her, their wealth and power unimaginable, just like the city around them. The elite of her time were people outside of the law. They could do whatever they wanted. If she had not played along, they could have gotten rid of her, too.

Watching the other sponsored students suffer from their pride, she quickly learned that to survive on level 7, she had to sell her dignity. So, she sucked up to the elite, reading them poetry and articles, listening to them rant about how monochromatic their life of drugs, sex, and partying was, and letting them do whatever they pleased. They dressed her up. They dressed her down. She acted out old Shakespearean plays and pulled up fun trends from the past. Like a monkey, she danced to their tune. She honeyed her words and made sure to be extra sweet. Sometimes, they would get a little rough with her, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. Her aspirations had been too high; the sky was her limit, and she had been willing to sell her soul to reach them. Plus, they generally loved her; they wouldn’t kill her. They loved her.

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How wrong she had been. It was almost funny now. But by playing along, she was able to get through the academy smoothly. After the city had chewed her up and thrown her out, she wondered if her owners had noticed her disappearance or if they ever stopped to think about her.

She wondered if he remembered her.

He had been the worst of them. He used her in any way he had pleased, used her heart, and took over her mind. She had been so blinded by him that her mind seemed to stop working when they were together. When she needed him the most, he had disappeared. Did he ever know how blinded she had been by his brilliance? He had been like the blazing sun. She couldn’t remove him from her memories. Even now the pain remained. How could he have discarded her when she needed him most?

I was just a pet to him as well. She scoffed.

Today, smog covered the city, as was often the case on level 1. Her lips pressed against the wall of a warm mug, and she allowed the coffee-like liquid to slip down her throat, warming her insides.

At one point, coffee had almost gone extinct. Apparently, that was a big issue the people couldn’t live without their coffee. So, with speed unheard of from the scientific community, they worked to find a solution. Then at some point, they started to grow a coffee-like substance in greenhouses on Mars; this substitute was expensive, but eventually, they found something similar to coffee on some other planet, and ever since then, they have been importing the pink bean. It smelled like coffee, tasted like coffee, and worked better than coffee from what she had heard from her old classmates who could afford to spend immense amounts to buy the almost real coffee.

The door to her bedroom opened, and Emelie walked out wearing nothing but her hoodie. “How’d you sleep,” Emelie asked, stretching her willowy arms. Emelie was tall, much taller than her, with a slender hourglass-shaped body that was now hard to see under. She, too, went over to grab a cup of coffee.

“Better,” she replied and took another sip of hot liquid. The melancholy came and went, and some days were worse than others. And sometimes weeks would pass before she felt better.

“Are you working today?” Emelie took a sip of coffee and audibly sighed.

“Yeah, but sometimes I wonder if there’s a point.” Teaching on level 1 was a whole different beast. The schools lacked funding, students weren’t motivated, many found life on the streets more prosperous, and others joined intergalactic crime networks –those got you off the earth and opened more opportunities but were riskier. There, you didn't just have the corps after you but the intergalactic police force as well. Yet because of how large the intergalactic crime network had become, the attention given to level 1 was almost nil. It seemed the big corps had found it easier to contain the crime on one level and ignore it than actually do something about it. And why would they? What would they have had to gain from helping stabilize the lowest level? The earth was a failed experiment, mostly kept as a legacy of the olden times, but that didn’t erase the fact that so many people still lived on this wasting planet.

As a teacher- no, as a decent human- she tried to get sponsorships for the school and students, but that was a dead end. Still, she kept trying. This goal kept her functioning; it kept her from remembering and focusing on the past. If it hadn't been for this job and her mother, she might have ended her own life that first year.

Emelie hummed in a sort of half-understanding. Emelie had been here far longer than she had. If this was her sixth year, it would have been Emelie’s twelfth year. Maybe at that point, you start to get desensitized to the way of life here but that seemed unlikely. Emelie's communicator buzzed, and she read something only visible to herself. “Anthony sent me a message; he advises you to strap today...” A moment of unsure silence passed between them. “I know you don’t like it, but he says you should take the rifle just in case.”

She walked to the windows and looked out onto the mostly empty streets below. Cleaner bots worked hard cleaning the garbage left from the night.

“Don’t feel guilty, Fri. No one here would feel guilty killing you.”