With birds chirping, the sun shining, the wind lightly blowing fallen leaves and rustling the trees, our hero sat at a park bench without awareness for the world that was unfolding around him as he determinately scrolled through the content on his phone. Plain-Man had been waiting at the Nature Park on Dimension drive for a new mission for almost an hour and his feet and legs were beginning to go numb under him.
Finally, as if making a big decision, he passionately locked the screen and put his phone off to the side, rubbing the lids on his eyes through his black mask and sighed. It was morning and already he was tired of scrolling through the endless stream of digital virtue signaling, memetic warfare, and advertisements/propaganda he had inflicted upon his perception, yet he could not look away and within seconds already had picked up his phone, until, finally, he was rudely interrupted.
“Aren’t you hot in that mask and jacket?”
He looked up from his phone and realized some random person was speaking to him. The man wore an untucked light blue dress shirt with a red tie around his neck, white pants and tennis shoes, a short european-styled haircut, and carried a black briefcase that most likely didn’t contain anything. He stared at Plain-Man, unflinchingly awaiting the answer to his question.
“Uh… I’m doing fine. How about you?” he replied, taken off-guard by such a random interaction.
“What are you even doing at this park? I’ve seen you here every day for like, the past year, just sitting around, doing nothing. Don’t you have something better to do?”
“What do you mean?” Plain-Man said, who has only been working the Quick! App for a month or so at this point.
“Well, you all look the same to me anyways… You should really find something better to do with your time and instead sucking resources off the public like some sort of vampire.”
“I’m just waiting for someone who needs help…”
“Yeah, I know what you’re doing, and it’s not fooling me. How about you go find some other place to loiter around and leave us people with actual jobs in peace.” The man holding the briefcase said, turning his back on Plain-Man and walking away.
Plain-Man frowned at the harsh judgement that had just been laid upon him by a stranger, but, before he could dwell on it for too long, a notification stole his attention from the situation.
[Quick! App alert: You have a new request! Please accept the mission or the mission will be offered to the next best Hero]
“Finally.” he said quietly to himself, tapping the large pulsating circle with the word ‘accept’ in the middle, putting an end to the loud, chiming notification sound.
[Quick! App update: Mission Location – e-bus 1138 – Description: Public disturbance–see Kelly R. for more details on request]
Part of the reason Plain-Man had chosen the Nature Park as his center of operation and waited there for new missions every day was due to its location being conveniently in the heart of the city’s commercial district. Here he felt he had a more of a chance of earning the most points for his time from the more well-off individuals that seemed to congregate in this area, though this didn’t always pan out.
Really though, the Nature Park, besides being a public space, was the only place that offered the closest thing to what resembled to solitude compared to the house he and his 24 other roommates shared with him, which he only used for sleep and that’s about it. This park had become more of a home to him than his actual home. Also, an e-bus shuttle arrived there every 5 minutes or so and he could get pretty much anywhere Uptown in no time.
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He walked over to the street where the bus stop was and waited with three other individuals who were all in business attire and gave him the hairy eyeball, until, within a minute, he could see the frontend of an e-bus rounding the corner. What followed behind was a long chain of segments all connected, moving together, much in the fashion of a massive centipede that all but passed them until the final boxcar came to a halt.
An alert sounded proceeding the door opening and a half-dozen commuters stepped off, rushing passed them in more of a hurry than he would’ve expected. He stepped onto the bus and waved his phone over the terminal that would’ve taken some of his friendly points had he not been there on official business.
His priority now was to get in touch with his contact and figure out what exactly the issue was and how he could help out. The compartment of the bus he had entered was sparse and quiet and no one seemed to give him any look of recognition, so he decided to move onto the next to further his investigation.
He passed through 6 segments of the now moving bus, each containing passengers that either give him dirty looks or otherwise ignored his presence. On the seventh, when he passed through the door and gently shut it behind him, he was greeted by a sight that he didn’t know what to make of at first due to it being quite out of the ordinary.
Directly opposite of him on the other side of the boxcar he encountered a half-dozen people dressed in skintight morph suits that were the color of pinot noir grapes who were standing up, frantically moving about the confided space.
“Now you better hand it over if you know what’s good for you!” a loud raspy woman’s voice resounded demandingly was the first thing he heard and then witnessed the actions that followed these violent words. A woman who had been seated was dragged to her feet by her hair by one of the purple morphs and began to scream as she tried getting away. Several other of the perpetrators surrounded the distressed woman and aggressively pushed her from all directions.
“Haha! What you going to do now, lady. We gonna get you!”
This has to be the public disturbance I was alerted to, Plain-Man thought to himself. Two men carrying briefcases rushed passed him into the next car, leaving only him, the purple morph suits, and those who were being assaulted, which meant it was up to Plain-Man to put a stop to this. He approached with caution. No one seemed to recognize his presence at first until he spoke up.
“Release the woman at once!” Plain-Man demanded over the clamor, “If you don’t vacate the premise immediately, I will be required to use force, if necessary.”
At this point all six of the purple morph suits had turned towards him, letting go of the woman, who then immediately ran into the next car, and the gang began to approach him from all sides.
“And who you supposed to be?”
“My name is… Plain-Man.”
“Plane Man? We ain’t on no plane, we on a bus!”
All of them laughed hysterically through the spandex that covered their mouths as they got closer to make their assault on him.
“Let’s get this fool!” one yelled enthusiastically.
“Oh, you gonna get it!” said another.
In his youth, Plain-Man had been somewhat of an athlete during his time in school and was part of the wrestling and football team before all contact sports had been outlawed his senior year, so he knew how to throw his weight around.
Yet, he could tell under the tight purple material, he was facing a group a women and wasn’t too keen on being forced to hurt someone from the opposite sex. As they got within a few feet of him, several members of the gang bum-rushed him, pushing from all sides, just like they had done to the female passenger. However, he did push back a little just so he had enough space to get some distance.
“I don’t want to hurt you… But it’s not right for you to harass normal people like this!”
“Honey, you ain’t normal. Let’s get that mask off you and see what your ugly face really looks like!” one of the taller purple morphs said, coming off almost like she was the leader. Again they all ganged up on him, this time kicking his legs and on the prat, punching his stomach. They tried to go for his face, but this is what he spent his time protecting by blocking all the purple hands trying to grab at his mask.
An announcement came over the e-bus over the loudspeaker.
“Arriving at Irvine Blvd. stop.”
For a second, the purple morph gang stopped their assault on Plain-Man and looked at the tall one as if waiting for instruction.
“We need to take care of this joker before… “ she said, reaching through a makeshift hole in her suit to pull out a little canister.
“Say goodnight, you freak!”
Without even much a of a chance to react, two of the purple morphs attempted to hold him down by grabbing both of his arms as their leader took a step forward and sprayed some sort of gas from the cannister right into his face. They let go of him, but it was already too late.
“Grab the loot!” was the last thing Plain-Man heard before fading to black.