Valerie walked quickly through the winding tunnels of the underground network, a tiny scrap of a brochure with only the QR code left on it held in her hands as she made her way through. A sudden burst of steam hissed at her as it escaped from the pipes on the sides of the tunnel, the uncomfortably hot vapour fogging up her glasses as she passed by. Up ahead and to her left she could hear the murmuring of voices, some sounding excited while others sounded bored. She walked faster, her pace turning to a jog.
She wasn’t far now.
As she jogged, Valerie took a deep breath in and held it for a few seconds before exhaling it back out. Her nerves are getting the best of her, her anxiety about leaving her life behind in this hellhole finally getting to her.
She had friends here. Good ones. Great ones, even.
But she couldn’t stay. Her friends know she can’t stay here any longer, too. She’s had enough of Cimeira City.
She shook her head, ridding herself of the thought as she confidently strode up to the nearing turn.
“Avalon, here I come,” Valerie whispered to herself, the words psyching her up as she finally turned to the left.
The sight she witnessed was simply breathtaking.
Instead of the dullness that she had been accustomed to for the past decade—steel pipes, narrow underground stone walkways, neon signs on everything, and the blinking, but broken yellow lights of Cimeira City—there was instead an impressive and extravagant atrium.
Smooth marble flooring with marble statues and pillars all strewn about, luxurious-looking red carpets underneath every single line of people, screens that practically covered the walls, and the roof reached so high that it pierced the sandy earth up above them. There was actually natural light shining down on the lines of people. Valerie hadn’t witnessed natural light in a long time. Although now that she looked at it, she could tell that the glass roof was tinted.
Probably to keep all of the nasty UV rays from getting us sick. That’s neat! Ho-ly shit, is that air conditioning?
Valerie held her hand out above her as she walked down the carpeted stairs, the resonant hum of an air conditioner above and behind her as cool air descended upon her, the hairs on her back tingling from the cold sensation as bliss coursed through her and replaced the nervous energy she was feeling earlier.
Inwardly squealing at how amazing everything was, Valerie could not keep her joy hidden as she took in all of the sights, turning around over and over again to analyse every intricate detail as she entered the very back of the shortest line there.
“Excuse me,” someone said from right behind Valerie, surprising her. She quickly turned around and faced a silver fox of a man dressed in a black tailcoat and suit pants, wheeling around a serving cart full of food.
“Would you like free snacks and drinks as you wait?” Silver Fox asked, his arms held behind his back as he waited for a response, a polite smile on his face. A mountain of food was stacked on top of one another in the upper section, with bags of snacks ripe for the picking in the middle section, and with several types of drinks served below on the lower section of the serving cart.
"For free?!" Valerie sharply whispered back to the man, blinking rapidly and staring at the exorbitant amount of food laid bare in front of her and finding it herself lost for words.
The man smiled widely before speaking once again, “You can have as many snacks and drinks as you’d like.” The man reached downwards into a separate compartment, opening a latch where steam rose out of, and pulled out a sterilised glass. “Or we can offer you a glass of water instead if you would rather?”
“This is going to be a long while, right?” she asked. The man turned to look at the length of the line Valerie's in before turning back to her and nodding. “I’ll take one of everything then,” she managed to choke out, her mouth salivating at the thought of so much food. “Please.”
The man nodded once more before a blue light shot out of his eye, the light then lengthening and widening and forming a two-dimensional holographic list of all of the items of food that Valerie will be given for free. The man waited for her to scan the biochip implant embedded in the back of her hand, Valerie moved quickly to affirm the freebie, bumping the back of her hand against his.
“Would you like to have everything handed to you now?” Silver Fox asked, his hand hovering over a bag of Spicy-Flavoured Taro Crisps that Valerie was eyeing earlier.
“I think I’ll have just that one for now please, sir!” She beamed as he reached over and gave Valerie her prize.
“Good choice, madam. The rest of your food can be delivered to you if you contact us directly through your biochip—if I’m not available, another member of our staff will come and deliver the food in my stead.” The man bowed deeply before standing up straight. “We hope you enjoy your trip to Avalon!” he said before turning away to walk towards a refill station.
Valerie watched him walk away, still whiplashed with the whole experience. Shaking her head to refocus, she turned to face the front of the line before looking back down at the wrinkled scrap of the brochure held in her hand and re-scanned the QR code with her eye implant.
THE AVALON REHOUSING INITIATIVE
Travellers, come one, come all to Avalon, for a Land of Adventure awaits you!
Families of all sizes are welcome! And heck, bring your friends along, too!
As the saying goes; "The More, The Merrier!"
Go to your respective city's Avalon Headquarters to be given a two-way ticket for the Continental Railway headed for Avalon, Australia, all 100% free of charge!
All travel expenses will be paid for by the Avalon Corporation. And in addition to that, all expenses that will come with living in Avalon will also be paid for by Avalon Corporation for the duration of 10 years. This includes all medical expenditures during your stay.
Reading over the brochure details, Valerie's nerves reignited. The sparse details of the brochure repeated themselves inside her head. A decade's worth of food, water, electricity, and housing, all for free?
Something's amiss with this entire thing, but what the hell could Avalon want with so many people?
The line moved forward one spot.
The more her worries ran through her mind and the more and more time Valerie spent ruminating, the more compelling her friends' stance on the entire thing became.
Nothing's ever done out of the goodness of the heart, that's something she learned the hard way.
Always read the fine print.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
"This is too good to be true," Valerie muttered to herself as she began to read the entire brochure she'd stored in her mind bank while hugging the bag of Spicy Taro Chips to her chest, the bag crinkling around as she fidgeted with anxious energy. Reading over the entirety of the brochure, however, resulted in nothing being amiss, which only furthered Valerie's scepticism as she scratched her head.
A ragged voice from right in front, and below, Valerie cackled, sounding like a crazed lunatic. "You're damn right it's too good to be true." A few people ahead of the line turned around and looked down, before brushing it off and turning back around.
Valerie lowered her head to look at where the voice came from.
A short, old, wrinkled woman, dressed both practically and eclectically in a combination of leather and nanoweave all thrown together, stared back at Valerie with one eye before suddenly moving about in its socket and staring at other things. The old woman's eyes were artificially lazy, drifting off to the side and shifting about, much like how a chameleon watched out for both prey and predators with their monocular vision. Her grey hair was long but silky smooth and reached just past her waist and, judging from her facial features alone, she seemed to be of Eastern-Asian descent, but you can't really tell that stuff nowadays.
Valerie was left confused as she stared at the old woman, to which the woman didn't care whatsoever, opting to keep to herself as she stared off into the distance with her chameleon-like vision. Upon realising this, Valerie returned to her anxious state, half-considering leaving the line and just booking it before things could get weird, for lack of a better term.
But for some reason, she couldn't get herself to do it.
She's been desperate for another chance for years now, and living like a rat just to make ends meet had lost its lustre on the very first day she'd had to live like one, and now that she's been offered a chance to live life easily—albeit with a healthy dose of suspicions—and with basically no repercussions, it would be a waste of an opportunity to let it pass her by.
And besides, what could a globe-spanning corporation that had dominated practically all industries for the last century need from someone like her? She's got nothing to lose, while they have nothing to gain from her, so it's a win-win situation for her.
After repeating those thoughts to herself, Valerie slowly calmed herself down enough
There were so many people all lined up uniformly, and at the end of the lines were booths with a person inside, handing out tickets for the Continental Train leading to Australia.
Australia, huh?
Not once did Valerie ever think that she would be living in the desertified wasteland that was Australia, but what else could she do when the continent was the brightest beam of hope for her? And the promise of Valerie’s every need and want is taken care of for a decade straight was just too good of an opportunity to pass up on, no matter how shady it was.
She would just have to leave it to chance.
The line shifted one spot forward.
Avalon, here I come.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Valerie looked out of the train's window, watching a variety of ocean life swimming by the incredibly long glass tunnel.
She had ended up right beside the old lady from before who had offered her the seat in the first place.
The train flew by through the underwater Continental Railway headed to Australia, but far slower than any of the other cities' trains.
She's much more comfortable with its slower speed, though, she will admit.
Turning back to face the screen right in front of her, Valerie watched as a recording of a massive battle of might and magic happened between two guilds. She had no idea what was happening between them, but it must've really pissed one of them off as the camera zoomed in on one man who had shapeshifted into a werewolf and devoured another player whole.
"That's metal as fuck!" The old lady beside Valerie stared at the screen while leaning against Valerie's armrest, both chameleon eyes focused on the battle. "He just gulped that poor mage up like they were nothing, hah!"
"Yeah…" Valerie discreetly shifted away from the woman, crossing her left leg over her right. The old lady hadn't stopped staring at the screen for almost 5 hours straight now. Normally, Valerie wouldn't have had a problem with that. But the issue she had was that instead of the old lady watching the battle on her own screen and on her side of the seat and respecting Valerie's personal space, the old lady was doing the exact opposite.
Had Valerie's friends been here, they would've been screaming and yelling at the old woman at this point…
Am I doing the right thing? Valerie asked herself. Just up and leaving my friends because things were hard for me? The rest of them bled and suffered through the very same things I went through, but they didn't break. Not even close to breaking, the arrogant pricks…
Valerie bitterly laughed, uncaring of the reaction of the old woman beside her, as her memories of the times she spent with her friends flipped through her mind like the pages of a notebook. She reminisced of the times they had back then, all the dumb things they did…
And all the time she spent with Aimie…
Valerie’s heart began to unwind as her heartbreak began to take over her, gnawing away at the mental resistance she had formed to keep her from making a scene in such a crowded space.
The last thing she wanted was to be a nuisance to the people around her.
She retreated to her memories.
Valerie often escaped to a far-off place by replaying memories from her mind bank, much like everyone else she knew. Memories that didn’t have Aimee, her friends, family, or anyone else in them. Just her, alone, spending time in the last space of public greenery in Cimeira City.
Auto-choosing using filters: Cimeira City, Public Greenery.
Recording #47102 (Mom’s Patch of Life) now playing.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Construction droids littered the area, all busy with being reprogrammed for the last-minute changes applied to the job.
Conventional AI hadn’t taken over that particular industry just yet. At least, not here in Cimeira City.
Valerie watched as her past self turned away from the droids, taking one last look at Mom’s life passion and work.
A community garden. The last public space of greenery.
The droids began to move.
A simple white picket fence formed the perimeter of the garden.
In less than five seconds, each droid disassembled the fences into their lesser parts, nails and all.
The grow lights had beans growing on its tripod body, much like a trellis, as it shone down onto the raised garden bed with a tiny sprout of some plant—that Valerie didn’t bother to ask Mom the name of, though now she wished she did—tucked under a blanket of mulch.
The droids practically yanked out the damn thing, the roots of the bean plant that clung to the tripod tearing from the dirt, severing their connection to the soil. The rich, damp soil revealed worms and springtails, wriggling and scurrying away. The construction droids put an end to that, hovering right over the dirt above the multiple raised garden beds for less than a tenth of a second, their superheated exhaust killing everything beneath them in short order, and drying the tiny bed of hope to nothing more than a husk of what it once was.
Valerie’s mind began to blur at that moment.
Recording #47102 (Mom’s Patch of Life) is now over.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
She really, really wanted to cry now, though.
Stupid auto-choosing feature…
Something pinched her side lightly. Valerie turned to face the old woman.
"I can see you are sad about something, but I don't wanna hear you yapping and crying while the battle's going on, girl."
What…?
Seeing Valerie's confused face, the old woman rolled her eyes before speaking. "You made a sad-looking face while whispering ‘I'm sorry' over and over again.” The old woman leaned in, her breath reeking of garlic. “You look like you ugly cry, by the way. Has anyone told you that?"
Lost for words, embarrassed, and with a sick feeling rising to her chest, Valerie immediately brought her luggage bag down from the shelf and beelined for the nearest steward, the old lady cackling away as she left. Tapping a stewardess with a buzzcut, multiple piercings and facial implants, on the shoulder, Valerie immediately asked to be relocated to one of the private rooms that the person from the booth had told her about. The stewardess, upon seeing Valerie on the verge of a breakdown, immediately led her to one of the private rooms and opened the door for her, taking the luggage from her and placing it into a compartment inside of the tiny room.
The room itself had one porthole to see out of and was basic, lacking any place for her to sit save for the state-of-the-art FullDive VR Pod that was placed front and centre and humming quietly, the helmet that read her brain waves hanging onto the roof of the device. Little space is made for anything else, save for a collapsible tray attached to the wall just outside of the VR Pod, being close enough to reach from within the pod.
The door shut behind Valerie, the stewardess having left her alone in the empty room, the humming growing louder with the silence.
She sniffled, wiping her arm against her eyes to dry them out, but failing miserably as her eyes didn't want to stop. Valerie collapsed onto the floor from where she stood and cried for what felt like an eternity as the train whizzed by, heedless and unknowing of the sheer volume of heartbreak that Valerie was going through. Pulling her knees close to her chest and hugging them for support, she could only pray that this moment passed without having someone knocking to make sure she was okay.
She is okay. She knows this.
She's just having a bit of a hiccup, that's all.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Icky.
Icky is the only fitting word for how Valerie felt at that moment. Her clothes had begun sticking to her from all the tears that accumulated in their fibres. Valerie herself looked worse for wear. Her eyes were irritated and tired as she held out one hand against the wall for support, glancing at the watch her father gave her as she stood up.
Two hours. Two hours had gone by already, and they weren't even close to getting to Australia.
She was done. Done crying over what could have been. Done crying over how uncertain her future was.
Just… done.
Slowly striding up to the Pod, Valerie then sat down on it and closed herself within it. She'd tried one of these over at Reg's before, but his version had far more buttons that only added to her confusion due to his being an older model. This version, however, was streamlined for the user experience, with only one button needed to start it up. Adorning the helmet, Valerie continued onto the menu as she began to inhale the fumes of quick-acting anaesthetic being pumped into the pod, putting herself to forced sleep as the lock mechanism of the pod triggered.
She really just wanted to distract herself until the end of the trip to Avalon.
AVALON INDUSTRIES
We hope you enjoy your Dreamtime Session!