The nearby taxi ignored me as I rose my arm, trying to hail it, and moved across the street. The driver tried to engage an executive, hoping the Banker wanted a ride; he, of course, refused. The Bankers all had their own transportation and a simple street taxi was beneath them. Not up to waiting and being denied again, I turned away from the street and walked down the alley that led to the subway station. I spared but a glance at the cluttered path and towering steel skyscrapers that made up the city.

At the entrance, I noticed a girl crouched next to the garbage bin, staring at the floor. As the sun sunk out of the barely visible sky, I waited my turn to enter the passage to the train systems that ran under the city, ignoring her outstretched hand. I stood awkwardly by while the girl begged without even lifting her gaze. People glanced at the girl as if she was an abomination, a freak, and who would think otherwise?

I shuffled forward in line, still glancing back at the girl over my shoulder, I realized I had also begun to accept that reality whilst trudging forward into the station. The silent escalators led to multiple levels of tunnels that sank miles into the earth. My intended stop, however, was only two sublevels below the city’s surface.

I moved with the flow of people and made it through the artificially lit arching passageways that led to the traffic station and the boarding platforms. Once the human surge led me to the front, I realized I had not been paid for my month’s work. I took out of my worn wallet and handed the traffic officer my pass card, which I knew was expired. He looked at me with disgust and returned it.

“You need to pay the fee. No free rides.”

Reluctantly, I pulled my account chip out of my wallet and handed it to the man. He mechanically inserted it into a machine and returned it, a balance of less than ten credits flashing on the card. I walked past him, maintaining as blank a face as possible. It was always a struggle to move without expressing the discontent I felt at having to submit to the whims of Officials in my corrupted city. There were no breaks for the people of New Dust.

As I quietly made my way to the boarding platform, I stood around in a line full of people in similar states to my own, exhausted and empty. Nobody complained or got angry when someone bumped them while walking. The concept of personal space had long disappeared once Earth exceeded ten billion residents. We, the people of the city, just stood there as one, suffering in the same monotonous way after each day of labor. There was a certain amount of camaraderie in that, but since not a soul acted on it the only thing it engendered was more loneliness.

The train arrived just as I was nodding off, lucky to have a column to lean on this time. I began to approach it when I heard a whimpering sound coming from the traffic officer’s box. I turned and saw the officer that had taken my fare pouncing on the girl that had been begging outside the station.

“Stop begging, you useless whore, all you need to do is serve men... and here’s one right now!”

The traffic official had nothing to fear. There were severe punishments for those who opposed agents of the Government. I tried to contemplate the situation from a position that would not compromise me as I watched the scene, but then I stopped.

“Why would I do that?” I wondered aloud.

While that thought was crossing my mind, my body had already made its decision. I tackled the distracted officer to the metal floor and slammed my fists into his face. Repeatedly. The labor I’d been subject to since my teens had made me physically strong, leaving the flabbier man unable to peel me off him. However, my vindictive energy died out the instant I realized what I had done. Blood dripped from my hands. I looked at my fists where the man’s teeths had cut into the knuckles. He laid dead before me. The girl, now half naked, sat shivering next to his mangled face. I stood, shivering just as much, and tossed my trench coat over her.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to stand around the body for long. I lifted her up and into the train the moment it pulled into the station. The people that had once stood around me, pulling me into the amorphous blob, now left a visible gap between us, and I felt the weight of their eyes on me. I felt the warmth from those that approved of my actions, the fearful stares of those who were scared of what I had done, and the occasional guilty look from those who had not been bold, swift, or stupid enough to act.

The train was a simple tube of metal lined with handholds and a few seats, reserved for those with medical conditions. While the train was not the most private place, considering the sardine-like state the human flow demanded, everyone kept to themselves. The girl held my hand the entire time we rode the train, and it was not until we left toward one of the subsurface layers that she let go, opting to follow closely behind. I walked purposefully towards the place I called home, plowing through the boarding and unboarding population of the train system.

Once I reached the Compound, I began to weave around the many hostile areas in that maze of hovels. At the time the Compound was built it had been a wonderful community, but, since, the houses and complexes for the community had never been restored. Many of the structures dated back to the lunar colonization and were in heavy disrepair. The one upside of the whole situation was the very cause of its disrepair: none of the Officials lived here, and thereby nobody with a Name to submit to.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Of course, it was also one of the few places in New Dust that anyone of my social position could afford. This is assuming, of course, that the thugs I paid money to actually owned the room I lived in. Nevertheless, I had considered it home for almost three years, ever since I started working as an engineer in the city’s Nuclelectric center.

At the factory, all I had to do was apply my knowledge of old machines from the turn of the 21st century and create miniature containers for nuclear fission. This was, obviously, an extremely hazardous job. The containers and the agitated atoms within could catalyze and leave only an aftershadow of the person. There had been entire cities wiped by chain reaction explosions of the power sources, which prompted the post-Grim War Government to focus on more stable, organic sources of power. Sadly, this was not widely used still and the masses that lived in the major cities were always subject to potential eradication.

I used to look at the radiation shadows already imprinted on the walls and wonder about all the life and knowledge that lost its chance to develop in the bondage of the Government and the Bank. While everyone that was given life tasks at an extremely young age ended up hating their profession, I treated my task as a goal and made the best of it.

However, dealing with my job was the least of my current concerns; the issue of the beggar girl took priority. The miniscule payment from the center could only barely support one malnourished person. She had to go, but the same drive that had caused me to save her now prevented me from releasing her into the Compound where her fate would have been far worse than it would have with the traffic officer. She, of course, remained silent as was customary of those without Names or a number.

Names gave a person value, they were someone - someone worth Naming in a population of thirty billion. I for instance did not have a name, but a number, which placed me just above the Forgotten but increased my chances of surviving exponentially.

The Forgotten were a result of the founding of the Bank of Earth. The Bankers believed that their Names deserved recognition above others’, especially those that did not deal in interplanetary resources. They convinced the World Government Council to ban Naming unless authorized. The Bankers and Officials either named the future child, left them a Digit, or worse - Forgot them.

It might have seemed ridiculous, but the wandering child that stood in the Compound was merely the result of cheap employers and irrelevant parents. Nobody had paid for her to have one of the limited Names given out in the month of her birth, and without parents in the employ of someone more powerful, she had not even been assigned a Digit. She stared at me with eyes so sorrowful that my own felt trivial, for it could not compare to her own. “Well…What shall I do with you?” As I wondered aloud her eyes darting to me, suspicion heavy in them. “We cannot live together here, but I don’t wish to condemn you to the world…”

“You…didn’t have to save me,” she whispered in a dry voice, one not used to being used. Suspicions crept into my mind. The Forgotten weren’t taught language; they were intentionally handicapped from birth so that they could not pick it up through hearing.

“Why, you speak…” I said more to myself than anything. As I contemplated this new information, the window of the room shattered. The shock of the explosion threw both the girl and I to the floor of my dingy room. Through a series of built in speakers that were used for emergency announcements the entire Compound resonated with the message “Hand over the murderer and the girl, and no one else will be erased.” Along the display walls in the center area of the Compound... at least, those that had not been shattered or covered in graffiti - projected holograms of the girl and me.

I became a murderer in the eyes of the Government and the Bankers. There would be no trial nor any kind of mercy from the enforcement officers. The sound of the ships of the Government shook the building, breaking the few remaining windows of the apartments in my block.

Panic spread through my mind for no real reason, since I already knew they were going to come. The Government had eyes everywhere, but I’d been preparing for something ridiculous on their behalf for quite a while.

Shots tore through the apartment wall, exposing me and the girl to a hovering craft that was only ten meters from us. It was pointless to try to run from the Government, I had only hoped to move the girl from the Compound before they came to get me for having murdered the traffic officer. That’s what I thought, of course, but I was wrong. The hovercraft only scanned us and moved away from the concrete opening.

The hovercraft descended into the central courtyard in the middle of the Compound, where all the individual rooms could be seen, and soldiers filed out of the cargo door. I knew I didn’t have much time, so I ran to what was left of my bathroom and pulled out the briefcase that was hidden behind the toilet.

I’d done the best I could to improvise a nuclelectric generator from the parts I had stolen over the years, and I proceeded to toss it in the direction of the guards. I could no longer expect a trial, even one that would send me to one of the torture islands the Bankers were so fond of, since I was about to escalate the situation.

Even if I hadn’t killed the officer, he would have been protected by the Government and there really was no such thing as a fair trial in the hierarchy of Earth.

The generator, about the size of a loaf of bread,began to heat up exponentially. I quickly threw it down, through the concrete opening, and the canister rolled between the ranks of the Government soldiers and violently blew them to superheated shreds. The explosion knocked the hovercraft against the side of the Compound, and the girl and I flew against the opposite side of my apartment.