With the Promenade – the biggest thoroughfare that traverses the length of the Terrestrial District – only a few blocks away, the bustle and hum of people are everywhere. Down here in the perpetual twilight, streetlamps burn day and night. Holographic projections and bioluminescent paint cover every flat surface with advertising. I adjust my ocular boost accordingly to help me make sense of the chaos as I search. Not everyone gets the night amplification filter – only the lucky few in the Terrestrial District who can afford it. My father never got one, but he worked overtime for a year to ensure I had it by the time I started middle school.
“What are you doing, Emery?” Kenzie asks, suddenly at my side.
I whirl toward him, fist at the ready, then relax at the sight of his startled, pale face. Guess I’m still amped up after my session.
“Whoa.” He holds up his hands, faux leather wristlets protecting his data receptors. “Sorry I scared you, but you looked a bit lost.” Up close, I can make out the metal plates along his forehead and cheeks, just under the skin, where he can magnetically mount different accessories. Anything from devil’s horns or reptilian frills to carved bone ornaments. But he’s just himself today.
“Oh, I was just…” I tap my temple, signaling preoccupation with my implant, and hope he’ll drop it.
“Well, don’t let me interrupt a conversation with one of your blink buddies. Or maybe a confidant?” He waggles his brows suggestively at the idea of me having an implant contact I share everything with, but to trust someone with that much of myself? There’s an extremely short list of potential candidates. “You know I’d calibrate with you any time,” Kenzie continues. “Just say the word. Isn’t that why you started coming round again?”
He usually doesn’t let me leave without some form of banter, but I’m not up for it today. Perhaps sensing that, he saunters back to the desk. “Put you down for the same time tomorrow?”
“Nah. Sunday,” I call after him.
“You’re taking a day off? What’s the occasion?”
“I have a life outside the arcade, believe it or not.” I keep my gaze trained on the crowd, scanning for a very specific shade of brown hair.
“Sure you do.”
“Jealous?” I say over my shoulder. But before I can give as good as I get, a guy with the exact tint of brown hair comes down the street.
For a moment, all that aggression from the game flares up at the sight of Breck Warner. It’s him all right. His easy stride camouflages his lean strength. The mop of curls hanging into his eyes softens his slightly beady gaze as he tracks his surroundings. By day, he’s a mild-mannered assistant tech at an implant clinic in the Understory. Decent job, good benefits. He doesn’t need to prey on the people down here. That he does anyway…
Death-gripping the shoulder strap to my bag, I make my decision. Actually, I already made the decision when I came here today. I just keep expecting it to get easier. “Gotta go,” I tell Kenzie.
I brace myself for not only the increase in humidity as I pass through the arcade’s automated doors but also the crowded stink that permeates everything dirtside. Leaving the arcade behind, I walk the cramped streets of the Terrestrial District. Mile-tall towers hulk overhead, blocking any possibility of natural light filtering down.
New Worth’s just one of the domed cities around the world shielding humanity from the elements that rage on the other side of the glass. After too many years of storm-leveled towns, receding coastlines, drought, flood, pollution, and devastating fighting over food and resources as governments tried to provide for their people, domed cities became our only option to escape the ravages of a world that had finally turned against us after so many years of abuse.
While everyone in New Worth is granted equal protection from the hostile environment outside, our lives inside the dome are dictated by status, credit balances, and career potential. Those with the right credentials have every advantage as they literally ascend through society, living out their lives in the city’s luxurious upper levels. Everyone else remains landlocked in the Terrestrial District – choked off from light, constrained by space, and constantly inundated by others tied to the same fate.
The one bright spot on the horizon is Emergence – the day when the glass can finally come down, and we return to the land of our ancestors. So, as we wait for our rehabilitation efforts beyond the dome to take root, implants not only help us pass the time, but also make our lives a bit more bearable.
With a simple eyecast command, I can filter out the incessant noise down here. No more crying babies or shrieking feral children. No more desperate pitches from beggars with homebrew credit transfer devices clutched in their bare hands. Or the aggressive advertising jingles piped out of every storefront. No windy grumble from the maglev tracks crisscrossing overhead or the creaking drone of air ventilation shafts that pump cool air into the Canopy. The resulting relative silence gives you the space to think – something I didn’t know I needed until I got outfitted with my implant at age ten.
The smells are harder to get rid of, requiring expensive implant add-ons or body modifications. Most people learn to live with it. There was a time I was noseblind to it all, but my time in the Canopy has since put an end to that.
Crowds trickle along, eddying at intersections or swirling around busy storefronts, as garbage bots and far too many people fight their way through the constant gloom. The government keeps saying they want to clean things up, but with buildings constantly being appropriated to better support the Understory, and by extension the Canopy above, instead of something useful like retrofitting them for capsule residences to accommodate the waiting lists, life in the Terrestrial District
