Chapter 1: Meta

Disclaimer: I don't own any copyrighted materials.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark (Clark's Third Law)

Warning: implications of the use of child soldiers, foul language, gore, mention of religions and implied consumption of humans.

Imagination was what allowed to people to imagine things beyond their realm of reality that couldn't be made feasible by the technology available to them at that time, to imagine the future, of the future potential problems that could arise.

The start of people's daily life started when the sunlight from the artificial sun had lit up the blue sky, showing the white and fluffy clouds the dotted the sky.

Yet people were now awake and moving up fast because of a different reason.

The sirens throughout the city were screeching so loud that it was safe to say; it was enough to wake people who were dead asleep in their beds. Security and government robots were sent out, prowling the streets in search of any disturbances, trying to contained them if found.

Waves of citizens had rushed out of their homes or units onto the streets in a frenzy, carrying and grabbing whatever they could take from their homes like sentimental objects to other helpful objects like communication devices or important official documents; staffing them into any containers, they could find in their house. Police and the government robots were called in to rein in the crowds, human instincts had override the logical thinking of people, seed of chaos were already sown.

It was a tense atmosphere with people were crowding around each other, everyone was on the alert for the next possible changes that could announced for the situation, they were in.

Within the crowd, electronic devices were held out, attempts were made to contact or call friends and families had ended in failure. In a society so dependent on technology, being cut off from their common source of communication had left many people frustrated at being unable to communicate with each other.

A man turn on his red smartphone, opened the app he used for adding contact detail of people. The app came up with the contact detail of many people, ignoring them he typed in a name on the search engines of the contact list and it come up with a small image of a teenage girl and her contact detail.

Tapped on the image of the teenage girl, the icon of green telephone had popped up which he tapped on to call the girl.

"Come on, pick up…" Pleaded the man with frowning eyebrow down; beads of sweat could be seen dropping down his forehead at his smartphone. Only to stare in dismay as an animated white dog with black spots walked across the screen holding up a sign 'Unable to connect network'. "Not again…"

Meanwhile a family of a mother, father, son and daughter in the same crowd was sitting down, observing the people around them.

People didn't have the time to nitpick on what things in the house they wanted to bring.

A young boy sitting down next to his family, could feel his throat going parched after going for several hours without water. Looking at his father taking a tiny sip from a water bottle. "Daddy, can I have some water, please? " His mind was clicked, he was now made more aware of how dry his mouth was and coarse his tongue felt like sandpaper.

"Sure, son just don't drink too much," handing the water bottle to his son, "We might need it later in the future." Looking at the sea of people surrounding his family and watching his son taking a couple of greedy drinks to soothe his parched throat, handing it to his sister who was just as thirsty as he was.

The girl took heavy gulp of water from the bottle to satisfy her, she handed in the water bottle to her father who closed the water the lid he was holding in his hand.

Many screens on the buildings had switched from their usual transmissions to broadcasting warnings from people announcing them on the big screens. Advices were given as well to citizens of the cities to seek the nearest shelters and to try to calm down, to allow the operation for evacuation to process more smoothly.

"Attentions to all citizens, there has been series of outbreaks from multiple biological and robotic experiments," announced the lady on the screen while displaying screenshots of hideous monsters and robots that were presumable part of the outbreak. " Citizens are informed not to engaged with any of these biological and mechanical hazards, if you sight anything suspicious, please report it to your nearest authorities."

The speakers on the screen around the city were ringing with the sounds of danger. The severity of each danger had it's own distinct tones, on extremely rare occasions the alarms would play a combination of different tones that meant a combination of disaster was either about to hit the city or worse case scenario, it was already there.

Half of the sun's glowing warm body sank into the horizon.

The city was bathed in the orange sunlight from the sunset but there was no one was to enjoy the warm sight. The city was hollow, it lay in ruins, and fragments of the towers in the city had toppled into the ground below. Vehicles were left discarded and scattered around the city like food thrown haphazardly by a kid throwing a tantrum.

Two shadows, one significantly shorter than the other stretched across the ruin of the city, pass the part of the vehicles on the streets that were flung, pass the deserted area devoid of living humans and functional robots into the far distance, where still nothing remained.

A cold sheen of sweat covered both the faces of woman running along with a young boy. They had passed by many buildings covered in dents ranging from small in the size of a hoverboard to large in the size of a hovercar and what appeared to be long lines clawed through the metal structures of the towers.

Whoever made this wasn't human at all as the damages on the buildings, reached as high as the buildings themselves. Some parts of the buildings had fallen onto the streets, blocking the pathway of the streets had that had lead to the many districts of the city even the underground part of it, inaccessible or hard to travel on by foot.

Onward, they wandered through the graveyard, with one concreted idea: to survive. The sky was tinted orange with the color darken over in one edge opposite of where the sun had descended in the horizon, the clouds that were lined in the sky no longer look white and fluffy instead they look dark and grim.

Corpses of people filled the streets, the stench of blood and other bodily fluids weren't had leaked out of the bodies. Both the lady and boy couldn't bare to look at the nauseating scene that surround them and the smell was more terrible, it followed them everywhere even out of sight and was a constant reminder of the horror that had transpired.

Their footsteps echoed hollowly through the empty ruins of the city, a place that was once filled with noise from yet now devoid of anything left worth to remember about the society that had once resided here.

The streets were painted black from the dried old blood of the corpses that laid there, some corpses were could be identified to some degree but other was mutilated to the point; they couldn't simply not be identified by looking to see whether they were a female or male. Even parts of the police robots were scattered about the areas, leaving it even more hazardous to travel through.

The smell of blood and other bodily fluids weren't the only the strong smell there, the smoky smell of roasted meat was present as well in the areas that were torched. The people walking had perished the thought of eating any food at that moment; it was too much to stomach.

The lady and boy stopped in the shadow of a fallen building, breathing frantically after traveling quickly through the smoking ruins of the city. The boy sat down with his head looking down to the ground, trying to catch his breath by frantically panting while the lady leaned with her back facing the wall, keeping her eyes on the lookout in distance and in the sky.

As she looked around, all she could see was the morbid scenery all round her. Mounds of humans' corpses lay messily on the street as if someone tossed their bodies. Some of the people had their eyes widen open, their irises had faded into a shade of grey just as their lives had faded away. One of them was a small girl, judging by the fact, she had long hair and was wearing a dress laid on her back near a wall. Above the girl, smeared on the wall, was a large red stain that trailed down. A toy bunny laid beside her it was white and it had a large patch of copper brown where the blood had touched it.

"Mum," Whimpered the boy tugged on his mother's right arm. He had noticed the mounds of dead bloodied human bodies with blood leaking out from their orifices and areas where limbs were supposed to be attached to, it made him cringe in fear as he could see someone's eyeball looking in his direction, it had an optic nerve that was still connected to someone's eye socket. "I want to go home, I don't see this, please…" Closing his eyes at the scene, he turns to look up at his mother.

The woman went down on her knee, hugging the boy with her arms wrapped around him, kissing him gently on his head. "It's okay, to be afraid," looking right to left, warily, "We have to move to a safer place before they come." She would not give up and die right here; she had to survive.

"Are they here?" Asked the boy in a timid tone. The nauseating smell of the bodies wasn't helping much; the sight was enough to make the boy turn pale and his body trembled like a series of tremors in an earthquake.

Walking on with heavy steps, the duo continued to make their way to a shelter, looking about the city was in ruins and the systems throughout the city were out of order or shutdown; it was mostly the latter one. Many hazardous materials cluttered the streets made walking through it even harder to breathe and see with those fragments floating about, there were even large holes made in the middle of streets. Taking handkerchiefs from their bags and binding it to her and her son for protection, walking through the dusty places where fragment covered areas and buildings like powdered snow.

The woman didn't want to look into the holes after see so much horror; it had left behind after the several times she had looked in. It felt numbing to see what had lain in the holes, it was lucky that the victims couldn't have felt the pain. From the pressure that had crushed and driven into the ground, it all happened in a flash.

"Mum, there a hole." Pointed the boy, unwilling to get near the grisly scene neither was the woman herself.

The boy and his mother walked a reasonable distance from the hole, thankfully the mother, and son couldn't see the true sight of the hole through the waning of the sunlight but the smell of the rotten corpses was still there, persistently lingering in the air as reminder.

As the duo walk away from the sun's light in search of shelter for the tonight into darkness, unaware of being trailed by the hawk-like eyes that followed them. These eyes had belonged to the groups of large silver creatures, bigger than the people walking down there.

These creatures had crusty but moist red stain coated over parts of their silver bodies especially their arms, several of them held onto white sticks of varying sizes, some were small, some were large.

Some of the whites sticks had thinned strips of flesh attach to it along with the dark blue veins. Opening their mouths, taking bites out of the bones they were holding, munching the bones as if it was a chocolate bar and grinding those bones into powder with their teeth.

Generally people living in the cities, in the modern age often dwelled on the day to day basis, never worrying about what the future would bring such as where is the next place to find to food for dinner. The world had become monotone resulting from the experiences of people who saw everything, that was there to see and imagine due to the power of technology.

People growing up where societies were dependent on technology, were naturally 'gifted' with the ability to use and understand technology easily. If you didn't have the skills, it would become a serious problem later in your life. It would impede on your abilities to work within societies, to an extent your opportunity to find a stable income.

Energy and information were used everywhere, in and out of citizens' home, it was unthinkable and unbearable for people to live without it. People wearing fashionable clothes were walking up and the down the many streets of the city, fiddling with their little gadgets such as listening to music while wearing cordless headphone: some shaped like cat's ears, talking to holographic people who appeared on the screens of their smartphones or using wireless internet. People couldn't survive without the power of technology.

It was what made their life feel completed.

The big screens hanging off those tall shiny towers couldn't stop talking in this continuous moving technological world, towering over the streets. Ads were repetitively shown non stop at the peak hour to the countless amount of people as they flooded the areas like numerous ants marching off to work, even the movie trailers featured people in it wearing and using both famous and unknown company brands. Everything had its own purposes in society.

It was a carefree world, where the technology made life stress and everything was miniaturized to a portable size.

The shopping centers were frequently used facilities for teenagers just to hang out or to go on a shopping spree, it was catered to not only to the needs of the people but their wants as well. With the stores lined within the rooms there wasn't anything people wouldn't want to buy from the square shaped tomatoes to the latest virtual video games on the market.

Ah yes… Latest goods from those big brand companies were parading themselves to the eyes of the potential customers behind those glass walls. Those tell tales signs of longing, lingering in the eyes of shoppers as they pass by those shops, staring at those precious good like children begging with parents buy some ice cream by giving puppy look.

"Argh, why won't you go any faster?!" Snapped a young boy wearing cowboy attire, which consists of a brown cowboy hat along a blue t-shirt and black jeans at his smartphone; the Internet on his smartphone would be unanimously described by the young generations to be 'lagging beyond a reasonable time'.

The boy was lazily standing near a big blue pool located in the middle of the floor, it had structure of a massive red Chinese dragon lopping around and towering above the busy shoppers buying or window-shopping.

The pool was only there as a decorative, swimming was prohibited. Reinforced by a hefty fine and not to mention a criminal record that nobody wanted on his or her clean record.

It was almost life like; it was impossible to tell whether it was real or fake. Its eyes had a shiny lively gleam, with its dark black irises staring down deeply at the people walking.

He wasn't the only one annoyed by this lagging causing by the wireless Internet, people who surrounded him shared the same feeling. Some of the people who sat on those blue and yellow chairs watching other people's movement like people walking past, other people prefer to the kill the time by playing what ever apps they had downloaded from the internet.

As technology and science continue to prevail, slowly trenching itself consciously and unconsciously in people's lives. Both major and minor religions slowly fade into obscurity; their voices meant nothing to the people of the public who had no obligations to follow these religions.

Relics from different religions were collected and preserved by public for the future generations to observe upon the foundation of the past, which the cultures and influence it had left had behind such as the many different versions of the Holy Bible or the Koran.

Somewhere, in the museum filled with countless number of ancient artifacts lined among the numerous rooms, the accumulated reminder of the past. Guided by one of the guides included as part of the touring package a group of tourists strolled past the numerous labeled corridors of the museum. The museum guide often made many short stops at different exhibitions, making small talks about what they visited before allowing the visitors to examine the artifacts closely.

A girl wearing a long pink dress with denim jacket examined the massive glass box, lined within laid many books, some opened to show people their content while other just laid on their sides, showing their title.

The books were old; it wasn't the type of objects that people these days and ages would keep or use. It was just too big, and for the better lack of word - redundant. It was pointless in keeping an object that had only one function where there were other that had could preform not only that action but other useful actions, unless it had sentimental value or was really important to its owners.

They were probably heavier than the electronic tablet held in the girl's hand.

"Why did the people in past believes in gods and religion?" Asked a teenage girl among a group of tourists, peering into the big glass box that contained many holy scriptures from the past, the pages were tainted yellow as a testimony of its ancient age. " I mean wouldn't it ring some alarms in people's head that some of ideas preached in those books are unfair and are sometimes hypocritical."

"You have to remember in context; people were the mere observers of the effects of science all around them." The guide lectured to group of tourists listened on keenly. "Like how did the sun move? Unable to find or rather lack the mean to understand, they created stories that would help them to understand the world."

"Even when science was still advancing, people were traditionalist, they didn't like the questions that questioned the integrity of the gods and their religion to an extent their cultures."

The tour guide ushered the group to the next exhibitions as he continued on.

"Now on to the next exhibit, everyone take out your smartphones or portable computers as you can see the technology of the past as show here was much bigger and very inconvenient to carry unlike the gadgets of today…"

People had a constant drive to quench their never ending thirst of knowledge, to make their dream come true and to improve the ways of society. To success in this quest, technology was advanced to the point where it was indistinguishable from magic. The result that was the border between fantasy and reality for people was growing thinner as the time passed.

Entertainment industry and the technology industry went mutually inclusive together.

Who didn't want their own favorite anime or movie franchises to be bought to life?

Cosplay was that one of the hobbies to be changed for the better or the worse. No longer did the people make their own cosplay clothes, some still did just to be unique.

The technology of 3D printing had allowed people to buy cosplay clothes at affordable prices and for an extra price; the cosplay clothes could be customized into something unique to the taste of their clients. This allowed people to cosplay their favorite characters from any franchise; they chose from.

It had led to many flame wars over the past years that were not limited which cosplayers were better, or worse which pairings were better. It was a relief that arranged marriage was rendered almost non - existent, eventually.

Some cosplayers were later diagnosis with mental illnesses; they had to book trips to psychologists after becoming too obsessed in becoming their 'characters'.

Everything in the city was revolutionized by the advanced technology of the universe. The technological advancement had changed the ways society had functioned; to the point virtually everything was available at the tip of your finger or a single thought from your mind.

Through by using special augment virtual glasses and earplugs, people can interact with the virtual side of the city. Data being moldable could be made into various interactive augment reality programs that could be found through out the city while wandering about.

These programs would often take visual forms of things that people have seen through their lives but are not limited to creatures and objects based from mythologies. However, they are can't be perceive by normal people through a naked eye, special glass was required to see them while earplug was required to hear noise from the virtual side.

There are many ways of seeing into cyberspace, the digital landscape in the city but they were considered to be even more invasive than wearing those virtual glasses.

No one was really bothered these days to see virtual programs or pets based on mythical creatures or fantasy characters soaring above their heads. It was a norm to see young kids treating these virtual programs as part of their families like playing with them in the park and talking to them.

Like the taijitsu from the ancient time, yin and yang; every price had its toll.

Even utopia had to have its own dirty little secrets, secrets that everyone knew. It wasn't the flawless paradise that the government made it to be. The slums in parts of the city were example of those dark secrets; they were believed to be the 'gateway to hell' to the underworld.

The underworld was a cold and ruthless place where chaos reigned, as a rule of thumb, it was where everything was permitted and nothing was prohibited. The slums were contaminated with crooks, these crooks roamed the slums with hawk like eyes looking for advantages to exploit, and nothing was spared even their own children. It was truly a heartless place.

Secrets as though these were like a dark stain, no rather a black contagious mold growing on a pristine; white cloth. Like a mold, nothing could kill it off permanently. It would just come back stronger than ever. It was just a matter of time before the mold would the entire pristine white cloth into a contaminated and foul black cloth.

Sunset was a lit signal at night for the denizens of the underworld to shed their skin of disguises, spreading their unholy service to the world. Danger persistently lurked around the corners of the city, despite the best effort of cameras, programs and securities deployed by the government or patrolling the street to curb the danger in the city.

As the sun was beginning to set in the horizon, the night was beginning to descend into the city. The glow from the setting sun was turning the tall buildings into dark and shadowy figures with eyes of small beady lights glowing eerily.

It was normal for the light to be left on by the employees in the buildings; it was part of the daily routine. To resident and people moving in and out of the city, it was normal sight in the city, there was nothing strange about it. The signals were clear to those unwanted wandering eyes, break into these buildings: we will hunt you down.

From the bird's eyes, the city below had rivers of golden lights flowing out of the city, which brightens up the city that highlight the beauty of the city at night. These lights were from the vehicle of people eager to leave their work and stress from work to enjoy a relaxing dinner with their family.

As the night grew longer, the bustling atmosphere of people moving and talking and vehicle moving about, soon faded into dim, silence and unsettling atmosphere.

The light from the streetlights and from the buildings shed some visibility on the once bright and bustling city but it was not enough to see anything from a distance until it was too late. It was so dead quiet that you could hear the sound of your feet moving up and down on the ground. Every foreign noise sounds had you alerted, quickly whipping your head and sharpen senses to find those sources of disturbances.

Somewhere in the city, there was place where there stood tall shopping center with many windows along its sides, displaying many goods that the stores inside, had to offer. Outside the shopping, stood a plaza with shiny tiles with colors of white and blue, reflecting light and the light from the city and moon.

On top of the tall shopping, stood a massive silver rectangle digital clock, just standing there for the world to see. The green neon digital numbers were glowing from the black screen of the clock; they were ticking away.

11:58
11:59
12:00

It was the start of new day and the end of the yesterday.

A digital clock in the living room had displayed: 11:00AM. In fluorescent green lighting that shone against the dark background.

The sweet smell of pancakes could be smelt drifting through the living room with a hint of chocolate syrup as a humanoid fox wearing a blue apron with a yellow frill with an image of chibi pink goat under her red qipao with blue flowers and could be seen gently squeezing a bottle of chocolate syrup as a finishing touch to the freshly - made, steaming hot golden pony shaped pancake.

A ding was heard through the speaker as a hologram had popped up right in front of the fox. It had a picture of a girl wearing a black jacket with the hoodie with blue jean carry a lunch box in polymer bag and a tablet waiting outside near the door. The fox placed her apron on the hook on the wall.

The fox placed separate dishes of salad and pancake on one side of the table near her own blue tablet before walking to the door.

Typing in a complex password with paws on the holographic keyboard that had materialized out of thin air, too long to be remember in an instant into the system of door before opening it manually for girl to come inside.

"Hi Rena," Greeted the girl, she could smell the fresh chopped vegetables from salad and the fresh pancake that Rena had made for them. " You shouldn't have made those pancakes for me, have you eaten yet?"

"Don't worry, it wasn't much of a hassle," Consoled Rena, her stomach wasn't growling in hunger. " I had just finished cooking, don't just stand there, have seat in the living room." Making gestures with her paw for the girl to come into the living room.

Rena led the way to the kitchen with the girl following behind, they pulled their chair back, before sitting down to eat the delicious foods made by Rena.

"This is for you," The girl sat, handing Rena the plastic bag, inside was a black Chinese dragon engraved on the red lunchbox. "For cooking for me, last time."

Opening the box, she could see it was a bento, one half of the bento box, had cooked rice on one half of the compartment, while the other half contained the assortment of appetizers, there were carefully sliced pieces of synthetic salmon, savory pieces of synthetic fried chicken and there was even brightly colored pieces of riceballs made to resemble a variety of cute animals.

"You shouldn't have made this made." The fox expressed her concern at amount of the effort; her friend went through to make this food. It wasn't needed, but it was the thought that had counted. "It looks yummy; I will save it for dinner."

"So what are you reading," Rena inquired munching on the leaves of the lettuces in the salad, putting down her fork on her plate, looking to the right at what her friend was reading on her tablet. "How interesting is it?"

"Yes, it is interesting. It is about one of those incidents that happened at least many millennia ago, the precursor to the war that spread through the universe," The girl clearly speaking despite eating the top half of the pancake leaving the poor pony headless with her eyes still glued onto the portable computer. "So how life going for you, Rena."

"Life is all right but, I mean going when we go to the university in like, a couple of month," Rena walked to the dishwasher to place her dish in, thinking of her future. "Is it going to be safe, I mean are going people there who may not like us. What do you think about it? " While the future had the power to create solution to former problem; it had caused more problems.

"Well, you can't always have what you want all the time in life. They can hate us all they want," the girl said, looking the fox in the eye finally getting up from the chair. Life was never fair. " I don't give a damn."

"Beside they can't touch us, if they know what good for them." The girl continued on as she handed her dish to the fox to be put in the dishwasher to be cleaned. Rena flipped the switch on the dishwasher, the machine hummed as it cleaned the dishes. " Did you find anything that was interesting here in the city?"

"Nothing is interesting as back at home," The fox recounted her arrival from the luxury first-class spaceship. The types of spaceships; that people traveled in were highly dependent on their yearly income." Except for those organizations that were protesting against our arrival."

"So what did they do at your arrival at the space port?" The girl asked in curiosity, leaning against the dishwasher.

"There was a demonstration by the protestors," Reminiscing on her arrival, Rena continued on, walking up to the cupboard to get a tin of cocoa and milk from the fridge to make a cup of hot chocolate. There wasn't much point of getting upset over people shouting insults, the best thing to do was to ignore it." They got their own kids to poses as child soldiers with bloodied wounds, and they were carrying signs even the kids were too like: 'Murderers Not Saints', 'Child Enslavers' and 'Mutants'. Pouring the hot water from the kettle into two cups of cocoa, Rena put two spoons into the cups of hot chocolate before carrying them to the table.

People were free to say to whatever they wanted, just as long as they didn't touch it but regardless they still made a big mess of things.

"Police and robots were called to monitor these demonstrations to make sure that it didn't get out of hand." Rena offered one of the cups of hot chocolate to the girl, which she accepted. Stirring her cup of chocolate to get to the right mixture and taking a small sip, savoring the sweet favor. "How about the one at your arrival."

It was the girl's turn to speak about her experience. Oh joy….

"It was similar to your arrival, along with paparazzi trying to get exclusive photos for the magazine or exclusive interviews for livestream," Remembered the girl, as she open the bento box, picking and chomping on a pink riceball in the shape of a cat before sitting down. "They couldn't stop following me, and trying gets past the security. It makes me think that they have no life other stalking me."

Damn those paparazzi, it was amusing to see how low they could especially stoop to, the time when she saw them rooting big celebrities' massive garbage that had been dearly departed from the residential premises.

"Well, they do make big credit from finding whatever information they can find of you." Snarked Rena without giving a second thought to what she said. For any upcoming events in the colony, it was usual for the media to take a snoop at anything, they figure would give them some juicy information to publish.

The girl grumbled "Yeah, but I want all of it for myself, and nobody can have it not even my brother." Taking a drink from the blue cup as she look at cup as the steam floating up.

It wasn't true that money couldn't buy you: happiness, it did help bring some happiness. Money was what made the world spin on its axis, it was amusing and sometime sad to see what extent people would do for to earn it.

"So where is your brother? Why didn't he come along with you on the spaceship." The fox remembered the other half of the twin. Dry dishes were taken out of the machine when it stopped humming by Rena, to be placed on the rack.

"He and my parent had some businesses to finish off so he had to stay behind to finish them off." The girl took a seat beside Rena, continuing reading the articles saved into her tablet," I finished them all before I gave it back to my parents to take over, I had read so many bloody files."

People expected more work from their children in this era, it was high expectations placed by society upon itself: to achieve beyond your limit. It was a win - win situation for the parents, for their children as well. It always felt good to brag about something, especially if you have proof to back it up.

"So meanwhile, do you know about anything interesting to do?" Boredom was beginning to sink its claws in both of them; they hadn't been allowed to go outside. The organizers had insisted on they shouldn't go outside without any guards for their own 'protection'… but Rena knew better.

"Not really like what I said, it is really quiet boring compare to home." Insisted Rena who couldn't think anything that would be fun after being stuck in the building for two days.

"So do you know anyone, who had just arrived?" Rena pulled out her tablet lying on the kitchen table displaying the numerous images of inhabitants that had just arrived or soon to arrive for her friend to see. Putting the cup down on the table, steam could still be seen drifting from it.

"Generally for most of them, I met them at either at parties or those business conferences with my parents." The girl used her skill of technopathy to scroll down along the side of the tablet to look through the list of images on her friend's tablet. Gently putting her cup of hot chocolate. "My brother is coming along with a bunch of people in the next two days."

With the right connection in life, you could advance your social placing in the upper class. Having no social skill in society was dangerous, nobody wanted to deal that they had no idea about; it wasn't worth the risk of finding out.

Rena leaned slightly forward, her head rested on her paws. "So which people are coming with your brother, I mean what is those rank of the people coming with your brother?"

Like a common phrase 'You are what you eat', the type of person who you, depend on the type of friends, you have.

"My parents think its better for my brother to come here with family friends." Yin stopped looking at the blue tablet and placed it back on the table. The golden rule was safety in number especially with the people you know. "Alfred, Vash, Arthur and Feliciana and the people, they hang out, you know what I mean."

" Oh them? Oh I remember them back at school." Rena continued to drink the remainder of the hot chocolate. "Remember the time Alfred and others said it would be fun to do parkour in the park, it was fun and you were in it as well."

Yin was smiled in return, thinking of her childhood memories "Of, course how could have I refuse? I had nothing better to do on that day." Drinking the remaining hot chocolate from cup as drink was cooling down, judging by the amount of steam that was rising. "Since we have nothing better, let go and explore the facilities in this campus."

Placing the cup on the bench, near the sink. Walking to the door, Yin turn back to look Rena in the face, still sitting in the chair " Come on, let go and check out these facilities."

-
Codex Entry: Augmented Reality
It is a physical environment seen by the human's eyes through the usage of computer generated graphic and sound that are enhanced, changing people's perception of it. Later advancement in the research had allowed the digital landscape and the user to be influenced by each other as if they were happening in real time.

The potential uses of this technology were endless, trainee surgeons could practice their skills of cutting open the human bodies generated by augment reality with ease of knowing they would be killing anyone with their blunders. The trainees could even see the system of the body still functioning, heart still beating, and pumping blood around the body to the main organs.

It was hard to see these days what technologies that were not augmented. It was made mandatory through the customers' demand and marketing standard to install augmented reality in games or computer devices as it made the computing devices more user-friendly, interactive and appealing to the user's eyes.

In the olden day, virtual pets stayed behind the screen and the sole way to interact was to press those buttons, repetitively. It was made even worse that the virtual pets had no personality: they reacted repetitively that they were programmed to do. Even when virtual pets were given AI to give them a sense of realism, a way to make the player to feel a connection with their pets, but the only way to interactive with them was with a console with the buttons …Still they repeated their dull actions over and again but this time with more varieties.

Cyberspace has existed when electronic devices was created. When the Internet become wireless, it had became more recognized, leading into another mode created called 'virtual reality'. With the support from the technology companies, money was poured in the research to bring a new realm of virtual reality to their ever-thirsty consumer. Soon, enough virtual pets could now could now leave the screen and join their owner in the real world.

Yet… for every new field found by researching, there will be new problems that spring up from these fields.

Author's Note

The characters here are not nations but you can't exactly call them 'human' either. Here a clue: transitional

I'm not sure what type of genres I want to put in this story, as I want to put in different genres. This story will contain dark (possible disturbing) themes and inspirations drew from different medias that I have seen.

The intro is supposed to be how they do the introduction in the Pokémon movies which they release every year, e.g., Talking about the same thing about how many Pokémons in the world at the intro. I wish they would release something darker like 'Apokelypse'.

If people do review my fanfic, l would prefer it to be a critic; that would make me happier than just a review. I would like to know how I could improve my skills in writing. If anyone finds any mistake, just tell me.

My English Teacher told me repetitively that my creative writings or writing essays were of a poor quality because of my poor grammar and punctuation. I might do a rewrite of this fanfiction more like 'The Rebuild of Evangelion', as I'm not sure if this story is what you would call a good quality of writing as I'm trying to write it as if I'm trying to make it into game.

I will add in references to many things/ideas that happen in real life; however, I don't know on them if I can expand on them in the later chapters, to enrich the story but lets just see how it progress.

1. The actors wearing/using company products refer to a marketing technique called 'product placement'. After discovering that people were ignoring its ads in TV, they have decided to handsomely pay other companies to advertise their products on their media like movies and games, where people are more likely to noticed.

2. The flame wars remind me sadly of arranged marriages in Asian, especially in India. Families usually ostracize people from different caste who marry each other . While disagreement over fan pairing is usually, people just sending insult, disagreement over people making their own choice on who they want to marry against the wish of their parent can unfortunately lead to honor killing, in the attempt to restore the families' honor.

3. The cosplayers getting mentally ill are references to how society can pressure famous people to become what the society envision the people to be. To be more precise like the anime film: Prefect Blue and its depiction of folie a deux (mental disease). Another note: the actors mention here acting in the film aren't exactly actors.

4. The technology here like augmented reality, takes inspiration from the anime film: 'Summer War', Denno Coil, Dot hack and game 'Watchdogs'.

For me, it is easy to think up a new idea but hard for me write them out. I have several plot bunnies that all have dark and possible disturbing themes in my mind which I don't think I will be writing them soon, as the more I think of them, the more questions that start to pop up. My teachers love to give me schoolwork without any shred of mercy.