I: New Home
With a bump of the train car, my eyes jolt open. Always been a light sleeper; never helps when you're trying to sleep a drawn out ride off. Adjusting my posture more uprightly...yeah. Neck was probably resting on the top of the seat all however time long; probably gonna have a knick in it for hours. I look around; same dull train car interior as usual. The authorities never bother cleaning the insides of these things up; not that anybody bothers to damage it anyway. Too tired, anxious or malnourished too, anyway. General aesthetic is more familiar to my now-passed grandparents who grew up during Nixon's little debacle in the presidential seat: lots of wood paneling; an honest effort to make everything look cluttered and abundant - colorful, even - but it still feels lifeless. Maybe insidiously friendly would be a better description, but I digress.
My hands sweat to high hell in the extremities section of the half-hazmat-half-worker suit I'm wearing, but even a stubborn basset hound of a bitch like me wouldn't bother to take it off in an environment like this. Looking out the windows, I see something different for once; new buildings, that is. The 'sky' - if you could even call it such anymore - was still it's same dense, thick and sickening blueish-green. Primary reason why I need a suit and a gasmask every time I go outside. But like before, at least the buildings were different. I didn't know quite were I lived last time was exactly located - I was only yae-high and 4 years old when the Seven Hour War occurred - as the authorities had stripped all places of their former names, but the shore (at least from the looks I was able to get of it) looked pretty rocky. Jagged, even.
Now, the train I'm in is taking me to some sort of once-alive metropolis. Looks lifeless now - everything does - but some traces of glory are still here and there. Skyscrapers in a defiant art deco style intermingle with the smaller brutalist and colonial-style high-rises and buildings surrounding them. At the streets below, I catch fleeing glimpses of similarly-suited and masked-up civvies like me, doing whatever. Civil Protection officers standby or move to whatever ghettos had a couple more litres of oxygen than what the Consul said they could; stuff's happened to be before, but that's a whole different can of worms. The more I focus, the less I can see in a way; I'm intentionally trying to get as much sight of detail as I can...yet, like a clear sky in this day and age, as soon as you have it for a second, it's gone.
Like a good show, just as I'm getting invested, it stops. My train car goes into a tunnel, getting enveloped by the darkness. As quick as it went it, it goes out. Chugging into a station, with a thud, the train car stops.
"End of the line..." Some poor sap sitting besides me says with a sigh, sliding his gasmask over his face. I do the same, and I get up. The doors slide open, and me with the gauntly crew of passengers shuffle out. The surrounding station feels blank; like an unpainted canvas. It feels unfinished; maybe like an idea that got a good start, but wasn't taken through all the way to the end. One side has baroque pillars, the other has art deco decorations on the heavy concrete wall. I don't bother to look much; with the rest of the civvies, I form into the line towards the processing station.
It's a rudimentary booth, the station; the modular, thorax-like metal plates which construct it next to the actual exit to the station square make it look like a parasite. Fitting; like a sample of the rule of the Universal Union in a single interior. The line goes steadily forward; my turn, after some time I didn't bother to count. The glowing eye lens-masked metrocop gives a glance in my direction.
"Identiband." They command, nodding in the direction to my wrist. Each suit us civvies have has this sort of bionic barcode on it's right wrist cuff; always glows a distinctive color based on a total summary of vital signs. Only being a little malnourished, my identiband glows an artificial green I present my wrist up. They take a scanner to it; after reading it for a second, the scanner beeps in a light tone. Approved, I presume. Without any smalltalk (thank God), the metrocop waves me forward. I walk through the open door and into the train station square.
My eyes are drawn above as I walk out in some uncrushed-by-apathy curiosity. Some high-rises surround the station square like a shell of some sort; brick-and-mortar in colonial and art deco styles. Some windows are shattered, some look intact, even with lights on behind them. Others are boarded up for some reason. Not that I'd like to know in the first place. I shuffle along; this is the third time I've been moved this month, so it's a concrete fact I don't know anybody. Can't reach for some help starting up. Just have to start from scratch for the next 10-day-period that I'm here. Potato, potata.
I see a flew loudspeakers present, mounted at the corners of the base of a statue in the middle of the square. Odd that it isn't the usual holographic screen, but some diversity never hurt anyone's palette. The same bald mug of the Consul, but in voice form croaks out from it.
"Daily oxygen allocation per citizen is now set as 6,000 liters per 24 hours. Underhanded obtainment of surplus oxygen is considered malcompliance." Croaked the loudspeakers with a jingle preceding it. After the jingle played again, the loudspeakers went back to their dormancy. There's this odd doublespeak the Consul and the rest of the Universal Union uses; with nothing better to do, I've kept some mental notes of it. Malcompliance? Doing anything they don't like. Pretty obvious, but that's besides the point. After a brief game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe with what apartment building I should go into, I chose the one nearest to my left. Constructed in art deco, it's pretty much a very squat-in-form skyscraper wannabe. Totally not me.
I head inside. No Civil Protection checks for this one; it's very hit-or-miss, depending the one you enter into. The ones near all the important people, like the one in the city citadel I was last in prior to being moved here, have metrocops swarming them like hornets to some poor kid who bothered them too much on a sunny afternoon. But ones near a train station like this are left to the civvies's devices, which I don't mind at all. Feels rather liberating, even if for a bit. The walls have peeling wallpaper, if any at all; they look to be mostly constructed off some sort of well-filed concrete or granite. Wooden floor creaks with each step I take; old.
The door shuts behind me. The only good thing the Consul's goons did is renovate the wall structure and door of each apartment building to form an airtight-seal. After I hear the seal do it's work with the door shut, I slide off my gas mask. I blink; my face is covered in sweat from the humidity of the mask's seal. It feels oddly refreshing to get some musty apartment bloc air. I walk up the stairs a singlular flight; I see an open door and some open voices coming from it, so I waltz on in. Now that I bother to actually notice it...practically all of the apartments have their doors missing. Probably from being kicked in too many times by metrocops.
I'm a fatass, plain and simple. My footsteps are heavy; I couldn't bother to sneak up on anything if I'd want too. The two people I see in there both look to be grizzly-looking acquaitences; one man of broad white stock, and the woman of Hispanic stock. The man turns around upon hearing me first; I see his eyes are startled for a bit, but he quickly calms down with a sigh.
"Phew...thought you were a cop for a second." He says in relief, turning his gaze back to the window.
"Someone stirred the hive toady..." The woman grimaces, looking out to the street. I join their little watch party; looking to the streets below, modular and sleek armored plating-equipped APCs drive down the street, with metrocops making their merry way down it. How fun.
"...you think they got any reason to storm our place?" The woman asks to both the man and me.
"Nothing I can think of. Unless you count more than a thousand calories a day malcompliance..." The man says with a scoff.
"Somebody might'a been moving between apartment blocs too quickly." I suggest, looking to them both for evaluation.
"Maybe...one of 'em might've had a scanning station." The man responds with a nod.
"Also might have had enough oxygen to not feel the need to hyperventilate while outside, maybe?" The woman interjects with some extra sass in it.
"Nothing's outta' the realm of possibility." The man then says, keeping his gaze locked to the street.
"...hold on...you're part of the group of newbies from City 13, right?" The man then asks me, looking to me with a raized brow.
"I guess." I answer, crossing my arms. The man looks to the woman. After both of them look at each other for a few seconds...the two nod. Their eyes tell it all; they've been waiting for something like this to happen.
"Bedframes were confiscated, but we got a free mattress underneath the table in the kitchen. Good for blocking out light. Maybe you'll actually be able to sleep..." The man says, finishing it off with a chuckle.
"I don't have to be offered that twice." I concede, immediately heading for the kitchen. Honestly, though...with me actually getting the opportunity to rest without needing to wake up to get out of a train? I feel dead exhausted. The closest thing to death, almost. After I shimmy my rotund self under the kitchen table, I lay on the mattress. Not washed by any means, but clean enough to not question if something unsavory was happening on it earlier. An ambience of a few flies buzzing by the sink and the white noise of an AC unit running fills my ears...the perfect concoction to dull and calm the nerves. At least my nerves; I'm actually feeling genuinely tired for once. Not like...tired out of malnourishment, or boredom. But like I actually need sleep. An oddity with my past living situations.
Without any delay, my eyes shut. For once in my life, I go to sleep peacefully.