Valley of the Pagans

Welcome to the land of the permanent sun
Where the flowers are melted and the future is fun
- Gorillaz, The Valley of the Pagans

Our story begins not on Earth. It begins elsewhere. Very, very much elsewhere.

Many years ago, long before Zoofights Corporation took off to the stars, there were thise who had given up the Seanet~ravaged Earth as a bad job beyond saving. This meant that other corporations, rising out of the ashes, were all making the big space race, hoping to snag whatever pieces of galactic pie they could grab. And while there were many failures, there was one group that, in the background, was quietly - almost insidiously - succeeding. Formerly known as Osmond & Sharpe, it would eventually grow and gain influence over the planet Spero in almost the same way as ZF Corp influenced Earth, slowly assimilating almost every kind of service into itself as it swelled like a bullfrog on helium.

By the time of the completion of the planet's new captial city, Neo Manhattan, they'd undergone a rebrand. Partly because the "Sharpe" of the original name had left under mysterious circumstances, but primarily because, in the course of the city's development, they had become the sole provider of almost everything anyone could ask for. They hadn't allowed any competition - with no regulation, any potential rivals were snapped up like chicken nuggets in front of a shark. Food, technology, entertainment, living space... it was all under their thumb, though under many different brand names.

And thus did they become United Everything Services - or UES, for short. Founders and sponsors of Neo Manhattan. And it is in this city, ruled by one brand, that our story begins...

~NEO MANHATTAN, PLANET SPERO~

"Good Morning, Neo Manhattan! This is your wakeup call with UES Radio One, and as always, I'm your neighbour, Max Ramone! We're gonna start off with the morning news and weather for all you commuters, but first here's a message from our wonderful sponsors and founders-"

The hand struck like a cobra from between the sheets, slapping down upon the radio alarm clock with such force the plastic creaked.

But it did the job - the sound cut out with an almost disappointed suddenness and the meagre light from the display snapped off. The bedroom was once again cast into darkness, save for what little of the morning light could sneak past the edges of the blackout blind. The dull, greyish light of the morning drizzled highlights upon the sparse apartment interior - a combined kitchen, sleeping and living space, all glossy white and smooth. Aside from the piles of clothes and what looked like computer parts strewn about, it gave the impression of having one's head stuck in an iPod.

It took perhaps another two minutes for the hand's owner, buried somewhere under the quilt, to move. And when they did, it was with a groan and a lethargy born of sheer, apathetic reluctance. They shuffled along beneath the quilt, but made no real effort to actually get out of the bed - they simply slid out and landed with a heavy thump to the floor below. 

"Fuck," groaned Kaydence from the prone position.

It was one thing to wake up on a Monday morning and remember you had to go to a lame job. It was even worse when you then had to remember you were doing all that in Neo Manhattan.

The young woman slowly levered herself off of the floor and picked her way across the floor. Her hands groped along the wall as she went - they touched something protruding from the side, then traced a semicircle. Artificial light slowly blossomed into existence across the room, and Kaydence squinted for a moment, adjusting to its presence as she continued to move. 

First things first. No time for a proper breakfast - she'd set her alarm too late for that. Approaching the kitchen, she picked put a blue box, pulled out what looked like two waffles trying to disguise themselves as a sandwich and shoved it into a vaguely toaster-shaped device. A button press later and it was quietly humming to itself as Kaydence, now certain of where she was going, made a direct line for the bathroom while trying to ignore the whine of digital signals gnawing at her ears.

Once in the bathroom, she made vague and uncaring attempts at fixing herself. The glass in the mirror reflected everything back at her, good and bad. Dark golden-almond skin, the origin of which she still had no clue. Messy hair - white with cyan streaks, but red roots were showing through the dye. Eyes as green as the text code in the Matrix, but puffy from multiple nights of shitposting. Permanent case of resting bitch face. Nice rack, though - although that only scored points with her followers on Flutter.

Speaking of... she'd need to check that on the way in to work. And maybe delete some of the more creepy messages. Ugh.

Ablutions complete, she went out of the bathroom and began to pick up random clothes from the floor. A white tank-top, a yellow coat-jacket thing, blue jeans. She'd been sleeping in her underwear anyway, so she didn't bother to change those. Her workplace wouldn't care - there was one employee who smelt faintly of day-old cheese every time he came in and nobody seemed to remark on it- 

Something sharp poked her in the foot.

"FUCK!" she yelled, hopping backwards. She glared down at the offending object and, sleep still clouding her brain, took a lot longer than usual to identify it. Oh, yeah, it was a cooling fan. Her mental rolodex blurred - it was the one she'd taken out when making that custom gaming rig to sell, wasn't it? She'd kept it because it might have come in useful later on. It hadn't yet - and she knew she was, by now, too lazy to throw it out.

She bit back another swear and finished getting dressed. Socks and shoes went on very quickly to prevent further accidents. That done, she grabbed her Citizen's ID Card - extremely important - from her bedside table, then headed for the minifridge in one corner of the room, opened it up and took out her packup. It had been put together last night - a tonkatsu sandwich, an apple and something that looked vaguely chocolatey. She'd be damned if she was eating anything from a cart, not after the stomach upset she'd gotten on Friday.

The toaster beeped, and the waffle-wich shot out. She whipped out one hand and caught it mid-air, ignoring the heat, and bit deep into it. The taste of cherry - real cherry - hit her tongue past the vaguely artificial-tasting pastry and oodles of fake sugar. Mmmph. Now there was the good stuff. Too bad you had to go digging for it. 

It was a metaphor for the entire fucking city, actually. But that was a rant for another time.

She looked at the time and sighed. 7:40. She had to get a move on. And she knew very well what that meant.

"Fuck," she said for the third time, with her mouth full.

She'd have to catch a Tebbie.

--------

Kaydence hated the Tebbies.

It was street slang for TEB - Transit Elevated Bus. They served the ring roads that divided the high-density housing and flats from the central business district, orbiting the core of Neo Manhattan like fat sharks considering the idea of taking another bite into the whale carcass before them. Since large transport vehicles were forbidden from going into the CBD itself , their entire design revolved around keeping the flow of normal traffic going. And so these things loomed above the road like hippos on stilts, allowing the faster cars and Pods to pass by underneath while they lumbered onwards at the hands of idiot drivers unable to keep a decent speed going.

Kaydence hated them because they were ugly, slow and too crowded. She hated having to share seats with others. But she had no choice - the Tebbie was the fastest way to her job, since she lived in the West Quarter and her job was in the North. So she stood at the elevated platform amongst the crowd, shivering in the mid-winter cold and finishing the last of her breakfast, until the iron-grey bulk came around the corner and pulled up.

She was inside the moment the glass double-doors slid open, making a beeline for the very back of the Tebbie. The automated snack bar situated there - the only saving grace of these ungainly wastes of taxpayer funds - beckoned her with the siren smell of lukewarm sandwiches and vaguely decent coffee. And coffee was exactly what her brain was screaming for. She took the time to pull her glossy white headphones off as she approached and punched in her order, muttering under her breath as she did so.

"Coffee... black... two sugars... dash of Jolt."

She really needed the Jolt. Last night had been rough.

The machine beeped in compliance, and she held up her phone for the payment. Another beep, and the device was whirring away as ingredients were mixed together. Meanwhile, the doors snapped closed, and she felt a gentle lurch as the Tebbie took off with all the grace of a fat whale farting itself into motion. She watched as the plastic cup appeared and the contents were poured in with all the care of a soulless kitchen appliance performing the function it was meant to do. The TEB swung around a corner and she grabbed a pole to keep her balance.

The 'DING' of the machine completing its work reached her ears, and she took the cup in one hand and sipped from it. The combined heat and citrus-y tang of the added stimulant made her gasp. She turned and, spotting an empty seat, walked over and sat down, seeing nothing but more grey, identical buildings and storefronts pass by on her left. The morning sun came through a window and nearly blinded her until she turned away, but eventually the Tebbie moved under the shadow cast by some buildings and she was able to look again.

The journey was a brief one, punctuated by only one or two stops. And all throughout, Kaydence sat, sipped her coffee and stared out the window.

She watched the buildings pass by. The same ones, every morning that wasn't a working day. She saw shop fronts with near-pristine windows on sidewalks so clean you could eat off them - and some people did, just to prove a point. She saw metal, glass and synthcrete - "what the future is made of", the promotional posters had screamed - mingling together in a mathematically perfect syphony of progress. She saw vending machines of every kind - for snacks, for groceries, for hair products, for Braindance chips.

But most importantly, she saw people walking past. Going about their own daily routines, seemingly at peace with everything around them.

Well, except for the one person blasting music on the sidewalk as the TEB went by. Some mindless, cookie-cutter Neotrance garbage - made in their basement, no doubt. Kaydence made a great show of ignoring it, turning up her own music - Aqua, only the classics - to block it out.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that... something was off. In fact, she'd felt that way for a long while. Ever since she got back from Earth.

There was a bridge coming up. It had been built because damming the canal, the place where all the waste went down, wasn't an option anymore. Kaydence gripped her cup more firmly as the TEB slid up and then down like a carousel horse that had long given up trying to be enthusiastic about the job. Much to her relief, not a drop was spilled.

She knew she was overstimulated, constantly searching for the slightest micron of entertainment from her surroundings. But even things that she usually could derive something other than bland indifference from didn't excite her anymore. Streaming didn't give her that same jolt of glee. Completing a new gadget didn't give her that same satisfaction of a job well done. Even the dumb meme compilcations that kept her up at night didn't make her laugh like they used to. And she couldn't quite place why.

Well, there was one obvious reason. UES's logo was stamped on nearly all of it. And seeing it everywhere always made her stomach churn in irritation. But even that felt like small potatoes compared to how she felt now...

She sipped her coffee again. The caffeine and Jolt together were doing their work. She was feeling more and more awake by the second. But no less detached, uncaring, uninterested, bored. She knew she was overstimulated - too much phone, livestreams, music, too much everything. But even so, she felt... listless. Dull. As though she were wandering through the hazy confusion of a dull dream, trying to spot what was wrong.

Moreso than usual, actually...

Another lurch from the Tebbie. She looked up, and saw that they'd pulled up at another elevated stop - one she recognized all too well. The doors were opening, and beynd the glass windows of the stop, she saw the buildings. Not the squared-off, multi-story things that formed the high-density apartments, but the shining, towering, silver-white monuments to human achievement that formed the CBD - the very core of Neo Manhattan. And, right in the middle, ringed with holographic news bulletins and adverts, the great Liberty Spire - home of the biggest wigs in all the city.

This time, she said "Fiku" instead, reverting to Esperanto. But it meant exactly what it sounded like. So it still counted as the fourth time today.

She got up, downed her coffee in one motion and made for the double-doors.

--------

Let us skip the working day of Kaydence Roberts. It isn't interesting enough to dwell on.

What is interesting is the journey back.

--------

She got off a few stops earlier than she usually did. This wasn't something she did often. Normally, she just wanted to get back in her apartment so she could work on whatever gadgets she planned to sell, or do a livestream for her audience. But on this day, in her near-constant drive to break out of routine and kill boredom, she decided to not eat anything in her freezer and hit up a fast food place instead.

Burger Factory, if you squinted, could have passed for any other fast food joint on any planet. It even tried to keep up appearances on the inside, with the look of 'classic 50's diner' filtered through 'Apple Macintosh'. But like a sea serpent lurking under the waves, the stark difference reared its head when you peered into the depths. No wait staff lurked behind the counter - because there was no counter. Just a wall of microwave-like compartments from floor to ceiling, where trays of food were deposited by robotic arms, visible for only a moment before being collected by waiting customers.

It was a literal burger factory, in every sense of the word. Because it was completely automated. No humans to cook or serve - all machines.

It was a little packed when Kaydence walked in, but she was past caring. Her belly demanded burgers, and the smell of frying meat and grease beckoned her like unattended biscuits around the family dog. So fixated was she on getting inside, indeed, that she almost smacked face-first into a square, glossy white thing that dropped down from the ceiling to hover in front of her. The polished screen in front of her flashed on, showing a smiling yellow Emoji against a light blue, shifting background.

"Welcome back, Miss Roberts!" it chirped in that ever-so-annoying, overly-friendly tone. "We're pleased to see you again at Burger Factory!"

Kaydence rolled her eyes. Ugh. She didn't know who the hell had designed the Serv-A-Bots, but she suspected they'd gotten their start in children's TV. That was the only explanation she should think of for their resemblance to floating CRT monitors with wings, or why they had such annoyingly chipper personalities. Not exactly what she wanted to deal with when all she wanted was a damn burger. Also, she could hear their shoddy wiring and cut-and-paste coding beeping and hissing away, and it was like nails on a chalkboard to her ears. She just wanted to rip them open and-

No. Get the QA instincts under control, Kaydence.

"Just the usual," she said, and held up her phone to the robot's screen. There was a moment's pause, then the floating annoyance beeped, the screen changing to show a tastefully-doctored picture of a burger and accompanying sides.

"One Autoburger with extra cheese, large fries, a cherry Chill Cream and a cherry shake," trilled the Serv-A-Bot. "Coming right up, Miss Roberts!"

"Yeah, yeah," grumbled the woman, and moved away as the irritating square floated back up into the ceiling. That was one saving grace, at least. If you had an account with this place, you didn't have to deal with the Serv-A-Bots for long. Any order you had saved could be called up the moment you walked in, and they'd get right onto making it, no fuss and no bother. But Kaydence despised interacting with them to any degree, so it wasn't much better.

Ignoring the crowds of chatting, munching people around her, she took a seat at a circular table, pulled out her phone and, falling back into the age-old instinct, began scrolling. Let's see... what was new? Traffic holed up at the Southeast Tunnel due to a crash. Boring. East Quarter rep John Filigree vows to push Solar Fusion bill. Dead-eyed corpo sadsack. New flavour of Chill Cream to debut next week. Dull. Latest album by Dot Matrix hits number one in the charts. Manufactured trash. Scientists predict next solar flare may cause network disruptions. Blah, blah, blah.

Ooh, five new subs on Flutter. And on the "Ronin" tier, too! Small mercies.

She didn't know how long she spent on her phone. She was only jolted out of it when she heard the think of a tray landing on her table, and looked up to see her meal in front of her. A large burger, still sizzling with grease, layered with cheese, bacon and lettuce, sat as the crowning glory of the meal, flanked by a small mountain of fries spilling from a paper cup on the one side and a tub of off-pink, fluffy whiteness on the other. A tall cup of something equally pink and frothy provided cover from the rear.

"Your meal, Miss Roberts!" trilled the Serv-A-Bot with a pixelated smile. Kaydence rolled her eyes - table service was definitely not worth it. She pocketed her phone once more as the thing flew away, reached forward and picked up the burger in front of her

She took a bite. It was everything she expected of it. The beef roasted to perfection, seasoned with the right amount of salt and pepper. The cheese creamy yet not overbearing. The lettuce crisp. The tomatoes and onion combining together, adding extra flavour. And the sauce adding that final little kick to the dish. In summary, it tasted the exact same as every other burger she'd-

Something went click inside of Kaydence's head.

She stopped chewing. 

She stared at her food. She looked around the restaurant and at everyone in it.

Then, before she'd even thought about it, she threw her burger to the floor and stood up from her chair.

"Fuck this," she said aloud, and stormed to the door.

She knew she'd just drawn suspicious looks from other patrons. But that soon proved the least of her problems, as another one of the Serv-A-Bots swooped down to block her path. It hovered at about head height, too close to her for comfort, and its LCD face displayed a concerned Emoji that screamed like a distressed sun against the sky-blue background.

"Is something wrong with your order, Miss Roberts?" it droned. "We here at Burger Factory pride ourselves on customer satisfaction, and all complaints-"

The thing that had went click inside Kaydence gave a definite snap.

"FUCK OFF, TIN CAN!" she shrieked, and punched it in the face.

Except it wasn't just a punch.

Kaydence had... well, others would call them 'flaws'. She'd call them 'quirks'. One of those was her stubborn refusal to ever be parted from her beloved 'glass' - her custom phone. But that particular 'quirk' fed directly into another one - something she'd had since she was a toddler. Something she called 'digimancy' without a shred of irony. The ability to absorb, manipulate and expel digital signals of any kind. The exact mechanics of it baffled the doctors when they first saw it, and even now, at her age, Kaydence didn't still fully grasp it.

But the long and short of it was that she had, in her pocket, a source of power. A source of digital energy to draw upon, which she did so in an intoxicating rush that felt like cold pinpricks dancing up her arm and, at the moment of her fist impacting that gurning screen, released in a blast that she couldn't describe without going into very lewd terms.

People screamed as the Serv-A-Bot flew backwards, hit the opposite wall with an almighty clang and slumped to the floor. The hole in the middle of it sparked and smoked, blue-white artefacts rising like mist from the edges.

Kaydence lowered her arm, across which pixels still danced, and drew in a breath. She stared at the broken automaton as it twitched on the floor. Then she turned and stared at the faces of the other patrons, all of them twisted in various attitudes of shock, fright and general disbelief. Her own heart sounded like a cannon in her ears and her skin tingled.

Then she turned and stormed out of the restaurant. For real this time.

--------

That night, as she entered her house, she didn't turn on her television or fix a meal or even start to get ready for bed. Instead, she stormed oer to her wardrobe and flung it open.

She'd always known exactly what was wrong with Neo Manhattan. It was a utopia. And, in many ways, that was a good thing. There weren't any slums, because the city wasn't designed to allow them to develop. Whatever crime existed was quickly rooted out and stamped down by drones and automated police. Nobody wanted for food or housing, because the city could provide it without really thinking about it. The city was as mathematically perfect as possible, to cater to every possible need.

It really was utopia.

And that was the problem.

A small, black holdall bag was pulled out and thrown onto her bed. Her hands, shaking, roughly zipped open with the care of a charity shop worker who no longer cared if they broke the second-hand china they'd been handed. Her face glowed red and her eyes bored into everything she even glanced at.

Utopia. Another word for 'gilded cage'. Because a shared dream like this, something that was meant to be for everyone, was basically impossible. The glorious dream of the future had no room for such inconveniences as free will and human nature. You couldn't make everybody happy, no matter how hard you tried, because humans would eventually find something to be unhappy about. 

She threw clothes into it as though she'd strangle them if they didn't comply. Blue pixels and chromatic abberation skitterd up and down her arms like nervous spiders.

No, the only way for a utopia to work was to force itself on people, wherever they wanted it or not. Neo Manhattan only worked because it stubbornly ran the way it was meant to, counter to what anyone else might want. And that only worked because one company ran the show while lying to your face about your freedom.  You could eat processed kibble or cook a proper home-made meal. You could go to a movie, or watch a Braindance, or vote for the man who represented your quater of the city. But that wasn't freedom. Not when everything from the roads to the radio all had the name "UES" stamped upon it.

Shoes, roughly shoved in. A torrent of angry curses in Esperanto were trickling out under her breath.

And they were proud of that. Every poster, advert and logo trumpeted to the stars about how they could provide everything and anything - the tech, the food, the news, the entertainment. They were, as their corporate tagline boasted without a shred of self-awareness, 'For Everything, For Everyone'.

Everything... except anything. Because that phrase meant absoutely fucking nothing. Meaningless, corporate drivel designed to keep you complacent while they rifled through your life history and reshaped your brain to how they wanted it. Nothing was yours, nothing was private and they could do whatever they wanted with you. You gave up everything, and in return you got to live the same lie as everyone else.

It was utopia. But it wasn't ours. It was theirs.

She stormed into her bathroom, wrenched her cupboard open and dragged out a small toiletries bag. It had committed no real crime, but she threw it like a baseball into the holdall anyway, not really caring if anything inside had broken.

And it was only then, sitting in that restaurant, clutching a burger made by a robot, that Kaydence had realized the full scope of that. She'd always hated this place, but she'd never really considered just how bad it really was. That bite into her burger had been like a jolt of caffeine - it was as if she’d woken up for the first time and saw everything around her as really being there. And seeing all those other people munching away, completely oblivious...

She tried to shove something else into the already bulging bag - a tablet computer that she normally used for her repair work. But then her digimancy, already bubbling inside, jumped out like a jack-in-the box with murder on its mind. There was a cyan flash, she recoiled with a yell, and when she looked again, the entire thing looked like a half-melted child's project in her hand. The screen was a cracked mess, the plastic sizzled and the smell of burnt copper and silicon hit her nose.

"FUCK!" she screamed, and threw it against the wall, where it shattered into two halves. That was the second expensive thing she'd broken today. She inhaled a great lungful of air, swallowed and tried to get the shaking under control.

She knew full well what she was - overstimulated, needy, bitchy. Unable to turn off the constant buzz and whine and hum of pure technology in her head. And she doubted that living anywhere else would have changd that. But she'd lived the vast majority of her life here and, for the longest time, she hadn't really considered any alternative. UES phrased it this way; you could live here and toe the line, or go try your luck in any of the costal towns slowly collapsing into obscurity on the ass-end of the continent. A binary choice that wasn't really a choice at all.

But then she'd won that trip to Earth, by sheer chance, in a weekly raffle she'd entered out of boredom. And, in coming down, she'd met the Kobbers.

When she'd first met them, all she'd known about them were old stories. Heavy drinkers, fierce fighters, debaucherous and violent. Exactly what she'd been looking for. But then she'd gotten there and they'd been... boring. They talked about adult things that she didn't want to talk about. They barely boozed or took dorphs or fought with the bloodlust she thought they did. And their fights, while high-octane and exciting, were barely against straight-up bastards. Most of them were against people who were just misunderstood and needed to be talked down. Ugh.

But...

By degrees, she got her breathing under control. She stopped shaking and the pixels went away. The colour drained from her face, restoring it to its original hue.

She understood that feeling she'd had this morning. It was the realization of  how utterly fed up she was with the way things were. She'd gotten out for a brief moment, tasted the outside world, and now that she was back, everything wrong with Neo Manhattan was like the irritating habits of a once-tolerable acquaintance. The problems were more glaring than ever. The convenience at the expense of personal freedoms, the corporate control, the condescending way everything was delivered to you, the fact nobody else seemed to even notice or care about all of it... That burger had just been the trigger for her to wake up and see it all more clearly.

The more she slept and ate and worked here, the more she felt like someone in a straighjacket in a padded room being watched by men in white coats who sold ads on it. Earth might have not been perfect. Dull, dirty, crap coffee. But it now felt like a massie outdoor playpen filled with pinatas in her mind. It was...

It was a third option. And a better one than a guilded cage or crumbling, wind-swept nowhere.

She sighed.

And then she picked up the holdall and put it back into the cupboard. Not right now. Not yet. She needed to sleep on this. She couldn't go half-cocked. She had to get things in order here first - and that included paying for the smashed Serv-A-Bot. They might have been cheap, but breaking them generally wasn't looked on favourably by the managers. Even if they themselves were blank-eyed, shuffling tools of the men upstairs.

But even as she shut the copboard and turned to her laptop, ready to start tonight's livestream, she said the words aloud. A vocal promise to herself that, no matter what happened next...

"I'm gotta get the fuck out of here."

~TO BE CONTINUED~