I raised my hand, trying to attract the attention of a nearby taxi, but it simply ignored me and moved across the street. The driver inside tried to beg an executive from the Bank, hoping he wanted a ride, which he of course refused. The Bankers all had their own transportation, there was no need to take a simple street taxi. Not up to the task of waiting to be denied again, I turned away from the street and walked down the long alley that led to the subway station.

Upon reaching the entrance, I noticed a girl that was crouched next to the garbage bin, staring at the floor. I waited my turn to enter the passage to the train systems that ran under the city. I stood awkwardly by a light post as the sun sunk out of the barely visible sky, and watched the girl beg without even lifting her gaze. People glanced at the girl as if she was an abomination, a freak, and who would think otherwise in a place where everyone thought that way?

While I shuffled forward in line, still glancing back at the girl over my shoulder, I realized I had begun to accept that reality and continued to walk into the station. The silent escalators that led to the multiple levels of tunnels seemed to go into the earth for miles. My intended stop however was only two sublevels down from the city surface.

I moved with the flow of people and made it through the fluorescent arching passageways that led to the traffic station and the boarding platforms. Once the human hurge 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 to me, saying “You need to pay the fee, no free rides”.

Reluctantly, I pulled out the remaining dollar in my wallet and handed it to the man. He simply and mechanically inserted it into a machine and returned a quarter of it to me. I walked past him without expressing the discontent I felt at having to subdue 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 as my own, exhausted and empty. Nobody complained or got angry at the other when someone bumped them while walking, the concept of personal space had been gone since the time when Earth had exceeded ten billion residents. We, the people of the city just stood there as one, doing and suffering in the monotonous way we did, after a day of labor. There was a certain amount of camaraderie to that, but since not a soul acted on it the only thing that it caused was more loneliness.

The train arrived just as I was nodding off when I got a chance to lean on a support column. I began to approach it, but 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 is 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 in the least, but then I stopped. “Why would I do that?” I wondered aloud.

While the thought was crossing my mind, my body had already made its decision. I tackled the distracted officer to the metal floor and delivered my fists to his face, repeatedly. The labor I had been subject since my teens had made me strong, leaving the flabbier man unable to peel me off him. However, my vindictive power died the instant I realized what I had done. Blood dripped from my hands, the man laid dead before me and the girl now, half naked, sat shivering by his mangled face. I stood, shivering as much as the girl, and tossed my trench coat on the her.

Thankfully, I did not have to stand around the body for very long. I lifted her up to her feet, and pulled her into the train the moment it pulled into the station. The people that had once stood around me as one, shunned me, and I felt the weight of their eyes on me. I felt the warmth from those that approved my actions, the fearful stares of those scared of what I had been capable of, and the cold anger of those who had heard and had not had the bold, swift, and stupid ability to act.

The train was a simple tube of metal with lots of handholds and a few seats 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 had to go back up to one of the subsurface layers that she let go. 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 weaved around the many hostile areas of that maze of hovels. At the time the Compound was built it had been a wonderful community, but since the houses and complexes that had been built for that community had not been restored since the lunar colonization the many structures were in heavy disrepair. Due to the current state of affairs of the Compound, the lack of taxes and almost self contained policing system, everyone wanted to live there.

Of course, it was one of the few places in New Dust that anyone of my social position could afford. This is assuming that the thugs I paid money to really owned the room I lived in. However, I had considered it a home for almost three years now, since I started working as an engineer in the Nuclelectic center of the town.

At the factory, all I had to do was apply my knowledge of old machines from the 2000s and create miniature containers for nuclear fission. This was obviously, an extremely hazardous job as the containers and atoms could erupt and leave only an after shadow of me on the reinforced testing rooms. I used to look at the ones already imprinted on the walls and wonder all the life and knowledge that lost its chance to develop due to 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 had taken my task as a goal and made the best of it.

However, dealing with my job was the least of my concerns; the issue of the beggar girl took priority in my life. The miniscule payment of 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 with the traffic officer. She, of course, remained silent as was customary of women without names, which was due to the high population the human race had reached in that century, almost thirty billion. It was a Name that gave the person their own values, they were someone, or otherwise they were part of the Forgottens, those left and not represented in almost all retail centers. I for instance did not have a name, but a number, which placed me just above the Forgottens but increased my chances of surviving exponentially.

The Forgottens were a result of the founding of the Bank of Earth. The Bankers believed that their own names deserved recognition amongst others, especially those that did not speculate on interplanetary resources. They convinced the World Government Council to ban naming, unless otherwise authorized by the employer of the future child. This was even further limited by the fact that there were only a set number of names given out per month.

It might have seemed ridiculous, but the wandering child that stood in the Compound was merely the result of cheap employers and irrelevant parents. She stared at me with eyes so sorrowful I felt my own sorrow lessen, for it did 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 do not 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. That was my turn for suspicion. The Forgottens were not taught language and were handicapped on purpose at birth so that they would not pick it up through hearing.This was of course to limit how far they could advance in society by their own merit.

“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 none will be erased.” Along the display walls in the center area of the Compound, those that had not been shattered or covered in graffiti, shone holograms of me and the girl.

I became that in the eyes of the Government and the Bankers, the Murderer, that meant there would be no trial or any kind of mercy from the enforcement officers. The sound of the ships of the Government shook the building breaking the windows of the apartments in my block that remained.

I felt the need to panic for no real reason, since I already knew they were going to come. The Government had eyes everywhere, but I had been preparing for something ridiculous on their behalf for quite a while. Shots tore 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 though 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 did not 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 had done the best I could to improvise a nuclelectric generator from the parts I had stolen over the years, and I proceeded to tossed it in the direction of the guards. I did not expect to get a trial, even to 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 had not killed the officer he would have been protected by the Government and there really was no such thing as a fair trial in such a distinct hierarchy as that of Earth.

The generator, about the size of a loaf of bread and the moment I joined the catalyst chamber to the atomic sample the radiation levels began to rise exponentially. I quickly threw it down through the concrete opening and the canister rolled between the ranks of the Government soldiers and almost instantly mushroom clouded them from existence. The explosion knocked the hovercraft against the side of the Compound while the girl and I flew against the opposite side of my apartment.