It would’ve been nice if Rune could’ve been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Unfortunately, the stars hadn’t aligned for Rune. He’d been popped out of his mother’s womb in New Southern Chicago, the largest slums in all the United States, home to nearly five percent of the population, roughly fifteen-million humans at the time. Like a fairly large portion of the people unfortunate enough to count themselves among those in the mega-slums, Rune and his family were all strays.

Strays were the dregs of society, the lowest rung on the proverbial ladder of American social class. The term had originated some eleven years before Rune’s birth, in 2123, when Congress had passed the Subsidization Congressional Initiative and with it the Poverty and Unemployment Subsidization Congressional Initiative, also known as PUSCI. The Initiative was the back end of the response to what had come to be known as the Great Flood of 2100. Several major population centers lining the southern American coastline had been flooded and destroyed, and the government entirely lacked the funds to continue supporting the National Flood Insurance Plan. Instead of continuing the NFIP, Congress repealed the NFIP and passed the Relocation and Temporary Housing Act, moving vast numbers of people inland and into smaller cities and temporary housing.

These millions of destitute and evicted refugees had formed massive tent cities which had eventually grown into slums—case in point New Southern Chicago. With not nearly enough jobs to go around and millions stuck in deplorable conditions, Congress would steadily pass various social welfare programs angled towards improving the lives of people in the various mega-slums, ramping up in scale and effect over the years. In 2123 Congress would pass the SCI and with it, PUSCI, widely regarded as one of the worst debacles of acronym history. The initiative would affect those millions contained within the mega-slums, and provide subsidies and the bare necessities for those unable to obtain them, and housing for families with young children. For a short while after the Initiative’s passing opposers of the Initiative would derogatively call users of the Initiative pussies, denouncing them as the dead weight of society either not skilled enough to get a job or too lazy to work. Supporters would more generously call them cats. Then, after the opposition pointed out to a supporter in a forum argument that they shouldn’t be called cats but instead strays as they lived on the streets, the current term came into being. Both romantic yet derogatory at the same time, the slang term spread like wildfire through social mediums and become the most commonly used term for PUSCI beneficiaries. And some eleven years later Rune would join the ranks of millions of strays within the United States.

Being a stray was hard. Even more so being the eldest son in a large family. As the eldest son of six, Rune was expected to take care of the rest of his siblings as a child. More than one school day had been skipped to take care of sick siblings while his father had slaved away in a fusion plant and his mother had worked endless part-time jobs. It had gotten worse when Rune was ten and subsidization for government-sponsored housing for impoverished families was cut in half. Between paying protection fees to gangs in the slums and paying for the roof over their heads, the Yahuis were barely squeaking by. Things eased up when Rune started taking on part-time jobs himself—at the expense of his class time.

At the time, it had seemed like such a good idea. Skipping a couple classes here and there to help pay the bills and keep everyone out of the wind and cold of the frigid Chicago winters seemed a small price to pay. But a couple classes had snowballed into five, then ten, then an entire week, and before he knew it, he’d racked up so many absences he couldn't pass the grade. Now at nineteen years of age, having been held back a year and gotten a GPA of only 3.03 Rune knew he was screwed.

There were two ways out of the slums. Either you could go to college, or you could enlist. With a GPA of 3.03 and having been held back a year, Rune’s chances at getting into college had been abysmal. A hundred years back a GPA of 3.03 would’ve been fine if he wanted to go to college. But in 2153 the college game had entirely changed. With the flooding of the majority of the major coastal population centers in the United States had come the flooding of a large number of colleges within the United States. With a significantly decreased number of colleges for applicants to apply to, the competition had intensely fiercened. It was rare to see anyone get into college with less than a 3.5 GPA. Even rarer for someone from the mega-slums with the need of a financial aid package. Besides, Rune didn’t want to get saddled with hundreds of thousands in student loans if he was going to a bottom tier college. There simply was no place for Rune in academia, and the couple applications he did file were all rejected.

The military was as much of a crapshoot. Once upon a time enlisting hadn’t been too hard. All you really needed to do was graduate high school, not commit crimes, be relatively fit, and not fail the ASVAB. But the ASVAB had been revamped, and candidates not just needed to be fit but qualified. In the wake of the formation of the United Face of Humanity or UFOH by the Alliance of Powers (AP), the Southern Alliance of Island Nations (SAIN), and the US and UN, there weren’t a lot of places for troops to be sent. For one of the first times in history, the vast majority of the world was peaceably allied with each other while they rebuilt their countries. People were focussed on peace and rapid demilitarization occurred, especially in America. The army was shrinking—more applicants weren’t needed. But to the many impoverished and unemployed stuck in the mega-slums, the prospect of food, warm meals, and steady pay was very, very appealing. Hundreds of thousands applied every year. Only the best got in. Rune was in good shape and at the cost of two years and nearly all of his pocket money had managed to grind the rank of ace in a VR game called Whirl of Warplanes at the only VR arcade in New Southern Chicago. Unfortunately being well qualified to be a pilot didn’t help him at all—he learned far too late from the enlistment officer that you needed to be an officer to qualify to be a pilot, and to be an officer you either had to go through college ROTC or be very, very well qualified and get into a military institution. Rune hadn’t a prayer of either of those things happening.

That was probably why Rune was in the process of signing his body away to the government. He didn’t want to spend the entirety of his life in the slums and was willing to take a risk to get out.

In 2124, the UFOH had begun the Virtual Citizen plan, an attempt to curtail the massive population overburdening Earth. The plan was exceptionally ambitious. In 2117 humanity had reached the virtual singularity, the point at which VR technology had become able to create worlds physically indistinguishable from the real one. The VC plan was a project to digitize billions worldwide through the process of extracting their brains, storing them in specialized VR dive pods, and placing them in underground stations complete with the servers that would host the world that the VCs would live in. The VCs would need a fraction of the nutrients just to upkeep their brains and wouldn’t take up living space on earth. Even better was the fact that the digitized citizens would leave behind their bodies. All the various components of their bodies, including organs, bone marrow, DNA, whatever the human body contained, could all be harvested for a few million of profit. It was ingenious. Not just were the governments getting rid of excess population, the plan would practically pay for itself.

It took twenty-five years for the UFOH to finally accomplish their goal. A full two-thirds of that time was spent engineering the needed tech, the final third was spent fine-tuning it. The project was a wild success. While the survival rate of the operation was only 95 percent, many millions from the slums across the world opted into the program. It was practically the only chance at a better life for millions.

With no chance at college or the military, Rune could definitely count himself among those hopeless millions. Similar to the number of college entrees and military entrees, the program also had a low number of entrees: the UFOH was only getting maybe three-million off the planet every year and there were far more than that in terms of applicants. Somehow though Rune had gotten lucky and he’d won the proverbial lottery for this year’s shipment of VCs. Rune had gotten his ticket early on in the year. He’d hoped to make it to college or into the military but had drawn a blank. While living in a video game sounded great on paper, he wanted to stay with his family and friends and most importantly didn’t want to lose his body. There was also the risk of death. But Rune wanted to make something of himself. And he’d never do that trapped in the slums. So there he was, sitting in the lobby of New Southern Chicago’s VC office, signing away his body to the government.

Do you forfeit your United States citizenship in order to become a Virtual Citizen of the UFOH?

Rune grimaced and then checked the digitized checkbox on the PDA next to the statement. It was the last term on the form. He scribbled in his signature on the empty line below it. As a VC, technically, he wouldn’t be an American citizen anymore. America was part of the UFOH, but the UFOH was technically a separate political entity. Not that it mattered. Soon he wouldn’t even be on Earth and he’d leave the UFOH, the mega-slums, and everything he’d ever known behind.

Rune got up and carried the PDA across the lobby to the cute registrar behind the main desk who was tapping away at a keyboard, entering something into her digisheet. She didn’t even glance up as he came to a stop.

“Done?” She asked the question in a curt tone.

Nervous and wanting to be on with the process, Rune kept his response minimal. “Yeah, finished filling out the forms. Where should I put this?” He waved the PDA in the air.

The registrar’s eyes flickered to the empty desk space in front of Rune before flickering back to her computer. “On the desk.” She paused for a moment before continuing, “As soon as we verify that your forms are signed and in order, I’ll call a nurse in to take you to your operating room. Expect a fifteen-minute wait.”

Rune shuddered. “Alright, sounds good.” The words came out a little shaky. He set the PDA down and gave her a nod. “I’ll just, uh, be waiting in the lobby then.” He turned around and strolled away, navigating his way through padded chairs filled with soon-to-be fellow VCs before finally getting back to the chair he’d been sitting in. Rune flopped down bonelessly down into the empty chair.

After letting out a shaky breath and smoothing back his forehead length hair, Rune checked his Digiwatch. It read 3:24. That meant that they should call for him at roughly 3:39. Rune let out another shaky breath. He really didn’t like dissections. The idea of something underneath his skin and messing around with his organs… Rune shuddered again.

Just think of bunnies. Bunnies, sheep, puppies, kittens, cute things, scalpels, brains, broken bones, they’re gonna dissect me and rip my brains out…

After attempting to take his mind off his upcoming excerebration and failing miserably, Rune instead opted to see if he couldn’t chat up the people sitting next to him. Glancing to the left, he saw an older man, maybe in his mid-forties or early fifties. Judging by his ratty, torn and mismatched red fleece and orange jacket and a rather unkempt appearance, the man was a stray just like Rune. And now that Rune was paying a little better attention, he finally realized where that smell was coming from. Rune’s face soured a little, and he observed the man a little more closely. He in the midst of reading through the form that Rune had just filled out. The PDA was less than five inches from his face, and it seemed that the man was scrutinizing every line of the document. Rune didn’t really feel like bothering the man, so instead, he looked at the person sitting on his right.

Sitting to his right was a girl. But not just any girl. She seemed to be an uptowner. Rune did a double take. The girl was dress in the flowing, loose expensive clothing that was the current fashion trend in America. More telling was the fact that she was clutching a holophone in her right hand. That was a sure sign of at least moderate wealth. Pretty much everyone had a cellphone—but very few had holophones. A cheap holophone sold for upwards of two thousand digicoins which were enough for a mega-slums family to feed themselves for a year. Rune had seen them stolen before with his own two eyes at both gunpoint and knifepoint. She was definitely an uptowner to have both a holophone and that clothing. The only real question was what was she doing in the mega-slums VC office? Rune knew that there was an uptown VC office. Not just that, but to use the VC office in a district you had be a resident of that district, which meant residing there for more than a month. She would’ve had to go out of her way just to be allowed to go through the VC office.

“Hey,” the word got caught in his throat and didn’t come out quite right. The girl didn’t even start, so he decided to try again, assuming she hadn’t heard him.

“Hey. You from uptown Chicago?” Her left hand swiped a couple times and a couple more images from her holophone shifted around. Otherwise, there was no response. Rune scratched the back of his head. He was almost certain that the girl had heard him that time. He decided to switch tack and try a more neutral approach.

“Uh, so… I’m Rune. Do you have a name?” He asked the question in as friendly a voice as he could possibly muster, a warm and entreating smile stretched across his face. The silence stretched as the girl ignored him and continued doing whatever it was she was doing on her holophone. Rune’s warm smile soured a little. He knew that there could be some pretty bad discrimination against strays, but if this girl didn’t like strays what was the point of coming to their district to enter the VC program when she could do it perfectly well from her own? Annoyed but wanting to crack the enigma, Rune tried to strike up a conversation a third time.

“So then miss nameless, you looking forward to becoming a VC and playing Endless Stars?” Still no response. Rune was a little confused now. She should at least be telling him to shut up or something. Maybe there was a bug in her ear or something? He leaned out of his chair, trying to peer around her hair to see if there wasn’t something stopping her from being able to hear him. Her eyes shifted to give him a flat stare as her right hand made a brushing motion, and her holophone turned off.

“What are you doing?” Each and every word was precise and terse. The girl was very clearly annoyed with him. Rune’s face flushed a little. Now that he was actually looking her in the face, he realized the girl was kinda cute.

Rune tried to shrug nonchalantly. “Uh, nothing. I was just tryin’ to see if you had an implant in your ear or something. You weren’t really responding and I was trying to talk with you.” Rune tried his best to seem unconcerned. The girl’s eyes narrowed.

“I was in the middle of something. Didn’t your parents teach you not to interrupt people while they’re in the middle of doing something?” Her voice was cutting, annoyed. She seemed to be pissed off at him and not really in the mood for a conversation, so Rune decided to cut and run before the conversation devolved into a full-on flame-fest.

“My bad, my bad, I couldn’t see what you were doing.” Rune pointed up at his face. “No vid glasses, see? I can’t tell what you’re doing on that holophone.” Rune shrugged. “Pretty much nobody here in New Southern Chicago has one.” The girl opened her mouth as if to make a sharp retort, then recoiled a little as the words sunk in. Almost guiltily, she shot a furtive glance around the room.

“Oh.” The word came out of her mouth hesitantly.

Rune shrugged again. “Well, I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing. It seemed important, best not to let me keep you from it.” He started to shift in his seat, to turn to face the stray sitting next to him when her voice came again.

“My name’s Ivona. And I am from uptown.” The words came out confidently, almost daring him to challenge her. Pausing mid swivel, Rune turned back to regard the girl.

“Ivona huh? So how did a high-class uptown girl like you get down into the slums VC office with the rest of us strays?” The words were slightly mocking, but Rune was genuinely curious.

“It’s the exchange rate. It’s higher down here,” Her tone was haughty as if she was explaining something that should be obvious to Rune, “and I wanted to make the most out of my savings. The rate down here is 1.01 times what it is at the VC office with the next highest exchange rate in uptown, and with my savings, I decided that renting down here for a month was worth the cost so I could save a little.”

Rune’s eyebrows climbed for the sky as he quickly ground the math out in his head. Renting unsubsidized in a moderately nice apartment in the mega-slums was 300 digicoins a month. That meant that she had… Rune’s eyes widened a little. At least 30,000 digicoins. That was a lot of fucking money.

“Uh. Huh. I see. Yeah. Uh. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.” Rune did his best to make it sound like he was agreeing with her while he gave his head a slight shake. Uptowners like her lived in an entirely different world than him. Slightly shocked by that grand proclamation of wealth, Rune lacked the presence of mind to continue the conversation. The girl, after having Rune agree with her, seemed to be content to go back to doing whatever she had been on her holophone.

Rune knew that people could convert real-world money into in game currency, but Rune had been looking forward to a fresh start. This was a stark reminder that the world would always be skewed in favor towards the rich, giving them a head start on everybody.

His thoughts in a dark place, Rune hardly noticed when a nurse came by and picked up the girl to take her to her operation. It wasn’t long after when Rune was finally called for his. The nurse led him through the winding corridors of the facility before they finally stopped outside one of the many, large, steel plated and engraved security doors. Rune was wondering where the card swipe for access was when the nurse put her hand on the door and blue lines pulsed up from the floor to trace the outline of the woman’s hand before pulsing up and into the wall out the top of the door. Rune’s eyes widened. It was a bioscanner. That was some expensive tech.

The nurse stepped into the room and ushered Rune in through the door after her. Rune hesitantly stepped inside, glancing around. The walls were chrome steel, with dark black lines dividing the walls into separate sections, presumably only there for aesthetic. On the opposite end of the room from the entrance stood a holocomputer stand, and next to it a gel bath with some sort of strange machine next to it. Rune gulped audibly as his eyes fixed on the machine. It looked like something out of a horror movie, a set of spindly appendages complete with surgical instruments on the ends of them. Some were more mundane, such as pliers, scalpels, and prods. Others, like the small circular saw and massive injector full of neon green liquid, were downright terrifying. The nurse seemed to notice Rune’s fixation and made a dismissive waving gesture towards the robot.

“Oh, don’t be scared of the surgicobot. Once you get into the gel bath you won’t be able to feel a thing. Besides, a qualified assistant will be supervising the entire process and an actual surgeon will complete all the critical steps of your procedure. There’s no need to worry at all.” The nurse strode over to the holocomputer and signaled Rune to come over. Grudgingly he did. The nurse handed him a pair of vid glasses and Rune slipped them on. Through the lenses Rune could make sense of the floating holograms. One allowed him to make digicalls, one allowed him to write a will, one had access to the Internet, and the last, arguably most important hologram allowed him to make a digicoin deposit into his account in Endless Stars. 356 digicoins. Everything he and his family had been able to scrounge together in the past month after he’d finalized his decision to become a VC. They’d wanted to send him off with a good parting gift. His parents had always felt as if they screwed over his future by not working hard enough and needing him to help pick up the slack and this had been their way of repaying him. Rune had really appreciated the gesture. But after realizing just how much an advantage someone from an upper tier district with several thousand digicoins to throw around had, Rune couldn’t bring himself to spend that money on himself. Five minutes later, Rune had signed 256 of the 356 digicoins back to his family in his will, only keeping 100 for himself to help him get his feet off the ground.

The remaining 100 digicoins he transferred to Endless Stars.

Units added to your future bank account.

With that Rune was had nothing left to do. With a shudder, he turned to the nurse who was patiently standing by.

“I’m ready. How do we do this.”

The nurse gestured towards the gel bath. “It’s simple,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Climb in.”

Rune gulped and strode over to the bath. He clambered up onto the side of the bath and looked back nervously at the nurse. She gave him an encouraging nod. He turned and slipped into the bath, fully submerging himself. It was cold. Rune hoped that the general anesthetics in the liquid would hurry and get to work. It wasn’t long before his lungs started burning. His instinctive drowning response kicked in and Rune started struggling towards the surface, only to find the surface closed, a sheet of metal preventing him from leaving the tub. Rune started panicking. Desperate for air, Rune opened his mouth and inhaled gel. He felt the burning sensation of the liquid filling his airways, esophagus, and stomach. Then he felt nothing at all.