CHAPTER 1.

THE DAY EVERYTHING WENT TO SH*T.

Earth 296.

July 10 2046

Dallas, Texas.

Tuesday 07:59 EST

I looked at my cheap linoleum table covered with envelopes; some sealed and others opened. Bills, so many fucking bills, Anger and despair filled me as I squeezed the letter in my hand.

A letter informing me of the rising amount of student loan debt plus interest currently in my name and a reminder that I'd failed to meet up with the payments.

My TV turned itself on based on its preprogrammed startup time of 8:00 am. The anchor on the early morning news opened her segment with a shocking headline. "A brutal attack on a Russian submarine that took place yesterday between 1:00am and 3:00am EST. All the ship's crew members were killed and an undisclosed number of hypersonic nuclear missiles and drones were taken. Information on the attack was leaked by an anonymous source, and the Russian government has refused to make any comments regarding the attack and any alleged perpetrators. The international community is stunned by the daring nature of this attack. There are already accusations of sabotage amongst NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) nations, with threats of war hanging in the air."

"This attack is the fourth known successful attempt to steal enriched plutonium and other rare minerals in three years. Last year, Indian and Pakistani air bases were also attacked, where an unknown number of warheads were taken. And prior to that, the Brazilian nuclear submarine, "Álvaro Alberto" was attacked and stripped of its nuclear arsenal; it remains at the bottom of the ocean in the Strait of Hormuz."

"No organization or body has taken responsibility for these attacks, and the methods by which the assailants were able to transport the highly unstable and radioactive materials remain unknown."

I tuned out the news anchors droning for a bit to focus on the bills on my table, trying to wrack my brain on how to get out of this ever deepening financial pit I'd found myself in.

"In other news, the EU has passed the new purified air bill that will compel private citizens to pay a monthly charge to private companies like Airgen; who'd recently perfected carbon capture research and have built massive facilities in several client countries to combat rapidly rising CO2 levels."

"There have been protests—" I tuned out the persistent voice of the news lady, uninterested in the entire dialogue. Within my considerable pile of bills, I already had an air purification bill sitting on the table.

No amount of protests was going to stop the air bill in Europe. We tried that route here in the United States with little success. The government just let us bitch and whine, then did what they wanted anyway. America has always been ahead of the curve with regards to exorbitant and unfair bills, but I admit I may be a bit biased as I stare at the stack on my table..

With the climate deteriorating, a host of new plant diseases and pests began to spread, affecting agricultural output across the world. A number of highly infectious and treatment resistant diseases began to crop up all over the world, killing hundreds of thousands and all but bringing several countries' economies to a stand still. The government imposed a compulsory and progressive carbon credit system on various aspects of society with penalties ranging from hefty fines to even jail time.

At first the initiative was welcomed as a great step in the right direction with regards to combating pollution, but it fell on its face as the government failed to properly regulate the worst climate defaulters; the energy industry.

Despite all the promises to completely switch to clean energy and use other alternative sources like wind and solar, most world governments still relied heavily on fossil fuel to sustain the fuel hungry beasts that society had become since the industrial age.

In the end, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. The governments of the world would have to spend a lot of money to create the necessary infrastructure necessary to sustain a new energy system when the old one was already in place and cost far less.

No way! Instead, the usual conciliatory promises made by aspiring elected officials to advance the use of alternative energy sources became the norm, while crude oil production steadily increased even as the cost of fuel derivatives fell sharply.

Yet another situation where greed trumps science.

The problem was that current alternative energy sources were insufficient to sustain the massive machinery that was modern society and the ability of energy companies to subvert protections placed in the laws of various countries via lobbying simply made things even worse.

World leaders came up with various initiatives to halt the now obvious effect of climate change, but their inability to agree on anything ensured that each attempt failed to produce any consistent desired result.

And then to hit the final nail in the coffin, the Recombinant Adaptive Respiratory virus (RAR) swept through the world like locusts on a wheat farm.

Over 300 million people across the world were infected with the airborne disease in four years and 25 million died within the same time period . The height of the epidemic lasted five years with sporadic incidents randomly showing up across the world till date.

Government's across the world promised all sorts of "miracle" vaccines, but it was later discovered that it was all an attempt to prevent people from panicking and to get everyone back to work.

Companies like Airgen; a subsidiary of LodgeOil; the largest oil conglomerate in the world, approached the world's governments in the wake of the epidemic with a proposal to build highly advanced carbon capture facilities in major population centers within their countries, but in return, they'll impose a rate on the purified air.

The United States was the first country to agree to the initiative, passing a bill to impose an air purification charge based on area of residence.

While some welcomed the new air purification charge as a way to halt the rising carbon emissions, most people argued that the government was forcing its citizens to pay for a resource that was previously considered a God-given right and that it was the parent companies of the so called "savior" companies like Airgen that played a major role in the rising CO2 levels causing climate change.

I ignored all the drama, the world was going to hell in a souped up ferrari and as much as I wanted to be worried about the possible world ending implications of respiratory diseases, a failing climate and a possible world war, there had been so many headlines; many with their own possible world ending implications, rolling constantly across media outlets these days that it simply felt like just another tuesday.

I tried to take my mind off the letter in my hand by thinking of the upcoming weekend when I'll be free to clear that extremely difficult bone dungeon with my party.

These days, the only escape available to me from my shitty life was on VMMORPG's clearing dungeons, fighting massively overpowered bosses and taking loot.

Life hadn't been going exactly as planned since I graduated from college. I woke up every morning; rushing to arrive early to a job I despised. And even with a second job, I still couldn't keep up with the constantly growing pile of bills.

I would love to tell myself this was not the direction I imagined my life would take, how things were meant to be for me. But the stats for a young black man in America are still somewhat shit even in 2046.

I was a game developer at a skeezy game company called gamehard. There, I develop x-rated adult theme online games for their pervy customers.

It was a depressing job, at least for me. But in this economy, you've got to take what's in front of you. Finding a good job in the tech industry is difficult enough without adding the fact that I also had a record for computer hacking and identity theft.

At six feet eight inches tall, dark skinned and packed full of muscle, I knew that I was nobody's ideal idea of a hacker.

When you think of a hacker, what comes to mind is a skinny or overweight awkward looking man-child with social anxiety.

Nobody expects the big guy that looks like he'd be more comfortable as a strip club bouncer, or a pro wrestler.

I could still feel the itching skin around my left ankle where my recently removed ankle monitor used to be. After six months on probation, it finally felt good to have my life back. Bills and all

Luckily I had a great parole officer, unlike some you hear about that make life unreasonably difficult for their charges.

It was thanks to Alan; my parole officer, that I had my current job; shitty as it was. He went above and beyond to reduce the length of my parole and provide job recommendation for a convicted cyber-criminal at a job with limited access to a computer. I really had no idea how he pulled that one off.

Alan really stuck his neck out for me in ways nobody had since my parent's death. The forty year old father of three had acted like a father to me and seen through my macho bullshit. He'd stuck with me through and through and made me want to step up just by his example.

When most people look at me, they are unable to see past the colour of my skin or my bulk. They either remove me from their considerations or consider me trouble. I felt a deep well of bitterness as I remembered all the times in my life I've had to deal with close-minded assholes.

After college, getting a job was difficult especially in the tech industry.

Let's just say trying to get a job in silicon valley with a degree from your local community college will take you out of the running right off the bat.

Obviously from my ranting, anyone can easily assume I did not earn my degree from one of those fancy ivy league colleges. That combined with my "visual attributes," and the strong downsizing sweeping the IT sector of the economy, made finding a good job even harder.

So I took some freelance online jobs. Anything from writing browsing scripts to designing robots for specialized projects.

I was kind of a jack of all trades engineer, handling all kinds of problems across the tech spectrum. The pay never matched the work, barely able to cover most of my bills, much less my fast growing student loans debt.

I was slowly drowning in debt and in my desperation, I listened to people that I should have avoided, people that at the time, I thought were my friends.

Make no mistake, I take full responsibility for my actions and have no one else to blame for where I ended up other than myself.

But when they came up with the idea to steal the identity of some snub nosed rich suburban types and gain access to their fat bank accounts, my eyes flashed with dollar signs. I convinced myself that I wasn't doing anything immoral. It was a victimless crime, "They all had insurance right?"

Wrong! wrong in the worst way possible. But when shit hit the fan, I was the only one caught in the backlash. My so-called friends had apparently needed a fall guy in case things went bad and I was desperate and loyal enough to be the perfect patsy.

It took me a while to put it all together, but at the time I was too focused on my defense to notice.

In a misplaced sense of loyalty, I refused to snitch, taking responsibility for the entire operation. I was lucky enough to have held onto the login information for the accounts we used to divert the funds; another way to ensure culpability lay squarely on my shoulders and I returned most of the money.

I got three years from the judge and got out after two on good behavior. After six months on probation, I finally got my life back; more or less.

So you bet your ass that I was still bitter and I honestly didn't know what I'd do if I saw any of them again. Not that they'd be stupid enough to show their faces anywhere near me. Motherfuckers had wiped their online presence and gone dark.

Alan has been my rock since I got out. Sure prison wasn't an easy place to be, but it wasn't too bad either; at least for me. For me it was mostly boring, spending most of my free time at the weights or finally catching up on all the book reading I missed on the outside.

Not everyone on the inside is an animal like you see portrayed on TV. A lot of us just want to do our time and get our lives back.

But since my parents, nobody else had put their neck out for me the way Alan did and no matter where life takes me, I'll always be grateful to him.

My thoughts returned to the dungeon raid; my means of taking my mind off all the shit in my life while slowly trying to pull myself from the brink of bankruptcy. My party members and I had been grinding all week in preparation, and tonight we would enter the bone dungeon with the rest of our guild.

I had plans to spend my day at the auto-body shop where I did custom upgrades for clients who wanted specialized work done on their vehicles, but we're unwilling to fork out the cash most high end auto-shops would charge them.

It paid well, even better than my job coding at gamehard. I'd be working there full time, if I didn't have crushing debts weighing on me, plus I was still holding out hope for the tech industry.

I left my place, heading to work on my bike. As I pedaled my way to a shitty job I hated and with crushing debt that had grown even more burdensome while I was in prison. My mind flashed to the moment everything went to shit for me. I still remember the day, as clearly as if I was still standing on our threadbare rug, the sirens flashing outside, the knock on the door, the policeman at the door talking to my sitter about my parents being in an accident, child services coming to our dingy apartment to take me. The pain still felt fresh in my mind.

I spent most of my teenage years in the foster system, moving from home to home. Some homes were bad with abusive foster assholes; those I ran away from. Some were good; too good, with people who actually wanted to help, but back then, I was too angry to take what they were offering, my pride blinding me to the simple kindness of the people around me. I ran away from those too.

In some ways they were worse than the bad places. At least with bad people you know what to expect, they don't look at you with pity in their eyes. Anything but pity.

Either way, life was shitty bouncing from home to home and being a big black kid in Dallas, Texas probably didn't help either. By the time I finished high school, I was well over six feet with a massive physique,

I had a small science scholarship to attend a local college and I took the chance as a means to get out of my hood. As much as I wanted to slide into apathy; do drugs and lose myself in vice and crime, I couldn't get over the fact that it would break my mother's heart if I ever gave up.

Sure life dealt me a shitty hand but I had to toughen up and take it like a man. The scholarship couldn't come too soon, the gangs in the area had increased recruitment intensity and because of my size and my intimidating looks, I was apparently prime gang material.

It was a struggle to avoid the gangs; moving from place to place, trying despite my hunger and the temptation of seeing guys my age driving cool cars and having the hottest chicks on their arms, trying to focus on the dream of college. The idea that once I was through with school, I'd be better off than these drug pushers. Looking back, I'm not so certain I succeeded.

After finishing up early; I logged out of the network, switched off my work computer, picked up my bag and hustled out of the place.

I had to hurry to my second job; yes a second job. Those student loans would not pay for themselves. After thirty minutes, I stopped at the auto body shop.

My boss Mike was a saint amongst men. Sure he was a grumpy, foul-mouthed, ham-fisted, booze-guzzling saint; but a saint nonetheless. A former convict himself, his hiring policy was open to those with criminal records. He was a good guy, willing to give you a fair shake as long as you're on the up and up, and although he was fair, he suffered no fools. The red-headed Irishman had a temper he kept in check until he was pushed and he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty if anyone tried to cheat him. Some of his former employees and cheapskate customers had to learn this lesson the hard way.

I waved to Mike as I walked in, he gave his usual grunt in reply and waved me on.

Mike is not what you'll call a people person. Heck, he rubbed most people the wrong way; from suppliers to customers. The only reason we were not losing too many customers to his surliness, was that we delivered on deadlines and we're relatively cheaper than our competition.

If you get him drunk enough, he'll tell you that the reason he has employees is so he doesn't have to deal with people. But as far as I'm concerned, like Alan he was more than okay in my book. There were people who just put themselves out there for others. I don't know if I'd ever be that brave.

After changing into my overalls, I signed in to begin my shift. I picked up the notepad; another quirk of Mike who mistrusted computers and made sure we all used the notepads to input measurements and information for the next shift.

The only computer in the entire place was the one he used to do the books, which he stubbornly refused to connect to the internet.

I looked through the available work for my shift. First on the list was a classic 2007 Harley Davidson Ultra that the owner wanted tricked up with chrome wheels. Sighing, I looked at the wheels with envy, wondering when I'd have the money to buy a vehicle like this one. Shaking off my melancholy, I got down to work.

By the time I was almost done for the day, it was dark outside, I pulled out my smartphone to check the time, It was almost 9:30 pm and I looked up to see Mike by the door preparing to leave.

"Kid, I'm heading home, try and close up before ten and make sure you lock up good and proper before you leave." He grunted to me before opening the door and stepping out. How the man was able to hold entire conversations in grunts was beyond me, but somehow Mike was always able to manage the feat.

"Have a goodnight boss." I said to his back as the door closed. I was almost done with the bike in front of me and then I'd head home and lose myself in magic and swordplay.