I leaned my head on the bus window as I watched the scenery outside. The township building was looking more like a miniature as we moved further away. When I looked ahead, vast green was starting to overrun the province. It concluded that the town was surrounded by walls made up of the forest.

"You should sleep." Alatha who sat next to me said, she patted her shoulder signalling for me to lean on.

I was tired, but my eyes couldn't comply. The mission my mother had assigned me to do made me restless. "How long do you think until we reach the border?"

"About two hours, maybe. My mom got assigned there sometimes. She used to take me on visits when I was small."

"If we use one of those flying cars that once existed a long time ago we would already be there by now." A girl who sat next to Alatha on the other row suddenly interrupted.

The matter intrigued the other girls and they started talking about the past. There were times when the Earth was reigned by intellectual men and technology was prestigious.

"Flying cars, space travel, and even artificial intelligence. Can you imagine if men still exist now?" One more girl exclaimed.

Due to the small population and lack of workforce after men went extinct, the earth plummeted into darkness for years. Hence the downfall of technology along with it. Miraculously, women era managed to pick up the pieces after just a few generations. With innovation, renewable energy was employed, but it forced the decrement of the modern machine.

"Yes, but they ruined our mother earth one way or another," Alatha interjected.

Most of them agreed with what Alatha said. And for a while, I tried to ignore their ramblings, but the clatter got too intense that I couldn't concentrate on anything.

"I think each individual is responsible for their own doing, it doesn't matter what specific group they fall into, " I insinuated, instantly receiving glances from some of my classmates.

While some looked remorseful, most wield their look of disapproval. But I held my head high, trusting my words had no wrong to it.

Like a click, the bus fell silent, and the only sound left attending were from some of the girls whispering with each other.

All the commotion made time move faster. Out of a sudden, we arrived at the checkpoint border. My heart was pounding hard as I walked down the bus. I scanned around to study my surroundings. The vicinity was enclosed with barbed wire fences, and only two passages were leading to the other side; one was where the vehicles were driven through, and the other was where we were in line.

When I saw a gate-like door, it was when my nerves started biting me; that was what my mother had informed me about last night. Luckily I was appropriately in the middle of the line so I had time to analyse the situation.

The procedure looked quite easy after watching several girls walked past the gate. So I readied my shoulder bag and dropped it just as I was about to step through.

As I crouched down to pick it back up, I let out a spontaneous "Ops!". It made the FOS officer guarding the monitor to look at me and chuckled. I smiled goofily at her, and amid the act, I spotted my ID flickering twice on the screen behind her.

It must be my lucky day because the girl behind me walked through the gate before the officer turned her attention back to the monitor. I was cheering silently for the victory.

However, my victory was short lived when I saw every car passing through got inspected thoroughly. The FOS officer, accompanied by their dogs opened every compartment and even looked under the vehicle. It got me thinking about something.

"What do you think such tight security is for?" Amy mumbled. She practically stole those words from me.

For some unknown reason, a sense of bad feeling was starting to crawl under my skin.

***

The thing about nightmares was, we were supposed to part with it after reality took over. That was what I was looking forward to; for it to end.

"Charis, wake up... We already arrive at HEROIN."

My eyes sprang open abruptly when I heard the word HEROIN allover again. Alatha looked at me in alarm, rubbing my shoulder gently to calm me.

"Did you have a bad dream?" she asked.

A haphazard nod and shake was my response at the muddle. Looking outside, it was more than a dream when my sight engulfed the word HEROIN in an instant. The other girls were already waiting to start the tour and waved at me to hurry down.

When I stepped off the bus, I felt my stomach tightening. It could be I was drowsy from the journey or thinking about HEROIN affected me more than I thought.

"You don't look so good, " Amy commented, she interlocked our arms together.

"Well, you two take her to the ladies room first and get freshen up." Our tour leader who was a representative of the HEROIN instructed. "Make sure you girls join us afterwards and don't go anywhere else, do you hear me?"

After nodding and hearing both my friends accorded agreement to her behest, we hurried to the bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet before I heaved and hurled out all my breakfast this morning, including the peanuts Alatha kept offering me to eat in the bus.

"You got bus lag bad..." Amy said from outside the booth.

Alatha, on the other hand, was stroking my back lightly, unfazed by the smell of vomit.

After a few more barf episodes, I finally felt relief. I washed my face and took the aspirin that Alatha handed over to me.

"Are you feeling okay now?" she asked.

"Yes, let's go, " I said.

"Now that's the spirit. Let's go!" Amy clasped her hand excitedly and tugged us both towards the entrance.

The facility was humongous, it consisted of 3 semi ellipse-shaped building which was connected with a tunnel-like channel. There wasn't a single window visible from the outside. What was unique about it was the greenery covering the building, when you looked from afar the whole site looked like a hill.

As we walked in, the same gate scanner waited for us to walk through. But this time it was paired with a metal detector.

"Please leave all your belongings here, ladies, " said the security lady with a stern face.

We emptied all our pockets, and when I contemplated over my phone and looked at her, she nodded. She put our stuff in a safe and gave us the key.

The surrounding inside was very still. Every personnel who were wearing white from top to bottom minded their own business as if we weren't even there.

Thankfully we managed to catch up with our group. But there wasn't much to see besides the information regarding the pods and history of HEROIN establishment. Most of the sections were closed off for visitors.

We followed the tour guide deeper into the facility and stopped at a large open space. The sight almost reminded me of Amy's garden but it was multiple time bigger. My eyes skimmed over the different shades of sprouts growing from the ground.

"This is where we nurture the pods donated by volunteer and some are from deceased newborn," the tour guide informed.

I gaped at the remarkable video of the pod emerging on the Meniphic above us. It was the first time I ever saw a Meniphic live. The magnificent contrivance floated in mid-air inside an almost invisible frame and the visual-only consist of the primary colour.

*Disional Telecommucations Hologra Machine, a new kind of holographic projector invented by females. It was pronounced easily to correspond the meaning 'many pictures' and 'magnificent' combined.

"All of ours should have matured by now." I caught one of my classmate's comment.

Amidst pulling my attention towards her, I noticed the quiet turn of event. Our tour representative was now busy talking with one of HEROIN's officer. And never had I expected what would come next.

"May I have your attention, please. It seems there is an error with one of your register record. Is there a Ms Charis Charmaine, here?"

Suddenly all eyes were on me and I felt the bile build-up in my throat again after hearing what the tour guide just said.

To be continued...

⚜⚜⚜

Thank you so much for reading. What do you think about this chapter? Share with me your thoughts.