Aria woke up before noon with an empty stomach and the familiar aching body.

Damn the system cleanse.

Looking around the familiar room, she felt a burst of nostalgia. Leaning back against the headrest, Aria hugged the pillow to her chest and squeezed her eyes closed.

Tears fell to her cheeks as she got lost in her memories. All the hardships from the last life and the fast pace events from the last two days just was too much at this moment.

Being in her own room, surrounded by her own things and being reminded of her simpler life before all the bad stuff that happened.

She thought she was stronger than this.

After some time, she stopped crying and picked up her (The disappeared Aria's) phone. No messages or missed calls. Aria smirked self deprecatingly. Her family surely did not care about her. Only coming to her whenever they needed something since she was the "dependable" one.

Sweeping the whole apartment clean, she sent an email to the apartment manager telling her she's moving out effective immediately. Then Aria left her old home.

Grabbing a quick bite for lunch, Aria went to the DMV and requested a physical copy of her license for official use. After touching the computer system, she had S3 create a new identity for herself.

Aries Wang

Gender: M

Age: 20

Place of birth: Country C, Town GHX

Mother's name: Vicky Zhang

Father's name: Henry Wang

Aria chose the place of birth to a small town that burnt down 18 years ago leaving no records or people who remembered living there.

She then had S3 create over 20 random identities for use later on. After the ZA, each base still scans the citizen's ID chip. But a physical ID was useful in some cases too.

Once the physical ID of the Li identity was ready, it was packaged together with all the others at the pick up window.

Deciding to get rid of Edward's batch of clothes and materials, she went to the donation site and gave away everything unidentifiable. She did the same for Sara's clothes and the clothes she found in her apartment.

Moving on to the homeless shelter, she left all the food that Edward found. She doesn't need his food, she can buy her own.

Then she burnt the remaining identifiable things before heading to the mall to replenish her wardrobe after the purge. She bought a few comfortable outfits, both male and female in her size. Mall clothes are good enough for everyday wear pre-ZA, but she'll need to visit a military town later to buy better defensive clothing.

City S is a 1st tier compress food production city. The city comprised half farmers and half food and water production. During the war, they contributed a good amount of compress food production to the army so their consumable production was very advanced. After the war, they and a handful of cities continued to produce half of the food within Country C.

But within the past decade due to the fact that people's wealth allows them to dine more and more extravagantly. So even though the compress food production (CFP) companies are still earning money providing for the public, mostly to the lower income families with healthy nutrient compress food, they are not doing as well. A few months before the ZA, the majority of the compress food production companies relocated overseas where the market was still booming.

Country C won the war largely due to its superior war technology and its ability to feed it's fighting force and citizens during and after the war. Other enemy countries were not so lucky. However, enough time has passed that Country C is allowing businesses to be relocated overseas to do business but still need to provide Country C with a certain ton of food and liquid at the same price range for the next century.

Therefore, 90% of the CFP companies already moved their businesses overseas in 3029. Aria knew that at this time there were only a handful of the CFP companies left in Country S, mostly small mom and pops shops that can't afford to move their businesses elsewhere. Even though the profits were less, it's still enough to live and eat. By the Fall of 3032, all the remaining CFP in Country C received the country's subsidies to venture into other types of businesses since the demand for compress food was no longer there. Everyone wanted organically grown food that was cooked by real chefs and presented nicely at a restaurant to dine.

Not little 1x1 cubes of high calorie food full of vitamins and health supplements. Even the liquid pills were phased out. 1 cube of food equals 2500 calories, so 1 cube can last 1 day's worth of food so people tend to just bite off parts of the cube throughout the day. And 1 liquid pill of water equals 16 oz of water inside the system once swallowed. A whole container can last for months and are quite popular with campers, hikers, and explorers.

It was due to one of the most well known cases: 6 hikers in Country F fell into a deep cave and weren't able to notify anyone of their disappearance. They were stuck for 3 months but were able to survive until rescue due to one person's impromptu purchase of the compress foods (CF) and liquid pills (LP) during a stop at the gas station.

Since then, it's not uncommon for every person to have a package of their favorite food cubes and liquid pills inside their space button in case of emergency. This fact saved a lot of people's lives after the ZA broke out. But that also means that the demand for the compress food (CF) was at peak high... but there was inadequate supply within the country. The supply chain was unfortunately cut off 5 years before the ZA with that Overseas Relocation Deal.

Not even the heat waves nor the deep freeze leading up to the ZA could stop the politicians from moving the deal forward.

So within 2 months after the ZA, consumable supplies were low, people had to venture back to the cities they ran away from to hoard CF and LP. Of course the military had their own CFP system set up internally dedicated to their military personnel. Even though the military was run by the government, the CFP's purpose was only for military personnel, separating from the city's, state's, and country's demand for CF and LP consumables. The act was passed right after the war to prevent the military's resources and government's resources and budgets from being shared.

This was of course implemented and pushed by the government since it involved the budget. Throughout the years, the military's consumables numbers were not shared with the government since it was clear that this was not the government's problem so therefore they did not need to be in the know.

So during the AZ, the military was able to still feed it's soldiers but the government struggled to feed its citizens. When the government tried to strong arm the military to hand over some CFP system for the government's usage, they were blocked when the military said they only had two to barely feed the soldiers. Having no evidence of whether or not this is true or not, the government had no choice but to back down. During this scuffle, the military succeeded from the government to manage itself since the government was operating under pure self interest at that point. Aria wasn't too involved in that matter since she was too busy trying not to starve to death.

Aria's goal for today is the CFP nearest the Li's family. When the ZA occurred, the couple who owned the small CFP there turned into zombies. 6 months after the Li group reached the K base, the shortage of food was too dire, Ken Li, Aria's father, remembered the location of the small CFP he was interested in investing at one point in the past.

Banking on the fact that it would still be there untouched due to its unpopularity, the Li family brought their own forces back to City S and packed up the humongous untouched inventory that could feed a population of 150,000 people for a year. Taking Lily with them as a mobile warehouse, they emptied out the supplies leaving others none the wiser.

The Li's obviously hoarded the food and machines using it as leverage at the base for preferential treatments and to gain more followers and power.

Aria would never give them such a good opportunity to live well in this life.

She called the owners of the small CFP processing plant to ask if they would like to sell their business. They were surprised but replied that they are open to the right offer north of 2M.

Aria requested to meet up in person to discuss an offer and potentially purchase the whole processing plant. The couple agreed to meet at 2pm with their lawyers at the plant location.

Aria got ready, picked up some steamed buns to appease her hunger. She felt really sorry for herself. She has been eating the last few days just to live and not be hungry. She hasn't had a chance to search around for really good food.

One thing she refused to eat ever again were dried biscuits and instant noodles. The government quickly took possession of the machines that make these types of food from the pre-war museums. By the 2nd year, those were the main types of food that the citizens at the base can eat.

The government clearly was not prepared for this type of food shortage. But since the CFP were sent overseas, the farm lands were empty, and regular citizens didn't know what to do with the limited seeds that they had since the farming robots had been doing it for decades.

----

Aria: "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Lu. Thank you for meeting up with me. My name is Andrew Gu."

John Lu shot a worried look over at his wife after Aria introduced herself to them. This young man is too young to have enough money to buy their plant. Glancing back at the lawyer they brought over, his eyes questioning the authenticity of the interest of sale.

John: "Hello Mr. Gu. My name is John and my wife is Sarah. And this is our lawyer Howard Xa. Let's go inside to discuss the details."

Sarah: "What makes you interested in purchasing our business today?"

Aria: "My family runs a nonprofit organization that provides relief for third world countries. And as you well know, besides clothes, blankets, and medical supplies, we purchase large supplies of CFs and LPs. Our usual supplier relocated last spring and we have yet to decide on another supplier when they also left part way through purchase negotiations.

So we are left with the option to either purchase from the same supplies in countries B or find an alternate solution. I've decided with the uncertainty of what's going on with the CFP companies, I wanted to purchase one outright so we don't have to run into this type of problem again."

John knew that this was very common. Suppliers are leaving left and right but they are still here, thinking they can scoop up the market as needed. But the demand dwindled drastically and they have been underwater for a few months in a row already.

Aria: "Could you give me a quick tour? I am interested in the plant, the crops, the raw materials you have in stock, the farming robots, and this house. Do you have the records of your operations too? I would like to take a look at all of that before I make a well informed offer that is both fair for you and myself."

John and Sarah gave Aria a quick tour of the plant. The plant has 12 processing machines, 2 for food, 2 for liquids, 4 for vitamins, and 4 for supplements. The raw materials they have on hand is enough to make 50K CF and 100K LP. Of the 10 acre farming warehouse in the back, half was used to grow medicinal herbs to be processed into vitamins and medicinal supplements. The other half grows vegetables. Meat CFP are processed at different companies. This one is small but self sufficient, growing everything themselves.

Fresh raw materials arrive once a quarter and finished products were delivered to sellers at the end of the week. The profit margin used to be 20% but has decreased to 10% in the past few months.

The two story house they live in has 4 bedrooms and is located on an elevated hill near the road having full view of the property at each angle.

Sarah: "Are you serious about purchasing our plant? It's not that big..."

Aria: "It's big enough for my family's purpose. Now according to the information you've provided and..."

Aria repeated S3's calculations and analysis based on the numbers provided and information that is well known in the business, Aria offered a number that she believed to be fair for the couple. The manager and staff would stay on to continue the service.

Howard: "If the Lus decide to accept your offer today, how do you plan to pay?"

Aria: "In full. Under the condition that you vacate the premises by 6pm. I can add in an additional 5k as a relocation fee."

The three walked away to discuss the deal and decided to accept it. The lawyer drew up the paperworks and Aria had S3 scan it for any oddities before signing it herself. The funds were transferred over and they all shook hands.

Aria called a security firm to have 3 personnel come and guard the property as the Lus moved their stuff out of the house since the plant still has so much raw materials in stock.

A cleaning service was also scheduled to arrive at 6pm to do a deep DNA cleanse before she arrived home at 8pm. Overtime was paid for the security guard and the cleaning service accordingly.

Before Aria left the Lus to deal with their move, the security authority was transferred to Aria and their access was deleted.

Aria now owns the much prized compress food production plant.

---------------------- Author's Notes -----------------------

Now why would Aria need to buy the CFP plant? She mentioned that she wanted to get her hands on it first so that the Lis won't benefit from it later on. She obviously will take everything away before the ZA occurs but knowing that the Li's force might make the same trek to this plant due to the Ken Li's memory, a part of her wants them to come and find nothing, but another part of her wants to prevent human deaths for some useless act. Plus she has plans for it since there will be many disasters leading up to the ZA. Food will be the most important.

Although a part of her wants to let the Lis act the same in the previous life, she doesn't want to create unnecessary deaths. At that time, 100 people left but 80 people returned.