I’d seen him die.

  I’d seen him die right below me, and there was nothing I could’ve done about it.

  I’d yelled.

  I’d screamed.

  Nobody would listen. He still died.

  I wanted to feel something. Anything. Sometimes you just sit there, wondering what you’re supposed to be feeling when something as surreal as a co-worker diving himself headfirst under a heavy loader happens. You also wonder why he’d been singing a jingle. It had been about dumplings, a common advert for cantina food. even in a time of death.

  Man...was it weird to be craving food at a time like this?

  I dunno. Maybe I was still processing.

  Our direct Supervisor had seemed understanding, even taking the time to come out of The Offices to personally tell me to take the rest of the night off. His symmetrically perfect face, white teeth, and impossible smile had been shifted to an expression of empathy and kindness. He'd watched me struggle to get out of the harness, angling to guide me with a firm hand toward the exit and away from the scene with a few soft-spoken words.

  It seemed like a blessing at the time. I was nowhere near being in the right mindset to continue for the next minute, let alone the remainder of our extended shift. So, on his insistence, I’d logged out and turned in my work board before trudging homeward, still wearing the bulky Outeralls. Bravado aside, that had been the first time I’d ever personally seen someone die—at least directly. Even the fact it had been someone like...

  Well. I didn’t want to think about it.

  Not really.

  It was cold. Bitterly so, which was normal for this time of year. City 17 was fortunate to be near the southernmost tip of the peninsula. I’ve heard rumors of the cities far north of us requiring breathing masks to keep the moisture from freezing in their lungs. Thinking about it, I felt a sudden chill and began to shiver violently. The next breath came out more forcefully.

  I watched this time as the vapor formed and condensed into a wispy cloud, which rose into the harsh glare of the overheads, temporarily turning opaque and muting out the neon lights of the Spire’s exterior. The trio of towers formed the core of City 17, corporate centers for a Global War Project, “destined to save the best and brightest humanity had to offer.” That’s what the decades-old advertisements used to say anyway.

  The Port was one of the few locations where any of the Glow residents even had a shot at working for Corp-Scrit in hopes of eventually getting a living visa. A Visa meant the right to live inside. Inside meant Better, with a capital B: Better Food, Better Water, Better Heat, Better Power, and Better Peace of Mind. Deeper meant safe. Higher? Higher meant The Executive Elite. A membership to an exclusive club. Less security since it wasn't underground, but better views and, “...oh so much personal space you’d wonder if you’d died and gone to heaven.” At least that’s what my supervisor used to brag about as he mingled with the downcast and hopefuls like me. On the rare occasion he ever graced our presence like he had today, I suppose he wasn’t all that bad.

  The neon lights of the three corporate logos of the Spire’s Sponsoring Three shone like a ray of hope, their shapes fading in and out slowly due to the late shift low-power modes.

  From where I was standing, the Spires still seemed impossibly tall despite the hundreds of thousands of souls calling them Home. For most people? They end up somewhere in the middle, exactly where anyone with logic could see people like myself needed to aim. The closer to the ground, the lower the class. "Stuck in the muck,” as my dear old dad used to say. I often wondered what he’d think about my lofty kingdom right now.

  In my case, Home meant Non-Spire Housing for transient workers, or “The Pod People Village,” as I’d heard the higher-ups say when they forgot we were hanging above them on shift. After six long years, I had finally been graded into a Class Ten position. One step away from finally being out of the cramped, disrepaired, and low-powered NS-Housing Pods, which, if I were totally honest, were still leaps and bounds better than where I had grown up in the Capsule Bays.

  The Pods were originally meant to be stacked and used as emergency housing in low-atmosphere environments—before the Colonization Ban was put into effect. The squat, faded, and cheaply made units were like six-meter-sized PlayCrete building blocks. Uniform in size and designed to snap together so connections for heat, power, and light could be more easily managed with metal walkways connecting the entryways and various levels. From the outside they looked everything like the shipping containers I’d been busy scanning and labeling before...the event. It was an odd realization I’d never made a connection before now; they were practically identical.

  Huh.

  Keying the outer door, I tapped the small recessed multi-function panel, which acted as the Pod's exterior interface. The display shifted to a data screen of the cycle process as it accepted my Ident. A set of gauges representing the internal, inner lock, and external ambient conditions slid around each other as the lock processed the environmental states between inside and outside. From the outside, the system was near silent. It worked the magic of letting me in as red glows became green glimmers, and a tone sounded.

  The entire process served an important purpose: efficiency, keeping internal conditions from being wasted. Less Space? Less Waste.

  As the outer door opened, I was presented with a somewhat cramped vestibule, only marginally big enough for two people to squeeze into.

  Shaking off old thoughts, I stepped inside and keyed the inner door process as the outer door closed. The gauges did their balancing act as frigid air was pumped out to equalize the Pod living conditions, and warm, damp air pressed against my face.

  The inner door opened.

  The smell of clean moisture and lavender surrounded me, intermingling with a whiff of my scarf, which I'd unraveled subconsciously upon arriving home, and I was then reminded how much I wanted to wash off the daily crud from working the docks before...the event.

  The smell of clean moisture and lavender surrounded me, intermingling with a whiff of my scarf, which I'd unraveled subconsciously upon arriving home, and I was then reminded how much I wanted to wash off the daily crud from working the docks before...the event.I let out a soft sigh as I took a deep breath, feeling the tension melt from my shoulders as I began to relax from the lavender smell of her soap. The scent meant comfort and home. The moisture in the air and the lack of lights meant the likelihood of Dora, having returned early from work, had taken a shower and gone to sleep was very high. While Dora might hate the thought of us calling the sanitation unit a “shower,” since it was more of a warm, very weak spray than anything, turning in early was a common occurrence when things were going well. If the cycling of the lock hadn’t stirred her, she had to be as tired as I felt.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Habitually, I scooped off my bag, extending my arm outward. My aim was to be quiet: better to tell her everything in the day rather than wake and bother her tonight.

  All chances of being quiet failed.Fully expecting the hook by the doorway to catch the strap as normal, I let go. A thunk echoed throughout the Pod with all the subtlety of a brick hitting a drone. The bag landed in a pile on the floor at the speed of gravity, and I froze in shocked surprise as my brain caught up to the bag being the source of the noise.

  An apology was already on my lips in anticipation of the sleepy murmurs or shocked yell I'd expected from Dora. Instead, the room remained mostly silent. The environment cycler clicked slowly on, filling the small space with a steady hiss of warm air being pumped in. I began to sweat.

  It remained eerily silent.

  Odd... I thought to myself.

  “Hab-E...lights?” I said quietly to the automated environmental controller.

  The lights, opposite their normal pre-programmed behavior of gradually increasing to 20% in increments, snapped on. Instantly.

  I yelped, stumbling in surprise as I slipped in a puddle and went down hard. My elbow banged into the kitchen counter as I tried desperately to cover my eyes with both hands and to block out the sudden illumination. The full 100% output overloaded my cheap ocular implants and hit my cortex like an icy spike of pain.

  “Hab-E! Lights to Twenty Percent!” I shouted from the ground.

  The environment system acknowledged with a trill and lowered the lighting. I sat there for a moment, a sliver of worry beginning to slowly grow in the pit of my stomach to the size of a small boulder. I hadn’t heard Dora say anything. The Pod was still silent.

  The room slowly came into view in patches as my vision returned. I sat up too quickly, banging my head again, but choosing to ignore it. Now lit by a cold and harsh bluish tint the room was somehow much more gray than I’d anticipated and that was concerning.

  For a fleeting moment, I had the bewildered sense I’d mixed up unit blocks, challenged by my Ident-Code, which was displayed in green on the upper right-hand corner of the entry display. Lacking any additional warning messages about intrusion, alarms, or emergencies, all systems appeared to be normal.

  Sqwincing up at the display, I confirmed the unit number was the correct one and blinked a few times to ensure my vision was working correctly.

  I turned my attention back to the rest of the room, still feeling so many things weren’t adding up. The first and most notable thing became apparent: a distinct lack of anything on the walls to cover the exposed piping, conduit, and electrical lines in the utilitarian pod.

  Now that definitely WASN’T normal.

  The Pod design was meant to be universal, allowing a pod to convert from one mode to another quickly with the right tools, materials and modules. Dora, never the fan of utilitarianism in anything, had made it her life’s mission to shape our pod into a homely environment. A standard living Pod’s layout had areas with all the spatial qualities of a booth connected to other booths and she'd taken it as a personal affront on her womanly sensibilities.

  The primary issue with the Pod’s Modular design: There was only ONE module configuration designated for housing.

  Rather than engineer methods of sealing off sections with accompanying methods for ensuring environmental controls and functions, the designers simply implemented height dividers between the kitchen, sanitation, and co-functional sleeping/working modules. The units all had a specific orientation for hook-ups, a few small areas for utilitarian customization and...little else. The partitions, specifically, annoyed the ever-living hell out of Dora. Her biggest gripe had always been the lack of coverage, as they only covered three quarters of the space from floor to roof. With our height, it meant everyone could and would be visible from where we stood anywhere in the unit, and I'd laughed about it a few times until she'd made it clear she didn't find it funny.

  “Soulless” had been the term she had used for it. On a mission of comfort, she had pushed every spare Corp-scrit we managed to scrape together into outfitting every flat and exposed surface with cloths, silks and textiles to make for a more homey feel. Utilizing an array of hooks, magnets and polyline acting as guy-lines between the sections, she'd succeeded in forming the illusion of walls and privacy.

  "Small things; Large payoffs, Owen!" She'd teasingly said to me in her mischievously cute way. Her green eyes would flash in amusement. Right now? Everything those green eyes had seen were missing.

  Hooks, Lines...(my stomach) was Sinkers.

  Without the usual mix of coverings to block the head-height emptiness, I had a straight view through an oddly placed, thin-lined view port which took up the top portion of the back wall. I’d only ever seen the room look like this twice: Once when we moved in, and before that when we moved out of our older, smaller block unit.

  The lack of the cloths, silks and artwork meant the exposed piping, conduit and duct working which normally would be hidden, were now laid bare. The harshness of the reset lighting, also didn’t help the look any either. “Soulless” was right. It did seem rather drab and more than a little depressing from where I was seated. The entire room had the feeling of someone preparing it for a new occupant, only I hadn't gotten the memo.

  I stood, examining the different areas around me for further clues, trying to fight down the trill of panic which risked taking over.

  Several puddles like the one I’d slipped in, as my throbbing elbow reminded me, were still pooled in different places around the locker-like shower/sanitation combo unit. Also missing was the synthsheet we’d placed there to act as a barrier and curtain to limit such instances. The sole power output port positioned above a rickety slide-out table and seat in the kitchenette was notably also bare as the rattling combo food cooler/protein pack dispenser buzzed and wheezed, reminding me we hadn’t had anyone to look at it yet.

  I moved onto the sleeping area as my mind lingered on the thoughts of food. The sleeping bunk was just large enough for two and stowed when not in use. It was packed away right now and only made the emptiness of the modular Clothing Storage Cubes and small recessed closet more apparent.

  Uh...

  The worried feeling grew as I checked the desk and work area: a small section with just a seat, a slide-out tabletop, and a few storage bins. It was all mostly gone, the majority of the remaining clutter just the pieces and parts from upgrading my Cortex Rig.

  The Rig itself was missing.

  ...Well, shit.

  Frankly, I was having issues making sense of what I'd found since returning home. Everything so far felt a bit too much for my sluggish brain to handle. I extended the desk seat and sat down, trying to give myself time to think. Ignoring the fact my Cortex rig might have been stolen, and right AFTER I'd finished upgrading it, nothing else taken would've served much value to anyone outside Dora and myself. Perhaps...

  I paused as a chirp interrupted my train of thought. The lines, "Incoming Messenger: Mandatory Receipt Required," blinked slowly across the lock screen as the inner door opened on its own accord. A mandatory receipt meant I'd need to accept the official message personally. Ignoring it would only lead to more problems I couldn't afford to deal with right now.

  I sighed wearily as I stood, trying not to think of worst-case scenarios or my missing Cortex Rig as I walked into the lock. The outer doors opened after only a minute, and the coldness in the air hit me like a knife unexpectedly as I struggled to cover my face with my scarf.

  I immediately regretted it. The musty scarf had been dangling around my neck like a crusty noodle, the smell fast reminding me I'd yet to change out of my Outerall as I cast the scarf aside. I wasted a few seconds attempting to blow the lingering scent out of my lungs and sinuses, but it didn't help.

  I stepped outside to wait.

  A palm-sized drone eventually rose to meet me. With a buzzing warble, it cast a green glow as it scanned the Overall's Ident-Chip, and I had time to glance up before it ejected a semi-transparent Filiscrit sheet directly into the wind.

  The sheet began to flap away as I dove, nearly spilling over the railing. The tips of my glove-encased fingers snatched the sheet out of the air as the drone departed, having met its requirement for proof of receipt. I quietly cursed the drone as I managed to clatter back over the railing.

  Wondering what message would justify sending a messenger drone this late at night, I sighed, regretting the action as my nose was again assaulted by the pungent scent coming out of the neck of my suit as I stepped back into the lock and began the closing cycle.

  Flipping over the sheet with my hand, I froze as my eyes read the words Termination Notice written in bold red letters across the top.

  I had been fired, and worse? Pandora was missing.

  Now what?