What Happened Last Night?

You didn’t choose to live here, you were simply born into this world, and what a world it was nobody could say for certain if it had always been this way or if it suddenly happened one day. History had always been rather hazy with the details but the faint glowing number upon everybody’s wrists was proof enough.  Your number was three much like the average person or, so you were told, and average described you in most ways.

At 25 years old you were nothing special just an average build, average height, average looks, even an average name Brandon Landing. You took yourself to work every day working in an office like millions of others, however your job could be something not so average. You work in a government office that specializes in ‘death’ reporting; it was all very new to you 6 months ago. You had known your whole life the little number on your wrist was the number of ‘lives’ you had, but nobody had ever mentioned that you could obtain more.

This came with its own set of problems, it seemed to gain more you had to save somebodies life, and more precisely you had to save 10 people’s lives. Now these numbers were visible only to yourself meaning you could never know somebody else’s number unless you were told. One down fall of this was the invention of transfer technology, in which you could transfer said lives to one another. Unfortunately, this was reserved for the rich while the poor still worked for cold hard cash.

One other interesting bit was that these so-called lives also affected other attributes as you gained more, manifesting in various ways. Some people became stronger, others smarter, some more attractive, it was like an extreme version of Darwinism the more lives you have the more likely you were to survive.

Now when it came to your job you sat in front of a computer in a cramped cubicle, the ever-static noise of others on the phones in the background. When somebody died or more likely their number was reduced, they were required by law to submit a notice of deduction. These then went into a database of all the people in the world, thanks to the United Nations agreements that turned the world into ‘essentially’ one nation. Granted there were a few hold outs, but you never heard about these places anymore.

These records had to be verified which was more or less an interrogation to make sure those people were not lying. The punishment for false information or not reporting at all was often ‘death’ or the removal of all your lives except your final one. This implied that the authorities had some way to read your lives, but it was a close guarded secret and anybody asking questions seemed to always disappear.

Many of these people called in which is where Brandon came in as well as all his coworkers here. They would receive a call, create a request, which then got sent to the ‘Data retrieval’ team who would go out and verify the death. Once that was completed, they would bring a report back which would be logged as either true or the suspect would be brought back meaning it was false.

Brandon had a call once where it was a sanctioned killing match which were quite common amongst the rich. These often consisted of poorer people being brought in and paid cash in exchange for their place in the ‘games’ as they put it. These ranged from the rich hunting them down, gladiator arenas, and cannibalism even. Sometimes these took a turn and for the worst with the participant outright dying, which held little penalty for the rich it seemed as a life sentence was often pennies on the dollar to them.

All this also led to entertainment avenues as well with Hollywood jumping in on reality shows, such as The Gladiator or Horror House. Brandon was however one of the average outcasts all who preferred more old-fashioned entertainment, going to the bar, board game nights, Dungeons and Dragons, or in other words ‘old fashioned entertainment’.

Today was just another Friday, the minutes ticking away till five o’clock when Brandon could leave and head to their favorite pub, “Mickey’s”. This week had been particularly rough on him, having his performance review which could have gone better, “Your false reports are very high this quarter.” As if he had any control over if people were lying, then the false alarm which had them locked in late into the night.

It was time, finally time to leave work, some of his coworkers

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 07.10.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-5999-7

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