~*EZ-Dreams*~
It was a
Friday afternoon and Roger Turnwell had just been paid. When the buzzer rang at
five O’clock, and all the little worker bees filed out of the Rubber Sole
factory, he moseyed on down the road with an honest smile on his face. The smog
alerts weren’t as bad today; the sky had only the faint tinge of greens and
yellows. Roger had no wife or kids, and for a man of thirty-five years it was
nearly time he chooses his Assignment. He thought to himself that fatherhood
would be grand, but having to move to the countryside and relocate from the bustling
streets of the Metropolis brought thinly stretched wrinkles to his face. No, he
would continue working and eating and sleeping and enjoying the comforts of the
city.
He pulled
on his airMask, which filtered all the heavy particles in the air, and put in
his Iodine-Eye-Saver Eye Drops, the bottle was getting low maybe it was time
for a refill. Motorcycles and other small, motorized vehicles zipped up and
down the cluttered roadway, and the chatter of a dozen angry languages filled
his ears like white noise. The smell of street vendors distracted him
momentarily from the grey world around him, and for a moment he remembered Old
Metropolis before the Wave had hit. He remembered all of the spicy ethnic
cuisine and the exotic women in their tiny skirts lighter than air. That was
over twenty years ago however, and most people in Metropolis had no memories of
that time.
Roger
walked another few blocks, with his hands in his pockets and his chin firmly
nestled against his chest, watching each foot take a step and being sure to
avoid all the cracks in the sidewalk. Last time he stepped on a crack he had
watched moments later as a motorcyclist was crushed to death by a bus coming
around a sharp corner. The man hadn’t even had time to let out of a yelp, but was
swallowed in the undercarriage of the hulking red monstrosity.
Roger
picked his head up for a moment at the sound of a young woman shouting, “Stop!
Stop!! Give that back!” and he saw as a unkempt man in a leather jacket that
stretched to the ground played tug of war with a designer purse. No one else
had stopped, and he considered it for a moment but remembered he was no hero
just Roger Tarnwell the man that filled the rubber molds for the soles of
shoes. Just a Rubber sole man, with no kids and a low bottle of Iodine
Eye-Saver Eye Drops.
He made it
to the drugs store and shuffled in, taking his shoes off at the door. He went
to the back where the pharmacy was located and placed his order for the eye
drops. He noticed a disheveled man running to the bathroom screaming “I’m
goanna shit myself I swear” and when he found that the door was locked he beat
on it until his hands were red and raw howling, “Let me in there you dirty
motherfucker! Let me IN!!”.
When Roger
made it to the checkout counter he saw that there were two new brands of
EZ-Dreams Sleep Pills. In addition to SummerLover and TropicTrip they now had,
KillerFrenzy and HeavenlyClouds. Roger really enjoyed the EZ-Dreams products,
you took them like a classic sleeping pill but the dreams were preloaded into
the solution, so you knew what you were going to get each time.
SummerLover
gave erotic dreams of companionship and love to even the loneliest of people,
and was a product that Roger was no stranger to. TropicTrip gave one the
sensations and experience of relaxing on a private tropical beach, surrounded
in luxury. This one was less popular than you’d expect considering most Junior
Citizens had no concept of beaches, tropics, or even luxury because most of
this was made impossible after the Wave and there was certainly nothing
analogous in Metropolis.
KillerFrenzy
was a darker product. There was a shockingly high murder rate in Metropolis,
with nearly a third of residents living in abject poverty. KillerFrenzy is
designed to let these people live out their aggressive desires and kill in
their dreams. The only problem is when some of these people fight the urge to
sleep and stay awake, they tend to get a bit violent in the waking world, and
may require to sedation to be pacified.
HeavenlyClouds
is probably the more iconic product in the line. It brings the user to a state
of heavenly bliss, usually with no corporeal form and floating in bright
celestial bodies of warmth. When you live in a place like Metropolis,
HeavenlyClouds is a welcomed break from the bleak realities of the world. There
are no Iodine Eye-Saver Drops, and there are no airMasks, or airRaid sirens, or
airAlerts or rubber soles either. It is all a swirl of pleasure and
nothingness; and for what feels like a brief moment nothing really exists at
all.
Roger
snatched for one bottle of each and went to the back to see if the Pharmacist
was finished. She was, her wrinkly skin hung down like a Basset Hound, her face
curled into a similar type frown. She was bespectacled with the frames
connected to a long chain that snaked through the folds in her skin and settles
somewhere behind her head. She put
everything into a plastic bag, pausing on each item to shoot him a disapproving
glare.
He put the
eye drops in before leaving the building. They stung because he had missed a
few doses, but he felt the solution working its way through his eye with a
little searing. One more stop at the Store of Spirits and he could finally
return home and call it a day. It was getting a little later in the afternoon
(sunset came earlier now, as the sun dipped behind opaque dense clouds of
smog), and once it started to get dark, there would be a changeover on the
streets. Most respectable people of Metropolis were at home by dark, and the
few that roamed the streets were generally either homeless or up to no good.
He walked
the four blocks to the store with a little more vigor now. The honking of cars
rose a few decibels, getting more aggravated and violent as people got nervous
about the impending darkness. When 5 O’clock hit the “Money-Monks” as they were
called all hit the deck for their evening prayers. Since new Metropolis and the
destructive Wave, many had converted to Monetarism a polytheistic religion
devoted to personal success and consumerism. When the bell rang they would all
hit the deck to prostrate and beg their God for spare change to be rained down
from the heavens. It was a religion that had a basis in reality. Everyone’s
health and happiness required money, and to pray for it only made sense. To
reward their beliefs there was the occasional jet-black blimp that slowly
hovered above Metropolis and would rain down dimes and dollars. Roger hadn’t
converted yet, but he acknowledged the merits in their beliefs.
When he got
to the store their was a long line snaking out the front door and around the
corner. He got in at the end and looked around. The people waiting in line
stretched several socio-economic brackets and races. There were a few men in
trench coats smoking cigarettes talking to each other in hushed tones, and
there were a few women pretending to be busy with their cell phones to avoid
accepting that they too must wait in a line despite being pretty and single in
Metropolis. There were a few older men, who were hunched with age and supporting
themselves with rickety little canes, just waiting to give out under their
hulking wrinkled bodies. They were black and white and Asian; liquor still held
sway over anyone and everyone that wanted to drown their sorrows away one night
at a time.
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