Busses are timeless inventions

"I think I might be dead. No, it can't be. So an afterlife does exist! Why can't I feel my body, though? Why can't I see it? Actually, this is my flow of thought. I can't even feel like I can speak because I can't feel anything in or around me. I must be lost in an abyss with only my conscience intact."

Everything was dark—no, something much darker than that and closer to non-existence than darkness. I felt like I was there but not there, somewhere. I could hear nothing except my thoughts in the voice I had been given on Earth. Neither could I see, except the imaginary colors my conscience was bringing out because the nothingness beyond was incomprehensible. Then suddenly within my consciousness, I felt like I needed to think of something. There was no reason for me to be thinking this, but strangely I began pondering over the question, almost forcefully.

"What are my unique abilities? What? Is this even a thing?"

I was almost close to concluding that the only thing I was good at was hacking when my mind told me something else.

"What? I actually have three unique abilities? How do I know this all of a sudden? What are these abilities?"

It felt to me like I had possessed these abilities forever, as if they were naturally equipped at all times.

I couldn't believe it and went through the information in my head again and again. But no matter how many times I thought about it, there was no doubt that these were unique abilities, and I was the owner of them. Since they were unique abilities, my mind told me that only I was able to use or know them, and that these could be my trump cards while dealing with people.

"Ero-sensei? What a twisted joke this is. What even is all of this? This must be a joke, maybe my brain is slowly running out of oxygen. Wait, my body would have evaporated completely from the atomic blast. I truly regret my decision to deploy the missile. I wonder what's happening on Earth at the moment. News channels would be so glad right now…"

Hey, why do I feel like itching my crotch? I am wondering and suddenly realize I'm feeling a prickly sensation all across my body. As if a force is acting against me and pushing me forward. Before anything, why do I see a small dot of light like there's an end of a tunnel? As I wonder about these things, everything else happens quickly, and I open my eyes. I have a body now and hands and legs, and the force of being pushed towards the end of the dark tunnel as the light grows bright makes me grunt.

As I am pushed out of the tunnel, which I realize seems more like a vortex, I quickly realize I am falling in mid-air, accelerating towards the ground. In a moment, I fall on a hard cemented pavement, and pain shoots up through my elbows.

"Aaaagh," I flinch as I grab my elbow.

I look down at myself and discover I'm wearing the same clothes. Nothing has changed about my body from the look at my fingertips and hands. I check a little further, hoping to have something about my body improve, but everything's pretty much the same. Then I quickly look around. Somehow I have accepted the fact that this isn't a dream, and the atomic bomb did indeed explode. But what really is this? Why did I end up falling in a dark alley lined with small shops, with shutters closed and neon signboards all around me? This looks a lot like Japan, but there is an American ring to it as well, especially from the garbage bins lined across in different spots in this dark backstreet.

"Where am I? Did transmigration exist all along?"

I ask myself many questions, but there is only one way to answer them: to look around. I slowly move my legs and begin walking out on a bigger street. Looking at the night sky and the closed shops, everything looks very chaotic yet so managed.

As I walk out on the main street, I am struck by the magnificent and unrecognizable scenery, as if I am inside a science fiction movie. The street leads out to a view of the city. This street I am standing in is seemingly at a higher altitude, and all that stretches for as far as my eyes can see are buildings and cars, and neon lights. Also, all the cars are flying. And the cars are simple transparent cubes. There are multiple stories to the city, organized like shops in a mall. The blocks upon which the city is planned are very evident from afar.

The story I am currently on is somewhere amongst the higher floors, but the buildings here are mostly shops and smaller houses. The sky above is also somewhat visible.

"So it's not hierarchical, but more functionally oriented, huh."

The entire megacity is built in a circular manner, and in the middle, it's hollow until the very last floor, where I can see some camps. Each floor is connected with bridges that move in a spiral way, and every floor has almost a different vibe to it, as if each floor had a purpose.

It's as if my ears are the last part of my body to fully wake up because slowly the sounds begin to flood in. From some floors, I hear a strange type of tune, a lot like electric pop, and some floors give off the bustling of people talking. More floors contain the sounds of lasers which I suspect would be the glowing objects in which I can make out people sitting.

I have realized that I am in the future. I have been translocated into the future, to be more accurate. Everything around me doesn't make sense, but still it is something that does not faze me. If I were a tourist visiting this place, I wouldn't ever want to leave. There are too many questions that I have about this entire situation. Questions like, was I transported here using a time machine, and if likely so, was it kept as a secret technology in my time? Is this even planet Earth, or is it really another world, like those Japanese light novels that I used to lure young American audiences into reading for commission back in my early days of hacking. I'm not sure. I will have to move around and observe, and ask someone for more information.

I'm standing right at the edge of the innermost part of this floor, or level should I call it. There would have been no way for me to know there were levels on top of this city and levels below it had I not been able to peek through the center and see multiple layers. Which means the night sky above is artificially created, most probably using hologram technology. It seems like this floor is themed after a cyberpunk back alley with small shops lined after one another. After taking one final look at the different floors, I begin to turn around to explore, when I hear the sound of a laser charge, coming closer. A bus approaches me and stops instantly, and then I realize I've been standing at the bus stop. This bus is the same as the cars I was able to see on the other floors, however as much as I'm able to see inside, I know there are all sorts of punks and drunkards, their sleepy heads pressed against the glass windows, drool half dried up and flaky stuck to the glowing green windows. I step inside the bus, and see a woman in charge of the wheels. The lights outside flicker, and as I sit on a seat, a window pops open right in front of me. Something is written in a foreign language so I can't make out what's written.

"Oh shit, the worst possible scenario- language barrier."

I try to find the translation logo somewhere to translate into English but only a map is visible, but certain places are highlighted. I must be expected to select one of these for my destination spots. I realize the driver is looking at me subtly from her screen, a similar window instead of the dashboard in front of her as the one that has appeared for me to register my seat or something.

I can clearly see the various views inside the bus that are being displayed on the holographic panel in the front but as I strangely notice, there are no CCTVs installed in the bus, from the angles the display is being captured, at that!

"Just how advanced is this place? What kind of technology is this place made out of?"

Ah shit, I said it out loud. If my language isn't spoken here, they'll realize I'm new here, and alone then as well. I messed up. The driver looks at me now without hiding it, having found a reason to look at me. I am sitting in the first row of the left aisle after all, right behind the driver.

"Zimyon aiklis frudyano?"

Huh? What did she just say? It sounded like a direct question, and her dialect is something between German and French. I know 12 languages and I'm sure this language didn't exist back on Earth. What the funk? Aaaaaaaaaarrr, I clench my teeth but quickly make a friendly and confused face expression, to attract some type of leniency from the driver. "I hope these guys are tourist friendly," I chuckle in my mind, nervously.

The bus driver fixes her gaze at me from her CCTV-like footage, her face as stern as a rock. I may have attracted the wrong type of concern. I may be a hacker, but these machines are still foreign to me. I don't have proper kits to defend myself or any knowledge of this world.

The driver goes back to driving the bus, or from the view of it, simply sitting in her driving seat and assisting the self-driving bus, and placing her palm on the surface of the holographic screen from time to time.

"Maybe that is how these vehicles are steered and accelerated. That's strange.."

One by one, the drunkards who seem to be heavily intoxicated step down altogether at the last stop. I can tell because I never really got rid of the screen that had appeared in front of me, and the map kept updated. The driver didn't once engage with me in any sort of conversation. This is the typical social culture of buses and subways even back in 2024 Earth. Busses are timeless inventions after all.

When all passengers have gotten down on their respective stops, I keep sitting, waiting for the driver to entertain me.

Once the driver has gotten up from her seat, she moves towards the passenger seats where I'm sitting. This bus has only one way out, and apparently it's used by the passengers and the staff alike. Makes sense.

"Yuki."

The girl says. She points at herself. Then she points at me.

I didn't really have a name in my past life. For as far as I could remember, I was brought up in the streets, kept hidden from the government because I was not a legitimate child and my father didn't want to pay for child support, or the fact that he had killed my mother. For the most part, I lived amongst the homeless, and learned programming and code by cracking vending machines and ATMs. On the internet, I went by the username of OppaiMasterBaka. Well, not that introductions are a priority in a crisis like time travel.

"My name. Oppai Masterbaka."

The girl stared at me, and then motioned me to follow her. The bus had been parked in a square and began levitating in the air as soon as I stepped out of it. I think it was weight-sensitive so it could detect it was empty. In a row, there were other types of buses with green neon lights. Ours seemed to be the last. I looked around, not completely trustful of this girl. Of course, I would have doubts. Crimes like human trafficking could be deemed equally as timeless as the invention of buses. I was really cornered here because of the language barrier. Although my thin body didn't have a fight in it, I decided to trust her. She had been kind enough to remain quiet throughout the bus ride, which also meant she didn't take my fare. Then she introduced herself, and gave me her name and also asked mine in return. I decided to trust her. Usually I am able to detect malice in people. I looked down on the ground and the concrete roads were pretty much the same, but within these concrete roads, I also sensed some metallic plates attached in a fixed distance, in a row. I remembered there was an electronic road installed in Sweden that would charge cars as they drove. Maybe that's what powered the buses. As we stepped out of the open parking space, across a hundred meters from where we stood, I saw a large building, made mostly out of thin metal sheets. I couldn't find anything strange but it was odd that in a time advanced enough to build a megacity in the form of a building structure, it still had buildings the old-school way.

We began walking towards the run-down place. Suddenly, the girl, Yuki, stopped. Her hand pressing hard against my chest, in a defensive stance. It seemed as if she had sensed danger. Before I even knew it, a laser-like light flashed across my eyes and shot Yuki in the leg, making her fall on her knees. Her face expressed pain and she looked at me for a second, and got up.

"What the hell just happened? We're being attacked. Yuki, where did you take me get me out of here."

Yuki looked at me for a second, her eyes fixed in my direction. Another flash of red laser rushed past me, and I let out a little cry, now alarmed.

"Run."

I screamed in a hurry, mentally adjusting my weight on my legs to be able to run at top speed. Then she surprisingly, with her thin arms and a frail wrist, pulled me towards her and lifted me up into her arms like it was nothing, and began running towards the factory.

As more lasers shot across us, another hit Yuki in the back. She let out a whimper, and kept rushing, gaining more speed with every second.

"How did I end up like this? Where am I? What the hell is happening? Is this even real??"

In the midst of the chaotic spectacle, laser beams streaked past me, and I, the world's best hacker, released a frustrated cry. A life lived independent, detached, now thrust into the arms of Yuki, in a warehouse of unknown purpose, her arms cradling me while lasers zipped by, almost as if the assailants behind the guns were privy to my identity. The world, however, revealed itself to be a hundred, a thousand times more advanced than my wildest imaginations. These unfolding events, stranger than the quirks of my life on Earth just hours ago, were pushing the boundaries of incredibility. Yet in this whirlwind of the extraordinary, it was all becoming overwhelmingly excessive. Too much, just too much.

In this grand theater called life, our scripts are but whispers to destiny, and the simplest knots may unravel the most intricate plans. For in the dance of chaos, even the most calculated steps may lead us into the arms of the unknown.