The Sign
Dedry slowly opens his eyes and groans. He puts his hands on the floor then picks himself up. He starts walking to a little tablet in the corner of the room with a slight limp. He turns it on and puts in some numbers.
The home screen looks normal but the interface seems to be popping out of the screen similar to a hologram. He taps on an icon with the name P.H.A. The icon had a thumbnail with a robot with a health symbol on its main body. He clicks on a green rectangle with the white text inside saying, "Activate P.H.A."
The P.H.A was created with the collected knowledge of many healing Enlightened. Healing Enlightened didn't need help from the Engineering Enlightened. The reason for this was because Enlightened can have up to three subjects of knowledge input into their brain.
People always thought that the Starters only took control of one branch of knowledge at a time. In reality, every Starters knew multiple subjects, making it so that no Starter was the ruler of one branch of knowledge.
As people started to research this subject, the Enlightened tried to retaliate stating that they only knew one subject. The attempts were futile as the public soon knew about these things. The reason they retaliate was that regular people can kill Enlightened to gain some of their knowledge.
If a regular civilian were to kill an Enlightened they would only get to learn one subject of their choice. As a result of this people started going rogue and killing the people they suspected of being Enlightened. If no one knew that there were two other subjects in their mind, they'd never kill an Enlightened with the knowledge they deemed unneeded.
No one knew who the Enlightened were as there was no physical indication. To the naked eye, an Enlightened would look like a normal person. The only way that society knows how to identify an Enlightened is by trying to test their knowledge in any subject.
This leads to confusion as if you were simply knowledgeable in one subject you would be treated as an Enlightened. Now many people claiming to be Enlightened are dead or sitting in the position they would've never been in.
PHR stands for Primary Healing Agent. It is injected into people at an early age for it to be useful as soon as possible. It helped the population in many ways as it helped several people with minor injuries that could've turned fatal to the victim.
The side effects were few but the 2 main ones were reduced production of white body cells, as over the years human bodies have gotten used to having P.H.A in their bodies killing infections and viruses. Another one is the decrease in infant survivability. Baby's bodies didn't produce as many white blood cells leading to a significantly greater risk of infection. People weren't injected until the age of 2 leading to many dying before becoming a toddler.
P.H.A was not active until it was commanded to be. This made people angry as they wanted their injuries to be healed without having to activate them from a virtual screen.
The company manufacturing these nanomachines said that it would be automatic in the future, but they needed it to run specific tests. Some of the public ones include, how much pain can it subside, how long does it take to heal depending on the severity of the injury, and does it affect the brain.
Dedry pressed the button then immediately felt relieved. He could see the dark spots in his body start to fade away. He was happy that his mother spent her well-earned money on something so beneficial.
P.H.A was not cheap but was not expensive either. It was paid through social credits.
Social credits are the current form of currency for the world of Katra. It is used for every type of bank info. Your credit can be found by the number of social credits you have and the amount of money you have in your bank is equal to the number of social credits you have.
Socials credits were easy to get and much easier to lose. You can gain them by praising the founders and current leaders of your country, working jobs that help people, giving back to the community, and loving the people around you.
Losing them is easy as stealing candy from a baby. All you have to do is not contribute to society. This makes lazy otakus do some actual work instead of contributing nothing to society.
He walks over to the bed with the messy blanket looking like it would slip off the floor at any moment. He sets up the bed and lays down on it.
"God damn that the worthless garbage," Dedry said clenching his fist under the blanket "I'll punch him in that damn face of his and he'll see how strong I am." Dedry starts closing his eyes slowly and falls asleep.
The soft sunlight of the blazing sun hits the eye of Dedry. The bird on a nearby tree sing with a beautiful melody.
Dedry starts opening his eyes and turns to lay on his back. He covers his eyes with his hand and starts getting up. He walks over to his toilet and does his business. He finished up and goes to the door leading to the outside. He opens it and the sharp sunlight hits his eyes. He takes a step back, squinting his eyes. He walks out in the wet green grass from the storm from yesterday's storm that took place when he was asleep.
He swiftly walks over to the wet clothes on a clothing line connected to his house's right wall.
"Dammit. Now my clothes are wet," Dedry says complaining.
"Young Boy, come wear my son's clothes. He's sick from all that cold yesterday but was lucky enough to have covered his uniform with a raincoat. I'm not sure if it's the right size, but it's better than getting sick like he is," yelled an old man from across the street.
His house almost looked identical to the ones Dedry living in now. It was a wooden rectangle with a triangular roof made of reddish-brown tiles. The cracks that surrounded the house made it look like it would collapse at any moment.
In on the big cracks on the wall, Dedry could see a boy around the age of 15 panting heaving on a bed.
'Hope he gets okay,' thinks Dedry.
He walks across the street and takes the dry clothes on a similar white clothing line. He walks over to his house and puts it on inside. He walks out and starts going to his school.
His daily routine for school was: Go to classes for 4 hours, go to lunch, go to classes for 4 hours, get thrown around by Angel at the end of school, walk home.
He walks home beaten and bruised from today's beating. He walks towards to outside of the city, the suburbs or also known as, the slums.
The streets looked empty with most of the people dead in their houses, people getting robbed, and some at work. The asphalt for cars to drive on was cracked and full of potholes. The government never put any effort into improving the situation for the poor people of the slums except for giving them some jobs.
The only way that people actually moved from the broken homes of the slums was because of Development Induced Displacement.
Dedry was walking with his head down with a limp but less serious than yesterday. He turns a corner and bumps into a man.
"Oi, watch out fag. I'd kill you if you weren't a kid," yells the man. His spit lands on Dedry's face leaving it to drip down to his shoes.
His face gets red and he starts to walk away. His nails start digging into his palm as he clenches his fist.
Dedry feels a sudden warmth in his body and his eyes start to burn. He tries his best to not yell but he can't control it. He lets out a sudden scream and lights start to light up in some houses.
He starts sprinting home with a shout every now and then from the agonizing pain. He pulls open the door and shuts it quickly. He walks over to his bed and puts his head on his pillow and yells with all his might.
Little did Dedry know, some universal being was behind all of this.
(This chapter was mainly focused on world-building. I'll try to advance the plot further next chapter.)