HOME | DD

Description
When they arrive at the shinkansen terminus for the trip home, Tau Ceti has just begun to set on Popravka's eastern hemisphere. It's exactly 19:40, and the station rings with the clamor of the train bells as the sleek diamond-plated maglev vehicles whirr onto the platforms. The friends go their separate ways; Luukas back to Mycenae, and Roland to the shining splendor of the arcologies at Ionia. As he steps into the spotless interior of the Mycenae Line Train 4 and settles into a generously stuffed reclining couch, his mind is still racing with thoughts of political dissidents and strange soldiers in riot gear that obviously isn't just for staving off angry hippies(more like high-velocity ablative clouds), in precise, machined array, clutching at rifles like frozen flows of molten platinum that shine brilliantly in the glare of the floodlights. The tension is unbearable as the ranks take a step forward as one. Then another, and another, until they're traipsing across the cobblestones of Rand Square, drenched in cold light. Like a living thing, they act as one; raising deadly rifles to gunsight eyes as they unleash hell upon the ranks of the protestors, blast after blast of abrasive particles tearing through the armor and flesh of the innocent. Screams erupt as the scene turns chaotic, blossoms of light and smoke erupting when HE grenades explode with an ear-shattering crack, bodies falling like cordwood atop each other, police and protestors both, blood flowing like rain into the rapidly clogging storm drains... Luukas shudders. Protest and the reactionary backlash are simply a part of the evolution of political science. Most countries still struggle with the animosity between their myriad parties and splintered political clades that seem to have revolutionized democracy as it was known in the twenty-first century. Parliamentary systems had come into favor around the 2050s, after the fall of North America and the meteoric rise of Europe to Earth's dominant entity.

The train eases to a standstill at the Mycenaean terminus around 2 hours later, and the PA system chimes jovially as the rows of glass doors slide open with a collective hydraulic sigh. Luukas stands up blearily; he'd been half-asleep for most of the journey home along the few hundred kilometers of spiny mountain range, lost in mnemonic training programs and test sequences that kept his mind active and sharp while he slept. (When a human brain gets too used to assistance from implants and external computing clusters, it tends to become dependent and dull.) Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he steps from the train to the platform, surrounded by the slowly-moving crowd of commuters that file from the blinding-white bullet trains into a crawling mass that inches toward the great granite doors that open on the quietly bustling streets of Mycenae.
Eventually the crowd seems to yield, and Luukas inhales deeply, relishing the cool night air outside the mammoth Gothic façade of the Mycenae Transit Center. The night is still young, and most of the clubs are just beginning to open. So he blinks open his social liaison feed and checks out what's going on tonight. Of course, Gerard and Alex are the first on the list; they haven't stopped partying since they got together, and sure enough, they're traipsing off on a fetish-club crawl that should last at least 15 hours, if conditions are optimal. That isn't quite Luukas' thing. Don't want to get between a man and his... man. And all the other random men they'll inevitably end up with. He scrolls down. Not too much else. He yawns cavernously. I suppose I'll hit a café before I do anything else. Luukas asks his implant to steer him toward a coffee shop he hasn't been to yet, and a path snaking across a thoroughfare and along a terracotta-tiled path flashes into view. As he follows the path, it's truly made apparent that he's never been to this coffee shop before; it's in a part of town he'd never dream of visiting. Not because it was fairly run-down for a neighborhood in a major city in the era of post-capitalism, but because he was simply ideologically opposed to its occupants, stuffy transcendentalists that they were.

Description
When they arrive at the shinkansen terminus for the trip home, Tau Ceti has just begun to set on Popravka's eastern hemisphere. It's exactly 19:40, and the station rings with the clamor of the train bells as the sleek diamond-plated maglev vehicles whirr onto the platforms. The friends go their separate ways; Luukas back to Mycenae, and Roland to the shining splendor of the arcologies at Ionia. As he steps into the spotless interior of the Mycenae Line Train 4 and settles into a generously stuffed reclining couch, his mind is still racing with thoughts of political dissidents and strange soldiers in riot gear that obviously isn't just for staving off angry hippies(more like high-velocity ablative clouds), in precise, machined array, clutching at rifles like frozen flows of molten platinum that shine brilliantly in the glare of the floodlights. The tension is unbearable as the ranks take a step forward as one. Then another, and another, until they're traipsing across the cobblestones of Rand Square, drenched in cold light. Like a living thing, they act as one; raising deadly rifles to gunsight eyes as they unleash hell upon the ranks of the protestors, blast after blast of abrasive particles tearing through the armor and flesh of the innocent. Screams erupt as the scene turns chaotic, blossoms of light and smoke erupting when HE grenades explode with an ear-shattering crack, bodies falling like cordwood atop each other, police and protestors both, blood flowing like rain into the rapidly clogging storm drains... Luukas shudders. Protest and the reactionary backlash are simply a part of the evolution of political science. Most countries still struggle with the animosity between their myriad parties and splintered political clades that seem to have revolutionized democracy as it was known in the twenty-first century. Parliamentary systems had come into favor around the 2050s, after the fall of North America and the meteoric rise of Europe to Earth's dominant entity.

The train eases to a standstill at the Mycenaean terminus around 2 hours later, and the PA system chimes jovially as the rows of glass doors slide open with a collective hydraulic sigh. Luukas stands up blearily; he'd been half-asleep for most of the journey home along the few hundred kilometers of spiny mountain range, lost in mnemonic training programs and test sequences that kept his mind active and sharp while he slept. (When a human brain gets too used to assistance from implants and external computing clusters, it tends to become dependent and dull.) Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he steps from the train to the platform, surrounded by the slowly-moving crowd of commuters that file from the blinding-white bullet trains into a crawling mass that inches toward the great granite doors that open on the quietly bustling streets of Mycenae.
Eventually the crowd seems to yield, and Luukas inhales deeply, relishing the cool night air outside the mammoth Gothic façade of the Mycenae Transit Center. The night is still young, and most of the clubs are just beginning to open. So he blinks open his social liaison feed and checks out what's going on tonight. Of course, Gerard and Alex are the first on the list; they haven't stopped partying since they got together, and sure enough, they're traipsing off on a fetish-club crawl that should last at least 15 hours, if conditions are optimal. That isn't quite Luukas' thing. Don't want to get between a man and his... man. And all the other random men they'll inevitably end up with. He scrolls down. Not too much else. He yawns cavernously. I suppose I'll hit a café before I do anything else. Luukas asks his implant to steer him toward a coffee shop he hasn't been to yet, and a path snaking across a thoroughfare and along a terracotta-tiled path flashes into view. As he follows the path, it's truly made apparent that he's never been to this coffee shop before; it's in a part of town he'd never dream of visiting. Not because it was fairly run-down for a neighborhood in a major city in the era of post-capitalism, but because he was simply ideologically opposed to its occupants, stuffy transcendentalists that they were.