Grid Seekers (Grid Seekers Book One) (2 page)

“Why don’t people do that again and get rid of it once and for all?” I asked, with an honest curiosity.

“That’s enough talk about the old days and all of that. We don’t want things to change, Alexia. The nation has our best interests at heart, and we need it to continue to prosper,” my mother said, before turning around and walking back into the kitchen.

I hated that she said those types of things. I knew she had to, at least in her own mind, but it still hurt knowing she was almost brainwashed into saying what she thought the government wanted to hear. I’m not as fearful as her. I wasn’t afraid to say what I wanted to say and think what I wanted to think, no matter the consequences. I wasn’t sure if it was youthful ignorance or fearlessness, but I knew everyone else was thinking the same things, even if they didn’t have the guts to say it.

I continued to look through the photo album even though I knew my mother didn’t want me to. I got to our pictures, my pictures, photos of my mother in the hospital with me, my father standing there, looking at the two of us with such honest love in his eyes. Things were better then. Sometimes I wished I could go back to being a kid, for more reasons than one.

Chapter Two

The next
day started just like any other day for me: waking up to Saraia snoring, a little sliver of drool sliding down her cheek to pool on the pillow, leaving behind a small wet spot. As I got out of bed, I was careful not to wake her since she didn’t need to be up for another twenty or so minutes before getting ready for school. My mother sometimes took her, but I did on the days she couldn’t. It was usually a little bit of an inconvenience, but not today, as I needed to leave and it was on the way. I had work all day today. I felt like my life was being devoted to picking up after people who couldn’t or wouldn’t do it themselves. I had a very strong feeling that my entire life would be like this, unless I was lucky enough to retire in old age, which was unlikely.

My mom was already gone when I walked into the kitchen, tore off a chunk of bread from the loaf she bought last night, and slathered on some butter that had been left out overnight. This buttered piece of bread would be all I’d eat until I finished my shift. My boss, Mr. Kriegle, didn’t usually give us anything in terms of free food, not even the scraps customers left behind. Sometimes I thought he’d rather throw the food away and let the rats eat it instead of giving his workers anything. I guess he considered it a handout if he gave the food to us.

I quickly tore through the bread, making sure I didn’t lose but a crumb. Saraia stumbled out of the room, her hair a mess, as she rubbed the crust off her eyes with her hands and squinted, looking right at me.

“Where’s mom?” she asked.

“She’s at work. What do you need?” I asked.

“I need to get ready for school. Are you taking me today?” she asked.

“Yes, I am. Go get ready, but make it quick. I need to get ready as well,” I said.

She nodded and went into the room to grab her uniform. All of the schools in the city required uniforms. Some had better ones than others, depending on the school, and all of the kids from lower income families wore hand-me-downs or worn out uniforms from the other, richer neighborhoods. Saraia was no stranger to that, and all of her uniforms were either ones I used to wear, or ones my mom got for cheap from the rations store.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked thirty-five minutes later, as she was collecting her belongings in the room.

“One minute,” she yelled back, the ruffling sound of her bag spilling out into the kitchen.

I grabbed my bracelet and clasped it around my left wrist. It was my grandma’s and she gave it to me. I always wore it, no matter where I went, even to work. It was a part of me, and I never wanted to let it go. Besides, only good things could happen to me while I was wearing it. She told me it was lucky.

“Okay,” Saraia said as she walked out of the bedroom, her backpack hanging off of her, a little too big for her frame.

I grabbed my keys, we walked out the front door, and I locked it behind me. I jiggled the doorknob to make sure it was secured, which sometimes it wasn’t. It was this time, and we walked down the steps. Saraia grabbed my hand when we got onto the sidewalk, and off we went for the fifteen-minute walk to her school. Thankfully it was in the same general direction that I needed to go to get to work.

Although the skies were always gray, it was particularly overcast today. Some days there were thin rays of sunshine that were like small bits of heaven breaking through the dark, brooding clouds. Sadly enough, today wasn’t one of those days.

Saraia and I were at a corner, patiently waiting for the light to change so we could walk, when she nudged me, slyly pointing to a man standing in an alleyway nearby. He looked a little suspicious, constantly glancing over his shoulder, like he was expecting somebody, or something, to be there. I saw a kid walk by him, and the man stopped him. I kept a close eye on him, wondering if he was going to start any kind of trouble.

He opened his jacket, and I could see something metallic and shiny hanging inside. At that moment, I knew what he was doing. He had a skimmer in his jacket, held up by a fabric sling, neatly hidden away because of the consequences of having such a device.

Skimmers were illegal, and he definitely knew it. They were dark metal devices, a wristband of sorts, that you wore in WorldNet. They allowed you to hack through the network with special cards that I was guessing the guy was likely also carrying. I had heard about skimmers in school once, but I’d never actually seen one in person. I knew enough to know that you didn’t want to be caught with one in your possession.

Skimmers were legal inside the tournament, and they were actually given to competitors, along with a set of cards to use with them. Swiping the cards inside the tournament allowed you to hack or change the source code, ultimately letting you change your surroundings or how you operated within them. You might be able to make weapons appear out of thin air, gain some sort of superpower, or even literally change and form your landscape and environment. The cards could really do anything, as long as you had the right ones.

Possessing a skimmer outside of the tournament, however, was strictly forbidden. Merely being seen with one meant a mandatory five-year prison sentence, a fate nobody wanted, but plenty of low-lives were wildly tempted. Skimmers went for a lot on the black market, since people used them inside WorldNet to hack into banks, cause trouble for people trying to enjoy themselves, or even just to mess around and act out their wildest fantasies. After all, if you had one and could program a source card, you could do whatever you wanted. There were no true limitations in the digital realm.

The light changed, and Saraia and I started walking. We were going to walk right past the man selling the skimmer. The boy he’d tried to persuade was long gone, as he must’ve realized that he could get in trouble for even
talking
to this man.

“You look like a smart girl. You want to see something cool?” the man asked me, but I didn’t even look at him.

“I’m not interested,” I said, and squeezed Saraia’s hand harder, picking up our pace.

“Oh, come on. You mean to tell me you like being poor? You like being pushed down at every chance you have to stand up? I’m offering you a chance,” he said, walking beside us.

“A chance at what? Prison? Get away from us before I call a cop over here,” I said sternly, as I stopped in place.

“Whoa, whoa, we don’t need any cops to come over here! I’m sorry if I offended you, I was just trying to help,” he said, his hands up.

“A little piece of advice: don’t ever try to help me again. If I ever see you on this street again I won’t hesitate to make sure you regret it,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes, his expression one of pure fear and regret.

Without saying a word, he spun around, briskly walked away, and turned around the corner.

“Wow, you really scared him,” Saraia said.

“Well, somebody has to. You don’t ever talk to someone like that, okay?” I asked.

“I promise I won’t. I don’t want to be in trouble. Ms. Weldon wouldn’t like it if I missed turning in my homework. She’d give me detention!” Saraia said.

There was such a difference between us; our motives for staying away from that man or people like him were completely night and day. She didn’t even think about getting in real trouble, only that her teacher would scold her, and she’d miss turning in something as trivial and unimportant as homework. I didn’t think about losing my job and source of income, only getting tossed in a cold jail cell without a key in sight. Oh, what it’s like to be young.

Saraia and I soon got to her school, the mass of kids running up the chipped, weathered steps and through the front door, some of them even chasing each other. I looked at the clock that sat plastered atop the front door. There was an hour until I had to be at work. Saraia brought my attention back down to her.

“Is mom picking me up?” she asked.

“Yeah. You’ll stay here until she comes, okay? You’re going to have to stay with the after school group today,” I said.

“Aw, but I hate going in there. It’s no fun,” she pouted, her arms crossed.

“I know, but you have to. I have work, and mom can’t come until an hour and a half after school lets out. You’re just going to have to stay for today, but I promise you and I will have fun once I get home,” I said, smiling.

“Will you braid my hair?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“If that’ll get you to stay after school without a problem, then yes,” I said.

“Yay!” she said excitedly, before hugging me tightly and letting go, joining the other kids in running inside.

I smiled, watching her run out of sight inside the hallway, before I turned and started my somewhat leisurely stroll to work. My walk was going to be pretty stress-free since most of the people in the city were already at work. My boss let me come in a little bit later on days when I had to take Saraia to school, which was about the only kind thing he did for me. I sometimes thought about trying to find a new job, but it would most certainly be suicide for us financially. Not only because it was hard to find a job in the first place, but also because I knew they would want some kind of reference, and this job was the only one I’d ever had. The last thing I needed was some guy calling Mr. Kriegle up and inquiring about a girl named Alexia who just applied at his place. I knew I’d get fired on the spot, and without another job in place it wouldn’t be a smart move on my part.

When I was about ten minutes from work I passed by a shop. A sign in the window immediately caught my eye and caused me to stop in place. The shop was a café, though they didn’t serve any food. They served access to WorldNet, which for some people was far better than even the tastiest cuisine money could buy. Cafes like this were starting to sprout up more frequently, and they offered anyone with a little cash the luxury of logging onto WorldNet comfortably, getting to see the world and an environment that was artificially better than the one I was standing in now.

“
First-time customers get twenty minutes free inside WorldNet. Claim your twenty minutes of fun now before space fills up! Spots are limited!
” the sign read.

WorldNet was unique in that it worked on a four-to-one ratio between minutes in the real world and minutes inside the grid. For every four minutes that went by in the physical world, one minute went by in there, which meant my time in the grid would only feel like five minutes in the physical world. That wasn’t that long. I had thirty-five minutes left before work. Twenty minutes in there and a ten minute-walk to work left me five minutes to spare in case anything went wrong, which I knew it wouldn’t. I looked around, saw nobody coming from either direction and, biting my lower lip, decided to take the plunge. I walked up to the door and opened it up, as a little bell rang above me.

There was a screen above the front counter showing all of the pods available. Only one had a green light, which meant it was available. All the others were occupied, which was surprising because they had ten pods and it was a weekday morning. A woman walked out of a door behind the front counter and came towards me with a smile on her face.

“Hello, can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m here for the promotion. I saw the sign,” I said, pointing behind me at the banner strung on the window.

“Oh, yes, please come forward. I can definitely help you with that,” she said.

I walked up to the counter as she pulled up a small screen from below, a scanner from what I remembered the last time I logged on, and looked back up at me.

“I will just need your thumb print, if you’d be so kind. It’s for government purposes, not for us,” she said.

I pressed my right thumb against the scanner, the light behind it going from left to right before the blue screen turned green, which I took as a good sign.

“Good, good. You’re approved for access to WorldNet. Is this your first time?” she asked, putting away the scanner.

“No, but I haven’t been on in a while,” I said.

“Well, you’re about to have a great time. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to your pod,” she said.

She walked out from behind the counter and I followed her down a hallway. We stopped in front of a pod with the number nine painted on the door. She opened it, extended her arm, and smiled as I walked inside. There was a somewhat darker room inside lit up only by strings of lights along the trim on the walls. There was a white chair in the center of the room with a large machine behind it, and there were arm and leg restraints on the chair itself, which I remembered was to make sure you didn’t wander off or fall out of the chair.

“If you’d just sit down, we can get started,” she said.

I sat in the chair and got comfortable before the restraints automatically fastened on me, though not so tightly as to make me feel threatened or uneasy. She pressed some buttons on the machine behind me, but I had no clue as to what exactly she was doing.

“Okay, we’re going to get started in a second. Once your twenty minutes are up, the network will ask you if you’d like to pay for more time. If you answer no, you’ll be logged out and woken back up. You’re going to feel a sting in a minute. That’s normal, and it’s just the neuro harness injecting into you so that it can tap into your central nervous system, which allows you to have all of your worldly senses inside WorldNet. Do you have any questions?” she asked.