Chapter 11: Idle Time II

Most people would probably tell her to just shut up, ‘grow up’ and be grateful for what she already had, she was sure. Couldn’t she just go to college, graduate, put on a groomed shirt and some cheap lipstick and go work in an office cubicle from 9 to 5 like everybody else? Of course she could! She wasn’t special. Emily Griffith wasn’t better than anyone else.

Those were all simple facts, accepted by the general population. But still, none of that had changed how she felt in the end. After everything she’d seen from that freakish world, the ‘White Lady’ often found herself all out of gratitude.

To tell the truth, she did not feel any semblance of interest in whatever path the UDS’s kind system had ready for her. All of her life, no matter where she went, thinking outside the box would be punished. Peer support and brown nosing, above everything else, were crucial for success.

Time and again, she would peek outside the window, first hour in the morning, and stare at the hundreds, thousands of office workers, countless career-driven men and women, rushing to and from numerous different buildings in a frantic back-and-forth, some of them yawning, some of them looking at their phones, many traveling in groups while dryly talking between each of other, doing all kinds of different things, an almost disturbingly planned, coordinated parade, as they hurriedly made their way to their jobs. Among those things, laughing and smiling were, naturally, the two they did more often. Or, more accurately, their mouths and voices laughed, loud and clear, as if gaining a life of their own. Their eyes never did.

Oftentimes, she’d see Kay putting on her own plain shirts, high heels, and overdone makeup like every other salarywoman, and walk out the door before 08:30.

Every day, Emily would smile at her sister and wish her well, and she’d reciprocate accordingly. But deep inside, behind all the charades, she struggled to care. Was her sister even happy, living like this? Was anyone, among those thousands of people?

With the inevitable automation of most functions and jobs throughout their singular nation, that kind of career path had become the norm, considered among the safest and most stable lines of work. It was the natural evolution of ‘the job market’, whatever that even was anymore.

Well, it certainly could seem like a good idea for the majority, but she refused to be a part of such a monotonous, fake society. Or rather, even if she wanted to take part in it, she would never be able to fully fit in. Not anymore. She still held onto the past. A near past. Closer to a yesterday than a last decade. But still the past. And because of that, she could not help but to keep living on the edge. Out there. It was dangerous, naturally. Sometimes, deadly so. But at the very least it did not bore her.

She’d rather suffer right now with a knife in the gut, than be the one who wound up killing herself years later out of shame and regret for her own failures at life, like many already did in the present day. The growing spread of haema products through ‘illegal’ means hadn’t stopped suicide rates from being as high as ever, but she hardly recalled seeing anybody try to address the problem for what it was, so far.

No matter where she looked, every single person, victim or otherwise, seemed to instead deny it on a constant basis. In the end, that was none of her business, right? She figured she should just let people be. Not like she had a choice.

“SO. THE. RADIUS!! Can be obtained in its squared form BY REPLACING THE COORDINATES WITH THEIR RESPECTIVE VARIABLES!!!”

(Holy fu…!)

It had only been for a split second, but a sudden, deafening noise had rung right next to the girl’s ear following the teacher’s scream, startling the rest of her classmates as well. She hesitantly turned to the window on her right, trying to get a clear look at it through the beaming sunlight.

Three large cracks, around half a meter in length each, had appeared at the center of the glass pane right next to her. Regardless, the teacher kept going, noticing neither the noise nor the state of the window, and soon the students followed her example, ignoring it past the initial shock. The pale girl, however, remained frozen in place, staring at the fractures for several minutes, her mouth agape.

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