No matter how much I tried to think how I ended up on this city, I can't figure it out. The interplanetary guard just told me to sleep on a pod and the next thing that happened when I woke up was it opening inside of what now is my abandoned apartment.
I knew it happened this way, but how?
It was a underground city, mostly autonomous, and the only outside things that entered here were actually from other cities. They were all connected by tunnels even further down on the ground.
So how did a intergalactic ship didn't get caught when landing on the surface? How did a pod entered from the surface to the underground city? How did a thing of that size with such a amazing technology didn't get intercepted by the authorities before reaching a suburb apartment?
Not that it mattered now.
While the bus passed the cramped streets, its automatical driving system managed to not run over a person and don't hit any transport. The ceiling made impossible for the population to go upwards and improve the flight technology. Almost everyone walked. Yeah, no hovers. No flutters. No floating transports. Everything was bound to the ground.
It was the first thing that I noticed when arriving, but somehow I got used to it.
Worst than that was the fact that people walked looking to the ground. If you looked up, the only thing you would see was the blinding lights that made the artificial sunlight. There was no sky. At "night" not even one artificial star.
While looking down, they were doing things. Everyone here had one implanted chip. It appeared externally on you left temple and connected to your eye. It was quite interesting, because everything looked like primitive but this technology was almost the same we used back home. I didn't even needed to exchange my implant before coming here.
It actually reinforced my previous theory that we were related.
My superiors disregarded it, the years passed and I started to think that it was indeed practically impossible.
I looked into the history of the chip, but found nothing. It has been used for so long that no one remembered how it came to be. It was like the water filter. We used it everyday and it was a important part of our lives, we know which companies produces and sells it, improve its usability and technology... But we don't have a clue who discovered that water needed to be filtered and though how to do it.
The chip worked just like a computer. It read the inputs by reading our brain waves and projected the outputs on our retin. It worked wonders on everyday life but it was always connected to the city's network.
And that bring us back to why I took the bus. While connected, they could still track me, but on the surface I would be disconnected from the network.
I didn't even consider removing the chip. It was implanted right after birth and it grows adjusting to you. By the time you reach adulthood the chip is buried so deep into your brain that was impossible to remove it.
So yes, do not think about removing it.
Some time latter the bus passed by one of the buildings that went above the ceiling, but after thinking twice I decided to go to the next one.
Each one of those have a purpose on the city. The one I just passed by was handled by the city law enforcement, what means that if I started to look suspicious there I could be in trouble, to say the least.
The next one, on the other hand, was the temple. It actually had a huge elevator opened to the public that leads to the last floor before the building reach the ceiling. That floor had windows that allowed the people to look to everything. It was made on the center of the city.
History says that every underground city started with one of those. It had windows on all sides of
the upper floors because the resources came from the surface and were slided down on cables to all directions. The huge elevator helped the scavation team to take the debris and move it to outside. And when the city was finished, they locked the upper floors down and turned the huge structure into a temple.
It costed just 10 sparks (yeah, that's the name of the money) to enter the temple. They charged it to maintenance and to pay the security. I checked my virtual wallet and found that my city's bank account was still available but without a intergalactic connection I couldn't access my money back home.
That was alright for now, I still have enough money to survive for a while here.
Oh.
I threw a punch on the lad on my left. He covered his cheek and looked at me with wide eyes.
- You choose the wrong person to steal from today, boy. I'm on a bad mood.
I considered giving him a kick, but the bus reached my stop. I left the bus showing my maturity with a middle finger up.
Nobody on the bus made a fuss about that. They just checked if they were not stolen. If not they just clenched their stuff closer and started to keep an eye on the boy. It was just another sparkling day in Rope city for them.
The boy would not be ok. If he managed to steal from someone in the bus before I caught him trying to pick things from my backpack then they were going to punch him to the blink of death before dropping him out on the next stop.
But that was not my problem.
I payed the entrance fee and entered the temple.