Later this day, almost when the nighttime hit Garnet Island, Raj is walking inside a store, where he is thinking to buy a pack of cigarettes he needs for his good. When Raj walked into the store, he notices the cashier of that supermarket is a middle-aged man, that looks like an ordinary Russian immigrant. After the things they went through the past year, United States of America was flooded with these kinds of people, including the artificial islands they've built as a trend to gain clout on their social media.
Yes, most of these continents have built artificial islands even for social media clout. Funny for today's people, but think about this: It may be happening in real life, considering how the corporations have taken the internet and developed business only to gain papers that are going to be used to exchange goods to make life of humans miserable and good at the same time. But later, they realize these artificial islands are good for their economy and tourism, so they decided to try built more, but realizing this will do much harm than good and benefits, they decided to keep on a minimum to one or four. And United States of America are having only three artificial islands: Ruby's Island, Sapphire Island, and Garnet Island.
When Raj entered the store, he looked at the cashier, who was looking on his phone, probably on his social media like any human addicted to dopamine social media are throwing to their face. The man is looking at Raj like he cares about a customer, and asks him.
"Yeah?"
"I would like to buy a pack of cigarettes, please." says Raj to the cashier.
The cashier is walking two steps to the place where the cigarettes are stored, he looks at them, then back at Raj, and asks.
"What pack?"
"Give me…" says Raj thinking what pack of cigarettes to buy since most of them are having nowadays the same taste because of the mass production in Africa and companies of cigarettes multiplying in number. "Redwood."
The cashier takes a pack of redwoods, and he scans it Then Raj, pays the product, which is almost twenty-five dollars. Yes, cigarettes have become so expensive, and that is because most of the politicians, who quit smoking, decided to make the civilians quit smoking as well, by raising the price of a pack of cigarettes.
Before the cashier could take the money, something wrong happened.
A man in clown mask enters the store, wielding a double barrel shotgun, and yelling to the customers "Get on the ground! Don't move!". All the customers are doing what they have to do. Raj sits on the ground, looking down and not making eye contact with the attacker. He knows this will be a bad idea, but he has a plan.
As the robber was pointing his shotgun to the cashier, he yells at him to give all of the money from the cash register. The cashier, who barely speaks English, is doing as fast as he can to empty the cash register and tells the man he doesn't have much. The robber continues to point the shotgun at the cashier, but, he doesn't pay attention to the three customers and Raj. While some customers are on their ground, looking down, and keeping their voices down, Raj picks from one of the hidden tranquillizer pens into his pocket, and he stabs the leg of the robber, sice it was so close to him.
"What the fuck!?" yelled the robber backing away from the cashier desk, looking at Raj, and aiming the double barrel shotgun on his face.
Raj, jumps from the ground, and he tackles the robber. Manages to pin him down, and throw the shotgun a few meters away, to one of the customer who was filing the thing on TikTok to gain cloud and probably become a celebrity for like five minutes then forgotten. He successfully pins the robber down for about one minute, until he falls unconscious due to the thing substance he was injected with.
After Raj saw the man couldn't move anymore, he gets off him, takes the pack of redwood cigarettes from the desk.
"Thank you." he says to the cashier who was looking so shocked at this, then he sees the person who was recording this scene. "Delete it, please."
"Why?"
"Because I said so."
"For one hundred dollars!" says the person smiling at Raj.
"You scumbag." says Raj, who decides to leave this place and let that asshole film the man leaving while he is critiquing the one who probably saved his life.
After Raj left the store, he enters his car, and heads back to his house. He sees the night is about to settle so he is thinking to go early to sleep. But first, he will stop at the nearest pizza, and will order one.
***
Arriving at the pizzeria near his apartment complex he is living, he gets a text message from the teenager who helped him by taking off the business of a person. The message was send right when Raj is on the line, waiting for his turn to go on the giant tablet that McDonald's are having to this day to place orders. The message says: "Hello, Raj! I have already sent you about one thousand dollars. I would suggest you either keep the money or invest in crypto. They are going huge nowadays. Good night!".
Reading the message, Raj doesn't even think to invest his money into crypto coins. He knows the business is shadier that what NFT's are. But, he decides to put at least one hundred dollars in just one digital coin called "Livesey's Doctor Coin". After he's done this trade, the graph looks almost the same, raising a bit, and falling down until it hits the phone downside.
He closes the phone, and he waits for his turn on the tablet.
After three minutes, he gets his turn to place the order. He presses the option of package, then places the pizza option. He decides to go with Salami type pizza. After this, he selects the extra ingredients. He goes with the option of putting chilli sauce. And he places the order of a drink, a normal-sized Coca-Cola for Americans, that is about 500ml or so. He sends the command to the system, takes the ticket from the machine, and goes with it to the cashier, where he pays about twenty-five dollars for one pizza on the size of XL, that is about thirty-five centimetres diameter.
When he paid the pizza, he stays near the counter and waits for his command. As he stands there, looking at the monitor that displays the number of the orders, he looks at hi ticket with the number, which is having number twelve, he gets a notification. This notification it's from the site he invested 100 dollars to the crypto coin.
"Congratulations! The coin "Livesey's Doctor Coin" now values one hundred and fifty dollars per coin!"
And Raj, decides to ignore the message. Not because he will believe the price will go up or something, he decides he doesn't want to do it. After all, spending one hundred dollars like that is nothing to a bounty hunter who is hunting criminals for a living.
When the command comes to Raj hands, he leaves the store and heads to his home, where he will enjoy this pizza while he watches a good movie from his Smart TV.