The flight landed in another ten minutes or so, fortunately there were no delays and we could land on time. It was warm in LA so I didn't have to adjust much to the temperature. As I walked towards the large airport in the distance, I thought about what I would do next. I decided to grab my suitcase from the belt first, head to a restaurant for lunch and read the information while eating.
I looked around and most of the people seemed to be Indian, a lot of them seemed happy and excited to be here so it looked like they were immigrating in. There were some Americans that were flying back though so it was quite a mixed group. I quickly went inside the nearby airport, and headed to the baggage belt. The airport was extremely full, people from all over the world were flooding in and out. I'm sure the recent announcement had made an increase to this, but the LA airport probably had a lot of people all the time. It was a tourist hotspot after all. After a couple minutes, my suitcase arrived on the belt. I quickly grabbed it and went on my way to the nearest fast food restaurant. Luckily I was in America so I didn't need to walk that far. Just at the edge of my sight was a McD's so I quickly ran over. There were a quite a lot of people inside, given it was lunchtime. I sat down, and started reading the email. After the irrelevant formalities, the email said this.
"Welcome to the USA, we hope you had a great flight. We would also like to thank you for choosing this great nation to work in. Your work week officially starts on 4/11/2023, which is the Monday next week. Until then, you are expected to complete all legal procedures allowing you to work in the US and also move into the building provided for your accommodation. There you will be further briefed on the specific role you will play. The address of the building is attached to this email as a link. If you have any further questions you can reply to this email" After that was a link with a map to the building, which was a decent distance away.
I was not too worried though, I had like 5 days to reach there. I decided to rest for the first day and then do all the legal hullaballoo tomorrow. For now, I would tour LA and have some fun. I spent another 5 minutes finishing lunch, and I left the airport after that.
LA was not bad at all, or maybe it just felt that way cause I lived in India my whole life. Either way, it was the first time I was in such a massive city with skyscrapers all around. I knew that I wanted to relax and after watching all the videos about the places to visit in LA, I made sure to use that time appropriately. I went to all the popular spots and finally settled down at a 3 star hotel which was the most I could afford.
The next few days went without incident. I was able to get my ID, and relax a little throughout LA and get a sense for the city. Soon enough 4 days had passed and it was the time for me to go to the facility where I would start my new job.
The place I needed to go to was towards the east outskirts of the city. It was about 3 hours and the drive was way too arduous. It got to the point where even the Uber drive I had booked for was getting annoyed. I had enough time to go through some of the newest discoveries in the world of Domus, I hadn't done much except train there for the past few days and work in the research section. Aside from a few interesting conversations with Cathryn and Jeff, my time there the past week was pretty uneventful.
Recently, though I realized that it was possible that the government could try to control the things I do inside Domus. The chances of this were low though, since they wouldn't risk losing my role at the military and it would also be hard to convince people to completely give over their freedom. What was more likely is that they would ask us to move in a certain direction, or support certain civilizations. To me though, it was of not much importance since I HAD to do this. It was this or suffer in a broken home or have no home at all. For now, this would do. When I do better in Domus, I could do better here.
When we reached at what was supposed to be the location, I quickly paid the cab driver and stepped out of the white sedan. Outside there weren't that many buildings, it seemed like we were really far away at this point. But there were a couple smaller buildings in the barren environment. With only a little greenery here and there it was pretty much a desert here. But out of all this barren land and desert was one massive building. If I had to guess it had to have an area of 10000 square feet. Other than its size, it was a fairly inconspicuous building, and it didn't have any distinguishing features. A normal concrete square shaped building, with large reflective windows running along the sides. There was a decent crowd around the place, with a lot of people walking the large doors that were a story tall. It was mostly Americans, but there were a decent amount of people from all over the world. I blended into the moving crowd and moved towards the entrance.
It was getting fairly crowded so I started to speed up. After quickly dodging some of the people in my way, I soon walked into the building. The inside was the opposite of the outside. There were several flashy lights strewn around this massive entry area, which was a wide cuboid with a higher elevated area in the center. It seemed like some sort of stage to make announcements and such. People were all around the area, some sitting some standing. Most of them were talking to each other and making conversation, whereas a few like me were keeping to themselves.
I planned to do so for a while but I probably wouldn't need to, since an announcement was bound to come. I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through all the latest news and tuned into the social media channels I used to watch. After a couple minutes of doing so, I looked closer at the people around me. Most had excited or nervous looks on their faces, with very few of them being calm. I looked forward, then left, and then right. Mostly out of curiosity, slightly out of boredom. It was important for me not to allow my mind to be still for a long time as well so. When I was looking through the people on my right, there was suddenly a commotion from the left. Angry, jeering voices were getting louder and louder and I could also hear a small voice replying back to them.
"IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT IM WEAKER THAN YOU!" a young voice said from a place not too far from where I was. I looked closer and I could see a boy that seemed to be around 14 on the ground looking at man standing close by him. Before I could make sense of the situation I started heading away from the commotion because the last thing I wanted at this point was unwanted attention. Just as I was heading away, a woman with bright blonde hair started walking in the complete opposite direction. I sped up and so did she, soon enough we crossed paths and I hoped that I could just keep walking forward without getting involved. My hopes would soon be crushed as green eyed blonde looked at me and said in a kind yet firm voice "Don't you think we should help?"
In real life I wasn't really the person to help others. I wouldn't go out of my way to pick up someone's pen or help someone cross the road. Not that I wanted to be rude or anything, I just had no idea how a conversation like that would go. So I always made the conscious choice of not having that awkward conversation. This time though, that thought didn't even enter my mind. Because there was no more conversation to be had, it didn't feel awkward just doing what is needed with the woman in front of me. I felt comfortable enough to be able to help. So comfortable in fact that saying no to helping would be much harder to get away with. Just as my mind processed all this I heard "ITS NOT MY FAU" *voice crack* "lt that I'm weak." It was the kid defending himself again.
"We should." I started walking up to where the fight was happening. We stepped through all the bodies in the crowd as fast as we could to stop the situation from escalating any further. Quickly, we reached the area where I could see a group of people backing up the man in his actions. It seemed that 5-6 people were in this group, both male and female. I didn't have much time to focus on those details though, because the man had currently raised his hand above the kids head. I needed to stop him.
I ran forward, and stretched my hand to stop his arm from landing. I just reached in time, as his palm was just a couple inches of the trembling figure on the floor. "There are cameras all around us, you sure you wanna take that chance?" I knew that all I had to do was remind him that he was here to get a job from the government, and that they would certainly not provide him with one if they saw his behavior. That was enough to get him moving back to his group.
Looking over to where the teenager was, I saw that the blonde lady from earlier had already moved down to help him. She helped him stand up and talked to him for a while before turning towards me. "That guy isn't the smartest." I looked over to the guy, before saying "Yeah, probably not." I was going to ask her name right after, but it seemed like her attention was on the kid so I chose not to. I looked away, and waited for a moment to. It seemed like though, she saw me looking away and also chose not to speak because it was awkwardly quiet for the next minute or so. Giving up the hesitation I chose to speak up "What's your name?" and finally she looked back at me and I got to really take in what she looked like for the first time.
She had wavy blonde hair that went down to her neck. It was the type you would see on surfers, the sandy kind. She looked young, close to my age. She was attractive, wayy too attractive. Especially her bright green eyes that completed her look. Not that I would ever tell her those things but I noticed them nonetheless. My focus was broken when she said "Valeria, most people call me Val though." The name suited her for sure, though it was not what I expected. The name was too uncommon for me to expect it really.Before it got awkward again I quickly replied "I'm Amitav, you can call me whatever." It was at this point in time that I realized that she hadn't even asked my name back. Eh it was too late anyway. I waited for a reply, hoping that I hadn't messed up the first social interaction I've had in a week. "That's a nice name, you sure you don't mind me calling you whatever I like?" I thought about it for a while before saying "I mean not whatever but pretty much yeah." She smiled before saying "I'm gonna call you... recluse. I saw you walk away at first you know."
I've had many nicknames among friends, sometimes derogatory ones but never ... recluse? "Can I take the whatever back? And to tell you why I was walking away, I hate confrontations." and attention but whatever she doesn't need to hear that. "Still gonna call you recluse, but okay." she snickered knowing that she was putting me in another confrontation. I just fake laughed and looked towards the stage. It seemed that the announcement was starting.
Up on the stage were two men, one in military uniform and the other wearing a black suit. As they did, the conversation in the large room did lessen but was still quite lively. All it took to kill it completely though, was the guy in the suit clearing his throat instantly grabbing everyone's attention. It seemed that the excitement was colored with a tinge of nervousness. Everybody was now laser focused on the suited man.
They would have to refocus again though as the man in the military suit started talking quite loudly, and impressively assertively. "Welcome to the American National Domus Authority, you are our latest recruits. I hope you're ready to change the world."