On a usual day, a young woman with silver hair was walking down the busy street.
There was a large screen besides her, one for advertisement. No one really paid attention to it, when suddenly a young man around twenty was projected. People turned their heads; beauty always attracted the appreciation and awe of others.
In truth, the woman behind them might look better, but after all, her greying silver hair made one think she was an old lady, the contrast to her lush hair was great.
There were very few such huge advertisement, a different culture with a different taste one might say, but after so many years of globalisation, basically everyone had a bit of what others had. So, at first, everyone would look at the screen whenever they passed. Only with time did they realise the advertisement was no different from any other.
The man on the screen had blonde hair and blue eyes, a typical beauty in this day and age. He looked like a true sunshine; white trousers and a white beach-shirt made him give off a very soft energy with a touch of joyfulness.
He looked down at the people, 'They must have paid him extremely well to perform extra for this kind of screen' the silver haired woman thought, but she didn't look away. After all, she also appreciated beauty, although this wasn't her taste, no one would reject eye candy.
Without any words, the man looked kindly at the crowd. A smile escaped his lips, and a perfume of the side came forward, landing in front of him, not blocking his face at all. A small bird was depicted on a spherical crystal perfume bottle, the inside seemed windy and alive.
'They are getting better and better at marketing luxurious goods, but why the effort to rent this advertisement screen? None of us here will be able to afford it anyways…' just as she said this, someone commented on this too "I heard he is going to be a candidate to join the parliament.".
The person they talked to nodded and said "Yes, I heard the same. Look at him, he's so beautiful and obviously earns a lot with his job, yet now he also wants to become a government official. His looks alone will outshine all those old people! But will he really be voted? After all, if it was only about looks, other models would've been voted long ago."
Their friend replied "You don't know… actually, there are rumours that he's from an influential and rich family down south. They are always like this, trying their best to manipulate the politics into their favour. This is their new way of doing so, since all the previous things didn't work out.
Though that isn't enough to make the government give up the taxes they get from such big families that own many shares, my guess is that he will become a citizen darling and then only implement small changes. Anyways, these families exist for so long and even kept their wealth through large wars, with time, every small change will become a huge profit."
Others nodded but no one refuted it, after all, getting small benefits was indeed a common practice, and those companies also knew how to gain public favour, such as opening new job positions or donating, temporally losing out will make them gain long time benefit.
It's not that people don't know this; they even talk about it. The age of information has been going on for quite some time and the common populace knows everything. If it wasn't for this, why would they need to be satisfied? And deep down, the common people also had the arrogance they inherited from many events in the past.
So, what if they gain a little benefit every few years? The common people can take it all back as long as they are angered. This has happened in the past!
No matter how interesting it was, soon, everyone left and went on their way. In total, they barely stood there and watched for a minute.
The silver haired woman didn't care about it – today was an important day. She had been studying for many years for this, and then she had to work in a hospital to realise her dream, but finally, she would today get her certificate that she could practice as a therapist. Although the way was winding and confusing, finally she could work for herself.
Today she only had to get the final certificate from the hospital, all her applications and everything else was ready, this was the last piece in the puzzle. After finalising this, there was nothing going to stop her –
*Boom*
An explosion suddenly sounded in the far, she looked there and saw a car suddenly crashing into another, this was confusing, after all, the cars barely moved a few metres every minute on this street, how could they suddenly crash? Then she looked at the owner of the car and saw that he didn't seem to fully be awake, but even the crash didn't cause him to wake up.
At this moment, she looked around and saw people around her falling down, then more cars crashed. Even though this happened everywhere around her, no one seemed to scream, she saw some hideous injuries that suddenly came to be because of the situation.
Fear willed up in her heart, but as she tried to calm down, she wasn't sure of her own situation. Looking at where she stood, she felt that it was dangerous to be here – to the left there was a road that was somewhat empty, but she knew that sometimes people would rush through this, not knowing whether there was a car in the far that was still pushing the gas, she quickly tried to move away.
Scared and shocked she wasn't aware of what she was doing at all, it seemed as if her years of training to 'deactivate' her emotions caused her to be able to have great rationality in this situation while supressing her emotions.
At this moment, she realised a horrific fact. In the distance, water bubbled up from the ground. This was a fact that not many knew, she only knew it because it was a fun fact someone once told her in high school – this city, the capital of the country she lived in, was built upon a swamp.
Over hundreds of years had passed, but the ground never changed beyond the fact that it was liveable now. Yet even so, when there were construction sites, there would be people pumping out the swamp and water from below the cold stone ground.
Even her rationality didn't know how to react here – how was she supposed to leave this metropolis that would take her over an hour even with a car just by feet! She had just heard the sudden sound of cracking below her, when her conscious faded too like the others…
'No wait – let me escape, wait-'