OGENUS EARTH 🌎 🌊 {Dystopian Sci-Fi Adventure}

There's No Home For You Here

It's coming, Meg thought, bracing beneath her paper-thin blanket.

The square mirror above her plain dresser refracted a burst of abrasive light to scorch her eyes.

I'm up! She grumbled in her head, lurching out of the flare's path as it continued to climb the wall. Every morning with that awful alarm, just once couldn't it be a light breeze?

Meg chuckled inwardly at her own sardonic joke, there wouldn't be a breeze until eight when the fans kicked in.

Meg stretched her legs, noting the asymmetrical bruise decorating her thigh. Her risky run-in with a Legionnaire's boot was fading into a sickly yellowish tint.

She prodded it lightly with momentary fascination. It was still sore, but much better than it was four days ago. Shrugging against the memory, she slithered out of bed, searching for the shoes she had discarded the night before.

With a dull thud the paperback book she had fallen asleep clutching, hit the floor to split down the middle of its well-worn spine. The image of a grand wooden ship riding atop undulating waves on its voyage to adventures unknown, stared back at Meg, almost mocking the mediocrity of her reality.

With care, she bent down and plucked it up, closing the pages to keep the invaluable contents from spilling out. There was no need to mark her place, she could pick any page and fall naturally into the story.

Neither Laura or Ben appreciated early morning noise, so a shower was out of the question. Not that Meg needed one for where she was going. In the bowels of Arc City One, there weren't many discerning noses to notice that she was going on her third day without showering.

Just in case, she lifted her left arm for an exploratory sniff. It was a bad idea, but thankfully bots couldn't tell the difference. At least, she was pretty sure they couldn't.

In the top drawer of her dresser was her secret weapon, a canister of baby powder. One shake to her hair (and bodily crevices), and she could go for another two days.

Laura might say something tonight, but Ben never seemed to care, and since those were the only two humans to talk to Meg on a regular basis, she went about getting dressed.

Meg's light blue uniform was too long in the sleeves, the torso, and the legs, making her appear much smaller and frumpier than she actually was. Again, not that it mattered. Cleaning bots and running diagnostics wasn't exactly glamorous work, but at least it was thankless. The less human interaction the better as far as Meg was concerned.

With a sweep of her hand, Meg's solid curtain of onyx hair was knotted at the nape of her neck, and she was ready to start the day.

Outside their modest family apartment, the air was stagnant.

The atmosphere would brighten up soon as the ventilation cycle began, carrying with it the scent of the immaculate parks that surrounded their floating city.

Meg's shoes padded along the black-topped walkway carefully tracing the same route she always took. Darting from the designated path, she ducked into the lush bushes to cut fifteen minutes from her commute and bring a smile to her face.

Most people took the main routes, calling out hearty greetings and pleasant exchanges to their fellow citizens. Those types of superficial niceties didn't interest Meg, and in the park surrounded by greenery and growth, she could get a perfect view of the dome that so few remembered to thank for their survival.

Tiny beads of condensation, a result of the hydro sprinkler system that triggered before dawn, hugged the unnoticeable shell of the magnificent polyhedron, twinkling like infinitesimal diamonds in the digitized sunrise.

Even those at the lowest spot on the totem pole of humanity could feel like royalty surrounded by the riches of their engineered world.

And all of it for my eyes only, Meg thought, smiling and hopping over one of the deeper puddles.

While it was blasphemously early for most, this was Meg's favorite time of day.

Only bots and the occasional Tinker or Legionnaire on their way to or from work could be seen, and only if you really looked for them.

Leafy green trees of various genus stretched their branches up and out in their photosynthetic quest. Meg could imagine the chubby birds who should be waking up right about now, their feathers gradually warmed by the sun's crescive rays until they felt compelled to offer their trilling gratitude to a new day.

She'd only read about them in her books because Tinkers didn't usually go to the museums, which was the only way to see records of old Earth's animals.

One day, when man's wretched mistakes had been eroded by the sands of time, life would restore the shattered links of the food chain. However, that was going to be thousands of years after the lethal chemicals still choking Earth's atmosphere had evaporated.

Meg would long be dust by then, so she would have to make do with her own mental images.

At the edge of an expansive lawn of manicured grass, huge buildings sprouted up into the roof of the dome. A stark contrast to the greenery just a few feet from where she'd come.

Long angular shadows swallowed her frame as she moved through the streets, dodging any corner she'd seen a Legionnaire spying on the population. Even in plainclothes and off-duty, Meg could always spot the officers sworn to serve and protect them.

A few more blocks and she would disappear into the safety and solitude of the Harmony building. The only humans to go down to negative-seventeen (the shipper's floor) were other maintenance workers or bots. Once in a while, you might see an Architect down there, but that was rare, and thankfully, wholly avoidable.

She supposed that was part of the purposeful design. If the worst happened, the rats would be the only ones to go down with the ship.

After reading the individual rings and grooves on Meg's palm and matching those to the DNA in her dermis, the tinted Plexiglas doors of the Tinker entrance retracted, letting out a rush of warm air before she was wrapped in darkness once again.

Here, she was safe. Here, Meg was alone.

Dear Incredibly Appreciated (and most likely extremely, like ridiculously, good looking) Reader,

Hellooooo! This is the first of two chapters that I'm posting today, so you're meeting a few lead characters in the cast :)

The above video is NOT the White Stripes (duh), but I'll be darned if Jack and Meg ever made a video to one of my favorite songs they ever composed. So, I found this group doing a lip sync...not sure if I understand their artistic vision, but at least you get to hear the original track in all its glory.

Again, THANK YOU for reading! As mentioned, I'm so-broke-it's-no-joke, and this book is unedited. So, any constructive comments or notes are always welcome!