Mind Planet
All Rights Reserved
© 2021 May Dahlia.
Word Count: 2360 words
8 Years Later
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Naomi let out a breath in the purest expression of boredom as she stared at the paper-like screen where the ATD News was being broadcasted live from Dirveena. The country had been the epicenter of attacks for longer than any other country in Zuerst so it was basically all that they talked about at all times of the day.
Naomi could still recall the times when journalists were free to report all types of news and get deep into other people's research for their content. She had considered the news worth watching back then and even though she had stopped being a fan of them long before, she could at least say they had a job that they were doing well.
But two years prior to the one she lived miserably in, there was conspiracy theory brought about by the government that the freedom of the press was the reason they were unable to complete tasks that they needed to keep hidden for national security and protests arose.
Many, including her, knew the truth of what had truly been going on at the time and some tried all they could to stop the sanctioning of the press while others like her went about their daily lives without a care for things that didn't affect their means of earning. The majority voted for the sanctioning and not long after the law was passed, the people began to realize what they had brought upon themselves.
Journalists and news reporters were required under all state laws to run all their works, consisting of but not limited to their video and audio recordings, written or acquired statements, written and/or documented articles, by the military before they were permitted to publish. The sanctioning resulted in the speed of information flow being drastically lessened and inaccurate or inadequate information being provided.
While others lamented on their foolishness or expressed their anger at the foolishness of others regarding the issue, Naomi found sadistic pleasure in watching the world pay for the limited mindsets. She wasn't completely against the sanctioning because it limited those who wrote simply to unfairly criticize the government but the reason it was so funny to her was the simple fact that no one had been the cause but them and so the people had no one but themselves to blame.
Deciding not to think any more on the topic of the foolishness of mankind and its inability to accept the responsibilities, she turned away from the TV to find her only friend on the small planet coming towards her with a tray in his hand.
She coughed out a laugh when she realized that he was dressed from head to toe in sun yellow, bright orange, and magenta pink. In secret, the three colours represented all the things she appreciated the most about nature and they constituted a majority of her palette of favourite colours. Whereas, in the open, she was a gothic, emotionless person, a persona she was forced to adopt as a means of survival in the terrible world she lived in.
Nathan was the only person she had ever told and although she considered it thoughtful that he had decided to wear such bright colours to cheer her up on her worst day in the year, she knew it would take more than the simple gesture to keep the horrors that came with the date at bay.
It was the same day, but eight years after that her adopted parents had died. The date on the calendar was a constant reminder of what she had lost and what she had become and she could only be glad for a distraction to keep the awful thoughts away until the night when the pain would be unbearable.
She gave him a bright smile to which he responded with a gracious bow as he set a delicious-looking piece of chocolate and red velvet cake in front of her. The flavour had been a personal favourite for as long as she could remember but the real reason her smile transformed into a genuine one was because of the size of the cake in comparison to the term 'piece' he had used when he invited her to his place of work. The cake was large enough to feed two footballers as a full meal and for her' being a foodie with amazing metabolism; enough to fill her up until she would receive her next meal in less than a few hours.
"For my lovely Naomi on this truly shitty day. I hope you cry only tears this night in a recommended process of ridding your eyes of all the harmful substances you will come across this unfaithful day. But more importantly, I hope you will remember me as a hot man in the vortex of your imaginative dreams." Nathan said in a perfected intergalactic accent. He bowed for the second time to complete his performance then slid into the chair beside her.
On the tray were a freshly baked cake, two 'couple' cups of ice cream, and a platter of freshly grilled fresh fish. The char was there and it well seasoned, giving it an aroma that made Naomi's stomach growl. The fish had been seasoned with a great number of exotic spices but as the universal language to her heart was food, so was the equation potato chips; crushed and crumbled as a crust onto the fish.
In total, the tray could never have been more perfect as a distraction from her truly shitty day.
"Are you going to rate my performance or not? Do you have any idea how hard it is to take the train, as a guy, dressed in all the brightest colours in the forty-first century, practice a childish performance continuously for a girl who has turned you down countless times, just to see her happy, wake up early in the morning to disturb people to get things ready, only to receive no form of appreciation?" Nathan said in a melodramatic tone, looking like a distressed person who had lost all he owned and cherished.
For a half-second, Naomi felt a pang of guilt for how she had been towards him but then the feeling was gone, replaced by what had become her natural state of being unbothered. She rolled her eyes then replied in a bored drawl. "Next time you want to get appreciated, get a friend who has emotions and a percentage of sentimental value for actions taken for or against them. But for now, you're stuck with me so sorry, not sorry." Then without a single care for his stretched hand reaching for the cake, she cut the cake into two and swallowed the entire piece whole.
Her mouth formed a vacuum that had become very uncommon as more children were being born and it sucked up all the roughage while she absorbed only the nutrients and delicious taste. Nathan watched in horror as she did the same for everything else on the tray and slowly and steadily consumed every single thing on the tray of food, including the cup of ice cream that he had originally assigned to himself.
In a matter of seconds, all traces of the food were gone and with his shoulders sagged, he was forced to do his job of clearing it away when he thought he would have been enjoying a little of all his hard work.
Once he was gone, Naomi glanced down at her left wrist where a chip that served as a mobile had been embedded in her skin and connected to the nanites implanted in her nerve system. It was the thirteenth hour of the morning and she was more than ready to utilize the twenty-five hours she had left remaining in that day before she would have to retire to the hellish place that she called a residence.
She tapped out two digits in a Jumbla code that was indigenous to the Angaza. Almost immediately, the interchanged form of the two digits she had tapped out; 73 popped up in a message on her screen and she smirked, having already suspected that there was an outsider who had gotten a whiff of her membership in the secret society of technologists. She took a few seconds to copy the IP address of the sender and upload it on the dark web before discarding the message and severing the person's connection to her mail.
Seconds later, someone walked through the door with his face completely covered in an unsuspicious way and he walked straight in the direction of her table, causing her to take in deep wild breaths as she tried to reassure herself that it was regular protocol to remain hidden and the guy wasn't a hired assassin for the gang she had electronically robbed for the pleasure of seeing them go down the drains.
The person stopped in front of her, dropped a folded grey piece of paper on her table then flickered and disappeared right before her eyes. Her eyes were wide in shock and disbelief at the thought that such sophisticated tech had been developed and she had been stripped of the honour of being the third to own one of it.
Discarding the thought, she opened the card to find an equation. It spelt something different when she turned it the other way and she laughed because she could already imagine how much time the person had spent coming up with an equation that would take double the time to solve because it could be something different when rotated a hundred and eight degrees. She would have done the same, in a sadistic moment of cruelty but she could only hope her first answer would result in a palindrome rather than having to spend two weeks solving for a pass code she had already waited over a month to get.
She tipped her hat at Nathan to let him know that she was leaving then she was gone, off to be the criminal she had become on the same day four years after her adopted parents died and prior to the year she was in.
~>~>~>~
Some Terms Used And Their Definitions:-
Dirveena:- A country in the first continent; Zuerst that has become the epicenter of dream elements attack. Dream elements will be explained further when the need arises.
Nathan:- A major-minor character that will be showing up from time to time. His backstory and relationship; which will be non-sensual and/or romantic, with Naomi will be expressed further as the story continues.
February 23rd, K41E6:- This is the day Naomi's adopted parents died and it will be stated this way throughout the rest of the story so as to keep you in tune with how the timeline of the story is progressing.
Vacuum Feeding:- In the original biological setting of Nigale, the feeding habit of people was through vacuums. This process was conducted through three internal organs; more specifically, the duodenum, the small intestine, and the large intestine. This is different from human biology in which the duodenum is connected to the small intestine. Also, all these three perform different tasks from what they are known to do in the human body.
In native Nigaleans, the nutrients of the food are absorbed from the food and down the throat as the very first process of digestion while the vacuum at the back of their throat, right beside the uvula engulfs the food in a seemingly dark void of nothingness. The nutrients go to the small intestine to be utilized to the body advantage. On the other hand, the remaining food goes to the duodenum to be broken down into fluids. During this process, all the nutrients that haven't been absorbed by the mouth, are taken in by the small intestine while the waste is sent to the large intestine to begin the process of excretion.
In conclusion, the digestion process of a native Nigalean {that is, Nigaleans born before the plague or Nigaleans born from a direct line of people born before the plague} is ten times faster than a human and five times faster than that of people who were born after the plague.
Nanites:- Extremely tiny, nanorobots that are implanted into every Nigalean at birth as a security measure taken by the government. They also serve as connectors of sorts to basically every piece of technology the individual will ever use. They are connected to the chip that serves as what we call a phone as well as to every bio-attachment a person may/may not have.
38-hour system:- Basically, in Nigale, there are thirty-eight hours in a day. They don't have a half-time system like 12:00 am and 12:00 pm, the time is simply read as it is done in military camps as 0000-3800, pronounced as 38 hundred rather than 3 thousand, 8 hundred. The afternoon starts at midday which is 19 hundred {1900} and midnight is 38 hundred {3800}. In conclusion, their days are much longer than ours so do not be confused if a lot of things happen in a single day.
Jumbla code:- My personalized version of Morse code. You can decide to read it the way rather than how I wrote it because they are basically the same.
Angaza:- A secret society or organization, formed by millions of scientists, technologists, and computer experts who are against the government and at war with IUPAS for working with the government and its corrupted ways. They are an adaption from the original Illuminati and the word can literally be translated to mean the same thing. {Before you decide not to read further} You should know the original history of the Illuminati was a group of scientists, mostly consisting of atheists who made discoveries that disproved the teachings of the church. They were never violent, quite like the Angaza but they were forced to go into hiding from the church and their name was twisted into something else. The Angaza represents all science as opposed to the Nigalean laws of governance so they can sometimes prove to be violent but never physically.
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A/N:- It's funny how I literally turned this book into a Biology class, lol. You can just read the last paragraph and understand all my long story but I guess it's more of a guide for me to remember than for you guys since it won't really be all that relevant since the planet basically doesn't exist. I apologise in advance to all Biologists, Chemists, Physicians, and Geographers because I am all of that in the learning stage and I know how fucked it can be when someone basically changes everything you know as fantasy. :)
Anyway, let me know your thoughts on this. Angry, annoyed, frustrated, happy, in suspense, sad, whatever it may be. I sincerely can't wait to hear. If you liked it though, be sure to vote and share this book with anyone you think would enjoy this book.
~May.