I

He thought of a future he knew he would not be a part of.

Beep.

Came down one slot. Carefully, Ivard placed the DNA strand and pushed down the bottom. It fell, he could hear the wind being pushed around the bottle as it slid out of sight. The room was dark, dim, and cold.

Beep.

Came another. From the labeled clear glass he took the DNA strand and placed it. The room was quiet, only the machinery could be heard. Ivard knew his work was very fragile even though it didn't look like he did much. Today this part of his work was to be automated. He pushed the bottom of the bottle and down it went. As time went on, everything advanced. Now, more than ever, there were epidemics. It really felt like germs and viruses were out to kill every living thing.

Beep.

How long had it been? Five? Ten years? Ivard didn't know, he'd lost count. With care, he took the DNA strand out of the glass labeled 'HEART', placed it in the bottle and pushed down. People didn't regularly come to the hospital looking for a new kidney or liver or heart.

Beep.

Actually, he remembered, we never even had a successful brain transplant. Now he wondered how it would feel to live in a body other than the one he was born in. He admitted, all this still creeped him, but it had saved a lot of lives. Though Ivard was not sure if this was the best way to go about it. We could have continued to fight fire with fire, germs with germs. Instead, we now chunk the entire biological machine and replace it with a new one. He was not sure if this was just an easier route, or the only route. Now diseases and illnesses were becoming more and more severe. He put the DNA of a second-generation brain in the bottle. Pushed down and off it went. Infront, there was a poster which listed all the current generations a brain could be. There were five different generations.

Beep.

The first-gen brain is a normal brain that one might be born with, it is not tampered with, and is completely organic.

The second-gen brain is a brain that prolongs the state of childish behaviour, which down the road will usually result in a sharper individual but may be socially inept.

The third-gen brain has almost all its neural paths opened and developed, able to hold mass information from the moment it is activated.

The fourth-gen brain is any active or previously activated brain. That means, the brain that one is born with is a fourth-gen brain at the moment they started to weep. No matter what gen it used to be, if it is or was activated, it is a fourth-gen brain.

A fifth-gen brain used to be a fourth-gen brain. A fifth-gen brain is one that holds a massive amount of information. Usually, one would achieve this level of information when they are around the age of thirty or have specialized themselves in a particular field. All the memories and experiences the brain holds can be invoked by the individual who controls it. This is the ultimate way of transferring knowledge.

What got him so excited about working in this field was the ability to give an organism enhanced or completely new senses. Someone who had been completely blind their entire life could easily get a new pair of eyes that worked! Or if one wanted, they could get a third arm or maybe a tail! Physical disabilities were the worry of the past.

The day was over. Ivard locked the room and made his way to an elovar. It was obviously pronounced el-o-var, not e-lo-var but most of the world had not decided on that yet. He took a seat on the left end, furthest from where the others seated. He could never imagine the world without them, or at least, he didn't want to. They were the best way to get around; so many tunnels had been built that a single elovar could take anyone around the entire world. The door closed and it started moving. It used a single rail to glide on. Ivard had not researched the inner-workings of these machines but they had gotten him interested. It got to places reasonably quickly, it could go up to three-hundred kilometers per hour for short distances and even faster for longer distances. In history he was taught that before the Third World War, which resulted in billions of casualties, the main means of transportation was on roads. A world which functioned on roads seemed too claustrophobic. Too many cars at the same height, side by side, slow. He remembered it to be called a traffic jam. That does not exist anymore, and never existed his entire life. If an elovar were to ever stop before the journey's end, it was to wait for an ambuvar (emergency elovar; am-b-u-var like an ambulance but better) to pass through the intersection so it could quickly go where it needed to be. This rarely happened though, there is most likely another path the ambuvar can take since having an elovar slow down and stop takes some time. The word ambuvar was sometimes shortened to ambu. Also, elovars were to stop when an earthquake occured. Not because it was dangerous underground (it was actually safer than on surface), but because emergency elovars (such as ambuvars) were to attend to the people up top.

The elovar had sped up to three-hundred. He did enjoy the scenery up on land, and it was quite fascinating to see it while travelling super fast through the large windows on each side. Things close up would move by so chaotically that you would never know for sure what it actually was, and things far away would look like they're still and peaceful. There were many, many destroyed buildings, houses, libraries, and unrecognizable ruins that made most of the landscape. In tiny patches grew grass, and once in a while there may be a small tree far away. There were some sidewalks, no one really used them. Most of them ended abruptly and were shattered during the war, and probably to never be fixed. The uneven ground and mass of concrete and stone caused long shadows to form on the pavement. The sunset from here was truly magnificent.

The elovar had started descending. It slowly went deeper and deeper under. Through the windows the ground which used to be underneath them steadily raised around them. Now the six rectangular lights on the roof were sharply gazing down. There were two others seated before he came. The maximum room was usually ten. There isn't a limit, but the long cushioned benches on each side could seat about ten people. Three on the left and three on the right, and two at the front and two at the back. They all faced inward with the large windows behind them. There isn't really a 'front' or 'back' of an elovar, the 'front' and 'back' are relative to the direction the elovar is moving.

There was a man, all in black. He was sitting at the back in the middle of the soft bench. He had stretched out his body mass as to disinvite anyone from sitting beside him. He had a hat that killed the light from piercing his face. His jacket was loose and did not fit his body. No one could see his hands since they were tucked up inside his sleeves. It was not that cold, a sweater would have been fine. He had seen this type of fashion many times recently. Actually, he didn't know if it was always the same person in the same outfit. He had never seen anyone's face who was wearing that outfit. The more he saw it, the more he began to feel it was one person who kept coming back. Perhaps this person had the same route home as he did. He wondered what this man's daily routine would look like. He had never seen him anywhere except here. Maybe he was coming from work, there was some construction happening past the hospital. But that would be tiresome, and wearing a jacket right after work would only make him more fatigued. He might be hiding something, like a scar or some radiation that altered his physical form. But if it was that, he could easily get a part of his body renewed at the hospital. Maybe he was an agent of WHO. But was this how they secretly checked if a person was stable? "Was it me?" Ivard thought. Was he being checked on? He had seen this man a couple times before. Maybe he was checking for any abnormal behaviour. But he's only seen this man in elovars. The thought then came to him. Perhaps he was being followed. But right after he thought, "no, that's stupid." He was the only one who left the elovar at his stop, then he walked a little distance to home. He had never felt a presence around him while walking alone. Most likely this person simply doesn't like to be around strangers.

Deep underground, the elovar had stopped. Ivard made his way out and glanced back to make sure no one exited besides him. The man in black was seated still and had not moved an inch. The door closed as the barrier slid together, only Ivard had left, and off it went with its two passengers, gradually gaining speed. Ivard's feet were on concrete. There were thick barriers, up to Ivard's shoulders, so no one would fall off to the bottom of the tunnel. The very top and bottom was an entire radius high and below of the tunnel. There were lights all around the inner-surface and where he stood was almost half of the diameter inward. It was lit in uneven paces. Some places would be well lit while some would have man-made objects blocking light and projecting multiple dark shadows. It was especially dark in the center, since the lights on the left and right were blocked by houses and small apartments and stores, and the lights on the top were quite far away, while the lights at the bottom were cut off by the floor. The concrete which he stood on had been carefully split into many lengthy pieces. It was supported by pillars on its bottom and side. If the ground was to shift, the concrete was to shift with it. Buildings had been constructed in this manner too, which is why all of them were small so they would not split open from the center if the tunnel was to stretch or bend. The barriers could also be pulled apart or compressed with a strong enough force. There were signs that showed a person laying flat on their stomach at what seemed to be the ground shaking. It was bright and triangular. This place was built during the Third World War. Other tunnels contain larger buildings and an all around better environment now. This place was very safe if an earthquake were to occur, but other tunnels had more wonderful buildings and lighting while still being just as safe. This place was a simple tunnel, yes, that's all. Nothing special about it. He had always wanted to go to the Underground City. Its name was explicit in what it was. It was the first underground city and the largest one. Over here, every building was stacked as a single line. Not much space behind them, the barriers would stop one from reaching the horizontal ends of the tunnel. In the middle were two elovar rails and on each side was the giant row of buildings. In many strides were bridges that would take people from this side to the other side. They curved downward, under the two rails, and then back up to the other side. They were more like mini-tunnels. They could also be stretched or compressed. The windows in the man-made objects pointed inward, where the two rails were. A few buildings down was the location of Ivard's house.

He took out his key. It was a small rectangular card. He scanned it on the door, where the handle was supposed to be. Beep. He quickly looked behind him, then pushed the door open. He was finally home. He had turned around a couple of times while he was making his way here. His brain hurt, as if it were about to explode. "Damn James, getting me paranoid," he murmured to himself. Now, he could relax. In front, a bit to the left, were stairs leading up. Straight ahead was a small kitchen, enough room for one person. To the right, was the living room with a fireplace. He took off his brown sweater and hung it on the sphere which stood on top of the end of the railing which belonged to the stairs. He thought, if someone was following him, wouldn't the constant looking back be abnormal if the spy knew it had not been discovered? "Relax, calm and relaxed," he said. "Take it easy, you always think too much."

With a sigh, he took a seat on his big comfy cushioned chair. "Ignite," he said out loud, and the fireplace in front of him lit itself on fire. Again, he stopped to appreciate the technology. It wasn't a real fire, but however the projection was created, it was incredibly realistic. He still remembered the first time he saw real fire. Up top, before the building burned down to a crisp, the fire in that fireplace seemed like a projection. He could not tell the difference, he never considered it to be real until his father told him. The heat he felt was the same as he felt it now, the small sparks were all too similar, and the darkness of the wood slowly being plagued, just like it was now. He still had not made his mind up, he was still filled with doubt. It looked far too much like a projection. Maybe, if he had seen the entire building on fire, then, perhaps, would he have finally believed that what he saw was, in fact, real fire. But, even now, he had given it the benefit of the doubt and surmised it was real. A big part of him also wanted to believe it was real, knowing that he had seen something only a handful of people would ever see; it had given him some history. Reality as it was now was too gloomy.

He picked up the band with a stretch of his right arm, which laid across the small circular table beside where he was seated. Held it a bit lower than his chin, far enough to see it. Stretched it out to put on his head, but instead just stared at it. He felt a bit uneasy at what he was doing. He definitely found it fun, his best memories came from this game. But the memories felt detached from him. He was more fascinated by the thought of real fire than deflecting bullets with a sword. The world in this band was more interesting. Sure, we had huge tunnels and elovars, but the city in the virtual land felt like heaven. It felt like how life would have been before the war. Structures reaching all the way to the clouds, jumping off of high ledges, running through fields of gunfire, standing still in front of a bear. Such adrenaline packed as if he could die at any moment. Being able to do these things in the first place because he knew it would be all right at the end of the day. It was all fake which gave him courage to try new things, but still, it was all fake. None of that mattered. As long as he had fun, it was not a problem. He settled the band around his head. "Hello," he said slowly, "World." For five seconds he stared at the fire. Then he said it again, faster and louder, "Hello World." And everything started to fade, he was falling into unconsciousness.