Author:
Mario Brash is a reader, writer, coffee enthusiast, and huge nerd of many things. 

Jessica Leibniz tried being a normal teenager, but unlike most teenagers, she can tell time without a clock. She still wears a watch, but it comes with incriminating A.I. software. It's part of her fashion sense-if you call a mix of 80's nostalgia, geekism, and jagged hair a fashion sense. Otherwise, you have a normal, nineteen-year-old girl who delivers pizza and tacos by day and hacks cybersecurity networks by night. All the while, she turns heads, probably because she performs her job on a gravity board, which is relatively unorthodox in a future where aliens rule the planet.

The alien takeover could have ended more violently, but there's irony in how efficient and peaceful Earth has become a hundred years later. Corporations still reign supreme, but aliens lie at the top of the social ladder. Azareans they call them, overlords who've constructed a new kind of city for the modern world. The Eden: a modern megapolis.

Accustomed to life in the modern city, Jessica has learned to embrace challenge when it comes her way. Without a cause, she confides in her three friends or smacks into boredom. And when she seamlessly cracks an uncrackable corporate security algorithm, nothing makes sense. Faced with world-turning revelations, the life she's led seems trivial next to a hundred-year lie and tragedy.

Hacking the Sun

Up ahead, Valerie had reprised her role as navigator, following the map of her mind to their destination. "Whatever you do, don't look back," she told them. 


"Shannon," called Jessica, holding back a chuckle. "Did you actually know what the hell those guys were saying?"


"I was guessing," she said with a smile. "Not that hard, though. You should know this, but every derivative of cool is just a derivative of black culture whether or not they actually pull it off. You just gotta navigate and wade through the intonations of dialect, no matter how much it sounds like nonsense. Descriptivism is a double-edged sword."


They stopped under the glow of a corner street lamp, vibrant like angels in the dark. "Ay, we're close," said Valerie.  She pointed at a shabby, worn-down building across the street, and, after double-checking every direction, led them to the other side. 


Chapter 33: Pets For Memes Part 2