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2

lt his eyes dry and his thoughts accelerate even more as the drug passed through the membranes in his mouth before he swallowed it. 

You're going to drink yourself into a spiraling thought depression, he thought, you're going to be depressed for hours. Again. You need to stop doing this to yourself. 

To stop himself from drinking more he stood up and dumped the brown liquid into the sink on the wall behind him. The apartment had a bed, a sink, a desk which doubled as he dinner table, and a television. Showers and toilets were communal. The rent was low, but he had millions of dollars under his bed in boxes. He couldn't use a bank; The Mayor's Police would ask where the money was coming from, ask how an un-employed university kid living on the outskirts of the city, almost on the city walls, had made that much money?

Three successive knocks pounded out on his door. His racing brain pictured the mayor's police, in grey suits with handguns drawn. The rational part of his brain reminded him that he wasn't under lockdown; the alarm in his room had never sounded. The police couldn't be outside.

His door had electrical problems. The current that powered the electro magnets was shorted and the door itself actually carried some current through the metal reinforcement strips. The electro magnets that could hold the door shut under his command or under the command of The Mayor's Police if they ever came for him. He heard a soft female voice swearing and he knew she'd touched the metal part of the door when she knocked and received a slight electric shock.

Syd opened the door and a pretty young girl stepped in. Her hair was blonde and long, and her breasts stood high on her chest. The skin along her face and upper neck was smooth like glass; she had the look of someone raised with money. If her face had not been surgically altered, Syd thought, he cheeks would probably be flushed red with the panic of having to enter the outer arc of the city. A university girl, probably.

H

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Alone Again Or, page 1
by Michael Bassette

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