chapter 3

(May or may not be writing about a Corporalian school soon -- depends on how FF feels about underage characters outside of explicit scenarios.)

The waistlines of Corporalia's residents weren't the only things that were growing--their cities were, too. As part of their plan to keep their citizens living in as much comfort as possible, the benevolent Corporalian government had taken advantage of the leaps and bounds made in automation to expand cities and towns all over the globe.

Back at the beginning of the century, Alan's hometown had been a smallish town of only fifty thousand people. Now, it was home to close to five hundred thousand, and had grown into an enormous, sprawling expanse of steel, stone and concrete. High-rise office towers and apartment buildings loomed over the network of elevated high-speed freeways that snaked between buildings all around the city. Travelators had been installed on high-traffic sidewalks to allow weary pedestrians to take a load off their feet for a bit, and also connected several buildings via plexiglass tunnels, allowing office workers and apartment residents some wonderful views of the city's skyline as they drank their caramel and fruit syrup-packed coffee and munched on their 100% synthetic doughnuts.

At the centre of the city lay its greatest landmark--a concrete statue, thirty feet in height, that depicted a proud-faced individual in a suit standing above a threshed crop of corn. This was the Monument of Prosperity, which commemorated the ingenuity that the first Corporalian government had shown when they used synthetic foodstuffs to save the planet from the threat of famine after crops had failed globally thanks to ever-growing climate change. Security cameras were stuck on poles on either side of the monument, peering closely at cars, trucks and buses on the adjacent highway as they zoomed by.

Inside one of these cars was Alan, who was enjoying the tingling feeling from the synthetic sugar and caramel as he finished off the coffee he'd brought from home. His eyes glanced up towards the Monument as he passed. It was an impressive sight to behold, and certainly livened up the morning commute.

Behind the Monument itself was a tall, foreboding-looking building, with the Corporalian flag flying proudly from a mast atop its roof. This was the headquarters of the Corporalian Department of State Security, who were responsible for cracking down on any and all who opposed the Corporalian way of life. The CDSS made their presence known with their surveillance cameras, as well as their posters gravely warning of the consequences of "treasonous activities". The CDSS was omnipresent, and every Corporalian citizen knew that they were watching, listening, or both. But that was fine--it was all for their own good, after all. Besides, if you had nothing to hide, you had nothing to fear, right?

Alan could only recall one time the CDSS had come close to his own life. He had once had a work friend, a man named Kyle, who he was not exactly friends with, but still on cordial terms. Kyle had always seemed like a straight-up guy, which was why Alan had been all the more shocked to learn the previous week that he'd vanished in the middle of the night. Not only him, but his wife and children, too. The general consensus was that the CDSS had taken him, and the only reason for that could be that he'd tried to undermine their values and morality.

Shocking! Kyle had seemed like such a straight arrow, with a wife and two lovely daughters, in line to be promoted... and all that time, he was a traitor. Maybe even a thin activist! Alan shook his head. It was always the ones you least suspected, wasn't it?

His belly gurgled, and he drove at a slightly higher speed. The doughnuts in the office were calling his name.