One girl's fight for survival in a sprawling metropolis of the future!
Adapted from "A Grey World" by Joe Hanvy (agreyworld.wordpress.com/)
Alex has a lot to deal with - hunger, loneliness, an abusive home and, worst of all, highschool.
To make matters worse she lives on the infamous Montreal Island which, since the Diaspora, has become the most overcrowded ghetto on the whole North American continent.
The ceremony of innocence in a future dystopia
Retard, loser, creeper, freakazoid, barfbag, skeevo, skank, minger, schemie, troll, freakshow… Sicko.
“Operation Human Being” is GO! as Alex fights to make a connection in a fractured world.
Alex is confronted by her mother, and traverses the ghostways to reunite with Beth.
Somnopolis… city of sleep… city of sleepers… city of dreams… city of nightmares. Montreal Island is all these things, ravaged by somo, a bio-engineered drug that leaves the population comatose for 90% of their lives, dreaming lucid, waking dreams where they live out their wildest, darkest fantasies.
How can a broken reality even begin to compare?
Alex reaches breaking point and takes to the streets.
“They say Montreal used to be all wide boulevards and leafy avenues and colonial mansions. A Gilded Age, before humankind collectively shit the bed. Now we pay the tab ran up by Generation "Who-gives-a-Fuck?" The sins of the father are visited on the sons. And all the crap of the world gets washed up here. The authorities look away - as long as it stays on the island. “Containment” “Managed Decline” The euphemisms barely conceal their indifference. It’s just a form of population control… Darwinism weaponized… Urban eugenics.”
Alex confronts her tormentors and reaches a crossroads
It was the first class back from Spring Break with the head bitch. I was on edge the whole morning. On reflection, I probably shouldn’t have flipped her off in the hallway before Social Science. With the benefit of hindsight I mean. Not gonna lie, at the time it felt fucking great.”
“You wanna know what I think? Once you start hitting people, it ain’t that easy to stop…”
Alex crosses a line and takes a stand against the cartels
“If I’m gonna do this, whatever ‘this’ is, I need to do it right. I need - and I can't believe I'm saying this - I need to go shopping.”
(From the diary of Dr Kendrick)
Subject 3 continues to develop well.
She has shed the dark hair that had furred her skin - the lanugo - and even begun to eat some of it. This is natural. She presses against the sides of the uterine tank, as though bursting to get out. She is testing the limits of her world, as am I.