𧚠HOUSEKEEPING:
1. This story is part II. Check out Part I, here.
2. That is it. Enjoy.
âHow much longer, Prince?â
The dog ignored its masterâs question, and continued his march onward. They had been walking for almost three hours, passing through district after district â carbon copies of the same main street chains, mansions harboring the rich, houses sheltering the poor, and shanties exposing the homeless. Everyone seemed to have their role. And it seemed every role had a mission.
Whatâs my mission? Ximena thought. She was the wealthiest person in her district â letting her dog and a beggar lead her into an abyss.Â
After a particularly laborious climb up a hill, she noticed the big red building. It reminded her of the packaging she received when she got Prince. Except this building wasnât bright or shiny, but rather old, dilapidated, industrial and unnamed â nothing exciting about it. It was tucked neatly in a valley; not haunted, but somehow worse. Vacant.Â
Some spaces are designed to welcome; others to keep away. Ximena knew without hesitation where on the spectrum this building fell. Raymond must have felt the same, because he abruptly stopped walking as soon as he reached the peak of the hill.
The kids looked at eachother. Ximena felt like she was in a diorama. A perfectly crafted vignette closing in, fated strings pulling her and the beggar toward inevitable tragedy.Â
Like one of those charter school fairytales.
Ximena dreaded the thought. She learned, as all young consumers did, that breaking the Agoraâs rules had a cost. And that cost, no matter how small, was always paid.
The growls broke her train of thought. A low, guttural drone. Malevolent â and entirely unfamiliar. Prince had never shown aggression, let alone to his master. He was coded to imprint on the first person he saw. To be a direwolf, a protector, and completely subservient to all humans, but especially Ximena. She couldnât recognize him now.Â
But the growls eventually faded into the wind. And invisible strings tugged her forward. They went toward one destination. The valley.
Prince led them to the side of the building, where they walked past a long line of neatly parked vehicles. These cars were the newest models, the largest sizes, and had the most features.Â
Ximena had been used to seeing an abundance of luxury like this, but it made Raymond stop dead in his tracks. Awe-inspired. Even Prince perked his head toward one car in particular. The Beamâ˘ď¸ Cloud SXL in burgundy.Â
Ximena realized this was her fatherâs car. She didnât know the details of Luisâ work, but she never expected his office to look anything like the dreary old building they found themselves at.Â
Prince shook out of his trance, and proceeded toward the small, unmarked door on the side of the building. He pawed it and cried â not unlike his behavior when he had to use the bathroom. Raymond went to the door, and tried pulling down the handle. It was locked.Â
Turning to Ximena, he asked, âhow do we get in?â
Ximena looked at the door, and to her surprise, quickly found the answer. Most buildings in the Agora had been secured with biometric scanners â meaning only those with the right fingerprints or face could enter. Biometrics made it impossible to penetrate. But luckily enough, this building was so antiquated the doors had a digital keypad.Â
Ximena had only seen one other keypad in her life. Her fatherâs safe. He showed her the contents of it once, only after making sure she promised not to tell anyone. The things in his safe were illegal, and if anyone found out, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. This excited Ximena, but when he opened the door, all she saw were some lousy books.Â
Luis called them texts. Sacred texts. Named the Bible and Qur'an, if Ximena remembered correctly. But after taking the dust-covered books in her hands for exactly three seconds, she lost interest and ventured to another part of the house to play chess with Maeve, the house manager.Â
Although the contents of the safe werenât at all interesting, how her father got into it was. She would never forget the code he inputted as she peeked over his shoulder.
111018. Her motherâs birthday.Â
Knowing her father was inside the building, and that he used a code to get in, she deduced the code was her motherâs birthday and tried it on the keypad.Â
Two beeps red. Error.
Ximena was disappointed. Not only because the code didnât work, but that it meant her father was no longer thinking of his wife every morning entering the building. She thought hard about why Luis would change the code, and gave one more try.
032750. Her birthday.
Two beeps green. The door unlocked.
Prince stepped inside without hesitation, looking back to make sure the two humans followed his lead.
The large open space made the building feel even bigger from the inside. They were in what felt like a hangar, but the lack of proximate walls shed a vulnerable light on them. This was a recipe for an ambush, Ximena thought.
Prince led them down a pristine corridor that bisected two large spaces enclosed in glass windows. On the left was some type of lab, filled with industrial-sized instruments for pouring, measuring, and heating. Large glass chambers filled with fluid, stood like Roman pillars at intervals of six feet across. Inside the pillars, were fetal-like tissue, an organic mass unrecognizable to any living thing Ximena had ever seen.
On the right was a factory. Automated belts weaving throughout; workers and robots collaborating to put new-born pups into boxes, seal them, and send them off.
At the end of the corridor was a bright red door. Authorized Personnel Only.
Ximena saw the keypad, and without hesitation, entered the code. But she abruptly stopped in horror as soon as she opened the door. It was a prison.Â
A row of kennels lined the walls for what seemed like miles. In each of the kennels was a human, strapped to a desk. For some reason, they were all extremely obese, putting visible pressure on the metal chairs beneath them. They typed mechanically on the keyboard that rested under their beefy forearms.Â
On each desk were three monitors, Beanâ˘ď¸ Windows to the World â industry standard for tech companies, but extremely expensive.Â
Ximena couldnât really make out what was on the screen, the first two monitors were filled with code. But the last one was a full-bleed video. It had all the unpolished and frenetic markings of a live-stream.
Raymond gasped, and ran to the third kennel on the right.Â
âFather?â he yelled.Â
A man who had zero resemblance to the slender figure from the flyer turned his head slowly. He cracked a smile, and said, âit worked.âÂ
He was connected to a feeding tube, which serpentined its way to a bag filled with a blubbery, syrupy concoction. This explains why theyâre fat, Ximena thought.Â
She turned her head to look away, and noticed herself on his screen, the dogâs eye view made everything fall into place. She looked at Prince, and then back at Raymond Sr.Â
Prince was a vessel.
âHow do we get you out of here?â Asked Raymond Jr.Â
Raymond Sr. began to answer when a group of armed security guards came storming in.