Welcome to Agora, an anthology of super short stories set in a world where the public sector is dead. A universe that’s governed, not by ineffective politicians, but rather faceless corporations.
Read Time: 4 Minutes
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Jody stared into his beautiful blue eyes. Gori69™️stared back, giving her the perfectly-imperfect toothy grin that made him famous. The pop star cradled Jody in his arms. Holding tight, with an unspoken promise to never let go.
This was the moment she had been waiting for. Finally, a first kiss — from Agora’s biggest artist. Gori69™️ leaned in, and pressed his lips against hers. It was warm; her skin burned in tingling sensations from the contact of his heavenly figure. He squeezed her tighter and tighter, taking her breath away. Literally.
Gori69™️ plunged his tongue into her mouth, and Jody felt a gagging, choking sensation come. She tried to pry away, but his grip was steadfast. Losing breath. Losing breath. Until black.
Jody flung her torso up. She felt her sheets. Damp with sweat. The smoke was rushing in from under the door — visibility shrinking, she had no time to think. Only to move.
The young girl picked up each of her legs meticulously, and swung them over the side of the bed. She lifted the dead weight every morning effortlessly — if only the world could see how strong she was.
Jody muscled her way onto her Smile™️ Chair and drove it away from the heat. She glided through her dilapidated bathroom, past the musty wooden hallway, until she reached her parents’ bedroom. But when she peered in the room located at the heart of the house, all she saw were remnants of a frenzied exit. Items spilled off the nightstand, lights on, and a trail of clothes leading to where she just came from. They were gone. Without her.
The girl drove her chair into the room, and tucked herself in the back corner of her mother’s walk-in closet.
This is where she solidified the haunting thought that crept up inside from time to time. The one most kids with a disability dealt with, but never found enough evidence to confirm: she was wholly and inescapably unloved.
The Agora was a fine place for most people, but unfortunately, Jody did not fit in that category. (Charter school bullies had been dogmatic in making sure she never forgot.)
Jody realized pretty quickly that when you’re not most people, you see things others don’t.
Small epiphanies (like the cruelty of the commissary, the constant bombardment of content, or the subversively effective war against passion) that add up to form a worldview. A worldview that seeps into every thought like the smoke she had just escaped.
Unlike her neighbors, Jody harbored no love for the Agora. She saw the illusion others were happy to call reality. Her true thoughts on the system would terrify those who knew her. And if she had one regret now, moments before death, it was this silence. The silence in pursuit of comfort.
For all her institutional loathing, however, she wasn’t a stone-cold nihilist.
She believed in exactly two things — The first of which was Smile™️
Loving Smile™️ wasn’t an unpopular opinion. And that fact in itself gave Jody small twinges of hatred for it. But it was the only non-profit permitted inside the Agora, and it had done a lot of good for those who fit outside the category of most people.
In fact, the chair she sat in now was leased to her at no charge. Her family did not have enough money for the newest model, so a particularly caring clerk entered her into a program that lent outdated chairs at no cost.
The second thing she believed in was Gori69™️. He was the real deal.
He talked shit about Agora all the time — spoke to the burning issues Jody felt in her heart. Issues like poverty, climate change, and consumerism. The things most people pretended didn’t exist.
And it was precisely because of Gori69’s™️ optimism — his unyielding fight against the forces of evil, that Jody decided to try and live through the uninhabitable situation she now found herself in. Smile™️ Chairs included a tracking feature for safety, and luckily enough the model she possessed was the first to have it.
Jody turned on the feature, waiting for the dark purple and green lights to flicker — an indication that someone was coming.
The smoke rushed in, and Jody feared the firefighters would be too late. But it was exactly at this moment of doubt, that she heard the unmistakable noises of emergency services. Shattering glass. Pounding boots. The whirring of unfamiliar mechanisms, piercing higher and higher as they moved closer.
The closet door burst open, and to Jody’s surprise there was but one firefighter. Through his clear face-mask she noticed his piercing blue eyes. He was beautiful. The firefighter approached Jody calmly, and cradled her in his arms. Jody felt a warmth reserved only for dreams. Was this love?
But before she could finish the thought, the man threw her to the ground. He picked up the empty Smile™️ Chair, and turned around. Jody screamed for him to come back, begged like a wounded animal. But the man walked away. Leaving her inside the closet as smoke obscured visibility.
The back of his jacket. She could barely read it. But it was the key to her final understanding. The illusion had gotten to her as well.
Smile™️ Emergency Services
Property Recovery Unit
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