VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 91: The World of Tomorrow

Rolling through the streets of Edinburgh, Valerie kept her eyes firmly on the ground in front of her, not bothering to admire or even glance at the buildings and scenery around her. There were a few reasons for that.

One, there was barely any scenery to look at. Over the years, development had spread so that even the greenest countries like Bonnie Scotland had been overrun by housing and corporate facilities.

When they had invented ’Cruelty Free Meat’ - which was essentially lab grown animals that were made without brains, consciousness or anything that made them alive, and were in fact just ’living’ hunks of meat that grew to be harvested.

Which meant that farm space for real cows, pigs and so forth rapidly dwindled until the animals they were trying to save from cruelty were rapidly killed off for development.

Of course some greenery still exists in the world, some of it is even real and not artificial in the slightest. But the real stuff was contained. Actual trees growing in the pent house mansions of the rich, warehouses filled with grass for real animals to graze on to make high quality meat for - again - the rich. The most people like her could ask for was a potted plant or two.

The second reason she did not look around, was the blinding lights. Adverts were played everywhere blaring slogans for the latest types of implants or blasting catchy jingles for the newest flavour of synth paste, Red-Orange number 68! Now with real Red number 5!

Not to mention the ads for Corpo-blocks. That wasn’t the official name. It was actually called ’Vertical Lifestyle Complexes’, which was a bunch of corporate jargon to make them sound better than they actually were. But Corpo-blocks was all anyone called them, even the people living in them.

They were just massive, ugly towers that took up massive chunks of land. Each one owned by corporations and acting like their own miniature sovereign state. Everything anyone could need was in these corpo-blocks. Restaurants, stores, exercise floors... work spaces. And when you lived there, you couldn’t leave without a passport, not that you were given a reason to.

Your entire life revolved around the Corp that owned your Corpo block. You were born for them, you worked for them, you earned their money and spent it in their stores, you had babies for them to have more workers and then you died for them.

For some reason, all of the sci-fi and dystopia media throughout all of time and human civilisation didn’t work to dissuade the suits in charge and only provided them with more ideas on how to make human life worse for their profit.

Strange that.

Anyways, Valerie kept her eyes down, away from the blinding ads and bleak environment as she wheeled herself into the store. Pulling a basket onto her lap, she hummed softly to herself as she picked out the supplies for tonight’s dinner. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

She made sure not to touch anything she wasn’t absolutely certain she was going to take, otherwise the wonderful AI running the store would automatically charge her account as if she was taking it for a purchase. They were like a worse version of a hotel mini bar.

’Cruelty free’ ’Beef’ stir fry sounded good. So with carefully trained hands she plucked the ingredients out, transferred them into a bag she brought from home and wheeled herself out without a single bit of human interaction.

Just how they liked it.

However as she rolled home, she couldn’t help but stop on occasion and glance over her shoulder with suspicous eyes. The third reason she kept her eyes down was actually so she wouldn’t see the pitiful or disgusted looks passers-by always gave her.

So she was used to being stared at. However this time, the stares she felt had neither pity nor disgust. Instead it almost felt... hostile, but not in a way she could properly place.

That freaked her out the most. Someone staring at her to rob or attack her, that she understood fine. But staring at her for a reason she didn’t know was much creepier.

Between the flashing lights and crowds of chromed out people, there wasn’t much that Belladonna could make out. No matter how much she looked, even when her eyes started to burn from the lights, she couldn’t find the source of the stares.

Reluctantly she began to roll along once again and after a few seconds of waiting, a hooded figure moved out of the few shadows cast by the blaring ads and followed behind her, always keeping at a steady pace behind her.

Her suspicion and constant glances behind her continued for her entire roll home, as did the hooded figure following her. It lasted all the way up until she got to the street of her apartment, before finally disappearing as if they had never been there in the first place.

She had intentionally taken a roundabout and slightly longer route home, just in case they were trying to find out where she lived. So the fact they disappeared now was not a comforting feeling, and instead felt like far too much of a coincidence.

When she returned to her apartment, she set Jinu to a defensive mode, allowing for the attack of any intruders. It wasn’t the best, as was everything to do with Jinu, but it would do for now.

That event put a serious downer on her ’fancy’ meal and completely ruined her mood as she started to prepare it. It made her seriously consider going back to crappy fast food for a while.

It was so bad, and had her so distracted and working on auto pilot, that by the time she was finished plating the food, she realised that she had actually made two portions, not one.

One portion was significantly smaller than the other, as it was now her habit to split some off for the Brownies. A habit that had carried over to her real self, even if she had only recently developed it.

Looking at the tiny plate, she couldn’t help but laugh and turn to Jinu.

"Tell you what, if you can protect me from intruders, you can have this Beef Stir fry. How’s that sound?"

She waved the mini plate towards the robot, who simply tilted his head in confusion, before she placed it down next to the sink and rolled away. Her own meal was sitting in her lap, as she took it back to her bedroom to eat.

One more layer of doors felt better.