The comfortable haze of two more pints settled over them. David, feeling generous, waved the bartender over. "Same again for my miserably wealthy friend and me."
The bartender, a large man with a clean apron and a tired smile, nodded. "You got it, Dave. Rough week?"
"You have no idea," David sighed dramatically. "My ex wife's new boyfriend just bought a hover yacht. A yacht! That's my life time money floating around out there."
The Bartender chuckled, polishing a glass. "Tell me about it. My kid's tuition just went up again. The AI professor upgrade package, or some nonsense. Costs more than this place makes in a month."
He gave a dry chuckle, setting down two fresh pints. "My missus wants one of those new AutoChefunits too. The one that cooks a three course meal by itself. Costs a fortune." He shook his head. "I told her, my cooking was good enough to get her to marry me. She said that's exactly why we need the machine."
David let out a hearty laugh.
Morgan, who had been quiet for a while, gave a slight, understanding nod. "Inflation is a universal constant, it seems. Even with fusion power and recyclers, the price of a good pint still hurts."
"Ain't that the truth," The bartender said . "Some things never change. You boys take it easy." He moved off to the next table.
The last of the beer was gone, leaving that familiar, comfortable buzz that made the world feel softer. They shuffled out of the pub, the cool night air a shock to the system. A rough, back-slapping hug in the parking lot was a silent promise to do it again... soon and they fell into their cars.
David's old automobile let out a tired whine before the combustion engine rumbled to life.
Morgan just leaned back in his seat; his sedan's interior glowed to life, recognizing him by the chip in his wrist. A smooth, electric hum was the only sound as it pulled itself onto the road.
The city wasn't just lit up; it was a living stream of data and light. Morgan watched as a delivery drone, a silent black spider, descended onto a balcony across the street, depositing a package before zipping away.
Above, the sky was structured. Layers of transparent transport tubes snaked between the skyscrapers, with pods carrying people silently shooting through them like bullets in a barrel. You didn't see stars here anymore. You saw the ghostly blue pulse of data transferring between buildings and the shimmer of hard-light advertisements that adapted to who they thought was looking.
This was the world now. After the Coastal Reclamations of the 3020s, most of humanity lived in these mega-cities, vast arcologies that were more machine than metropolis. Their environmental domes, invisible from the inside, kept the air perfectly temperate and filtered out the industrial smog that still hung over the uninhabited zones.
Outside the domes, the world had gone quiet. Autonomous solar drones flitted over the recovering forests, monitoring ecosystem health, while the rusted skeletons of old suburbs were slowly being digested by nano-reclaimers, to be later repurposed for construction.
David's voice, slightly grainy, came through the car's comm. "You ever see those old films? Where kids just... kicked a ball in a street? No traffic management AI, no designated play zones. Just the road."
Morgan glanced at his own console, where a flickering display showed the biometrics of the vertical farm that supplied his building. Perfect tomatoes, grown in air, their roots misted with nutrient-rich solution. "They also had lead in their petrol and polio," he replied. "I'll take the play zones."
"Yeah, I know," David sighed. "It's just... it all feels so scheduled. My fridge orders my milk before I know I'm out. The city grid knows my energy consumption down to the watt. It's like we've traded surprises for smoothness."
" David, it's what we've come to...and it's not like the world is soo bad...of course it would have been better if the effing Rodaks didn't exist" .
"Better without the Rodaks?" David's voice fizzed over the car's speaker, followed by a tired laugh. "No kidding. But hey, they keep me employed. Gotta look on the bright side."
David was a military man , he was one of the low ranks who fought on the front lines.
" Will you be reporting to the Barracks ...or you're going straight home?" Hole asked.
David coughed ,then answered " I'm part of the unit they're deploying to the Outskirts tomorrow afternoon, I have to report and make preparations ".
" I see".
They drove in silence for a while.
" Beep Beep "!
Morgan heard the beep of David's car indicator through the comm. "Alright, this is my turn-off. Don't do anything I wouldn't do, Morg."
The line went dead. David's old car swerved down an exit ramp, heading for the simpler, darker streets of the mid-level districts. Morgan's own car flew on, rising smoothly toward the bright, clean towers of the upper city.
Alone with the hum of the engine, Morgan stared out at the lights. The Rodaks. Everyone knew the name, the way people long ago knew the names of wolves that hunted near their villages. They were a fact of life, a bad one.
The government called them a "biological threat." That was a clean, simple way of saying they were a mistake that got out of hand. A long time ago, the army wasn't just training human espers. They were mixing people with animals, trying to build super-soldiers. They used big cats for their stealth, birds for their sight, wolves for their pack instinct and other beasts based on their traits.
It went wrong. The test subjects didn't just get stronger. They changed. They broke and became something new. The Rodaks were the children of that disaster. They were neither human nor animal, but a twisted mix of both, filled with a deep, mindless hate for anything under the sun.
They hunted at night, drawn to the heat and emotion of human places. The rich, well-protected city centers with their strong shield generators were mostly safe. It was the outer zones, the poorer neighborhoods with flickering power and weak walls, that suffered. The Rodaks would find a way in, bringing the cold and the dark with them, and they would feed on the fear they created.
Morgan's car slid to a perfect stop in his private garage. The door opened to his silent, safe apartment. But the quiet felt different tonight. It felt thin.