Tonight the streets were quiet but that wasn’t strange at all. Green plants grew from the cracks in the asphalt and planted trees on islands had their roots spread out like dark claws under the moon’s spotlight.

What was once called a city bristling with life is now a place of ruin; reclaimed by nature as time went on, this place slowly crept under the covers to be forgotten but cities of this size can never fade that fast.

My name is Stain Farrow and I’m a scavenger for the cacophonies. The cacophonies are whats left of this silent world after the Great War. I wasn’t there for the rise of tensions between territories, the dread of gunfire and sabotage or the terror of the aftermath. No, I was born in the time of silence – the time technology died.

Some scholars say this was the second Stone Age, a new beginning to our scarred world. I can’t say I don’t agree with them since we are indeed devoid of high technology but we aren’t the same as those in the first. We know a lot more; we just lack the tools. It’s been several decades in the new Stone Age and I find myself still wondering how I’d fit into this world. I am a scavenger, as I’ve said earlier but I’m not sure I like being that. The upside is that I can freely roam the world as long as I return in one piece with other useful pieces.

I sit perched on a car’s hood as I watch the shadows slowly crawl into more thinner, longer versions of themselves. I give out a sigh as I collect my satchel and sling it on my shoulder. With a heave I push myself from the hood and set myself towards the nearest building.

My legs are strong; they’ve kept me alive all this time in the urban forest. Things lurk in the night unique to the cities: The People. They’re deformed versions of us, possibly infected from all the radiation that occurred in the Great War. This was one of the places hardest hit by the fallout they said and over time it seemed safe to go in.
I stop in front of a store named Gareth’s, the other word ripped from the sign. My back was against the wall as I peek through its glass door. I feel something tingle and check my nose. I bring my finger into the light and see that its blood.

“Damn,” I whisper. Another bleeding nose, I don’t even know why this happens.

I peek again, my eyes linger on the medicine cabinets over at the back of the counter. The resident doctor did say that my bleeding nose may be some sort of allergy; maybe some of the medicine here could help.

I slowly creep in through the door, careful not to trigger any noise. My hand passes through the non-existent pane and I fall in. Shards of glass dig into my hand and arm as I let out a grunt. I pull myself up and look around. It was still silence. Good.

I try to gauge my hand, if it were still functioning. The shards didn’t go in too deep so that’s another good thing. I brush off the shards and pull my striped handkerchief from my satchel and bandage it around my palm, using my mouth to help tie the knot. I wipe away another drip of blood from my nose and slowly approach the counter. I jump over it and land quietly only to see an empty cabinet.

I curse under my breath but it was cut short -- a rustle of things from the back part of the store probably in the supplies. I grit my teeth and start to leave.

If it were the People then I didn’t want any part of it. I cautiously move over the counter and exit through the door.

Fruitless night this was.

The drinks at the Starview casino tasted like filth, and yet Victoria had another. In a room where one half of the patrons were soldiers and the other were scum, it was more important than anything to make sure she stayed inconspicuous. Electronic melodies boomed throughout the room in pulses that warped the clouds of smoke and fog that clung to the rooftops. It smelled like sweat and tobacco and bad alcohol, and yet the place was packed. Marines stood tall and laughed loudly, many of them blowing through more money than most people made in a month, and the casino loved them for it. Industrial workers made slaves by debt, pirates, thieves and scavengers were scattered throughout, striking like birds of prey when they spotted a prize pot that had bloated to some absurdly high number. They bawled out laughter and angry cries alike, many of them too drunk to grapple with the intelligence the hotspot tables demanded. Some won, many lost, and the casino loved them too.

But somewhere, out among the throngs of greed and desperation and suspicion and sometimes even joy, was Victoria's target; Grett Norsak. Tall, sleazy, and only trustworthy if you didn't have your back turned to him. Wanted for theft, armed robbery, piracy, and more counts of murder than you could shake a stick at, and he was as as awful as they came. Victoria had trailed him through three different stations throughout low orbit and it was here that he had decided to stay, and then he had promptly disappeared into the crowd, blending in with his own kind, more likely than not using stolen money to take another shot at fortune.

She wasn't worried about finding him, though. All you had to do to catch a man like Grett was to listen to the pings of high-jackpot tables, and she was sure that he'd come running.

The bounty hunter left a couple of coins on the counter to pay for her drinks, rising easily on slender legs as she sauntered into the crowds herself, appearing no different than all the others who looked for a seat to snatch when they heard the bell's toll, like some strange version of musical chairs where the winning was almost always followed by losing. And yet the odds being terribly against both thieves and soldiers alike was only a passing thought, drowned out by the speakers above that played automated rounds of applause that announced the name and winnings of the few lucky souls who had managed to beat them.

The Newcomer
I drive my car into its designated parking spot, for each teacher gets his own special place to park. I put the car on park, shut her off, and take a walk to the still empty school.
It’s my first day ever doing a teaching job, and I can’t begin to explain how excited I am! The shiny hallway floors, the new wooden desks, the sun shining through the classroom window and onto my desk, it’s all very welcoming! Thirty minutes until class starts, thirty minutes until all my students are here! Oh, how delightful will it be to get to know each and every one of them, to introduce myself to them, perhaps become friends to some extent! I always wanted to be the cool teacher, the one who wouldn’t be too strict, jokes around and is actually funny, no cheesy puns! Yet at the same time, the teacher who manages to deliver the curriculum to his students in a way that makes them enjoy the process, a way that opens up their famished minds to the feast of knowledge, and sparks their curiosity to know all there is to know and be the best they can.
That’s why I picked this job. I enjoy teaching others what I know; I like knowing that I made a contribution to the next generation of people who will run this world, and most of all, I love learning. Yes, through the process of teaching others, one masters what they know, becomes better at it, and learns about the people he teaches as well, learns their backgrounds, ideas, hopes, aspirations, different perspectives and ways receiving information. The job of teaching not only prepares the student for life, but also the teacher. And oh look, twenty minutes have passed; my students are going to be here soon! Oh how excited am I to begin this journey of learning!

The Old-Timer
Thirty-five years. Thirty five years of my life, spent away in the class room, lecturing about the ins and outs, the dos and don’ts, the lay of the land of a profession I lost interest in within 5 years of practice. As the saying goes, those who can’t do teach, and that’s exactly what happened to me. I took up the profession of becoming a historian when I was 18 by doing a History Major, my passion for it however was when I was a teen, reading a book about China that was given to me by my history teacher; he was a very cheerful man, he made me love this subject. After graduating, finding a job that catered to my exact passion of exploring the past was not easy, and I ended up becoming a high-school history teacher. At first, I wasn’t very unhappy with it. Teaching was tedious, long, and frankly quite boring. Despite that I had kept a positive outlook, hoping that this was only a temporary career, that I would one day soon become a researcher of ancient Chinese history, and have had produced a multitude of well known papers under my name. But alas, as age progressed, so did my responsibilities. I met a woman, had a child, and needed this job to be able to support my new family. I stuck with the teaching job, and after 35 years at it, I reached retirement age. Now an old man, with minimal research experience, and too tired to follow the dream of my youth. My life has been wasted teaching a subject that not many care about, use, or pursue as a profession. I deeply regret many choices, and blame the randomly occurring circumstances for my current state of dependency and lack of production.