“The sky above the port was the colour of black and gold, tuned to dead meme...”
Los Angeles, November, 2019... The free market has been sabotaged. The lines between organic and synthetic beings have been blurred. Man, now become woman. Woman become man. Man and Women become null. Hair as blue as the ocean, before the Marxist uprising wiped out the global powergrid, with a super-EMP, codenamed "Soy-lent Grün."
It was cold, with acid rain that burns the skin. I searched for shelter.. and a beverage. It is difficult in these years to find a nourishing meal. Newspaper (on datapad) covering my head, I ran for the nearest cafe I could find on the street corner of desolate downtown Los Angeles. I couldn't bring myself to decide whether the neon-red LEDs of "Das Kapital" cafe were blinding or inviting. Eyes fixated and studied me head to prosthetic toe, as I wandered into this small establishment, gingerly. "Can I help you?..."
"It's Dockyard...," I quietly answered the slender, amorphous, blob, with triangular-glasses, so sharp, that they may impale the last living shark, from Zuma Beach, if those creatures still lived, during these most trying times. "I'll have a warm glass of milk and a country-fried steak."
"I'm sorry, Dockyard," but we only have salads and soybean smoothies." In bleak times like this, a man has to settle, beggars can't be choosers...
After a humble waiting period, of approximately 2 hours (they said automation would make life easier for us, boy howdy were they wrong), I started to pick at my "meal." The same server swayed towards me, with a concern in their eye. "That person in the corner says you are a Batondasher!" "Tell him I'm eating!" I flicked a pickle from my salad onto the window of the booth where I was sitting, and slightly grinned with amusement as it slid down the surface of the glass, "....whatever you call this sad excuse for 'food' ..."