 Daenerys stood with her hand on the inside knob of her apartment door. Face mask? Check. Book bag? Check. Bunker Bootz? Check. Her choice of foot protection this day was lavender, selected from an array of fashionable colors and patterns found on the hazmat preparedness aisle at Target. She had been in more of a marigold mood, but decided indulging her own fashion whims was less important than showing solidarity with her LGBTPSQ allies who (unbelievably, in the year 2049!) were still forced to pay for their own in-vitro fertilization, embryo rectification, and species or gender transition procedures in some Unity Regions. Smart phone? Check. Daenerys (of course) had an identification chip implanted in her hand, but had not yet been able to afford the implantable smart-screen stamp, so she still had to carry her exsomatic device for some purposes. Trudging down four flights of stairs in her heavy, acid-resistant boots, Daenerys’ mind was as blank as the pale, yellowing walls of the stairwell. After leaning her full weight against the thick metal door to open it towards the street, her senses were overwhelmed with smells and sounds. Sewage, chemical runoff, and food waste stench emanated from the sludge on the street, dulled but not completely blocked by her snug mask. Sounds from diesel engines and honking horns painfully penetrated her ears. If only the anti-progressives had listened to reason in the pre-Unity era, and passed the Green New Deal before it was too late! But the dominant Pallid regime had implemented short-sighted, selfish, and capitalistic policies, and subsequent generations were forced to live with the resulting contamination. Historically, Pallid culture had done so much damage. Cringing with shame, Daenerys felt the weight of the collective crimes of which her skin was emblematic. She had learned at Amazon Unity Region University that the guilt she bore was embedded in her DNA and that there was no available gene therapy to correct it. Though her debt to the Melaninated could never be fully paid, she was obligated by morality (and by law!) to make every possible effort to mitigate the damage. Of course, she would have been happy to undertake the pallotype suppression exercises even without the threat of being fined or jailed. It was the right thing to do. And the medley of African, Indian, and Asian music that was softly playing at all times in her dwelling unit was actually kind of nice. If it kept her brain from falling into pallotypical mental patterns, which as a Pallid she would always be prone to do, well, that was a just a bonus. The small electric jolt that emanated from her implanted ID chip when Daenerys used archaic, pallocentric language (like referring to Unity Regions as “states,” a common habit of Allies who were old enough to remember life pre-Unity) had been far less pleasant, but by now she had mostly purged herself of the forbidden terms, so it was no issue. The reparative equalization fees were another contribution Daenerys was happy to make. As the first head of the Department of Reparations, Secretary Ocasio-Cortez, had explained many years ago, Pallid slaveowners had kept one hundred percent of the product of Melaninated slaves’ labor, so allowing Pallids to keep twenty percent of their own earned income was comparatively generous. Considering how difficult it was for Daenerys to manage on twenty percent of her own earned income, she felt immensely grateful for the mercy displayed towards her by the Melaninated. As she trudged through the filthy streets towards her Team Labor Assignment, Daenerys’ attention was absorbed by the Ally speaking on the massive Unity News Network screen that hovered above the street. It was wonderful that the Unity Regions’ Central Authority had decided to place these screens in public venues in all the Unity Regions to make sure that everyone could be equally well-informed. Even though access to live-streaming had been declared a human right by the Continental Equity Council in 2032, there were still some Allies who lived only on their Universal Basic Income which was insufficient to pay for the cost of having the video feed delivered to their dwelling units. Daenerys sighed with resignation. So much work remained to be done. The Unity News Network speaker, Kardashia Kumar, was a female-presenting Ally with sepia-toned skin who was wearing a bright red skirt suit. Xer lips were boldly hued with matching red lipstick. In a chipper tone, Kardashia delivered news that Central Authority Leader Jayden Jiminez had decided was most important for Allies to know that day. As she plodded through the streets, Daenerys watched Kardashia calmly inform viewers that Netflix Unity Region Team Leader Malia Obama had been under fire since hacked photos emerged of her wearing a vintage, pre-Unity “Pride” t-shirt. An apologetic Obama defended her display of the pedophile-phobic-and transspecies-exclusive image, emphasizing that she felt the archaic symbol embodied her family’s heritage of promoting what, in less enlightened times, had been viewed as progress, and was not, as critics claimed, a promotion of hatred towards marginalized Ally groups. Next, UNN Arts correspondent Ming-na Ogumbawa excitedly announced that the K-Pop band P#ndaz00a was set to receive the best song award of the year, marking the first time such an honor had been granted to a trans-species trio. The award would be presented by music legend Ivy Blue Carter at the Cardi B Center for Fine Arts in Detroit, capital city of the Proctor and Gamble Region. Male-presenting ally Vladmir Al-Hazmi reported from the northwest that an angry, armed Melaninated Ally group continued to occupy a food distribution hub in the Walmart Unity Region. Ally Group leader Tyrone Randhawa was claiming that Team Lead Gunter Chen failed to provide adequate food rations to Melaninated dwelling compounds, while Chen blamed regional leaders for allowing the Unity Agriculture Authority’s armored food trucks to be seized by local gang members. Another field correspondent, Mohammed O’Donnel, provided a report from the Blackrock Unity Region. This region - which some had once referred to as Appalachia before being zapped out of the habit - was a largely rural area, and geographically one of the largest of the regions. It was still plagued by pockets of people resisting Unity. When the Unity Regions had been established, some religious fanatics (mostly unrepentant Pallids, along with a handful of their Melaninite accomplices), had retreated out of the cities into mountainous areas that were almost impassible except on foot, taking with them only what they could carry. They had established walled homestead communities they called Freedom Forts. (Daenerys scoffed at the thought of “freedom.” Why would you want “freedom” if it meant living in a shed built from sticks, eating food you pulled out of the ground, completely cut off from electronic communications and entertainment?) Video footage obtained by drones indicated that the anti-Unity extremists had displayed remarkable resourcefulness and ingenuity, surviving fairly well so far using only indigenous resources to build shelter and grow or capture food. The fort residents had built small but sturdy homes, primitive water collection and purification systems, and pulley systems to shuttle various items quickly up and down the mountainside to their forts. Some had even fashioned art work, instruments and recreational equipment out of natural resources, all examples of feeble attempts to break up the monotony of their bleak existence. Obviously, the Freedom Forts should and would be stamped out, but dealing with the obstinate Unity Resistors had proven much more difficult than expected - a fact Resistors absurdly attributed to their Bronze Age Sky King of myth. In reality, it was because vicious infighting among the Unity Region Team Leads and bloody conflicts among various Ally Groups in the cities had thus far been of more pressing concern than isolated groups of Resistors. Because they had not yet become the central focus of the Team Leads, the Resistors had been left alone for a time to fester in their pitiful little forts. Daenerys had heard chat-room rumors that Resistors had been smuggling resources out of the Unity urban areas, and the UNN had reported that some of the deluded extremists meant to defeat the Unity Region Central Authority using guerilla tactics to sabotage infrastructure. It was comical, really – the idea that the state-of-the-art, fully unified financial and communications systems designed by the most diverse teams in history could possibly be compromised. And how could anyone think that these primitive, ignorant people could get in and out of the sophisticated city centers without detection, much less cause any kind of noticeable harm? Arriving at her Labor Assignment fifteen minutes early as expected, Daenerys dragged her Bunker Bootz across the sharp steel grating at the entrance to the employee mud room, where she shook the ash off her overcoat and hung it on a hook. “Dani, Dahling!” cooed Sanjay. “Divine to see you! Now get your sweet derriere over here behind the register, the line’s almost out the door!” Sanjay wore fuschia chiffon and a pink mask with an ornate stitched pattern of gold. Swirling pink and gold earrings hung down on his shoulders, almost as low as the bottom of his neatly trimmed beard. “Coming, coming!” Daenerys reassured, scurrying to her spot behind register number two. Daenerys had been assigned to a food service establishment on the outskirts of the Wells Fargo Unity Region in the northeastern part of the continent. Pre-Unity, it had borne the pallocentric moniker “New York.” Though the name had been changed, the area remained the most important financial center in the Continental Unity Region. Daenerys liked knowing that she was working in proximity to this important place, even though her job – serving bottled soda, mixed coffee drinks and prepackaged snacks - was dull, repetitive and thankless. Daenerys spent the next few hours blending drinks and pulling food for a continuous stream of customers whose faces all blurred together in her mind. The snack bar where she and Sanjay worked was a dilapidated, primitive facility in which little had been updated since it was built in the early 2010s. Standing in the cramped space, she noticed her muscles became tense and achy, and an uncomfortable twinge in her bladder, and longed for break. The line of customers had dwindled, so she took up Sanjay on his offer for her to “Take five, Sweetie. Or take ten. You look beat.” After relieving herself, she sat down, knees even with shoulders, on a tiny metal stool behind the counter. She watched blankly as Sanjay plunked down bottles of soda and water for the customers, who casually waved their hands over the pay pad that was bolted onto the counter. Sanjay watched for the green light to indicate each customer’s chip payment had been validated, then smiled, “Just lovely. You are good to go, Xir.” Usually this was a quick process, but the current customer seemed to be holding up the line. A large, male-presenting Ally in a black hoodie was hunched over the pay pad, waving his hand back and forth over the sensor, but the blinking red light indicated that the sensor was not reading his chip. “Try again, Xir. A little closer to the pad,” instructed Sanjay, in a tone which Daenerys recognized as controlled annoyance. A buzz in her pocked reminded Daenerys that she had not checked her exsomatic device for a few hours. Sanjay was beginning to lose patience. “Xir, I’m afraid you’ll need to remove your glove, Xir. Our reader is much less sensitive than the new ones.” The black-hooded Ally gestured at Sanjay with a rude hand wave to back away. Daenerys thumbed through the notifications on her exsomatic device. ALERT: MAJOR DAM BURST IN WESTERN FACEBOOK UNITY REGION. 20,000-30,000 ALLIES DEAD OR MISSING ALERT: RESISTOR OPERATIVES BREACHED CITY CENTERS; PLAN TO TARGET VULNERABILITIES IN OUTDATED HARDWARE TO DISRUPT UNITY NETWORK. ALERT: SERUM FOR VIRUS VARIANT XG21 HAS BEEN APPROVED BY UNITY CENTRAL AUTHORITY. ALL ALLIES MUST REPORT TO LOCAL HEALTH CENTERS FOR INJECTION. Sanjay’s voice was becoming increasingly loud and agitated, and Daenerys snapped her head up to see what was happening. The black-hoodied Ally was still hunched over the pay pad, and seemed to be intently focused on something. “I SAID,” Sanjay spat, “REMOVE YOUR GLOVE, XIR.” Sanjay grabbed the man’s glove at the wrist and yanked it down. Sanjay and Daenerys gasped at what they saw when his bare hand was exposed. In the fleshy part of the hand between the index finger and thumb, where the ID implant and tattoo were meant to be, was.... nothing. Nothing. Sanjay and Daenerys exchanged looks of wide-eyed horror upon beholding the bare skin. This man was no Ally. He was a Resistor. Before either could speak, the Resistor stood up to his full height, drew back his trunk-like muscular right arm, and forcefully planted his fist into Sanjay’s face. Sanjay staggered backwards, falling against the back counter, and knocking plates, cups, and plastic bottled drinks onto the floor. “IT’S SIR,” he roared. He took a breath, and in a calmer tone added, “But you can call me Chad.” Chad tilted his head towards his shoulder and said in a low voice, “It’s in.” One second later, the lights in the café flickered, then went dark. Daenerys looked out the window. It looked like the lights on the rest of the street had also gone dark. She heard tires squealing, and a crash. Looking further into the distance, she saw a helicopter crash into a bridge and burst into flames. Chad’s heavy black boots pounded the ground until the Resistor reached the cafe door. Daenerys saw his broad shoulders and beard in silhouette as he paused briefly in the door frame. The back of his hoodie displayed a phrase in an archaic language that she did not recognize: “Deo Vindice.” Daenerys blinked. By the time her eyes flicked back open, Chad was gone.
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