Nexgenesis: The System's Sin and Sovereignty

The Cost of Survival

(Global Calendar Year 2087)

Do you know what it feels like to be poor?

“No, we have nothing.” 

… 

“Get lost, beggar.” 

… 

“Mama! Mama! What is that brother—.” 

“No, little one. Don’t call him brother. Shhh. Let’s go.”

To walk a commercial street in shabby clothes and be treated like a pauper in a world ruled by selfish capitalists? 

… 

“Hey, handsome. Do you want money? Something to eat?” 

… 

Or to be easy prey for the predatory scammers and thieves, those beasts wearing the masks of common people, always hunting for one more piece of merchandise?

“You are late.” 

“No, I’m not, boss. See? The watch says I’m on time.” 

“Tsk. Keep that dumb old watch and get to work.” 

“Yes~.”

Do you know what it is like to work day and night at a construction site for minimum wages that can barely sustain one other life besides your own?

“Another day of shit work, another day of earning a living.”

To live surrounded by high-rising skyscrapers, under corrupt bosses who employ legal tricks to grow richer? 

To work your ass off for the one person, the one family, you have left to care for? 

To save every scrap you earn, eat the cheapest food you can afford, and hold onto the dignity of never taking from others, even when offered their so-called fucked-up goodwill?

“Huuuuu…”

Do you know how it is to wear the same clothes until they are threadbare? To wear worn-out slippers? To work tirelessly with a growling stomach?

“Good work today.” 

“Good work, everyone.” 

“See you later.” 

“Here.” 

“Thanks, boss!”

To smile at the bastard boss who sees you as nothing more than an animal, the clear disgust on his face when he pays us workers at the end of the day. 

To be one of the workers who are dead inside, possessing the hollowest smile in this growing world.

“Haaa…”

To hear the same curses, the same cruelties, the same trash you hear every morning, repeated as you walk back home. 

“His mother must be a slutty whore as well, beggar.”

Does anyone know how it feels when these same comments are aimed at the one person you care about, the single human being who gave you everything you have today?

“Haaaa…”

To hold back the urge to smash their faces, break their jaws, pull out their eyes, and cut off the tongue that spoke those heinous words… only because your values will not allow it?

–Knock. Knock.

“I’m back, Mum.” 

“Welcome back, dear. How was your day~?” 

'As shitty as always…'

Do you know how it feels to live in a shabby cabin with two rooms, lacking even the facility to properly call it a bathroom?

“It was the same as always, Mum.”

In a world where technology has advanced so much they’ve launched space missions, colonized a neighboring planet, and reached a point where ‘other worlds’, the fully immersive virtual realities for massive multiplayer games, have become the greatest source of entertainment and the core driving force of the global economy.

“Hehe, you silly~. Go, wash up and let’s eat.” 

“I’ve told you many times, Mom. Don’t wait for me. And don’t do any straining things. You’re unwell!” 

“This much is nothing~. Go, go. Do your thing~.”

Can you imagine how it feels to have a loving, perpetually ill mother whose medications you cannot afford? 

A single mother who raised you in this vicious world, giving you every bit of affection and resource she had for twenty-three years?

“Haaaa…”

Do you know how difficult it is to just survive in this world if you can’t afford basic needs? To have just enough to sustain life?

‘It is painful…’

To watch others and yearn for what they have, knowing you cannot possess it. To be unable to cure your mother’s simple illness and watch her suffer. To simply endure, endure, and endure the urge to escape this painful cycle of repetitive days…

‘I know this sounds like someone venting anger and resentment toward an unfair world. However, I also know there is a simple solution to all this.’

Becoming like them.

Doing the things that they are doing.

‘Stealing, cheating, conning others, lying, scamming, committing fraud… making the simple human mind do what it is programmed to do: hurt others for selfish gains, earn money by various immoral acts, and elevate my lifestyle from what it is right now.’

Many do it. Many have climbed to the higher levels of society by selling out their morality.

However… I cannot do all that. 

“The food was delicious as always, Mum. Oh, I’ll be going out for a walk for a while. Do you want anything?” 

“No, darling. Just take care of yourself. And don’t stay out for too long!” 

“Of course, Mum.”

She was from a poor family. 

Her father abandoned her at a young age after her mother’s death, unable to bear her burden. 

Since then, she lived on her own, growing into a woman whose attractive looks were, obviously, fancied by many. 

But she gave her heart to only ‘that person.’ Even though they could not be together for long, she had me, and she raised me the best way she could with whatever was left.

‘Time passed, she got old, and I got older. With all the morality, values, and behaviors she encoded in me since an early age… I started taking care of her.’

The life we had wasn’t the best, obviously. Not when there was so much around me to learn, understand, see, and explore.

‘It feels shittier today for some reason…’

I knew I could do much more than construction work. I knew I was capable of much, much more than only physical labor. 

There were many things I could already do better than those who claimed to have graduated from prestigious universities. And I wanted to do all that…

“But if I start chasing my own selfish dreams, I will have to lose my mom. And that is the last thing I will ever do.”

She was the reason I was walking freely like this in the first place. She was the reason I was breathing right now. And she is the reason I am what I am.

“So, I am trapped in a paradox.”

I need money, a lot of it, to do all the things on my mind. The things I know I can do for certain. 

To earn that kind of money in a short time, I would need to do shady things, which, again, I cannot. So that’s out of the option.

The only other option is to get a full-dive VR tech and earn virtual currency from the ‘other world.’ Doing that would be perfectly doable, however, to even buy that kind of tech, I will need another shit ton of money.

‘So, in the end, money is the problem in this world.’

And even if earning it is easy for someone who, at the very least, has some kind of presentable clothing, for someone as broke as us… I don’t see myself getting that tech anytime soon.

‘Even after saving whatever money I can save from the work I do throughout the day and late-night shifts, I barely have a third of what is needed to buy even the cheapest—.’

—Dhum!

“What the hell? Oy, filthy bastard! Watch where you are going!”

I was walking by the roadside, and even though I was in deep thought, I was paying attention to where I was going. This girl was the one in a hurry, running with her head buried in her Cyberphone.

“You should watch where you are going, miss—.” 

“Fuck. Shut that filthy mouth of yours, beggar! Move! Get lost!”

She stood up with a disgusted expression, spat to the side, and continued running with her phone clutched in her hand.

‘That’s how poor-looking people are treated nowadays.’

Sometimes they beat us up for no reason, and the police do nothing to them. As the ones wearing rags, we are practically animals in this society.

‘Haaa… I want to get rich. At least enough to have a Cyberphone like that.’

These things were state-of-the-art tech, on the rise since a few months ago… wait.

‘But what’s someone with that kind of thing doing in a place like this?’

I was still in my shabby neighborhood, so there were no tall buildings here, no skyscrapers. There was just a main road beside the footpath I was walking on, where people seldom traveled to the central city area in their cars. 

And from what I know of those high-class baboons, they wouldn’t even open their vehicle doors when passing through places like these.

So then, what was a ‘young miss’ in expensive-looking clothes and a fucking expensive device doing here, walking on the footpath of us peasants?

“Hmmm?”

I had walked a few steps ahead, and by the time this question popped into my mind, the distance between the girl and me had increased.

—Vroooooom!

The very next moment I turned around, a car so attractive one would only see it in the holographic ads on the city's top billboards passed by me and stopped right beside the girl, who was still rushing somewhere with her phone.

‘What the hell, man?’

This was my first time seeing a car like that in a place like this. It felt incredibly weird for something like that to be here.

‘What’s happening here?’

This was strange. Perhaps a rich-people drama, or something else entirely, but this incident made me curious. 

I stayed there to see what kind of drama this actually was…

It should be much better than walking the same old streets anyway. 

And that girl called me a filthy beggar. I should at least let her know that it was offensive.