Chapter -1 - How do you find food when you're homeless?

I’m really hungry. I need to find food, Jack thought.

The 18 year old teenager left his hiding place in the basement of the abandoned warehouse and walked outside.

The sun hit him in the face and the cold winter breeze made him shiver. The cold weather coupled with his thin jacket made Jack hate being homeless.

How will I get food now that I’ve run out of cash? This sucks. Maybe I could try to find cans to get money from the recycler?

The old, abandoned industrial area was filled with homeless people. Jack spotted a group of homeless men warming their hands above an oil barrel fire.

He avoided them, and other homeless men he spotted, and kept searching for cans.

After half an hour, he stopped and thought:

You idiot. Of course you won’t find any cans here. All of the other guys already picked this place clean. And not like they can afford cans anyways. I’ll walk over to the commercial district. I’ll probably find cans there.

It took about one hour of walking to get to the nicer part of town. He spotted a playground. Kids were playing on the swings and mothers were walking with baby strollers.

He avoided them as much as he could and kept his head down and looked around for cans.

Why can’t I find anything!

Jack decided to look inside one of the trash cans.

This is disgusting…

He shuffled through the trash and his hands turned sticky from spilled soda. But he finally found a soda can.

Yes! Finally! Okay I think one of these is like 20 cents? So if I keep–

A strong force pulled him backwards and he accidentally dropped the can.

“What the fuck!”

A two meter tall and burly man twice his size grabbed and pulled him outside the park.

I dropped the can!

“Get the fuck off me!” Jack said, and headbutted the man.

The man did not take kindly to that, and promptly tossed Jack against the road. Jack landed hard on his hands and knees on the asphalt.

Awwww! That hurt!

Jack looked up and saw a big, angry security guard.

“Get out of here or I’ll call the police,” he said.

“Fuck off. Give me that cola can and I’ll leave,” Jack said.

The big security guard grimaced and took a step closer to Jack.

Jack pulled out a knife.

“Take a step back,” Jack said.

The security guard pulled out a gun.

….

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Above the text was an illustration of a kind of windowless chair capsule.

“What the hell is this?” Brian said.

“What?” Lucas said.

The two homeless teenagers were sitting on the makeshift, dirty bed in Jack’s hiding place under the abandoned warehouse.

Brian handed Lucas his smartphone and showed the ad.

“This looks dope as hell. How much do you think it costs?” Lucas said.

‘I dunno. It said beta testing so maybe we can get in for free.“

They clicked the link.

…

Am I safe?

After a sprint and non-stop running in zig zag motions for 20 minutes, Jack looked back.

Yeah, I think I’m safe.

Jack was in the parking lot behind a big mall.

Now that the adrenaline was gone, he felt pain on his knees and hands and saw that he scraped them badly. They were bloody and dirty.

Just great…

Randomly, he spotted an employee taking out the trash and walking towards a big group of dumpsters behind the mall.

Dumpster diving! Okay, I think I can get food from here.

But I can see a few security guards. Why are there so many guards in the commercial district?

If I try anything now they’ll spot me. I’ll wait until night…

He hid behind some bushes and took a nap. It was always hard to sleep under the warehouse because there were a lot of noises and it was cold. But right now he felt warm and tired. Very tired.

A few hours passed and he woke up. It was not night yet, but the sun was almost down and he was hungry. So he checked for guards, and then walked over to the dumpsters.

Fuck! Of course there’s a fucking lock!

He looked around for something to break the padlock with and found a brick.

He slammed it into the padlock and nothing happened. Then he slammed it again and again.

Come on! Just open!

“Hey, stop that!” a guard said.

Of course. The universe fucking hates me! Fuck you!

Jack took off running. He didn’t know where he was going to get food from and he didn’t know one stranger and one familiar face were on his bed right now.