Blake got in the car with a sigh. After Bella announced her desire to ‘cook’, the brothers tried hard to persuade her to change her decision and throw those tomatoes away. But Bella insisted and also requested them to order other ‘ingredients’. Faced with her watery eyes, Blake had no choice but to agree. Now he’s worried that those ‘ingredients’ are also something consumable and it can cause harm to her already fragile body. But he couldn’t refuse either.
Letting out a sigh for the nth time, he sank to his seat.
The car began to move forward as Berson stepped inside. The vehicle rose from the ground a metre high and began to move towards the destination already set in its program. The ride was fast but smooth, as smooth as a vehicle without wheels and anti-gravitation enhancement could go but Blake still couldn’t stop sighing. Looking through the transparent roof above his head in the twinkling evening sky where the colour purple and violet were playing with each other, he let out another sigh.
Berson sat on the seat beside the sighing Blake. The expression on Blake’s face was regretful, as if he had made a terrible mistake which he couldn’t undo. It’s not that they’re running low on money. Who living in Orion is poor? It’s not impossible to buy a few ingredients for their sister but Blake is behaving as if he’s the poorest person on Orion and couldn’t afford some luxury for their sister. It feels like looking at a broken man who couldn’t buy toys for his daughter. Suppressing the sigh that was about to leave his mouth with a cough, Berson opens his mouth.
“Do you really have to behave like that?”
“You don’t understand.” Blake says with pursed lips. “How am I going to explain to her that those ingredients she’s talking about are also bad for her health? It’s the first time she asked something from me but I’m torn between fulfilling her wish and caring for her health. Just imagine something bad happening to her and Mom and Dad getting the wind of it. We’ll be doomed.”
“I understand your concern but don’t behave as if you have no other way. You can directly explain to her why it’s bad for her body. I’m pretty sure that if we explain the harmful cause of food consumption to her she would understand.”
Berson tries to reason. From the birth of their sister till now, Berson did not get many chances to get along with her. He was always too busy handling his two little brothers and his own life. His parents’ attention had always been paid fully to their sister and he can’t blame them for that. The condition of Bella was too fragile to be left alone. But from what he has seen by interacting with Bella so far, she has a soft heart and is a very understanding person. If you explain something to her, as long as it doesn’t trigger her, she would understand and obey. He might not have been able to accompany her much in the past but he knows that his sister is not an unreasonable person. She is smart in her own way and also quite considerate. If they could explain to her properly she would not make a fuss about it.
Blake also knows that his sister is an understandable person and will not get angry for not fulfilling her wish. But how can he not feel guilty? He has promised her. Because of his promise she had been drinking her nutrition liquid without any complaints. But now what? He can’t let her ‘cook’ and consume those things that would make her sick for sure but he can’t reject her either.
Another sigh leaves his mouth as he keeps pondering on the matter.
The person of the brothers’ worry is now sitting on the balcony and enjoying a pleasant afternoon. Her excitement of being able to cook again still hasn’t died down, which made her look up some information about this world. And she would lie if she said she wasn’t shocked.
Sitting on the fluffy couch on the balcony which was as big as the living room with an open roof and glass railing, she began to observe her surroundings. When Blue first brought her here, she was very surprised. She didn’t know they had such a beautiful balcony nor did she know they live on the topmost floor of a skyscraper. It was so high up that she couldn’t even see the ground. She wondered if this height causes problems during rain or storm although she knew it was quite impossible. She had seen skyscrapers in the 21st century too, which obviously wasn’t as tall as the one she’s staying but she knew that these structures were made in a way that there would be very little danger. She asked Blue jokingly if they will get elactroud by thunder or something. But Blue smiled and assured her that it’s impossible because it doesn’t storm in here. It wasn’t surprising that it doesn’t storm that often in cities but the way Blue answered as if it had never stormed once here. She was a little sceptical but didn’t ask any further questions. She had too many questions about this world and she doesn’t want to bother the brothers every time by asking them.
From where she sat, she could see the Skyroads up there. The transparent Skyroads twist and turn in every way like a bunch of wires haphazardly tangled with each other. But she knew that there was a considerable distance between each road although it seems like they’re all tangled up from where she sat. Vehicles made of completely glass can be seen running inside the Skyroads as if bubbles were moving inside a pipe. Few children were flying around the building, which shocked her most the first day she came to the balcony. The jetpacks on the children’s back and anti-gravitational boots on their legs make them seem like straight from a sci-fi movie. Technically, she indeed is now in a high-tech movie-like world but that doesn’t stop her from being surprised everyday.
It was still unbelievable to her that she isn’t in her old world anymore. The world she’s in now is so vastly different. The people, the language, the environment and not to mention the technology is amazingly different from her previous world. All the buildings, vehicles, roads etc. proves how advanced they are from her former world. Patting her heart mentally, she hypnotised herself saying that she won’t be stunned anymore in the future no matter what she sees or hears.
Although she can convince herself the reason for everything being different and advanced, one thing still puzzles her. And that is the colourful sky above her head. When Blue first brought her here, that purple sky caught her attention the first thing. It was noon at that time so according to her knowledge, the sun should be high up in the sky glaring at them with the blue sky stretched behind it. But the sky she saw wasn’t blue nor was there any sun. It was a light lavender colour with the big star known as sun completely absent. Not only that, there weren’t even any clouds.
Why aren’t there any clouds in the sky? Shouldn’t there be fluffy clouds around the building since we are so high up in the sky?
As her eyes roam around the vast sky, she realised the colour of the sky is now getting a deep violet with a purple-ish pink hue at the far corners. It was getting dark around but she couldn’t see the source of the light disappearing anywhere. Where is this light then coming from and how do they disappear automatically? She could see everything, which means there must be a sun or something that is the source of light but where is it? Shouldn’t the sky look pinkish orange at sunset? No, where is the sun? Why isn’t there any hint of any sun or source of this light? Is it normal for this world? Maybe….
So many questions but no answer. Finding no clue, Bella shrugs her shoulders and throws the unimportant thoughts out of her mind. She snuggles in the blanket that Blue has brought for her and opens the Neutab on her wrist. The pale pink bracelet was brought by Blue the day before yesterday. It’s a device that could be compared to a 21st century portable phone but with much more advanced facilities. Not only that, the nanochip which is basically the core of this device can be taken out of the bracelet anytime and inserted into other portable devices, a lot more like pen drives. It doesn’t matter if it’s a phone, a robot, car or any other vehicles or a headphone, a home system or even digital spectacles. Just insert this and you will be connected with the rest of the universe through this along with the data that had already been stored before. Blue has told her that their Skynet is the strongest in the whole galaxy. You can communicate with the other end of the galaxy easily through this.
As soon as Bella pressed the pink button in the middle of the bracelet, a floating panel popped up in front of her, automatically connecting her to the Skynet and taking her to the webpage she had been reading before. After she came to this world, her doubt if the people of this world do not eat food intensified and soon turned into many questions. Those questions led her to search the web which opened up the true facts of food consumption of this world. The fact that people of this world truly don’t eat any food is half true and half not. Common people of this world don’t consume any foods not because they don’t want to but because they can’t. Food is considered luxury in this world. The prices are so high that people would rather consume nutrition liquid than buy food.
If the high price of consumable foods is the reason for people not eating them then the first question arises: Does that mean people of higher status who are filthy rich still eat food? If so then the next question arises: her family doesn’t seem that poor, to be honest her brothers look quite rich. If they’re rich why didn’t they let her eat anything consumable? Why did they force her to drink nutrition liquid? Not to mention, when she expressed her desire to eat fruit, her brothers showed a confused expression as if they had never heard about it. Which means they rarely, or probably never had anything consumable. Is food so expensive that they could never afford it?
Bella was pretty sure that people far beyond in the history of this world must have consumed food. So she started to search for ancient articles about food. After searching for a long time she finally found an article about food consumption. The article is nearly 800 years old. All the other articles related to food consumption have been deleted. The reason this article is still on the net is because this article had been published by the government.
After reading the article carefully, she realised that it has been more than 800 years since humans stopped consuming foods and began leaning more towards nutrition liquid. The reason for this is several major famines at the end of the 21st century. Extreme drought, flood, earthquake and many other natural calamities hit the human world with all their might, taking the human society on the verge of extinction. The rich and developed countries barely survived the onslaught of mother nature but underdeveloped and poor countries ceased to exist. The earth got so polluted that it became almost impossible to harvest crops, so the production of crops began to get less and less each year. Wars broke out and people began to fight with each other for a small piece of bread. And at this moment of great calamity, a group of scientists invented the nutrition liquid, the beacon of life that saved the starving mankind from starvation.
After the invention of the nutrition liquid, governments of the countries that were able to tackle the continuous calamities distributed to their people for free and people started to consume it as a substitute for food. Food became scarce so people had no choice but to lean more towards nutrition liquid, and slowly forget about food. Because the people of this world have stopped eating for a very long time, their digestive system is becoming weaker day by day and the organs are on the verge of being inactive. If humans don’t start food consumption in the upcoming centuries, then there’s a possibility that their organs would completely go extinct…
