Day 98: Going Back: Part 2

After Artificial Life, Yeralt found himself clinging to the memories that he couldn’t remember. He knew that life was enjoyable for the most part, but it was also very difficult at times. People died all the time! Nobody dies in real life. Well, at least not often. The average life span was around two thousand years, give or take a couple hundred. It made life interesting, knowing that any day could be your last.

Everything about Artificial Life was interesting. Real life was boring. Yeralt worked on the farms, which is one of the few jobs that anyone. The machines did most of the work of gathering and processing the crops, but they still needed halets (people) to make sure everything was working properly. Halets also mined and managed the Core Engine, which produced all the power needed for Verond, which is four times the size of Earth. Despite the longevity of halets lifespan, they did not reproduce in mass amounts like humans. Halets were created based on the need of civilization.

They are born from eggs. Imagine a cross between a human and agama lizards of various colors with bright hues and you get an idea of what a halet looks like. They eat like humans, but only for basic fuel. There is no real sense of hunger, obesity, or over-consumption because one is bored. A halet only needs to eat twice a week for energy. They do no consume liquids but find it amusing to dare their friends to drink water, milk, or bromine. Liquids will not kill halets, but liquids are just weird. It would be like a human eating a soft rock or a Tide-Pod. No, a normal diet for a halet is a horbig every few days. Horbigs are their main food source, which grows in the ground like a potato. They are the size of watermelons and taste like dirt. But, again, eating is not the pleasurable pass time like in Artificial Life.

There are very few cities on Verond. Most halets live in small villages or live alone in the wilderness. Yeralt lived in a city called Tormangue. Halets don’t build skyscrapers. Their buildings are modest in height but stretch on across the land for miles. The largest buildings in any city are the farming manufacturing and delivery plants and the core engines. There is no need for many types of buildings. The rest in the cities are dome-style homes.

Yeralt walked out of his dome a week after his first time in Artificial Life, looked up at the bright purple sky, and realized that his life was meaningless. All the contentment and joy that he found in the simple life had somehow washed away after being in AL. He regretting trying it out in the first place, but now all he wanted to do was return.

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Author's Note #1: You are reading the rough draft process of stories. I apologize for the information dump, but it is necessary to get the ideas out there. Time constraints for writing long pieces are becoming very real.

Author's Note #2: I have some idea where I am going, but thinking that it would fit into a short story was being overly optimistic.

Author's Note #3: If there were typos or questions, feel free to let me know.

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Image by FelixMittermeier from Pixabay