Fade to Black: Cont.

Scene 1- Beginnings of Doubt: Jessica. That was her name. It was important she didn’t forget that. Or she might forget everything else. She sighed and rubbed her temples. With the highly polluted atmosphere in Urbania, the toxins in people’s bodies could build up quite fast, not counting all the poisons people were putting in their bodies, what with drugs, fast food shops, and chemical performance enhancers. These myriad toxins could cause any disease imaginable, and several that weren’t. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and tumors were some of the most common diseases caused by the poisons of Urbania. But toxins weren’t the worst of Urbania’s evils. The World City, Urbania, a city that stretched over five hundred miles, was more corrupt than the most evil of empires. It contained within the Outer City, the third ring of the city, and the poorest, nearly 1.5 million convicted criminals, two hundred thousand drug dealers, and no less than three thousand serial killers. The 1,703,000 people included on this list were about equal to the number of people in both the Inner City and Middle City combined. Of course, Jessica didn’t know about any of that, her living in the Inner City, where all the buildings were chrome and glass, where avenues were so small that all traffic was in the air, where every skyscraper was connected with at least five others by long glass walkways and broad avenues. But even here, in the best part of the city, the foul smog filled the air, choking people up and overcrowding the hospitals. She looked at the clock and gasped. It was already 9 o'clock, and she would be late for work of she didn't hurry. She dragged her coat on, because even in the middle of the summer, the great looming skyscrapers blocked out most of the sun, leaving the lower levels shaded in darkness. She leapt out of her back door onto one of many personal glass walkways hat lead from people's back porches to the wide avenues filled with cars and people.

She dashed down the little walkway, gasping periodically as it shook and twisted at her exertions. Jessica opened the door to her car, the handle instantly recognizing her fingerprints and unlocking the door. She hopped in, flopping heavily onto the thick leather padding of the seat. She punched in the GPS coordinates on the car’s dashboard; hit the max speed button, and the car blasted away, to her work space. When she got to her small office in the one corner of the fifth floor farthest from the bathroom, there was a large yellow envelope. She groaned with fear. What with her being late to work all the time now, and her reports becoming increasingly sloppy and small, she had been expecting the “yellow envelope” of an official firing for weeks. She gasped with shock when she read the contents of the envelope. It was, in fact, something much worse than a mere firing. It was a request for a report on poverty in the Outer City, with data provided by the author coming directly from the source: they wanted her to go into the Outer City and collect information directly from the inhabitants. She was horrified. The Outer City was nothing but a massive ghetto, all Inner City folk knew that. In fact, the Outer City made a ghetto look like a pleasant upper-class neighborhood. At least, that’s what the stories said. You know, those urban legends that everybody swears that are true but are so ridiculous that they’re believable. But there was a tiny bit of good news at the end of the news letter. She was to be given one week of police training (in case of a firefight) and two police “escorts”. Hopefully nothing would happen, but her belly was still tensed as she told herself, over and over again as she lay in her bed, nothing at all would happen. Bu then again, this was the Outer City. And the Outer City was evil. According to the stories. The rumors. Which were completely unbelievable because they were so false.