Alia stumbled out of the classroom, dizzy and overwhelmed. Her meager daily ration had just run out, leaving her emotional reserves totally drained. A hollow numbness consumed her as the faint hints of contentment faded away.
She looked around at her classmates with envy as they continued to bask in the manufactured bliss pumped into the academy’s ventilation system. Squeals of delight and infectious laughter echoed down the hallways as the wealthier students had their top-of-the-line supplements refreshed by discrete attendants.
Alia recognized the telltale rapturous expressions, the wide eyes and flushed cheeks of those experiencing chemically-synthesized joy in its purest form. How she longed to feel that same all-encompassing euphoria, to be awash in waves of delirious happiness.
Instead, her med-implant began sending warnings of emotional deficit, the dosage calibrated with cold economic precision. The first pangs of sadness started creeping in like insidious black tendrils. Alia shuddered, bracing herself for the inevitable crush of despondency until her family could procure more rations.
The unmistakable chime of an Emotion Trader cavalcade echoed from the academy’s main gates. A covey of armored trucks emblazoned with the iconic intertwined E pulled up, flanked by security drones. Alia watched with desperate longing as sleek porters unloaded chrome cases brimming with vials of glistening Cardinal Bliss and Seraphim Delight – emotions so powerful and transcendent that just minute fractional doses could incapacitate an ordinary person.
A crowd quickly gathered, the prestigious families of New Arcis jostling for prime position as the delivery team set up their dispensation pavilion. Alia pressed through the throngs, straining for a glimpse at the priceless vials of distilled rapture and exhilaration.
The pavilion’s main purveyor, a finely dressed woman with artificial poise stamped across her sculpted features, oversaw the operations with clinical efficiency. With a series of deft motions, bright golden ampoules were decanted into individual aerosol biopeners for respiratory absorption.
“Who desires the first taste of Paradise?” she called out in a voice mirrored with faint hints of contentment programmed to entice. The crowd surged forward eagerly as security drones expanded their periphery.
Alia could only watch in abject yearning as the wealthy patrons raised their bids into the millions for mere fractures of blissful ecstasy. One by one, they greedily consumed the vapors, their faces melting into expressions of such profoundly rapturous joy that it surpassed anything words could describe.
A young heir to one of the primary shareholding families stumbled backwards in a blazing epiphany of elation, his body quaking with convulsive euphoria. Another collapsed into a catatonic state of pure transcendent nirvana, unshakably distant from the waking world.
Alia’s heart ached as she was pushed back by the guards, an insignificant speck amidst such consecrated indulgence. Blinking back tears, she turned and ran from the spectacle, the mocking laughter and cries of infinite delight echoing all around her like a cruel siren’s call beckoning her towards an unreachable paradise.
Life's Adventure 