The year is 2017; you're on a train, heading to another city in the Universal Union governed Earth. You feel it will all be the same experience. Rations, CWU, tokens, scrounging up what you can to survive and avoid the Union as much as possible. You are a citizen, you live in the dregs of society with everybody else. Nothing will be different. All the same. Bland. Tasteless.
You wish you could die. Yet, you still cling to reality.
The train stops to an underground subway station.
You step off of the train and register through an automated Universal Union Assessment System upon arrival. So far, it's all the same. Yet, so far so good. You go up the steps to the surface, and you walk up to the main district of the city.
A brisk autumn breeze flows through the main district of the city where the hustle and bustle of citizens is heard. Already, as you step off of the trainstation boarding dock, you can tell this city is set away from the rest. You actually see people being productive. You see them, smiling, talking in groups of three or four in the middle of the street. You see them smoking cigars and cigarettes with the Universal Union logo printed on it's filter.
What is this city? It's none other than City Fifteen, situated in the pre-war city of Diekirch, Luxembourg.
Here in City Fifteen, there is no need to be afraid. The CMA will not bother you unless you bother them. They seem calm, nonchalant about all of the activity in the main districts of the city. The citizens seem fine with their presence, too. It's as if they're all on the same side. It's incredible!
You get the courage to take a tour of the many shops and stores in the sector. They seem full, opened doors. They're welcoming.
-Alcohol is being sold? Is this heaven?-
Other novelties are being sold as well. From toiletries to accessories. Bliss.
As you exit a shop, you notice a group of units going to an alleyway with their guns raised. They're chasing somebody! A final gunshot, the young man they followed is killed. Citizens soon peer around the corner to get a good look at what happened. What the units find on the man is troublesome.
It appears to be anti-civil propaganda against the Universal Union.
A unit radios in his findings, and almost spontaneously an eerie, almost maddening siren begins sounding all throughout the districts of the city. The voice of the familiar Union DISPATCH is heard, speaking about codes, codes of what? They're being directly spoken to the populace. The CMA begin herding the citizens into the apartment buildings so suddenly! Their attitudes completely swayed!
"What is going on!?" You think. "Are we being sent to death?" That thought sprawls your mind, you can't stop thinking it! You're terrified, but you stand your ground and prove your worth by complying with the best of them.
Before you know it, citizens are being lined up against every visible wall in the apartment complex. Backs out, hands bound with zip-ties, stunbatons to those who oppose. You, and your compatriots, are all forcibly searched for all of your goods and belongings.
Hours later, it all ends. You're back is strained from being upright for all of that time. Everyone's ties are cut, except for a few unlucky ones who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. The unconscious are being dragged out to the streets and Nexus checkpoints. Everyone else, well... they go on about their business and act like nothing happened. Everything goes back to normal... Calm, breezy, hustle and bustle...
Thus is the experience of City Fifteen.
It's safer here, so much as you comply.
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