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Welcome, The Year is 2301 1:3

When he wakes up Changbin is just as tired as he had been when he had crawled into bed the night before. The mattress springs dig into his back and the lumpy pillow under his head is starting to give him a migraine. He doesn’t feel rested in the least. For a moment, as he stares at the bare ceiling above him he contemplates skipping classes today. Of course he won’t. As exhausted as he was, school was the only place around here with any form of entertainment.

Changbin propped himself up on one elbow. There was enough light in the bedroom to see his uniform pants discarded by the side of the bed. Groaning he swung his feet off the edge of the bed and pulled the khakis over his boxers, before heading into the kitchen. Oh yeah, he remembered as he rummaged through the cupboards, he’d run out of food. In the last shelf , behind a cracked ceramic bowl sat an unopened packet of ramen. It was his last meal, a gift from Jisung who always managed to put it there in case Changbin ran out of food. He never saw the boy put it in and he didn't even know when Jisung knew to put it there. Whenever he had nothing to eat he would remember to check that same spot and, without skipping a beat, a similar packet of ramen always happened to be there.

Putting the ramen on the stove, he returned to his bedroom where he finished getting dressed and grabbed his bag. By the time he returned to the kitchen the ramen was fully cooked and he ate it standing over the pan on the stove. Making sure that the fire was out Changbin headed to the front door, slipped into an old pair of beat up sneakers and slipped outside.

The trek down the tower was always easier than the hike up but it wasn't any less time consuming.  His part of District 9, nicknamed the Shanty, was already crawling with crowds of people. Men and woman with rags that passed for clothing, hunched shoulders, and worn out souls. It was apparent that people here had long since stopped trying to scrub the desert sand out from under their broken nails. They had stopped hoping for a change even long before Changbin had been born.

Children ran around the square in a never ending game of tag as the older folks looked on wistfully, wishing they could go back to a time much simpler than the one they were in. Street vendor's shouted at the top of their lungs, becaning others to take a look at what they had to offer.

Unlike, Moonhaven, the outskirts were a cluster of broken down cities that had begun showing their age long ago. The sand had buried most of what had been standing but there were enough buildings around to shelter the humans who had migrated there. 

Large building complexes and derelict stores were clustered close together, arranged down two way streets, though the reason for such proximity wasn't clear given the buildings were as ancient as the time of the humans. Most of the towers were original landmarks from back of the time of the human reign. They had withstood the test of time but not without showing their wear and tear.

A gust of dry wind punctured through the tall apartment towers where windows no longer had possesion of their glass. As an act of safety, the majority of the shattered windows were now covered by wooden planks. Doors whimpered in discomfort as they swayed in the breeze and weeds peaked through the cracked asphalt of the sidewalk.

The streets were littered with trash, the squat gray buildings leaning on each other in their old age, threatening to tumble down at the slightest resistance from the wind. Changbin’s building complex was almost at the edge of the Shanty. He only had to pass a few intersections to reach the old trading center where he knew Chan and Jisung would be waiting for him. There were no working cars out on the Outskirts so there was no real danger when crossing the streets.

Vehicles required batteries to run, and batteries needed electricity, and that wasn’t something the humans had at their disposal anymore. Anything that required electricity in the district ran on a schedule. A system that ran between 7:00am to 7:00pm.  A system that was being controlled within the city of Moonhaven. There were no resources on the Outskirts for things like electricity and so the human districts had to borrow from the aliens much to their dismay.

In theory, the System was created to keep crimes down. Amongst themselves the humans all considered each