Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) Read Free Page B

people on the planet and over half of them are rich and demand their needs come first. The other half of us does all the menial work and shut our mouths. No one wants to stir the pot in fear that the National Insurance for Age-pro would be cut. As it stood we had to wait until we were thirty. If the government decided to cut the funding, they could push that limit to forty or even fifty!
The orange-yellow glow and the whirling of ducted fans from the belly of the Hover-Shuttle lowered to the center of the waiting area. The propulsion fans ran on hydrogen fuel cell technology, so to kill two birds with one stone, there were containers under the vehicles collecting the steam and water from the cells and then later to dump it in recycling plants. There the plants would send the water to all sorts of places from drinking water distribution facilities to watering tanks located in most suburban neighborhoods for their greens. Anywhere and everywhere they could use it.
The metal on the shuttle was chipped and dented giving the appearance of a beat up refrigerator. The passenger door lowered to the ground with a loud CLUNK and turned into a set of grated metal steps. Skipping two at a time, I climbed up the stairs and entered.
The interior wasn’t much nicer than the exterior. The seats were arranged like any public transportation: two rows of two-seaters with a middle aisle in between. There was only one other passenger besides me: a businessman, suit and tie, reading from his electronic reader, keeping to himself. I sat down near the front. The driver waited a few moments as if someone from the trailer park would come running up the stairs at any second. Or maybe he just counted to ten in his head at every stop. Whatever it was, at some invisible marker of time, he closed the door of the craft and we were off.
The humming sound of the Hover-Shuttle was almost deafening as we sailed toward Geoffrey Turner High School , the next stop. I looked out the window as we traveled and admired the landscape. Where the trailer park was stark and devoid of much vegetation, once outside its perimeter, the ground became lush with bright green grass and a field of California Oaks. Once the International Law of 2142 was passed requiring the planting of a tree every twenty feet, most places decided to re-plant near extinct trees like the California Oak. The law was passed as soon as everyone realized the down sides to Age-pro. Overpopulation. This basically meant we’d run out of oxygen if we didn’t start evening out the balance of the world. More people meant more things, which meant more natural resources being drained, trees being one of the highest for paper alone. The first law to be passed was in 2068 that outlawed anything printed on paper. Electronic reading devices were already a popular luxury item back then, but they soon became a requirement if you ever intended to read anything. Only e-books were legal. But it just wasn’t enough. There just wasn’t enough plant life on the Earth to sustain the amount of people inhabiting it so they had to make planting more trees a worldwide law. It was hard for me to imagine living on this planet without the amount of trees we had now. I loved trees. I loved getting lost in the forest with a good book or to just sit under the shade and have a moment to myself.
The Hover-Shuttle flew past the oak forest and I could see my high school drawing near. It looked like something from a fairytale: early 1800’s architecture (re-created of course: the school was only twenty-years-old) made entirely of brick and mortar, iron-wrought gates and ivy growing up the sides of the school like veins pumping life into the building.
I just wished the people inside it were as nice and the building was to look at. Being poor in a rich school didn’t exactly lend itself to making friends. I had two people who were brave enough to socialize with the “leech” as I was so fondly referred to. And I truly considered