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A hillbilly's life in San Franisco When Iowa is further away than Cassiopeia A

Danny got off the train, pulling his large suitcase behind him. It was really more like a rolling wardrobe than a suitcase, as he had packed pretty much every piece of clothing he owned into it, plus a few personal belongings like photographs and other memorabilia.

But the most important things were in his backpack, all the money had earned over the years in cash (since his father had refused to use any sort of online banking, nobody in Danny's family had a bank-account) as well as all important documents he would need for living in San Francisco.

He had arrived just about 10 minutes ago in the bay areas' main transportation hub and yet he felt like he had arrived on a different planet. It was barely three hours ago since he had left the main MAGLEV train-station of Des Moines in Iowa and now he was here in at the west-coast in a city in which he had always dreamed to live one day.

(If he would have taken the underground vacuum-tube MAGLEV he would have arrived in just about one hour, but first it would have cost three times the amount he had spent for the ticket of the older train above ground and second he wanted to see the world with his own eyes and not from a screen while traveling at 2000 kilometers per hour in a vacuum-tube)

Holographic adverts where flashing on the walls of the huge hall and above the platforms, sometimes even briefly right in front of a person, showing off things Danny knew, like the Coca Cola ('Most bought soda in 27 star-systems!') and Levi's jeans ('Buy jeans for 100 Terra-Credits and get free shipping to a dozen nearby solar-systems!') , yet also various products Danny didn't even had an idea what one would use them for.

Luckily it was still very early in the morning, not even 7:30 AM, so the platforms where quite deserted, only a few commuters were walking over to elevators and moving walkways to some other means of transportation into the inner city.

Danny though was standing on the platform without a clue where to go now. Standing there with his huge suitcase and backpack, in plain jeans and a light summer jacket he looked around, searching for a staff member of the main-station, yet nobody seemed to be around.

As he looked around another time, his eyes briefly watching another holo-advert ('Ben & Jerry's Ice-Cream: Now with Galzri-nut flavour from planet Bilroi!') he saw a bright column that was supporting the ceiling, a torus-shaped hologram of orange colour circling around it, showing of the words 'Tourist-Information' with several holo-screens below.

A sigh of relief escaped his lips as he walked over to the column, only to freeze in mid-step as a gigantic 7 feet tall anthropomorphic bug walked by, not even noticing Danny, as he just stood there, only moving his eye-balls as the black and blue colored creature disappeared in a nearby passage.

'Holy Lord, was this an alien? A robot? Or even a morph? Who the hell would even want to look like this?!' were Danny's first thought as he finished his step after the man-bug could not be seen anymore. His heart pounded a bit faster as he looked around, but for now only a few non-morphed humans could be seen.

Quickly he moved over to the Information-booth, hoping he could figure out how to use this device. He walked over to one of the large holo-screens, showing the emblem of the 'San Francisco Office of Public Affairs'.

In the moment Danny wanted to touch the screen, it shimmered and the screen quickly warped its shape, forming a blue and white colored hologram of a small man floating right in front of him.

"Greetings citizen, my name is Francis, the communal Digital Personality of San Francisco. How may I be of your service today?" the hologram said with a voice that for Danny was too...realistic. He had expected something more distorted or machine-like for a computer program.

At least that were his first thoughts after he got up from his suitcase behind him, after stumbling back and falling over it from the sudden appearance of the AI, not expecting to be greeted in such a manner.

"Sorry citizen, it was not my intention to scare you." the hologram-man said, bowing a bit before him. It was nearly comical, the small blue and white colored man apologizing to Danny by bowing to him.

"Eh, it's okay, I guess. I just...did not expect this hologram to appear so suddenly, never seen one like this before, you know?" he said, unable to hide his blush.

The hologram seemed surprised, saying nothing for several seconds as the man made out from nothing but a thin force-field and a projection rubbed his chin, his gaze wandering over Danny, before he talked again. Danny knew that AIs could process information at a speed no biologic being could ever achieve, so either this AI was playing with him, or acting just surprised to not upset him (He knew that some AIs were programmed to act more human than necessary to make people feel more comfortable around them) or something just happened that did not fit into his programming.

"Interesting, very interesting." were his only words.

"What....what's so interesting?"

"No Spacebook account, no mention on other social network, not even in the archives...if I would not be measuring your heart-beats and your body temperature right now I would say from a hypernet perspective you would not exist. Are you sure that you are really alive?" the hologram-man joked.

Danny frowned again, unsure to respond now.

"As far as I checked last time, when I cut myself when I repaired our combine harvester, thank you very much." He crossed his arms before his chest, trying to glare back at the hologram, as if to intimidate it.

The floating hologram-man lifted his hands in a calming manner.

"There, there, young man. No need to get angry, I just tried to ease the mood a bit. Didn't want to anger you. So now, what's your problem? You look like you could need some advice."

Danny looked at the hologram-man for a few more seconds before he sighed, and took off his backpack, looking for the the folder in which he kept the information where his new shared apartment would be.

"Erm, yeah. I need to go to this place here and I wanted to know if you could tell me what would be the easiest way to get there."

He showed Francis the sheet of paper, who only briefly showed a surprised expression again, before looking at the address.

"Treasure island? You seem to be quite lucky to snatch an apartment there, kid. Normally around this time of year pretty much all of them are already taken. Lucky for you in the past few decades there were some years with a lower birthrate, so less students here now. Just give me a second to calculate you the best path to your new home."

And indeed, only a second later a 'ding' sound could be heard and another holo-screen appeared in front of Danny's face, showing a line from his current position to a nearly rectangular island in the middle of the bay of San Francisco.

Danny waited nearly ten second for something to happen, but the holographic man did not say a word to him at first.

"Don't you wanna download it, buddy Where's your personal communicator?" Francis asked, breaking the silence finally.

Danny looked at him briefly, biting his lower lip before answering.

"I...I don't know how. And I don't even have such a....personal communicator." A light blush appeared on his cheeks.

Now Francis could not hold back his surprise, his eyes wide open in astonishment.

"You don't have a....huh, who'd have thought. I only thought that people like folks on the outer colonies didn't have them. Lucky for you I am also prepared for that. But I would advice you to buy yourself a personal communicator soon, you'd be helpless without one nowadays, my dear."

Danny could hear some rattling sounds before another ding could be heard, a green light appearing above a little metallic drawer.

Danny opened it, but it was empty.

"Err...there's nothing in there."

"Really?" The hologram-man turned around, looking at the empty drawer.

"Sorry, looks like my equipment here needs some overhauling. But it is no wonder, the last time I had to print out a plan for somebody was surely fifty years ago." Francis noted.

Danny's blush grew even more, as this was already the second time today that somebody noted about him living in the past, using things that have been obsolete decades ago.

Again rattling could be heard and another ding illuminated a second light above another drawer. This time luckily Danny found a sheet of paper, showing on both sides an detailed illustrated way which public transportation he should take to get safely to his destination.

"Thank you very much, Sir." he said to the hologram-man. "I would have been totally lost without your help."

"Sure thing, kid." Francis teased. "If you need me again, just look up for a public info-box. They are all over the city, there I can help you again."

Danny nodded, before taking his backpack and suitcase, walking over to the moving walkways that would lead him to the subway. "Interesting young man." Francis murmured as he watched Danny walking off, wondering if he would ever had the chance to have a real chat with him, and not just a pre-recorded answer, as were about 75 percent of all normal chats between organics.

But he dismissed the thought only a few fractions of a second later as a notice from the water-treatment-facility indicated a failure in one of the main filters. He stored the info of Danny in the list of newly arrived citizens before he tried to handle the newly appeared problem.

---

Danny pulled the suitcase up with his both hands as he took the last step from the Muni-Metro station of treasure island. For some reason there was no elevator, so he had to pull that damn heavy thing all the way up.

He stood there for a few seconds, resting to catch his breath. He looked around, scanning the area. From his spot he could oversee large parts of the bay of San Francisco. He was standing near a bridge connecting the natural Yerba Buena Island with the artificial Treasure island.

At one side of the bridge was a sign reading << This island served as a supply and medical center during the crisis of the greater-bay-quake of 2212. We thank the inhabitants of Treasure Island for their help in our effort to rebuild the city. >>

A shiver ran down Danny's spine as the sign reminded him that he was now living in a lot more dangerous area than his old home in Iowa. But he tried to shove that thought away, concentrating on finding his new home.

After nearly half an hour walking in the blazing sun he wished he would have called one of these small automatic bubble-shaped taxis that were driving around the streets. Two had actually offered him to bring him to his destination, but he declined. He thought he would get there without problems and he would not need a taxi, but now he wished he had, even though he did not knew if the accepted gold coin Neo-Dollars.

Finally he arrived at his new home, sweating buckets. It was a medium sized plot of land near the shore, with two buildings, one with three floors, the other with five, and a decent sized stretch of grass between them, nearly like a little park. The buildings had flat roofs and both buildings had a (to Danny's eyes) weird style of metal and ceramics. He looked around, checking for the last time if it was the right address.

Only then did he notice that nearly all people he saw walking by were morphs. He saw an anthro eagle on the other side of the street, talking with a hologram that was floating in front of him as he kept walking. Then he saw something that resembled an anthro otter, only that he had blue fur and small little horns on his head. He talked with somebody as well, but there was no hologram, so Danny assumed he had probably some of these cheap throwaway electronic lenses, that some companies were nearly intrusively advertising all over the place. After a few seconds Danny noticed another thing. Except for a short yellow-green loincloth the otter was totally naked. Danny could not believe his eyes, how somebody could walk down the streets with wearing barely any clothing. (And Danny didn't even knew if these people were morphs or aliens, it was all just sooo complicated.)

He looked up as a large shadow darkened the sky briefly, seeing a large creature with blue scales and green feathers quickly gaining distance to him.

His heart-rate increased now a bit. He was not really afraid of morphs, yet somehow he still felt uneasy near them. And now it seemed that this region of Frisco was swarming with morphed people. (or aliens)

He straightened his back, before taking a deep breath. There was no backing out now.

'Come on, Daniel. Show these people that you are not some hillbilly.' he thought to himself as he walked over to the left building.

On front of the main door he waited for a minute to both cool down (Finally some shadow!) and also gather some composure, before he rang the bell.

For nearly half a minute nobody opened. He already wanted to ring again as he could hear somebody walking over. An old-fashioned lock was opened and the door swung inwards.

Two deep blue eyes meet his brown ones.

"Hello there. How can I help you?"

Danny wanted to answer but he had problems formulating the words as he stared at the anthro snow-leopard standing in front of him, wearing nothing but some blue shorts. He just stood there unable to move for several seconds as he kept staring at this female bare-chested anthro snow-leopardess

"Everything allright, buddy?" she asked, her fluffy tail slowly wagging behind her.