The Machine Rules

6

We arrived at the school with five minutes to spare, and on our way there, my belly growled at the lack of food. I decided that I would eat at the zoo as my teacher said all the food was paid for, so I counted on that.

The car lowered on the street below, and once it stopped, the door opened for me to exit. I looked inside the vehicle to see the Golem didn't move from its place.

"You may leave without me. There is no need for me to escort you," With that, the door closed, and the car took off into the building filled sky. Once the car turned into a black dot, I turned around and walked to where my friends, teacher, and I were supposed to meet.

"Good morning Lilya," The teacher greeted me.

"Good morning Ms," I greeted back and stood next to her.

"I hope you haven't eaten breakfast yet; I'm going to take you girls into one of the restaurants there. And let me tell you, the food there is to die for," I smile, feeling happy I would eat properly. I plan on enjoying as much as possible from the situations I'm having these days because if it all turns back to what it was, I'll have some nice memories.

"I didn't, and I'm starving," I smiled and looked around for Sarina and Valrie. They met us just as the clock turned eight. "You guys made it!" I hugged them once they reached us.

"You look so pretty, Lilya!" Valrie cheered as she and Sarina checked me out.

"You look pretty too," I tell her as I look at her cute outfit.

"Alright, girls, you can check each other later. Now we need to go to the zoo and eat," Our teacher clapped her hands and started walking along the sidewalk. It was a ten-minute walk, so there was no need to take any kind of transportation. It also allowed us to go around the city.

It may seem we have the freedom to walk from city to city, even parts within the city, but we aren't. We need direct permission to traffic on them, or else we are sent back to our home and locked for a day as punishment.

Unless you worked in a different area from your own or went to school or college, you weren't allowed to go anywhere. For that, you had to make a request, or on the screen, everyone has that send a direct message to it, or to a building in their area specifically for that.

This goes for all social classes, poor, medium, and rich. No one is above no one before it.

On our way to the zoo, we got to see many buildings we've never seen, shops we never heard of, and food we never tasted. It was a pleasant experience I would definitely remember.

"Oh, look, Valrie. Someone wants to look older than they already are like you," Sarina points at someone in the crowd of hundreds. Valrie hits her arm and glares at her.

"I don't want to look older. My hair is beautiful, so if you don't like it-"

"What? What are you going to do?" Sarina teases. Valrie jumps on her, and they start fighting playfully. I look in the direction Sarina pointed to see someone with white hair but looked to be a man. The hair soon was out of view, making me turn back to the now hugging girls.

"Glad you were done with the fighting, we are here," Our teacher catches our attention before pointing to the zoo. The entrance was made of a glass dome with leaves falling down the floor and windows. There were many passages to other areas as we entered, as we as a butterfly or two flying inside the glass walls.

"Wow," I say to myself as I look around.

"Girls, follow me. This place is big, so don't want to get lost," We get close to her and follow as she walks over to a corridor to our left. It goes to a bridge that goes over small hills covered with plants. I stare down the bridge and see small animals like rodents, rats, rabbits, and capybaras moving under the leaves.

We continued our way outside, where most of the people were. There were a lot of shops and cafes, which made my stomach growl. We entered one that was packed but with a few tables left.

"Come girls, the food here is divine," Our teacher pushed us to a free table. As soon as we sat down, a waitress came with a bright smile on her face.

"Good morning, ladies. Welcome to our cafe. I'll introduce it if any of you never came here before," She said as she set out the table with plates and cutlery. "We have the option where you choose what you want from our menu, or we serve you everything we have and more, but we'll charge per person."

"How much is it per person?" Sarina asks politely.

"Five thousand," The waitress smile and missed our mouths that hung open. "But because you are special guests, all expenses have been paid. We were ordered to serve you our best. We'll serve you shortly. For now, you can enjoy our drinks," On cue, another waitress comes and gives us cups and jars with different juices.

Our original waitress walks away, and we are left wide-eyed as we stared at each other.

"Did you win a competition or something? This is an expensive cafe, not a restaurant, cafe, and we got it for free. Not only that but got to come here, eat in the best cafeteria at school. What the hell is going on?" Valrie starts talking to me, but in the end, she grabs her hair and tugs it.

"Nonsense. Sometimes people get chosen for this sort of stuff. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. They say it's a trial of sorts if the people being tested deserve a better life or not. One out of twenty actually get better lives, and ten out of twenty have their lives turned worse. But don't worry, I don't think that will happen to you," Our teacher explains.

My eyes fall to my lap, and I bite my lip in sadness. Here I thought I was lucky somehow, guess I'm part of a test.

"Here we go, ladies, your food. Enjoy," The waitress comes back with two others and serves us heavenly-smelling food.

I've never seen this much food for breakfast in my life. I can see that Valrie and Sarina have the same expression as me, eyes wide as saucers, mouths hanging open, and frozen.

"Oh."

"My."

"God."

"Girls, please close your mouths. A fly might get in," We closed our mouths and giggled as we completed each other's words. "Eat girls, eat as much as you want. They'll bring more if you want," Without letting her speak twice, we dug right into the delicious food.

"Holy s**t, this is too good," Sarina moaned. I grabbed one of the toasts with tomato, leaves, and other things on top and took a bite. A sweet, bitter, and sour taste flooded my mouth, and I tried my best to hold back a moan.

"Can we take this home?" I ask myself as I take another bite.

"Try this. It's delicious," Valrie said, handing me a soft-looking bread with white dust on top. I took a bite and had my eyes roll to the back of my head.

"I think I'm going to live here from now on," I said, making the three of us laugh.

"Make sure to eat as much as you can because we will only eat at lunch. We have a long day as there are multiple attractions for us to visit," Our teacher spoke with a small smile on her lips. "We'll go in twenty minutes," We nodded and resumed our eating.

"Thank you so much for coming. I hope you guys have an awesome day here at the zoo. We close at eight pm, so feel free to come back as all your meals are paid for the rest of the day. Bye," The waitress said as we walked out of the cafe.

We thanked her back and followed the teacher. We had to decide which attractions we wanted to go to first as there were too many for one day. We decided to see the aquarium that had all kinds of fish and marine mammals. Then we would go to the aviary, after that the savanna, and last the frozen part where there are polar bears and penguins.

"Let's go, girls. Let's have fun."

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