03：13
 
Jane was startled to awake from a nightmare. The hard bed plank underneath her body and the moldy smell in her room reminded her that she was back to reality. Soaked in sweat, she panted and fought for several times to retrieve the control over her stiff body.
 
Foul breath of the mixture of cheap cigarette and liquor and a heavy vomit. Sour stench arisen from the shabby and dirty clothes. And the stink deep down from the body which was full of rotten despair.
 
The man pressing on top of her in the nightmare didn’t seem to disappear after she woke up. He was still as hefty as a rock. The nightmare was too real.
 
 “There are always troubles on the first day of relocating to a new place,” Jane tried to console herself, “only a weirdo can adapt to a new environment fast.” Meanwhile, she could vaguely hear the gunshots and screaming from afar. That was probably the constant background music in Haywood.
 
Heaven Street is at the edge of Haywood. Sparsely populated, it is close to the suburb, so it is kind of distant from the most violent community in the area. She might never step on this infamous land of Haywood if she was not going to work in the company several blocks away, or if she could afford a higher price for an alternative room. Queens, where she was born and bred, is so much safer than here, though it is also infamous for poverty. She couldn’t help shiver as she recalled those greasy hands hammering on the car window, the zombie-like junkies wandering in the street, and the swollen bodies covered by flies lying everywhere on the roadside.
 
“It is going to be fine, and at least I find a decent job now, don’t I?” Jane sighed. She didn’t want to go back to do what she did. A decent job in these days, she thought she should owe this miracle to her daily prayer to gods.
 
She lied down again, as she must look good on her first day to the new job. She restrained her fear to that nightmare and tried to sleep again by fancying about the future. Snatches of dull voices passed through the thin wall and floated in the room. It was the old folks downstairs that couldn’t fall asleep.  They were talking about the old days, year 2020, or something else.
 
Don’t they need to sleep? Jane murmured. She didn’t care about what they were talking about or whatever they were doing. She simply wanted to sleep. She bitterly buried her head into her hands.
 
 
05：13
 
Alarm clock.  The sound of sharp and piercing alarm clock.
 
“F*ck you”, yelled by several boorish folks upstairs and downstairs at the same time, followed by the smashing of wine bottles onto the floor.  And then there was a gunshot. Jane jumped out from her bed as if she got an electric shock. She crushed on “off” button on the clock to make it stop, after which, alas, silence was back. She gasped and eventually reached her slippers.
 
Outside the apartment building, groups and groups of crows were flopping wings to search for the remaining food in the deserted buildings across the street. The sky was gloomily gray. It was the color of air pollution with various waste discharge.
 
Takemura was waiting for her in the car. She burst into smile the moment she saw his old black Ford Mustang. It was a beautiful smile like the sunshine out of haze.
 
Takemura grew up with Jane. He claimed to have a job as a bodyguard. His salary varied from month to month, and he bought this Mustang when he earned a lot. But when he failed to bring back enough money, he couldn’t even keep his shabby room.
 
“What a place!” Takemura frowned. He hurried to give her a kiss and tried to change her mind again.
 
“It is OK. It is the safest place, and I can only afford this.”
 
“Why don’t you stay with me? Isn’t my place good enough?”
 
“It is good, but it is too far away. I don’t want to take the subway every day on my own,” she said.  Everybody knows there could be more attacks than passengers in the subway of New Camelot.  She silently added one more comment in her mind, “I don’t want to get kicked out by the landlord again.”
 
His car went on and off, going through blocks and blocks of chaos. Then they finally arrived at a desolate building that seemed to fall down in any minute.
 
08：13
 
“D*mn it,” Jane gritted her teeth. “They lied. This is by no means what they told in the ad.”
 
Only one room in the entire building had the light on. There was nothing but a couple of old desks and chairs. The so-called “professional” staff were only a skinny old man, an over-weighted young man, and an old woman who never stopped coughing. They were all staring at the computers and none of them cared to look up to say hello.
 
Takemura did not respond as much as she did. He had seen this a lot, and he understood how good a company could be with its location on the edge of Haywood. Though it didn’t look fancy, it was far more decent than what Jane did. At least it was an office job.  He said something nice to Jane and left in a hurry after receiving a call from his boss.
 
Jane sat down on a chair, waiting in low spirit with her back leaning against the wall. When she was about to fall asleep, a hand tapped on her shoulder, which startled her so much that she hopped up like a rabbit. She found a thirty-odd-year-old man standing in front of her. He was smiling. His suit was far too exquisite for this district. He kept his right hand at the back and looked very polite. “If Takemura could look like this …”She wondered.
 
“You are…”
 
“I am Pergetrator, the boss of this company. You must be Jane. I am sorry to ask you come to such a lousy place, but please let me explain. Our headquarters had some troubles. You know, we got a fire three months ago. It was horrible and unfortunate. I’ve lost a lot...” He stopped for a while in sorrow. “These three people are my most loyal employees. They have stayed with me since the first day I started this company. But the fire also cost them in some way and they have something wrong over here”, he pointed at his head. “I don’t know why but they insisted on moving their office here. After all,  how can I say no to such a small request?” He reached out his right hand -- a prosthetic hand indeed. “I am a victim of the fire as well.”
 
“I am sorry, sir.” Jane was still a bit confused and uneasy, but her heart became soft when she saw that clumsy prosthetic hand. “When do I start to work?”
 
09：13
 
Perqetrator showed her to a desk and gave her some assignments before he drove off.
 
“He surely didn’t belong here.” Jane heaved a sigh. And then she turned her head to look at her three colleagues. They all had a poker face and stuck their eyes on the computer screen, while keeping hitting the keyboard.
 
“Anybody needs coffee?” Jane asked after she spent a long time fixing the old coffee machine. But no one uttered a word. “I know you are good employees, but don’t you take a break?” Still, no one uttered anything except their unchanging sound of breath.
 
Jane felt awkward. She curled her lip, and then prepared three cups of coffee on a tray. It was part of her job to take care of these three people. The old woman and the young man didn’t bother to move their eyes away from the computer. Only the old man nodded to her.  But at the next moment, he overturned the cup and spilt the coffee right away. Apparently he was too weak to hold a coffee cup.
 
Jane rushed to him and disconnected his keyboard to terminate the work page on which he was working on rapidly. She thought she was helping him because his work on the data processing would have been in vain if something went wrong. But to her shock, the old man howled hysterically and his face became twisted out of fear. He cried pathetically and looked at Jane, begging for help. Jane was petrified, but she managed to get his work page back in a little frenzy. Without waiting for Jane’s apologies or cleaning up the coffee mess on the desk, the old man was quickly back to hitting his keyboard again.
 
The other two people did not even take a look. Jane grumbled to the fat young man, “Can’t you give me a hand?”
 
Without stopping his hands at work, the fat young man gave Jane a profoundly weird look. Jane freaked out, feeling like being glared at by a snake.
 
12：13
 
“How is your first day at work?” Takemura asked, but the signal at Haywood was so bad that his virtual image was distorted.
 
“Frankly speaking, no one seems normal except the boss. He said they were the survivors of a fire.  The fire burnt down the headquarters three months ago.”
 
“The fire three months ago... I heard about it.” Takemura’s face turned grim. “I’ll ask someone. Something is wrong.”
 
“Don’t worry. Their heads are not very normal, but they just stared at the computer all day long.  They don’t even taking a break.”
 
“I know,”Takemura remembered them, “I did not worry about this. If what I heard about this company is real, I think it is a good idea you look for another job.”
 
Jane curled her lip and didn’t say anything. It is easy for him to say, but there is not always a job waiting there for her.  She sat on the roof of the building, pulling her bread apart and putting it into her mouth. She was bathing in the sunshine at noon, but she didn’t feel the warmth when she looked at the distance that was in a mess. 
 
13：13
 
Jane went back to the office. It was odd that the old man was not at his desk, while the other two both kept their mouth shut. But Jane noticed that they occasionally exchanged look at each other and then glanced at her.
 
She pressed down her growing anxiety and began to get busy at the computer. At this moment, an anonymous message popped up at her screen.
 
“CLASSIFIED: The arsonists who set fire at the Happy Data headquarters are identified.  They are the employees of Happy Data. They tied up their brains to the company server, in exchange for the doses of Happiness Formula which can maintain the stability of their life and eliminate any negative feelings. As all the employees have signed a confidentiality agreement, plus the lure of the drug, the company is able to keep this secret and to make huge profits. It is said that the employees who set fire had been dismissed because they were no longer well enough to deal with such an intense workload. Without the support of the dose, they desperately took revenge to Happy Data”.
 
Who sent her this message at this moment? Is it Takemaru? She shook her head. Thinking of those people and the agreement they had signed, she found her heart sink all of a sudden. That polite smile on Perqetrator’s face was like a scorching flame to her. He promised her that after work he would come over to give her a dose of Happiness Formula -- an expensive drug that can keep people in peace. This drug was smoking hot in New Camelot’s black market. It was the main reason that Jane took this job, too. And tomorrow he would give her another dose and then she would work like the other three in the office.
 
He promised.
 
 
18：13
 
Finally came the off time. Jane packed her stuffs hurriedly and went downstairs to wait for Perqetrator.
 
It turned dark unusually early that day, and the polluted air lingering above the city blocked the sunset. The holographic projection of different colors was all on the black sky. The air stank. At a short distance, a couple of thugs were beating a transformed human.  He is hardly broken.
 
Some liquid dropped on Jane’s hair.  It was the water from the eave.  When She lowered her head back she saw a hobbling figure approaching her slowly.
 
That old man.
 
There was a stunning breach on his head, from which a bunch of wires were exposed. One of his eyes was dug out, while the other one was an old artificial model dangling outside the eye socket. “You...it’s all your fault!” He shouted in despair and pounced on her, like a dying, struggling beast, waving his two boney arms in the air, with the cracking sound and glittering flash out of the short circuit.
 
A sharp blade cut down.  The old man split into two pieces.
 
“Are you OK?” Perqetrator drew back his soft sword into his prosthetic hand.  The deadly weapon returned as swiftly as a snake.  He smiled politely.
 
“I am OK.” Jane was still in shock. Her feet trembled so much that she nearly fell into his arms. “You saved my life...”
 
“Well, it is nothing.”
 
Jane was back to her feet by holding his arms. Her face flushed. “You come at such a good time. I thought you might be here later.”
 
“Oh, you remind me,” Perqetrator took out a metallic tube from the pocket on his chest.
 
“Is it the Happiness Formula?” Jane’s eyes open wide.
 
“Yes. We got a deal, right?” He twisted the tube open, and there was a dose of vaccine inside. The pink liquid was rolling gently in the transparent glass tube. “Come on. You deserve this.”
 
A little pang of pain on her arm. Jane watched that liquid shot into her body. She then giggled, as relieved as a junkie after getting high with her drug.  
 
 “See? This is JUST what you guys want,” she smiled. There was some tiny light glittering in her eyes. It was the data transmission at high speed.
 
Perqetrator looked at her quietly with a smile, too. He didn’t speak until she gradually calmed down. “Do you know why I like Haywood, Jane? Because it is chaotic. Everything here is chaotic, from the sky to the ground. An ancient sage ever said, ‘chaos is a ladder, and only the ladder is real and climb is all there is.’ How wise he was! I love chaos.”
 
Jane blinked her eyes, but she didn’t get any feedback from the sever over the city. She turned around and ran immediately. However, only several steps away, she was caught by a powerful prosthesis and then clamped onto the wall. 
 
“Let go, you monster!” Jane shouted and struggled.
 
 “No, no, dear Jane. You are wrong. Do you know how many people are admiring me? They are all the elites of this society. Do you know what the Senator said? He said, ‘This company kept its humanitarianism while making profits in a sensible way. Many people who were supposed to be dying can now enjoy happiness and pleasure. This is the back bone of our society!’ I know why you are here. You are in the light at the very beginning when you delivered the job application. ” Perqetrator said leisurely as he looked at her with his bright eyes. “My dear Jane, do you know how adorable you are when you are standing in the light? I haven’t met a woman as lovely as you for a very, very long time.”
 
He fondled her face with his undamaged left hand, while approaching her slowly. His body was full of the amazing flavor of cigar and the cologne. Every act of his was on par with the classic standard of a social elite.
 
20：13
 
Takemaru kept calling Jane over and over, but he got nothing except the monotonous beeps of the ancient phone, which was set by her on purpose. He forgot how many times he had called, and he didn’t how what was the point of keeping making the calls.
 
The signals in the entire Haywood area were in chaos. Many car accidents and fights occurred, and many people died or were dying-- for no sense whatsoever.
 
A crow, which became insane for whatever reason, dashed toward the dreamy sky covering the holographic projection. It did not fly long before it got burnt by the electromagnetic shield, which had no entity underneath the drone.  Takemura looked at that sudden spark in the dark, while drops of tears running down silently.