Chương 1: The Smart-Meter Crisis

The digital notice arrived with a sharp ping. Behind the wall-mounted utility hub, the toilet's ventilation flap shut with a dull metallic click.

"Warning," the synthetic voice said, flat and loud.

"Account balance for Sector 4, Block 52, Unit 12-04 has fallen below Singapore Dollars 2. 50. Under Chinatown District Code, oxygen efficiency will drop to forty percent in twenty-five minutes. Please top up." Ethan Tan kept his fingers steady. He pressed the edge of the foil packet against the table, forcing the final grey smudge of synthetic protein paste onto a cracked saucer.

"Grandma," Ethan said.

"Don't breathe too deeply. The grid-drones are choking the vents again." In the corner, inside a scratched, second-hand medical preservation pod salvaged from a Geylang scrap heap, an old woman opened one eye. The external LED display pulsed in a weak yellow: Internal Nutrient Level: 14%. Filtration Warranty: Expired.

"Bloodsuckers," Grandma Tan rasped. Her voice had the thin, serrated edge of an old market woman.

"In my day, the government gave you water even if you couldn't pay the town council for six months. Now, you don't give the computer three dollars, and it steals your wind. Did you finish your university module?"

"I withdrew this morning." He walked to the pod, checking the digital ledger. The automated system had swept his account at midnight, pulling his last S$1, 200 for an administrative access fee before he could hit cancel. He was forty thousand dollars in debt. His digital wallet held exactly one dollar and forty-two cents.

"Good," Grandma Tan grunted, her shoulders shifting against the gel-pad.

"University is a corporate scam to sell student loans. My friend's grandson went to MUS for six years to study AI logistics. You know what he does now? Pilots a garbage barge in the Johor Straits for fifteen dollars an hour. Wasted piece of paper."

"It's not paper anymore, Grandma. It's encrypted data blocks." Ethan sat on his threadbare folding mattress. He watched the red neon glare bleed through the window pane. Directly across Chin Swee Road, the gargantuan, obsidian spires of Marina Bay pierced the humid evening sky like black glass needles. Their holographic advertisements cast a brilliant, mocking kaleidoscope of blues and purples across the cracked concrete of the old Chinatown rental blocks.

A giant, floating golden chariot drifted between the corporate skyscrapers—a three-hundred-meter-tall projection advertising Bereshit Online.

"Earn Real Shekels. Forge New Covenants. Escape the Grid." The golden letters pulsed against the smog. Ethan's jaw tightened. Every major syndicate in Singapore had already poured billions into buying early server real estate. The exchange rate was live: one Silver Shekel inside the game traded on the black market for nearly fifty cents Singapore currency. For the sky-villa elites, it was a playground. For Ethan, it was a math problem. One shekel is forty-eight cents. Two shekels is a meal.

Five shekels keeps the power on for six hours.

"Ethan," Grandma Tan said. Her voice dropped its combative edge, replaced by a low, hollow rattle.

"The pod... the fluid is getting cold. The heating coils draw too many watts. Turn it down. I can sleep through the night without the thermal cycle."

"If I turn down the thermal cycle, your joints lock by dawn," Ethan said, standing up.

"The automated clinic will charge an emergency physiotherapy fee of eighty dollars. We don't have eighty dollars. Stay still. I'm going under." He walked to the far corner of the room, behind the small induction stove. A long, horizontal tube made of tarnished gray polymer sat against the concrete wall. It was a third-hand neural-link capsule, an obsolete 2035 model. He had repaired it using copper wire and sheer stubbornness.

"You bought that garbage coffin?" Grandma Tan asked, pointing a wrinkled finger.

"It's our leverage," Ethan said, pulling open the plastic hatch. The smell of old ozone and cheap disinfectant drifted out.

"I sold my old account from Warlords of the Frontier to a secondary school kid in Orchard Road this afternoon. It gives us enough to keep your pod powered for forty-eight hours and buy a starter license for Bereshit."

"Don't get cheated by those computer programs, boy," Grandma Tan warned, closing her eyes as the pod's compressor groaned under the reduced power load.

"Outside got so many sweet-talkers, you know? If want to do business, make sure don't buy air."

"I don't buy anything I can't touch, Grandma," Ethan muttered. He climbed into the tube. The plastic molding pressed tightly against his shoulders. He pulled the scratched visor down over his face, locking the seals until the ambient noise of the Chinatown traffic died into total silence. Zero maintenance costs, Ethan repeated to himself like a mantra, his fingers gripping the archaic manual emergency levers of the capsule. No expensive weapons. No potion consumption.

Every copper coin spent on overhead is a drop of blood taken from Grandma's life support.

"System initialization," a low, analog hum vibrated through his skull.

"Neural sync at eighty-four percent. Warning: Older hardware detected. Visual rendering capped at 1080p equivalent. Do you wish to connect to the Levant-South Server?"

"Connect," Ethan commanded.