EXPIRATION DATE

PREFACE

"This story is not about how to save the world. It is about how not to lose yourself when the world has already burned."

When I sat down to write this cycle, I asked myself one question: "Why do people stop fighting?"

Not because they are weak. Not because they are cowardly. But because they are tired. Tired of the news, tired of crises, tired of the feeling of their own powerlessness. They look at a world that is crumbling and say: "I can't change anything." And they are right - individually. But together - no.

"Meat Row" is a story about how three people, each with not the slightest chance of victory, still try. Not to change the world. But to remain human.

Why read this story?

I do not write entertainment literature. I do not give the reader the opportunity to "rest" from reality. On the contrary - I force him to look at reality without embellishment. At the reality that is already knocking on our doors.

You read this cycle to see what our world might look like in the near future if we change nothing.

Corporations becoming stronger than states. Mortgages turning into bondage. Technologies controlling your every step. Food ceasing to be real. And people ceasing to be people - because it is more convenient for them to be "Users."

But you also read this cycle to see that even in the most hopeless world there is a place for love. Not sweet, not romantic, not "they lived happily ever after." But real love - one that is born in darkness, one that is not afraid of death, one that remains even when everything else has already burned.

Usually in a preface the author talks about the plot, about the heroes, about the world he created. I will not do that. Because the plot is only a shell. You can eat a candy and forget it. But the aftertaste must remain.

I want to talk with you not about what happens in three books, but about what happens inside you when you read them. Because the real story is not on paper. The real story is in your head, in your heart, in your questions that remain unanswered.

1. What if you never existed?

This is the first question with which this story begins.

What if you were not born of a mother and father? What if you have no childhood, no home, no even a name - only a number stamped on your arm? What if your "expiration date" is shorter than a refrigerator's? What if the entire meaning of your existence is to complete a task and disappear?

But what if, despite everything, you still feel? What if you are capable of loving, suffering, fearing, hoping - even when the world tells you: "You are a thing, you have no rights"?

This question is not about science fiction. It is about us. Because we also live in a world where they try to reduce us to numbers. Where our status is determined by our credit rating, number of followers, place in the housing queue. Where we are taught to be "efficient" and not ask unnecessary questions. Where anyone who stands out from the system becomes a "defect" - expendable material that can be shut down.

What remains of a person when everything is taken from them? Names. Places. Hopes. Rights. A future. What remains?

This book seeks the answer to this question.

2. What if loving is forbidden?

Imagine that the most natural human feeling is declared illegal.

Imagine that for one touch of the one you love, both of you will be destroyed. Not because you did something wrong - but because your very love violates "order." Because you dared to love someone the system considers "below you." Because you erased the boundary between "human" and "thing."

How will you live knowing that your love is a death sentence? How will you decide: risk everything or submit? How will you look into the eyes of the one you love, knowing that every day of yours could be the last?

This book is about how people make this choice. About how some submit because they are afraid. Others run because they cannot bear to watch the suffering. Others stay because they cannot leave. And about how in this world there is no right answer - only the price you are willing to pay.

3. What if no one chooses you?

Now imagine that you love someone who can never love you.

Imagine that you look at the person you worship and know: his heart will forever belong to another. That you can be near, protect, help, sacrifice yourself - but never hear "I love you" in return.

What will you do? Turn away? Leave to save yourself? Or stay - knowing that your love will not be reciprocated, that you will always be second, always a shadow?

This book is about the choice between pride and devotion. About how one can love without hope of return. About how sometimes the strongest love is the one that asks for nothing in return.

4. What if a person is what they remember?

In a world where everything is erased - biographies, names, identities - memory becomes the only thing a person has left.

If you have lost everything: home, family, past, future. If you have been renamed, renumbered, turned into an "asset" or a "user." What will remain of you? Your memories. The moments no one can take away. The people you loved. The words you were told.

But what if your memory is also under control? What if the system can erase it, rewrite it, replace it with another?

This book is about how to preserve yourself when the world tries to rewrite you. About how to hold on to memories when everything around you say they never happened. About how a person is not their documents, not their biometrics, not their "digital footprint." A person is what they remember. And as long as they remember - they are alive.

5. What if you survived, but the world died?

This is the most terrible question that remains after the finale.

Imagine you went through everything. Lost everyone you loved. Destroyed your enemies. Destroyed the system that oppressed you. You won.

And then what?

The world you built is crumbling. The war continues - only now the enemies are not corporations, but people who hate each other for being different. Your victory was Pyrrhic. You survived - but you are alone.

What will you do? Give up? Go into the wasteland to forget? Or find the strength to protect those who remain - even if you do not know if they will have a future?

This book is about how to live when victory does not bring happiness. About how to carry hope when you yourself do not believe in it. About how the finale is not the end. It is just another step.

6. What questions do I want you to ask yourself?

I do not give answers. I give questions. And here are the main ones:

What does "being human" mean to you? Is it your body? Your DNA? Your passport? Or something that cannot be measured?

Are you willing to risk everything for love? Or is safety more important?

Can you love without hope of return? Or do you expect your love to be rewarded?

What are you ready to defend when everything is lost? Only yourself? Or those who are weaker than you?

What will remain of you when you are gone? Your name? Your deeds? Your words? Or nothing?

Do you have the right to hope when there is no hope? Or will you prefer to give up?

What do you remember from your life? And what do you want others to remember about you?

This story is about how three people used this right. Not to save the world. But to remain human in a world that tried to turn them into things.

I do not write for you to rest.

I write for you to wake up. To remember what pain is. To remember what fear is. To remember what it is like - to stand before a choice when both options lead to an abyss, and all you have is a second to decide exactly how you will fall.

I want you to feel:

What it is like to look into the eyes of someone who will never be yours. And know it. And still be there.

What it is like to hold the hand of someone dying in your arms, and know that you cannot save them. That you can only promise to remember.

What it is like to remain alone in an empty world, where everyone you loved is already dead. And keep walking. Not because there is somewhere to go. But because stopping would mean betraying their memory.

I want you to feel this with every cell of your body.

I do not speak in it about how easy it is to be a hero.

Because heroes are not born. Heroes become heroes at the moment when you have no choice. When you understand: if you do not take this step - no one will. If you do not say this word - no one will say it. If you do not love - love will die.

Heroism is not a feat. It is simply a refusal to give up. A refusal to obey. A refusal to become a thing.

And I am silent about the fact that love is medicine. Because it does not heal. It burns. It leaves scars. It makes you wake up at night and stare at the ceiling, thinking about what you could have done differently.

But it is precisely this pain - the only proof that you are alive.

7. Why I do not give you hope

Because hope is a drug.

It calms. It helps you forget. It gives the illusion that everything will be fine. But I do not want you to forget. I want you to remember - every second, every minute, every day.

The world will not become better if you close your eyes to its ugliness. It will become better only if you look it straight in the face - and say: "I see. And I do not agree."

I do not give you false hope. I give you the truth. The truth that corporations are already at your doorstep. That states are already selling your freedom for the promise of security. That technologies are already erasing your identity, turning you into a line in a database.

But I also give you another truth: you are not alone.

As long as there are those who remember - freedom has not died. It is just waiting. It is always waiting.

8. What I want you to do after reading

I want you to close this trilogy and feel the emptiness.

Not the emptiness when you have nothing to do. But the emptiness when you understand: the world you knew was never real. And you will have to build a new one - from scratch. From ruins. From tears. From the memory of those who did not survive.

I want you to go outside and look at the sky. Not at a screen, not at a hologram, not at an advertisement - but at the real sky. And ask yourself: "What do I see? And what do I want to see tomorrow?"

I want you to stop being passive. To stop waiting for someone else to decide your fate. To stop signing documents without reading them.

Because this world was created by those who were not afraid to read the fine print.

I do not know if you will read this trilogy to the end.

I do not know if it will leave a mark on your soul.

I do not know if it will change your life.

But I know one thing: each of us is a choice. Every day. Every hour. Every second.

The choice between submitting and surviving. Or rebelling - and dying free.

I am not telling you what to choose. That is not my right. It is yours.

But I ask you one thing:

Do not choose blindly.

Read the terms. Look at the faces of those you trust. Look into the future - not the one promised to you, but the one you see yourself.

And then take your step.

And remember: even if you fall - you will not fall alone. Because somewhere, in a basement, in ruins, in the Gray Zones, there are others like you. Those who remember freedom. Those who did not give up. Those who are waiting for a signal.

And that signal is you.

"Freedom is not a gift. It is a right that must be defended. Every generation pays its price. Our price is now."

Are you ready to pay it?

Anatoly Shigapov

EXSPIRATION DATE

STAGE 1. "CITIES-IN-A-BOX" (2035–2052)

October 2035. Manhattan.

The rain had been falling for three days straight. Not a downpour, not a drizzle - some kind of gray watery suspension that seeped everywhere. It settled on the windows of skyscrapers, mixed with exhaust fumes, and turned into sticky mud on the asphalt. It seeped under collars, down necks, into shoes. It made everything gray - faces, buildings, thoughts.

Charles Davis stood under the awning of an abandoned bank. It used to be "City Bank." Now it was emptiness. The windows were boarded up with plywood; the facade was covered with peeling paint and graffiti: "SOLD TO CYBER-FUND." The glass doors were smashed - inside there was nothing left. Only trash and the smell of dampness. Charles looked at the building and remembered how in 2025 he had taken out a mortgage here. Back then he still believed. Believed that he would buy an apartment, that the world would become better, that his children would have a future.

He had no children. And no apartment either.

He looked at the screen of his communicator. An old model, a plastic case in cracks, a screen with dead pixels. He had bought it for forty credits at a flea market. New ones cost a thousand - you could watch holograms, play games, order food on them. Charles did not have a thousand. He did not even have a hundred.

The screen blinked red: "Danger zone. It is recommended to immediately leave sector 14-B." Charles paid no attention. These warnings appeared every hour. The "Cyber-Fund" security system automatically scanned all areas where the crime rate exceeded the permissible level. Sector 14-B was one of them. Poor people lived here. There was no police here. There was only survival. But Charles needed to deliver a package to 45th Street, and 45th was right in this sector. He could not afford a late fee - fifty credits. That was four hours of work. That was two days of food.

He adjusted his backpack. Heavy. Inside - a plastic container with biological material. He did not know what was in it. Maybe medicine. Maybe blood samples for diagnostics. Maybe something illegal. He did not ask. He just carried it.

The rain did not let up. Charles raised his head and looked up.

There, behind the gray veil of clouds, hung the airships. Huge, slow, majestic. They hovered over the city like gods from old myths. Each had its own logo, glowing in the darkness. "Solar-City" - a blue sphere with white rings rotating around its axis. "Cyber-Fund" - a silver triangle pulsing like a heart. "Neura-Infra" - a green neuron branching like a tree. They hung over the city twenty-four hours a day. They never descended below three hundred meters. They were symbols of power. Reminders of who was in charge here.

Once, American flags had hung over Manhattan. Charles remembered. In 2020, when he first arrived in New York, stars and stripes were on all the buildings. Now flags remained only on government buildings - and fewer and fewer of them. The White House in Washington still raised the flag in the mornings. But who looked at that?

Charles remembered the 2020s. Everything seemed different then. People believed in progress. In green energy. In technologies that would save the planet. Hollywood made movies where inventors defeated villainous corporations. Scientists promised that in ten years we would be living on Mars. Politicians swore that "we will build a better future." Charles believed. He graduated from the architectural faculty in 2019 with honors. He designed bridges. Six bridges that were never built. He remembered sitting in his office, looking at the blueprints, and thinking: "I am creating the future." He was creating. But the future turned out different.

Technology saved not the planet. It saved those who had money.

Charles looked at the airships. They said that inside them were entire cities. Offices, residential modules, restaurants. Top corporate managers lived there. They never came down. Why would they? Down there was dirt, crime, disease. Up there was cleanliness, artificial climate, synthetic food that did not smell of rot. Up there was safety. Down there was chaos.

The world of 2035 was a world of fatigue.

Charles looked at his hands. He remembered them young, with clean skin, without calluses. Now they were cracked, with black nails from dirt, with bruises from heavy packages. He was forty-seven. He looked sixty. That is how couriers aged.

He turned away from the airships and walked along the street. Along the walls - advertising. Holographic screens built into the walls of buildings. They showed ideal faces, ideal smiles, ideal homes. A woman with skin that did not know dust said: "Solar-City is building your future. A new smart district in Arizona. Clean air, round-the-clock lighting, schools for your children. Only 30 years of mortgage - and you are a homeowner. Join the Solar-City family." Her voice was soft, lulling. It penetrated the mind. Charles had heard this advertisement a thousand times. He knew the text by heart.

He remembered Jacob.

Jacob lived in the neighboring apartment - small, damp, with peeling wallpaper. He worked as a programmer for Cyber-Fund. He earned little but dreamed of more. When enrollment for "New Eden" was announced, Jacob came to Charles, beaming, with a tablet in his hands.

"Charlie, have you seen it?" he jabbed his finger at the screen. "Only 2% annual interest! A thousand a month, and I'm a homeowner! Clean streets, no smog, drones collecting garbage. They even have a security system - facial recognition! No crime."

Charles looked at the tablet. He was used to reading fine print - it was a professional habit of an architect. He saw the clauses Jacob had missed. "In case of dismissal for any reason, the corporation has the right to revise the terms of the loan." "All disputes are resolved in corporate courts." "The corporation has the right to unilaterally change the terms." "The mortgage is transferred to the corporate fund upon change of employer." Charles tried to explain:

"Jake, you don't understand. If they fire you - you'll be left without a home."

"They won't fire me!" Jacob waved him off. "I'm a valuable specialist. They appreciate me."

"They appreciate you as long as you're useful. And when you're not - they'll throw you out. And you'll be left with a debt you can't pay."

Jacob laughed. He was already mentally living in the dream city. He did not hear Charles.

"You're just jealous, Charlie," he said. "You're staying here, in the dirt. And I'm moving to a bright future."

Jacob left in 2033. The first message came a month later. It was ecstatic: "Charlie, this is paradise! I've never seen such streets! It's light here even at night! I went out on the balcony - and saw the stars! We didn't have them in our city for twenty years! The food is synthetic, but tasty. The neighbors are good. I work twelve hours, but it's worth it. I'm happy."

The second - six months later. Already shorter: "Hard. A lot of work. Debts are growing. But I'll manage. The main thing is not to get fired."

The third - a year later: "Charlie, I've been laid off. Downsizing. The company transferred half of the functions to AI. My home - they revised the terms. Now I owe twice as much. I'm trying to find a job, but without a corporate passport no one hires me. I can't sell the apartment - it belongs to the corporation. I can't leave. I'm trapped. Charlie, I don't know what to do."

Charles called back. The subscriber was unavailable.

He never heard from Jacob again.

Now, standing in the rain, he looked at the advertisement and felt cold. Not from the weather. From understanding.

In this world there were two types of people. Those in power. And those who signed documents without reading them.

Charles looked at his hands. He was no longer an architect. He was a courier. He had no home, no family, no future. He only had today. A package. A road. Survival.

He walked on.

An underground passage. It smelled of urine, mold, and dampness. On the walls - graffiti. Someone had drawn a flag crossed out with the red logo of Cyber-Fund. The caption: "THE STATE IS A CORPORATE LOGO." Below - another: "YOU HAVE ALREADY SOLD YOURSELF. YOU JUST DIDN'T NOTICE." The next - darker: "ROBOTS WILL DIE. BUT WE WON'T. BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY DEAD."

Charles walked past. These inscriptions had been here for years. They were painted over, but they reappeared. It was the voice of those who still remembered what it meant to be free. But there were fewer and fewer of them. The rest just wanted to survive.

At the exit of the passage, a drone stopped him. A silver sphere the size of a basketball. It hovered at chest height, silent, like a ghost. In the center - a camera scanning his face. From the speaker - a mechanical voice, without intonation, without emotion:

Identification. Present your passport.

Charles took out a plastic card. A state ID. On it was a photo taken five years ago. Back then he still shaved. Now he had a week's stubble on his face. The drone scanned.

Charles Davis. Tax status - "non-payer since 2031." Credit rating - 412. Trust level - "low."

Charles did not look at the drone. He waited.

Your presence in this area has been noted. It is recommended that you leave the sector within 24 hours. In case of repeated detection - a fine of 200 credits.

The drone paused. The camera rotated.

Have a nice day.

It flew away. Fast, silent. Dissolved into the gray sky.

Charles watched it go. "Tax status - non-payer." That was because he had no official job. He was a courier on private orders. He paid taxes when he could - once every six months, in small amounts. But the system considered him a debtor. That meant: he could not get a loan, rent housing in a good area, buy medicines under the state program. He was treated only in free clinics, where queues were three months long. He could not vote - he was simply not on the lists. He could only use public transport, and even that with restrictions. He was an outcast.

But the scarier thing was not that. The scarier thing was that soon there would be no state passports.

Corporations had already launched "Digital Passport 1.0." Beta version, only for employees. Charles had seen how the system worked. His neighbor in the shelter - a former Cyber-Fund engineer - had shown him. Everything was linked: taxes, mortgage, insurance, medical history. One chip in the wrist replaced twenty documents. And if a state passport could be lost, forged, destroyed - a digital one could not be lost. It was always with you. And it always controlled you.

Corporations were working to expand it to everyone. And then Charles would cease to be Charles Davis. He would become "User CR-44921." He would have no rights. Only "Terms of Use." And if he violated them - the corporation would "shut him down." Simply, quietly, without trial or investigation.

Charles wiped his face with his sleeve. The rain was letting up. Above his head - the airships. Impassive. Indifferent. Gods.

He walked out onto 45th Street. The buildings here were old, pre-war. Brick that had once been red was now gray from dirt. The windows were boarded up. In the entrances - homeless tents. Children ran barefoot through the puddles. Here, in sector 14-B, corporations did not rule. Neither did the government. Here - anarchy. People survived as they could.

Charles found the right address. The door was iron, with peeling paint. He knocked. A woman with a face cut by wrinkles opened it. She was probably forty. She looked sixty.

Delivery, - said Charles. - Order 4492.

She nodded. Silently. Took the container. Charles did not ask what was inside. None of his business.

She closed the door.

Charles turned and walked back. Past the underground passage. Past the graffiti. Past the drones. Past the airships.

He had delivered the package. He would get his credits. He would buy food. He would survive today.

And tomorrow - another day.

SCENE 2. THE FIRST PRIVATE CITY

January 2038. Arizona Desert.

Here, where there had once been an abandoned military base, a miracle was now being built. A miracle visible from space - a perfect rectangle on the map of the desert, where the land was marked with lines of future streets, where foundations rose from the sand like the teeth of a giant animal.

Joshua Hall stood on the observation deck. It was a temporary structure - steel beams, a deck of metal sheets, wire fencing. The wind blew from the desert, scorching his face, carrying sand. Josh adjusted his protective glasses. Below him lay the future "New Eden."