The Glass Ceiling
“I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was...”
The child stood, enraptured by the flashing TV screen, ignoring the pangs of hunger in his long empty stomach. For the time being, just these short moments, dreams were enough sustenance to fuel him.
“To catch them is my real test, to train them is my cause...”
On the screen a twenty something actor pretending to be a junior high school student posed dramatically while pointing out a target for his charizard. A smile crossed the boy’s face. He loved Pokemon, then again everyone did. The national sport, a league where the top players became rich through endorsement deals. TV shows, toys, fashions, literature, games. Everything brought pokemon to the masses. Everyone wanted a charizard, a pikachu, an eevee. Most kids woke up every morning wishing they could start training a pokemon, get to the big leagues and be famous and adored by the masses. This kid was no different in that regard.
“Hey scab! I told you to stay the hell out of my store! You’ll bother the real customers!”
The boy’s reverie is interrupted as he’s flung bodily from the store.
“Gods damned vagrants.”
The boy doesn’t cry, because he really doesn’t notice things like pain anymore. He picks himself from the street as a car drives past splashing water all over his small body. People are everywhere and unlike him they have clothes that aren’t full of holes. The ones he likes are the ones who don’t spit on him or swear at him. His favourites are the people who just try to pretend he doesn’t exist.
He looks at the sky, he hasn’t seen the sun at any point in his entire life. The thick clouds of smog ensure that even the brightest day is like dusk. Some buildings, very special ones he’s heard extend upwards, past the pollution. He’s heard that all the good people live up there.
Ducking down an alley he makes his way back down towards the deep gutters. Where the rest of his kind live.
Some kids aren’t born lucky. Some kids don’t wake up one morning and find that an eccentric genius has decided to gift them with a rare pokemon and cutting edge experimental electronics. People don’t hand them bicycles and berries, people steal that stuff. Health care and food aren’t free, and those that don’t have money don’t have any value to society at all. Waking up to find that a poochyena didn’t gnaw your foot off while you were asleep is the extent of serendipity for these children.
This is a story of the underprivileged, the forgotten and forsaken. Kids who have to work for everything they get, and with no guarantee that it won’t get taken from them in the next moment.
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I am searching for players to play characters who are literally street urchins. Homeless, hungry and with few prospects in life, a chance discovery will change the course of their lives forever. Will they stay together or go their separate ways? Will they try to become the very best and master the Pokemon league? Will they plot a revolution? Or will they escape the confines of their home and go in search of other civilizations?
