Yzenia clung to the side of the building. The chilled early morning air of the Bay stung her eyes and made them water. She just wanted to crawl out to the edge and see the sun hit San Francisco one last time.

She lived in Oakland, now. She was born in San Francisco but her family had lost their rent controlled apartment sometime in the mid 2010's when Yzenia was still a teenager. They moved to Texas and Yzenia hated it. The people were too nice in Texas. Well, to her face, anyway. They were as backstabbing and conniving as anyone else but they wrapped it in sticky syrup smiles and down home platitudes like "Oh, isn't that sweet of you." and "Bless your heart."

Her disgust with those people, and the blistering heat, lead her hide away in her house and video games. Those video games led her back to her birth city.

Yzenia had made millions as a competative gamer. First person shooters were her favorite to play but she really made her money in real time strategy and battle arenas. Being a cute girl didn't hurt but Yzenia never leaned on her looks. She was just good. Really good.

After her first big sponsorship Yzenia moved back to her beloved birth city. She wasn't in the heart of the city, but she was close enough and she had her choice of dim sum and bars with a decent selection of beer.

That was ten years ago. Now, in 2031, Yzenia was a relic. She hadn't placed in a battle arena tournament in almost 6 years. She had no other skills to fall back on and she had to sell her place and move to Oakland.

Generation alpha, as they'd called themselves, those born right around President Trump's first term and before the oilpachalypse wars, had no qualms enhancing themselves. They mostly used electrical stimulation which Yzenia didn't find too bad but it was the printed drugs -- the 'neus' the alpa's called them -- that Yzenia couldn't bring herself to ingest on a regular basis. They made her skin smell like burning and her eyeballs feel hot. They always seemed like they were moving, too. But there was no doubt; reatction times were halved or more. Attention was unwaivering. Strategies flowed and coelesced effortlessy from the 'near space' -- what the alphas called the incredibly fast sub-conscious computer just below the conscious, plodding mind.

The enhanced alphas were a force. They dominated many areas including law and medicine and, strangely, physical sports. But they were hooked. Many burned out. None of the others cared. The 'high' was like being like you only more. Much more. It felt great like constantly engaging a flow state where everything seemed to work out. That is, until you ran out and were exhausted. Not, 'oh jeez I'm tired I think I'll watch some video' exhausted but 'sleep for three days, wake up for 20 minutes for a snack and water then sleep for two more' exhausted.

Yzenia couldn't do it to herself. So she lost her house. She had no job prospects since it seemed anything she was interested in was overrun by the enhanced. Her travel schedule made it hard to keep a singificant other around.

'So,' She said aloud ter herself wiping the tears from her eyes and focussing on the sunrise reflecting off of the Bay and city 'You're broke, uneducated, lonely, and it's only getting worse. The whole world is making progress and I'm falling behind just by sitting there.' She sobbed.

She was pretty tech savvy as a kid but now the world just seemed to be on fast forward. From the hyperloop tunnel that ran near the base of this building to nootropic mentally enhancing drugs to cyinical digital companions and asteroid mines and multicopter bikes there just wasn't much of the world that she felt comfortable with. She even had to buy her old trusty keyboards from bespoke mechanical keyboard craftspeople.

"I guess it is now or never.'

She stood up , heart racing, her breathing clipped and looked down. With her toes on the edge of a decorative, angular peice of concrete jutting from the side of the building forty stories up, she bent her knees as far as she could without her ass bumping the wall and knocking her off her perch and jumped.

Everything was blurry as she looked down. Her arms flailed. She turned and looked up and as the tears were pulled from in front of her eyes by the wind rushing past her cheek she saw the reflected sun and she'd never seen colors so bright. She'd made a mistake. This wasn't what she wanted. She could fix it. She could fix everything. She was young and healthy. Then the image of the sun began to wobble. She heard a rumbling. Glass burst from the building. Cars started to swerve. An earthquake. And below her a gaping chasm opened in the street.

She was five seconds into her six second fall and the black gash rushed to swallow her. She heard a WHOOOOOSH and felt her stomach lurch as she was pulled sideways, parallel to the ground and away from that waiting maw. She hit the her head and then black.

She awoke to a man in a hard hat with a large bulbous nose pitted with blackheads. It was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. She bolted up and hugged him.

"I'm alive! I'm alive! How am I alive?!"

The man reluctantly hugged her back.

She pulled back. She was in a metal tube lined with red lights down the middle as far as she could see. There was a finely bladed machine like a giant jet turbine taking up the tunnel on one side.

"Is this hell?"

"Heh. No mam. This is LA. You flew about 40 min down the hyperloop tunnel from a break near San Francisco during the earthquake. You must've gotten sucked in like a lemon seed in a straw. You should hold still until the EMT's get here."

She hugged him again "Thank you, thank you, thank you."