The door to the Environmental Biology Laboratory opened, and a panting boy appeared on the other side. Looking around and realizing that the teacher was not yet in the room, he let out a sigh of relief and ran to the group of students from the Upper Zone, bumping his backpack into a boy from the Lower Zone without even bothering to apologize.
The boy from the Lower Zone also didn’t dare say anything, pretending that nothing had happened.
In a few minutes, the teacher arrived and class began.
The holographic projector in the center of the room displayed complex graphs about the saturation of carbon particles in the atmosphere of the Lower Zone.
Dr. Aris, a man with excessively smooth skin, a sign of expensive cosmetic treatments from the Upper Zone, pointed to a green line that floated dangerously close to a red zone.
"As you can see in the scatter plot, the corporations’ macromolecular purifiers have stabilized residual toxicity at exactly 14.8%." Dr. Aris pointed to a static point on the hologram, speaking in a monotone voice, without showing any real importance in what he was explaining. "This index represents the ’Induced Homeostasis Plateau,’ which is basically the technical threshold at which the human immune system can metabolize heavy metals and sulfur dioxide without acute systemic failure or short-term tissue necrosis."
The professor adjusted the cuff of his impeccable shirt before continuing indifferently.
"In layman’s terms: the air in the Lower Zone is perfectly functional for productive life. As long as the sealing protocols for HEPA-4 filter masks are not violated for more than six continuous minutes, alveolar damage remains within the body’s natural repair margin. As long as they do not neglect the equipment provided by the company, these people will be perfectly safe."
Lohan, sitting at the back of the room, felt a bitter taste in his mouth.
Thanks to the [Digestive Filter]
The actual green line should have been dipped in red, as the air he actively filtered contained more heavy metals than the simulator conveniently ignored.
In the other world, Lohan had spent years analyzing blood tests and biochemical reports to understand why his body was dying.
He knew toxicity tables by heart, and although there were slight differences in exposure and analysis of this knowledge between the two worlds, with enough knowledge it was possible to understand the relationship between them.
What the professor was calling an "acceptable limit" was, in fact, almost genocide in slow motion.
"Are they doctoring the data to avoid panic? Or out of greed? Or both?" Lohan thought, keeping his eyes down.
He had no intention of speaking up and becoming the "prodigy student" of the Lower Zone... that would only attract unwanted attention to him.
The conflict, however, did not come from his will.
Next to him, a girl from the Lower Zone, visibly pale and with a dry cough that she tried to stifle with her hand, ended up letting her tablet slip. The device slid down the sloping floor and stopped right at the feet of Julian Neal, the boy who had arrived late, panting, and who was now sitting a few rows down, surrounded by his friends.
Julian looked at the tablet, then at the girl. Instead of returning it, he kicked it further away, causing the device to collide with the corner of a table.
"Watch your trash, stinky girl..." Julian said, without even turning around completely. "With the air being as good as Professor Aris says, you should stop pretending you’re dying to get attention."
The girl blushed with embarrassment, her eyes watering as she tried to get up under the muffled laughter of Julian’s group.
Dr. Aris just cleared his throat and pretended not to see anything.
Scenes like this were very common in college; it wasn’t worth offending someone’s important child for a nobody from the Lower Zone.
"Mr. Neal, please, no interruptions. And you, young lady, if you can’t control your belongings, perhaps you should reconsider your presence in this technical class."
It was the professor’s disregard that made something snap in Lohan.
He saw the mathematical injustice of the data on the projector merging with the social injustice in front of him.
In the other world, he had seen doctors speak with the same coldness about "clinical stability" while his body wasted away, ignoring the pain he felt because the numbers on the papers met bureaucratic protocols.
Without realizing it, his hand gripped the arm of the chair with a force that the Lohan of a week ago would never have had.
"The data is wrong." Lohan’s voice was low, but the sudden silence in the room made it echo.
Dr. Aris stopped talking. Julian turned his neck, a mocking smile growing on his face. Lohan cursed internally.
He didn’t mean to say that, but just as he would argue with doctors who gave wrong diagnoses and thought themselves superior in the other world, his response here came out almost automatically.
"What did you say, sir...?" The professor narrowed his eyes, trying to read Lohan’s name on the terminal.
"The sulfur saturation isn’t just 14%." Lohan forced himself to keep his voice steady, trying to sound like just a confused student rather than a defiant expert. "If it were, the oxidation rate in the filters of ordinary masks would last twice as long as it does in practice. You’re using the purification constant for the Upper Zone to calculate the impact on the Lower Zone. That’s a basic sampling error."
Julian let out a nasal laugh when he heard that and turned to his friends, mocking him loudly.
"Look, everyone, another stinker from the slums thinks he knows more about chemistry than the doctor. Let me guess, you learned that by sniffing the sewer where you live?"
The whole room laughed.
Lohan felt anger bubbling up, but what really bothered him was seeing the boy from "Rare Base," a few seats to his right, watching the situation with an analytical gaze, alternating between Lohan and the fake graphs on the projector.
Dr. Aris walked to the edge of the stage, his face red with indignation.
"Shut up, Hayes. If you’re not going to contribute anything to my class, you’d better keep quiet before I expel you. Until the end of the semester, I don’t want to hear your voice anymore, unless you bring me a scientific study with technical data to prove what you said."
Lohan rolled his eyes when he heard that. How could he provide technical data to prove this in the Lower Zone? Just a device to analyze air saturation would cost several years of the monthly allowance he received.
Although the students from the Upper Zone showed disdain for Lohan, those from the Lower Zone looked at him differently.
Some mocked him quietly, trying to distance themselves from this problematic figure so as not to attract trouble for themselves, while others changed the way they saw him a little.
Since they also came from the Lower Zone, they knew that the filters in the masks did not last as long as the teacher had said, but not only did they not know how to express this, they also did not have the courage to confront a renowned teacher from the Upper Zone like that.
But for one person, Lohan’s comment was like a divine salvation.
"Cough, cough... thank you very much for your help." The girl who had dropped the tablet thanked Lohan with a weak but sincere smile.
If Lohan hadn’t said anything, she would have had to get up to pick up the tablet from the floor under everyone’s mockery, but with his words, people just ignored it and she was able to return to her seat without any further trouble.
Lohan didn’t care about that; he didn’t speak expecting thanks.
But the attitude of these people was becoming increasingly irritating to him.
Thinking that he would have to study here for another four years, Lohan decided to find out how to make money in Elysium as quickly as possible and abandon his studies.
Students from the Lower Zone like him could only use this degree to become low-level employees in large companies, even if they demonstrated great ability.
With the changes and importance he noticed in Elysium, Lohan knew that this would not be the life he would follow in the future, so it would be better to just abandon it and focus on what matters as soon as he had financial independence.