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Akrez Poiuy
In my twenty-seventh year of life, I had the privilege of touring, with my Mad Minton Match, the happening place that was (and still is) Akrez Poiuy.
It used to be an agricultural town. It was fenced in by such natural formations as the Warmos River on its southeastern side, and a hill known to its inhabitants as the Uvlo Knolls on its northern border. Its people, more than half of which was as fluent in their native Warmo as they were with the National Language, were hard workers in the field.
Akrez Poiuy, though small, was blessed with an abundantly fertile soil that yielded rich harvests of grain twice every season. The town’s produce was more than enough for what the inhabitants could consume, so those few who were either not involved in actual, hands-on farming, or simply had too much time in their hands for a side-job, got into trade.
The hillside town of Tab-Awan was their closest neighbor, and from them the Akrez Poiuyans learned to build cell sites—in exchange for the surplus wheat.
The fruits of this business endeavor didn’t immediately become apparent. In the early years of this arrangement, less than two percent of Akrez Poiuyans were traders. Slowly, however, the number began to increase, so that for once every ten months, Tab-Awan folks went down from their hills to conduct actual lectures.
This became the birth of the Akrez Poiuyan Interest in Communications (APREX), which today sends hundreds of thousands of cheaply paid APREX’s throughout the world. During that time, when cell site building was considered by many Akrez Poiuyans to be an idiotic waste of time and resources, ridicule met APREX’s doing such pre-cell site-making procedures as area surveys and cellular system design proposals.
Nothing was stranger to the farmer folks than seeing something come up on the ground that wasn’t planted and watered, and no concept as hard to grasp as that of getting benefits from that which didn’t even bear fruit.
For a time, it had been that way. There was no mass change of interest, and what little grew in the number of wannabe APREX’s was credited to that the more hard core agriculturists stuck to their farming, the more extra grain Akrez Poiuy produced, and the better and more frequent the dealings with Tab-Awan were.
Things were about to change, however, as T.E.W.B.G.S. released its series of new phone models.
Aside from having the high tech feature of being able to store and analyze crop information, the new phone models were equipped with an integrated compost processor. Loaded first with manure or any rotting organic matter, they mix and emit compost at the press of a button. As marketed by T.E.W.B.G.S. to their target consumers, whoever owned those phones were practically walking human fertilizers.
One can only imagine the popularity of such high tech gadgets in a town like Akrez Poiuy!
In less than two months after the phones were released, every Akrez Poiuyan owned at least a unit. The phones came in various sizes, colors, and shapes. Some had slightly advanced features than others, but they were essentially the same high tech phones: nice to look at, intelligent, and extremely expensive.
Each phone cost about an entire harvest’s earnings for a medium-sized farm—which was no problem at all for the inhabitants of this bountiful land.
What was more of a problem to them was that except from the agricultural functions of their phones, they couldn’t use the phones for anything else… like call.
It was this need, this pressing need to make use of the devices the Akrez Poiuyans had purchased at such exorbitant prices, that caused a change in an average denizen’s career goals. Whereas before, the APREX profession was ridiculed, now everyone wanted—if not for themselves, then wanted it for their sons and daughters—to be an APREX.
All of a sudden everyone wanted to know how to build a cell site. Everyone wanted a better cellular telephone system design, and it became apparent that what passion the Akrez Poiuyans had once had for farming, they now poured into enjoying their small wireless telephones.
The first to benefit from this was their closest neighbors, the inhabitants of Tab-Awan, but as with any kill, always it was the bigger predators who got stuffed the most.
T.E.W.B.G.S., excited over the unprecedented success of their products, quickly released new and more advanced models, each release sooner than the one that preceded it.
And the Akrez Poiuyans bought.
Then, corporations from the surrounding cities, getting a whiff of this spending frenzy, moved in to partake in the feast.
It was not difficult to get their share of the good fortune. All they had to do was sell material related to the trends.
At first it was only accessories to go with the new phones. Enhancement gadgets, cases, customized parts, customized software, cellphone-related publications all sold well.
Then some corporation came up with the idea that the users themselves have got to go with the pleasant appearance of the cellphones they were wielding. Thus, “fashion” infiltrated Akrez Poiuy.
Suddenly everyone was wearing garments dictated by the latest trends. Colors came in and out of fashion, cuts and fabrics too. Akrez Poiuy learned and complied with the rules governing what hip clothes to wear at what part of the day and what day of the year it is. More importantly, they bought stuff, and that was what made the corporations happy.
They bought clothes when it was as simple as buying clothes to make them attractive. When the magazines said beauty was having skin only of a certain shade, they paid to have their skins peeled and bleached. Then the interest moved to the growth and color of people’s hair. That cost money as well—but then not quite as much as when the trends required a certain bodily figure. The Akrez Poiuyans released money to meet those demands, if not in the fitness centers, then the surgical clinics.
Thus was the “fashion-awakening” of Akrez Poiuy, which was but on its first phase…
With the increase of beautiful people came the demand for beautiful places where the beautiful people could hang out in. There came in the developers, who built malls as fast and efficient as the Tab-Awans had erected their cell sites before them. In fact, they beat the Tab-Awans, because as they were starting to build their first malls, they happened to have learned from the National government that they were the rightful owners of Tab-Awan Hill. They drove the Tab-Awans out and cleared their hill off the ground to build more shopping malls in which the beautiful people should only properly be seen.
The inhabitants of Tab-Awan, enraged, couldn’t do anything but move as their hill was bulldozed to the ground. Nothing was ever heard of them afterwards, but every now and then random acts of terrorism were attributed to them. They were pursued by the authorities, and the cell sites they had built were torn down, to be replaced by more modern and expensive installations by other profiteers.
In any case, their former neighbors, the Akrez Poiuyans, seemed to have completely forgotten about them, perhaps quite as much as, if not more than, how they had completely forgotten farming.
Akrez Poiuy after its transformation will never be mistaken for the agricultural town that it once was. The Warmos River now had its banks developed. It had paved lanes to walk on under colorful, bright, and gay globular lights. Fashionable food places and outdoor cafés lined this bank. The UVLO Knolls, left untouched for some reason by the recent boom in development, was now associated with the ancient and unknown. Indeed, a lot believed it to be the earth base of mystical elements, so that every year, sometime around March or April, the cool and hip youth troop to it, carrying their plastic-bottled water and signature camping bags to pay devotion to the Powers.
As for Akrez Poiuy proper, it was now an urban jungle of commercial and residential high-rises, hotels, and malls. Big time businesses were now operating in Akrez Poiuy that many nicknamed it the Money District.
But of course, because of the derogatory connotation of this label, it didn’t immediately catch on. In fact, it was still called Akrez Poiuy when I, with my Mad Minton Match, had the privilege of touring it in my twenty-seventh year of life.
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