The stronic entered Artride's bloodstream swiftly through the pump connected to various veins in his right arm.  The four foot tall pumping system itself, and also the small amount of fluid within it, were by far the most costly things within the small, dingy apartment.  Unbeknownst to him, as his vision began to blur and reality faded away into his own heaven, the government issue wall-mounted monitor flickered into life, displaying the words "Public Service Announcement".

As the eyes of his physical form lolled back into his head, the eyes of his being in his own drug-induced reality opened, revealing a beautiful countryside.  Both of the great suns shone brightly down, causing the great Omotopian trees to cast dark shadows upon the pale white grass.  Artride looked around gleefully as he did every time, taking in each detail as an artist might.  He tore his eyes away from the landscape, looking behind him to his former home.  He saw steam rising from the ventilation in the roof, just as it had always whenever she was cooking a hearty meal.  He smiled and made his way into the house, unaware of the thick darkness descending upon him as the planet rotated with impossible speed, causing both suns to move to the horizon, leaving only a small dark red semicircle visible.  

The terrible stench hit him as he opened the door.  The unmistakable stench he had smelt only once before, but would never be able to forget.  He moved swiftly into the dark house, searching wildly for a light.  As if on cue, the room was suddenly engulfed in fiery red light.  He saw their corpses then, all of them.  All those he had lost and left behind.  The room began to spin around him and he shouted at the top of his lungs, willing there to be a way out of this nightmare.  

His prayers were answered when his wild movements ripped the needles out of his arm.  The nightmarish images began to fade, replaced by a small dark room.  As reality began to dawn on him once more, his shouting quietened and he tried to calm his beating heart.  Artride looked to the gravitationally powered pump in front of him and lashed out at it, sending it flying to the floor with a crash.  

A bad trip.

When he was confident that he could balance, he stood up and looked over to the monitor he and every other inhabitant of the planet Trorem were forced to have in the vicinity of their homes.  The tiny scanner in the top left corner of the machine, noticing movement in it's range, began to play it's pre-recorded announcement.

"Greetings citizens of our great planet Trorem!  We are happy to inform you that in our constant attempts to keep the planet clean of illegal immigrants, a planetary living quarters scan shall occur  in five minutes.  Thank you!"  Before the message had even finished, Artride was on his feet.  He started towards the electronic safe in his wall, but he was already too late.  He saw the subtle  lights of the scanner move down the room, taking in his real DNA pattern, one that was unknown to the system and would instantly raise alarms.  Grabbing a thick jacket and his custom-made Lort & Metofer sidearm, designed to avoid the hundreds of different scans that were encountered on a daily basis on this particular planet, he smashed his window and looked at the eight hundred story drop below him.  He had a long climb.

As he began to carefully make his way from window-frame to window-frame, he wondered what else was in store for him.  Trorem was the first of many planets Artride would attempt to recreate his shattered life upon, and as he had already seen from the corrupt planetary government which ruthlessly oppressed and controlled it's people, quelling any uprising with ruthless yet subtle killings, this state of living was far different from what he knew.

It was a darker world.