1.Dwax found a rat.

A dirty young man roams the streets, his stomach growling.

Dwax has been walking the streets for half a year now. He was but an individual among the 18 billion people on this planet. It was not easy to find food.

He didn't have anything to eat for two days. His stomach was growling up a storm. His eyes were gleaming silver-red with the insectoid genes he had been incorporating into his genome. His compound eyes nested in his human eye sockets saw a wider spectrum of light and detected more than sixty frames per second. But most importantly, it burned far fewer calories than a regular human eye. That particular augmentation is popular with those who have a hard time finding food. All a person needs to get is a fly, which a person is able to attract with a piece of excrement. After that, the person can put the fly in their gene harvesting organ and incorporate the genes harvested from the fly through the gene editing interface embedded in his visual hallucination generator. The hallucination generating part of their brain would then display this:

[The Musca domestica Linnaeus: classic genome detected.]

[The hallucination gland is displaying genetic traits that could be incorporated into a human being without causing problems.]

[1.Compound eyes.]

The common house fly mostly relies on its visual acuity and swift reflexes for survival. It doesn't see too far, but it sees its close vicinity in greater detail. It burns fewer calories than the eyes described within the genome of Homo sapiens: Classic.

[2. Touch tasting]

The common housefly is able to taste the things it lands on. This adaptation might help survive in a chemically compromised environment. It's not much different in its calorie expenditure.

Dwax did this when he was a little child. His mother protected him when he was blind for a week. His eyes melted, and his irises reformed into compound eyes. During that time, he had burned through the food reserves of his mother. The calorie cost of metamorphosis was nothing to scoff at. The food situation was better back then. He helped his mother restock in no time with his new eyes. It also helped him conserve energy. It was a good deal genetics-wise. The calories saved over time were greater than the calories burned during metamorphosis.

He caught something in the corner of his eye. The starvation had sharpened his senses. The slight movement he caught with his eyes had drawn his attention to a certain spot. The spot was glowing with ultraviolet colors. It's fresh animal urine!

He crouched near the dumpster and waited. Eventually, a rat reared its head from the opening between the dumpster and the ground. He quickly lunged at it. He was half-expecting to fail. To his surprise, he caught it! Was someone going beyond looking out for him? His hands trembled, and tears started streaming from his eyes. He was grateful; he didn't know which holy being he was grateful to, but he was grateful nonetheless. He quickly ran to the dumpster fire and impaled the rat on a stick. He was salivating already. As the rat kept roasting over the fire, Dwax noticed the homeless man sitting across him was looking at him funny. His eyes were listless, and he was as malnourished as Dwax.

In sheer desperation, the homeless man lunged from the spot where he had been sitting. He was surprisingly agile for a starving homeless man who is at the mercy of the elements. He lunged at the crisp rat, intending to steal it from Dwax. Dwax punched him in the face. The homeless man didn't take it too well. He stared at Dwax with a face of pure malice. His salivating mouth had most of its teeth missing, and the ones that were left were rotten.

He lunged again. This time, the target wasn't the rat. It was Dwax. The confrontation had turned into a life-and-death struggle. His inhuman eyes opened wide as he noticed the sharp glass in the old homeless man's hand. He dodged the old man and struck his attacker in the jugular. Another punch met the homeless man in the cheekbone.

The homeless man fell to the ground and started snoring. The strike had rattled his brain and did something funny to it.

The man had tried to kill Dwax. Dwax was not down from his adrenaline high, and his judgment was clouded. He mounted his face-down attacker and repeatedly punched him in the back of his head. The homeless man's eyes went back to his skull, and he started spasming. A faint, bone-chilling smile formed on the homeless man's face due to muscle spasms.

It was not enough for Dwax. He has been overcome with rage. He held his enemy by the hair and slammed the poor man's face into the concrete until sticky strings of blood formed between the man's face and the blood-stained pavement. The homeless man wasn't moving anymore.

Dwax, mentally blocking what he just did, picked up his rat and started eating. He was in shock and his mind was blocking what just happened. His adrenaline went down, and he realized what he had done. He kept eating and crying. He was covered in blood. He was a murderer. He had killed a man over a rat. Dwax put his trembling fingers on the homeless man's neck. The man's pulse was gone.

The police arrived not long after. The police force was well-trained and effective. They had been funded and provided with standardized genetic augmentations that all police must have.

Even if everything else went to sh*t, the police would always be well-funded. The reason for that is that keeping public order is good for business. And business was good for survival. Since security was at the root of everything, every piece of credit spent on the police force was money well spent for those who needed their properties protected.

They put Dwax in handcuffs and took the homeless man away. He was shoved into the back of a police car and hauled off. Being homeless was one thing, but he dared to murder a man in front of a camera. AI had spotted what he did and why he did it and judged it a crime. By the time he had been arrested, he had already had his trial in cyberspace among the AI and had been found guilty of murder under alleviating circumstances.

He was put in a jail cell, waiting to be executed. Dwax wasn't worth much to society in general. Dwax and men like him. Their deaths were not a big loss in the eyes of those who owned everything. They executed whoever committed a severe crime. There was no such thing as life imprisonment. That was simply not profitable. Unwilling workers brought the quality of the products down, and a person who is imprisoned was a burden if they didn't work. So, executions it was.

He waited in his cell for a week. His execution was scheduled for a week later. He was to spend two weeks in custody as human eyes looked at his case just to be sure.

During this time, an old man approached his cell and started talking to him.

"Dwax I presume."

The old man had downward-slanted eyes. He looked fragile.

"In the flesh."

The old man unfolded a chair and looked Dwax right in his crimson-silver eyes.

"Do you know why you are here?"

Dwax was confused.

"I killed a man. Why else would I be here?"

The old man shook his head.

"It wasn't the fact you killed him that made you guilty. The video clearly shows you assaulting the man long after he ceased to be a threat. And all this over the meager meat of a rat. Why were you so vicious?"

Dwax showed no remorse. He had been sitting in this cell, thinking about what had happened. In fact, that was all he could think about.

"I was starving, and by luck, I caught a rat. He was starving, so he attacked me. If I didn't eat the rat, I was going to die. If he didn't eat the rat, he was going to die. We were already in a life-and-death struggle the moment he saw me roasting my rat. Whether you die a violent death or die of starvation, there is no difference in the end. They are both bitter ends. I killed for survival. You lot will kill me, and mark my words, old man, it will be murder. You will be my murderers."

The old man watched as Dwax spewed excuses.

"You can't fool me, boy. I saw you. I saw your face. You had the face of a predator when you smashed that man's face on the pavement. Something primal awoke from within you; it took you over like a demon. You've met the demon and welcomed him in. As long as you live, the demon will always ring your doorbell."

Dwax smiled.

"Ring my doorbell? I wish. That scenario implies I have a house."

Both the old man and Dwax started laughing.