Cursing under my breath at the delay, I leave the building and locate the nearest store where I can buy a replacement comms device; without it, I feel like a cavewoman.
“Would you like to check out the newest model?” the uber saleswoman asks me with a megawatt smile.
I look around. “Is there a place I can check my cc balance?”
She nods at a nearby mirror, and I realize it’s a screen in disguise.
I walk up to the screen, authenticate myself, and have a look at my money.
Wait a second. The number here is much bigger than I expected.
It doesn’t take long for me to figure out what happened. Valerian paid nearly double the amount we agreed upon. Wow. He’s given me bonuses for a job well done before, but never this much.
Once I have my comms, I’ll need to thank him. With this amount, I can pay Mom’s outstanding bills and still have enough left over to consider the newest, most expensive model of comms.
“Show me,” I say to the uber woman.
She takes out a sleek-looking comms device I’ve never seen before and opens it like a clam shell—another novelty.
Inside the comms are almost invisible earphones, two contact lenses, and ten clip-on nails.
I examine it all in awe. “I’ve heard these were in development, but didn’t realize they were out.”
My last set of comms interfaced via special glasses and gloves, so I couldn’t openly use them on Earth. This is so much stealthier.
“Put them on,” she says with a knowing grin.
I reach for the contact lenses, then yank my hand back. “Are these new?”
She cocks her head. “Are you from some Otherland?” Before I can tell her I’m local, she adds, “These comms have hygieia built in—a cleaning technology.”
I know what she’s talking about, of course. Hygieia is why things like salmonella are extinct on Gomorrah. Her answer also tells me the stuff was in other people’s eyes before—which is a problem, even though I know my concern is not rational. It’s like drinking out of a sterilized toilet on Earth—icky, at least to me.
She must read my mind because she smiles sagely and takes out a sealed unit.
“I don’t promise to buy it,” I say reluctantly.
“That’s fine.” She hands it to me.
Right. She knows the next customer won’t have my qualms.
I unwrap the device as if it were a Christmas gift, put in the contacts, and whistle under my breath. They’re extremely comfortable—as in, I don’t feel them at all.
The saleswoman smiles wider. She knows I’m almost on the hook.
The earphones are amazing. Once in my ears, it’s impossible to see them, and I can still hear external sounds.
I hold the nail things to my nails, and they latch on as if magnetized. The result isn’t bad at all—a bit like if I got blue gel nails on Earth.
“Are the gestures the same as with the gloves?” I ask.
She nods, so I gesture for the comms to activate.
The usual spherical icons appear in the air in front of me. With glasses, these looked like Star Wars holograms, but the contacts make everything sharper, almost real.
I gesture at the login app, and once I’m in, the interface changes to the way I’d previously set it up, with icons that look like impossible shapes, such as the Penrose triangle. It gives me the feeling that I’m in the dream world.
I have a ton of messages waiting, but before I check them, I bring up the paying app and say, “I’ll take this.”
“Pleasure doing business with you.” The saleswoman grins her widest smile yet.
As I walk out, I check some of my messages. Most are from the hospital, telling me I must pay the bills. I do that and then craft a message to Valerian. He’s instrumental to my new idea on how to gather more power—at least that’s what I tell myself.
This has nothing to do with what almost happened between us the other day.
Nothing at all.
To my disappointment, he doesn’t instantly reply. Nor does he reply by the time I get into a car. Well, he does spend half his time on Earth and half on Gomorrah, so hopefully he’s just away and not ignoring me.
The car drops me off by our building, a modest skyscraper with one hundred and fifty floors.
Stepping into the apartment is an odd experience after being away. The first thing that stands out, as usual, is how few personal touches Mom gave the place. The walls are bare, and the kitchen is immaculately clean. There are showrooms at furniture stores with more personality. If I were to enter Mom’s bedroom, it would be even more bland—just walls and a bed. Sometimes I wonder if Mom thought that by decorating, she might accidentally reveal to me some secret from her past.
I enter my own room. Like inside my virtual reality interface—and dream world—I have a lot of art that features visual paradoxes and surreal scenarios. Works reminiscent of Earth’s M. C. Escher and Salvador Dalí slideshow on screens that are my room’s walls. On the ancient portable screen that I borrowed from Mom, I spot the cover of the textbook on video game design I was reading before my life turned upside down. My unmade bed is floating a couple of inches off the ground thanks to magnets and superconductivity, and it looks ridiculously inviting.