Mood boosted, I gave myself permission to order a few more outfits while I was at it. I needed some comfort, some sense of self-worth, or living the way I was would drive me crazy.
Page after sales page flitted by as I picked and chose what looked like appropriate contemporary clothing, based on what I saw on television, what I'd seen during my brief forays outside from the hospital to the group home, and from the group home to the department of human services. Where there was a question I erred on the side of conservative-looking clothing well suited to Chicago's winters.
I didn't hesitate to opt for 3D-printed clothing, so cheap it bordered on ridiculous. The interview suit would do at work until I could afford to buy something business-casual, and the rest of it... I didn't feel safe going outside in this neighborhood, anyway. Especially, with a glance at the view-screen clock, not this late at night.
CHAPTER 4: BLIND AND HUNGRY
I nearly jumped out of my skin when a sudden buzz from the kitchen startled me, and I realized that I'd spaced out in the middle of my purchasing spree.
"Did I make toast?" I rose and walked to the kitchen.
There was a glow coming from the pocket of the paper shirt I'd folded and left on the counter. I pulled my ChicagoCard out of its pocket, and saw that the card's surface had gone opaque, with a blinking message reading "PRINT JOB QUEUED" and an arrow pointing to the left. As I turned away from the counter, the arrow rotated, continuing to point towards the door. I noticed tiny light ripples spreading from where my fingers touched the card. It wasn't just an ID or bank card, it was a touch-sensitive screen. A mobile device.
There was a similar message blinking at the bottom of my apartment's flatscreen. I tapped the one on my card with my thumb, and the displays on the both my card and on the larger screen expanded to an overhead floor-plan of the apartment complex, with a dotted line leading to a pulsing marker in one of the entrances. I tapped the marker on my card and a list popped up, showing me a list of 3D-printed items I'd purchased, each with a green READY next to them.
So, two things. First, the card acted as a remote control for the screen in my apartment. Of course, they were networked together, why not? I could probably control everything just as easily from my card as I could from the screen... no more getting up off the futon for me.
Secondly, and more interestingly, my building had its own communal 3D-printer. That was certainly convenient.
I quickly dressed and slipped out the door.
***
It was dark outside. Late. Almost midnight, according to my ChicagoCard. The trio of teens had left their post by the vending machines.
"Even juvenile punks need their rest." My voice, though quiet, broke the night's stillness. "Stop talking to yourself."
The paper shuffle of my paper soles on the concrete sounded just as loud on my way down to the lobby, and I did my best not to break out into an all-out run. I kept one eye out for dangerous young men, and the other on the Card's arrow as it guided me to the East end of the courtyard.
The East lobby was empty, too. It wasn't the one I'd entered through earlier, and had a different range of mailboxes... including my own. Handy.
Less convenient was the discovery that the doors out to the street had been boarded over. I couldn't come in this way, so if I wanted to check my mail when I came home I'd have to come in through a different entrance, cross here, then go up to my apartment. Or... I could check my mail from the screen in my apartment. If I could sync the card up with that while I was out, I could check my mail remotely when I got home. Was the apartment network on Wi-Fi, or was it more like a Bluetooth thing?
I broke my gaze away from the mailboxes to force myself out of another introspective fugue.
The lobby also held a squat booth that looked like a cross between a xerox machine and one of those machines that made plastic molds at the zoo. The arrow on my card was pointing right to it, so some quick detective work told me that this was probably the 3D printer. There was monitor screen set into it, allowing users to purchase print jobs right at the machine, and also a flat panel with a "rectangle and wavy lines" icon on it identical to what I'd seen on my flatscreen.
I waved my card in front of the panel. Nothing happened.
I tried again, more slowly. Nothing. Tapping didn't seem to work either, and the screen wasn't offering any advice.
I gave it one more go, this time with my thumb pressed firmly against the card's surface, the way I'd unlocked the door... maybe it used my thumbprint?
This time the machine lit up, an array of LEDs along its front winking bright, an unholy screech emanating as the printing "arm" reset itself.
I cringed at the sound and jabbed at the faded "cancel" button, but nothing happened. I jabbed it again, but the machine had begun its work, emitting a mechanical wail as the printer created the products I'd selected online. I couldn't get it to stop, I couldn't get it to pause, all I could do was either sit and wait and grimace until its work had completed, or run and hide and abandon my purchases to whoever came to investigate.
As strong as the urge to flee was, I couldn't bring myself to abandon goods I'd spent so much on. I grimaced at the printer's squeal, keeping a close eye on the rows and rows of apartments above, those visible from the courtyard. Was I waking people up? Would they complain? Or would they just come out and take out their frustrations on me personally? And those punk kids... no way they wouldn't hear this. No way they wouldn't know that it meant someone was loading themselves up with easily steal-able consumer goods.
Deeper than the fear of being mugged, though, was an aversion to drawing attention to myself, a desire to avoid inconveniencing my neighbors with unexpected screeches in the middle of the night.
The pitch of the machine behind me shifted as it began working on the next item, and a neatly folded pair of sweatpants slid out into the delivery slot. I picked them up and held them protectively to my chest. Still warm, still smelling of melting polymer.
The slam of a door several floors up sounded over the squeal of the machine, and once again I fought the desire to run. Instead I turned to the machine, tapping my fingers on its case, silently willing it to work faster. There was a small clatter as a pair of sneakers tumbled out, complete, and I picked them up too.
Hurried footsteps were coming down the stairs above. The machine's overall progress rate, displayed as a line of tiny lights, was at 40%. No way it'd be done before whoever was coming down reached me.
Print faster.
Faster, you piece of shit.
The approaching footfalls were only a floor above. Purchases clutched to my chest, I turned, heart pounding, to face whatever justice was coming to confront me.
It was one of the teens from before, the ones loitering near the vending machines, the one who'd stayed to watch while the others tried to flank me. During the day, wearing a bulky jacket, I'd taken her to be an adolescent boy, but in a printed wife-beater and cargo shorts she was more obviously a girl in her late teens to early twenties.
There was no sarcastic mirth in her eyes now, just a wary annoyance that carried to her grip on the aluminum baseball bat in her left hand. "The fuck you doin'?" With more time to look, I could see that she had striking blue tribal tattoos spilling down over her lower lip, dribbling down her chin to stream down her neck in parallel lines.
I had no words, only fear and embarrassment. I looked back at the printer, then at her.
"You can't fucking read?" She thrust the end of her bat over my shoulder and past my head, pointing behind me.
A plastic plaque hung there, bolted to the wall. Simple black words on a white backing, NO PRINTING AFTER 10 PM.
"I'm sorry, I didn't see it—"
Her eyes narrowed but her jaw relaxed and she walked closer, bat slung back over her shoulder. "Now you gotta pay the fine."
I stood still as she approached, the desire to flee slowly draining away, supplanted by a powerful impulse to take the bat away from her and crack it across the
side of her head. I've never been a violent woman, I never have revenge fantasies, and I absolutely don't know how to fight. Still, it took all of my willpower to keep from attacking the girl. I don't know why... I didn't even feel angry. It just felt like a good idea. The right idea.
"What you got there?" she asked, using the end of the bat to sift through what I was holding, what the machine had printed.
Sneakers. Sweat pants. Underwear. Socks. The cheapest I could find, almost negligible in price, expensive only in the quantities I'd needed to replace an entire wardrobe. "Just some stuff."
A look of distaste crossed her face and she stepped back. "Get the fuck out of here with your cheap-ass shit. And don't fucking use the machine after ten."
"I won't," I managed, hurrying past.
"It's disrespectful," she called after me.
"Sorry."
She didn't respond, and I didn't look back, half-jogging up the stairs to my apartment. It was too dark to see if there were any other spectators, but I could feel them there, in the shadows, jeering and glaring.
I'd gotten off lucky, but these teens wouldn't give me another chance.
***
Waking up from a coma isn't like they show it in the movies. There's no fluttering of eyes, no sudden return to consciousness. It's nothing like waking up normally. It isn't instant, it isn't easy, and it isn't clean. The doctors told me that coma patients can open their eyes, get up, even walk around without being aware of it, without truly being awake.
Even after leaving the hospital I still felt like I wasn't all the way there. Like I wasn't fully awake.
A quarter of all coma patients come out of the condition with some permanent brain damage. The first few days after coming around I'd been in a confused daze. I'd lost my short-term memory. I couldn't read, or do basic math. I couldn't comprehend what had happened to me, and the doctors couldn't explain it to me. All I knew was that I was in a hospital, and that they were doing tests on me.
But I was lucky. My cognitive functions did return, slowly. And with cognition came questions about how I'd gotten into the hospital. That's when they told me that I'd been brought in after being discovered, non-responsive, in a dilapidated apartment building. I'd been found naked, with nothing in my possession, and no obvious injuries pointing to a cause for my condition.
Oh, and the doctors had mentioned casually, as an aside, it was 2025.
No clues as to where I'd been for the last ten years. What I'd been up to.
I lay in bed, thinking about these things, trying to summon up the willpower to roll out of the futon and get on with the day. I'd imagine getting up, taking a shower, and getting dressed, and then realize I hadn't actually done any of those things. It'd happened in the hospital. It'd happened in the group home. And it was happening here.
Actually getting up took a supreme effort, aided only by the gentle alarm coming from my flat-screen, something I hadn't remembered setting. I didn't remember anything from the night before after running from the girl at the printer. I was having those small memory lapses frequently, and had come to think of them as aftershocks of my memory loss. The doctors told me that there was every possibility that they'd stop, eventually. I didn't find that particularly reassuring.
I got up, took a shower, brushed my teeth, threw on my new sweat pants and t-shirt. They were nice. Comfortable. The printed polymer material didn't feel exactly... right... but they were miles better than the hospital garments.
I didn't really feel hungry, just sort of empty. I'd been feeling that a lot, lately. Intellectually I knew I should eat something, but just the idea of making breakfast made it harder not to just go back to bed.
I tapped the flat-screen, fully intending to look for nearby brunch places, but instead found myself trying to research the latest trends in pharmaceutical marketing, to prepare for my meeting with Greg.
I say "trying" because finding actual information on the Internet was a complex process. The industry had exploded since I'd
gone under
disappeared, and there was a lot of data to wade through. Just tracking the legal changes in accountability standards and disclosure practices was a logistical nightmare. From what little I could tell, Septopharma's marketing had been deregulated to the point where companies could make almost literally any claim and omit known side-effects without repercussion. The balance of power had definitely tipped away from the consumer.
The marketing departments of the big corporations had taken advantage. There were patently false studies, disinformation campaigns, and blatant propaganda that made it nearly impossible for me to discern what advances had actually been made, and what the state of medical technology actually was.
This did not bode well. I'd be going into my meeting with Greg blind. And hungry. Blind and hungry.
CHAPTER 5: MANY HAPPY RETURNS
A new alert popped up on my flatscreen, a small message telling me that my packages were on their way. It included a countdown timer with only a few minutes on it... the precision surprised me, but I guessed that UPS and FedEx had pretty decent GPS on their trucks by now.
Deciding that I'd rather meet the delivery guy than have him drop my packages in the lobby where they might be picked up by the new friend I made last night, I threw my new 3D-printed hoodie on over my T-shirt, slipped into my sneakers, and stepped out the door. There, in the distance, I could see a pair of black objects descending into the courtyard. At first I took them for remote-controlled helicopters, but they were bigger: spheres the size of a basketball with eight spokes sticking out to twice the hub's circumference, each with its own propeller, riding on top of a cube, wearing a cylindrical flashing yellow light as a fez. Drones.
I backed up into my apartment's doorway as they swooped down towards the walkway in near silence, close enough that I could see the corporate branding stenciled on their sides. The first neatly navigated between the railing and the wall to deposit the box it carried in front of my door, then rose and drifted out of the way to allow the second to do the same. I watched, mouth agape, as they ascended once more to fly back to wherever they came from.
"Yo, get anything good?" The call came from my right, down the walkway near the vending machines. The three teens from the day before, including the one who'd yelled at me last night, were watching me and gesturing.
I found myself wishing I hadn't bought so much, hadn't made such a conspicuous display of wealth that I didn't really possess, and hauled the boxes back into my room.
Once safely inside I opened the first box to discover my interview outfit, the jacket, blouse, skirt, and shoes. The punks outside instantly slipped from mind in my eagerness to model my new outfit in front of the bathroom mirror. She still didn't look like me, this redhead with short hair and cold eyes, but she definitely looked presentable. I could barely tell how buff I was, and that helped make it easier to pretend that I hadn't changed.
And oh, the outfit was so comfortable. Maybe that sounds strange, but it felt great to have real cotton against my skin again. Still, I carefully disrobed and hung the suit and blouse up over the back of the futon. According to the website they were made out of some high-tech material that incorporated silicone filaments to repel water and dirt, and the ad copy also claimed that they were impossible to wrinkle, but after reading about how marketing regulations had been relaxed, I didn't want to put them to the test.
The second box held a longer jacket made of the same water-repellent fabric. I didn't remember buying it, but given how winters were in the city it didn't seem like an unreasonable purchase.
As I slung the jacket next to the suit, reflecting on how my apartment didn't have a closet, I noticed a second package inside the coat's box. Small. Flat. About the size of a paperback book, and hard plastic, unlike the cardboard boxes. It even had a small card-reader lock on the side, alongside a notice warning that tampering with the mail was a federal offense.
Frowning, I thumbed my ChicagoCard and held it to the reader. There
was a small click, and it opened.
There was a small pistol inside. No way I'd ordered this.
I snapped the lid closed and stared at the box for a few moments before grabbing my Card and connecting to the online retailer's customer support line.
Almost instantly I was greeted by a chipper voice. "Fairweather Industries, this is Makayla, how may I help you today?"
"Hi, I ordered a couple outfits from you yesterday, and I think you shipped me something extra by accident."
"I'm sorry to hear you have had an unsatisfying shipping experience." The voice dripped cheery sympathy. "Can I have your order number?"
"Yeah, hold on." I sifted through the packaging and found the invoice, then read off the long string of numbers and letters.
"Just one second ma'am, while I bring your order up. You have an extra package?"
"Yes." I glanced over at it. "It's a gun. I didn't even know that mail order firearms were legal."
Her voice lost none of its smile. "Is there a problem with your purchase?"
"The problem is that I didn't purchase it." I walked to the kitchenette.
"My records show here that you did order the Fairweather HomeDef 40 at ten-thirty-eight last night."
"Well, I didn't mean to! My finger must have slipped or something. Or your records are wrong."
"I appreciate your concern that our records are wrong, but there's a double verification process when purchasing firearms. You'd have to have confirmed a text message that you did indeed intend to purchase the firearm, and I am showing that we have that verification."
My fingertips went to my lips. Had I answered such a text? I couldn't remember. "Well, I don't want it. Take it back."
Cold Reboot (Shadow Decade Book 1) Page 4