curb. Up ahead, someone swore out loud and then stopped to stamp his foot in anger. Now motionless, a wave of people began flowing outwards and around him. I saw my chance.
Sailing up beside him, I ducked smoothly in behind and was caught perfectly in the opposite flow to go in the direction I needed, but then I ran straight smack into a ridiculous looking woman in sparkling red body paint and peacock feathers.
“Out of my way!” I scowled.
Shoving her aside, I rotated out and away towards the edge of the street. Elbowing my way to the curb, I outstretched my arm to join with the forest of other outstretched arms.
“Ten! Ten!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, offering ten times the going rate.
This was excessive, but I was tired and frightened and just wanted to get out of there. A cab merged fluidly from the traffic flow to pull up beside me, my generosity earning me dirty looks from people around me trying to get their own ride. In return, I offered them my finger as the tiny gull wing door of the cab opened.
I stepped inside and sat down. The relief was immediate. Cool, recycled air swept around me as the door closed to expose the silence within. I took a moment to collect myself, closing my eyes, exhaling softly, trying to relieve the pressure.
“Where to, lady?” asked the cab. It was a mini self–driving electric, one of those Hondasoft ones with the motors in the wheels—barely more than a plastic tub on roller skates, if you asked me, but a cab nonetheless. I took a deep breath.
Where to? To the office was where to.
“Ah…” I said, and then stopped.
What the hell was my office address? I sat bolt upright and rubbed my eyes, blinking hard. Where did I work again? I couldn’t remember where my office was, and I’d worked there for over ten years now. Fear gripped the pit of my stomach.
“Lady, where to?” asked the cab again impatiently.
Damn machines, it’s like they thought they ran the world. Don’t rush me you little bastard.
“One second,” I snapped at the cab a little shakily.
“Ah, Kenny, what is my office address?”
I posed the question to my tech assistant through the mobile bud I still had stuck in my ear.
“555 5th Avenue…” a perplexed Kenny began to respond, which I then relayed to the cabbie.
My face flushed.
How in the world could I have forgotten that? I needed a drink. The cab immediately accelerated and merged into the traffic. I sat back and took some deep breaths, trying to loosen up the tightness in my chest while we sped off towards my meeting.
2
CAREFULLY TAKING ONE bright paper napkin from the black conference room table, I wiped off a residue of sweat from the nape of my neck. I was nervous. Patricia Killiam, the famous godmother of synthetic reality, had decided to personally attend the meeting today, or at least her bio-simulation proxxi had.
This was much the same thing to Atopians.
I’d had to rush to get here, sprinting the last yards from the elevators, but I’d made it just in time. They’d immediately jumped me into my presentation to the Cognix people. That incident with the robot had really thrown me, and my pitch timing had been off. I was still shaking, even now. It made me look like an amateur.
The Cognix account was easily the biggest to ever come through our office, and I’d been named as the lead for closing the deal. Other people were always taking credit for my work, and winning this contract would enable me to finally take center stage. The pressure was intense.
With my part done, I sat back and watched my colleague Bertram finish the presentation. I was thinking of my fight with Alex. He’d wanted to move in together, but I really needed my space.
With him, it was always about spending time with his family and brothers and sisters, but they were always judging me. It was a constant source of friction between us, made worse when he kept insisting that it was just my own insecurities. The nerve. He also wanted kids, telling me how I was too focused on my career, but I had no idea how anyone could want to bring a child into this world. It was falling apart.
I couldn’t believe my boss had almost given this jerk Bertram the lead on closing the account. Look at him, pantomiming away in that ridiculous multi–phasic suit, flattering the boss, laughing at his own jokes. Whatever he was doing seemed to be working, however, from the way everyone was reacting to his pitch.
I needed a smoke.
Maybe I was getting too old for this. Kids nowadays had AIs running around doing most of their jobs for them. I had a hard time keeping up with it all. Thinking about kids brought me back thinking about Alex again. Perhaps I had made a terrible mistake. My stomach lurched.
“Cognix, making tomorrow your today!” gushed Bertram the jerk as he finished up, sweeping his hand into the distance with a flourish. There was a smattering of applause.
Wait a minute. That was my tagline. What the hell was he doing presenting that today? I was supposed to be using that tomorrow. We’d agreed on this.
“Something wrong Olympia?” asked my boss, Roger.
Was my boss in on this too?
“Olympia, do you have anything to add?” asked Roger again.
Everyone turned to look at me.
God it was stuffy in here. With a short intake of breath I thought of what I could say to make Bertram look like the fool he was. I tried to shake off sudden vertigo.
“I, uh, I…” I stammered, but I couldn’t get anything out.
All the air in the room evacuated itself and I felt a crushing pain in my chest. Panic flowed hotly into my veins. Gripping my chest, I wrenched myself up from the table and fled out the door in my search for air.
“Someone call a doctor!” I heard Bertram the jerk yelling out behind me as my vision faded and blackness descended.
3
“NOTHING MORE THAN a simple panic attack,” said the doctor.
That was a relief. I guess I knew I wasn’t really having a heart attack, but it was good to hear anyway. The terror had been real enough at the time.
The doctor’s bald pate reflected the overhead panel lighting like a shimmering, sweaty halo above his radiantly clean lab coat. A stethoscope hung uselessly around his neck. He leaned forward over his veneer mahogany desk and clasped his hands, bringing them up to support his chin in what I assumed was his thoughtful pose.
“Are you still smoking?” he asked.
“Yes, I am still smoking, but I stay fit.”
He shrugged and shook his head, sensing this was a fight he didn’t want to get into. He looked at his notes.
“Well, this could be fixable via medication,” he suggested, but I cut that short.
“Look doc, thanks, but no thanks, I’m on a strict organic farmaceutical diet,” I explained hotly. “I need to limit the medications.”
Something about him reminded me of the endless string of men my mother had dated after she’d driven my father off. My parents’ relationship had been doomed from the start. Trying to mix a Greek and a Scot was a surefire
