Posted by TT on 12/5/2007, 1:25 pm
86.135.46.154
The weather broke as the afternoon turned to evening. Rain poured from the sky in sheets and send people scurrying for shelter their summer clothes already soaked through.
Kiren stopped outside the hospital and watched the rain pour down from the darkened sky. Even in her heyday she could never have been described as beautiful, though handsome was a possibility. Her chin jutted out a little too proudly and a bump on her nose indicated that it had been broken once or twice, dark hair lay tangled over one shoulder of her coat. Dull red lipstick had been carefully applied and seemed to pull the corners of her mouth into a permanent frown. She was a little too tall and rake thin with arms and legs that were almost gangly, looking as if someone had got hold of her head and feet and stretched her out of shape. Her raincoat was soon soaked and heavy and clung in weighted folds around her, water streamed off her hat and past her nose.
There weren’t many people out in the rain but those that were stared. Kiren’s simulent half was almost hidden in her clothes and hat but she could do little about the lack of hair on one side of her scalp and even less about her face. Dull silver metal, seared to a join with her remaining skin, covered the left half of her face dipping up and curving as it reached her lips and passing on behind her hairline. Lights took the place of eyeballs on the moulded black unit that covered the top of he face like a pair of sunglasses; these grew or shrank depending on her mood. Right now the lights were like large molten red suns in her sockets, Kiren was angry.
She had felt sure to find him at the Simbiotic unit of New London’s main hospital, getting checked for the feared illegal additions before being allowed to stalk the streets. As a Simulent and not a Mechamide she could avoid all that bureaucracy as long as she didn’t stay in the country too long, which was good as she didn’t fancy being taken apart to separate the none too legal devices she had hidden about her Sim half. Her friend Mec however played by the rules. She was afraid he wasn’t going to last five minutes here.
A car of young men, pulling over to jeer at the lone woman walking the streets, wound their windows up and fled skyward as she turned to glare at them. For a brief moment she consider firing a smiler blade at wiring on the car’s underside, and then thought what Mec would say about it and regretted thinking about firing the blade. She then regretting letting Mec get inside her skin enough to make her regret what previously she would have considered a just act after such provocation. She then regretted regretting this and so carried on Kiren’s thought processes until her computer interrupted her.
“Your pulse has gone up again. Three guesses who you’re thinking about!”
“Shut up Sophia.” Kiren daily regretted buying the emotional computer system that had been all the range thirty years ago, but, after having its circuits hardwired into her own cranial cavity and sensory array for some company, she doubted whether she could have had the thing removed.
“Bet it begins with the letter M?”
“I’m warning you, you senile piece of retardant hardware, I’ll cut your www time.”
“And I’ll cut your bank account off, you know you can never remember the pins by yourself.” Kiren’s pupils swelled another millimetre or so, shutting her mouth, her muttering was not helping the stares.
“Anyway enough baiting, you’re never going to guess where the Bio Mec Gladiator championships are being held.”
“Mmmm.” This was probably safer than saying anything to the deranged computer.
“New London stadium.”
“WHAT” Everyone in earshot looked at her, above in the sky rise apartments a baby began wailing. She ignored the stares, ducked her head and strode forward quickly to get out from under the eyes.
“Exactly as you predicted, even that big wig the head of the United European Federation and his pals from the European Congress are coming to watch the games before voting for the preliminary Biomechanical Standardisation Paper... Wow BIG pulse surge that time.”
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Now we find that idiot Davis, extract him from whatever zed he’s got himself into this time and get our arses out of this Godforsaken weather before I rust.”
“Ahhh mi amour.”
“Shut UP Sophia.”
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