May 22, 2099 – On the way home

Aaron stood at the Light-Rail station at the Auraria Campus. The music in his ears faded and he heard a pleasant female voice say ‘Alison is calling. Answer?’

“Yes” aloud, and with a grin spreading across his face. “Heya, what’s happening?”

“Not much, just taking a break and I thought I’d call you. Can you go Vid?”

“Yeah, sure.” and followed it with “Command, visual” as he pulled his iPod from it’s belt clip and aimed the screen at his face.

“Where are you?”

“Remember that lecture on mental computing that got postponed?”

“Oh yeah, at Auraria, right?”

“Yeah, well, the guy’s way behind the times so I bailed at intermission. And now I’m about to get on that, and come home,” and he pointed the iPod at the approaching Light-Rail.

“Ooh, fancy, an ML.”, referring to the Maglev train that she could see on the display in her office, “I didn’t know they had the tracks completed through Downtown yet.”

“Well, they do, and this is the Flatiron Express so I’ll be there in fifteen minutes tops.” And he stepped on through the open doors.

Their conversation continued as Aaron stared out the window of the speeding train, US-36 lay twenty feet below him and the lines of traffic blurred into a rainbow. The foothills approached rapidly, as though the train was diving straight into them, and then they suddenly became parallels as the tracks took the train north, toward Flatiron City. Alison’s break was over, pixels changed on the screen of Aaron’s iPod, and the music returned to his ears.

The train slowed in a corner as it left the highway to cozy up to Flatiron Parkway. The three interconnected towers of the Flatiron City reached far into the sky above, and Aarons’ eyes followed their sleek curvature upward until the sun shone too brightly for him to continue. The Maglev abandoned the sun-lit parkway for the massive, fiber-lit, underground parking structure beneath the city. He stepped from the train into the lights of the Flatiron-West Park-n-Ride, headed for the lift, level zero, and rose into the city.

The lights in the lift changed color as it passed upward through each section of the tower, and the wall display showed its’ progress in an animated diagram. Aaron stared absentmindedly at an advertisement for ‘Sub-Zero @ The Colony’ and his mind wandered back down the lift-tube, past the parking structure, to The Colony. A recent addition to the city, The Colony was an entertainment complex buried below the parking structure, and Sub-Zero was the hottest club underground. Aaron had never bothered visiting, but stowed the club in the corner of his mind as a potential date.

The lights in the lift turned a lemony yellow, bringing his thoughts back up through the tube to the 218^th floor. At the 220^th floor the doors opened and Aaron stepped into the nine-story lobby of the Aspen Ridge Apartments. The atrium glowed gloriously in the golden rays of the afternoon sun. Weaving his way along the path, through a grove of aspen trees, he noticed that the escalator to the third level was closed; he would have to take the stairs. At the second level he paused to chat with Peter, the friendly mechanic he often saw fixing one thing or another. He turned left from the L3 landing and mentally counted the doors as he passed them. Stopping at twelve, he touched the biometric scanner, sighed in unison with the hiss of the door, and was home.

January 8, 2099: Sunsets & Sake

“Dear Katsuro

How are you doing, son? Is business going well? I do hope so.

Your father has received another raise; he restored the mainframe to a multi-national corporation who’d left their previous comp-tech firm for destroying said mainframe. To celebrate, we are going to come visit you! We will discuss details when next I call.

The Millers tell me their daughter took a job in a bar where you live, and I remember how much you enjoyed spending time with Rachel, so I thought I would let you know so you could try to find her.

I know I could have told you all of this over the phone, but I knew you would enjoy a letter from me. I’ve also enclosed a bottle of your Aunt’s sake.

We will see you soon. Love,

Mother.”

Katsuro smiled as he stuck the letter up on his fridge. It’d been over two years since he’d seen his parents.

After he moved to Flatiron City, he became too busy to get back to London, setting up his home and supervising construction of his shop. He took his time, of course; no need to wear himself out with a steady allowance from dad. But he insisted on checking progress every day.

Mr. and Mrs. Hanaka tried to get to Flatiron for the Hanaka Nippon grand opening, but a minor emergency came up, canceling the trip.

Katsuro stored the bottle of Sake his mother sent him and settled down at the “bar” for some fresh sushi. He’d just taken his first bite when the phone rang. Swallowing quickly, and nearly choking, he answered, “Tell me something good,” he sputtered.

Rachel laughed through the receiver. “You ok, Katsu?”

“Yeah,” Katsuro tried to regain control over his vocal chords. “I’m only choking on raw shrimp!”

Rachel chuckled again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to kill you.”

Katsuro finally stopped choking. “No worries. So what’s up?”

“Not much, I just thought I’d see what you were up to.”

“Just eating. I don’t have any plans for tonight, you wanna come up? My mom sent me some ‘Mitsuko Sake.’”

“I love that stuff! How do I get there from the club?”

Katsuro swallowed bite of his dinner. “Take E-lift 16 up ten levels, then follow Mountain View Walkway through the courtyard to MV Residential district 3. Take the Elevator to the fifth floor. I’m number 1563.”

“Number 1563,” Rachel repeated. “Got it, I’ll be right there!”

“See you soon,” Katsuro smiled, hanging up the phone. He checked his watch, 4:34, pm.

An hour later, Katsuro heard a knock on his door. “It’s open!” He hollered. Rachel walked in, grinning warmly.

“Sorry it took so long, I got hungry, so I grabbed a snack on the way.” She walked past the kitchen into the sitting room where Katsu sat reading a Japanese novel. “I got you a baguette.”

“Thanks.” Katsuro marked his place in his book and got up. “Let’s head upstairs.”

“Sure thing,” she followed Katsuro up the spiral staircase into the loft.

The sat down on the black leather sofa, facing the west wall. Katsuro picked up a large remote, pushed a button, and a metal blind opened revealing the mountains view, filling the entire west side of the room.

“Wow,” Rachel gasped.

As she stared at the beautiful sunset, Katsuro handed her a warm sake from the glass coffee table. “Kanpai,” he saluted.

“Cheers,” Rachel replied.

Flatiron City …

Giles has a post up at the site, and I just posted mine, go check it out…

Flatiron City

April 17, 2099: A Better Day

Alison Few sat at her desk sipping on Zhang’s Diet Wakeup Juice. She divided her time equally between the paperwork on top of her desk and the binoculars she often kept hidden in it. Looking out over the vast and open interior space of Flatiron City, she paused briefly on another office’s window, passed over the Lacrosse scrimmage in the arena far below, and stopped with great interest at a young man hanging from a support column a few floors down and about a third of the way across the gap. He was wearing coveralls cut-off at the shoulder and was seated solidly in a harness. “Definitely not a jumper’ she thought to herself. She paid no attention to what he was doing, instead focusing on the rippling biceps and what she considered to be a dreamy Eastern European face under a simple Caesar haircut. She was wondering what part of the city he lived in when her thoughts were interrupted. The door to her small office rattled with the knock that she knew belonged to her boss Steve.

“Come in.” She croaked loudly as she slammed the binoculars into the wrong drawer, unknowingly smashing her stash of Oreos into hundreds of little pieces.

“Hey Alison, didn’t meant to startle you. Here’s this weeks expiring contracts list, make the calls, offer ‘em ten percent off first month. We lost a few to the ‘other guy’ last month and, well, the big boss. Yeah, you know. Well, I’ll stop rambling and let you get back to those binoculars, I mean, umm, reports.” And Steve left the room smiling over his shoulder at Alison’s dumbfounded stare. She opened the drawer and moved the binoculars into her purse, determined not to ever get caught with them again, not at work at least. Her boss knew! She reached to shut the drawer and her day went from bad to worse at the sight of Oreo crumbs smashed into the cover of The Grapes of Wrath. Four-thirty was most definitely a long way off.

By Four-twenty-one. Alison had had it, she lost three more contracts to ‘the other guy’ and two to some mom and pop operation she’d never heard of before. She had a run in her hose, the boss knew about the binoculars and the Oreo crumbs had not only ruined The Grapes of Wrath, but also her as-yet-unread issues of both It Takes Two and Dance World. She was leaving nine minutes early and she didn’t care who knew, besides, she had to make a stop at M3Media on the way home, stupid Oreos.

She burst through the apartment door, threw her replacement books onto the coffee table, and was changed into sweats almost before her mother could say hello.

“Ali-hon. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Good, is it chocolate?”

“Oh, honey, did you have a bad day?” The response was muffled by the chocolate-drop in Alison’s mouth, but it sounded something like ‘Mmph young guy, mhmhph boss, binocshmp, stupid Oreos!’ Tears followed, and between the two of them they drained a bottle of Teastone Vineyards 2067 Chardonnay. As she crawled into bed at a very early eight-o-clock, Alison couldn’t help but hope for a better day tomorrow.

A medium sized mug of black tea sat on the table against the wall. Aaron Pickett sat behind it, watching the steam rise and imagining that it was in synch with the light touches of Transient Sage that emanated from the walls. A few forms crossed the teahouse beyond the steam. Outside, beyond the glass, others bustled along the walkway. One of the forms caught his eye and he stood, forgetting his tea. Aaron was almost running when he turned and offered a ‘peace’ sign to Katsuro while backing out the door into the cool mountain air.

“Alison!” She had one foot in the tram before she turned to see who had called her name. She blushed a smile at Aaron and mimed a ‘call me’ as the doors closed on the E-train, 8:50 A.M. It was still early and the day was already looking good.

Aaron and his impeccable sense of timing walked into the lobby of Mountain City Home Services five minutes before lunch. Alison looked at him through her open office door, and over the top of her glasses.

“I thought I told you to call me.” She said, her smile betraying the serious voice with which she said it.

“Well, if you’re gonna be that way about it, then I might have second thoughts about buying you lunch.”

“No you wont.” She smiled. “So where are you taking me?” she asked, looking back at her display and feigning disinterest.

“Boulder, Pearl Street to be exact.”

Aaron spoke of the classic out-door mall as though it were McDonalds, but they both knew it was to be a special afternoon. The shops and restaurants of Pearl Street drifted past and Alison could barely feel the cobblestones beneath her feet. She stayed an hour late at work to make up for the two-hour lunch, and practically floated into the apartment that evening, glowing visibly. Her mother smiled. It had most definitely been a better day.