1 Bleach And Citrus

The lights overhead hummed with electric charge as the rooms disinfectant mist system buzzed and released an almost invisible mist of disinfectant that smelled heavily of bleach, chlorine, and citrus. The smell startled Ayla from her restless sleep. Ayla sat up blinking rapidly forcing her eyes to adjust and pull her mind from the nightmarish memory she faced only moments ago.

"Lights on" she said frantically with tension in her voice. Her body was trembling. Her breaths came in gasps. She gulped in air as if she were drowning in a deep sea.

'Calm down, its fine, this isn't that place.' She told herself over and over. She gripped her comforter tightly pulling it up to her chin. The comforter became dotted with small wet spots from the tears that ran silently down her cheeks.

The lights flickered on buzzing overhead. She looked over at the photo propped on her bedside table in an old school metal photo frame. The frame was made of metal roses that were woven around each other.

"Good morning family' She forced a smile on her face while looking at the photo fighting the emotional surge that berated her mind.

The eight by ten photo was one of the last memories she had of her family. Her eyes lingered on the eyes of her family recalling the memory the photo represented.

A cruise they hurriedly took one summer when her husband had an unexpected break from work. Getting her kids to sit still for the photo instead of rushing into the pool for one last swim before nightfall hit. The beautiful sunset was positioned directly behind them casting lovely rays of orange, purple, red, and pink to cascade on the seemingly calm water in the back drop. Ayla fought against the waves of emotions that the last vacation with her family brought her.

"Will I ever stop dreaming and remembering that awful day? I would much rather remember ya'll on our vacation that what I was reminded of now." She sighed tiredly to no one in general.

She wiped the tears away and looked around the sterile room. Dark brown fake wood flooring grey walls with white trim, No art work or photos on the wall, seemingly barren living quarters. The room had a large electronic window. A desk in front of that window that was all but barren give or take a a couple of small electronic devices and her personalized BIRDIE brand recording device. Her room like all the other Bionic living quarters had a walk in closet an over sized bathroom, and a small kitchen area that was never used. She figured they added the kitchen to her loft to create a sense of normalcy even though it had been many years since she cooked or even ate real food. She called it a kitchen but in reality it was just a refrigerator and a a countertop that looked more like a small bar top. There was no oven or stove or anything like that not even a sink. She only kept nutritional injections and coolant for herself. She did have a couple of bottles of alcohol for when her best friend visited.

Ayla shook her head to shake off the memories of the past. Stretching her arms above her head and taking deep meditative breaths to test the lung capacity of her lungs and running a simple diagnostics on her necessary functions systems.

"Open Curtains" she said in a drawn out voice in the midst of a long yawn.

The window faded from pitch black slowly changing color from the bottom of the window to the top like a curtain on an old stage. She assumed this is why the command for the windows was stated as curtains when transitioning from black to clear because of this odd window feature.

The sun was just starting to rise casting multicolor rays on the concrete and glass jungle view that was her city scape view on the 35th floor of the Bionics Lab building.

"Too bad it cant always be this pretty." She thought aloud admiring the array of light and shadow that seemed to dress the surrounding glass and concrete around her.

She stood and walked to the bathroom doing a standard natural human morning routing of brushing, bathing, and eating. Though she didn't eat normal food she did have a seemingly never ending supply of vital nutrient injections that she used twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. This injection was done through a port located on her left side ribs just under her left breast. This injection of nutrients wasn't really nutrient for organic beings it was more or less a concoction of lubricants and energy that had been put into a more liquid state to refuel the electronic components that now made up her organ systems.

She didn't mind the vital nutrient injections it made her morning routine simple and easy. Though she did miss the taste of food. She often would look at the naturals, envying the fact that they could actually benefit from them. Though she could technically ingest natural foods, it was more akin to throwing it away as she no longer had the ability to digest food. The food would simply be put into a container that was removable by opening the chest cavity. She recalled a time when she forgot to empty it for a couple of days, took forever to get rid of the rotting smell, and sense then she avoided it. Not to mention she would rather let the naturals who needed it to survive have it. With the way things were in the past she just couldn't justify that amount of selfishness just so she could appear to be a Natural. She was required to spend a small amount of money on Natural food to appease the anti Bionic groups, they required a donation for Naturals. Which she was easily fine with providing. So monthly soup kitchen donations were made, though she more than doubled her donation amount compared to the required amount.

There was a faint mechanical beep as BIRDIE her personal recording device awakened. BIRDIE chirped "7:00 am." The weird solo eyelid the device had seemingly blinked though it was really just the camera lens opening. "Today is Friday the 15th, 2100. The weather will be moderate today with partial clouds" stated the little BIRDIE with beak open, revealing a small speaker.

She had modified her BIRDIE to tell her the weather. She found amusement in the BIRDIE model when they first came out as all the models were made to resemble birds. Her BIRDIE model specifically resembled a Quaker Parrot. She dubbed her model Ducky after a real bird she once owned and had fed from the past. Just another reminder of the times and how things have changed.

She heard the whir of her Personal Projector System , PJS for short come down from a small hole in the ceiling of her room. She walked to her bed to straighten her comforter and arrange the pillows. The speakers played a chime that sounded similar to that of an old phone from the past.

"Answer and display on the window." She said in a flat voice.

The window fogged to a sheer white as the image of Dr. Miyamoto appeared on the screen. She took a seat at the desk and facing the large window and Ducky, hovered down to seemingly perch on the desk just as a bird would do.

"Good Morning Miss Ayla!" Dr. Miyamoto 's voice rang out over the rooms speaker system in an overly cheerful voice.

He was always in a good mood, she could swear nothing threw him off, she envied his bright and cheery personality.

Dr. Miyamoto was a tall broad shouldered Jinko decent man. She was always reminded of those overly handsome entertainment artists whose faces looked like they were sculpted to appear attractive to everyone.. His hair was dark and cut unevenly in a standard boring haircut, though his hair wasn't cut exactly and the sides weren't shaved down just a little shorter than the top. His hair was wavy and though he tried to tame it with product, no matter what he did it almost always had a disheveled just hopped out of bed look to it. His eyes were large and dark and had a slight slant to them. She figured he probably wasn't full Asian but that it ran in his family. He had slightly crooked teeth that were as white as fresh snow. Oddly for an Jinko decent male he had a pretty square jawline. He obviously took great care of his appearance though if she asked he would likely never admit to it. He was tall as well, 6'2" she figured. Which for todays times really wasn't exceedingly tall but more closer to average. Somehow over the years taller people seemed to be born more often that short ones.

Dr. Miyamoto cleared his throat. "How did you sleep?"

Ayla sighed "Restless." She frowned recalling her nightmare or memory however you would like to put it.

Since most of her brain was bionic now except for the emotional portions, she didn't often have new dreams just repeating memories of the past.

"Good news then! Soon you should be able to have peace when at rest, we are almost done on the new update that should fix that issue for the most part. Not sure how it will actually effect you until its put into place. We are hoping the new update will also allow you to have a false dream sense occasionally." He smiled broadly at the monitor hoping this news would bring a little cheer and optimism to her.

Ayla nodded her head while deep in thought about what in the world a bionic human could possibly dream about. I mean its not as though she would dream of natural fears or dreams right?

"Have you completed a full systems check this morning?" He asked while focusing his gaze on the mountain of files and paperwork that littered his desk. She watched him start to jot down data and information on a piece of paper and quickly switch to a holographic keyboard to enter in some data on whatever he was working on so early in the morning. She often wondered if he ever stopped working and went home.

"All systems are functioning normally Captain." She said while giving a fake salute and in a voice imitating the voice an mannerisms of an android robot. She might as well make some humor since she now felt more closely akin to basic machinery than to human behaviors.

"I'll plug in and upload the data now. Let me know when you establish a link and ill send over the check and the sleep scan." She said.

She always felt odd sending the sleep scan, she felt like she was just opening up deepest darkest secrets for all of Bionics Lab to sift through like they were searching for gold. She opened a drawer on her desk and pulled out a cable that was attached to the Bionics Lab servers. The slid the cable into a port that was visible on her left forearm just above the wrist. She sent out a signal and accept the connection request from the Bionic Servers.

"Data is downloading." He said smiling at her and then quickly looking away.

She felt her forearm warm as the data was bring sent. The sensation was a little strange especially at first. She figured the closest thing to data heat she had ever felt as a natural would have to be sun bathing, except this was only a small section of her skin instead of her whole body.

Dr. Miyamoto' s eyes returned to the image of Ayla on the screen. "Everything seems to be in order I don't see any red flags in this data, though we will give it a more thorough sweep soon. In a couple of days the new update should be ready to install on the brain systems. So we will schedule that as soon as possible, however the update does appear to be a large update instead of a small maintenance that we thought it would be, so that will require an over night update."

"Let me guess... I get to have a sleep over in the lab again?" She said in a playful tone.

"Looks that way. You know what that means right?" He asked with a cheeky grin.

Ayla laughed "Movies or video games this round?"

Dr. Miyamoto sat back in his office chair and laughed at her response.

"You never grow tired of the good oldies do ya? Since we played fifteen hours of Halo last update why don't we opt for movies" He paused and looked around him as if he was paranoid about someone over hearing the next part of his statement. "I just got my hands on an old DVD player that I was able to retrofit to work with the PJS system." He smiled sheepishly at her.

She knew the only reason he would even go that far after what happened last time when they were caught trying to hardwire into an old TV and almost burned the lab down, just to enjoy some DVD original movies.

"LOTR marathon?" She whispered pushing he face closer to the camera on Ducky.

He nodded enthusiastically "Bring the Hobbit series as well just incase."

She smiled at him.

There wasn't much left from the past that she truly just couldn't bring herself to part with and the original J.R.R. Tolkien movies was one of those things. They had of course been remastered and digitized long ago but there was something fun and nostalgic about popping a DVD or BlueRay into a player versus just streaming it over the network. She was glad she was able to share her appreciation for the oldies with at least one person. It made her current life just a little more bearable.

"Schedule it up and I'll be there. Now if I could only enjoy popcorn and chocolate candy with it." She smiled at the memory of some of her favorite snacks and memories of binge watching the films over and over.

"Don't worry i'll eat enough of both of those for the two of us!" He laughed with excitement.

"I am going to hold you to that. You better eat so much you get a stomach ache!" She said with as much seriousness as she could muster.

They both roared with laughter, the last time they binged watched movies during an update he did in fact eat too much and made himself sick. She felt bad for him after it was all over, even though he only did it to make her feel a little better.

"I'll send you a message with the exact update appointment in the next couple of days. Don't forget to do your physical training today, okay?"

Ayla made a disgusted face at the thought. Though her body is easily capable of exercise and it's not nearly as tiring as it used to be, she still hated it.

Dr. Miyamoto laughed at her expression and gave an awkward wave at the camera before ending the transmission.

Ayla unplugged the cable from her arm and sighed heavily, leaning back in the chair stretching her arms over head watching the PJS retract back into the ceiling and feeling the sun kiss her skin as the window faded back to a clear glass color instead of the start white wall. When the sun hit her face she blinked and looked over at Ducky dropping her arms dramatically onto the desk.

"Ready Ducky?" She asked tiredly.