Chapter 5: Dreams Of Yet Another Retro Geek Part 3

"Stop Playback."

Pine Rim Hovels read the wooden sign, green-painted pines and a rising sun underneath. Like Jessica's home complex, its walk-through scanner spoke as she whimsically walked by.

"Welcome, guest of suite 31."

Lithely and with a grin, she skipped down a red carpet between ivory walls, still dressed in her jumpsuit uniform. She carried another box carrier all the way down to the sliding room door with a bright number 31. She then slid a different card into the scanner slot.

Inside the apartment room, Jessica saw the back of a sofa draped by long, white hair. The head turned and revealed the face of an elderly woman, whose smile the sun envied. "Hey Jess," she said warmly.

"Heeeey, Beth." Jessica lifted her brows and the box. "Know what I brought? The usual. See, you didn't even have to guess. It's got that special cheese and e'erything."

Beth's sofa lay beside a cabinet painted blue, a color that warped into the flanking dresser and the walls. The blue came in spiral shades, like the inner sea. Before the elder woman lay an ottoman whose holoprojector was playing the news: TNN, a live segment where aliens and humans conversed in white coats and black suits.

Jessica placed the carrier on the kitchen counter. Four squares marked on a porcelain stove, which carried tin teapot below the standard exhaust hood. She couldn't help but eye Beth, who sat mildly entranced by the television.

"...The New Pharaoh of Egypt recently held a conference with delegates from The Chinese Confederacy in order to renegotiate the budget for trans-national infrastructure. Namely..."

Beth broke away from the hologram. "Jess," she said. "I prepared tea and forgot. Be fantastic and turn on the kiln, would you?"

After tapping the stove interface, Jessica grabbed the stool on one end of the sofa.

"Anything new happen today?" Beth began.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," she said, taking a seat.

"That's strange for someone who only notices everything."

"Nah. Some customers cool and-or respectable, and the usual normies who need help in this spotless cesspool. By the way, my average travel time rounded to thirteen minutes, with two-hundred and forty-seven officially on the job."

"Less than last time."

"Chya! But not by much, considering the district stretches twelve miles in every direction. Tacquizza leaves a six-mile radius every way."

"You travel that fast on your board?" Beth asked with a hint of concern.

"Maybe..."

"Well, maybe you need to be careful. The worst part of your being reckless is that I have to sound old and tell you to be careful, and that's just not okay, Jess. You take pleasure in making me feel old?" She flicked at the gravity board below Jessica's feet

"I got my airbag!" Jessica said, pointing to her collar. "I have to be quick, Beth. Remember? Customer interactions are variables. There was that one time this chic made me wait thirty minutes to have money transferred to her account. My OCD kicked in; interactions should not exceed delivery time."

"Well, at least you're a dedicated worker. You're a good delivery... girl skater."

"Well, I'm no half-asser."

Beth laughed softly. "You must be very busy because I have yet to find better than Tacquizza's tacos. Pizza's not terrible either."

"Other places are just stingy with the meat. That's all it is. Customers like their pork, but they don't like itty bitty pieces cut into another dimension."

"Anything to make meat invisible to the Azareans, Jess. They have that curious little attitude toward meat."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but Tacquizza is family-owned, you know? Owners don't treat the cows like meatÑthat sounds weird. Animal husbandry is sophisticated. Sophisticated is what it is. So, you have the aliens funding the diets so long as the animals aren't treated like dirt... or animals. English is terrible, and I'm getting bored talking about this. "

Beth snickered. "You get tired of knowing everything, hmm?"

"What are ya watching?" Jessica pointed at the hologram.

"Television."

Jessica's lips curled into a smirk. "What is on the television?"

"That political stuff kids don't much care for, or adults for that matter. World 'leaders' debating who gets more water."

"Is water becoming scarce again?"

"No, they just want more of it."

"Ah."

"Then Russia keeps threatening to leave the World Union, for the seventeenth-thousandth time." Beth shook her head. "A lot of hot smoke, but that doesn't stop anyone from saying they'll do this or do that"

"Way more childish than your great grandfather's time, right?"

Beth tapped the sofa cushion next to her as a gesture to sit. Jessica sat in a pretzel beside her, removing her colorful hat and setting it on her knee.

"You spend quite a bit of time outside," Beth started. "Do you see a lot of violence while you're out there?"

Jessica rolled her eyes in brief consideration. "Conflict, yea. Violence, almost never."

"My father told me things that he learned from his father, and his father before that. Great Grandpapa..." Beth turned her whole body, brandishing her six-sided star necklace. "He was a passionate man in a time where passions were designed for wealth. He reserved his passion for everyday people and justice. In his time, people killed one another because of something as silly as skin color, 'race' they called it. And people with so much moneyÑall the money the worldÑcould circumvent the law, break promises, and control governments without running for office."

Jessica listened with eyes like a lynx, intent upon Beth's every word. Her intensity expressed a measure of disbelief, but she was fascinated all the same.

"The worst weapon used against everyday people in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, remember what it was?"

"Epistemology," Jessica answered.

Beth nodded. "So much money was invested in misinformation, that criminals found their place in government, wars occurred without cause or without people's notice. Or worse, people thought there was a cause where none existed, and some were actually convinced that humans had no effect on climate. Or worse, they knew and denied it for personal gain."

"But that sounds so far-fetched!" Jessica stammered.

"I know it does."

"So, what did your great-grandfather do?"

"Well, he kept going, and going, and going, and he almost became a figure who could enforce a revolution."

"I know the end of this story..."

More somberness from Beth' eyes. "It means the world to me that he tried, but this has become a very gloomy conversation. You shouldn't be putting up with an old woman's gloominess, Jess."

"Pero Beth, I'm too curious. Only reason I don't ask about it is because I don't want to bother you, too much."

"You most certainly do not bother me. Only every time you visit."

Jessica and Beth exchanged glances before they burst into laughter. Beth leaned in and wrapped Jessica in a bear hug. Her tall figure always engulfed yet never overwhelmed.

"I listened to that song you like, the other day," Beth mumbled. "It's older than me."

Jessica gently parted from her arms. "Which of the thousands?"

"The one with the guitar, where the girl sings about bad reputations."

"You're welcome." Jessica checked her watch. "Frak, I have to go."

"Oh, yea?"

"It's about time to go nocturnal."

"Whelp, I won't keep you. Just be sure to stay safe andÑI did it again."

Jess put on her hat, grabbed her board, and made her way to the door. "See you, Beth."

"Guten nacht, Jess. And noches buenas. Did I get it?"

Jessica grinned. "Yep. And almost." When the door slid open, she departed.

Outside the door to Beth's room, she reflected. Every night in that apartment delivered another dose of life. She needed nothing more.

***

"Welcome back, Jessica." Back to her little room, number 59. First, she slid her finger down the white pad beneath Stevie Nicks. "Autobots, roll out!" It originated a tiny red light that quickly burned blue.

All of a sudden, the entire room's furniture shifted. The bed carried upward and disappeared into the hanger closet while both shelves began sliding toward each other, to the center. Very quickly, the room assumed a new layout.

To the left, where the shelf used to be, rested a kiln counter-top lacquered black. A mannequin decorated the far-left corner, outfitted with a blue Star Fleet uniform; her skin tingled every time she remembered the bidding war. The prized possession looked flashy next her second most prized possession, the coffee maker.

The far right held a black and white poster of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs back-to-back, each armed with a pair of sunglasses and an iPhone Ð Apple Inc. Saints it read. Directly to the right was a new standout feature, a crescent desk attached to the wall. The arrangement brought a keyboard, mouse, and a black holoprojector whose slithery shell matched the sleek desktop underneath. The desktop bore black and blue grooves, blue with a neon glow. Also, it had stickers.

The arrangement had its own desk and a mesh chair that unfolded from the shelf, a chair with wheels. On either side of the cone projector were two miniature figurines: R2D2 on the right, BB-8 on the left. In front and dominating the wall, a large poster displayed white letters: R, W, B, Y, and four female silhouettes in a polychromatic background: red, white, dark grey, and yellow respectively.

Finally, the shelf revealed a silk screen divider. Jessica unfolded the screen around her little nook, shielding herself with the bat symbol. Once obscured, she sat upright on the mobile chair. "Babel, on."

"Voice signature recognized." Several monitors illuminated above the projector, together rendering the hi-res image of a wild feline. "Good evening, Lynx."