I woke up lying face down on the sleeper in my Env in Woodlands. A shaft of sun streamed through the window. With one eye open I saw the rose lying on the pillow next to me, and I smiled. I turned my head the other way and looked at the Dev beside the sleeper. 8:45am.
I turned over on my back and scooted my backside up so that I could rest against the wall of the Env. It had changed a lot in the last two weeks since being occupied by Mariko. Books, paper books were piled in stacks around the room.
“Our library,” she had said, as if it were obvious that we needed paper books when we could read them on a Devstick. “A Devscreen with all the titles of the books you have on your Devstick just doesn’t have the same meaning as seeing the spines of real books,” she’d continued as we returned from another visit to the second hand book store on Orchard, near the Hyatt VacEnv. And she was right. I found myself absorbed in the feel of a book in my hands. So different from reading them on the Devstick. It is strange that although paper is such a low-tech medium, it allows for a far more random relationship with the data than a Devstick. What could be more random than laying books on the grass and allowing the breeze to select what you will read? You can’t do that with a Devstick.
Apart from the rose, she had also bought croissants from the French bakery on ground level, three blocks down from my Env, and started the coffee pot. Another new vice that I’d acquired — but then I’d lost a couple as well so maybe I was ahead of the game. Thinking about her I knew I was ahead of the game.
Since that day when we’d returned from the Lev port at Changi and she’d insisted on bringing me back to my Env, I was embarrassed at being that affected by the alky, and she had laughed it away, stripped my outers off me and pushed me into the outlet. I’d showered and felt clean and when I came out of the outlet she’d put new sheets on the sleeper and folded it back for me to crash on. She’d been sitting on the sleeper and patted the empty space exposed by the folded sheet. I’d walked over and laid down. She’d brushed the hair off my forehead and out of my eyes. No one had ever done that before. And it was a first of firsts. I’d fallen into a deep sleep, waking later to see her in the sleeper beside me, her arm over my stomach.
That was fourteen days ago now. I swung my legs out of the sleeper and walked across the padded floor of the Env to the outlet near the door. I took a seat on the recycler and tapped the Devscreen set into the wall opposite. Keeping myself on silent, I hit the menu for my data stream and, with my elbows on my knees and my chin resting on my knuckles, watched the screen. Mariko would be back at 2pm and then we’d go. I rubbed my unshaven jaw. It was unfamiliar to feel the stubble against my fingers, but since I’d resigned from my contribution at Coughington and Scuttle, a lot of things felt unfamiliar to me. I liked the feeling. It felt like I had gotten off a treadmill.
Finished, I pressed a button on the side of the recycler and a blast of ice cold water hit me full force. I yelped and jumped up, the water immediately cutting off. Mariko, I thought, and laughed. She had set the temp to manual and turned it to an icy three degrees Cel. She had a nasty sense of humor. I would have to think up something in return.
I reset the switch on the recycler to automatic and sat back down. A sec later the water, now warm, sprayed and cleaned me. I rose and entered the shower cubicle, but as I did so a new direct datafeed on the Dev caught my eye. It was from my uncle. I hadn’t told him of my decision to quit Coughington and Scuttle, nor of my decision to quit the pro bono work at UNPOL. I had just done it. I had acquired enough self-leave, and as a partner I could leave when I wanted, so I had quit within a week after returning to Earth. After that I had spent all of my time with Mariko when she wasn’t contributing. The rest of my time I’d spent reading and writing. I had never been happier.
I tapped the Dev and saw that my uncle had invited me to lunch at the UNPOL Executive Club located on the Topside of the UNPOL Complex. I thought about replying, and then decided I’d take a shower first, and shave. I checked that the switch of the shower was set on auto and that the temp was set at thirty cel. It was. She hadn’t booby trapped the shower as well as the recycler, and while I showered I occupied my mind thinking of how I would pay her back for her prank.
Coming out of the shower, I stepped into the dryer and the warm air blasted the water off my body, sanitizing at the same time. Once out of the dryer I looked at myself in the mirror that ran above the counter of the outlet. A single wash basin occupied the counter along with my shaver. I ran a hand over my jaw. I hadn’t planned on shaving today, however I hadn’t planned on the lunch with my uncle either, and now both were things I had to do.
I studied myself in the mirror. I hadn’t really paid any attention to what I looked like before, but Mariko had touched me in so many little ways and this was one of them. I wanted to look good for her. There were wrinkles at the corner of my blue green eyes. I could have them disappear with a little regen but I thought they suited the tanned face they were in. My light brown hair was long, longer than it had ever been. I hadn’t had it cut or styled in over three months. Usually I’d had it done once a month, to a level above the collar on my outers.
I am of average height at one hundred and eighty-six cents and slim, weighing in at seventy-nine kilogs. My shoulders are slightly stooped and I have to remind myself to stand up straight all the time. Mariko said that the rounded shoulders came from me thinking so much with my jaw resting in the palm of my hand. An image that conjured up another image, that of the runner who had called himself Jibril and who had disappeared. I picked up the shaver and ran it over my face, its wide laser removing my facial hair without a touch. The skin underneath was a slightly whiter shade than the rest of my face, but nothing that a casual observer would notice. Sir Thomas will notice, I thought, and I ran my hand again over my chin, leaning forward across the counter to be nearer the mirror, checking for any missed spots. I didn’t find any and thought ruefully of how nervous meeting my uncle made me. That had never changed. My uncle still inspired a childish fear in me, the fear that I had done wrong and was now going to be held accountable.
I exited the outlet and went back into the main room, threading my way between the containers that held mine and Mariko’s sparse belongings. Outers and inners mainly, but hers also held a collection of images of family and friends in image frames, plus objects gathered on her travels. When she had first moved into my Env, and we had collected her belongings from the EnvDorm on Orchard, I was surprised at the amount of baggage she had with her. Just as she was surprised when, the day after they’d returned from the Moon, she’d asked me how long I had been in the Env. When I’d told her four years, she had gone wide-eyed.
“Four years!” she’d exclaimed. “There’s nothing in here at all. It looks like a VacEnv.” And she was right. It did look like a VacEnv — there was nothing to show that the Env was mine, nothing except my Dev and my clothes.
There were two empty containers that sat on the floor nearest the shelves that contained our outers and inners. I was supposed to pack those and then this afternoon when she returned from the UNPOL Complex we would pack the car that was arriving at 3pm and set off for our new Env on the beach in Kampung Tanjung Sisik.
I walked across to the shelves that held my remaining unpacked inners and outers, and putting on my inners, leafed through the outers on the shelf. I decided to go and cred some new outers. I dressed quickly, poured myself a half cup of coffee from the pot that Mariko had put on earlier that morning, and took a gulp, putting the cup back down. Grabbing my Devstick off the sleeper side table, I walked to the door of my env and said, “Leaving.”
I turned right, heading the sixty meters down the corridor to the Lev port. I’d been lucky to get the Env on the twentieth level, but now the plastic walls hemmed me in and I couldn’t wait for that moment when I informed the Env Dev that I was leaving permanently. The molded Env with its smooth one piece cream interior just didn’t seem like the place to be anymore, and I thought of the work that needed to be done on the beach house. I was looking forward to the work, it would be fun to do, and I hadn’t had much fun my life.