M. Darusha Wehm - Beautiful Red

The figure stood beside Jacks bed and looked down at hersleeping form. Maybe she sensed his presence because sheturned ever so slightly.
He leaned toward her, his 5 oclock shadownearly scratching against her chin. Good morning, Jack, hesaid, his voice low and gravelly.
What the fuck! Jack woke up immediately,terrified and energized by the unexpected presence in herbedroom. She sprang toward the figure, jumping through hisbody and punching a button on the console sitting on the table atthe side of her bed. The image of the intruder flickeredonce, twice, then disappeared.
Jack sat on the side of her bed, panting withexertion and adrenaline. This alarm clock sucks, she saidaloud, even though she was alone in the room. That was noseductive stranger, she said, reading the currently selectedsetting on the holographic Personal Wake-Me-Up unit by herbed. She punched a few buttons and selected chirping birdsfrom the scrolling menu of options charmingly titled Who do youwant to wake you up?.
With my luck it's a fucking swarm ofvultures. Jack hit save, blinked a few times and around herroom.
The sun, such as it was, peeked through thewindow as the 'glass automatically turned from opaque totranslucent. There hadnt been a decently bright day inyears; it had been so long that Jack wondered if it were one ofthose nostalgic false memories that old people were notorious forsharing with anyone who would listen. "Back in my day," theywould say, "the sky was blue and so was the ocean, and everyone washappy and healthy and beautiful."
Bullshit, Jack thought. The air was alwaysfull of crap, even when she was a kid. Sure, it might havebeen bright, but it still stank and made people sick. Atleast no one got sick anymore. The vaccines took care ofthat.
Jack stood up and walked the ten paces to hertiny bathroom. She did what she needed to do then strippedoff her underpants and turned on the shower. After washing thenights grime off both her body and the bathroom, she dried offunder the blower and wandered over the the eating area.
Calling it a kitchen would be an insult to theconcept. She grabbed a breakfast bar out of the economy sizedbox near the fridge and slopped coffee into her cup. Shepulled her uniform out of her autoclave and got dressed. Fucking blue daisy, she thought, distastefully, looking at the logoof her employer embossed on the back pocket of her regulationtrousers. She wondered, not for the first time, if anyone atBellis International had ever even seen a real daisy - blue, greenor any other colour.
She stuffed half of the breakfast bar into hermouth and the other half into one of the utility pockets in herpants. On her way to the door, she went online by thinkingthe right combination of phrases to make it happen. The chipsin her brain whirred and clicked; at least, Jack liked to imaginethat they did something like that, but she couldn't actually feelor hear anything. She absentmindedly rubbed the area behindher left ear where the chips were implanted. She shudderedslightly as the image of her home workstation superimposed itselfover her vision and her personal startup chime sounded in herear.
She had a handful of messages from the nightbefore, but she figured on reviewing them at her desk. Workhad been dull at Bellis lately, so catching up on mail was a goodway to ease into the day. Work at Bellis has always beendull, Jack thought, it just had been even more slow recently thanit had been in the past. I guess there isnt a whole lot tosecure these days, she thought, grabbing her jacket which wascovered with the words Bellis International Security in large font,encircling an image of a sad looking blue daisy locked up inchains. Jack hated the blue daisy logo that Bellis slapped oneverything, so she took a perverse pleasure in the Securitydepartments version of the design.
Jack clomped down the stairs of her building,passing a couple of neighbours along the way. They did notacknowledge each other at all; Jack had never spoken to any of theother people who lived in her building. Most of the timeeveryone had that thousand yard stare that comes from paying 98percent attention to their desktops and 2 percent attention to thephysical world. Given proximity sensors and integrated globalpositioning and mapping systems, no one really had to pay attentionto where they were going.
Jack pushed open the front door of the building,an old-school heavy door made of real glass and wood. Therewas no doubt that it was the nicest part of the building - theinterior was broken into tiny cubicle apartments, just like almostevery other building in this city and every other city. Hardly anyone lived in more than 200 square feet of space perperson and many people lived in less. But of all the shittyapartments she could have chosen, Jack liked this one. Thebuilding door was cool; you hardly ever saw real wood anymore, andthe amenities inside her tiny apartment were thoroughly up todate.
As she exited the building, Jack reflexivelylooked up and down her street. Her neighbourhood wasn't knownto be particularly dangerous, but there were always people on thestreets looking for handouts either by begging or bygrabbing. Even though she rarely carried valuables, Jackwasn't about to be accosted. Partly it was common urbandefensiveness and partly it was years of security training, as Jackscanned her lines of sight, checking for streeters while she moved purposefully down the street toward the train line.
Jack owned an second-hand electric scooter thatshe'd had an old friend of a friend modify to run hybridly onbiodiesel for extra distance and speed, but parking was exorbitanteverywhere and Bellis didn't spring for it for a lowly SecurityOfficer Class 5. Only people high up in management, the kindwho could afford parking on their own, got to have spots paid forby the firm. So Jack was waiting at the train stop, alongwith the rest of the downtown workers from her neighbourhood.
At least the trains were regular and fast. But their users paid the price of the trains' efficiency, which isthat everyone used them, so they were usually crowded. As thenext train whizzed to the stop, a small throng of people surgedinto its few small doorways and crammed into the already fullcars. Jack found herself wedged between a young looking womandressed in fashionable but inexpensive business wear and an olderlooking young man who was obviously a courier. He had skateshoes on, and they looked well used but of excellent quality. Jack could hardly see the propulsion jets at the heels and couldn'tsee wheels at all. She recognized the man as one of thecouriers that Bellis Corporate used.