Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

After a long pause on the floor below her, the elevator doors slid open. She nearly barreled into an elderly man as he stepped off.

“Excuse me!” she blurted. The man, unoffended, looked her up and down and whistled. It sent a chill up her back, but was it’s own kind of reassurance. She flashed a crazy grin at the man and hammered the button for the fiftieth floor lobby. He gaped at her, smiling. Thankfully the doors shut before the pervert could put whatever crossed his mind into words. She fussed with her troublesome reflection in the elevator walls for the entire thirty floors down to the lobby. Better this than obsessing over the clock . She did anyway.

Finally, the doors opened on the fiftieth floor. The lobby looked nicer than it had any right to, especially considering the apartments in the place. A broad arcade of windows looked out over the main landing pad and Superway terminal beyond. They’d even sprung for shrubs, pathetic though they were. Her heels clacked a furious rhythm on the linoleum floor as she sped toward the front entrance. At the front desk, the block manager’s head snapped up at the sound.

“Ms. Ray! Ms. Ray!” he called after her. She pretended not to hear, entering the revolving doors. The bald squat little man pursed his lips then held a button behind the desk. The revolving doors stopped, trapping Liani inside.

“Ms. Ray,” he cleared his throat loud over the intercom in the entrance, ”you are aware that your account is fifteen days delinquent?” Liani pushed at the door. Over 300 tenants in his block alone, and he remembers everyone’s name and rent status.

“Well aware, Mr. Korvan! I’m on my way to an interview right now so I can fix that!” She folded her arms so she couldn’t yank out her carefully styled hair. In the long pause that followed, she thought about trying to break the glass with one of her heels.

“The full balance, including rent and late fees, is due by the end of the month, or eviction will follow.” A buzz came over the intercom and the doors resumed spinning. They almost knocked her down. She stumbled out onto the sidewalk then stormed off toward the terminal.

The train arrived as she did. A long, snaking row of segmented cars hung from the mag-lev rail. The Superway network could take you across town in minutes, but you had to pass security, pay for entry, and catch a train first, a tricky business in this part of town. Eff these heels! Liani retracted them, ran flat-footed to the turnstyles, and passed her forearm over the scanner. But instead of the good beep, it screeched with the bad beep. Text flashed red in her Neural display.

“Overdraft Warning,” a digital voice said in her ear, “press ‘Accept’ to withdraw the funds from savings with a surcharge, or ‘Decline’ to—” Liani punched ‘Accept,’ hoping that she might somehow break the simulated button. The usual tiny vibration of a button press was all she got. Liani pushed through the retracting gate, sprinted through the closing train doors, and found a seat.

She didn’t have much time to enjoy the commute. Only three minutes to cross the twenty mile span from her building into downtown. All the same, she kept her eyes glued to the clear bubble canopy of the train car. To the left and right of the suspension rail, the off-white, stained buildings of her Inner Ring neighborhood passed. Liani’s place would have been considered a high-rise a few decades ago. Her floor might have even been penthouse level. But as the final alley of scrapers passed in a blur, the glowing blue splendor of the midday Center Ring appeared. In its beating heart, the Trade Mesa. A gargantuan, flat-topped structure that sat lower than the thicket of shining towers around it, but dwarfed them all in scale. Only Sedonia Tower stood above and behind it in grandeur. The curves of over a hundred different superway rails converged on the Mesa, and steady streams of air traffic filed in and out of thousands of open ports.

She missed Mesa Park. The three-square-mile green preserve that stretched out from the southern base of the Mesa. Trees, shrubs, boulders, gardens, ponds, and lakes. She could almost smell the fresh air through the Plexiglas. Each day before a shift at GloboMetro, she’d been able to steal an hour to go running through the elaborately woven paths, passing Sedonia City’s best and brightest as they did the same. For the first time, she had felt comfortable. Confident. At home. And now because of that fucking stunt, I’ve got one last shot at it all. Then it’s back to bartending… or jail. Bitterness and nerves crept back in, spoiling the sight of blowing leaves and shimmering blue pools. She took out her compact mirror and fidgeted with her makeup for the last minute of the trip.

The Superway rail banked left and dipped out of Mesa Plaza, heading into the sweeping grid of towers. The GSBC Channel 17 headquarters appeared, twenty blocks or so from the Plaza. It’s angular structure and shining windows would have made it impressive on its own, but it looked sadly average in this sector.

Another ten blocks flew by before she reached the connection station. She hoped her luck would continue and there would be at least one shuttle waiting for her to just grab and make it to the office. She waited at the door for the train to stop, glancing feverishly at her watch. 9:58 AM… come-on come-on COME-ON! Finally, the train hummed to a halt and the hatch flashed open. She bolted out onto the platform toward the shuttles. Watched helplessly as a passenger entered the last one, closed the gull-wing door, and floated away.

She felt the second meltdown of the day boil up into her temples, but by now people were noticing her. From TV, she hoped… not because she’s a crazy lady in an ugly blazer on the verge of leaping from the platform to end it all as a bloody stain a hundred meters below in the Foundation levels. The arriving troupe of shuttles yanked her from the whirlwind in her head.

“Ooh ooh OOH!” She ran as fast as heels could go to the first one in line and hopped in. 10:01 AM … maybe their clocks are slow… or mine’s fast? Mine’s fast. Calm down, Liani. She sat up straight and smoothed the wrinkles from her outfit.

In front of her pounding heartbeat, Liani Ray was all charm and smiles on her way through the megalithic GSBC lobby. The morning sun streamed in through towering arches, bathing the vast flowing chamber. She felt good. Scared shitless, but good. It would be nice to finally toss off the weight of the conspiracy. Wait ’til they see this. It’ll be like a dropped a bomb on the place… this is just the beginning. An intern almost ran her over on his way through the doors. He was gone before she could think of something passive-aggressive to say, but then she noticed the rest of them. Other interns, reporters, fact-checkers, managers, art directors, cameramen, crew-men. All ran to and fro through the lobby. Some babbled into Neural screens or to one other as they rifled through floating interface. She caught bits and pieces of conversations as she wove her way to the high front desk at the back of the room. They added up to something big.

“What the hell do you mean, it’s still raw?! We need those shots cut together five minutes ago!”

“Are we sure about this wording?”

“If you don’t have final approval, then put me on the line with someone who does!”

“No way we can air that!”

“…well figure it out! ‘Massacre’ doesn’t exactly have the best connotation…”

Massacre? She waved off the sinking in her chest as she approached the front desk.

“Excuse me,” she said. The receptionist didn’t seem to hear. She almost said it again when the woman reached over and pointed to the scanner panel on the front of the desk.