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« on: March 30, 2005, 03:38:07 pm »
Happy X Block
1
I followed Mr. Brown to the public bathroom on my floor - 667, It wasn't that my office didn't have a bathroom, it was just that I didn't have to clean my bathroom if I didn't use it. Lazy? Hmm, practical I'd say. I'd won the office in a competition run on the back of Happy Flakes boxes a few weeks ago and had been given the entry code yesterday - Monday morning. I'd entered every Happy Flakes competition since the corporation had taken over Kellogg's back in '34; I was 5 then and had wanted my very own Authentic Pre Optical Processing Retro Gaming System Featuring 23000 of the worlds best games from 1982 - 2019. I hoped it contained Jet set Willy, I wasn't disappointed, Larry Greenbaum down the road had won the thing and showed it to me briefly before the death defying Scrid wrestling match that landed him in hospital for a year. I never spoke to Sucker Face after that. My parents couldn't afford to buy me an RGS of my own. But at least I won the office.
I'm 34.
Happy X Block was the 10th (you might have guessed) self contained business/residential block and the first with a fully fledged independent A.I. running the show. It had opened last week and since then every available apartment and business space was being snapped up by those eager to start anew. Happy X was filled to bursting point and they hadn't yet opened anything above 955, the final 45 levels - the expensive stuff was up there - the luxury con-apts - the law offices.
Sorry I haven't introduced you; Reader, meet Mr. Brown, an electronic strip on the ground that leads you to the nearest bathroom. There are loads of these guys all over the place. Mr. Yellow will help you find any business premises you're looking for, etc. Why they have Mr. Blue shows you to the many lonely singles cocktail bars on 668 is anybody's guess. I don't really have to express my opinion on the naming of Mr. Brown, do I? Fortunately the guide strips are polarised so that only the person following can see them, nobody knows I'm heading to the bathroom. Well that isn't strictly true, Happy X's A.I. does. Everyone in here is 'chipped' supposedly for out personal welfare and protection. All of our personal details are on that chip: Health, credit status, entry codes, criminal record (if you've got one) - all that stuff. I always thought it kind of sinister and since chipping was voluntary on the outside, in the world, I'd never had it done - shop assistants would sigh as I fumbled for my credit card. You had to be chipped to enter a Happy block and the thought of not accepting my prize of the 10 year lease on the office had made me abandon my Luddite ways. Besides I just couldn't afford to pay for my old office anymore and the landlord had already threatened my legs with a garbage truck. I'd taken down the sign from above the door and carried it with me on the train to Happy X. It didn't fit above the door of the new office.
You either had a home and went to work in somebody else's business space, or you had business premises and you lived there too, no-one had both, that would be a crazy waste of space! I have fantastically comfortable couch in my office that doubles as my bed, there's a kitchen and bathroom there too, like I said earlier I don't use my own bathroom, but the kitchen has seen many a great pizza and beer night.
I get to where Mr. Brown is leading me, the public bathroom. I enter, it's empty. Unusual, it's a busy place, 667 has a lot of restaurants and it's lunch time. The cubicles are all open; I enter the nearest one (I could never pee in a urinal - too great a risk of splash-backs). I stop and stare at the quarter slice of Edam cheese sitting on the cistern. Somewhere at the back of my mind I'm laughing hysterically at the bizarreness of this, outwardly I'm just staring at the cheese. I pee, sort my self out then carefully place a plastic bag over the cheese and slip it into a coat pocket. I'm a private detective; I carry plastic bags, ok. I leave the bathroom and buy a no-sugar black decaf coffee, a hi-fibre/lo-fat donut (the junk food world's epitome of pointlessness - I'm kind of charmed by that) and a news sheet at the vending machine mini-mall across the way. I settle down to watch the bathroom entrance alternately glancing at the news sheet, munching and slurping. No-one goes in there, not a soul. After 20 minutes I decide to ask to be shown a bathroom, I sub vocalise this as "Happy X - Show me to the bathroom". I drop my empty cup and donut wrapper (they're swept up by a janibot almost instantly) and fold the news sheet into my pocket. Mr. Brown appears in front of me on the floor leading me away from the bathroom opposite. Strange; I ignore the guide strip and walk over to the bathroom door, it's locked I find this out by banging my face against the glass, usually the door would slide gracefully open, but not this time. I turn around; nobody seems to have noticed my accident except a couple of giggling school girls. I wonder briefly in my dazed state if it's the fedora, the trench coat, or the bleeding nose that was the source of the amusement. My attire is kind of odd in this climate controlled environment, but I've always felt slightly cold in here, it's a couple of degrees warmer in my office. I glance down at the floor; Mr. Brown is insisting I follow back the way I came. I do so having nothing better to do, but clean up my face.
Mr. Brown stops outside my office door, I stop too, but more out of surprise, the nearest public bathroom (other than the one that's closed) is quite a way down the hall, yet the guide strip's insistent little brown arrow is pointing at my office door. I stick my finger in the chip reader and the door slides open. Once inside I polarise the glass, lock the door and dig the cheese out of my pocket.
Now, I like cheese, but I can't say I really ever had a big thing about Edam, odd rubbery stuff. I sit the cheese from the bathroom on the desk and switch on the antique green glass shaded desk lamp Hilary had bought me when I'd opened the first office in Boston. Hilary had a thing for fedoras, old lamps and Edam; she put it on pizza instead of mozzarella - yuck! One of the reasons she isn't here I suppose, the other being that aside from the fedora she eventually decided I was an asshole. Probably true, I'd made an awful big thing of the Edam pizza. The Edam on the desk was getting interesting. The thin edge of the wedge was translucent in the lamp light and there was something inside the cheese. I put on a pair of rubber gloves and failing to find a knife in the drawer I pull the cheese apart with my hands only to discover a human finger, complete with diamond ring buried inside. I drop the cheese reflexively and stumble back from the desk. Nausea washed over me and I made it to and finally christen my bathroom with partially digested coffee and donut. Damn. I doubt I'll ever have a good relationship with Edam at this rate...
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