Anna In The Garden

24

24

"Welcome to Kitsune Sector, Nimue District. Scheduled weather patterns today are dull, with light, misty rain followed by brighter patches to the end of the day-cycle. Tonight, it will be cold and wet, with clouded sky-plain right up to the next Sector. Please exit by the doors to your left and ensure ad reduction is in place."

For the third time, the recorded message played as Ken awaited Kontessa returning from the bathroom. It was like a flashback to their younger days and the weekly air-car ride to the fields that dotted Loki Sector, a breadbasket, the news cycle told them, for the Sectors above and below. Of course, Ken later found out that none of the food made it out of Loki Sector.

Kontessa had always had bladder problems when travelling. Doctors never found anything physically wrong, but Tessa would not even entertain the idea that it was, in some way, psychological. Yet, here they were, ten years later and Tessa couldn't even ride transport tubes without needing to evacuate her bladder. How she'd held it in this far, Ken would never know.

Back straight. Expression on her face that dared Ken to say something, Kontessa strode towards the seating area, arms swinging. Ken rolled her eyes and then rolled her body back to a standing position. The weather recording started its monologue once again, informing no-one but Ken and Kontessa.

"Ready? I mean, we're only running from Trace: Sinister and all. No rush." It seemed strange to see Kontessa with the virt-face that Ken's cloaking tech had sloughed over her sister's face, even fooling Ken, who had set it up. "You know, maybe I should lock that face cloak in place. You don't seem so sickly sweet and innocent."

"And you don't look like you're going to steal everything someone has." Without thinking, Tessa raised a hand to her face. Of course, she'd only see and feel her own face. "You know, I was using my slate, to see what this face looked like, and one of my eyes is definitely larger than the other. And higher. Should it be like that?"

"It's exactly as it should be. I made composites of new faces and made adjustments is all, including allowing us to see our own new faces." With the questioning look, Ken sighed. For a smart woman, Tessa showed a distinct lack in her education. "No face is symmetrical. Not a single one. The human mind sees symmetry in a face, it automatically knows something isn't right. If we're going to get through this, we need to blend in."

Tessa looked around at the silent transport tube concourse and Ken knew what she was thinking. You can't blend in to somewhere without other people around. Information about Kitsune Sector was as sketchy and threadbare as they come. She had had to rely on rumours and whispers about the lowest habitable Sector and even then, she had found little of anything to go by.

Rumour had it that Kitsune Sector was on the brink of ghosting. Although not a single source could agree with any other exactly why Kitsune was ghosting. Some said overpopulation was causing massive famine, others that a virulent disease had broken out, still others that a breach in the surface of the Tether wall threatened to tear the entire towering structure apart. No consistency. No collaboration. No confirmation.

Ken hated that. She liked facts. She liked absolutes, even though the 'verse seemed to despise absolutes. She liked to know exacting things, not possibilities or maybes. That no-one could come to any kind of consensus about the status of Kitsune Sector made Ken itch to run and disappear. But she couldn't, her obsessive need to know what was happening with the media, the dives into that girl's dreams, made it impossible for Ken to ignore it. Or run away. Why Tessa had followed her, Ken didn't know.

"The transport tubes for inter-Sector travel downwards are on the other side of the Sector, almost five miles away as the crow-bot flies." Staring at her slate, Tessa pointed in a direction, and set off towards the exit doors.