Lucie woke up at 1302 that afternoon. After the traditional weekly Friday parties held by the highest 3 classes of each grade- this time it was 720's turn- Lucie couldn't sleep. So she had taken 3 insta-sleep pills; she'd needed two, the chemical imbalance causing her to sleep for 13 hours.. Oops, she thought. At least it's a Saturday. After turning off her levi-bed, she walked out the door of her dorm, on floor 79- to find the door was closed. Bam! Lucie's nose banged against her door, and she reflexively put her hand to her face. With every pulse of her heartbeat, she felt as if someone was banging her nose with a hammer.
She pulled her hand back to find it covered in warm and sticky blood. The automatic door opened, finally. Too late, though. She dashed out to the med station,- 2 floors down- her nose gushing blood throughout her journey. In the med station, she found Klaira.
"Oh, hi, Klaira. Um, what are you doing here?" Lucie asked awkwardly; she didn't want her Class leader to see her with a painful bloody nose. Klaira just nodded in the direction of the med-bot coming, obviously towards Klaira, with a IV in its hand. Lucie blushed, not feeling observant.
The whole 5 minutes she spent in the med center was humiliating. She felt Klaira's hot glance scrutinizing her the whole time, while the med-bot applied healing nano-serums to her broken nose. She was relieved to run out the door, almost forgetting her payment. She quickly scanned her eyechip on the register and sprinted out. 10 MTs, just for a bloody nose!
After that quite awkward encounter, Lucie headed over to the mall on the 80-87th floors. She first walked to the ebook library, where she picked out a tablet titled My Datachip Boyfriend, a recently released story about a girl who created a computer program to act as her boyfriend. The librarian smiled at Lucie as she check the tablet out with her eyescreen. "Miss Surrey, this is due back in one week. Did you return Nanochip: A History?" asked the librarian. Lucie nodded, put the tablet onto a cart, eyescreened the lock, and left.
After leaving the ebook store, she took the hover-lifter to the 84th floor, where the clothing store was. The store attendant helped her pick out a black nano-fiber dress for next week's party- her Class was hosting, and it was traditional for the hosting Class to wear black. She purchased it, wincing at the price (her weekly PA didn't cover the valiant price; she had to chip in to her merit money.)
Her last trip of the day was to the hair salon, where after she showed her PIL, a service-bot clipped, dyed, and styled her hair. An hour later, her natural blonde chin-length hair became chest-length wavy red hair. She paid the 20 MTs and rushed home, happy with her hair.
That night when Lucie went to bed, hair in its dye-set shell, she started to wonder why Klaira was in the med station. She was getting an IV. Maybe she didn't have a gen mod and she needed to have a vaccination? Maybe. But that could only mean one thing. Klaira was an Illegal.
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YOU ARE READING
Timelock
Science FictionThey told us the world had finally achieved peace. But they lied to us. The world is at war. We didn't know. Why? The whole United States is covered in a Timelock trapping us in our own perfect society.
