Hacking the Sun [Old Version]

Chapter 1.2 Dreams of yet another Retro Geek

Hey oh

Listen what I say, oh

I got your hey oh

Now listen what I say, oh...

"Stop Playback."

Pine Rim Hovels read the wooden sign, green-painted pines, and a rising sun underneath. Like Jessica's home complex, its walk-through scanner spoke as she whimsically walked by.

"Welcome, guest of suite 31."

Lithely and with a grin, she skipped down a red carpet between ivory walls, still dressed in her jumpsuit uniform. She carried another box carrier all the way down to the sliding room door with a bright number 31. She then slid a different card into the scanner slot.

Inside the apartment room, Jessica saw the back of a sofa draped by long, white hair. The head turned and revealed the face of an elderly woman, whose smile the sun envied. "Hey Jess," she said warmly.

"Heeeey, Beth." Jessica lifted her brows and the box. "Know what I brought? The usual. See, you didn't even have to guess. It's got that special cheese and e'erything."

Beth's sofa lay beside a cabinet painted blue, a color that warped into the flanking dresser and the walls. The blue came in spiral shades, like the inner sea. Before the elder woman lay an ottoman whose holoprojector was playing the news: TNN, a live segment where aliens and humans conversed in white coats and black suits.

Jessica placed the carrier on the kitchen counter. Four squares marked on a porcelain stove, which carried tin teapot below the standard exhaust hood. She couldn't help but eye Beth, who sat mildly entranced by the television.

"...The New Pharaoh of Egypt recently held a conference with delegates from The Chinese Confederacy in order to renegotiate the budget for trans-national infrastructure. Namely..."

Beth broke away from the hologram. "Jess," she said. "I prepared tea and forgot. Be fantastic and turn on the kiln, would you?"

After tapping the stove interface, Jessica grabbed the stool on one end of the sofa.

"Anything new happen today?" Beth began.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," she said, taking a seat.

"That's strange for someone who only notices everything."

"Nah. Some customers cool and-or respectable, and the usual normies who need help in this spotless cesspool. By the way, my average travel time rounded to thirteen minutes, with two-hundred and forty-seven officially on the job."

"Less than last time."

"Chya! But not by much, considering the district stretches twelve miles in every direction. Tacquizza leaves a six-mile radius every way."