The Receiver

1 1 - S P O T L E S S

Our trip across the city takes less than ten minutes, but that's more than enough time for me to doubt every step I take that brings us closer to the Technocractic headquarters.

The administration building is a few stories shorter and wider than the Zephyr building with a few acres of mazelike gardens out front and a docking station bigger than The Trials' dome to the left. Pods fly in and take off, the docked ones ushered into an elevator that shuttles them and their passengers up to massive, multi-tiered decks where the pods are stowed. Iris and I see all this from the monorail window as we exit and head straight for the main doors.

A three-story fountain shoots an archway of water into the air. Projected beneath the curve is Lyath's face. He blinks a few times, unsmiling, and then is replaced by a rainbow of water. Two smaller fountains flank the larger, projecting the faces of his two living children.

"What exactly are you expecting to happen here?" Iris asks, plucking a purple flower for which she's named from a shrub we pass.

"I don't know," I say honestly.

"Well that inspires confidence," she says, twirling the flower between her thumb and index finger.

The shirt she's wearing today, a flowy dark green top, has cropped sleeves that expose the bottom part of her gang tattoo. But the Daughters of Discord symbol means nothing here and with all of Upper's crazy bod mod I doubt anyone even notices.

"You were the one who suggested you come with me, remember?"

Iris rolls her eyes. "Only because of the whole being sisters thing," she says, draping her left arm across my shoulders.

Inside the atrium of the admin building, a goliath-sized robot kneels, its back bent against the weight of a model of planet Mars. The bots, armed with alloys even magma couldn't melt, had been the first race to colonize Mars, as they were the only species fit for the task of creating a safe habitat for humans.

We ask the woman at the front desk for the office location and follow a yellow stripe on the floor to a set of double frosted glass doors that open at our approach.

A female bot, smart skin stretched tightly across its frame, stands at a desk.

"Hi," I say, unsure how to begin. "Is she busy?"

The bot's sensors spin, blinking pink light.

"What time is your appointment?" she asks in a polite voice.

Iris glances at me, then back at the receptionist. "Actually, we don't have one of those..."

"Please wait here," it says, walking around the edge of the desk.

"We don't want to wait," I say.

Yanking a laser pointer off the keychain dangling from my pocket, I aim it at the bot's eyes, and click the power button with my thumb. The rapid sequence of flickering light strobes into the bot's vision sensors, the lasers setting off a malfunction in its circuit board, like a seizure.

"What the hell did you do to it?" Iris asks, waving a hand in front of the bot's face. It doesn't attempt to make any sign or response.

"Put its motherboard on the fritz."

"How long will that last?"

I shrug. "It'll be back in working order in a few minutes."

"Should we let ourselves in then?"

At the end of the room, a sheen of laserlight creates a partition between this one and the next. We step up together. I reach my hand out slowly, to make sure it really is just light, when Iris gives me a shove and pushes me through to the other side.