Time: 1830

Day: 196

Year: 2334

Destination: Woodlawn Necessity Terminal

Region: Mid-Atlantic

HFC: Mother Corp

He did not have to access the rail terminal via the query panel and make a credit application to rent the graviton boots required to ride. Tray was a G-1 security tech on loan to Mother Corp from Retro Corp. His parent Corp had spent the past 24.9 years fitting, training, upgrading and acclimatizing Tray for his duties. Tray was now 25 years of age, legally permitted to have consensual sex and apply for reproductive privileges. As he stepped up onto the rail and his boots engaged he looked down at the pathetic group of techs crowded about the terminal, their variously obsolete halo-drives blinking from bright blue to deep gray. His was a deep green with gold accent.

The one at the head of the line with the deep blue halo and the enhanced hazel eyes looks so fine.

Just because you are now legally permitted to have friend-sex doesn’t mean you have to. Wait for the perfect woman.

She seemed to look up into his eyes longingly as he blinked at the traffic light and began to accelerate.

I wonder if she thinks I’m handsome.

Perhaps she just likes the boots—a jealous little tech girl waiting for rail access.

She wasn’t looking at the boots.

He accelerated parallel with traffic and could see their halos strobe as commuters surged along Main Rail #3 down into the Woodlawn Node.

I wonder what the trouble is down there.

His right frontal port warmed up and his jaw clenched involuntarily, as Lars, his tactical avatar, appeared above his right eye—or seemed to, as he was actually an imprint, the header in his mind that advised him and numbered the pages of his life in a manner of thinking. Lars’ square-jawed Nordic head appeared above Tray’s right eye on the oblique peripheral LOS.

Lars’ voice, like his image, was an imprint, and sounded in Tray’s right ear, “Sir, Mother Corp has reported Amish holdouts accessing the Woodlawn NT [Necessity Terminal]. Gaming addicts are bartering nutritional downloads with the Amish for some form of folk ‘psychotherapy’. You are to clear the Amish from the NT perimeter. Once that task is completed terminate three-point-five, make it four, trashers. The downs below this NT are overrun with them and the cleaners are busy over in Essex with the gaming riots. As usual you are on your own, Sir.”

Lars saluted and returned to idle, leaving Tray to his own thoughts as he merged with traffic.

The Amish! What a bunch of troublemakers. You would think, that since they aren’t permitted to reproduce naturally anymore, that they would just comply and get fitted like the rest of us.

He felt his left frontal port flash, and the image of Liz, his domestic avatar, appeared above his right eye on the near periphery LOS. “Good evening, Tray, I would like you to be careful tonight. The climate array is calling for an eighty-four-percent chance of showers in Woodlawn. Did you plug in your weatherproofing collar?”

He chuckled, “Yes, Liz. What is it?”

Her long blond hair brushed her shoulders as she shrugged them and smiled, “Oh nothing, Tray. I just thought you would like some insight on the Amish. Their entire lifestyle is domestic. It is in one of my subordinate protocols. Would you like me to—”

“That’s quite alright, Liz. We can limit our interfacing to cooking, bathing and masturbation if you don’t mind.”

She frowned her girlie frown and scrunched her eyebrows. “Well okay, Tray. I should not have nosed into your workday. I’ll pop up when you hit the shower—how about that big boy?”

“Sure thing, babe, see you at zero-six-hundred.”