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July 15, 2004
From a Fountain Part 1
5:36 AM, Tuesday, May 26, 2096
Davis Okanovic opened his eyes, and panicked at the silence, thinking that his Wake-Up program was malfunctioning. His cybernetic eye, called an “eee,” however, was completely shut down, and with a quick turn of his head his human eye he saw the muted violet glow of a sensa clock next to his bed that told him he had another twenty-four minutes of sleep.
It was not likely, however, that on this morning of all mornings, he would be able to return to that state. He lay back on the soft down pillow, nonetheless, and shut his eyelid; he couldn't possibly be nervous about the new position. Davis had proven his competence long ago, in Washington, before the bomb, and then, afterwards in Atlanta. This Broward Forensics Cooperative had wanted him enough to increase his standard of living several points higher than a normalized income.
He realized he had drowsed off again when a female voice suddenly declared, “It's six o'clock.
“This morning's news: delegates from Armenia, Georgia, and Greece stood in protest of the Eurasian Economic Congress's recent decision to admit Indonesia as a member, in remembrance of the 2084 Olympic massacre in Jakarta by Islamic militants. Sources say that...”
He silenced the Wake-Up by remote the moment his eee booted to life; while the complete functionality of each of the eye's systems sped across the bottom of his field of vision in a matter of microseconds. The room then awakened, lit ambivalently by a xenonite strip around the upper perimeter of the room.
Davis stared into his bedside mirror. His jet-black hair required no effort to ready, neatly cut close to under a centimeter in length. The flesh around his eee was clean and unblemished, which indicated that no loose detritus had gotten between the unit and the muscles of his eye socket.
He covered the eee with his left hand, and reassessed his looks. Without the always-open, silver lensed unit, if he still had the left eye from his boyhood, Davis would be a handsome man, with two striking blue eyes, prominent nose and chiseled chin. He was a well-built man, and six-foot-three. There was no reason his bed should still be empty when he got up. And yet most people he met couldn't help looking at his eee when he spoke to him, as if that's all he was. The same thing that made him so very valuable as a detective also made him unattractive as a potential mate.
Continued...
Posted by Bastique at July 15, 2004 1:38 PM