BLUE SKIES
Part 1:
Olympia Onassis
1
Identity: Olympia Onassis
“No! No! Your other left!” I barked, gesturing toward the pack of cigarettes I wanted. My heart was still pounding after the screaming fight I’d had with Alex in the street outside. He’d wanted us to move in together—or rather, he’d wanted to move in with me. I wasn’t ready, and frankly I wasn’t sure I’d ever be. We’d just broken up, and this time for the last time.
It wasn’t helping that I hadn’t slept properly in weeks.
The pharmacist behind the counter stared at me and began speaking in something foreign. Even with languages going extinct faster than frogs, I’d read that the city still had nearly a thousand spoken throughout its many boroughs. What a mess.
He shrugged as if to say, “Now what?”
The rumbling impatience of the line behind me almost overcame my need for nicotine. Almost, but not quite. Buying one stupid pack of cigarettes required a pharmacist to personally verify my nano-cleaning certification, and I wasn’t about to go through this hassle all over again.
“Wait a minute!” I held up one hand and rummaged around in my purse for my mobile with the other. Squeamish of surgical implants, I still used an old-fashioned earbud. Acutely aware of the eyes on me, I popped it into my ear.
“Camel Lights!” I repeated, jabbing my finger at the display case.
Whatever language he was speaking was instantly translated. “Like I said, lady, those aren’t Camels. The package looks the same, but you’ll have to go across the street to find those.” He pointed hopefully out the door.
I sighed. “Whatever, that’s fine, whatever those are.”
Reaching into the display, he handed them over, and I grabbed them and began pushing my way back through the crowd toward the entrance, credits for the transaction automatically charged to me as I opened the pack. I banged open the door to the street as I stormed out, startling the incoming customers.
Smoking was a bad habit I’d picked up from my mother. We hadn’t spoken in years, but then she’d barely ever shown any interest in me when we had. She’d shown about as much interest in my father, eventually driving him away to some kind of Luddite commune back in Montana with the rest of his family. I hadn’t been able to reach him in almost as long as I hadn’t spoken to my mother, and it wasn’t something I was going to forgive her for anytime soon.
I stopped just outside the door of the pharmacy to light up, closing my eyes and taking a deep drag.
Midtown blazed away before me in an orgy of advertising. Almost every square inch of space, from lamppost to sidewalk, was full of commercials heralding a new Broadway show or multiverse world. A holographic head danced above me, sparkling and wobbling as the smoke from my cigarette drifted up into it. “Come to Titan, experience the methane rain.”
Taking another drag, I glanced up at the grinning head. “Experience the methane rain?” Not exactly sexy. They should have been pitching something like, “Take her to new heights—make love in the hydrocarbon desert.” I laughed grimly to myself—“make love,” now there was something alien, never mind Titan.
Without warning, the metallic robotic surrogate I’d noticed lining up behind me in the shop came barreling into me, pinning me hard against the wall. It fumbled at me. Blood drained from my face in shock, but my confusion and fear were quickly replaced by a bolt of fury, and I lashed back, yelling and flailing.
“Get off me!”
It bounced back much more easily than I’d anticipated. We stood staring at each other for a moment, my angry gaze meeting its dead, gunmetal-grey orbs. With what I could only interpret as a furtive glance, it shifted its shoulders in an oddly mechanical shrug before turning to disappear into the stream of pedestrian traffic. I lurched forward to give chase but gave up almost instantly.
I was shaking.
Breathing raggedly, I wiped spittle from the side of my mouth. Looking down, I noticed that he had stolen my cigarette pack. The tremble in my hands matched the wobble of the hologram touting Titan above me. In my right hand, the cigarette continued to burn away, unconcerned.
Nobody walking by seemed to have noticed anything, or at least, nobody had wanted to notice anything. I guess it was just after the cigarettes, although why a robot would want cigarettes was beyond me.
This goddamn city.
I had half a mind to call Alex, but remembered the fight we just had, and I was already late for my presentation. Still shaking, I dropped my smoke and ground it out underfoot before venturing out from under the awning to merge into the sea of pedestrians flowing down West Fifty-Seventh Street.
Surging with the crowd, I watched for a current that could carry me toward the curb. Up ahead, someone swore out loud and then stopped. His arrested momentum forced a wave of people to flow outward and around him.
This was my chance.
Sailing up beside him, I ducked in behind and was caught perfectly in the opposite flow going in the direction I needed. Then I ran straight smack into a ridiculous-looking woman in sparkling red body paint and peacock feathers.
“Out of my way!” I growled. Shoving her aside, I rotated toward the edge of the street and elbowed my way to the curb, where I stretched out my arm to join with the forest of other outstretched limbs.
“Ten! Ten!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, offering ten times the going rate. I was tired and frightened and wanted to get out of there.
A cab slipped from traffic to pull up beside me, my generosity earning me dirty looks from the people around me trying to snag their own ride. In return, I offered them my finger as the tiny gull-wing door of the cab opened.
I stepped inside and sat down. Cool, recycled air swept around me as the door clicked shut. I took a moment to collect myself, closing my eyes, exhaling softly, trying to relieve the pressure.
“Where to, lady?” chimed a metallic voice. It was a self-driving electric, one of those Hondasoft ones with the motors in the wheels—barely more than a plastic tub on roller skates, if you asked me, but a cab nonetheless.
I took a deep breath. “Ah.…” What the hell was my office address? I sat upright in a panic. What was wrong with me? I’d worked there for over ten years.
“Lady, where to?”
“One second,” I snapped. Remembering I still had the mobile bud in place, I called up my tech assistant. “Kenny, what’s our office address?”
“555 Fifth Avenue,” a perplexed Kenny responded almost instantly, which I relayed to the cabbie.
My face flushed. How could I have forgotten my own office address? I needed a drink. The cab immediately accelerated and merged into traffic. Sitting back I took some deep breaths, trying to loosen up the tightness in my chest while we sped off.