Even that brief blast of white light was enough to make my eyes burn. I scrubbed at them with the back of my hand as I turned toward the bathroom. Shaun?s door was still closed. I called, ?Showering now!? A thump on the wall answered me.
Shaun and I share a private bathroom with its own fully modernized and airtight shower system. Another little requirement of the household insurance?since we leave safe zones all the time in order to do our jobs, we have to be able to prove we?ve been properly sterilized, and that means logged computer verification of our sterilizations. The bathroom started life as the closets of our respective bedrooms. Personally, I consider this a much better use of the space.
The bathroom lights switched to UV when my door opened. I walked over and pressed my hand to the shower?s keypad, saying, ?Georgia Carolyn Mason.?
?Accessing travel records,? the shower replied. We don?t screw with the shower the way we screw with the house system. House security is kept at an absolute minimum, but the shower is governmentally required for journalist use, and we could get in serious trouble if the records don?t match up. The fines for posing a contamination risk are more than I could afford in six years of freelancing.
The shower door unsealed. ?You have been exposed to a Level 4 hazard zone. Please enter the stall for decontamination and sterilization.?
?Don?t mind if I do,? I said, and stepped in. The door shut behind me, locking with an audible hiss as the air lock seal engaged.
A stinging compound of antiseptic and bleach squirted from the bottommost nozzle on the wall, coating me with icy spray. I held my breath and closed my eyes, counting the seconds before it would stop. They can only legally bathe you in bleach for half a minute unless you?ve been in a Level 2 zone. At that point, they can keep dunking you until they?re sure the viral blocks are clean. Everyone knows it doesn?t do any good beyond the first thirty seconds, but that doesn?t stop people from being afraid.
Travel in a Level 1 zone means they?re not legally obligated to do anything but shoot you.
The bleach stopped. The upper nozzle came on, spraying out water almost hot enough to burn. I cringed but turned my face toward it, reaching for the soap.
?Clean,? I said, once the shampoo was out of my hair. I keep it short for a variety of reasons. Most have to do with making myself harder to grab, but showering faster is also a definite motivation. If I wanted it to get any longer, I?d have to start using conditioner and a variety of other hair-care chemicals to make up for the damage the bleach does every day. My one true concession to vanity is dyeing it back to the color nature gave me every few weeks. I look terrible blonde.
?Acknowledged,? said the shower, and the water turned off, replaced by jets of air from all four sides. The one good part of our shower system. I was dry in a matter of minutes, leaving only a little residual dampness in my hair. The door unsealed, and I stepped out into the bathroom, grabbing for my bottle of lotion.
Bleach and human skin aren?t good buddies. The solution: acid-based lotion, usually formulated around some sort of citrus, to help repair the damage the bleaching does. Professional swimmers did it pre-Rising, and everybody does it now. It also helps to lend a standardized scent tag to people who have scrubbed themselves recently. My lotion was as close to scentless as possible, and it still carried a faint, irritating hint of lemon, like floor cleanser.
I worked the lotion into my skin and retreated to my own room, shouting, ?Shaun, it?s all yours!? I got the door closed as his was opening, spilling white light into the room. That?s not uncommon. We?re pretty good about our timing.
I grabbed my robe from the back of the door and shrugged it on as I walked to the main desk. The monitor detected my proximity and switched on, displaying the default menu screen. Our main system never goes off-line. That?s where group mail is routed, sorted according to which byline and category it?s meant for?news to me, action to Shaun, or fiction, which goes straight to Buffy?and delivered to the appropriate in-boxes. I get the administrative junk that Shaun?s too much of a jerk and Buffy?s too much of a flake to deal with. Technically, we?re a collective, but functionally? It?s all me.
Not that I object to the responsibility, except when it fills my in-box to the point of inspiring nightmares. It?s nice to know that our licenses are paid up, we?re in good with the umbrella network that supports our accreditation, and nobody?s suing us for libel. We make pretty consistent ratings, with Shaun and Buffy hitting top ten percent for the Bay Area at least twice a month and me holding steady in the thirteen to seventeen percent bracket, which isn?t bad for a strict Newsie. I could increase my numbers if I went multimedia and started giving my reports naked, but unlike some people, I?m still in this for the news.