Thousand+ Words a Day for Dec. 3, 2025

Cred Lung had Known the Day was Coming, But She Hadn't Known it would Be this Day....

Cred Lung had known the day was coming, but she hasn't known it would be this day.

Her senior Spinner blinked into her private implant channel, causing a small image of himself to appear in her peripheral vision. When she saw that he was wearing the sleeve of his family's royal household, she knew. She pressed her tongue against her hard palate to activate the comm link, and the Spinner's image moved to her central vision. Moving her tongue to the side, she set the transparency to 70% so she could continue to monitor the progress of the car along the track as she took the call. "What is it?"

"Geert ra," the Spinner said, accompanying the greeting with the customary erecting of hairs that ran down the sides of his face. "The High Commissioner's office called. They'd like you there at sunset."

"When's sunset today?"

"8:05 pm."

"In the formals, I gather."

"Yes," the Spinner answered. His middle arm moved up, the hand on that arm picked something off of his sleeved left arm, then he flicked it on the floor."

Cred glanced down at the console before her. "Two hours," she muttered. "Alright, get my blue gown ready and I should be there in 20."

"Geert," the Spinner repeated. The hairs flicked up again, but he didn't blink off of the call.

"Is there something else." Cred asked.

"Ah, no, well, actually, yes," the Spinner stammered. The Spinner's English could occasionally be halting and uncertain, but this seemed different. "I just wanted to, ah, say that it's been nice--"

"Be there early," she cut him off. "I want you to go in first." The Spinner blinked off. I just hate it when they try to be polite, she thought--and then a call from the High Commissioner's office rang on her official channel. "Oh, crap," she said. She let it ring as she flashed on self-view, fluffed her hair with her fingers, and then then answered the call. "Major Lung here--"

The automation cut her off. "This is a notification from the Office of the High Commissioner," it said grandly. "Lung, Cred, Major, you are direced to appear in person at provided coordinates at next 547." Then there was the not-unpleasant tone requesting acknowledgement. Cred pressed the appropriate spot on her hard palate and the tone stopped.

By this time, the car was past the last transfer station and was slowing down. It jostled over the pullout trestle and caught the pull chain, which yanked it up the hill to the station. As the car slowed to a halt, it swayed slightly until pistons from below pushed up, producing the familia, albeit very slight, rise, the hatches opened, and Cred stepped out onto the mostly empty platform.

She looked right, then left. Civilians were milling around here and there. A Shroud Major in utility uniform at the end of the day was unusual, but not unusual enough to become involved, and so most people at the station ignored her. The ones who didn't might stare for a moment or even do a mildly comical double-take before they moved on with their own concerns.

In her visual field, a fork notice appeared, and a question: Did she want to activate a navigation overlay? She tapped out of it and reminded herself to turn off the nav notices, which she had been meaning to do for some days now but never seemed to get around to actually doing.

As she proceeded a long the walkway, she came around one of the ergonomically designed and fastidiously engineered curves to see one of the many newsman carts that wandered around the stations, following the crowded trains, the trains which the carts' artificial brains predicted would have a likelihood of customers. The carts were not very smart--the most elaborate of them had only an intelligence approximately equal to a chicken, but given the sell-or-die environment within which the carts operated and the rudimentary but surprisingly effective ability to self-adjust their own programming, competition between carts had produced an efficiency among them just as evolution had produced efficiency among chickens. Cred was at the cart now, and she turned towards it, activating its greet protocol; if the greet were successful, it would shift to the sell protocol.

The cart scanned the human facing it, accessed the public record, matched, and then a glowing figure appeared, tailored in appearance to match the cart's conclusion with regard to what sort of seller this customer might beat respond to. "Good morning, Major Lung," the avatar said. It was an older Hispanic woman, a gold cross on a leather cord around her neck and a Rosary wrapped around her wrist. She was slightly overweight, a bit dumpy, and she never quite made eye contact as she spoke. "You need some wakeup for an important meeting tonight, yes?" she said. A series of short bottles appeared next to her and hung in space as she spoke. "I have several for you here. Perhaps this one...."

How do these damn bots know so much? she thought as she scanned down the list of demand downloads available. "No, uh, just give me the Mars Report."

There was a chime, and then a deduction approval appeared in her visual field. She had the automatic approval set to $40; if a purchase was more than that, she would have to okay it first. But the newspaper was only $32, so it went through. "Delivered," the woman said pleasantly. "Will there be anything else?"

Lung had already stepped away and on down the corridor toward the west exit. Up an escalator and around a corner and then she was outside, squinting against the Sun, which was nearly on the horizon.
The display in her visual field gave the time as 6:48 pm, so sh assessed that there was time to proceed to the lab, get a shower and fix her hair, get into the formal, and get over to the High Commissioner's office by 7:50. if her spinner was there--And it damn well better be, she thought--she imagined that she would be in with the High Commissioner by 8:05, relieved of her command and commission by 8:08, and with luck, back down in the tunnels by 8:20.