This is a redux and comprehensive version of Lira's Accounts. Hope you enjoy!
All characters are over 18 and consenting.
Love, Iri x
*
~ Part One ~
The harsh, repetitive blaring of Lira's alarm dragged her from a pleasant dream that vaguely resembled her life about six years ago, free from worries about money or anxieties, and back into her tiny, damp little flat.
She flailed through the floating holographic display, dispelling the alarm in a moment. The room fell into calm, content quiet, and she readied herself to start the day.
The display on her ceiling read 06:00, directly overhead, blinking in pale blue neon. She sighed, and sat up, hearing something roll off her bed that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place, but oh well.
Her bed was trashed. Covered in blankets and pillows that fit no real aesthetic, with papers and her laptop strewn around her. It hadn't seen much, ahem,
action
in recent months, nor had the laptop seen much work, nor the paper much writing. Her flat was on the 67th floor of one of those mega-rises Edinburgh has, now that the population has rocketed. Interstellar travel doesn't just mean people are getting shifted off to their planets (though that is a thing) - it means there's a lot of technology keeping people alive for longer. Today's population count: Sixteen Billion (approx).
Mostly, the bed simply served as a barrier between her and the cold of mid-winter Edinburgh air as it threw clouds past her window. She dragged a small toggle upwards, and the opaque-grey glass cleared to transparency, giving her an early-morning view of the sky. The sunrise was maybe an hour ago, so orange and yellow still poured between the silver and grey oblong buildings that stood around her. The cloudline below her was too thick to see the ground through, but she had little reason to go down anyway. Nothing down there but floodwater and grime. Super gross.
Lira climbed from her little pocket of warmth and rushed across the room to where she had thrown down her dressing gown the night before. She pulled it on, over her cold, exposed skin, and kicked her way past the debris of her life that covered her bedroom floor. Mostly, there were books and printed journal articles, stacked in precarious piles that gave the illusion of productivity; a tall potted plant that, no matter what she did, seemed insistent on dying on her; a pile of unwashed clothes just begging for death. Lira wasn't exactly the kind of person described by her friends as having it 'all together'. Nor did she have many friends, for that matter.
She picked up her laptop, and pushed through the door as her stomach complained for breakfast, travelling through to the next room of her little flat. It was dinky, but with just enough personality to make it bearable. Most flats were like this these days, to be fair. A bedroom, a kitchen, and maybe a corridor in between if you were lucky. Living rooms were a thing of the past, and bathrooms were either en-suite or communal to the building.
The room welcomed her by lighting up for her, and the bedroom darkened behind her. She tapped the menu on the fridge and ordered some beans on toast, watching the little counter at the bottom of the light-display that glowed on whatever was the closest surface to her go down by 60p.
'Capitalism sucks,' she complained as the soft whirring of machines hidden from sight created her beans on toast and delivered it to her on a small plate through a cat-flap style hole in the wall.
After wolfing it down, she opened her laptop on the kitchen-top counter. The display was slightly 3-D, with the icons seeming to hover over the screen by half an inch. It was touch-screen, but also sight-oriented, so she was able to just stare at her e-mail until it opened the folder.
She clicked 'new' with her finger by waving it through the weightless icon, and started to type onto the pale blue keyboard display that spilled out onto the counter.
Please Julian,
she wrote.
I'm slightly desperate. I'll take whatever's on your pile.
She sent it off to her old editor, after being fired for actions she's still not sorry for. They were still decent friends, and she hoped he might be able to throw her a bone. It wasn't likely, though. Journalism was one of those professions that naturally shaped you to do whatever you could to get a story - there weren't many just sitting around, waiting to be picked up.
Assuming she wouldn't get a response, Lira began to get dressed, finally getting out of her soft pyjama bottoms and halfway into some jeans when her laptop pinged at her.
Lira, how desperate are you? I have one subject here - no one else has taken it. There's an attachment outlining what you'd have to do - it's all arranged, we just need someone who's up to it. You'd get paid for each update, and then a cut of what we sell. Take a look,
Julian
Lira had a read through the attachment. It was an... odd job, but, after a little deliberation in the freezing cold and looking at the pennies left in her food account, realised she had literally nothing to lose.
She dragged the assignment off the laptop screen and flicked it up to the wall to get a better look. She was to be meeting something called a
Polysmyth.
'Sounds fun,' she mused, knowing it was the best she was likely to get.
She sent Julian a confirmation email, and got to research.
* * *
Julian's directions were sending her to a small hotel outside the city.
She ordered a taxi on the newspaper's tab, knowing it would just have to come out of her commission. After about ten minutes, a small egg-like pod vehicle whirred up to the side of her building. She locked up her flat, and went to the exterior door of her floor. It was like an airlock, two doors with a foot-wide gap in between, to make sure people didn't fall out by accident.
She opened the second door, and stepped out into the raging winds and thin air. The pod, who had a business of not letting their customers die of oxygen starvation, rose to meet her, and opened its side door. She stepped in, and the taxi door clicked shut behind her. Immediately, calmness and quiet was restored.
It was a pleasant kind of vehicle, with clean white walls and nice leather seats that creaked as she got comfy. She set her bag down next to her with the items Julian had asked her to bring, as well as her ID, and waited.
There were no windows, but a small display gave her real-time GPS awareness of where she was, in relation to the pick-up point and the destination. It estimated an 8 minute drive. A shame. She would have liked to savour the car journey a little more than that. There was a driver - though most of the 'driving' was automated, but this was the cheap sort of taxi where there were insurance-mandated walls between customer and employee to stop stabbings and such. Lira didn't even see them.
Overall, the journey took just over 7 minutes - how's that for customer service - and the side door slid open. She got out, letting the taxi click shut and take off behind her.
She was much closer to the surface now, and her ears popped slightly from the pressure shift. The balcony she was on had rusted railings and a thick, graffitied door in front of her, but she tried not to judge based on appearances. The sounds of other vehicles honking horns and churning out exhaust fumes above her made for a constant, ebbing background noise. Like crickets in an American summertime. At least, that's what she guessed - all she had for reference of that sound was the movies they stopped making decades ago.
'Right, Lira. Here we go.' She pressed her hand to the door, and pushed. It opened, and she stepped inside, into what can only be described as an off-brand Travelodge. It was a small, simple, and slightly cramped hotel.
The reception had a branded
Habitat Traveller's Lodging
sign overhead, and it settled her stomach a bit - she was in the right place. It had very clean, very sterile table tops and chairs around her, yet there was no one sitting. A bar in the back, waiting for a more appropriate time of day, was closed off. Julian had said she was booked for the weekend, so she'd decided to check in early and see if the hotel offered any complimentary food or drink. Looking at it, probably not.
There was a small, ill-looking man inside flicking through a newspaper behind the check-in post, his balding head reflecting the soft yellow and white lights dotting the walls. He smiled at her in a way that made her know he knew why she was here.
'Lira Caller?' he asked. His voice sounded filtered, as though it was passing through a phone first. she looked closer - he was a hologram. The real man was probably upstairs, in his own room, where there was no risk of being robbed by angry customers.
Caller wasn't her real surname - they'd used it for the sake of anonymity, for her sake and the contact's. Lira didn't exactly have a reputation to uphold, but it was still a calming thought that the paper didn't want to risk her information being released - especially on the subject of something so... sensitive.
'Checking in,' she replied. She scanned her card on the pad on the bar. It beeped at her. Everything had been pre-paid - on Julian, of course.
'Second floor, room twelve. Enjoy.'
She gave him a small smile and made her way towards the elevator that waited behind the check-in desk. The area was decorated with small ornaments, mirrors and photographs of seemingly random people Lira had to assume were notable in some way, but she didn't recognise any of them. It wasn't particularly welcoming, but it was one of the few places in the near area willing to provide these services, so she had to go with what she could.
The lift opened as she approached, and she got in, pressing the button - an actual button! - for floor 2. It took off.
Room 12's door was large and round, perfectly accommodating for a Polysmyth like the one she was meeting later today. She took another look at the hallway and at how awful the decoration was, and pushed inside.
The room was much more anonymous than the rest of the hotel had been. Slick, silver decor dotted the room, but the centrepiece was - of course - the bed. It was large, built for a human couple, and hovered slightly off the ground with magnets.
That'll keep the noise down at least
, Lira thought to herself.
She checked the time - it was just gone 10am. The Polysmyth was going to be here at 8pm hour, so she had more than enough time to write up her journey so far (for what it was worth), have a quick exploration of the facilities, and then wash and tidy herself up, and set up the camera before the fun started.
