Part 1: The Girls of District D
Mike groggily walked out of the bathroom, applying shaving cream to his face as he made his way to the kitchen. The cream quickly eliminated this morning's stubble, leaving him completely clean-shaven without any effort on his part. He actually still preferred to use a razor, but according to Michelle "everyone who lives in an arcology uses shaving cream," and thus she didn't let him use his own shaving supplies whenever he spent the night at her place.
Unfortunately, all that spending the night entailed was sleeping on the sofa-bed in the living room. Mike and Michelle had been dating for a while, but so far the physical side of their relationship hadn't progressed beyond kissing. However, Mike was hopeful that this holding pattern would soon break.
Mike walked into the small kitchen, and ordered up some bacon and eggs with toast from the kitchen unit. While he waited for it to prepare his breakfast, he realized his throat was parched, and grabbed the glass of orange juice that was on the counter. Michelle had probably poured the glass for herself, but he could always get her a new one if she wanted.
When the kitchen unit announced his breakfast was ready, he took it and walked into the living room -- or what qualified as such in arcology housing on a student's budget. He hit the button on the side of the sofa-bed with the tip of his toe, and it neatly converted back into a sofa, after which he sat down.
"Good morning, sleepy-head," he heard Michelle call from behind him. She emerged from her bedroom wearing a loose fitting night-shirt, showing off her marvellous figure. Michelle was about one metre ninety, but her length didn't make her lanky in the slightest; in fact, she was still quite curvy. Her straight dark-brown hair hung down to just under her shoulder blades, and her eyes were a bright emerald green. Michelle's younger sister, Lucy, had confided in Mike that that was not Michelle's real eye colour; she had changed it because she felt her original hazel brown colour was too unremarkable amidst the scores of brown-eyed Japanese girls in the Tokyo Arcology.
With the top few buttons of her night-shirt left open, Mike was able to see the modest curve of her breasts, and even just a hint of nipple. They were only a mere B cup, but they did seem slightly fuller than two weeks ago. Two weeks ago; that was when Kimiko had made the proposal, and Mike
still
couldn't quite believe that Michelle had agreed to it. Not that he was complaining about it.
"Watch where your eyes are wandering," she said teasingly, but she made no effort to draw her shirt together. "There's no way it could be visible yet."
"I need to get good baseline data," Mike said with a lopsided grin on his face. "That way, we can confirm the changes logged in your biometric chip with visual inspection."
"Right, Professor," she replied. "Save the science for the lab, will you. Although... maybe a manual inspection would be warranted..." She began rubbing her breasts through the shirt, throwing her head back and moaning in an exaggerated fashion, leaving Mike to gape at her open-mouthed.
She stopped, and stuck out her tongue. "You are
so
easy to manipulate! That look on your face is priceless."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he said, shrugging as Michelle walked into the kitchen. He tried to appear nonchalant, but privately he was quite glad that the tray with his breakfast prevented Michelle from seeing what was going on beneath it.
After a few moments Michelle returned with her own breakfast, including a fresh glass of orange juice, quietly sitting down next to him on the couch. "Are you watching the weather report again?" she asked. "It's not as if we're going outside, you know."
"Force of habit," he said simply. Unlike Michelle, he hadn't grown up in the Tokyo Arcology, or any arcology for that matter. He was part of the ever-decreasing part of humanity that knew what it was like to see sky out the window.
"And speaking of habits," she said, gesturing at his breakfast tray. "Why are you still eating that crap? You're not in the English countryside anymore; this is Japan."
"Hey, there's no way I'm eating rice for breakfast! I need a good foundation to start the day. And besides, if you ate some bacon yourself once in a while, maybe you wouldn't need to go along with Kimiko's wild ideas," he said jokingly.
"Hah!" she exclaimed, jabbing a chopstick in his thigh. "If I ate like that, it'd all end up in my legs anyway. And we'd better hurry; you know how Professor Tamura gets when we're late to her class."
***
After they had finished eating and had fully dressed, the two of them made their way to the transport tube that they used to get to University. Mike and Michelle were both attending the Tokyo Arcology International University, which is what the former University of Tokyo had morphed into after its main campus had been absorbed into the arcology. Even in the 23
rd
century, it was still the most prestigious university in Japan. He was working towards his master's in information science, while she was doing the same in applied genetics.
The two of them had met at Professor Sayoko Tamura's class on genetic restructuring earlier this year, which Mike had taken to fill up his extra-curricular credits. Though he was actually interested in genetics, he had to admit that the decision had also been influenced by the high percentage of girls in the genetics department at TAIU.
It was a decision that had paid off brilliantly, because after four years of not being able to get dates, he and Michelle had hit it off pretty quickly. Besides that, he now had more girls in his social stream than he could recall having met since moving to Tokyo prior to joining that class, some of whom he even counted as close friends.
Among those girls was Kimiko; the stereotypical
genki girl
-- overly energetic no matter what the situation -- who was one of Michelle's closest friends. She was the one, just two weeks ago, who had come up with the ridiculous plan that was going to make Mike's life much more interesting, he expected. If anything, it should increase the eye-candy factor, and hopefully the hormonal boost that he had read was associated with it would increase the likelihood of getting some action with Michelle in the near future.
The two of them got into the already quite crowded capsule waiting at their station on transport tube 32-D, one of many running through the support struts in District D of the Tokyo Arcology. They were the primary means of getting around the enormous structure, consisting of multiple overlapping pyramids, which had replaced the old city of Tokyo. Since it was designed to house nearly a hundred-million people, plus all the factories, shops, offices, and even agricultural facilities necessary to support those people, efficient transportation was paramount.
The Tokyo Arcology was the first of its kind, completed in 2112 -- more than a century and a half ago -- to support the country's massive overpopulation. Since then many other cities had followed suit: London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro; all around the world nearly every major city had converted into an arcology. It was the only way the planet could sustain the now twenty billion humans that lived on it, and that number was still growing.
As the transport capsule sped along its course, Mike took the time to check his social stream. All the information he was interested in was projected directly into his retinal implant. His social stream told him that Kimiko had sent him
another
message asking whether he and Michelle had had sex yet. For some reason she had made it her life-mission to get the two of them two sleep together, ever since they had started dating.
After checking what some of his old friends back in England had been up to, he switched to the news. He always watched the European Central News Network aggregation feed; it was easier than configuring his stream manually to watch for stuff he would be interested in, and besides that he enjoyed Mary O'Shea, the busty red-headed Irish news anchor they used.
"This is ECNN on-demand, I'm Mary O'Shea, and welcome to the news," she began. She was wearing her usual professional white blouse and charcoal-grey blazer, which although fairly modest did little to hide her bulging chest.
"Our top story today is that the Madihi Fountain of Youth Labs have reopened after the damage from last month's terrorist bombing was repaired," Mary began the news. "The reopening once again triggered many public demonstrations in the Casablanca Arcology, home of Madihi Labs. The laboratory has been the topic of much controversy over the past year as they continue to work on the new genetic restructuring technique developed by Doctor Bassir, which he claims will be able to rejuvenate a person, effectively providing eternal youth. We asked him for commentary."
The scene changed, showing Doctor Bassir standing in a stereotypical biology lab. He was an African man in his late middle-age, with greying hair and a distinguished air about him. Mike had the feeling he'd seen him somewhere before.
"I understand that many people are concerned," Dr. Bassir began in a heavy Moroccan accent. "They think that enabling people to live longer when the planet is already overpopulated is a bad idea. But these people are not looking at the whole picture; our methods will also improve cell metabolism and the efficiency of many of the body's systems. It will allow people to survive on very little food, so they will consume far fewer resources. Additionally, longer life will hopefully reduce the reproductive drive which could lead to an actual reduction in population. And in the long term, eternal youth will make it feasible to send people on colony starships to other stars; no one wants to spend most of their life travelling through space, but when you can live forever, a few decades won't seem so long."
The scene switched back to Mary. "Dr. Bassir says he will continue his research in spite of the continued opposition. When we asked John Robson, once of Bassir's primary opponents, for comments, he said that Bassir is 'a stupid bastard who is full of shit', and that 'he should get on a starship himself if he loves that so much.' Robson declined to appear on camera.
"In our second story, Dutch engineers have finished land reclamation in the North Sea and are ready to begin construction of the North Sea Arcology. The new arcology is expected be completed by 2285, and will provide capacity for almost two-hundred million inhabitants, making it the largest sea-based arcology yet constructed..."
Mike's news-watching was interrupted when they arrived at the Ochanomizu station, and Kimiko entered accompanied by their friends Maaya and Rose, another exchange student. The three of them together always made for a comical sight: Kimiko was an average Japanese girl in almost every way, while Maaya was a diminutive half-Japanese, half-Chinese who was positively tiny at just one metre forty-five, and Rose towered over both of them at more than two metres.
Rose in particular was a sight to behold. Not only was she very tall, but the Brazilian girl also had an exceptional hour-glass figure, smooth dark skin, beautiful wavy black hair, and a D cup chest. Top that off with a face that was so hot that it could probably re-start global warming and it wasn't strange that every single guy in the transport tube turned their head to look at her. Of their little group of friends, it was perhaps the strangest that Rose had also joined in with Kimiko's plans, already being blessed with such natural assets.
Mike had been quite interested in Rose when he first joined Professor Tamura's class, but unfortunately for him -- and really, it was a loss to the male sub-species in general -- she was a lesbian. She had also made it quite clear to him that any jokes about being fine with it as long as he could watch would end with him face-down in Tokyo Bay.
It wasn't as if he could complain, though. He'd definitely struck gold with Michelle, and as long as he and Rose were friends, he could at least look at her. It hadn't taken him long to record enough images of her using his retinal implants to enable the not-entirely-legal undressing software he owned to create a ninety-five percent accurate model of what she looked like naked. It had made for some very satisfying wanking material.
