Chapter 1
Page 2 of 10
... may have found something that will interest you."
"Not now, Archie! Can't you see that I'm preoccupied?" Amanda snapped at the drone whose skinny robotic legs seemed to buckle under the weight of the REM-boards which he carried in his hydraulic arms. He was dressed in the tattered waistcoat of a Victorian footman, and his powdered wig was slightly askew on his chrome skull. He looked puzzled and hurt by her outburst.
Fifteen years of faithful service as agency droid and Archie Winkles couldn't remember the last time he had been maintenanced or had any of his parts replaced. The least she could do was to be civil to him. Fine, if that's how she felt about it. Eventually, she would return to her senses and then she would thank him. Perhaps she would even give him a raise.
Archie was running dangerously low on his supply of pleasure-cells. He had just enough left for a few pints of Nokia lager and a remote romp with Molly Nivens, that buxom drone who worked for one of the rival agencies across town. In the meantime, all he could do was to be patient and wait for his employer to realize that her fate lay in his capable drone hands.
That bitch Glenda Flowers! Amanda fumed as she reconstructed the disastrous events of the evening that had turned her life inside out. How dare she call herself my best friend, then stab me in the back like that! I'll see that she rots in hell!
Glenda Flowers ran her own bio-lit agency out of a swank office in Knightsbridge. For years, it had been the two women's habit to meet for drinks at least once a week to exchange industry gossip, trade snide remarks about their most difficult clients, and to catch up on each other's personal lives. They had a long personal history together.
They went way back to when they were both starting out as freelance trendspotters working for producers who specialized in the mutant genres. Edible Gothic Westerns, tampon editions of Harlequin romances, King James Version of the Bible suppositories, chat-room pills good for a thousand hours of telepathic exchange with total strangers. Even neural patches for masochists who sought the ultimate threshold of pain, learning to love and accept themselves in the true spirit of universal compassion. Novelty items with a twitchy shelf life, that was their stock-in-trade.
Then came the Psi-Revolution of '52 that ushered in more changes than reality had room for, Amanda speculated as she nursed her highball. It was as if...
