Digital Dreams

She felt the cold touch of the plastic against her skin...gentle, cool, almost erotic. The feeling was like a feather and the cold touch of steel at the same time. She slowly stood up and made her way to the open window. Icy air was drafting in, carrying a current of thousands of tiny ice crystals along with it into her small apartment. She took a deep breath of the air, ignoring the bite of pollution and the wet steel smell of Newport on a cold winter day.

She smiled, her mind drifting aimlessly to a tiny faraway place where her mind would take her quietly when she wasn't paying attention. Driftfully she closed the window and pulled on a long jacket with a furry lining. The fur was synthetic of course, just like everything else in the artificial city, but she didn't care. An instant passed in her mind and she stood in front of her apartment building in the upper class sections of the city with her eyes closed looking up to the sky, her face being stung by thousands of tiny ice shards relentlessly streaming toward the ground. She spread her arms and twirled aimlessly for a moment, drawing the cautious stares from the crowd of people moving down the sidewalk.

After she stopped she took a moment to look around. Her twirling had taken her no more than ten meters away from the entrance to her apartment, down her street. The street was actually a wide boulevard leading straight into the heart of Newport, Metra. Somewhere in the corporate domination of TetraCorp, the city had changed its central hub from the older Time's Square to Metra. Through the fog she could just see the brilliant neon signs advertising for any kind of service or product, trying to get those few extra credits off of any soul who happened to be lured in by the sparkling advertising.

She looked through the glare to a small boutique selling women's clothing. A yellow blur streaked by as a corporate shuttle ferried personnel past the building. As the blur slowly faded in her mind a man appeared in front of the shop, slouching next to the window. Most people would just pass him by as if he didn't exist, and that was his goal. Metra Rushed by her as she carefully wove through the traffic and myriad of multi-level sidewalks. She made no eye contact with the man as he passed him, but she suddenly felt her coat pocket increase in weight. Without thinking, she looked back to the man only to see that he had disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. She pulled out the object he had dropped in her pocket, a long flat digital storage unit with an antiquated interface on one end. She could just make out faint lettering on top of the device, "SigmaCorp Network Backup 15.11.2119 23.59, 1.2mTB. Destroy 1 Year from Creation Date."

The date only briefly registered to her as over fifty years past, and that by all rights she should not be holding the device. She felt the cold metal pressing against her skin, imagined the precious contents that must be on it. She carelessly brushed her fingertips over the lettering before repocketing the device.

She looked up to the sky, taking in a deep breath of the near toxic air and letting the snow cover her face in a wet icy blanket. The lights blurred out slightly and she felt a rising warmth inside her, like a thousand tiny butterflies fanning tropical air on her heart. She shivered uncontrollably as the icy bite of the air returned. The weight in her pocket suddenly became almost unbearable, so she started the long walk back to her apartment.

Slowly, unbearably, the elevator rose toward the sky, limited only by the length of the support cable and the EM field that held it to the rail. She wondered briefly when and how someone had come up with the idea of elevators, but her thoughts quickly strayed back to the weight in her pocket. The door opened to her apartment's front entrance and a wash of cold air. She stepped out, leaving whoever was behind to wonder why the temperature of the room was so low. Suddenly she felt the soft urge to turn up the heat to tropical conditions, so she shed her coat and set the environmentals to match a Caribbean sunset on the ocean. Her lights immediately took on a ruddy glow and the temperature and humidity rose. She shut her eyes, holding her arms close around her. The warm air currents stirred quietly at her skin. She resisted the urge to strip off her tight plastic clothes and drift off into shadows of sensual dreams on her floor.