Crowe and Coyote

ONE

SUNRISE, SUNSET

It was morning--barely.

The digital clock beside Moll's bedside read 11:25. The one in her head read 11:20. A smaller display, scrolling beneath the big red numerals on the bedside clock, read:

REALLY, GIRL. YOU HIT SNOOZE SEVENTEEN TIMES. WHY BOTHER TO SET THE ALARM IN THE FIRST PLACE IF YOU'RE JUST GOING TO IGNORE IT?

As she did every morning, Moll began her day wondering why on earth she had thought a TruthHertz model alarm had been a good idea. As if sensing her displeasure, the little red letters dissolved and reformed, now reading:

AND PLEASE DON'T PUT THE BLACK SWEATSHIRT ON AGAIN. YOU HAVEN'T WASHED IT IN WEEKS.

Moll raised the arm already in said sweatshirt's comforting embrace to the clock and gave it the finger. "One of these days," she muttered to it, adding a pair of ratty green shorts to the ensemble, "I'm going to remember to move a hammer in here before I go to sleep. Then I'll have something to fucking get up for."

With one final letter change--this time simply to GET A REAL JOB--the little clock sank down into her bedside table, two semicircles of fine steelmesh armoring raising to cover it like two halves of a clam shell. That particular feature, she remembered bitterly, had come with the clock. It was almost as though the manufacturer had anticipated the violence a proud new TruthHertz owner might be feeling every morning.

She threw a hairbrush at it anyway. It glanced off the mesh, thwanged against the wall, and generally made a horrible racket.

"Moll?" called Bobbit, from down the hallway. "Is that you, my little ray of sunshine?"

"Fuck off, Bobbit."

"There's breakfast if you want it."

Grumbling, Moll briefly scanned the newscasts deposited in her head by her percomm hardware, found nothing particularly interesting, and deleted all of them. She found a call waiting from her parole officer and ignored it. The clock in her percomm, flashing unobtrusively in the lower lefthand corner of her visual field, read 11:23.

Moll completed her toilette by splashing some water on her face and hair, trying to smooth the short red mess on top of her head down to some sort of reason. Failing--as she did every morning--she tramped on down the hall in her bare feet.

Bobbit was in the apartment kitchenette, apron tied firmly about what, on someone less statuesque than Bobbit, would be a waist. She was flipping something in a frying pan that crackled and popped and smelled mouthwatering.

"Christus," Moll said, taking her usual seat at the breakfast bar. "Is that real bacon?"

"Nah. Still soy, but it's that high-grade Flava stuff from up top. They say you can hardly tell the difference." She grinned proudly, revealing two uneven rows of stumpy teeth. "Got it from the restaurant. Was two days past the EXP--silly bastards were going to just throw it out."

There was a collective pause as both Moll and Bobbit wondered at the profligacy of people who would throw something only a day or two past rotten in a garbage bin.

"Any cereal?" Moll asked.

"Some Frooty Soopy SoyOs. Maybe a little bit of Honey Nut Substitute Crunch." Bobbit gestured with her spatula towards the cabinets. "Look for yourself."

"Elaine at work?"

"Nah. Still in bed. She's not feeling well." Bobbit made a clucking noise. This noise, combined with the wobbling of her chins and her spiky crest of bleached hair, made her look like nothing more than an obese hen. "Poor doll. She's a Sensitive, you know."