Universal Chaos - Web of Chaos

Chapter 2 - Wrong Place too

Sept 18, 2229

Before the sun rose, Gill got out of his bed in a tiny apartment much like a cheap hotel room. The bed and a small table with a single chair decorated the home. A small bathroom jutted out from one corner, and a closet took up another. Between them stood the front door. At the back, a small window looked out over the gray world and rain poured down on tall buildings as far as the eye could see.

In his white boxer shorts, Gill ambled to the shower. Setting his Aivot to play a Malvina Reynolds song "What Have They Done To The Rain," covered by Marianne Faithfull. His head filled with music. An eerie sensation of coming from his ears but also some indiscernible location; his brain's way of attempting to figure out how to interpret new sensory input it did not evolve for.

An ancient song of course, but Gill did not care much for most modern music. As a teenager, he figured he would search the net for the first audio recording of music ever made. Gill enjoyed the less convoluted, straightforward genres. The manageable amount of artist he found comforting; no flooding the market with millions of new songs a day. It took too long for his liking to find one good song by searching through modern music. So, he limited his search parameters by date and occasionally increased the year if an artist he liked still produced music after his previous cutoff point.

Not closing the door to the bathroom, Gill took off his boxers and stepped into the shower; it turned on. The water flowed out at the preset temperature with no waiting for it to equalize. He enjoyed the sound of the water drops hitting the floor. Five minutes later the water turned off, bright pinpoint white lights came on, and fans blew warm air. Dried in seconds, Gill stepped out. He thought of shaving but did not bother to.

Opening the closet, Gill grabbed a pair of boxers; the hanger released them from its clasps. All the boxers, socks, and T-shirts hanging up were white. All of the suits were the same as each other.

Finished dressing, Gill held his dark-blue tie close to his neck, and it attached itself.

Gill's Aivot alerted him to a call. "Answer," he thought and the system connected to his PAD. "Hello, sweetie."

The animated face of his daughter Sydnie beamed with happiness from his display. "Hi, daddy. Look," said Sydnie speaking loud and holding up a tablet with a drawing of a unicorn riding on top of a spaceship.

"Wow, that's pretty imaginative." Gill downloaded the image file from the tablet.

Sydnie looked at the tablet, glanced back at her Dad, and back at her drawing again. "Mommy helped."

"Oh."

"She said to draw a spaceship... So, I drew a spaceship. Then I wanted to draw a unicorn... So, I drew a unicorn." Sydnie pronounced drew and draw in a peculiar way. Looking back at her drawing, she stared at it for a second. "Do you like it?"

"I love it," said Gill smiling.

Multitasking, Gill viewed the information gathered from the PAD hack of the G.E recruit.

Opening her eyes wide, his daughter moved her face close to the PAD's camera. "Come over."

"I can't right now."

"Oh." She frowned and her eyelids drooped.

"We can play a game." Gill connected to her tablet with his Aivot and opened a game.

"No, no. Picture." Sydnie tapped the tablet and got her drawing to come back on the screen.

"Ok, we can play on the PAD," said Gill accessing her drone.

A half-eaten dried out biscuit sat atop a paper wrapper on the table. Gill picked it up and took a bite, heading out to his car.

Moving her character on the game, Sydnie looked at her Dad's face in the top right corner, unaware it was a representation of his current face and expression created by AI.