Day sat at the booth in the eighties burger restaurant, waiting for Ed who was late. She fiddled with the old-fashioned biros and notepad, while eyeballing the shopping mall walkway.
"Can I get you something?" The droid waitress asked. From the corner of her eye, Day noted the waitress' shoulder padded jacket, fluffy hair, fluorescent bracelets, and bubble gum.
"I'm waiting for my boyfriend," she said.
"What's that?" the waitress asked.
Day's jaw locked as she tried to swallow her irritation. Weren't they were programmed to notice when a customer didn't want to talk? She was about to ask the droid to leave when a light flashed on the droid's wrist monitor.
"Please hand over the weapon," the droid said, "or I'll be forced to call security."
"What weapon?" Day asked, prickles of stress rising through her body. Her shoulders tensed, her fists closed. The last thing she needed was a droid attacking her because it was having a meltdown.
"Please put both hands flat on the table, or I'm calling security."
Day stretched out her arms and lay her palms on the booth table. The waitress swooped in and picked up the biro Day had been fiddling with. Day watched the droid pull back the biro cartridge and shoot the sharp end at the ketchup bottle, demonstrating the objects weapon potential. The biro point pierced the plastic.
Day's mouth popped open in surprise. The droid collected up the remains of the other two biros Day had taken apart and threw them and the ketchup bottle in the nearby recycle bin. As she walked away, Ed appeared, apologizing for his tardiness and entering into a monologue before he even sat down.
Distracted by what had happened with the waitress, Day let him ramble, waiting for a pause in conversation. As he went on about his filmmaking challenges and she wondered about the biros, her anger flittered away, replaced by a dull sense of lifelessness.
It wasn't until Ed ordered coffee and waved away the waitress with the dessert menus that he solicited her feedback.
"So how about your work?" he said. "Did you get anything done this morning?"
The question annoyed her every time he asked, which was often. But today, she wanted to behave differently. Today, she would try responding with the truth, rather than her habitual knee-jerk reaction. If she wanted things to change between them, then maybe she needed change.
She took a deep breath. "I have no idea what I was thinking of when I started the tree project. A forest of floating trees without tops or bottoms. It's pointless. Hours and hours wasted on pointlessness."
"You said it was a metaphor."
"For what?"
"I don't know."
"Sometimes I don't understand what's the point to all this art. I mean the northern world is so great because humans can spend their whole time learning and doing art, but art for who and for what? The droids do all the jobs humans didn't want to do, and it turns out that was pretty much everything, and now everyone's a film director, or an actress, or a sculptress, or a pop singer. The northern world is saturated with artists and consumers while the southern world can't feed itself."
Ed nodded. "We're the lucky ones, babe," he said.
The waitress brought their coffees and Day thanked her, avoiding eye contact. Her rant was probably the most words she'd strung together in a fortnight, but as she'd guessed, Ed wasn't interested in the answer to his own question. He gulped his espresso down in one shot and got up.
"Wait, hang on." She fumbled to her feet. She'd expected more time to ask him about the pregnancy license
"Yeah, babe?" he said, putting on his jacket.
"I've been thinking about how messed up the world is."
"We have it better than any other humans have had it throughout history."
"Well, we don't really know that. Anyway, I think it's selfish to bring a child into this world."
Ed smiled. "Nothing wrong with being a bit selfish from time to time." He pulled her in for a kiss. As their lips pressed together, a spark ran from her head to her toes, and not in a good way.
If it doesn't feel good, it's not the truth, Will would say. God, she was obsessed. Why was she sitting around a deserted house in a deserted town waiting for an absent boyfriend when she could return to London and stay with friends?
She watched Ed leaved, sipping her coffee slowly so she had an excuse to stay. Why couldn't she do what deep down she wanted to do? What was stopping her?
If she was bolder, she'd go to one of Will's retreats and meet him in the flesh. Yes, she was aware she had a crush. Who wouldn't? Will Van de Berg was young, attractive and switched-on. A crush she could handle. What she couldn't handle was another weekend lounging on the sofa watching films with Ed.
The minutes ticked past, and the waitress returned.
"Are you ready to pay?"
"Sure."
"You need to switch on your monitor." Day pressed her thumb onto the side of the wrist display. Paying was only a formality. There was more than enough for everyone. And yeah you got extra credit if you got extremely popular in your artistic expression, but no one had to worry about food or housing, clothes or restaurant bills. Especially not Day, who could hardly be accused of being an ardent consumer.
Maybe a new outfit would help her feel a bit less like herself. She had to admit, she had been totally unable to hold her own against Ed during lunch, and it wasn't like he even had to do or say anything to make her feel like she was a washout, washed-up, squeezed dry by twenty-one.
She left the restaurant and wandered along the edge of the mall walkway. She was looking for a clothes shop that felt a bit more risky than her usual white shirt and loose trousers when she found herself back outside Janus.
"Hello again," the receptionist said. Her voice was on speaker so it came out through the doors. "You're welcome to browse and ask questions, no pressure."
Day smiled awkwardly and looked at an advert projected on the reception desk where the founder of Janus described the process. A middle-aged woman appeared from a far corridor.
"This is Alexia," the receptionist said. "Alexia will answer all your questions. She's just checking us out," the droid told Alexia. Alexia nodded and smiled. Her eyes were so dark they looked black. She wore her hair pulled from her face like a ballerina.
Wait! Day did a double take. There was no tattoo on Alexia's neck. She was human.
"Would you like to follow me?" Day followed Alexia into a small office off the main reception.
Alexia pulled out a chair for Day to sit on, then elegantly poured around the other side of the desk and sat down facing her. A fluorescent name-tag flashed on her blouse flashed "Alexia".
"What would you like to know?"
"Are you a volunteer?"
"I choose to work here."
"Why?"
"Well, unless you're on the art charts Janus is limited to one implant a month. It uses up a lot of precious, rare substances. Can't be abuses of the earth like our ancestors now can we? We have to put some restrictions on the consummation."
Except you're not, thought Day. The whole point of you working here is to get around those necessary restrictions. Bizarre. She was being totally hypocritical, and she was totally unaware of it.
"So let me rephrase the question," Alexia said. "What other part of yourself would you like to explore?"
"Maybe a bit more daring, or courageous. I wish I could just behave like I want to behave instead of how I end up behaving. I want excitement."
"Good. So we have a 24 hour package, a three-day package or the honey-moon deluxe which is a fortnight."
"I'm not sure I understand how this works."
"It's a little like old-fashioned hypnosis except it really plugs straight into your subconscious. Your subconscious is programmed mostly through early childhood with certain types of thoughts and belief systems. These ideas are hooked into the way you remember your past. The implant is like an alternative program that bypasses those beliefs and throws a different light on your memories. As they say, it's not the event that shapes the personality but how you interpreted what happened. After the purchased time the personality construct disintegrates and whatever was there before comes back up to the surface."
"Are there any side effects?"
"Loss of appetite, possible dizziness, possible diarrhea, possible palpitations—all part of the excitement. All perfectly safe. Why don't I let you browse our brochure of personalities and you can see if anything grabs your attention."
The holo table lit up and Day leaned forward to look through the virtual brochure. Each personality had a picture of a model reflecting the overall dynamic of the personality and each had its own name: Executive high-flyer, Big boss, Everything-turns-to-gold, Can't fail, Living-on-the-Edge, Successfully seductive.
Below each personality name there were the main personality traits, followed by some optional additions.
"See anything you like?" the receptionist asked.
What am I doing? Day wondered. It wasn't like she'd never heard of Janus. Ed had watched a documentary about it a few months ago. A collective of people trying to get the government to ban it because they'd all had side effects that had lasted months or years. She shouldn't be here.
"I'm going to think about it," Day said. She stood up and wiped her sweaty palms across her trousers. Despite the cool atmosphere she realized she was transpiring under her arms as well.
"I've seen hundreds like you," Alexia said, leaning back in her chair, a half-smile on her lips. "They come they look, they talk about coming back, but they never do. They never do because they're afraid. It's OK to live in fear. It's a choice. I just wonder what people are afraid of these days. It's not like you could lose your job, or your home."
"Hundreds?" Day said, challenging. Hundreds in an empty town like this, she doubted it.
"I've been working at Janus for thirty years. And you are not the first pretty, young girl to walk into my office. If you leave now, you won't come back. That's your choice. But you can also choose to seize the moment. Feel great. Feel excited. Twenty-four hours of feeling passionately alive. A lot can change in one day."
"Well maybe I'll surprise you," Day muttered. "Maybe I'll be the one to come back."
"Or you could be the one to not leave." Alexia got up, walked around the desk and perched on the edge with her slim legs crossed.
"It's true what they say," she continued. "You have to act who you want to be to become who you want to be. You have to act bold first, to be able to get a bold personality implant. The old chicken and egg conundrum."
Alexia's words were like hooks, clawing down through Day's skin. A dark, metallic sensation spread from her chest. What did she have to lose? It was only twenty-four hours. So what if Ed didn't like it? Since when did she have to answer to him? If he wasn't happy about her visit to Janus, well her new personality would deal with him.
She would pick something edgy. Twenty-four hours of kick-ass attitude. Twenty-four hours of feeling like every inch of her was tingling with life, that the skin on her arms were sucking in oxygen she felt so incredible.
"OK," she said, "show me the boldest, most assertive personality you guys have got."
HI GUYS! Sorry it was late. Hope it was worth the wait. Thanks for reading. :)