Noir 3

Sylvia woke to the taste of blood in her mouth, the loud blaring of her alarm clock, and the ever-chipper morning radio host's voice. "Good morning, residents of Nova Way. It is six AM on June 23, 2112. It is currently overcast at the temperature of thirty degrees Celsius, with a high of thirty-one degrees and a low of twenty-four degrees. The air quality index for Inner Nova Way is rated at 84, Moderate. The air quality index for Outer Nova Way is rated at 154, Unhealthy. Please remember to use proper safety equipment if you are heading into an area with an elevated air quality index."
Her hand darted out from under her blanket and reached blindly for the alarm clock, finally managing to turn it off after a good amount of searching. She groaned, dragged herself out of bed, and limped to her bathroom. She clutched her head and spat blood into the sink as she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her electric blue hair was tangled and dirty, her pixie cut looking more like a mangy mess than the attractive and cool style she'd been aiming for, and her headache was accompanied by the usual nosebleed. The nosebleed and headaches didn't seem like enough of an issue today to warrant anything more than painkillers, thankfully, so she took them quickly and without complaint.
She took a quick shower, brushed her hair, and changed into her work outfit. The low-cut blouses she wore had gotten old quickly, but the blatant, unrepentant sex appeal gave her network an edge over others— and even over online news agencies. And even then, the leather jacket she wore with it gave her a unique look, which was something refreshing in this age of mass-produced media. There was little room for amateurs when people could use androids to create personally-tailored media, so to stay competitive you had to bring something to the table they couldn't. She'd hoped that was her happiness and enthusiasm, at the beginning. Now, after months of nosebleeds and headaches and Data chips to keep her going at night, she knew the only reason she still had a job was her sex appeal, something all but the most expensive androids lacked. Still, she tried to be genuinely happy on air— not through Data or through faking it, but because she loved her job, and loved helping people.
A few long steps and she was at the kitchenette in her cramped apartment. She made some cereal, making sure to grab a clean-looking bowl off her counter, and sat down for a bit to read her email. At first, there were a few subscriptions that she couldn't care less about, the usual fearmongering anti-robot article, and a newsletter from the Silicon Church that she made a note to read on the way to work. Then she finally found an email she'd responded to last night, from her work, offering her the opportunity to cover a story about an unknown assassin who murdered a lawyer— mistaking her for a high-profile judge— and blamed the Silicon Church in their manifesto.
Even if people liked to claim that there weren't any good people left in the world, and the news tended to give credence to those claims, she didn't like to believe them. Through the Silicon Church, she'd met some genuinely good people who'd helped her get back on her feet and to where she was now. She honestly couldn't think of a legitimate reason someone would dislike them.
That's why she passed the story about the attack to someone else. For one, she didn't think she could handle it from an unbiased perspective— but she also didn't believe it at all. The official, government-approved line they were supposed to give about it being in response to recent pro-android legislation seemed like a complete lie. The Silicon Church didn't lobby or protest for it, and it seemed like a convenient way to blame the victim while ignoring the real issue: the government wasn't willing to investigate cases like these more than a simple surface-level investigation, and it was empowering these radicals to pursue further attacks. It wasn't just the Silicon Church and its affiliates, either, because the police had been passing up or denying requests to look into mysterious disappearances of both church members and those who opposed them for months, ever since the factory sabotage that resulted in the botched mods.
Including hers, of course. It wasn't as severe as others; some dropped dead days after getting theirs from a bleed in the brain, while others got infections or were injured by malfunctioning implants. Thankfully, she was lucky and got out of it only with the occasional nosebleed and headache. Unfortunately, though, it had been a few minutes and it hadn't stopped yet, which meant she had to take her other medicine.
She stumbled over obnoxiously large piles of clothing in the dark and eventually made her way back to the bathroom, where she picked up a small tube full of nanopaste. She squeezed a bit of the grey sludge onto her finger, then gently put it on the area around the spinejack on the base of her neck. She counted to ten and the headache stopped, then around half a minute later, her nosebleed tapered off. And shortly after that, the taste of blood in her mouth was replaced with the bitter aftertaste anyone who took nanopaste knew very well.
Feeling much better, she wiped the last of the blood off her face and left, the lights switching off and the door locking behind her automatically as she stepped outside. Immediately, she was met by the lingering smog that stung at her eyes and nose. She held her breath and closed her eyes, fishing in her bag for something, before pulling out a dust mask and putting it on. Her eyes still stung, but she blinked it away and hurried through the dim streets, dodging piles of trash and discarded boxes, until it opened up onto a larger road. She descended the stairs into the subway station for the Eleventh District of Outer Nova Way and swiped her ID card on the turnstile, which flashed red. She swiped it another time, and another—and finally it clicked and let her pass through. As she approached the subway train's doors, immaculate to the point of being able to see her reflection in the polished chrome, she held her thumb up to the scanner and the doors slid open immediately, then closed behind her after she entered.
She took a seat by the door, projected a holoscreen from her fingers, and started to browse the exonet. One headline caught her eye: police seized several 'illegal' androids while originally performing a sting on an alleged human trafficking ring in a nightclub. There was apparently some controversy over whether or not the evidence that warranted the initial sting was valid or not, because no evidence of human trafficking was ever found, and the androids had been at the nightclub for a while but there was no reason to seize them. Until they found a convenient excuse, she supposed— and it looked to her like they had.
The scenery fled by in the holo-windows; the majority of subway stops and intra-district transit was underground, but the subway ride from the Eleventh District to the Inner District was mostly on decaying bridges above the heaps of trash that separated the inner and outer city. It wasn't like it mattered, though; the subways didn't have actual windows, so each car just had a screen with simulated scenery on it. You could be underground and looking out at a digital forest, or on a bridge and looking at the side of a subway tunnel. It was sort of nice, in a way, allowing people sights and experiences they wouldn't normally get to.
The train began to shake and shudder a bit as she crossed the wall between inner and Outer Nova Way. As usual, the transition between old, seldom-maintained tracks and meticulously designed, sleek rails was bumpy and uncomfortable. The holo-windows flashed blue, and then switched to the external camera view, where the wall was only briefly visible before it flew past, swiftly replaced by hanging neon lights and floating holographic signs. A large, holographic display of some sort of animal spun in a plaza below, above a fountain, casting an orange glow over the area. The sun had barely begun to rise, but already there were people milling about and going about their business. While the outer edge of Inner Nova Way was just as bad as the other side of the wall, even a short ways in was much better. The buildings here were concrete, steel, and glass, towering monuments to the heights humanity could reach as a whole. They stood as a stark contrast to the drab and dismal brick of Outer Nova Way, which only served as a reminder of how not to be, and how not to act— a warning, not an example.
Which was a load of complete and total bullshit, if you asked her. The people of Outer Nova Way worked, lived, and grew up in shitty conditions and they were still nicer than anyone she'd met from the inner city. All the buildings in Inner Nova Way stood for was greed and corruption, just like the wall separating them from the outer city, the 'haves' from the 'have-nots'. The snobs in suits, sitting at the top of their towers and barking orders at the lesser people, wanted to be reminded of their excess and wealth constantly, while also being able to ignore the destitution their total avarice caused to others. Something was going to change soon, it had to, she could feel it—
But the work day continued as usual, and the subway slowed to a halt in the station. The glossy tile and smooth walls did nothing to abate her feelings, and instead just left her feeling… isolated. Alone.
Well, she thought, I suppose I ought to get to work. Her feet were already moving, of course, just another step in her unchanging daily routine. The towering office building loomed over her, and she couldn't help but feel out of place in her semi-casual clothing while everyone else she saw was wearing stuffy formalwear. Still, she entered the elevator and relished the relative silence as she rode it up to the twenty-ninth floor. Her casual look had its advantages, as the middle-to-upper class people in the inner city— their target demographic at the station— wanted a somewhat 'grungy' appearance, without being 'distasteful'. Her appearance had even been described to her by her boss as 'quaint', and if she had been in private she would have scoffed. But she wasn't, and so she put on a proud face and thanked her boss. Who cares if you're seen as a suck-up, if it's the only way to keep your job? She'd originally wanted to be a reporter or journalist, but according to the executives her 'looks' would be wasted on a job like that. To hell with her looks, to hell with sex appeal and spreading bullshit corporate and government propaganda. She'd gotten this job to cause real change, not stagnation, and to inform, not to get paid to lie through her teeth and look 'pretty' while doing it.
Despite her internal rebellion, she sat quietly through the morning staff meeting, and managed to not look entirely dead while doing it. After the meeting ended, she went to the coffee machine and felt something hitting together in her pockets. She reached into her pocket and saw two small Data chips. Disgusted at the thought of using it during the workday, she dropped them back in her pocket and made a cup of coffee.
She set the paper cup in the machine and pressed the button to dispense coffee, and after a moment of grumbling and sputtering it spat some damp coffee grounds into the bottom of her cup, then seized up. She hit it and tried again, but it did the same thing. Cursing, she dropped it in the trash and opened the cabinets to get some instant coffee. She blindly stuck her hand in the cabinet and pulled out a box of paper bags. She shoved it back in and pulled out another, and was rewarded with a box of instant coffee packets. She shook it and felt nothing, then turned it upside down and saw a scrap of paper fall out. 'IOU 1 box of coffee' was scrawled on the paper, with no signature. She threw the box into the trash, too, and just returned to her desk to prepare for the broadcast.
A few emails had appeared since she left the house. One was from Slow Drone, which she immediately hid and marked as 'read later', looking around to make sure no one was watching her open her emails. The next was from one of her acquaintances from the Silicon Church, Gerald, a bartender at the Cyber Sylph. He was, as usual, inviting her for a celebratory round of drinks at the bar that evening. The man could find an occasion to celebrate nearly every evening, though, so she sent him a response saying that she probably couldn't make it. A Thursday night was hardly an occasion to get wasted over.
The last email was from an official at the Silicon Church, but it looked like a mass-email to anyone on the newsletter. It mentioned a 'special service' on Monday morning, at around one AM, that everyone was recommended to attend. It was described as 'revolutionary' and 'breathtaking', but not once did it ever mention what it was actually about. She sighed, marked it as read later, and returned to her preparations.
About thirty minutes before she was supposed to record her segments, someone left a paper on her desk with some government-issued lines about something or another, which she recited to herself several times. It wasn't worth arguing over, and there was no point in protesting about it so close to recording. She recited the lines again, then checked her notifications. There was one story about a traffic incident on 5th Avenue and 22 Street West, which was simple enough. She jacked in quickly to download the schematics of the scene to the holoprojectors in her fingertips, and then finished up her preparations and headed out to the studio to record.