composer. Soundscapes were considered the muzak of their day and she was lucky if two or three people a week stopped by to listen to her pieces. But the worldlet of her office came with the auditorium as part of the package and she was always pleased if anyone at all came by to listen.
It was a free worldlet tailored for musical applications and came with the studio, the auditorium, a meeting room for receiving clients, and a little rest room – little more than a comfy chair on a ledge of rock with a small table and a coffee machine. She sometimes considered paying for a custom office. When she made it big and had lots of spare credit maybe. Until then this one suited her just fine.
She made for the studio and pulled up the files for the Old Vienna project. The minute she heard the rattle of carriages and the distant strain of classical strings a wave of utter boredom washed through her. It was almost a physical revulsion. She just couldn't face it. Not today. Maybe not ever.
She went through to her rest-room and poured a coffee, falling into her chair and staring at the perfect sky.
A pair of eagles were hunting over the valley, spiralling up on the thermals and gliding above the hills. It was the same pair of eagles that often appeared just there. The trouble with free worldlets was that they didn't come with a huge repertoire of behaviours programmed in. She had often stared at these two birds, thinking they looked like kites with invisible strings, imagining a little girl down in the valley, running and squealing, tugging the lines to make the birds swoop and soar. Today she felt that she was the kite, only her string was broken. She was being blown about on powerful winds, not gliding gracefully across the sky but tumbling along, out of control and in danger of crashing.
She was tired. Bone weary. Not least from having walked and cycled so much, taking more physical exercise in one day than she had in the previous month. What she really needed to do was sleep, but she was so exhausted she couldn't face the effort of climbing out of the tank and staggering the two paces to her bed. In the end, she forced herself, the prospect of sleeping in the tank again being worse than that of dragging her weary body into bed.
-oOo-
She woke in the middle of the night, groggy and confused, and called for lights. For a second she wondered if the woman with the gun, her cycling along city roads, dodging the robot vans, her hair blowing in the wind, had been a dream. Then she felt the ache in her thighs and knew it had really happened.
She popped up a clock and groaned. Three AM. For a while she lay with her eyes closed and tried to fall back into sleep, but she needed a pee and she was starving. What was worse, the mere recollection of her adventures set her heart racing again and made sleep impossible. It wasn't until she got up that she realised she had slept in her clothes on top of the bed. This is why you don't have a husband , she told herself in a parody of her mother's voice. You live like a hippy. You should get a real job with regular hours. Instead of amusing herself, the recitation depressed her. She probably would need to get a real job soon, either that or starve.
She grabbed a packet of something from the freezer and put it into the microwave. The little cooker read the tag on the box and set about cooking the contents as instructed. Ginny stared through the window at the slowly rotating packet until the machine pinged and snapped her out of her mindless state. She pulled the box out and took off the packaging. Some kind of Tai soup in a plastic bowl steamed on the counter. With a shrug she grabbed a disposable spoon from the dispenser and sat down to eat.
The entertainment feed was playing some middle-of-the-night political analysis show. The kind that no-one would watch during the day. There was a bill that the pundits had been getting excited about for several weeks now. Something to do with new powers to
It was a free worldlet tailored for musical applications and came with the studio, the auditorium, a meeting room for receiving clients, and a little rest room – little more than a comfy chair on a ledge of rock with a small table and a coffee machine. She sometimes considered paying for a custom office. When she made it big and had lots of spare credit maybe. Until then this one suited her just fine.
She made for the studio and pulled up the files for the Old Vienna project. The minute she heard the rattle of carriages and the distant strain of classical strings a wave of utter boredom washed through her. It was almost a physical revulsion. She just couldn't face it. Not today. Maybe not ever.
She went through to her rest-room and poured a coffee, falling into her chair and staring at the perfect sky.
A pair of eagles were hunting over the valley, spiralling up on the thermals and gliding above the hills. It was the same pair of eagles that often appeared just there. The trouble with free worldlets was that they didn't come with a huge repertoire of behaviours programmed in. She had often stared at these two birds, thinking they looked like kites with invisible strings, imagining a little girl down in the valley, running and squealing, tugging the lines to make the birds swoop and soar. Today she felt that she was the kite, only her string was broken. She was being blown about on powerful winds, not gliding gracefully across the sky but tumbling along, out of control and in danger of crashing.
She was tired. Bone weary. Not least from having walked and cycled so much, taking more physical exercise in one day than she had in the previous month. What she really needed to do was sleep, but she was so exhausted she couldn't face the effort of climbing out of the tank and staggering the two paces to her bed. In the end, she forced herself, the prospect of sleeping in the tank again being worse than that of dragging her weary body into bed.
-oOo-
She woke in the middle of the night, groggy and confused, and called for lights. For a second she wondered if the woman with the gun, her cycling along city roads, dodging the robot vans, her hair blowing in the wind, had been a dream. Then she felt the ache in her thighs and knew it had really happened.
She popped up a clock and groaned. Three AM. For a while she lay with her eyes closed and tried to fall back into sleep, but she needed a pee and she was starving. What was worse, the mere recollection of her adventures set her heart racing again and made sleep impossible. It wasn't until she got up that she realised she had slept in her clothes on top of the bed. This is why you don't have a husband , she told herself in a parody of her mother's voice. You live like a hippy. You should get a real job with regular hours. Instead of amusing herself, the recitation depressed her. She probably would need to get a real job soon, either that or starve.
She grabbed a packet of something from the freezer and put it into the microwave. The little cooker read the tag on the box and set about cooking the contents as instructed. Ginny stared through the window at the slowly rotating packet until the machine pinged and snapped her out of her mindless state. She pulled the box out and took off the packaging. Some kind of Tai soup in a plastic bowl steamed on the counter. With a shrug she grabbed a disposable spoon from the dispenser and sat down to eat.
The entertainment feed was playing some middle-of-the-night political analysis show. The kind that no-one would watch during the day. There was a bill that the pundits had been getting excited about for several weeks now. Something to do with new powers to
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