"You're late again," said the man in the corporate costume. Woven from the same fabric as an ordinary suit, its purpose as a costume was confirmed by the text sewn into a repeating pattern. facade was the word. It had lost all meaning in the context of this garment, beyond the semantic irony held in it being a literal facade against his otherwise bare flesh.
For a corporate costume, it wasnt wholly reprhenisible to the eye. It may have been from the wrong century, however. It was stylised in a way that made the chequered jacket not seem entirely like a cheap prop, but perhaps an ancient mustard and clay coloured blazer from some point in the 1970s.
Through his modern glasses, he observed her. She was dressed entirely in black, with a languid physique not yet dangling attentively from the threads of caffeine. Her dependence was marked in her slightly yellowed teeth revealed as she spoke back to him.
"Seven seconds", a sigh, "this conversation is taking too long, I am starting work. "
She placed a scarred hand up against the chip reader. The last workplace had done the cheapest job of chip removal shed has in her short life. She and many others had wondered why chips were removed instead of reprogrammed upon the change of employer, but she loathed the tangled web of scar tissue between her thumb and index finger.
She rubbed at the sore spot, an ache reminding her of all the places she'd already been. Her ears rang quietly from the noise of the night before, memories of the protest bubbling away in her eyes, which sat among tiny dark bags. Her dark hair still holding droplets of rain.
The protest was more like a rock concert than something to shake and shape the foundations of law. It took place upon the steps of an ignorant, vacant parliament. The building was an ornament of the past. Debate need not occur in the flesh when the public square was naught more than an IP address and particular port on one of the many limited access servers.
He glowered at her, and the machine, expecting that the consequqnce of seven seconds would have more impact. She was late, she reasoned, but for a purpose that was well worth it, as the callous between her index and middle finger reminded her.
The arcs and lines she spewed out page after page were a panacea, a series of trajectories and interconnected relationships. When crafting the inky lines she was making her own Art.
The coffee machine beeped and an organic mug emerged from the bench below. It filled with fluid, assaulted the room with an aroma. She looked at it longingly, and the beautiful text that slowly emerged from patternless substance into discernible text. Phil. The Machine beeped again. A panel illuminated in red, with the temperature in Celsius counting down. It went to green at the ideal number, then beeped violently.
She picked up the organic mug and hope she could obtain somewhat of the chemical stimuli from steaming particles alone. "Good morning, Phil?" She asked with a smile looking out to the gathered strangers. A man wearing a woven beanie raised his hand skyward. She handed him the morning's essentials. He thanked her and in the proximity of hands, producer to consumer, their respective chips silently communicated with one another.
On the corner of her contact lens, she saw the piecemeal transaction enter her account. Behind the counter, the Machine beeped with the usual urgency. If every beep was urgent, none of them were urgent.
The crowd grew larger as the sun rose. She watched the man name Phil wander off into the crowd as she prepared to read the next name, the smile less genuine with each individual that proceeded the last.
The morning rush would be over in fifteen minutes. Then she could go to her next job.
