Woman on the Edge of Time

“But you don’t have any women friends to visit? Like from apartment to apartment?”

“What for? I got everything I need. You want a Rapture? Or whatever you float on. Have a gape—I got a good selection.” She pointed to an automated pill dispenser beside the bed.

“Drugs?”

“Risers, soothers, sleepers, wakers, euphors, passion pills, the whole works. What’s your poison?”

“Nothing right now, thanks. I been on them kind of heavy lately.”

“Just so you don’t cross out, you know? Mixed reacts? You got to check the combos on the Digitab. So many fems cross out just because they don’t check it. Me, I almost CO’ed once when I was a kid. Takes just a minute to Digitab, right?”

“You don’t have to see the doctor for pills anymore, huh?”

“Seea doctor?” Again Gildina looked embarrassed. “I’m only middle level. I been to a medimated clinic, you know, like everybody else middle. You wait in line and then you talk with the computer. But see a doctor! Well, there’s service medicos here who repair the medimated clinics and the medimats. Supervise organ collection. Do the actual extractions and vacuum seal for transport upstairs. But I never actually seena doctor. They’re high-level flacks and some of them even live upstairs. I see a lot about them on the HG, of course. Some of my favorite shows are about doctors. The fight against senility. Thrusting back the frontiers of life. All that stuff. But they’re too busy prolonging life to hang around down here, you know.”

“HG. Is that … holigraph?” They probably had the same thing they called holies in Mattapoisett. “Every so often you have a three-dimensional ritual or story?”

“It’s on twenty-four hours if you subscribe. But we have a Sense-all. See?” Gildina pointed to what Connie had thought was a fancy hair dryer suspended over the bed. “That’s much better. If it didn’t cost a heart and a kidney, I’d be in it all day. But Cash is at me already for the bill I stacked two months ago. It’s much realer. Cause you’re in it. Didn’t you ever try?”

“Never.”

“I’d vite you but Cash is at me already, like I said. It’s like dreaming, only you’re awake, and it’s real exciting. Like, look at the catalog.” Gildina passed her a well-thumbed Sense-all catalog for September. It was full of ads for drugs and cosmetics and gadgets, services and knockshops, body designers, protection devices. This could not exist simultaneously with Mattapoisett. Could not. Or else they were at war and she had ended up somehow in the enemy camp. Maybe that was the war they were fighting. She forced herself to calm, using easercises Luciente had taught her, then she scanned the catalog.

“Hot Dog”: A bulgy contracty amuses herself while her man is away with a large boxer dog. HD 5.

“Tremors on Platform Texaroyal”: A top-level SDman goes after the Assassin who got his zec. Another Studs Jerker extravago with contracty harem, degutting, many explos, and lesby sex. FD 20.

“What’s the FD 20 stuff?”

“Time and price—what do you suppose on?”

She read:

“Sorrinda 777”: Story of a love never supposed to be, between a low-level medimat swab and a doctor in service to a nuke fission family; her faithfulness, her suffering, her shining love: will she give the ultimate sacrifice of her heart to replace his legal contracty’s coronary dystrophy? FD 15.

“Good Enough to Eat”: Top-level bulger ignores warnings from family and romps in Roughlands. She is captured by mutes. Mass rapes, torture (inch-by-inch close-up with full Sense-all). Ultimate cannibal scene features close-ups. DD 25.

“When Ferns Flung to Be Men”: In Age of Uprisings, two fem libbers meet in battle—kung fu, tai chi, judo, wrestling. Stronger rapes weaker with dildo. SD man zaps in, fights both (close-ups, full gore), double rape, double murder, full Sense-all. HD 15.

“Contract Null and Void”: A dud woman blackmails a re-op tech into a series of beauty-ops, enters career of social scramble from level to level (costumes by Rang-up, full Sense-all) till she falls for Dirk, Assassin to Spaceport Mobilgulf. FD 15.

“Men and women haven’t changed so much,” she said, thinking of Times Square. She was surprised by how cheerless that prospect seemed.

“So why go out?” Gildina went on, bouncing a little on her bed. “Unless some contracty lousy with credits is about to loan you her Sense-all. By the bim, the HG’s not bad. Lots of trans I watch.”

“Show me the rest of your apartment, okay?”

“The rest?” Gildina looked blank. “You mean the cleano?”

The bathroom was bigger than it would have been in her time, with more devices: devices for cleaning shoes and what was probably like dry cleaning. There was no tub, but a shower with many hard sprays of water that would hit different places on the body, and a meter to time the amount of water. The shower had a disinfectant light as well plus nozzles for shooting out hot air. The toilet was big and fancy but still a toilet. Over the washbowl hung a device for drying hair instantly. But the bathroom lacked a window.