As she lay in her bed, contemplating her looming grades, Lex received a message that made the budget air taste sweet. Projected onto her darkglass goggles, she read the Nmail:
Dear [ Alexandra Vulcan ] of class [ 77A ],
Students should avoid contact with the former protector known as Manny Grave and report any suspicious activity immediately to the Department of Purity. The suspect is Graexian, 5'10, 82 kg, and is believed to have stolen a cache of military-grade explosives. On behalf of the Department of Purity, we hope you have a wonderful day—Department of Purity, 11:58.
But even this news couldn't salvage her sour mood. Her interviewers had been perfectly clear they'd thought her unworthy to unclog Upstairs toilets. With two days before she got her Offerings, and the droid battle tonight, Lex was getting fidgety.
She prayed in front of her Athena poster, and even lit some incense to help the prayers reach the gods above. Then Lex returned to her bed, peering out of the window to a street of replica prefab homes: a grey drudgery Lex could have escaped if she had only tried harder. More study. Stricter lessons. The list of what she should have done wore down on her spirit. Ever since returning home from that soul-crushing interview, Lex had been unable to stomach food or her family, and had hidden in her bedroom.
Despite her better judgment, Lex wired her slate to her processor terminal on the wall and pulled up a battle simulation. Slapping on her darkglass goggles, the words 'Tengoku Megacorporation' appeared before her, followed by the unveiling of a white lotus on a golden field.
Without a wirehelm, it was harder to maintain the scene in her mind. Still, Lex was properly loaded into a world of long-legged cranes, croaking cicadas and paperwhite walls. Even with a sky of shining steel, it was her favourite; a Tengokuan-style katana appearing in her hands, and an orange kimono wrapping her body. The Tengokuan sims were the only alternative to the local Graexian sort that all involved slaughtering Empyrean 'barbarians'.
To her left sat a Zen garden, her right a koi pond. Her sandalled foot slid across white sand as she positioned her sword in a readied stance and a warm breeze brushed her face.
Ninjas, wrapped in black cloth, sprang from atop wooden walls. The programs moved like liquid shadow and Lex fought them with a skill born through orbits of non-stop training. She won the first battle. Then the second. And the third.
The fourth wave came with a solid-steel sumo, the opponent's cybernetics geared for battle. Since augmented bodies were so common, a cyborg designed for combat was dubbed cyberblade, and they could range from a single bionic arm to replacing every organ, bar the brain, with steel. Her opponent was one of the later.
The cybersumo charged with machine-powered speed, bursting through a wooden wall, and barrelling straight towards Lex to throw her against the ground and stomp through her belly. She lost—her mind wasn't focused today. But it was good. Just like droid fighting, the simulation let her feel what it was like to have a functioning heart and a strong body.
To move. To fight. To forget about her sickness, at least for a little while.
Her neck twinged mildly, then badly and then horrifically. The damaged slate had strained her nervous system. Without a working slate, raw data flooded her mind and, while her brain could make sense of the mess, her neural cortex wasn't designed for binary traffic.
Lex wired out, her arching back relaxing against the soft bed linen as she rubbed her neck, steam hissing out the side. She'd need to buy a new slate soon, preferably with her winnings from the droid fight—assuming her current unit survived long enough for her to win against the very best droid fighter the lower floors had to offer.
Yet, if her back alley fights were anything to judge by, it wasn't impossible.
But before that, she'd need to face her family, and hide her failure long enough to find a new way forward. Getting up, Lex threw on a new shirt, and her black boots. Sniffing an armpit, Lex gagged. She needed a shower.
Cracking the door open, Lex dragged her feet down the hall. Every door dotting the lemon-yellow walls was studded with the same steel hinges; each cubic addition to their prefabricated home was made in the same factory. It made buildings cheap, sure, but it also made everything mind-numbingly dull.
Lex treasured her faded memories of her childhood under the Big Blue: she had visited brightly painted temples, slept in secretive desert enclaves, hid within glinting loyalist graveyards, danced around sprawling vineyards and climbed crumbling ruins. The Upstairs world had wonderous flavour, while the underground was endlessly bitter.
She arrived at the bathroom and found the engaged sign blinking orange. She furrowed her brows, then pressed her ear against the sliding steel door. No running water, no humming, no wet steps. Her stomach rumbled like a thunderstorm.