"Two tickets to the top floor, please."
The receptionist, a tall blonde guy with perfect white teeth, smiled. It was slightly unsettling - his eyes seemed unfocused, as though he was looking at a spot behind Nero's head. "Sure. That'll be sixteen quaths. And - please turn off that device on you."
Ophelia looked at him quizzically. "My phone?"
"There's something else on you, isn't there? It's interfering with the cameras."
"Is he talking about the pen?" asked Nero.
Nero's camera distortion pen doubled up as a stylus on Ophelia's phone, and had to be disabled when she wanted to take photos. Out of habit, Ophelia had taken to turning the pen on whenever she wasn't using the camera.
"Oh! Sorry, I'll turn it off."
The receptionist's eyes finally focused to meet Nero's, and Nero felt a chill run down his spine. "Thank you. Please take the silver elevators on the left - those go straight to the viewing gallery."
Ophelia thanked the guy and hurried into one of the silver elevators, looking confused. She held the doors barely long enough for Nero to get in, half-crushing another girl who was trying to enter.
"How did he know about the pen?" she asked.
"Electric-type esper?" suggested Nero. "But what was with his eyes? They were all over the place."
"Maybe he was tired."
"First time here?" asked the other girl in the elevator, grinning.
Nero and Ophelia turned to look at her. She had wavy, jet black hair and ruby red earrings, which matched well with the crimson band around her middle finger. It was difficult to identify where she was from - her catlike eyes suggested that she was Oriental, like the Katoris, but her fair skin and faint accent suggested that she was from one of the Northern countries.
"Yeah," said Nero. "I don't know anything about this city. Do you know about the receptionist?"
The girl blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. She was attractive in a way that Ophelia was not - Ophelia looked sweet and elegant, the kind of girl you'd bring home to meet your parents. This girl exuded confidence, and looked like she could double as the lead singer of a rock band.
"I've lived here half my life. The receptionist isn't an esper. In fact, none of the staff in this city are espers."
The glass walls of the elevator provided a stunning view of the city - if you weren't afraid of heights. Unfortunately, Ophelia didn't do very well with heights, and was thus reduced to a quivering ball at the far corner of the elevator, while Nero continued to talk to the girl.
"How else could he have known about something the size of a toothpick?" asked Nero. "Was it the security camera?"
"Sorta. The workforce in Meridian Primus all use cameras to see - they're automatons."
"Ah."
Now he understood.
Automatons were robots that were designed to look and act human. They first came into existence near the end of the 19th century, but the very first androids were limited to walking and picking up objects. As technology advanced, they became smarter, with the crème de la crème of automatons being able to outthink supercomputers.
The downfall of androids, even in the 82nd century, were that they were unable to carry out tasks that existed outside their programming. You couldn't get an automaton chef to do construction work, for example, whilst a human could do both - albeit at a lower quality.
This raised a curious question: how did the receptionist know about interference? Was it such a popular device in Meridian Primus that it had to be included in the android's memory?
He raised his question to the girl, who shrugged. "The automatons in Meridian Primus all share information. They're like a bunch of spiders on a web - all of them are connected to the same network. Any automaton in the city is capable of carrying out the tasks of any other automaton if they are reprogrammed for that task. Maybe they had a scientist automaton feeding it that information."
"Are you an esper?" asked Nero.
"Me?" said the girl. "Nah. But ask me again tomorrow, and I might have a different answer."
There was a strange tinge of apathy in her voice that evaded Nero's understanding. She was definitely taking the appraisal test if she was talking like that, but it should've been something to be excited over. The way she was talking was akin to a weatherman being asked about the forecast for the next day.
"You've taken the test before?" asked Ophelia, still clutching tightly to Nero's leg.
"This will be my fourth time," she replied. "Failed the first three years, but… maybe this time will be different. The name's Senna, by the way. Senna Sarabouche."
"I'm Nero," said Nero, "and this coward here is Ophelia."
"Nice to meet you, Senna," said Ophelia. "I'm Coward."
Senna clapped merrily, bursting into peals of delighted laughter at Ophelia's joke. "Aww, don't say that! Many people are afraid of heights - you'll see when we get to the top."