Alesha felt somewhat nervous as she followed the nurse down the hallway. She hadn't seen her family for well over 6 months even prior to what the nurse had called the Faxton Tragedy, she had been much too busy with her studies to spare the time, and now that she was about to see her family again she wasn't quite sure how to feel. Relieved? Happy? Ashamed of her previous behavior? Right now, she felt those and more as she drew ever closer to their reunion.
Walking through a final set of doors, Alesha scanned the waiting room in search of her parents. The sleek, polished waiting room had the characteristic too-clean appearance common to the Alliance's hospitals. The white walls, floor and seats would have been blinding if not for the numerous modern rugs and paintings that decorated every available surface, reducing bounce light. Visitors to the hospital sat in the available chairs, cushioned with Hi-Comfort Antibacterial Gel (Trademarked). The sturdy material molded perfectly to the shape of whoever sat in it while providing the exact amount of support they needed. How the stuff worked was a mystery to all but those who had invented it, who were now insanely rich; in the couple hundred years since the material had first been introduced, it had grown rare to find seating made with anything else. Nothing else came close to the level of comfort the stuff could provide.
[Ahem, host, weren't you looking for your family? Now might not be the best time to zone out drooling over how comfy your old game chair was because of the special material it was cushioned with. The chair's long gone anyways.]
Oh, right… Alesha felt a little sheepish for getting so distracted by thoughts of cozy chairs, even if it had only been for a moment. Next to her, the nurse called out, "Alesha Williams, I'm looking for the parents of Alesha Williams!"
A woman with short, thick wavy brown hair shot up to her feet from a nearby seat, back to Alesha before she turned around in a whirl, eyes searching for then meeting her gaze. "Alesha!" She gasped, navigating around the chairs and running over, smothering her in a bear hug. "My girl, we've been so worried about you! I'm so glad you finally woke up," her mother whispered, tears falling down her cheeks and into her daughter's hair.
A tall blond man (mostly blond anyways, he had a few wisps of white hiding in there) walked quickly over to join them, enveloping them both in his arms. "I'm so relieved," he said, his tenor voice laced with emotion. "We have so much to catch up on. Let's go home, alright?"
Tears leaking from her eyes as her parents let go, Alesha smiled, eager to leave the too-familiar medical halls behind. "Yeah," she responded, "I want to go home."
----
Alesha sat in the passenger seat of her parents' hover car on the way home. The sleek vehicle was pale silver in color, its shape similar to a short grain of rice, the same as the hundreds of similar vehicles that traveled in spaced-out, stacked layers along predetermined aerial routes. Her father, who sat in the "driver's" seat, wasn't actually in control of the vehicle. Regular citizens hadn't driven themselves in hundreds of years--they were far too prone to making stupid mistakes or even stupider choices. Of course, this meant that anyone desiring to be a pilot had to go through significantly longer training, but in the grand scheme of things, it was much safer to have the advanced City Transport AI Network take care of the populace's transportation. The role of "driver" had long since changed from meaning "the person driving the vehicle" to "the person who inputs the destination and chooses the music." The music her father had chosen today was by Deityquest OverLords, Alesha's favorite music group, and she was all too happy to jam hard to the music, singing along with her parents as the hover car navigated itself towards her parents' home. Alesha was happy her parents didn't start with trying to talk to her about what had happened and why. She still didn't understand it herself, so this little slice of normalcy felt like a lifeline amidst a churning sea of change.
The hover car slowed as it approached a 70-story building, then pulled into a parking garage halfway up the structure. Dozens of parked hover cars rested gently on their cement pedestals, each topped with a foot-thick cap of Hi-Density Industrial Insulation Gel (Trademarked), a much more durable variation of the famous seating material, this kind specialized for outdoors and/or high-impact use. It had been originally intended for use in construction until one savvy thinker came up with a clever strategy: he laid a thick coat of it on top of a cement block and rested his hover car on top of it. The material molded to the car's shape, holding it in place and keeping it from falling to the ground no matter how violently he got in and out of it. This meant that hover cars could lose the landing gear they had always been equipped with, and for those who had already ditched it, the complicated netting they had been forced to park in could be abandoned instead.
[Alesha, how obsessed are you with this stupid material? Are you some sort of gel nerd?]
Flustered, Alesha pulled her eyes away from the hover car parking stations, turning around to face her mother, who sat in the seat behind her. "Are Layla and Dennis home today?"
Alesha's mother, Jessica, looked up, responding with a smile, "No, they're at school right now. There's only a couple weeks before Finals, otherwise we'd have brought them with us to pick you up."
"Ah, that makes sense. I guess I'll see them after they get home, then."
The hover car pulled up to the family's assigned parking station, slowed, then lowered itself gently onto the block, settling in as it powered down and began to recharge. The doors popped open, hinging upwards like hatches. Alesha unbuckled herself and climbed out.
The three of them left the car behind as the doors closed and a cheerful "be-beep!" announced it had successfully locked. A short while later, Alesha found herself in front of a charcoal gray door with a metal plate on it that displayed "7 - 4663" in black numbers. Building 7, apartment 4663. The home she'd grown up in, the place her family lived, and now the place she was returning to after an unforeseen disaster had destroyed both her own place and the university she'd been attending, drastically changing her future.
Taking a deep breath, Alesha followed her mother inside. She was home.