Liberty’s home was a bespoken glorified dollhouse tucked in the nearly abandoned parking garage under the hospital. It was literally a bed in a box, welded to a trailer. It didn’t need windows. Suddenly exhausted, he pressed his thumb to the scanner embedded his box’s door. He’d scavenged the scanner out of an old phone, but it worked fine. The door unsealed with a hiss of cooler air and darkness. Grab handle in hand, he pulled himself up into his space. Maybe dinner and a nap would be good.
The thing about love was that if you forgot you wanted it, it didn’t bother you. The moment you remembered how much you wanted it, and how you were never going to get it, it hurt. Lights came up as the door sealed. Blank walls and a floor made of micro particles that felt like wet sand under his feet waited for him to give a command. He stood there, arms hanging, eyes closed for a moment, the memory of his dark haired stranger in his mind, those sparkling blue eyes seeming to hide so much possibility. “Beach,” he said finally.
The inside of his box transformed by the time he opened his eyes. His beach was private, copied after Venice Beach in California, with ocean splashing against rocks. He sank down to the sandy beach, a thick towel already laid out for him. His cat, a long haired black kitty, ran up and pounced into his lap. Her paws felt as real as he could imagine a cat’s paws would. She kneaded his thigh as he patted her. This was his home. When he let himself fall backwards, the beach rose up to meet him, cradling him, supporting him perfectly. He drifted off to sleep, only resisting a little as he thought about he should actually try to find out who his sparkling stranger was. “I was not flustered,” he told his kitty.
She mewed supportively, as if to say, of course not, of course not.
<><>
When the knock came on his door, his snapped open like they’d just closed. His kitty snuggled him and he petted her. The system told him he’d been asleep for 10 hours and that the person at his door was Jody, the hospital’s kitchen staff. He flopped over on his back, arms out to his sides. “Hey Jody,” he said.
On the outside of his box, his door turned into a screen, letting him stand there in perfect professional presentation, teeth even just a touch whiter than they actually were.
“Dr. McBride. I have brought you food. Your favorite. Crab salad tacos, mashed potatoes, and chocolate pie!”
Even his professional image on the door scowled like he was where he sat on his beach. “What did you hear?”
Jody was a pretty girl with a high melanin count and lips like Marie Antoinette. “I heard that my favorite night shift doctor got his heartbroken by dark haired out of town boy.”
Liberty belly crawled over to the door, and gave it a shove, so he lay there scowling at her. “That’s not what happened at all! He was suspicious.”
“I’m sure he was. A dark knight come to steal your heart. Zhara is writing a real life fiction about you.”
His mouth hung open for a moment while he regretted all the over the top poetry he’d encouraged out of that patient. “There’s nothing to write. I don’t need any special treatment.”
“So you don’t want the food?”
“Didn’t say that,” Liberty said, reaching out to take the tray back into his private space. “Thanks Jody.”
“You’re welcome!”
He drew the door closed. When it hissed that it was sealed, he grinned crookedly. “Harem!”
The soft beach fluffed up into brightly colored pillows of gold, blue, and maroon. The endless beach became elaborate Moroccan walls with arched windows and a vast and beautiful Constantinople spread out around his tower room. His kitty was still a black long haired, but not how had a lovely golden collar with a little bell that would ring when the master of the tower came to visit his treasure.
Liberty peeled his shirt off, threw it towards the corner where the system would collect it and send it to the laundry. He lifted up his hips and sent pants and boxers after them. The clothes that appeared in their place wouldn’t have been legal in public. He wore sheer dark blue harem pants with golden cuffs at his ankles, golden chain around his waist. The floor had risen to give him a table just high enough for his tray. The tray itself and the food on it were unchanged by the illusions in his box. Fortunately for him, Jody was an excellent cook.
With a hand gesture, he called up his patient records, checked what appointments he had today. The screen hung in the air, just where he’d want it to be, information moving in response his eye movements. An alert advised he had a new email from the sheriff’s office. In bitter irony, he expected it to be about Dark-Sparkly. Someone with that charisma was probably a gangster or a traveling preacher, something nefarious. The last of the chocolate pie in his mouth, he touched the alert.
There was going to be a rave, at the historic ruins of the Tacoma Dome - a huge gathering. Liberty scrubbed his face, then stared at the expected numbers again. The sheriff’s office had kindly procured him a ticket and twenty doses of naloxone. They were expecting a late fall apocalypse. Not that the seasons really changed anymore. He wolfed down the rest of the food, feeling his energy and motivation come back.
“Rave.”
His box shifted again. Now it was an empty night club, black background with pastel neon swirls of light that started, danced across the walls, through the air, then swirled back out of existence. A slow and very suggestive techno music filled his space as if it had the greatest acoustics physically possible. He danced, letting the music press against him, caress him. As he moved, his body left slight echoes of violet light.
The moment didn’t last long, just a whisper of thought manifest. It left him with a shiver and a rush of anticipation. Music and dancing made the end of the world seem like a silly over reaction. PLUR was old, something left over from the hippies, he thought, but it was lovely concept. Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect - now if a world could just be made on that set of values, it would be a very different world than the one they had.
“Okay,” he said. The box dropped back to its native bland state of readiness. “Clothes, baby, give me clothes.”
Said clothes turned out to be his favorite jeans, a loose grey button up, sneakers, and the AI in his box found it relevant to offer him a mild cologne and some hair wax. “Really?” He grumbled as he pulled on his jeans. “I’m going as emergency services. It’s not a date!”
His cat, the manifestation if the box’s AI, knocked over the sealed bottle of perfume.
“Is that what you think? You’re right thought. Recreate him.”
Just like that a hologram of Fai Talbot arose in the box, created from the microdots of the floor. He was static, not moving, other than in a very slight rotation. Liberty gestured his work screen up, grabbed a genetic sample from his patient out of the scan he’d done and set it for a search. The man was a little shorter than he was, but proportional, beautiful, but not so much so that he looked like a skin and not a person.
The genetic match came back much quicker than Liberty expected, but it made him stare for a moment. “William Shakespeare, really? Fucking gangster!” If he ever saw this guy again, he had words for him.
Stepping out of his box brought him a blast of warm air. Even with the space covered by air conditioning, sometimes it just wasn’t enough. He hurried to get to the elevator, to get into cooler spaces. He shuddered as soon as the doors closed behind him. Nothing was ending while he was still working on it!
One floor up, he stepped into his hospital, his home, the center of the world that still made sense.
Dr. Catherine was waiting for him there, her feet up on the only coffee table in their not terribly well appointed waiting room. A slender service bot held her cup of coffee and three work screens floated like shields in front of her. She noticed him, smirked, and signed, “Good morning, Casanova!”
He rolled his eyes and signed back, “Hardly. How’s the family?”
“Cat and Zoe are neck deep in the science fair. I mean that literally. Volcanos.”
Liberty plopped down in the other chair, gestured up his own work screen. “They say temps above 130 for the rest of the week. We should consider poshing up the garage, offer shelter?”
“There are already shelters,” she signed firmly. “I see you’re going to the rave tonight?”
He nodded, then signed, “I wanted to do rounds first. Carlos coming in to cover night shift?”
“Yeah. We only have one patient right now, Liberty and she’s sleeping. She was, apparently, up all night writing some romantic nonsense. We should transfer her to rehab.”
“She’s doing really well right now.” He pulled up her active stats, just to check on her.
“You are not going to find a donor to pay for reconstruction,” Catherine signed bluntly.
“Just not today.”
Catherine wiggled her eyebrows, a conspiratorial, but evil smirk. “You could do a calendar to support her reconstruction, ‘sexiest doctors’ in Pacon County?”
“If selling pictures of my naked, pasty white ass would get me better equipment, I’d be all over that. On the other hand,” he signed, then made like he was drawing a marquee, ‘Dominatrix Doctor of Haley General’?”
Her laugh was wheezy and more mute than not, but full of mirth. Still snorting, she signed more gently, “Don’t take everything so much to heart, Liberty. You have to accept the world for what it is.”
“I’m a doctor. I’ll never accept disease.”
She made a marquee back for him, “Handsome young doctor works self to death, survived by AI cat. For sale cheap.”
The sign he made back to that was just one finger and universally understood. “I’m going to get going then. Maybe I’ll die dancing. Can’t be better than that.”
Catherine wiggled her eyebrows again. “Have you tired sex yet?”
There was just enough pause, that kind when someone’s lying or someone’s hiding something. Her eyes widened and suddenly her work screens were very urgent.
He slunk away. Sex was just problematic. He’d worked while in medical school and while there were cures for most STDs, those cures were not cheap. His box had cheap and easy sex. When he imagined having sex with another man, to feel real fingers touch his cheek, slide down to his throat, he wanted there to be a person he loved on the other side of those fingers. Dancing, on the other hand, had lots of touching, lots of very nice touching, but no commitment, little risk. From the pharmacy lock up, he got his med kit and the twenty doses of instant-sober the cops had left for him. The kit strapped around his waist, with another strap around his thigh. On his way out the front door so early in the day it wasn’t even noon yet, he grabbed a suncoat and strode forward.
The suncoat looked like a floor length trench coat with the hood of a cloak, and sleeves that extended way past the hands. The color of sand, the active exterior fiber was reflective without being glaring. A veil of sort closed the front of the hood, screening for heat, particulates in the air, and biological contaminants. Liberty’s was set to display a generic emoji face and in that moment it was a smiling, happy face. The interior of it slowly release cooler air stored up in the fibers. Another hand gesture and music started for him which put a dance to his steps.
Cracks made the sidewalk uneven, but that only made it better to dance on. It was way too early in the day for it to be 120. Everyone outside was in a suncoat. At this time of day, there weren’t many people out. It wasn’t like he had any place to go, but getting out of the hospital had seemed like an excellent idea. The few others walking the streets all moved with purpose, meaning to get out of the heat and skin burning sunlight as soon as possible.
A couple blocks from the hospital, he accepted that he hadn’t really had a destination in mind, but he had to pick one. Standing there on the broken sidewalk, he turned slowly to look around him. The buildings were wrapped. Those buildings still active had screens facing outwards that advertised the activities inside. Everything was wrapped. He stood there without an inch of skin showing. He pulled his arm out of his sleeve, reached up to rub his face, the tension in his temples. He should just go back to the hospital.
Just as he was about to go back, a cream colored car rolled up next to him. The sides opened and an elegant holographic woman stepped out onto the smooth black road. “Dr. McBride, Sato San would like to request your presence at the pre-party for Fall Equinox Celebration you are to attend this evening.”
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