Waking up alone when you fell asleep in the arm of a loved one is always a strange experience. Or at least it is for me.

When I woke up, Irridus was gone. His side of the bed was cold, he probably had left at least a couple hours before. Even knowing beforehand he would have to depart early, I was still slightly disappointed he was not there to greet me in the morning.

I got up slowly, relishing not having to run to work. Today I had gotten a free day as a reward for staying way past the end of my shift to fix the huge bureaucratic mess that had gone down the day before.

As a Guardian who took care of the law enforcement, I had to fill in a report every shift, plus an extra one in case I had to take any action. That usually meant at least three or four reports at the end of every day, for me and every other Guardian with the same duty.

There were two hundred and fifty-three active Guardians in the city where I worked. That made seven hundred and fifty-nine reports total minimum each day. Normally each Guardian would fill and file in their own reports, making the whole thing just a small annoyance that kept you from going home for a few minutes.

But the day before, someone had clicked the wrong button and the whole reports archive for the last month had gotten messed up. And we had to find and re-archive each and every report. Fun stuff.

Shrugging off the problems of the day before, I rose out of the bed and went towards the shower.

The silence of the apartment was deafening.

I was so used to Irridus leaving the house later than I did and coming back earlier that I had forgotten how silent our apartment could get.

As I entered the large bathroom next to the bedroom and discarded my clothes, the silence was getting to me more and more. I didn’t like the silence. It felt too much like the calm before the storm. Bad things happened when silence stretched too much in my experience.

The cascading sound of the shower calmed me down as soon as I started the water. The moment I stepped under the spray, a news feed started playing on the glass of the shower stall, the voice of the newscaster dissipating the last of my nervousness. As I relaxed, I thought of just turning on some music once I went down to the living room.

As I walked by the living room, I called out: “Hestia, play ambient music”. Immediately the A.I. which controlled the house replied: “Music starting”; soon after an up-beat tune started playing, kept at background level volume.

“It is currently 9:24 in the morning” continued Hestia “temperature outside: pleasantly warm with strong wind. It is suggested to drink plenty of liquids to avoid discomfort during the day”.

I filed away the information for later and went on to prepare myself some breakfast. I put on some water to boil for a tea, and in the meantime I started cutting some fruit. After a few minutes I had a small bowl full of red fruits, just in time for the water to start bubbling. Quickly pouring myself a cup, I brought my breakfast to the living room and sat in the couch. The moment I sat on the couch, Hestia started the television on the program usually watched at that time in the morning. Unsurprisingly, it was the show on new technologies Irridus liked to watch, as this was the time of day he usually rose to have breakfast.

After years in a relationship with what could easily be described as a tech genius, I could understand some of what was talked about in the show, but a good deal of it was still gibberish to me. After a time I shrugged and changed the channel to a musical one.

After a while, as I was cleaning up my breakfast, my personal holographic communicator, left on the table the night before, started going off, a small holographic screen appearing just on top of it showing the picture of a pretty blonde haired girl with the name “Viri” written on it.

Drying my hands, I went to the communicator and accepted the call, the holographic screen changing from the picture to a live feed of the girl.

“Liafair! I heard you have a free day today!” Viri called, her eyes sparkling with excitement; “You have to spend some time with me today! It’s been so long since we’ve last done anything together”.

“That might be because we are both very busy” I replied; “Are you even free today? Last we talked, you had an even busier schedule then I normally do”.

“That was over two months ago!” shot back Viri; “I got a promotion in the meantime, you know? Now I have lot of extra free time!” she sounded very smug about it.

“A promotion? When did that happen?” I asked.

“That’s one of the many things you’ll find out when we meet today” she replied; “Come on, let’s meet at the park in a couple hours, okay?”

Not leaving me the time to give my consent to the idea, she closed the communication with a hurried “Later!”. I spent a few seconds staring at the communicator, almost as if expecting my stare alone would force her to call back just so I could tell her off for closing the call without letting me reply.

I shrugged and put my PHC on the table, moving towards the bedroom to get some clothes. If I was to meet her at the park in two hours, I might as well get started: it would take me the better part of an hour to get there, and I still needed to get dressed.

Once I was dressed in a shirt and shorts, both black, I exited the apartment and took the elevator down to the hangar a few stories below. Once there, I moved trough the rows of aircars towards the parking slot assigned to me and Irridus, hoping he had taken the Overtram rather than the aircar today.

As I had hoped, it was still parked where I left it the night before. Luckily, the automated systems of the hangar had cleaned it during the night, so today its dark blue sleek body was shining as if new.

Getting in, I turned on its engine and was greeted with the gentle purring of the magnetic propulsion system coming to life. As it did so, the car started to hover about 10 centimetres off the ground, waiting for me to direct it.

Carefully, I manoeuvred out of the parking slot and towards the hangar exit. As I neared the exit, a quick glance showed me the coast was clear, and I moved the aircar out of the hangar, the internal systems quickly compensating for the sudden increase in altitude, as the hangar was situated on the fifthly floor and therefore quite high up. I honestly could not remember the last time I had walked on actual ground rather than the floating platforms which made up the upper city.

I settled my car in the driving lane. Driving lanes were actually a beautiful sight at night, soft glowing lines marking the limits, created in mid-air by hovering holographic projectors, their colour a soft red at night which changed to a bright green during the day. Irridus had more than once referred to them as the veins and arteries of the city.

At this time of day, there wasn’t much traffic. Most workers had gone to their jobs earlier, and industrial transportation was usually kept at higher altitudes. Because of that, I arrived at the park in only forty-five minutes rather than the hour it would usually take me.

The “park” was actually the city’s botanical garden, a floating platform of several dozens square kilometres, filled with every species of plant that could survive naturally at our latitudes. Me and my friend had first come here once with our school, and had fallen in love with the calm peace of the place. Now that we had widely different jobs, it had become our meeting place, even though neither of our houses was close to it. Then again, when you could travel at a hundred kilometres per hour, distances tend to matter a lot less then if you had to go on foot.

Once my car was parked, I entered the garden and headed for the “giants” section; a part of the garden full of trees that could easily reach over a hundred meters of height, but with the ground filled only with soft grass, without all the smaller plants and bushes of the other sections of the garden.

Our usual meeting spot was under a particularly tall tree, with branches that finished in long tendrils cascading towards the ground. At this time of year, the tendrils were full of purple flowers, making the tree look like a purple dome reaching almost all the way to the ground.

When I got there, Viri was nowhere to be seen, but that was normal, considering both that I was early and her penchant to be late for everything. I sat down under the tree, enjoying the purple glow made by the sunlight hitting the flowers, and allowed my mind to wander.