The black box on Trianne's chest streamed Andrea's Greatest Hints into her neocortex at full tilt, through a black node—a wireless transmitter linking the consumer's mind to the black box—stuck to the center of her forehead like a black bindi.

“The power within, is within your power,” Andrea said, soothing and familiar, calmly narrating over a tropical vista, the message appearing in skywriter smoke across the bright aqua sky. The virtual self-help Eden hit a bad sector and began skipping on Trianne's sleep patterns, causing her to convulse. Her abdomen contracted upright as if her back were pierced by an invisible spike. Letters in the skywriter message flickered and dropped out of sight:

T E PO ER W THIN IS ITHIN Y UR OWER

Trianne jackknifed awake, her platinum hair drenched in perspiration. She jammed the palms of her hands into the transparent pod glass, sensing a warm sensation on her upper lip. Drops of blood raced past her chin, splattered onto the bright cotton of her tank top.

“Dammit!” She yanked the black box from her chest and tossed it aside, then yanked a tissue from a dispenser on the rail molding and shoved it in her nostril, clotting the blood. She gazed up through the pod glass, catching her breath, seeing nothing but concrete ceiling. The silence was broken by the pneumatic echo of a pod claw, rising towards her floor. She pushed open the pod glass, jumped out in her tank top and panties and stepped through the concrete bay, crossing to the circular catwalk with steel frame balcony, overlooking the central shaft of the motel garage.

She leaned over the rail, keeping the tissue to her nose, watching the massive pod claw lurch up through the shadows of the central shaft on a vertical track. Other curious observers leaned over the balcony rail, watching, waiting, dotting the central shaft with the blue glow of chemorettes, turning the gloomy interior to a faint galaxy of stars. The grimy metallic claw paused in front of a distant bay, expanded its mandibles, extracted a seemingly random pod, then swerved it away from the balcony in midair. The pod interior was fogged, obscuring the tenant from view. She could see traces of residual smoke escaping from the pod seals, as it was lowered towards the ground floor.

She got inside her pod and lay back down. The nosebleed had stopped. She trashed the tissue, flicked on her chemorette, inhaled, and let out a wad of smoke, then pressed GROUND FLOOR on the pod control panel. The LED clock read 1:00 a.m. So much for sleeping in on Saturday morning. Within seconds, she heard the whining of the pod claw, working its way back up the central shaft, pausing—a series of verification blips—the claw knocked the bottom of the chassis, shaking her a bit, aligned itself, then clamped down on the fiberglass.

Through the pod glass, she watched the concrete ceiling swerve out of view, as the claw swung her into the central shaft. Now, she could see all the way up through skylight, into the night sky. The navigation strobes of a pleasure dome drifted past the dirty window panes, on its journey to some exclusive event for fabled Metropans.

Upon taking another drag of her chemorette, she noticed something written on the underside of her wrist:

MEM E NO

She licked her finger, tried to rub it off with saliva, until it occurred to her that it was a tattoo.

The claw touched down on the ground floor, set Trianne's pod down on the tarmac, then swooped back up through the central shaft, resuming its mechanical routine. She looked around the desolate tarmac for the smoking pod. Nowhere in sight. She popped open the pod glass, sat up and fastened her black box to her chest, threw on her leather jacket, slipped on her skirt, knee high boots, dumped her personal effects into a tote bag, then hopped out onto the tarmac, catching a whiff of a horrible stench.

She headed towards the main lobby, through dreary concentric corridors, passing the open entry of a loading dock. An elderly valet in rumpled monkey suit and protective gloves stood on the platform, hosing off the surface of the smoking pod. Trianne paused, then veered into the loading dock to see what the matter was.

“What happened?” Trianne asked, approaching with cautious steps, unable to see through the layer of soot beneath the pod glass.

“I don't know the right thing.” The valet said with a worried brow and thick accent.

“That stench is making me nauseous. You gonna open it?”

“I don't know the right thing. I don't—”

“I'll do it.” Trianne stretched her jacket collar over her nose and mouth with one hand. With her free hand, she unlatched the pod cover and slowly lifted it up. Plumes of steam from vaporized flesh wandered out like foul spirits into the valet's black box flashlight beam. Inside, lay the smoldering remains of a human so charred that there was no discerning its gender. The victim's jaw was cocked wide open, like a silent scream—residual steam still flowing from the hollowed eye sockets and rib cage. Trianne jerked back and let the pod cover slam shut.

“I better call remote police!” The valet projected a local directory holopane from his black box, the options appearing onscreen in midair. He ran down the listings with his finger, looking for the right one to press.

“Yeah, and I'd better move along.” Trianne bailed from the loading dock, and headed back towards the main lobby. She blew through the rusted entrance doors, into the parking lot, drenched in halogen lighting, littered with dormant vehicles, pavement cracks infested with tall weeds, the sputtering neon sign looming high above in the night air:

THE PODS

VACANCY

SINGLES ONLY

1 NUKE - 1 NIGHT

She cut onto the sidewalk of Galaxia Boulevard, drifting beneath dull orange streetlamps, past ghoulish shop light, coming in and out of dark shadows from dormant high-rises. After walking a few blocks, she stopped on a street corner beneath a local eyesore—a neon red sign that gave off hellish light:

KEENO'S

OPEN 24 HRS

Through the storefront window, she could see listless go go dancers gyrating in glass booths to muffled disco music, the name of one dancer visible in neon light above her booth:

STARLIE

Aside from Trianne, the only other audience member was a cleaning lady inside the store, corralling trash between idle morphing machines with a leaf blower.

She dug out the Andrea's Greatest Hints 5-track from her tote bag and lobbed it into a nearby recycle bin, followed by another lob of her black box into the trash. Free from social media gadgets that caused nosebleeds, she set her sights on the hunched backs of insomniac mallrats, feeding their faces at the open pho noodle bar across the street. Just as her empty stomach squealed, with one foot on the crosswalk, that damn ring tone went off in the recycle bin.

“Crap!” She caved in and dug her black box out of the trash, still ringing, the caller's name glaring on the display panel:

CALLER ID

XENO

She slung her black box over her chest and activated the holopane, projecting the image of the caller, expecting to see. . .

“Hello Trianne.” Zoom's anemic face appeared on the holopane display.

“Zoom?” Her heart sank. “What are you doing posing as Xeno?”

“Well, since you won't add me to your network, I'm speed dialing from Xeno's black box. He passed out in the men's room.”

“Again? Where are you?”

“Food-4-All. Like my new dye job?”

“What color is that? Sex Offender Orange?”

“Ha, yeah, very funny. Have you got any Sunlite?”

“I'm not even going to ask. I'll just start walking.”

“Thanks, Trianne. We'll be waiting!”

Trianne hung up on Zoom, cutting through The Galaxia Mall—a byzantine shopping fortress that never closed, with neon bands of light hugging the concrete like electric varicose veins. A barrage of telepanes featured magnified models in heavy make-up, hawking skin products, their spiel mostly drowned out by frenzied techno music, their faces continually obscured by obnoxious typhoons of Helvetica logos and split-screen beauty tip diagrams. During a loop break from the smash-cut video feeds, Andrea's pouty red lips appeared on the telepanes, filling entire screens, smiling down between commercials on Trianne and the sleepless streams of black-boxers, bathed in retail light, roaming the terraced walkways, yacking with people on holopane displays—their total attention span limited to a few inches of screen time. Once in awhile, they actually bought something.

There were those who preferred open air audio conversation with the black box two-way transceiver. Couples in the food court maintained intimate eye contact, speaking out loud to the person on the other line, not to each other. Anyone who went off their meds—having full blown debates with voices in their head—blended right in. The whole social mural of talking and gawking heads looked the same from edge to edge.

Trianne switched off the SOCIAL RAY feature of her black box. If left on, any interests that were similar to hers would activate a pulsating pattern of light on another black box. The app would attempt to match you up with someone in the crowd, while you were sticking a french fry in your mouth, flipping through magazines, tinkling on the toilet, but not tonight. She wasn't in a pulsating mood. She had a stomach ache in the head. The ringer again. Trianne pressed GO on her black box. Zoom appeared on the holopane.

“So, Trianne, what brings you to our neck of the woods?” Zoom said.

“I was sleeping at The Pods. . . sort of.”

“What happened to your penthouse at Boutique?”

“Velva kicked me out. She thinks I burned down the Shoki Pao to spite her.”

“Did you burn down the Shoki Pao?”

“No, of course not . . .” Trianne's ballerina physique got a few whistles from unseen admirers, and her fair share of stare-downs from punk-divas hanging around the potted plants. Others just couldn't wait to shove two mustard-slathered corn dogs in their mouths, or gulp down a refill of Orange Curious, fortified with high-fructose corn syrup, double the caffeine, and triple the B12.

“You know where Lew is?” Zoom persisted.

“No, I haven't seen—” Trianne glanced over her shoulder to see some stocky golem-looking guy in baggy trench coat and boxy black sunglasses, following a little too close for comfort. He let his gaze fall to the ground, once Trianne spotted him lusting after her. God, a nosebleed and now this. She swept through a mass of broad shouldered boys, scamming along, flaunting their designer duds, hot rod hairdos, and high-end citrus cologne trails, trying to lose the ugly guy in the crowd.

“Xeno's auditioning to be a RAP artist,” Zoom said.

“What the hell is that?”

“Remote asset protection. Food-4-All can't afford a decent sur-veillance system, and the graveyard manager is a big believer in The White Boys. He has one camera feeding a single telepane, and the resolution is crappy. The rest of his cameras are just dummies, not wired to anything.”

“What does Xeno have to do?”

“If Xeno can detect seven out of ten shoplifters stealing merchandise within thirty minutes, he gets the job. The shoplifters are played by employees stealing specific objects.”

“Xeno's not psychic. How's he going to pull that off?”

“With Black Dot Wi-Fi cameras, I've secretly installed in the market. The hidden cameras are linked to my black box, and my black box is linked to Xeno's black box. I surveil the whole store on my holopane, spot the shoplifters stealing on my hidden cameras, then tip off Xeno on his two-way transceiver.”

“Those cost a pretty penny. Where did you get 'em?”

“I borrowed them from Lew, without asking.”

“So, all you're going to do is catch shoplifters the same way the manager does, without him knowing it.”

“That's right. The manager is none the wiser, and we start collecting checks.”

“How did Xeno even get the audition? He failed the Zener test at the Intellegella job fair.”

“I know. So, we showed the manager that video we made at Blouse's place. Remember?”

“Zoom, that video is a fake.”

“The manager doesn't know that.”

“I'm getting close . . . passing Mec Sex.” Trianne crossed under the pink arches of the luminous fiberglass M, hurrying around the long panoramic storefront window of popular sex furniture. She caught a glimpse of a couple on the showroom floor, testing out the latest orgy sofa. The salesman tapped the sofa control panel and appendages extended from the plush surface in all shapes and sizes, accompanied by orifices that expanded and contracted.

The woman unbuttoned her blouse while her consort unzipped his pants. Circular blinds enclosed the trio for more privacy, while other shoppers continued feeling out the furniture, testing the poofiness factor, sternly talking over the price tags with the sales team, making rectangle shapes with their fingers as if framing where it would sit in their own living room.

Trianne glanced over her shoulder to see the ugly golem guy veer off course in the crowd, and duck into an Orange Curious malt shop. He inserted himself into a line of young punks waiting for service, not blending in well with his looming height and bald gray head.

“Zoom?” Trianne ducked out of sight, behind an artificial palm tree.

“Yes?”

“Are you having me followed?”

“No.”

“Do you have any friends that look like lecherous frog-eyed instructors?”

“I don't know anyone that creepy.”

“Yeah, you do.” A series of synthetic tentacles wrapped around Trianne's rib cage, slithering over her breasts. She wiggled free and spun around to see an upright piece of sex furniture that had wandered out of Mec Sex, still trying to grab her. She sucker punched the foamy rectangular offender, knocking it back onto the pavement. Members of the Mec Sex sales team rushed outside and humbly ushered the furniture back into the store.

She pressed on towards the end of the mall, towards the neon yellow Food-4-All sign, hovering high and huge, above the supermarket storefront. She would go inside, take care of all this stuff with these dumb guys, do this, say that, and another day would just go by. For her, the sun just rose and sank in the brown dust from the last war.