“Good morning, Ms. Miller,” an even, robotic voice called out. Nell stirred inside of her bed, mumbling nonsensically to herself.
“Five . . . Five more . . .”
“It is approximately 12:42 pm and the temperature outside is 68 degrees fahrenheit with an eighty-two percent chance of rain.”
Whenever her home’s integrated AI declared the time, Nell knew it was about time to wake up. She pushed herself to the edge of her bed with a groan. She was glad she didn’t have to come into the office for the rest of the week.
“OT, can you enable the heat?”
“Of course.”
In most people’s homes, they’d be greeted by the rude sting of cold tile in the morning. Nell, on the other hand, gave a soft sigh of relief to feel comforting warmth radiating throughout the floor of her room. She took her robe from its hanger by the side of her nightstand and slung it over her shoulders. She could never get behind the itchiness and heaviness of organic wool despite what many of her peers thought. Many of them, especially Romanov, declared it as their favorite material. But, in their defense, it sure was warm.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she stepped out from her pitch black room to greet the natural light of her apartment.
Her apartment was quite grand, even for a corpo’s standards. It was the top penthouse of her building and took up a whole three floors. Each wall was made up of synthetic window panes that could change and manipulate how the rest of the apartment looked from the touch of a button; one minute it could be glass, the next it could be solid brick. Right now, however, they provided a look out to the typical murky afternoon of Richmond many hundreds of feet below her. The tile floor of her bedroom molded into a dark hardwood carefully shined to a polish. The furnishings of her home were all custom commissions by some of the last tradesmen left in the world, making her apartment seem like a museum of centuries old artifacts. She liked to take pride in the fact that her home was like Biltmore or Monticello due to that eclectic collection.
Clambering up the spiral staircase, she made her way into the kitchen. Much like the rest of her home, the appliances appeared old and regal. Yet, their insides contained state-of-the-art technology. OT, the proactive AI that he was, already produced a mug of her favorite coffee and had a BakFasPak sitting warm inside her meal processor. Nell’s greatest weakness was FabriPaks and it earned her many laughs from her co-workers. Frankly, it was way more practical; having to source and then actually cook organic food was such a hassle compared to just having OT automate her meals through the meal processor.
The smell of fabricated eggs, sausage, and pancakes made her mouth water. First though, coffee. Nell plucked up the mug and tilted her head back to take a languid sip.
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That is, until her house blared out an abrupt alarm. Nell nearly choked on her coffee.
“OT, pick up the phone! Jesus, I almost ruined my pajamas!”
“Of course.”
“I just woke up, what do you need?” she called out. Whoever was calling better have a good reason.
“I couldn’t give less of a shit if its your day off or not, what the fuck did you do?”
Nell felt the hair on the nape of her neck stand on end.
“Maurice, what the hell are you talking about?” She asked, keeping her voice as neutral she could muster.
“How are all you Waltaire execs this clueless?! I swear, I’m doing PR to a buncha fuckin’ children! Turn on CNTY!”
“OT, turn the TV on!”
“Of course.” The western wall of windows flipped to reveal one large screen displaced across five wide panes. The black mirror flickered on to show the current CNTY feed.
Nell nearly dropped her mug.
The headline read: WALTAIRE INC. BOARD MEMBER MILLER EXPOSED AS DRUG TRAFFICKER!
“What–?”
“Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. Just recently, many first-hand witnesses are coming out of the woodworks claiming that one of Waltaire Incorporated’s oldest executives, Nell Miller, is partially responsible for fueling the recent Hypnodonasol–AKA Gum–epidemic. By-products from certain Waltaire products can be substituted for one of the main ingredients in Hypnodonasol. Allegedly, Miller would pawn this by-product off to large illicit drug manufacturers that would then turn it into Gum. Gum has been an instigator for massive spikes in criminal activity in the last year as well as being the lead cause of overdose deaths.”
Nell barely heard the rest of the report. Her thundering heart deafened all but the sound of her harsh breaths. She collapsed against the edge of her kitchen countertop with stark white knuckles, sending her mug crashing to the ground with a flurry of ceramic shards.
How could this happen? Who let this happen? Why was this happening? Thoughts of all degrees rushed her mind in a horde.
“Nell? NELL! Nell, are you listenin’?” Maurice bellowed over her thoughts. She forced herself to try to listen despite the panic hovering at the edge of her thoughts.
“Um– Yeah, yeah I am.”
“Do you know anything about this? This is why I told you to stop messin’ around with Cory!”
“I-I didn’t do any of this! It’s all fake!”
“Then why the fuck is your face on every single news channel?!” Maurice shot back.
“I don’t know, someone had to set me up,” she replied. “I’d never betray Waltaire like this, you know that!”
“Well, tell that to NASDAQ!” A long sigh slithered out of the receiver. “Luckily, we have a standard procedure for these types of situations. I’ll make some calls, set up a conference for you to attend. Drivers, news people, police, the whole shebang. I’ll ship over a template of a speech that you can tailor to your liking, or whatever, along with your ride in about three hours. Look presentable, alright?”
Nell didn’t register half the words Maurice said, but she numbly nodded along and agreed. He strung along some more words in the shape of typical PR spitfire before hanging up, leaving Nell alone in her kitchen with the news parroting her demise in the background.
She stared at the forlorn broken mug on the floor. She couldn’t feel the burn from the coffee leaking on her toes.