Anna Torrez pulled the VR glasses from her head and threw them on the bed. Low-budget erotic telenovelas were her guilty pleasure. She always felt a bit dirty after watching a show.
Anna got up, pulled some clothes from a pile on the floor, and put them on. Her shift started soon. She went to the kitchen to heat a cup of noodles. Cheap and nutritious food consisting of artificial wheat protein, nanocellulose, and a long string of food additives - some were with a hundred per cent certainty banned by the Food Safety Authority. The noodles were slimy but filling.
Before exiting her small apartment, she glanced in the mirror: black boots, cargo pants, and a red jacket made of imitation snakeskin. Her hair matched her jacket.
Damn, I'm badass! She left her apartment and took the elevator twenty floors down to the parking garage. Her electric motorcycle was waiting, a shiny red beauty made of ultra-light fibre-reinforced composite material. Her bike was ready to go when she exited the elevator. A retina scanner made sure only she could operate the bike. The bike purred while she rolled over the concrete floor and exited the garage. The electric motor kicked in for real and she was out in the neon-lit night.
Anna took the expressway from North Ningbo towards Shanghai. Illuminated ads for all kinds of products and services lined the road. From the Hangzhou bridge, she got a panoramic view of the bay. The black waves of the East China Sea battered the barriers erected to protect the city from rising sea levels. On one side stood the Dragon Tower, a giant arcology built in a distorted neo-deconstructivist style, the dura-glass construction illuminated from the inside. Dragon Tower was a self-sustainable ecocity built on an artificial island and housed thousands of people. Some thought the arcology should belong to one of the world's seven wonders. Anna thought it was ugly as shit.
Stolen novel; please report.
She shut off the autopilot. A warning sign blinked on her display; she had seen it before. Insurance did not apply if she disconnected the driver assistance system. Anna disregarded the message and moved the gas regulator to the maximum setting with her thumb, she was on her way to pick up the first package of the night.
Anna zigzagged between the other vehicles on the road. To succeed as a motorcycle courier, one needed to be quick. Quick and resourceful. The previous week, her task was delivering artificial cerebrospinal fluid to a private hospital in Nanjing. The smog enveloped the city like a suffocating blanket, reducing visibility to zero with its yellowish haze of air pollution. The amount of airborne particles per cubic meter reached critical levels, causing her motorcycle's turbo engine to malfunction. She had to adapt a breathing filter and mount it on the intake manifold for the motor to function. The filter in her helmet struggled to handle the high volume of particles; she could taste the bitterness on her tongue. She arrived within an hour, allowing the operation to proceed thanks to her.