Tif takes a break for dinner,

riding the rickety turbo-elevator

down to street level,

plunging herself into

the flashing din

of the City.

The fire at the reactor is still raging,

and the sky has taken on

a shade of crimson

so sharp to the eye,

Tif can only look at it

for half a minute.

The Free City is mad with life,

street vehicles panting at intersections,

music bursting out of storefronts,

the sidewalks swollen and undulating

with all sorts

of sentients and automatons.

Tif disappears into the crowd,

and our eyes lift up

over the heads of the people,

taking in the incomprehensible diversity

before us,

every individual on their own path,

but converging beneath the neon light.

A long train of purple-robed

surrender maidens

snakes through the crowd,

holding hands,

their faceless sacramental masks

as enigmatic

as the chaste nuns beneath them.

A void trucker,

no doubt lost in the city,

honks his horn

at a half-dozen androids

blocking an intersection

in political protest.

The more the void trucker honks,

the louder the androids sing.

Police drones buzz in the air overhead,

vendors call out their wares.

A group of children,

their skin yellow from

playing in pollution,

sporadically bomb the street

with bottles and other trash

from a dark alley.

The city is always like this.

Our eyes turn back

to Tif,

who is ordering noodles

from a vendor she adores.

Steam billows through the noisy kitchen,

filling her nostrils

with dozens of flavors.

As Tif waits for her food,

she smokes a cigarette

and watches a young black woman

feeding her toddler

bits of a fortune cookie.

Tif is hypnotized by the baby —

so tiny, so fragile,

just a bud of life.

As an android, she was grown in a vat.

She never had a mother.

No one ever nurtured her,

tended to her when she was sick,

lifted her into their arms

and covered her face

with kisses.

“Tif!” the cook calls out.

Her order is ready.

Tif pages through her sketchbook

as she happily slurps her noodles

into her mouth,

lingering

on her three new drawings

of Carlo’s orange.

She really has not had much use

for the color orange before.

No, she has not eaten the orange

yet.

She tells herself

she wants to savor it,

but she knows

it’s because she’s afraid,

because she’s afraid

of being connected to Carlo.

Did he bomb the reactor?

The walls of her building

are paper thin,

and she has listened to

Carlo and his friends

plan something

for months.

They said the word “revolution.”

They said the word “bomb.”

Tif thought Carlo and his friends

were all talk,

like everyone in the City.

But when that blast came...

She supposes that Carlo

is a different type of man

than most she knows —

retired muscle for the Crystal Syndicate,

a serious gangster,

the kind of man

you can shoot at,

but can’t kill.

But what is he doing

bombing a reactor?

The walls of her building are thin

but she does not understand

why

Carlo and his friends would do

what they did.

What was the point?

The lights went out

for an hour.

The news didn’t even talk about it.

Why risk it?

Tif drops her noodle tray in the trash

just as a burst of rapid gunfire

rings out a few blocks away,

followed by another burst in reply.

A gangwar has been brewing for weeks

between the Crystal Syndicate

and the Burning Ring,

and it is only a matter of time

before the police are shooting people

from the air.

She decides to head back home,

manuevering through the crowds,

longing for the silence of her room.

After riding the shuddering turbo-elevator,

she sees a man

waiting by her door.

They know!

she thinks, shivering in fear,

They know I know about the reactor!

But —

it’s just her first date

of the evening,

early

for his appointment.

to be continued...