The Story So Far:

I put a finger to the side of my head and press against the ridge that rings my eye socket until I find the hidden recess. A secret button activates, transforming my cramped apartment into a luxury suite.

The gloom becomes unnaturally bright and depressingly cheerful. Grimy walls are remade to look as antiseptic as a surgery ward. My trade-show furnishings become a showroom of contemporary design. The grinding fans become chirping birds in a honeysuckle breeze. Real turns to fake, and the fakeness becomes my reality for as long as I can stand it.

I summon a full-length mirror and flip through my so-called wardrobe. Nothing I own approaches mocap quality. There’s nothing here from a name-brand designer. Nothing that follows the latest seasonal trend or the Pantone Color of the Year which, if I remember correctly, is #f5f53d. But I do have several options to cover my laundry day scraps well enough for me to blend into a crowd.

I settle on a casual look for the outset of my journey: sneakers, jeans, white blouse, and the flair of a little black beret. For the later part of my caper, I equip my crimson Service Corps cloak into the secondary wardrobe slot, practicing the mental shift that activates the toggle.

Flip. Flip. Flip. Flip.

Casual. Cloaked. Casual. Cloaked.

What a difference an outfit change can make!

Virtual clothes are programmed cover bare skin, so I have to tuck and tweak the lines to cover my physical clothing and move around in front of the mirror to make sure nothing pokes through. For a moment, I think about how much easier it would be to walk around naked like the sheep who allowed their wool to be replaced with cyberwool. But I can’t be a cyberwool sheep. That was part of my pledge.

I dismiss the mirror and take up my burdens. I’ve hand-coded my water buckets to look like woven baskets. Pails of graywater might invite unwelcome questions, but no one will look twice at an innocent shopper carrying goods from the market.

In my innocent attire, I pick up the baskets, take a breath, and open the door onto Public Hallway #3770. I smile for the camera. Cameras are rendered invisible to the lenses by default but I maintain their locations on my nav-map. All the cameras in the hallway outside my apartment are currently offline. A mech-droid is scheduled to drop by on Tuesday, so on Wednesday I’ll have to break the cameras all over again.

The hallways are coded to feel carpeted beneath my the fake sneakers with their coded gel-filled soles. It’s a deception that would fool most people, but I once borrowed a real pair of sneakers from a display cabinet at the museum. I only managed to keep them for less than a day, but I was never again able to walk the hallways without feeling their fakeness.

The south end of Hallway #3770 feeds into Red Promenade, which boasts a fifteen-minute walk to everything a citizen might need. A virtual brass plaque claims the promenade was named for Esports legend Joquin Red, who died at age 14 in the Second Call of Duty War. This would have been twenty years before I was born and ten years before the first residents moved into the Hive, if you can trust a virtual brass plaque.

The ceiling of Red Promenade is at the same height as the hallway I just left but is programmed to look far out of reach. The lefthand wall is a railing that appears to look down on the Level 4 central marketplace. I fight the vertigo by discreetly turning my lenses back off. The illusion of open space is replaced by physical walls and I can breathe easy again. The railing remains, keeping the drywall out of reach.

I bump into a woman of about my own age, sending her tumbling to the ground. She is mocapped, but instead of a cone-shaped hat like the Contessa wears, she gets her added height from eighteen-inch stilts strapped to her feet.

“I’m so sorry, miss,” I say, offering my hand to help her up.

“Miss?” she asks, and I curse myself for being so presumptuous. I flip my lenses back on, and the mocapped young woman becomes a distinguished gentleman in a stylish velvet suit. He takes my hand and rises to a height that looks down with amusement. It’s a trick of the stilts since, without them, he’s a good bit shorter than I am.

There are very few natural-born men in the Hive. They are guarded, protected, hidden away. Very, very, very few Y-chromosomes are viable these days, well on their way to complete extinction, but some people find an aesthetic appeal to the gender.

“Where are you off to?” he asks.

“None of your business,” I want to say, but outward rudeness would only draw attention. “I’m headed to the marketplace,” I say, “with baskets to bring commodities back for one of my elders.”

“Such a dutiful child,” he says. It’s an infuriating affectation, as I know his true age but have to play along with the projection of distinguished middle-age wrinkles and salt-and-pepper beard.

“I should go now.”

“Tarry a bit,” he insists. “I have a double-entry ticket for the meadow this afternoon and no one to accompany me. At my age, it’s hard to bend down to pick the flowers. These old legs aren’t what they used to be.”

I wonder at what his particular deception might be. Is it drugs? Is it sex? Is he fronting for one of the gangs or cults? On any other day, I’d be tempted to play along to gather intel, but this is laundry day and my laundry days are sacred. “I’m on an important errand with a ticking timer. My elder is ill and requires medicinal compounds and nutritional supplements.”

“Ah.” He nods. “In that case, I won’t keep you here any longer. But I will send you off with a bit of advice: when life presents the opportunity, take time to sniff some flowers.”

I watch him stride away down the promenade, a natural on those long-legged stilts. So cocky as he scans the passersby for another victim.

“Hey, Mister?”

He turns back to me. “Yes?”

“I think I would like to see that meadow. My elder can wait for just a little bit.”

His mouth widens into a predatory grin. “You have made an excellent decision.”