Year of Storms, Chptr. 8 – Xperience Fiction

Year of Storms, Chptr. 8 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

The paper crinkled in straight slashes, triangles meeting each other, three dimensions to the surface of the paper. It was an anachronism on the brushed steel counter. It was the light of the world when she was three; its extinguisher by age four. She’d seen paper currency only once in her life, when her dad gave a suitcase full of it to a man that stuffed them in what she’d later learn was a tractor trailer. But none of those bills were marked one-hundred.

“Sir, we use hypno here,” she said. “It’s the tier one service rate. If you’re worried about our scanner, it’s calibrated every morning.”

The man pulled a pink silk handkerchief out and coughed into it, causing a monogrammed rose to bunch up at the close of his fist.

“I know that you take hard currency,” he said. “I’m from Delta City. Our economy isn’t fully hypno-based. My,” he cleared his throat, “station, in life doesn’t use hypno.”

Cellie couldn’t tell whether it meant his station was above or below the high society line, but hard, real cash and soft, real silk gave her a guess.

“I know that we do take some hard currency from our more, well, our esteemed guests. You said that you were with the group that came in earlier? They used hypno.”

“They attend to me,” the man said. “It’s their station in life to use hypno. I’m very tired from my trip. Is there someone I can talk to about this, no offense to you?”

Cellie set the tips of her fingers to the edge of the bills, not daring to touch them lest she wind up an accomplice.

“I’m going to go talk to the manager,” she said. “She’ll know how to do it. Feel free to enjoy one of our relaxation rooms. The executive room is nice.” She pointed to the executive room entrance. “Right there.”

Cellie walked down the first-floor hallway, her hand on the rail, also brushed steel, a direct extension of the registration desk, her eyes adjusting to the brighter light that, like the lobby, was designed to not come from an identifiable source. He turned into the office doorway to find the manager, Helen.

The Diplomat Hotel, aside from being able to have a wood-burning fireplace, also had a paper license, and that license was well used. Papers piled on a desk that had no owner and served as storage for homeless forms. Helen sat on a clean Lucite desk with a lumen panel incorporated into the surface, just like the ones in the business area.

“Helen, I got something,” Cellie said. “I got a guy out front with currency.”

“What kind?” Helen said. “Does it look like anything you’ve ever seen?”

“Yeah, it’s money; I guess, U.S. currency. Five hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills.”

Helen sighed and pushed herself back from her desk. “Yeah, I got to look at it.”

“Sorry, I know your foot is hurting.”

Helen grabbed a clear plastic cane with a rainbow LED cascade effect traveling its length up and down. “I can’t sit down forever,” she said. “The problem with currency isn’t that it’s illegal in the city. We have a diplomatic pass for that. It’s that because its illegal in the city, nobody knows how to spot a fake bill.”

Cellie opened the door for her and stepped back.

“I had to take a two-week course at the Travel Directorate to spot fakes from a bunch of countries,” she said. “Only good thing is that they don’t print the stuff anymore.”

The man was fidgeting with his fedora, a style hat that had been growing in popularity in Unity among the trendsetters. Cellie thought it was unique to Unity, but apparently it wasn’t. Or the man was a trendsetter in his own city.

Helen walked behind the desk and swiped her hand over the bills. She picked one up and reached under the counter, pulling out an ocular. She held the bill up to it, letting the light shine through the fibers. She moved the ocular across the bill, to each corner before she set both down.

“It’s real,” she said. She looked at the man and tapped her index finger gently on the desk. “It’ll be four hundred and fifty for a night, and we need your Travel ID in case of incidentals, extra charges.”

“I can’t imagine any charges,” he said.

“Nobody can,” Helen said. “But they happen. You have your travel ID, right?”

The man patted four pockets before reaching in his back pocket, pulling out a lump of leather, the likes of which Cellie had seen in the museum by her cylinder. It was a wallet. She guessed that her father had one of those before the Collapse. Everybody did, but she was too young.

He pulled out the ID, which Helen took and scanned. A beep indicated that it was valid.

“There you go, Mr. Kringle,” she said. She handed him his keycard. “Your room is 5WB. The room amenities are included. Everything outside of the room is extra. Come to the desk for that stuff.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Kringle said as he turned to go for the main elevators.

Cellie gave Mr. Kringle little thought as she continued her struggle to keep the rooms clean. One thing that she’d noticed about Unity, her unique observation, was that, despite the inordinate amount of resources used to keep the city clean, and thus, keep everybody happy, they could never keep on top of fingerprints. Human oils coated every surface and could build up within a day. And it barely registered with the person walking down the street, their eyes awash in Lumen panel advertisements. But there was a human slick over just about everything, an undeniable piece of evidence that there were twenty-six million people in a land area designed for just under ten million.

She finished scrubbing fingerprints off the desks and lumen panels, cleaned the carpets, and recycled the fluid in the utility room. She was just coming out into the reception area to check the security screens when she had the overwhelming feeling that she lost something. She very nearly moved to check her pockets before she realized that, in fact, she had lost someone.

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