The Year of Storms, Chptr. 7 – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.
The Diplomat Hotel was a twenty-story building with slate-gray walls and tall windows that overshadowed the street below, spaced so close together that the walls between them doubled as prison bars as seen from the street below. It was stately and sterile and the grime from the old traffic contributed to a gradient that got darker the higher the building climbed, like all of the buildings in Unity.
Laro Wilson, a City President from an old city family, made it a point of his platform to get the tops of the buildings coated in dark suncatcher film to add extra power to the grid. For that point, he was mocked, told that only an aristocrat would think to spend such resources. And nobody running for political office in Post could be considered aristocratic and win, except Laro Wilson.
Cellie chewed a go-stick as she lined up the glass buttons on Podre’s short-sleeve plaid poly shirt. Siran left her with one cotton shirt, which was rare, an imported good. He was an engineer, and visiting workers often traded in rare imports.
But that shirt was dirty, and it was four days to her laundry timeslot.
“Mommy, this shirt doesn’t feel good,” Podre said.
“I know, honey. Just bear with it until we get home. Tomorrow, we’ll go back, and I’ll have you tested for a proper blend, okay?”
Podre shook his body top to bottom and laughed. “It tickles.”
“It’ll be okay. And you can take it off, but only if you’re in a room. You can’t be running around the halls or the lobby with no shirt on.”
She grabbed Podre’s hand and felt him squeeze, his heartbeat passed from his veins to her nerves, and she could picture it beating with the strength of a child who had already spent years away from her growing that pulse.
They walked into the Diplomat, through doors that stretched twelve feet high, yet opened with the barest trace of a pneumatic hiss. A small vestibule, lined on either side with defunct mailboxes, opened to the central lobby. Cellie glanced up at the grand chandelier, six feet in diameter if an inch, wrapped in translucent chains dotted evenly with semi-precious stones, with a gold fount sprouting silver arms that led to brass candle cups holding synthetic candles, each topped with multicolor pulsing LED lights. It was purely decorative; the lobby was illuminated by pale light coming from a space between the upper edge of the burgundy wainscotting and the wall above. It was set up to illuminate the room without there appearing to be a light source, and was pretty good at that.
There were three men and a woman, all spectacularly apportioned, standing at the registration counter. A fourth man was seated in one of the ExP jack-stations. Cellie could hear the low hum of the massager built into the station chair he was sitting in. The ExP cable came out of the right armrest to line up on the same side as the ExP jack at the base of the man’s cranium. He flipped the switch on the jack-station, which turned the massager off. He removed the jack and set it into the cleaner compartment, which Cellie would have to refill when she went on shift.
“We want the North Wing ‘B’ rooms,” he said to the others. “They have a great view, and they’re closer to what they have in Sun City.”
“We just left Sun City,” the woman said. “Why would we want something just like it? Live a little, Hamill.”
Hamill grunted. “We could go with a room on the West Wing, still the ‘B’ rooms. They’re wildly different.”
The woman, in round-frame glasses and dressed in finely woven navy-blue hemp, sighed and looked over to one of the other men, “Senre, do you want to find us something?”
“Miss,” Cellie said. “I can tell you that all of our rooms have zone climate control, in-room recycling that tracks in real time, a varied vegan breakfast, roof-grown vegetables, and full-access lumen panels, nothing extra. So they’re different, but they’re all good.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. “I’m sorry, you don’t have a tag.”
“I’m Celia Erbens,” Cellie said. “But I go by Cellie. And I’m just getting on shift.”
The woman glanced down and gasped. “And who is this wonderful child?”
“That’d Podre. He’ll be our guest until I can find a sitter.”
“I’m amazed that the hotel is so understanding,” the woman said. She leaned toward Cellie and brought her voice down. “They’re no place for a child, you know.”
“We’re not living here, miss. It’s just temporary.”
“Well, I wish you fortune.”
Cellie wandered around the lobby with the dust wand that had the most cling left. The lobby was divided into three rooms, smaller, but still larger than her whole unit. One of the rooms was designed for business, lucite braced in black painted steel, black and burgundy and pale-gray open spacing, desks at odd angles to eager other with the intention of fostering creative problem solving. Lumen panels lined the walls filled with city statistics and inter-city trading information. One of the lumen panels was a live feed of the Primes, the seven people who were empowered to create hypnocurrency. They were mysterious and legendary, but truth be told, no one knew anything about them. But a high-city financial law was that there must always be a visual, available to the public, of the Primes, all day, every day, wake or sleep, though Cellie had never seen them not sleeping. She dusted them too.
Next to the business section was a recreation room, with neon primaries glowing on casual black-and-white vinyl comfort seating and chrome trim on everything that bore an edge.
Topping off the lobby was the executive area, which was true leather and faux ivory, and one of the few places in the city where a real fireplace could burn wood. And this was the room where Podre set about jumping on the furniture.
“Podre, no, don’t do that, honey,” Cellie said as she put a hand around his waist and lifted him off. The chime rung at the registration desk, and she walked over, Podre in tow, over to the man standing at the desk. She walked around to the back end and noticed that the woman from earlier left her motel key by the registration pad.
“Excuse me, sir, I’ll be right with you.” She picked up the key, card shaped. She leaned over to Podre, who was gawking at the man.
“Podie,” she said. “You want something to do? If I give you this card, can you bring it up to Room WB3? You can find it on any panel, just tap ‘Room Map.’ Can you do that for me?”
Podre grabbed the keycard and took off running haphazardly down the hall.
“Kids, huh?” The man said.
“Tell me about it.”
“How old?”
“He’s eight,” she said. “He’s a little small for his age.”
“I see.” The man reached into his pocket. “I need a room.”
“Okay, do you know what kind of room already, or do you need to go experience a few?”
“No. I’m actually with the group that just lost their card. So, a room near where they picked.”
Cellie picked out an adjoining room, which was easy because the hotel was usually thin on guests. It would be closed if it wasn’t the only building designated by the city for foreign lodging. They could have one guest and the city would pay to keep them open.
“Okay, so I have WB5, is that okay? Two doors down?”
“Sure thing.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that caught Cellie aback.
He slipped three one-hundred-dollar paper bills on the desk.
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