Chapter Two

The dream was on her, the smell of burning, of pain crashing through her, lering faces in a circle of confussion. A shrill alarm cut through it the Punk sat up in her bed glared at the lumnious numbers hit the clock and rolled over she really needed to get a better clock that could track what day it was then it wouldn’t matter that she forgot to reset the alarm for weekdays.

But she didn’t have any spare credit and was basically working this curcuit for free – she owed the Company a lot of money but the sky bike was worth it even if it was well out moded. It was bueatiful – a lunaire 6 with real metal bits unlike the newer models who were all some fort of plastic or fibre glass. Light tough materials which generally comprised of a lot of empty space – thats what gave them strength the absence of stuff made what was there cling to itself in shear fear of the surrounding vaccum.

Her bike had been on of the first flying models released on the general market – the manufacturers hadn’t quiet got the hang of the fact they were no longer making for the military! It was a warhorse and ontop of that it had been owned by a trans-cyber-goth – it looked like someone had put Maroline Manson and Sitting Bull two great historical figures onto New Synth and let them fight it out – traditional Goth verses traditional native ammerican in rainbow technicolour. It was perfect. Just needed a bit more highlighting in her current colour of fade – Pink.

Grottily she sat up on her bunk and rubbed her eyes – there was no way she’d get back to sleep now so she might as well catch a shower before the water got too recycled to not stink of chemicals.

Of course it was just after lunch time, the lull in the day as everyone was out next to the pool or on one of the maintaned beaches pretending that the world still had such expanses of glittery white sand and that the efforts to stem global warmings effect hadn’t seen every such low laying area build ugly great flood defensis. She sighed at the thought – she’d tried to tell them, tried to explain what would happen if that managed the enivornment like that – had pointed out the devistation of New Orleans early last century but they had ignored her. As always she had been powerless to stop the destruction and then they had cuaght up with her and self preservation kicked in. sod the biosphere sod the multitude who would starve things where still much better than people realised.

They didn’t know couldn’t really what luxary they lived in, even their poor lived in a way that would have been considered bliss not many centuries before.

She showered quickly not becuase she wanted too but becuase she couldn’t afford the fine of exceeding her 15 minutes, the water was high pressure and airaited to make it more effecient at cleaning – she relished it as it prickeled her skin. She had the setting on high heat – most people couldn’t take it that hot but she loved the scalding heat. Hair washed and pits scrubbed she got out of the shower and stood looking at her reflection in the mirror – the nanotube covered glass repelled water and had begun apparing in as a luxary last century it was now as common place as chewing gum had once been. It didn’t mist up, it didn’t get dirty, the layer on it was charged and everything basically bounced off of it.

She missed chewing gum but the plasticizer and sweetners turned out to be carconogens – but everything was a carconogen so why did it matter? Cigerettes where still legal though – thats what truelly got to her. Sighing she begian to spike the magenta hair , shoulder length where it lay after the shower from a central ribbon of hair – the rest having been shaved. She slide a transparent tube down the center of her scalp, it grew little invisible spins and gripped there. She pushed the hair still damp up next to it. A tingling sensation passed through her and the hair stood on end. She smoothed it into a crest 1 and half feet tall. She looked at her Moheccan and smiled – what she would have given for one of these gizmos a centry and a half ago.

She dried herself off she looked like a teenager – the sort of non-descript sort that gets asked for Id even though their 26 or let into bars at 13 but then she’d looked like that for a long time. She put her piercings back in, lifting them from the decontam unit that had soniced them whilst she showered. She was tanned olive but could be darker she also knew from expereince she could be as pale as the rising moon. But she loved the sun, though she loved the night more.

She atatched the chain of anodised metal to her nose and ear and grinned with big full lips – she sugar glossed them and added glitter to her eyelids. Glam meets Punk she grimaced at the remebrance of some of the music and Pulled and pushed herself into a skin tight suit perlised pink to look like snake skin covered in butterfly dust. It zipped up molding itself to her form giving it a ridged shape she liked. Somehow hard femanine curves made her look like she was once more in armour. A round cheeky face with high cheek bones smiled out at her – she’d nock them dead at the club tonight.

The suit was a science fiction fact like so much of the world she inhabited. It was marketed as a still suit and was lifted straight from a scifi classic of the mid 20th century. She liked it – it looked sheek and was emenatly practical recycling her body fluids – very useful in the stiffling environment of a club.

Back in her appartment she munched some kelp crackers and stared out of her window. The resort island had no rooms without a view. Med blue waters stared up at her and she tried not to think on the fact she was on a floating construct made by morons who couldn’t remember to take into account the weight of water in a swimming pool when laying foundations. It was supposed to be hurrican proof – she hoped she wouldn’t still be here to find out when one eventually hit. It was one of the reasons the pay was so damn good.

She’d calculated that she had a few years before the weather patterns shifted again but the presance of the islands alone was enough to much those up so who knew. She jammed her feet into knee high boots, platforms chunky with springs in the heels and pink glitter flames up the sides. They looked like pale pink leather but wear a veg product impregnated with antifungals to stop her feet reaking.

It took an age to lace herself into them, they had zips at the ankle to allow a tighter fit and once the lacing was finished she laid the stupidly long tongue over them and did up the dozen or so buckels humming why she did it.

She stood, a head taller than she had been. She grabbed her acid pink bomber jacket, shiny material with tight ribbed cuffs and matching coiler checked that her must haves where still all in place and left the depressing white cube with its smell of ozone.

In the corrador she stopped to activate the lock and stomped off down the hall – for some reason she was in a bad mood. She was heading to the bar area ignoreing the holidaying tourists in bikinis that begged skin cancer swung into the dark cool room. Of course it was closed, not due to open for another five hours but she knew the early shift would already be out back preparing.

Alexi the walrus-esk barsteward was shouting his normal orders and his skinny wife was using her claw like fingers to type out orders and the like. Why the woman didn’t use a cord keyboard was beyound the Punk but people as always felt things should look a certian way – her sugar glossed mouth quirked at the realisation she was wearing enough pink to sink the original suffroget movement.

The Barsteward cuaght sight of her and beamed, ‘Ah my little DJ what will it be?’ the Punk tilted her head to the fridge units. The sound of the heat exchanges was audible at this time of day. They were full of synth beer – spat out by bacteria in vats – some people still shunned it but the Punk reasoned that beer was made by fungus anyway and at least this was a trained micro-organism.

Alexi paced her two bottles.

She moved through the kitchen delidding one as she went. She sat on the steps that lead down to patch of white gleaming pavement – she took out a pair of wrap around shades. The light was harsh this close to the equator as it was – mid day and relected off of white paving slabs was enough to blind you if you weren’t careful.

As she sat there contemplating her green tinged vista her mind turned to the vastness of the ocean beyound her, it had once seemed so large but now it was so annoyingly small. she tilted her head to the sky, there were the new day stars glinting in the sky – she knew what they were but they still gave her a scense of disquiet. They were like omens of old that the priests would hunt out a sacrific for, glinting gleaming in the skies. The Orbitals – the great minning endevour that had saved humanity for a derf of raw matterials. The early 21st century had laid the seeds of the project as the astronomers hunted the skies for near earth objects – fear had driven them. Theories of mass exctinction by fire from the sky.

She hadn’t made it up to the orbitals yet but she was sure she’d end up there at some point. The asteroids where netted due to some fantastic feat of engeerneering where they were then mined heaveily to run Earth’s industries. The resulting caverns where low G areas just rip for a population to relieve Earths own press. There was now alomst a ring around the entire planet – the doom sayers had predicted the end of the world – the Punk had been listening to prophetic apocoliptica for a long time, she’d done the calculations she knew it could work. She had been sad that she’d had to run out on the scientific community just as things were truelly becoming interesting.

With those types of thought buzzing around in her brain her fingures begain to get twitchy – she desperatly wanted to go and tinker with her new bike – but that had to be reserved for evenings off as once she got into it she was likely to be there for hours. She closed her eyes and supped her beer and sunk into a daydream of engine compartments and moving parts. She sighed happily.

The world was a much nicer place than it had been – most people she knew would disagree with her but they hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Sure there where The Ant-Space league blowing the Atmo-Gliders up full of passangers and there were still boarder conflicts in the ex-USA as terrortories where scratched out but they were isolated places, most people had food, had cloth were clean, knew at least what reading and writing was.

She felt the presance next to her, smelt the cheap aftershave and smiled, ‘Sit down idiot.’ There was a creak of synthetic leather and a gruff exhalation of breath.

Snake sat down next to her She looked at him, neon blue leatherette glared at her with lank green hair that some how clashed. He had uneaven stumble in his natural ginger covering his iemasiated face, he looked like he would imbibbed anything legal or illigal – he was in fact t-total. Brought up by a druggy mother who was obsessed with the apocolypse.

‘You drinking that foul stuff?’ he inquired.

Posted: Thursday, November 5th, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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One Response to “Chapter Two”

  1. Purple Monster » Blog Archive » The Punk in Pink Chapter Two Recap Says:

    […] Chapter Two the Beginning […]

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