The top flips over, keyboard.The top flips over, keyboard. Okay, where's the...neat, the screen is in the mirror. Good effect, hides a lot, but takes refocussing, it's like looking into a head's-up display. Drawer's got a pen, paper. Try the bathroom. No razor in the medicine chest, in fact nothing at all in there. Soap in the bathtub. I smiled. I could slip and fall and kill myself. Do failed suicides always think this way? What's the vidmirror hooked to? Try it. Standard input, but no email output, apparently. Look at the date. 57! It's been FIVE YEARS!? Where the Hell have I been? Frozen solid. Oh, yeah. Waitaminute! Run to the window. Look. Yeah, sun's overhead, can't see much otherwise, damned mountain in the way. Assume for the time being I'm on Pendor. Newslines Pendorian, at least. Try a music program. Nothing. No audio throughput at all. I guess I wait for my hostess. I went and lay down on the bed. "Ken?" Soft voice, sweet and high pitched, with a middlin' southern accent, like from north Georgia on Earth somewhere. I come to conciousness suddenly, flailing. "Wha?..." I said. "Easy, easy," she said. My eyes came to rest on the young woman I'd seen before. A better look at her face. High cheekbones, soft, definitely Irish eyes. But that accent! "Who are you?" I demanded of my...captor? Saviour? "Are you feeling alright, Ken? Hungry?" "Who are you?" "My name's Brieanna Flanders. Call me Brie." "Brieanna Flanders? There weren't any Flanders in my designs." "I know. I'm not anyone you know, or made. |