Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Collision

Wave had always considered herself an excellent driver. Until she crashed with the desk.

The hover drive rebelled against the weight of the furniture, lost the battle, and together, wood and metal kissed the asphalt with a bang. The Collision Emergency Routine, CER for short, disintegrated the control stick and displays into their atoms and the vacated space was taken by pink rescue foam, which caught her head just at the right moment. Then the lifebelt yanked her back into her seat and only a subtle smell of strawberry - her favorite flavor - remained as a reminder of the impact.

Spraying sparks, her hover car came to a stop. The CER shut down the engine and with a jolt, gravity set up natural conditions for the tail as well. After checking the driver's side, the CER released the seat belt, blew open the driver's door and Wave tumbled out through the fog of the explosion.

A row of waist-high concrete posts adorned the median, and she took hold of them, gasping. Her heartbeat throbbed piercingly in her ears and every hover car that honked past her or whizzed recklessly overhead made her wince in pain. Then the noise died down, silence enveloped her, and she felt dizzy.

"Bio readings," she breathed, and a cross-section of her body appeared before her eyes. Projected directly from the biochip onto the contact lenses. Gradually, individual body parts turned green. That was good. Until it was the head's turn. No broken nose, even though her face felt like it could burst into flames at any moment. No concussion, either. It was the ears that finally turned red. Diagnosis: ruptured eardrums. Automatically, her biochip sent a signal out to the medical department and another to the insurance company.

Wave slid down the post into a crouch and wrapped her arms around her knees. She looked over at the wreckage of her hover car and felt lousy. Really lousy. Now you could say that it wasn't every day that a desk fell out of the sky and smashed your engine block. But only if you hadn't done your driving training in Citadel City. That provided for even more absurd scenarios. After all, nothing but deadly jungle surrounded the city. At any moment, a giant Vetian lizard might breach the city walls, or a bird of prey might try to crack the shell of a mammoth turtle on the city's hard asphalt. Not that she could remember anything like that ever happening.

But no one could doubt the reality of this desk. A greater angle of fall, a little more speed, or another small detail, and it would have put an end to her existence.

She ran a shaky hand through her hair, wiped aside sweat and a handful of pitch-black strands, and looked up. Hightowers sprouted up around her, connected by office segments, shopping malls, and isolated apartments that squeezed in between. She looked for a hole in the facade or a shattered window. Instead, she found only a reflection of the clouds moving untouched across the blue sky. Their movement triggered a renewed sense of vertigo and Wave averted her eyes, then she looked once more at the pitiful remains of her hover car.

"Junk!" she cursed. Her voice sounded muffled. The outline of the desk and vehicle flickered yellow and the black lettering 'junk' appeared on a virtual label, attaching itself to that outline. Her lenses had taken a picture of the accident, tagged it, and uploaded it to the city's network. Now her friends, colleagues, and the rest of the world could poke fun at it. 'Great,' she thought, this time unheard by the telltale sensors.

The number of people in her contact list, who she actually thought were her friends, was limited. She pressed her index finger and thumb against each other and gave the command, "Friends." She moved her fingers and the short list scrolled down once in front of her eye and then up again until she had decided who she would beg for a ride. On foot, she was a good two hours away from home otherwise.

"Hello, Wave," Sven, aka Hammer, the boss of her Arena team, called in. By the Top of the Citadel, why did he have to mumble like that? Then she realized it was because of her and her stupid eardrums that she couldn't understand him. She activated the subtitles.

"Hey, Hammer," she replied, "you may have seen it already. If not, my hover car's on the fritz."

"Tried to outrun a furniture truck?"

"Funny," she returned, a little annoyed. "That thing just fell out of the sky. Somewhere out of the high-rise next to me."

"Sure."

"I don't care if you believe me or not. Meds should be showing up soon. Can you drive me home after?"

"The Meds are coming? Did you get hit?"

"Ruptured eardrums."

"Fuck."

"Hey, I've been through worse." Out there, in the jungle, she added silently.

"Hmm. I'd really love to take you, you know that. But I can't get off work yet. And my boss is already watching me."

"Cool." Wave sighed. Not cool at all. "I'll see you later after you get away from your boss?"

"Sure. See ya." With that, he disconnected.

Wave took a deep breath and exhaled. Who could she ask next? Most members of the team didn't have a hover car or a fossil cart, let alone jobs to pay them. Most of them were still too young, anyway. She fared better in that regard. She already counted twenty-six years and was able to join the Urban Expansion Agency as a consultant three years ago. She had spent a lot of time in the outside world thanks to her foster parents, who had taken her in as a baby. One day she returned to the city and within two years, she had caught up on all the education she had missed as a child and teenager. Until her ears bled. Literally. After that, she said goodbye to the experimental program "learn while you sleep" and completed her studies the traditional way.

They had left her enough money so that she didn't actually have to work. But she didn't want to touch it. Not after what they had done. Not after they had just left without a goodbye.

While she was still indecisively scrolling through the contact list, the Meds' pearly white emergency vehicle floated up with sirens and blue lights. Overdramatic, she wasn't dying, after all. Vibrating, the hover car stopped behind the sad remnant of her own vehicle. Landing gear pierced the vehicle's virtual skin and, hissing, it sank to the ground. The Med on the driver's side threw open the door and slid languidly from his seat.

"Citizen 8479884," he rattled off her ID and the subtitles repeated his words. "Anna -"

"Wave," she interrupted him before he'd finished saying her name. People tended to get that disgusted look on their faces when they saw her full name and it dawned on them who they were looking at. Another legacy from her parents that she would have loved to do without.

"Wave," he confirmed without flinching. "Your biochip has sent a report. I will run a second scan to confirm the results."

Wave nodded.

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"If you'll step inside, please." The Med pulled open a sliding door on the side of the hover car and then helped her climb in and sit down on an uncomfortable cot. "Don't be alarmed, the sensors are cold." With a practiced grip, he placed a series of metal plates at her temples. A palm-sized drone shot out from a recess, and Wave instinctively flinched. When you'd lived in the outside world for so long, you regarded anything that flew with a fair amount of respect. But the drone proved harmless, only hovering up and down in front of her a few times.

"All clear," the Med finally concluded his examination. "No other damage. Just a ruptured eardrum. Insurance says you're entitled to a KA-0X1 hearing aid until your body completes independent regeneration."

"A hearing aid?" echoed Wave, drawing out the syllables in disbelief. "I think my subtitles got this wrong. I thought that was supposed to be done in the Med Center in a few seconds. Even in the outside world, we had equipment that could heal wounds in no time. And those were much more serious."

"That's true," admitted the Med. "But the Kanter Group is currently distancing itself from biological interventions and refines alternative healing methods. You've already signed the change clause. Here, see for yourself."

At the edge of her left eye, a red dot began to flash, swelling to obtrusive size with increasing frequency.

"Yeah, yeah." She placed her fingers together and commanded, "Just open."

A document appeared, opened, and jumped directly to the clause in question. Yes, she had indeed confirmed that.

"What a mess." Wave quirked the left corner of her mouth. "These things always arrive early in the morning, right when I get up. If I don't answer them right away, the blinking really kills me."

"Here's a tip," the Med lowered his voice. "Just request treatment anyway. Sign a withdrawal clause, and you'll be able to get it in a day or two, via fast-track surgery."

Wave sighed. And until then she would be a test subject for the Kanter Group's hearing aid.

"Better than waiting three weeks for healing," the Med said with a shrug and started the synth. "KA-0X1, once," he commanded. Now the synth downloaded all the information from the database and printed out her hearing aid. Synths were handy. If you were lucky enough to have one with you in the wilderness, you could whip up a 5-course meal from a block of wood and a bit of dirt that you stuck in the top. How was that possible? Alien technology, which simply overwhelmed the human mind.

"Contact lens?" the med asked.

Wave nodded. The contact lens, or simply lens for short, was their control interface with the city. Older models came in the form of eyeglasses, and every now and then you'd still see someone walking around with an ancient implant that had replaced an entire eye. To the people who were brought out of cryogenic suspension, it was simply explained as an advanced version of a smartphone. The very crazy or the wealthy had the interface implanted in their heads right away. Control by thought sounded tempting, but without the right discipline, it could backfire. It wasn't for nothing that 'smoking heads' was no longer a figure of speech.

"You can sync the hearing aid with your lens." He handed her a translucent sheet, crisscrossed with barely perceptible silver threads. "Here are the instructions." Another blink in the corner of her eye. A pictogram showed her how to apply the foil. She held the foil to her ear. This wasn't the first time a spider had crawled over her ear. There were even varieties out there that wanted to lay their eggs in your ear canal. This tickling, however, was a harmless one. The film clung on and after that, she no longer felt it. With a smooth transition, the ambient volume increased back to its usual level.

"Synchronization," she commanded. A long list of devices in the environment appeared that were not yet connected to any interface. The hearing aid was not among them. "Strange, it doesn't show up on the list."

"Maybe try it at home," the Med recommended. "There's probably too much interference here. There are several cyber stores in this building, and there are a couple of broadcast studios up there, plus ..." a large drone buzzed right past the hover car's door, and the rest of the sentence was lost in the noise of the rotors. Blue in color, with the yellow logo of the Kanter Group. It circled the wreckage and another message appeared. The insurance company inspected the accident site and would take care of the rest. Time until a service team would have rebuilt and replaced the destroyed parts by synth: 2 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 4 seconds. 3, 2, 1. That was way too long. Was she entitled to a replacement vehicle? Of course not.

Wave put on the most convincing smile at her disposal. "Could you give me a ride?"

The Med laughed. Yeah, wrapping men around her little finger wasn't exactly one of her strengths. But here she had found one with a good core.

"Climb in. If need be I'll think of a reason and put it on the insurance bill."

Now she was genuinely smiling.

As she made herself comfortable in the large seat of the hover car, music sounded from the sound system's speaker. "CCR is escorting you to the end of the day." This was the melodious voice of her favorite host. "My name is Aki and this song is for all of you who are still out there, on your way home." A song, exactly for her, then.

"Is it crazy to fall in love with someone's voice without knowing who it really is?" she asked, more to herself than anyone else.

"Well, my colleagues would think I was crazy if I said something like that about a random guy on the radio." He winked at her, put on his blinker, and accelerated.

In the rearview mirror, she saw another hover car approaching the wreckage. It was a black hover car.

"The hypothermia department," the Med stated, and continued in a serious voice, "You don't have a frozen body in the trunk, do you?"

The hypothermia department came when it was too late for the Meds but too early for a hearse. They put those into cryogenic sleep for whom on-site care was insufficient and the Med Center's treatment was too risky. At least when your insurance provided it.

"No," she answered, without humor in her voice.

She had realized what they had come for.

Sticking out from under the wreckage of her hover car, barely visible, laid the arm of a human being.

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