Trinh pulled out a pair of slightly battered headphones from under
the ever growing pile of electronics. Nothing in the pile was sold
anymore, taken off the screens as soon as the newest alternative
became available. Inevitably, most of the unsold stock (and there
always was a lot of it) ended up on the black market.
Trinh was glad of that.
She flicked open the circular cover on the side of the right speaker
and took out the memory-disc. Fishing through the pile again, she
found the handheld device used to write to memory-discs. It was
pretty old – old enough to still have a button panel. She clicked
the disc into place and closed the cover.
The little handheld powered up, playing an advert which advised her
to ditch memory-discs and get the newer option – namely, a direct
cranial implant. She skipped it and flicked through the menu options
to 'LOAD'.
Trinh pulled up her sleeve and squinted at the messy ink scrawls
covering her entire left hand and forearm, and wished the handheld
had a visual handwriting recognition driver installed. It would take
her ages to input the codes she'd bought from the archaic goods
screen-stall in the Subway manually. It was a shady stall, but then
the entire Way was black market shops, so that was hardly surprising.
When she finally did manage to type them all in, she selected 'BURN
TO DISC' and waited as the disc whirred, and after about a minute the
message '73 SONG FILES BURNED. PLEASE REMOVE DISC.' flashed up.
One minute. Trinh mentally poured abuse on the device. A whole minute
for anything less than two hundred song files was so bloody slow.
She took out the disc and returned it to her headphones. Closing the
cover, she put them on and shut her eyes, looking at the little
SmartScreens on the inside of her eyelids. Selecting 'Play New' and
'Shuffle', she dumped the pile of electronics back into the plastic
box she kept them in, and shoved the box under her bed.
Some time ago now, Kattela Milles had insisted that her seven year
old daughter should have all the newest technological implants it was
safe to have – eye-screens, lip-mic, the lot.
Laying back, Trinheran Milles cursed her mother for turning her into
a Technician's nightmare.
This is very interesting. I really like your style. Can't wait to read more!
ReplyDelete^^ Thank you very much! It's really nice to hear that~ The next two sections are up now!
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