“Good morning, sir. The time is 6:30 a.m. and the temperature is set for 18.5 degrees,” greeted a disembodied feminine voice.
Aaron Bronovitch blinked his eyes to the light filtering through the rising window shades.
“Good morning, Diedre,” Aaron croaked blearily and twisted to his bedside table, where a glass had been filled to the brim with crystal water from an ejected spout.
He ignored the glass and rolled to his feet, rubbing his eyes against the brightness.
“Tasks?” he asked, kneading the stiffness out of his neck.
“In order of time, relevance, or category?”
“Category.”
“You have a speech at 9 a.m., a meeting with Andrea Dower from the Head Office at 10 a.m., and a session with the new council appointee at 3 p.m. Your quarterly dental checkup is booked for 12 o’clock. I have arranged for a standard-issue car to pick you up from your office at 11:23 a.m. Your estimated wait time is 13 minutes.”
Aaron stifled a groan as he stood and padded across the temperature-controlled grey tiles toward the bathroom. He relieved himself, then stepped into the shower, which blasted and scrubbed him with all the necessary ingredients to combat the stench of human biology. A channel of air gusted next. Aaron flattened his hair and stepped back into the bedroom, dry as a teacake.
The grey closet doors slid open in response to his approach, and a beam of light flickered over a cylinder containing one black suit hanging from a hook. Black? That meant something important would happen today.
“Why arrange a car?” Aaron asked instead.
“Vehicle #8920, registered to Aaron Bronovitch, has notified my system of a potential area for concern. I have approved the vehicle to drive to the mechanic for inspection and repairs.”
He cleared his throat. “Right. Okay. Thanks.”
“You are very welcome, sir.”
Aaron plucked down the suit and laid it over a bench that panned out from the wall with a pneumatic puff of air. He pulled off his pyjamas and tossed them in the hatch that opened for him. They would be washed and pressed come evening, having met their three-day allotted use.
She let him dress in silence in front of the mirror. Aaron tried not to inspect too closely at the grey in his curls of black chest hair, or the paleness of his freckles, or the dark circles under his eyes. When was the last time he’d gone out into the proper sun? Not the UV baths, but outside? On instinct, he turned to look over the ‘windows’, but his only view was a computer-generated screen of an unblemished blue sky.
Aaron was just dropping the blue tie over his raised collar when he finally asked, “Er. The suit, Diedre?”
“The anti-intelligence coalition launched another rebellious act of independent creativity in the central square at 3:30 this morning, destroying two government-issued billboards before law enforcement put them Under. They streamed the vandalism to 1.4 million viewers. You will record a televised address at 9 a.m. in response to this act of terrorism to assure your people of the importance of civility under One Law.”
Aaron hesitated in his final loop of the tie—a fraction of a second, enough to be a mark against him if she watched him close enough, which she always did. He tried to calm his heartbeat. Stop the tremble in his fingers as he pulled the silk through and tightened the knot at his throat. “Very well,” he managed to say, his Adam’s apple bobbing under the restricting length of fabric.
“Would you like to read your generated speech beforehand?” Diedre continued pleasantly, her computerized voice conveying no emotion beyond the usual.
Aaron sucked in a shallow breath and shook his head at the mirror. “No, thank you. Just send it to the teleprompter.” Better to read it once and be done with it.
“Very well, Mister Mayor. May the Intelligence guide you.”
The mayor smoothed down the front of his black suit, avoiding his gaze in the reflection. “Thank you, Diedre.”