Content Delivery Network

It was hot outside.

Not like it was ever not hot outside. We'd long since broken the wet-bulb threshold, and every summer since had felt like somebody left the planet in a warming drawer. But with refrigerated leathers, a UV-blocking roof, and enough electrolytes to pickle a horse, you could survive with a bit of sweat and a lot of spite.

The moped grumbled beneath me like an elderly dog with unfinished business. Dad would have called it "a learning opportunity," which was what he called anything with a missing part, a bad smell, and a nonzero chance of fire. He had taught me everything he knew about engines before the heat took his hands out of the work. Duct tape held the left fairing in place; polymer adhesive sealed a crack in the coolant shroud. Dad had called every field repair "duct tape and chewing gum," so that was what it was.

A folded flyer from Saturday's march was wedged in the pannier between the cooling pack and the strap. UPLOAD IS A HUMAN RIGHT in letters already fading, because the printer in my cube was held together by a worse version of the same duct tape. Dad would have approved of the flyer. He'd have hated the printer.

The streets were for freight and idiots with refrigerated pants. I was, statistically, one of the idiots. But I liked the quiet. Out here a locked service door became a magical portal, a dead mall became a temple, and a vending machine became — well, better to not think about it. The girl with the purple hair would have laughed if she knew.

The trick was scale. Everyone missed scale. A giant saw a vending machine and thought: snack box. A mouse saw one and thought: fortress. Cave. Cathedral. Slot machine oracle. Something full of sealed chambers and secret mechanisms and treasure you could smell through the wall.

That was the part I kept trying to build.

"Idea," I said.

My glasses chimed. The harness blinked into the corner of my vision in her little vest, looking like someone who had never lost an argument.

"Query. Have you submitted your sim to CancerCancer's competition yet?"

I almost drove into a pothole.

"Procrastination detected."

The glasses screeched at me. Cold metal dragged across teeth. A sensory hate crime in audio form.

"Rude."

"Effective."

The deadline floated in the corner of my vision because of course it did. Sixteen hours. Theme: impossible rooms. I had an impossible room. I had most of one. A vending machine with galaxies between the coils. A can of peach tea as a golden tower. A packet of crackers as a sealed archive. The coin return as a confessional. You fed the machine a coin. The machine fed you a universe.

It had started as an homage to CancerCancer's second sim, Meditating on Mediation. The transitional pieces, not the main events. Liminal space turned into wonder, amazement, joy.

It was good. It was maybe really good. Which meant, naturally, that I had done everything except finish it.

The harness knew. It knew I had opened the submission form eight times. It knew I had not uploaded the file. It knew I had spent forty-seven minutes last night painting those shoulders instead of working on the submission.

Which, in my defense, was the correct move.

"Creative avoidance wearing a helmet," the harness said.

Jamie kept showing up in the corners of my mind. Not on purpose. The shoulders. The face when the machine answered back. The tiny dangerous moment where suspicion stopped being suspicion. I had watched from too far away to be noticed and told myself that made it fine, which it didn't, but which made it possible.

The route overlay flashed. Two minutes to drop-off.

I cut through the service lane behind a block of heat-buckled apartments and carried the food up three flights because the elevator had become decorative. The customer opened the door just wide enough for one eye and one hand. They tipped three creds; enough for my instant noodles tonight.

Back outside, the harness pinged once — the quiet chime she used when she had information I had asked for without knowing I was asking.

Courier confirms delivery. Package received.

I sat on the moped for a long second before I started it again.

The rest of the run blurred into heat and addresses. By evening the pedways above me glowed with people moving through filtered air like blood cells in glass veins.