Frances forgot about the game at nine.
She forgot that she had to go to work in eight hours.
She forgot she had to make up for lost time after work for her own project.
But most importantly, she forgot where she was.
Her eyes were too puffy from crying in anger. The room was too blurry and dark to make over where she was. It was cold, she was covered in a bed sheet, she laid in softness, and her hair fell on her face. She figured out she managed to get back to her apartment, take off her bodysuit and scrunchie—the source of her holo-solid companion—and go to bed.
Memories from the afternoon entered her mind and she jerked in her bed to look for her phone. There were various messages: a co-worker's text message, a lost call and a text from her mom, a picture sent by her dad and… oh.
She stopped bothering with her phone because of various text and group messages from her Dojo friends. She decided to ignore them and answer a week later with some snarky apology.
She jerked once more to a more comfortable position. Maybe she could sleep away her frustrations, wake up feeling a bit better and call her mom before leaving to work. She probably wanted to ask how she was, what she'd been up to… and if she found out where Ed's been. When she would inevitably answer to her mom, she would start getting worried and soon an argument will happen and, and, and...
She was thinking of him.
"God fucking dammit…"
"My child! How are you, my lovely child?"
"Could be better, Mother," Fizz chuckled half-heartedly to her mom's small joke. She talked to her through a wireless headset on her ear. She brushed her teeth as her other hand tapped the skin near her eyes lightly. Her eyes didn't look that bad for crying a few hours ago. She had an oversized white crop top and dark grey yoga pants that hugged her thick thighs. One foot scratched the back of the other while she listened to her mother.
"Did you see what your dad sent on the group chat?"
"Didn't get a chance to see it. Where is he anyway?" She splashed water to her face before cleansing it.
"Serbia eating pancakes."
"Of course he was…" She rolled her eyes with a small smirk on her face. She dried herself with a nearby lavender towel. Her father liked to taunt her with pictures of food, especially during work hours. "So what do I owe you? You don't usually call me during the week."
"Remember that your cousin is getting married this weekend, hun."
Oh. Oh no.
"Can't I—"
"Frances…"
"Mother..."
She walked out of the bathroom to her small orderly kitchen to fetch herself some coffee. She grabbed the ivory mug, already prepared with bitter hot black liquid.
"Don't you dare bail."
She waved the mug around while she spoke. "Look, I'm not gonna pass the time saying, "Yup, still single." Might as well put it on a shirt and avoid talking to everyone. I would literally be alone with no one to hang out." She took a sip while her mother spoke.
"Why don't you invite one of your friends or a co-worker?"
She choked on her coffee. She coughed for a bit. "Mom…" she groaned. She turned to her refrigerator. "And why can Dad skip and I can't? Tell 'em I'm busy or something!" She picked up some bagged sandwiches.
"Your father is on a Seminar right now, Cissy. I would invite Edward to come with you, but… you know."
She sighed. There was a pause between them. Her mother could hear the mug clinking onto the counter. "Fine… I'll figure something out."
Her mother sighed of relief. "Oh, and Frances?"
"Yeah?"
"Love you."
She smiled. "Love you too, Mom…"
The text she had received from her co-worker was for a favor. Unlike Fizz, Dr. Roche had to be more proper. The co-worker in question was from the Biotechnologies Department, her old department before transferring to the AI Robotics Department.
She walked into the impressively large building with a small lavender backpack on tow. Her hands were inside her black skinny jeans' pockets. She also wore a black turtleneck sweater and her hair was in a two-minute consumed bun.
She walked directly towards the Biotechnologies Department. She knocked on the nearest door and looked into the room. She saw her co-worker, Blake, sitting in the break room. He was in his mid-thirties, well-groomed black hair and small icy blue eyes hidden behind some square glasses. He wore a lab coat and a green nursing outfit. He walked up to her with folder on tow.
"What did you mess up this time?" She started walking with the man through the halls of the department.
"I didn't do anything!" His voice was almost nasal.
"That's how it always starts! You guys tend to forget you're working with living, breathing and seventy-eight percent unfixable beings, not robots." This was Dr. Roche; Fizz would've made him quit his job. She stopped in her tracks to glare at him. "Tell me, did you study Biology? Biochemistry? Microbiology? Marine biology? Anything to do with the study of living beings?"
"Bio-engineering. Did you?" He raised his eyebrow. He met her when she started in their lab, but he was one of the few who recognized her from the courier industry that failed… seven years now? They were wiped clean when the military was solicited to haul materials and medicine for rebuilding Progress City. He didn't get offended by her attitude at all because she was well-known to be kind-hearted. Hell, she was there doing him a favor.
"When I was seventeen, I got bored during my Master's and did a second Bachelor in Biology to dabble in medicine. Would've actually done more with it, if I wasn't so busy starting my Doctorate. Now I have to clean up your mess while I await some better compensation to get out of my college debt." He handed her the folder. She checked on it. "I swear you guys treat the rats better than the test trialers."
She entered a room without Blake. He waited for her outside the door. She looked at the many different scrubs, gloves and masks that were available in different sizes. When she found out the ones that were her size, she changed from her own clothes to the light blue scrubs. She walked out of the changing room into what looked like an operating room mixed with a workshop.
"Bring him out and stay with me afterwards. I want you to learn from your mistakes so I don't get pulled here once a month."
Blake speedily walked out of the operating room. While he pulled out a bed with a balding late fifties male patient with a sleek navy blue chromed prosthetic right arm and a hospital robe, Fizz prepared a tray with black tools, a few plastic bottles with liquids and oils and two pairs of rubber gloves. She picked up the folder again to read in better detail the patient's information.
"Hello, Mr. Donovan. I'm Dr. Roche and you've already met Dr. Hummel from your operation. What seems to be the problem?"
"My arm worked fine for the first few days, but then the pinky finger stopped moving. Then all of the fingers stopped working all together. The only thing they do… is vibrate." He lifted his prosthetic arm to show his fingers twitching.
"Does it do it all the time?" She grabbed his hand and tried to grasp it. The hand didn't react, but the fingers kept on trembling. She put her ear on his hand and heard a slight white noise emitting from the fingers.
"Not all the time. It happens more at my job! It's the only place I can call my wife."
"Oh… so you live in the devastated area?" Blake inquired. The devastated area was the locals' name for Sector 14 and its neighboring sectors that took the brunt of Bedlam's terrorism ten years ago. That sector and the neighboring ones were still in reconstruction phases. Most of these sectors were almost uninhabitable with constant blackouts, rouge robots, problems with the water system, and wireless and data signal problems—250 years of backtracking. "Why didn't you move afterwards?"
"Where to? Everywhere else is so expensive. Ten years of medical problems after losing my arm, it's not easy to move." Mr. Donovan shrugged. "For what? To move to another sector with the same problems? Just because other sectors weren't destroyed, doesn't mean they avoided the situation."
"Yeah, Hummel, I have to fix my stove every time there's a blackout. What fancy rich sector do you live?" Fizz egged on. He glared at her while she smirked. "Mr. Donovan, good news is that it's not your nerves rejecting the prosthesis. You can rest assured that nothing is wrong with you. The bad news is I need to borrow your arm to check if the circuiting in the prosthesis is well-mounted and programmed."
The patient sighed. "Sure, that's what I'm here for."
With a few tools and the help of her co-worker, Fizz removed the now-lifeless robotic arm. She carried it to a main table with a monitor and a keyboard. The stainless steel table had an adjustable opening with many chips, magnets and circuits. The arm straightened when she connected it to the computer. She typed and decoded the arm's programming.
"Blake!" she groaned. "This arm is connected to Progress City's mainframe! This isn't an arm, it's a radio!" She glared at him. "Is this a prank to you? Are you guys trying to destroy this lab from the inside?"
"I swear this wasn't my intention!" he pleaded. "I installed everything like I mapped it out in the blueprints. It was approved by the committee!"
She continued to work with the monitor to see how far the rabbit-hole went with this mess. She managed to connect to mainframe with the use of the arm. Her eyes widen in astonishment. "This arm is hackable, Blake!" She knew her co-worker wasn't malicious, if something a bit naive with his surroundings. "Hey… weren't you arming this with the interns?"
"Yes, why—oh." He suddenly realized the fluke. "The cables did feel flimsier than actual electrical ones."
"They grabbed the wrong ones for his fingers, so the support cables wouldn't work after a few days of usage." She slapped him with the folder. "You know what to do."
"Thank you, Roche! Want some coffee sent your way in the afternoon?" Blake said as he walked away into a cabinetry area of the workshop.
"Yeah, and give our buddy Mr. Donovan some as well for torturing him all day here." She turned to the patient and smirked at him. He smiled back.
She continued to fiddle with monitor. It showed a map of Progress City with various moving lines crossing each other. She continued to type and the map changed to other versions of itself. She already knew what each map meant: electrical currents, data transfers, air filtration, traffic, robot locator, everything and anything. She hacked the system once more to locate people.
"Maybe… just maybe," she whispered to herself as she type out a code that was created by her and Deets for Dojo Deliveries: the crew's signature locator. She typed her own signature code. Her Builder signature was placed in Huckinson's. She typed a long code. The computer took its time, but resulted with a "not found" error. "Fuck…" She punched the back button in reaction, but surprised herself instantly when she imagined destroying a keyboard that wasn't hers.
She looked up. Shock streamed throughout her body. Her pupils shook witnessing a signature...
A signature matching a shorter version of Ed's code.
She slowly typed the last parts of a code she disgracefully remembered.
The signature matched her new code.