Newt was tired, and the Sona-tram was running late. They always were. The public transportation system of New Rotterdam was basically a disaster and always had been. In fact, not much worked in this asteroid city. The police were corrupt, most hospitals had been forced to shut down since the L28 law passed, and housing prices were through the roof.
In fact, Newt was lucky she didn't live on the streets. Her job hardly paid the rent and she had had to cut down on pretty much all expences in order to make her personal economy go around. Truth be told, Newt felt pretty terrible. This wasn't helped by her being forced to sit on this cold, rusty bench in freezing weather while an impossibly dirty man sat next to her and stared at her as if he wanted to eat her. All this because the city couldn't bother to spend even the tiniest amount of money on their traffic. The tram couldn't come fast enough.
Newt tried to look in another direction while the creepy man continued to stare, but it felt weird to have her back turned on him. She felt that he might start licking her neck at any moment, or something even weirder. "Hey" the man said. Newt didn't answer. "Hey, do you know if they have a problem or something? It usually doesn't take this long" the man continued. Newt shrugged while trying to avoid eye-contact. "I don't know" she said truthfully.
"You know, I think it might actually be faster to walk at this rate. Bloody hell. And I live in Willemsborough! Where are you going?" the man continued. "I'm going to Flemsberg" Newt sighed. "Yeah, that's like the other side of town and I still feel like we'd be better off walking!" the man yelled angrily. "Uhhrmmm… Can I ask you a question?" the man added. Newt massaged her temples. "Sure go ahead" she said with badly masked irritation. Her work day had been worse then usual, and all she wanted to do was to go home to her warm apartment and shut herself off from the rest of the world, no human contact whatsoever.
"Yeah you see… I'm thinking like… That symbol is what I think it is, right? You're one of them WY people, right?" the man said excitedly. Newt was confused for a moment, but then realised she were wearing her work jacket. She didn't really have any winter clothing that didn't come from work, so it doubled as her personal jacket in cold weather, and on the shoulder there really was a pronounced Weyland-Yutani logo.
"Yeah. Yeah I do work for the company" she said, relieved. That was probably the reason for the stares. The company had had some really, really bad press lately. "So… You know, the public are really… uhrm… interested in what is going on over there, you know. It seems like you're recruiting as much as the bloody marines nowadays, and it's bloody wartime! And all of this secrecy! Since that bloody blonde leaked those documents, no one has been able to shut up about it! Why the vagueness? What did all of those things even mean? It was almost as if it was in some sort of weird code or something! I know this is probably company secrets, but you know, you can always trust ol' Willie here to keep a secret. Besides, who cares right? It's probably the launch of a new super computer or something, right?" the man said and laughed nervously.
"Well, if you think I know so much, why don't apply for a job at the company yourself" Newt said jokingly. The man laughed hoarsley before he began to cough violently. "Are you ok?" Newt worried. "I'm fine!" the man said unconvincingly as the coughing started to calm down a little, until it finally stopped. "I'm fine" he repeated, while giving Newt a toothless smile. "To answer your previous question, I neither have the brains nor the brawn to work at that company". He lowered his palm. It was covered in blood from the coughing, bu the hid it away in his pocket in mere seconds. "Truth be told, I'm just a worker" Newt shrugged. "I have no idea what the higher ups and whatnot have in plan. Everything is classified and we have no idea what we're working on, which I think is highly demotivating for us employees to be quite frank. Anyways, I'm not running their bussiness. The short answer is that I'm afraid I don't know jack. Also, are you sure you're ok? It seemed like that was pretty rough." Newt said worringly. "No. I'm fine" the man replied sternly. Then he shook his head.
"You know, I kinda knew that you wouldn't know anything. Ol' Willie is pretty good with knowing that sort of stuff and whatnot. But I'm curious, you know? I mean, I bet everyone is curious about what's going on! Wouldn't you be?" said Willie. "Trust me, I am curious. But the only thing we can do is wait and find out." Newt sighed. Then she heard it. The sweet sound of a so called "high speed" Sona-tram, flying through the city. She tried to make out the number on the tram, and realised to her dismay that it wasn't hers. "Hey, that's my Sona-tram" said Willie and walked up of the bench as if Newt didn't even exist and started running towards it.
"Hey! I demand compensation! I've been freezing my ass off for hours! Hours I tell you! I'm going to sue the pants out of you if you don't give me at least a first class seat and a buffé ticket! And oh, for the record, I really like vodka! Write that down" he yelled. Newt wondered if didn't know that no one working on the train could hear him, or if he just yelled to vent his frustration. Either way he drew a lot of odd looks as he dissapeared in the crowd.
Typical. Newt figured she had to sit for who knows how long until her Sona-tram came. Alone and freezing in the cold. In reality it only took a few minutes until hers came along, and she could finally bord it and be on her way home.
The tram was incredibly crowded today, more then usual. It was only natural. The holidays were near, and as a tradition everyone worked until late in the evening to compensate for the work they'd miss out on during the coming days. New Rotterdam was nothing but proud of it's strong work ethics, an image the city had kind of tarnished in recent years because of it's high level of unemployment. Newt felt like if she was a sardine tightly packaged with other sardines. She did find a handle she could hang on to though. She had incredibly bad balance, and even though the high speed Sona-trams had a reputation of being late, mostly do to traffic jams, they really did live up to their name when they were actually able to fly.
There was basically no heating on the Sona-tram, and being practically immobile do to the people around her war extremely uncomfortable. It didn't help that some young beatniks were playing "Ticket to ride" by the Beatles on full, deafening volume less than a meter away. It felt like her eardrums were going to explode any second. The body heat from her co-passangers did at least warm up the Sona-tram somewhat which meant it was a bit warmer then when she was sitting at the Sona-station, which was nice.
Through the window of the Sona-tram she saw the city. Big billboards and screens everywhere. Practically all of them were military recruitment ads, and the few that weren't were almost always Wayland-Yutani. The same went for the commercials one the tv-screens in the Sona-trams. Military. Military. Military. The company. Military. The company. The company. Military. Parfume commercial. Military. Military. And then it started all over again. It seemed like the only thing that mattered in the world was WY and the military.
Newt was tired. She practically hadn't slept the night before. Or the night before that night. Or any night since many months back. What wouldn't she do for even a minute of rest right now? Newt felt like she was beginning to fall asleep standing right there, but then something happened that briskly made her alert. A high pitched scream was heard, and the Sona-tram suddenly and unexpectedly stopped.
After regaining her balance she heard how people whispered to each other in confusion. At least the beatniks had turned of their bloody music now, Newt thought. She saw how people began moving, moving towards the back of the train. Newt decided to follow them, and elbowed her way through the crowd until se reached the source of everyone's attention, one wagon down.
Police (or peacekeepers as they were formally called now) in their bright orange vests and black zap-batons had cordoned of a section of the train. On the floor lied a small synthetic in the shape of a little girl, with a green hat that had the text "Guide Maddy" embroided on the front with big black letters. Newt had seen these kind of synths before. They we're used when school classes came to visit, and where supposed to guide them through the city. In the crowd Newt did indeed see a group of terrified children who were up way past their bedtime. Their Sona-tram must have been delaid too, Newt thought and smirked bitterly. The synth was split in half, and had a horrified look on it's face.
Newt moved towards an important looking policewoman who stoically stood in the way of people trying to take a closer peek. "What's going on?" Newt asked the policewoman. "There's been a bit of a disturbance" the policewoman answered robotically. "Yeah, I can tell" Newt replied sarcastically. "The important thing is that the Sona-tram will start moving soon. You've got nothing to worry about" the policewoman continued. "With all respect, a severely damaged synth is lying in the middle of the floor. This isn't nothing, you know. I think we deserve to know what's going on here." Newt said dryly.
The policewoman's facial expression started to change. She almost looked a little embarrassed. "I… I'm… There was a malfunction. With the synth. I had to incapacitate it, but I'm afraid it's beyond repair now" the policewoman said, and straightened her posture. She had obviously reconcidered and decided that it was a mistake anyone could have done, that she did what was for the best, and that she stood for it. "A malfunction?" Newt asked aggressively. "What kind of malfunction warrants this?" Newt gestured at the synth. "I don't know. It kept screaming about how the oranges were after it or something. Listen, this thing could be dangerous. It scared the kids for crying out loud? What else was I supposed to do? So what if I inflicted a little property damage? It's not like the WY bosses don't already wallow in money! Besides, these things shouldn't be out in the public at all! They're a danger to society, that's what my mum always told me, and she was the wisest woman I know. I stand for what I did. It was…" but Newt had heard enough.
She angrily walked as far away from the woman she possibly could in such a crowded place, and found a new hanlde to hold on to. Newt was furious all the way home.