Executive
Eveline woke to dawn just how she liked it. Filtered light, glass that never fogged, a perfect match for her serotonin profile. Her home interface greeted her.
Happy Birthday, Ms. Dax
The years didn’t really feel real. Flawless skin, high-grade replacement joints. Morizono, but not the flashy kind. Just smooth, silent, immortal as a synthetic. Sometimes she’d dream that she looked like her mother. Allowed to grow old.
A courier drone had made a drop-off overnight. A silver box sitting on the counter. A single candle inside, scented, smooth to the touch. For 72 years, the card read.
Breakfast was nutrient-perfect, taste-adjusted. Scrambled eggs tailored to genome archives, memory cues, and behavioral history. Her life tracker reminded her to renew her care plan before the end of the day. Just another year - renewal form floating across her ocular overlay. Some new clause about “mandatory neural optimization”, a requirement for continued service.
She signed it. Didn’t read it. She had the money.
Reaching across the counter, she took the candle out of its box. Then lit it, watched the flame shimmer against the glass.
Employee
Marco’s terminal pinged just as it began to rain.
Anniversary detected. Pension schedule deprecated.
Same message came every year. A congratulations, and half a reminder to get back to work.
He sat in the hum of the substation, the smell of metal and insulation thick in the air. His thermos clunked as he set it down. Joints stiff and tendons tight despite the exoskeletal brace to protect his lower back.
His work terminal blinked red. A power failure in Zone 3. Semi-luxury housing above the floodplain. He pulled on his gloves, jammed on his helmet. Rain drummed as he stepped outside.
The failed node was about a quarter mile away. Supposed to reroute automatically, but that hardly ever happened anymore. The cables hummed beneath his fingers, living veins of the city. One patch job, and the current surged back towards the towers. On impulse, he rerouted a sliver of power to his old neighborhood. Maybe the lights would work for an hour.
He was tired when he got back. Dizzy. His brace glitched, a static buzz at the base of his spine. He sat down with a groan, both pain and relief, watching the monitors. Screens glowing, warm like a flame.
The log marked him active. Updated his minor salary reduction - reduced efficiency of those entering their seventy-third year. All unbiased, algorithmically calculated. Fair.
He took a long swig from his now-cold thermos. Listened to the grid as it hummed.
Forgotten
Rain was falling through the hole in the ceiling. Nina shifted in her broken cot, reached out to move the tin bowl. The rhythm of the drops kept her awake. Someone had left a candle stub, she didn’t know who.
What was it this year? Seventy-one…no…two, she thought. Numbers didn’t really mean much anyway. The cheap augments in her legs had failed years ago, ports rusted and decayed. She scavenged as much as she was able, sometimes traded for an old story. Younger squatters called her “Auntie”, though their kindness tended to run thin when the food did.
One of them had come to her cot that evening. Eyes down, apologetic. “We can’t feed everyone,” he said. “It’s not personal.” It never was.
She packed what little she owned. A thin, threadbare coat. A few matches. Her blanket. A spoon. The candle stub…that had been a kind gesture. The city glowed in the distance as she stepped out into the night.
From the hill outside the zone, she watched a brief surge of light in one of the outer sectors. Faint, but real. She smiled. Someone’s birthday remembered, maybe.
She lit the candle, shielding it with her hand. Let the wax run down her fingers, making them warm for the first time in days. After a little while, the wind caught the flame and blew it out.
A story from the Static Drift universe.