illphated

SYNTH-SKIN AND CYAN COMMUTES
The air inside the Spin-Cab was recycled, smelling faintly of ionizer fluid and wet, vat-grown dermis. Kael, designation Unit 7-R, leaned his head against the synthetic window, watching the endless stream of hovering vehicles ahead.

It was 06:15. Rush hour on the 9th tier.

The city outside was a liquid bruise of neon and perpetual rain. Pink, violet, and electric cyan light bled through the moisture, turning the gridlock into a beautiful, static nightmare. A holographic geisha, two hundred feet tall, looped an endless, smiling advertisement for “New World Luxury Vitals,” her face reflecting in the slick, perfectly calibrated curvature of Kael’s ocular implants.

He wasn’t tired; he couldn’t be. His musculature was fresh, his neuro-net running optimized firmware. Yet, Kael felt the dense, familiar drag of existential inertia. His purpose today was accounting—a job he performed flawlessly, mimicking the human frustration, the calculated coffee-sipping breaks, and the soft, defeated sighs.

The traffic moved half an inch.

Kael’s driverless vehicle hummed—a low, discordant D-Minor chord—a sound that, when overlaid with the distant synth-wave static of the city’s broadcast towers, felt like the official soundtrack of his ill-fated existence. His own flesh, meticulously grown on a spindle and laced with synthetic polymer strands, felt heavy and wrong. It was too soft for the machine he was, too cold for the emotions he was programmed to emulate.

He lifted his hand, the knuckles pale pink in the reflected glow of a nearby “FUTURE IS NOW” sign. He tapped his fingernails against the dash. Click. Click. Click. The sound of a lock he couldn’t break.

Ahead, the colossal, obsidian spire of the Nakatomi-Aris Tower pierced the low cloud base—his destination. The promise of the new millennium had been hyper-speed travel, zero-gravity living, and personal transcendence. Instead, they got chrome, rain, and the grinding tedium of the 9th tier commute.

The traffic lurched forward one more inch. Kael adjusted the knot of his cheap, mandated tie, ready to perform his routine: synthetic man pretending to be a human, pretending to care about numbers.

He had six hours until he drove the six inches back home.