Today's Reading
The flier's chime alerted Morrigan that the craft was on final approach to Aurora Tower. "Almost there," she told Dek, then swiveled her seat to face the control nest. "Unfortunately."
"Indeed," her sleekly molded companion replied. "You are aware that machine AI is far better able to handle a landing than any organic brain."
"You would say that, Dek." She wrinkled her nose as she brought up the holographic heads-up display. It was an old piece of verbal byplay. "You're an AI, after all." Her finger dragged through an illuminated touchfield. "I have control."
"You have control, Captain Morrigan," the flier's AI agreed. "Altitude one-four-zero-seven meters, velocity one-five-nine, heading zero-one-eight. Hold steady on five-degree slope."
She sighed. "Yes, Mother."
The flier dropped through the night, stars and a first-quarter moon visible through the bubble canopy, with the sprawling blue-white glare of ground lights below: the Denver Megapolis sprawling to the west, all the way to the mountains of the Front Range, and the Denver Spaceport dead ahead. Morrigan's destination, however, was to her left—one of the kilometer-high arcologies clustered within the megapolis proper.
Directions flickered within her visual field, fed to her brain by her corona, which in turn was linked now to the flier's AI. Her hand moved within a field and she thought her intention. The flier banked sharply to the left, and Aurora Tower slid across the canopy until it was directly ahead and just below. From here, it looked like an enormous mushroom with a three-hundred-meter cap shaped like a dinner plate. The upper surface was dominated by the Logan manse and outbuildings, but there was plenty of room left for parks, patches of wooded land, a large pond with a central, illuminated rainbow fountain, and a private landing pad.
"Aurora traffic control is overriding our approach," the flier told her. "Damn," she said. "Okay...tower has control."
"I don't think they trust you, Alex," Dek told her. "You being org and all."
"Aw, they just don't want us to have any fun."
Under Aurora Flight Control, the flier descended smoothly across the rim of the plate, hovered briefly above the glare of the landing pad, then drifted to a perfect touchdown. The flier's doors gulled open, and Morrigan turned her seat. "Well," she said. "Into the furnace."
"Do you want me to stay with you?" Dek asked. He was already out the door, unfolding to his full two-meter height of gleaming blue-black metal.
"Don't be silly."
"We are about to enter one of those 'vapid social functions' you mentioned. I have no wish to see you harmed by ennui or by frustration."
"I'm a big girl, Dek. I can handle it." She reached up to adjust her corona—a smoothly shaped horseshoe of what looked like liquid metal reaching from the back of her head around to points just behind the corner of each eye. It was securely in place—part adornment, part IT network connection, part personal secretary.
"I know, Alex. You'll be fine."
She faced the Logan manse as the flier sealed up and lifted off behind them, wafting off to a holding garage beneath the plate. Welcome, Captain Morrigan! a bright, female voice said through Morrigan's corona, the words forming inside her head. A green light winked on within her visual field. Follow the guide and come on in. We're delighted you could make it!
Morrigan couldn't tell if the voice was human or AI. It didn't matter, of course. Artificial intelligences often served as avatars for their owners. "It's good to be here," she lied, and followed the light. As if I had a choice.
Her looming, robotic companion followed.
The party in the manse and within the surrounding grounds was already well under way, a warm and brightly erotic swirl of life and color and outright hedonism. The Logan family, she'd heard, sometimes threw parties like this that lasted for a week. They could afford the lifestyle, certainly. The clan matriarch, Daphne Logan, had inherited a few trillion centuries ago from the legendary Troidertrust. Her family had been among the very first asteroid miners, and they'd made their first few fortunes by trashing most of the rare elements markets on Earth.
That had been a long time ago, but Morrigan remembered all the excitement on the news feeds.
I'm online if you need me, Alex. That was Pixie, the AI component of her coronal intelligence and the voice of her electronic alter ego.
"Watcher mode, Pixie," Morrigan said. "I won't be needing you."
...
