Dawn bled night into day as Laverna woke. Light splashed onto her face, and despite her best efforts, morning annoyed her into arising. The young woman stirred and extended all her limbs to their limits when her feet touched the carpet. Her watch noted her movement and the time of day. In the instant after calculations finished, signals from the watch ordered the kettle to heat some water, and for the home speakers to relay the news. Mostly some guff about what sports teams won and the development of a few high-profile movies.
She sauntered to the bathroom while stretching some more, and turned on the shower. A bit of a mix-up as Laverna normally starts the day by brushing her teeth, but she figured to change things up a tad. It took a minute for the water to heat up, but that was okay. Practically all of it gets recycled, so she wasn’t wasting anything. Now that her mind was on the subject, all water from all sources is recycled anyway. Actually, she was going to stop because if she continued down this line of thinking, she would get grossed out. Sure, it’s recycled, but everything is cleaned to the point that it is safe to drink.
The shower washed away any thoughts of the water raining down on her possibly being in a toilet at some point, and emerged fresh as this early morning.
By the time she got out of the shower, the water in the kettle had finished boiling. Laverna picked out ground coffee infused with cinnamon to put into the French press next to the stove before pouring water from the kettle in it.
As she waited for the coffee to seep, her stomach whimpered, reminding her to make some breakfast.
“Let’s see,” she murmured to herself. “Kinda feeling some nu-sausage with eggs today.”
She got some pans out from under the oven and turned on two parts of the stove top before getting out what she needed from the fridge to fry.
Hard to think that it’s been about fifteen years since I gave up meat, she thought. Almost everyone had stopped eating meat-based products at this rate, seeing as how synth-meat could replicate the taste and nutritional value of anything ranging from chicken to beef while keeping the cost lower than the real thing. Animal by-products have generally fallen out of favor since most anything people consume had been replicated and could be purchased at a lower cost. The one thing Laverna believed hadn’t gotten the taste right in terms of the replication process had been eggs, so she purchased real thing as a bit of a treat to herself. The local farms around the area treated their coops well, and it always felt good to support local business more than the corps, as reeled back as they have been.
Soft ringing reverberated throughout the flat before a soft-spoken AI informed Laverna that a certain someone named Patricia was calling.
She perked up a bit and commanded the intelligence to accept the call. “Hey babe, how’s the trip going?”
“Oh, it’s great,” a young woman answered, her voice coming from the various speakers scattered throughout the living room. “You should come with me next time to see my folks. The view from the train is gorgeous even if it all goes by way too quick.”
“I would love to! Your dad is a freaking wiz in the kitchen.” Laverna took care to not make a mess spilling everything when she flipped the eggs and sausage. “Maybe look into one of those retro-style trains? The ones that take a day or two to arrive at their destination? It’s a fairly niche thing, but I heard the cabins are just the coziest.”
“That sounds wonderful. Anyway, I just wanted to hear your voice for a bit before I get some writing done. I love you,” she stated sweetly.
Laverna could never help but smile when hearing those words. “Love you too.”
The love birds hung up, and Laverna thought about who else she could call. Stef most likely, but she was in recovery from getting that nasty infection on her leg. She kept telling her to go to the doctor and get it checked out, but Stef kept putting it off until it got bad. She was always like that. Not like going to the doctor even costs anything.
Laverna’s mother told her horror stories about how it used to be with the healthcare system, and while they may have been accurate, it was difficult to wrap her mind around having to pay for things like medicine and surgery.
There were countless things that she thought were ludicrous about how the world used to be, especially from the early 21st century. Despite the climate crisis getting more severe every year, it took until the 2030s for most nations to start doing something substantive about it. Melancholic thoughts struck Laverna when she thought about how flooded cities she could have potentially visited if governments had gotten together and seen past their bottom dollar sooner.
With everything ready, she set her breakfast and coffee down by the dining table sat next to the window. Serenity washed over her as she took her coffee in hand and sipped a bit while gazing at the idyllic scene outside her building. The perfect marriage between nature and human innovation paints the city landscape. Where there are buildings, vibrant trees rest atop almost all of them, blending forest green with the reddish-brown of bricks and gray of concrete.
Now and again, she liked to take hikes along many of the city’s trails, but this was nice too. Most cities were like this, but something always stood out to make one city unique from the rest. Here, at least from the view of Laverna’s apartment, the morning sun hid behind trees plant on top of the building facing her window. Sometimes she wished she lived on a lower floor just to have more of a street-level perspective, but those were swept away by the wind once she opened a window and inhaled the fresh air.
The rising sun kisses the rooftop trees, giving them some of the last warmth they will receive before Autumn comes to strip them of their leaves. Something would always twinge inside Laverna whenever reminded of this fact.
Inevitability? For what? The general passage of time? The idea that no matter how far humanity progresses, our souls will be reaped for whatever bounty they are worth?
The dawn of a new century approached rapidly, a fact only hitting the twenty-six-year-old just now. With her graduate program wrapping up, finding a new job, and considering where the future with Patricia will look like, Laverna never considered what will happen in only a few months. All the early morning spent gazing at the rising sun, the only thing she could see was the light peeking through the trees and not the trees themselves.
It was nerve-wracking and a little sad, but it signaled something new and exciting over the horizon. She concluded that the twinge must have been a physical reaction to these feelings.
A renewed sense of calm covers Laverna, distracting her from her half-finished breakfast. Not that it mattered all too much. She can take her time enjoying the view outside. The future was in no rush to get here, so why should she?
Eva Gonzalez
Leave a comment