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Alan Jules "[url=https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/3c/18/21/3c18212c015f2c596255571445175dbb.jpg]Jewel[/url]" Elliott, who on some days appreciated his mundane string of names and on others hated them as unspeakably generic plastic, thought that when he decided to claim some of his vacation days, forsaking the daily hamster-wheel for a week or two, the drug-high from the extra sleep and sunlight (the smog there was red) might at least last him long enough to reach his decrepit little apartment on Third West. Instead he felt it draining from his bloodstream even as he stepped through the long, snaking tunnel of security precautions leading off the airplane and out of the terminal.

I'm home, he thought contemptuously to himself.

Does any of your skin contain polysiloxanes, including those which are distributed under the street-name "Gargoyle"? No. Any metal hardware below the neck, including bones, cartilage, enamel—? No. Have your cephalic implants malfunctioned recently? Yes, but I'm not in the mood right now for another two hours of paperwork. So please and thank you, I'll tell you "No" just to move forward. Instinctively he reached for his temple and pressed against it, slightly soothing the prickly needling sensation he felt bashing against the inside of his skull, but the security personnel, either not noticing or not caring, said nothing about it. Maybe his rank in the company afforded him some secret luxuries, like getting through security checkpoints with only half the inquisition any normal squat on the street received.

Diseased by jet-lag, by simple, mundane exhaustion, by a fierce craving for decent bourbon, by the bright, sterile colors which assailed his eyeballs like a little nuclear holocaust self-contained within the airport, Jewel dragged his soles along the dreadful carpet. Its hue frustrated him terribly, how it teetered toyingly between a pale steel-blue and a true colorless grey, so he dragged these downtrodden eyeballs up toward the big sheet windows and the languid milky walls, scanning them for something but also nothing in particular. He overlooked the hanging plants, because every airport used the same hanging plant, from the species to the plantpot cupping it, in every dreary hallway. So his tired eyes had adapted to ignore them, and their fake-vibrant greens were assimilated in his eyeballs' angst by the insipid greys. He felt like a germ crawling along a news reporter's bleach-polished, perfectly straight tooth, with all flaws and blemishes but him already banished from her smile. He could feel germs slithering along his skin in turn, with the way everything shined, glass and steel and polymer; he was much too alive for this place, too filthy with biles and tissues.

By the time he had escaped this bureaucratic labyrinth intact, he was much too irritable to be thinking straight, and as he started sleepwalking home, he nearly walked past his ride. She was sat nearby, waiting for him to arrive.

[@DarknessDawning]