Meliora - Emanate - 11

[lady_mab]

Lionel Darcy

I give myself an extra hour to get to work that morning because I want to stop by ALICE. It’s sort of an impromptu thing, because I can’t sleep with Liala’s coughing. So I get up, get dressed, and leave for work as quietly as I can without waking her.

I left a note on the fridge saying I was off to work and to text me if she wanted me to pick up lunch or groceries on my way home.

The train takes me to the city center and from there I jog across the empty street to the ALICE building. It bleeds into the hospital the same way it bleeds into the rest of the city, and it sits in the place of honor instead of a parliamentary building. Not for the first time, I wonder if they’re not the ones actually truly ruling the city. From what I’ve learned from our Culture and Evolution classes, Eminence -- and what remains of the United Kingdom as a whole -- has been without a functioning central government for a very long time.

My presence triggers the motion sensors and the doors open on a breathy sigh. The receptionist desk sports steely letters reading out the company’s acronym. A woman who has a very plain face and cheerful smile meets my eyes the second I walk in.

I’m about ten paces from the desk when she greets me. “Welcome to ALICE. How can we help you today?”

There’s only the single desk, a handful of dark leather chairs and unremarkable landscape paintings hanging on the wall. Save myself and the receptionist, the lobby is otherwise empty.

My eyes continue to sweep around the lobby, wondering what sort of purpose the building even serves. It’s a Thursday, and it’s still early -- why are there not more people bustling in and out of the front doors?

Suddenly uncertain, thinking I might have misunderstood the text from Kaito about how we have to ‘meet the hosts’, I approach the desk. “I’m… here for Meliora?”

Her smile doesn’t falter. In fact, her entire expression doesn’t even waver. “Name, please?” She sports a silver badge that reads ‘MARY ANN’.

“Lianel Lions.”

She ducks her head as she stares at the holo screen behind her desk. Long dark hair falls over one shoulder in an extremely neat ponytail. Not a single strand out of place. “May I see your phone, please?”

“Why?”

Mary Ann doesn’t bat an eye at my tone. “You should have installed an application on it as part of the tournament, correct?”

Hearing it called a ‘tournament’ throws me off for a moment, but considering what I know of Meliora, it certainly does seem like a fitting term. “Yeah?”

“ALICE’s tour is run digitally. We function on a minimal staff, and this way you can set your own pace for the exhibits.”

My brow furrows, and I still don’t reach for my phone. “Who said anything about a tour, and what does this have to do with the app?”

I’m starting to become unnerved by the perfection of her smile. “You are here to meet the hosts.” She waves a pale hand in the direction of the antechamber beyond the lobby. “We are the hosts.”

“Question,” I ask, finally pulling out my phone and resting it on the counter. I don’t relinquish my grip on it just yet, though, and her smile finally starts to strain as her grey eyes shift from my hand to my face. “Is this an elimination round?”

Something flickers across her expression, and her head tilts to the side. “What do you mean?”

“You called this a tournament. That would, by nature, indicate elimination rounds.” I want to grin, return her nearly unflinching politeness with my own. “I’m just curious if you’re starting the game off with a bang and immediately cutting anyone who doesn’t figure out that ALICE is the not-entirely-invisible hand behind Meliora.”

Mary Ann’s head tilts to the side and her expression shifts to something that is borderline curiosity. “And how did you find out that we are the ones behind this game?”

We are locked in a silent staring contest before I pull my hand back -- phone left on the counter between us. “I put two and two together.”

I don’t say that one of the pieces was an email address that was frightfully easy to pull from the original message we had been sent. It took almost no time at all during the first event to backtrack through their thin layers of security and unearth it.

Her smile is back in place, but I can sense the tension behind it. She takes my phone and I lose sight of it as she pulls it behind the counter of her desk. There’s a beep, and she hands it back to me a moment later. “Just scan the QR codes at each of the stations. You might want to wear headphones.”

“Why, so I don’t disturb everyone else with the noise?” I tick the phone in her direction like a salute and weave around the desk before I can see what sort of expression she makes in return. I tug my earbuds out of my pocket and slip them into place.

The first ‘station’, according to the map on my phone, is a photo of the hospital and a half-completed building at its side. I hold up my phone, and the camera automatically detects the QR code without me having to change apps.

A woman’s voice that sounds suspiciously like Mary Ann’s floats through my headphones. “Welcome to Project ALICE’s virtual tour. During the course of this tour, you will learn a little about our history and what it is that we hope to achieve here. We would like to start with a thank you to everyone in Eminence for making us feel so welcome. It is because of you that we can flourish in the way that we have, and we only hope that our endeavours will help you to bloom in turn. Please move on to point two on your map to learn more about how we came to be in the illustrious capital of the New World, Eminence.”

“The fuck…” I mutter, staring at the transcribed speech on my phone. I’m here to learn about ALICE? There’s not a single soul in the world that doesn’t know the name of the medical corporation that has risen to the top over the last hundred years.

Not to mention, with my constant visits to the hospital next door, I’ve had plenty of time to read the pamphlets they had scattered about. I know more than enough about ALICE.

There is a double row of ottomans in the middle of the room, so that people can sit and stare at the photographs and busts of important figures in ALICE’s history. I sit down and shrug off my bag.

Since I don’t really need to learn more, and the fact that I have apparently ‘checked in’ to the event when I surrendered my phone, I decide to take the opportunity to poke around at the interactive map.

Sure enough, it doesn’t take much to pull up the other points in the tour without even having to visit them. Each one comes with a transcription. Certainly saves me the trouble of listening to things I already know or don’t care about. I don't know what is left of Oceanside in California, where the ALICE company originated as they tried to reduce nuclear damage to the coast. The States had a lot of shit going on for the last two hundred years.

Leave it to a medical conglomerate to say that they swept in to save a dying city and single handedly created the Sine Die era.

That’s what our Culture and Evolution classes teach us -- that ALICE spread across what was left of America and then into the European sector, spreading the new date. They reached into the heart of a fractured country, and set it back onto its feet.

It’s been two hundred years since SD became the new dating method, all but replacing the Old World style AD. Eminence is only as old as ALICE’s presence in England is, quickly erasing the idea of New London with a completely new city.

My eyes tick to the top of my phone, noting the time. I’ve got to get going to work if I want to make it there at the start of my shift. No need to give my boss a reason to get mad at me. It’s hard enough to find a job at sixteen -- I don’t want to lose the one I was lucky enough to get.

I close the app and snatch my bag.

Mary Ann watches me as I leave the antechamber and stride through the lobby. It is just as empty as it had been when I entered. “That was awfully fast,” she says, voice filled with saccharine falseness. “Did you enjoy the tour?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard,” I reply, and this time I let my lips form a smirk.

Outside, it is comfortably warm and there is a slight breeze floating through the wide open city center. I know that the closer I get to the repair shop, the more cramped it will become and the wind will disappear altogether. Still, it is better than the controlled atmosphere inside the ALICE building.

Then again, isn’t that what they do best?

‘Assisted Living in Controlled Environments’ -- from locked down cities to public office buildings, even the education system. There isn’t a single thing in this city that doesn’t reek of their influence.

If they don’t have their hands already in it, you can bet they will find one way or another to get it under their umbrella.