by Caroline Tigeress

Created on: November 05, 2009

Karl's eyes snapped open yet again, just like yesterday. It was dark in his large, spacious studio apartment.

His eyes glazed over his surroundings yet again, and the events of yesterday began to sink in. The bar fight, meeting FirePower, asking him to become her apprentice. Him saying yes.

Then watching her turn into a living nova.

The quiet ride back to base, him being installed with a sub-dermal microchip that would allow him in and out of various locations without the need for passes or even the concept of money. Anything he wanted all he had to do was pass his hand over the scanner, it would either give it to him or not.

FirePower had quickly taught him how to use C.L.A.I.R.E. Aka the Computer Linked Artificially Intelligent Reasoning Engram. CLAIRE's voice was soft, feminine and oddly a bit sensual. Once he unpacked FirePower confiscated his bottle of anti-inhibitor medication.

"You won't be needing this any more." She told him. "We need you at the top of your game."

Yet when he awoke, he was anything but the top of his game.

He could feel the crack of a molar where during the night he was grinding it so hard, the twitch in his face, and the spasm of his left arm. He knew what was coming, and didn't like it one bit.

He called to the empty air:

"Claire, are you there?"

The entire wall, once blank now vanished. On it was the enormous artificial visage of Claire, a disembodied female head. Rendered real-time, she looked like something out of a high-tech video game.

"I am here, Karl. Is there something I may do for you?" She prompted.

"Yeah, um, where does a guy go to get a drink around here?" He asked.

"The commissary has been open since oh-six-hundred hours. I will be more than happy to guide you to this location as you have not been there before."

Karl grunted. Still, any chance to get a drink.

He peeled off the clean linens, the cleanest he'd had since prison, and suddenly felt a little self conscious in his boxer shorts in front of a giant female head. He pulled on his ragged jeans and a t-shirt.

"So where do I go?" He asked Claire.

Her face became smaller. The screen split vertically, her head on the left, and a map on the right.

"Take the elevator to the first floor, turn north, which would be to your right if you are facing the elevator doors. Walk down the corridor until you reach a four-way intersection. Turn right again. Go to the end of the corridor, until you reach an intersection shaped like the letter 'T'. Turn right. There are double doors.

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