Sara Whitney

Serum

Pink and green lights moved across her in waves, bathing her bare skin in comfort as she stood by the window watching the relentless stream of ads that flashed across the giant screen opposite her window. They had started putting up the Scriins all over London when she was young, and now every building in the city was wrapped in them, their holograms filling the city with neon from dusk till sunrise. It had been another endless encompassing night that slipped easily into dawn as the tell-tale sky high above let her know it was time as it changed slowly from darkness to a familiar pale silvery-blue. She shifted herself from the wall and padded over to the sleek black panel that took up an entire wall in her bedroom and touched it lightly, it slid open, immediately offering her a glossy flat envelope from the hundreds that lay in neat little rows behind it. She ripped into it, dropping the bio-plastic on the floor and throwing her uniform on over the comfy, worn underwear she’d put on the night before. She sidestepped in front of the old-fashioned mirror that hung next to the wardrobe, the one she’d found in one of the junkshops in the lower levels. The Company had offered to pay for a plexi-mirror to be installed when they’d upgraded her to her own flat, but she’d flatly refused, opting instead for the old and worn antique. She loved that it wasn’t tech reliant, it was simple, quiet and pure. No touch screen beauty bot options, just her.