#Nanowrimo 2018 Book Intro

Well, I started Nanowrimo again.  I’m about 8000 words in now, but here’s the first 700 words I wrote:

Pulling the covers back, she stood up and stretched, each bone in her back cracking in succession.  Fluffing each pillow three times, she laid them back on the bed before neatly turning down the blanket.  A pair of slippers lay precisely at the edge of the bed, next to a silk bathrobe hanging from the hook attached to the post.  With three steps and a shrug of the shoulders, she was dressed for the morning.

Walking into the morning room, her daily workout started with squats, moved on to pushups and sit-ups, and then a set of the free weights from the shelves lining one wall.  Finishing with pull-ups and aerobics, a few spots of sweat stained her garments, despite her breathing remaining even and regular. 

Her feet took her into the kitchen, and she woke up to eggs frying and bacon sizzling on the stove, the smell of toasting bread mixing pleasantly with the other odors of breakfast.  As soon as her eyes opened, the shutters in the house started rolling themselves up, letting in the weak pre-dawn light of mid-November.  Yawning, she looked down as her hands stirred the eggs.

“Pause morning routine,” she murmured, her voice a bit scratchy.  Sensation returned to her hands, and she used her newfound control of her body to rub the sleep out of her eyes.  Hanging next to the stove were a pair of what looked like swimming goggles, jet black with a small CK logo on the side.

Pulling the strap back she adjusted them on her face before saying, “Resume.”

Despite the pitch black lenses, her side of the goggles showed her environment in every visible direction.  If she hadn’t felt their slight weight tugging against the back of her head, she’d have been hard pressed to notice any difference between them being on or off.  Some people had opted for the optic nerve implants, but she was a traditionalist.  Her hands moved of their own accord to the bacon and flipped it in the pan.

“Show notifications.”

What looked like a flip-chart sized piece of paper appeared over the stove, with notifications divided into different areas.  From social media, she had the usual run of alerts about birthdays and new photos, her e-mail was mostly spam, and the news was still running with the same garbage about the ex-president and his continuing attempts to blame everyone but himself for past failures.

A ringing echoed in her ears and three circles popped up, two neon green on the right edge of her vision, one fire-truck red on the left.  The upper green one had a camera icon, the lower a microphone.  In the center of her field of vision a picture of Sam popped up, the words, “I know you’re not really awake, but answer this anyway,” displayed below the portrait. 

Sighing, she focused on the lower green circle for a second, her field of vision clearing as the call connected.  “What, Sam?”

Sam’s voice, bright and bubbly, chattered in her head.  “Sophie!  It happened again.  There’s another one.  Can you believe it?”

“Sam, I haven’t had my coffee yet.  Can’t this wait?”  Even as she said it, her hands reached over to the coffee machine, where a fresh-ground cup of coffee had just finished pouring itself.  The sharp tang of it had her mouth watering, and her stomach let out an angry growl.  Her hands placed the coffee onto a tray, expertly transferred the bacon and eggs to a plate that they had prepared a minute before. 

She found herself carrying the tray from the kitchen to the dining room as Sam’s annoying chipper voice replied.  “No, it can’t.  Get into the office as soon as you can.  Isn’t this exciting?”

After muttering her true thoughts below the volume that the implant would register as actual speech, she adopted a resigned tone and replied, “I just need to eat and shower, then I’ll be in.”

“Be quick,” he said, and she could practically hear the smile in his voice.  “This won’t wait for us any more.  We need to deal with it.”

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