He tried to move as quickly as possible through the hostile environment.

Why was it taking so long? He was tired and moving in slow motion relative to everyone else. Had he been drugged? What if he should be attacked? He seemed to lack the speed for even a life preserving response.

The distances between locations seemed greater than he remembered.

Also he couldn’t remember how to use the 3 D comms device imprinted on his inside wrist.

Furtively he viewed the transportation system. He had to use it. Though the trip would be fraught with danger. The fear continued to build within him.

The system was under heavy load. The audio sounds were extraordinarily loud, monotonous, grating, and incessant.

He wondered, if had been wise to come unarmed. It seemed like everyone else was armed with something. Even a laspen would have been better than nothing. Looking at others on the transport system he conjured up visions of undetectable lasknives, energy dusters, neural dislocators, tele-shunters, and lord knows what.

Finally the assigned focus drop off point was reached. Thank god for that.

He still had a distance to walk via the local travellators and it was getting darker.

Had he been followed from the drop off point? Even now there were a lot of the original people still about and it was hard to distinguish the differences in their less developed members. They all looked much the same.

He concluded he was being followed but couldn’t think what to do about it other than increase his snails pace.

Heart thumping, lungs bursting, he finally reached his end objective point. Yet he struggled with his keyless remote entry. First to get it out and then to get it to work. Stabbing at it furiously time and again.

Then the less developed original people, laughing at his obvious distress, passed on by moving on the faster travellator. Perhaps they had just been having fun at his expense?

He breathed a sigh of relief. Then finally the keyless remote entry device worked and the semi-armored portal opened.

“Hi Hon!” came a voice from inside the portal “welcome home, how was your compworkday?” “You know you forgot your meds, and your IDS pak?”

Earle looked down forlornly at the meds, the blood press, age retardant and memstim tabs.

Mostly he had missed the grannyboost tab. The wonder drug that elderly citizenry took once a week to get through the compulsory one work day per week forced on them because of the age bulge demographic.

He looked down at his interdimensional storage pak. So much larger inside than out. The noise suppressant plugs, the small, light, exo-skeleton aid, the deflectors, the energy prod umbrella, and other things. All designed to make life a little easier for him outside the apt. He should have put some of them on before leaving this morning.

How he had missed them all, what a day it had been without them!

What a trip home!

End