304 Far Future Ch. 14 – Sometimes is Heard a Discouraging Word... (1/2)
Going Upspire wasn't all that hard, commercial lifts existed everywhere. But the mountains of the Upspires towering over the bloks below definitely gave them an inferiority complex, entirely by design. Shit flowed downhill, after all.
Still, stuff had to go up and down, beyond the normal cycle of food and waste. Plenty of people working Upspire lived Downspire, if not by choice, and the lifts were always running.
Having a Termite badge helped, even if I didn't have a job up there. My Band pointed out the right route; I went through the scanner and my identity was duly noted, thank you for the ten credits, and then I was on the lift platform as it waited to fill.
Didn't take too long. I and the other hundredish passengers grabbed the hooks hanging from above, while the oldest people or those with packages got the side seats, all under the watchful eye of the Lift Marshal, some of whom had been known to pop open a door and send the recalcitrant on a free trip Downspire if they got uppity mid-trip.
Government jobs were lawsuit-free. Good security that way. Of course, it could earn the Marshal a bullet in the head from the friends of the idiot making trouble, so it didn't happen often, but it meant the average person was nice and obedient when the Lift Marshal pointed and told them to give up their place to the little old lady.
He gave me a wary eye, his scanner-lens pegged the Termite badge, and he just looked away. New Termites were lower than interns and apprentices in most people's eyes, as they always came from Downspire, but experienced Termites were dangerous people, not to be messed with idly.
I had an additional 'Don't Mess With Me' tag on mine, thanks to My Queen.
I got off about two-thirds of the way up, an 'insulation layer' full of shops that didn't dare to do business Downspire, but had enough security and access to Upspire goods to draw in the mid-range workforce wanting nicer things and so drawing the vast majority of the traffic. A square mile and several floors of shops, parks, rides, eateries, and decent, clean walkspaces succeeded in drawing in the vast majority of Downspire people, preventing the rich guys Upspire from having to see or deal with them.
Going Upspire was still a treat, just from not having to deal with the smell of decay and the everpresent garbage that never got totally cleaned up... and that was in a mid-decay zone. The Upspires standing above full decay zones often disabled the lifts entirely, and their workers had to commute in from zones not shooting one another all the time down there.
I was heading to one of the more expensive restaurants, top of this Strata, and rumored to have actual vegetables, fish, and fowl, even if it was cloned.
Gak-food was really hard for someone with ki to eat, being totally reprocessed protein that had been through a million digestive systems... or was those digestive systems, as soylent was a primary protein source for Dole food. Gak also came loaded with mildly addictive suppressants which encouraged complacency and obedience, which everyone knew about, and there were entire industries based around repurposing and cleansing gak into something less tyrannical, generally by mixing it with free-grown veggies and mushrooms and the like.
So, I was looking for a high-end burger/bar joint called The Middle Ground. There was one on basically every Spire, even the Grand Spire where the true nobles and high-end bureaucrats lived, and the Imperial government ran the whole city. The food they served wasn't natural grown, but it wasn't pure protein, and cloned chicken and fish was better than gak. Most impressively, they used real hydroponic tomatoes, and there were cubic miles of tomato farms Downspire devoted to supplying Midspire's demand for them.
Artificial sunlight and fed on human waste... whatever. I wanted me some real tomatoes.
The dress code wasn't strict, and if I looked a little underdressed, I just flicked a five credit coin at the hostess and she ignored it. She also watched me Skate in, which meant ignoring me was a no-no, and so I got a seat near the kitchen where I would be served fast and sent on my way.
That is, until I ordered.
She was kind of a fresh-faced brunette, on the short and cute side, staring at the brand on my face, but my hair was decently styled and really lush, and I didn't have the snarling air of a ganger girl.
Also, the nymphal ears helped.
”Are you ready to order, ma'am?” she asked, sticking to the script.
”This is gonna be a big order and appropriate tip, sugar,” I winked at her. ”See these burgers? I want one of each, one order of fries, a bowl of each soup of the day, and there'll be dessert when I get there. On each burger, I want all the fixings. Don't worry about me being able to eat it all, I can, and don't worry about me being able to pay for it, I can.” I put down a hundred-credit coin, flashed five more, and alleviated all her worries. ”Get to work. The better it tastes, the more I want it.”
”Yes, ma'am!” she replied. ”Uh, would you like anything to drink?”
Technically I was underage; realistically, nobody cared. ”Bring me two sets of sample platters of different beers.”
”Yes, ma'am!” The hundred-cred coin would make her night. I grinned and sat back, waiting for my food.
Modern heating methods being what they were, she was back in three minutes with my various permutations of alcohol, and in seven with the first of my burgers. I began to indulge.
The food hit my guts and was slurried literally within seconds. My system went into overdrive cracking the organic energy loose, and then shuffling it along into my Reserve until my full Sustaining was ready. As I hadn't had crap to eat for like six days now, I was actually paying off a debt, and munch-munch crackle-crackle, my system sighed and paid the food debt down, and as my eating continued, it shrank to nothing, and I began to build up a reserve.
Of course, that meant I ate six days worth of food, and now was working on seven.
The waitress was rather wide-eyed, and I caught the eye of a few of the patrons, too. I was eating steadily and strongly, salivating at the tomatoes, meh with most everything else, although the taste wasn't too bad. It all went down, down, down, paying down the tens of thousands of calories I'd burned, and then started coming up the other side.
Of course, my bill racked up with it, and I slurped down the faux chicken and potato soups, ordered their biggest steak on a whim and a red wine to go with it (the wine disappointed taste-wise, but it was actually real), and then had six slices of different pies and half a gallon of ice cream to go with them.
The waitress looked at my abs, and the fact my stomach was NOT bulging like I was pregnant, very impressed. Several of the patrons who'd actually stayed to watch me eat clapped in approval when I was done. I waved at my fan base, totally digging a physiology that could binge eat like this and not lose my figure.
”How do you do that?” the waitress had to ask, as she flicked me my bill. I glanced at it mentally, tallied it up, paid it, and flipped her two hundred-credit coins.
”Biopsi technique, Mind Over Body. You ever hear of a Binging Stone?” She shook her head, frowning. ”Based on the same effect. Used by nobles. Actually stores food up. So, you eat and eat and eat to fill up the stone with all the excess calories and nutrition, and it pays it back to you over time, meaning you never get fat. Mind Over Body does the same thing, but stores it psionically. You can go without food or water for a long time, but when it comes time to eat, you pay it all back, or you could go from perfectly fine to totally dead of dehydration between steps.”