Before the elevator doors shut, a woman's hand parted them. She held an apologetic smile as she scanned her pod bay authorization card. Before I had the thought, I told her she was pretty and headed in my direction. Through my earpiece, at two times speed, she thanked me, admitting she was having a bad day and was confident she looked it. We still had a few thousand pod bays to travel through, both staying in the remote temps after the flood, but our conversation continued without conscious effort.

Since the release of OpenAIDS 10, most of us talked without producing sound. For me especially, it was a godsend. I could feel how I felt and let OpenAIDS do the rest. Even listening was easy - you could never know what people really meant so OpenAIDS would process the entire intercontext and make it understood without effort. The only bother was calibrating the device and configuring your personality. But Open Artificial Intelligence Device 11 (no one knows what the 'S' is for) was rumored to make that a lot easier.

I was lost in thought as the elevator slowed 10 seconds later. By now I had learned most of Bailey's life. She grew up in Texas. Both of her parents were petroleum engineers. She wanted to like electronic music so she forced herself into familiarity with it but found herself listening to ancient rock more than anything. She worked as a graphics viber after spending a few years as a technical documentation viber, having been educated as an astrophysicist back when the stars were visible from the surface. She had married and divorced young. She fled Texas when most of the southern states outlawed OpenAIDS 6 and above. I could tell by the tone of my voice that I was close to arranging our first date.

As the elevator stopped, a man boarded wearing leather that looked like sheets of oil with spiky metal accents. He was headed to the Whipsaw Concert Cavern, our next stop according to the third dot appearing on the eink wallpaper. His face was painted white except for black on his lips and eyes, and he wore a big wig and shoes with four inch platforms. I felt strange and couldn't put words to it so OpenAIDS presented my inner monologue, we aren't sure if he's an idiot or we're boring.

The elevator whizzed along again. I didn't hear Gene Simmons say anything, and my conversation with Bailey continued but started experiencing latency spikes. We were talking at one hundred times vocal speeds before Gene Simmons arrived and it was only two times vocal speed now. I started listening to our conversation, "I never liked the yellow loaf but have you tried the blue loaf at Blockbuster Cafe yet?" Bailey replied, "I thought I told you I was a yellowtarian."

By the time I checked my OpenAIDS battery and connectivity, full bars, we were stopping at The Whipsaw. I heard myself say, desperate and misconfigured, "I didn't know this elevator stopped at Halloween." When Bailey didn't laugh, I checked my OpenAIDS status again.

Bailey took Gene's leather-gloved hand as she got off, the three dots on the eink wallpaper turning to one, and we made eye contact for the first and last time as she beamed me a smile through the closing elevator doors.