[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts. Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts. I don't know what that will look like, but I want to find out. Here are a few of the possible 'feeder' posts:
At this point, I'm calling these all part of the 'Schmoid-verse' and have setup labels to bring make them easier to find. Not all of them will be used verbatim, but I'm planning on taking ideas from them all over the next few weeks. This is only the first of many. Thanks.]
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Perck Digital, the number one brand of implanted components, is proud to announce our new line of arterial generating stents. These new Septimus(tm) stents are capable of keeping your PTN[1] up and running[2] as long as you are alive. Implanted by a Perck Certified Surgical Engineer, the Septimus(tm) stents can be placed either in any of the major arteries (Celiac Trunk, Subclavican, Iliac, Femoral or Axillary[3]) to accommodate both consumer health and aesthetic choice. Septimus(tm) stents are packaged with the consumer’s choice of Merck tattoo’d capacitive charging elements including our patented ClearCharge(tm) capacitors for those people who want a more natural look. The Septimus(tm) stents are made from the highest grade surgical plastics and include our newest BalancedHeart(tm) charge balancing system to ensure a consistent charge regardless of heart rate or arterial flow.Of course all of the pertinent information was in the footnotes. Typical pharm-co. The tech at the V-EE[1] store had assured her that seven Hundred milli-amp hours would be plenty for her system, especially as they had installed it in the Caratid artery where it should be producing closer to eight-hundred and fifty mAh. When she had asked about the warning, the tech had brushed it off as Perck covering their asses about blood flow to the brain, then he had knocked her out before she could ask anymore questions. Tattooing the leads into the rest of the system had woken her up.
Perck Digital’s Senior Vice President of Surgical Networking, Vikesh Daniels, said, “We’ve worked hard to produce a product that keeps up with the power demands of today’s PTNs. These new Septimus stents produce forty percent more power than anything else currently on the market thereby allowing people to either decrease the amount of surgery needed to power their network or to power a larger, more capable system on their skin.”
For more information and complete specs, please visit www.perkdigital.com/press or stop by our booth at Tat-Com, April 3-6.
[1] Personal Tattoo Network
[2] Up to 700 mAh
[3] Caratid Arteries are not recommended.
Mo glanced up from the documentation as the bus came to a stop, but not her stop. The only other passenger on the bus got off and the doors shut. This far out in the baba[2], most people had their own auto-cars and the buses ran limited schedules. It made it hell for her to plan her life.
The Quiet Place was at the next stop. It was the next stop: the original center of this babahood, a convenience store. The shelves, coolers and registers had been gutted here as they had in 2,153 other locations across the nation. In there place were small booths and screen friendly lighting.
UR LATE scrolled across the bottom of Mo's contacts as she entered. BLAME THE BUS she sub-voc'd back to her manager. Ducking into the wait station, she hung up her jacket and bag, smoothed her required black shirt and jeans, then logged into the restaurant's Order Management System (OMS). Immediately her vision was filled with the status list of all the open orders to the left and the table status to the right. She blinked and pushed both to the sides, leaving notification icons blinking in her peripheral vision. When someone needed something, either a customer or the kitchen, she'd know. Until then, she poured herself a dub-caff latte and pulled up her TwitFace+ feed.
- JerMany37 (IRL: Jerry Menaul, Mo ex of two years past) had checked into Socii and was having an Irish car bomb at four in the afternoon. Mo +'d it but chose not to comment. Nothing good could happen there.
- GGMDisease (IRL: Sandra Martinez and Mo's roomate) was bored at work and had drawn a flip-cartoon of a kitten chasing yarn on a Post-It note pad. Again, Mo +'d it, but then sub-voc'd SUPPLY CLOSET FTW.
- ManOTRBitch113 (IRL: Felix/Felicia (depending on mood) Parsons, Mo's best friend since fifth grade) was whining about his ex. Mo did not roll her eyes because that would have shared the post out to her followers. Instead, she pushed it off the feed to the left with the swipe of her right index finger, the one with the activated snake tattoo.
- PMmeyourvacuumcleanerwaste (IRL: ???) had sent Mo a private message with the subject, NEED UR HELP MO.
And an order came up. Mo pushed the message and the rest of TwitFace+, clearing her vision for navigating the restaurant. She reached over to the warming line and grabbed the two plates there. As her hands touched the circuits embedded in the ceramic stone ware, two navigation lines popped up on her contacts, one for each plate. The two lines ran parallel until she reached the table where they diverged to the two people sitting there. Neither was looking at the other, instead staring at the latest handhelds with BTs in their ears. As Mo placed the plates in front of each guest, each one's handheld flashed that their food had arrived. Mo cleared the appetizer plates as unobtrusively as she could and returned to the wait station[3].
On her way back, one of the customers at another table looked up from his phone and grabbed her arm. Mo was startled. No customer had ever touched her in the Quiet Place before. People came here to find a quiet place to retreat from the rest of humanity and have a nice meal. There was no cause of interaction.
"Miss," he said. "May I have a refill on my drink?"
"Umm," Mo said. "I guess. You'll need to mark it on the order site." Just then her manager PM'd her. WHAT RU DOING?!! STOP TALKING flashed in the middle of her field of view. She sub-voc'd back, HE STARTED IT. She tried to pull away from the man, but he kept his grip on her arm.
"I know, but it seems so much trouble. Couldn't you just, you know, do it?"
"Sorry. You've gotta use the system." Mo tried pulling away again. Just then, the customer's phone lit up with a message: IS THERE A PROBLEM? It was from the manager directly to the customer, to head off this uncomfortable situation.
The customer glanced at the handheld, then raised his voice, maybe hoping that the manager would then hear him. "There's no problem. I'd just like a refill." He glanced at Mo again. "Maureen, right?"
Mo glanced down at her name tag. "Just Mo," she said.
"Okay, Mo. I'm Art and what I want to know is what's so hard about doing it this way? You're here, the glass that needs to be refilled is here, so why don't you just take it and refill it?" As he was speaking, his handheld flashed again: SIR, PLEASE USE OUR ORDER SYSTEM. This was followed by a link to the drink menu and another link to the Quiet Place mission statement and expected customer code of conduct[4].
"That's not how we do it here." Mo pointed at his handheld then glanced around the restaurant. Many of the other guests were pulling out earphones and scowling. "Please."
At that point, her manager appeared at the table. He reached out and separated Art's hand from Mo's arm. Without saying anything, he pulled Art up out of his seat and led him out of the restaurant. Mo dashed for the wait station and started looking at restaurant's TF+ feed.
- YesterSauce523 - Some people are so rude!! TG that mgr showed up. #Quietplace
- TriStateAreaForXmas - Don't people know what #Quietplace is about? Spoiler Alert: it's about being quiet!
- ForUMyLuvaRadish - [video clip of the entire event] #Quietplace #getagrip #newworldorder
None of them blamed her which was good. All of the feeds were monitored by the head office in Chicago and bad posts could be grounds for firing.
Her manager came in a few minutes later and disappeared into his office. Immediately, DONT LET THAT HAPPEN AGAIN appeared in her contacts. DO MY BEST, Mo sent back. The rest of the night reverted to normal as traffic started to pick up: orders came in and Mo followed the lines to deliver the plates. At six, Norb (TF+ ID: NorbertnotQbert) came in to help and the two of them stayed busy until the Quiet Place closed at eleven.
She forgot all about the HELP message until the next morning.
[1] "Blink Speed"
[2] "We're all wasted!"
[3] There had been several attempts at serverbots over the years, but none of them had really worked out. The conveyor systems had been popular for a while, but maintenance had turned out to be a problem; something in the gear train would take a delivery location (table) out and a human needed to be there to rescue the food and deliver it by hand. The more autonomous robots had they're problems as well, the biggest being ten-year olds with soda buckets. In the end, humans had turned out to be cheaper to employ and easier to maintain.
[4] "The Quiet Place is quiet. We expect our guests to respect this and the quiet of their fellow patrons. To this end, we ask everyone to keep their communication device of choice on silent or vibrate. All conversations at a table should be done through your messaging service of choice. All interactions with the staff at The Quiet Place are to be done through the order system. Anyone who does not abide by these rules may be asked to leave. By using the ordering system, you are agreeing to abide by these rules." This code of conduct had hit several local courts and one Circuit Court and deemed acceptable on the same grounds as a guest dress code which many upscale food dispensaries still used.
