The repair didn’t take very long, and soon Richard was packing up his gear to head home. The rest of the tasks on his list were on the other side of town, and his company had forgotten to credit him for transportation across districts. This meant that he could only take on tasks in his area of town, and there was nothing on the docket for today. It was actually a relief for Richard as he hated being stuck on the public transportation systems.

One time, near his birthday, he had gone to the west end of town to get a special cake made. The Regent Bakery was one of only three places left in Ottawa where you could still get a real birthday cake, made with eggs, flour, milk and other very premium, hard to come by ingredients. Richard treated himself to one each year, despite costing nearly a whole month’s salary. He had fallen asleep for only a moment, and because he refused to carry an ICD and be part of the wearable Internet crowd, he wasn’t woken up, nor notified of his lapse in concentration, and had missed his stop. This meant a further thirty minutes on the transport, arriving too late at the bakery, and an extra carbon fee tacked onto his monthly bill.

Heading home, Richard was stopped by a small patrol of security, and asked to see his credentials. Pressing his finger against a display, all of his information came up, and he was waved by. He sometimes felt like he lived in what his grandfather would have called a police state, but Richard kept his head down, and was left alone to go about his business.

Arriving back at his apartment, the owner of the building, Horus, came up to him, waving his hand frantically in the air. “Hey Ricky! I need some help with something.”

Horus was a young man, and sometimes seemed to be the complete polar opposite to Richard, as he wore so many devices that flashed and displayed information, it was hard to look the man in his face.

“Hi Horus, what seems to be the problem?” Richard said with a slight sigh of exhaustion.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what it is, but it seems all the elevators are skipping floors. If you press more than one floor, it only goes to the highest or lowest in the list, and doesn’t stop between at any other number.” Horus paused for a second to catch his breath before continuing, “why I keep those pieces of junk installed in this building, I’ll never know.”

One of Horus’ many devices began to beep and whistle at him, and distracted he began talking to it, “Horus speaking.”

Richard was going to wait patiently, but Horus waved him on, and so Richard could only nod, and head towards the elevators. Looking inside, it was easy to see what the problem was. The elevator was on service mode, and as such, it would only go a direct route, without stopping at any other floors. It was usually used for moving in and out of the building. It was manually overridden to stay on service mode, and because it required actual work to change modes, rather than just simple voice commands, Richard wasn’t surprised that Horus didn’t know what to do.

Switching it back to regular use, Richard popped his head back out into the hallway, and saw Horus was yelling to someone. Horus looked crazy, standing alone in a room, yelling to no one, but for most people, this had become a common, everyday occurrence. Pressing the button for his floor, Richard was quickly brought to his floor, and back home again.

Unlocking his door, he heard the natural click of a metal cylinder moving into the door, and allowing him access. It wasn’t computerized, it didn’t require biometrics, and it didn’t automatically respond to the fact he was home. It was simple, effective, and in his mind, perfectly engineered. Placing his keys in a dish next to his door, he walked over to his sofa, sat down and sighed deeply.

Under his breath he muttered, “is this how life should be?”