Page 35 of Ideal Life

As she perused the offerings, a man in his early twenties rolled up almost silently on a Segway and parked it at the end of the kiosk, scanning his badge to check it back in to the hub.

“Whoa… I didn’t know Segways still existed,” Talia said as she walked over to examine it. It was goofy looking, like someone had taken a lectern or podium, encased it in metal, and stuck two enormous tires on it. She still remembered when Segways had been introduced to the world as the future of transportation. Instead, only mall cops ended up using them. Once, she’d witnessed the somewhat comical pursuit of a shoplifter at Valley Fair mall. The thief sprinted easily in and out of the crowds while the hapless police officer tried to chase him on his giant motorized podium.

Now, though, the Omni employee stroked the Segway as if it were a beloved pet. “Yeah, we have something like a hundred Segways here. You know how there are sanctuaries where racehorses or other animals go to retire? They get to live out their days roaming across pastures and woods? Well, the Omni campus is kind of like a retirement sanctuary for Segways.” He laughed. “You want to give it a whirl?”

“I’ve always wondered what riding one would be like.”

“It’s all yours.” He patted the Segway once more, as if saying, Good job, buddy, before he jogged off into the nearest building.

What an eccentric place, Talia thought. And then she realized, this would soon be her eccentric place, once Omni closed their acquisition of Ideal Life. That was a big part of why she was here today—to get introduced to her future bosses.

She scanned her badge on the Segway’s charging station and it clicked as it unlocked. Talia climbed on to figure out how to drive the thing.

It surged backward from its parking spot—“Holy shit!”—and Talia went flying. She landed hard on her face on the cement path, hands and knees scraped and bleeding, her right cheek, too.

A couple of Omni employees started hurrying toward her. From the other direction on the walkway, another one rushed over on his skateboard.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m calling on-site medical services,” a woman said.

“No, it’s all right. I’m fi—” Talia started to say.

But the woman was already issuing the request via voice command on her Omni 3Ds.

Talia’s own Omni 3Ds were lying a few yards away on the ground. This, at least, was a relief. She didn’t want to know what Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth would say about what had just happened.

In the meantime, a campus surveillance drone had flown over and begun shooting video of Talia probably to document it for Omni Security to make sure she didn’t try to sue them, despite the liability waiver.

Would this make her late to the meeting? Knowing how corporate legal departments worked, there would probably be more paperwork to fill out. And they would probably make a fuss with a medical exam to make sure there really was nothing wrong with Talia that she could later try to use against them, regardless of all the liability waivers.

Nope. I am not going to deal with all that. Talia reached for her watch and whirled the crown backward.

“Aw, fuck!” Talia ran over to her kitchen sink and threw up. In her haste to rewind out of that embarrassing Segway scene, she’d forgotten again to turn the watch knob slowly, and going backward at hyperspeed was like jolting her stomach way past zero g.

Once she rinsed out her mouth and her stomach settled, Talia checked the time. Back to where she’d last restarted. Good.

She ordered another self-driving car and brushed her teeth. On her way to the Omni campus, she watched a Segway-driving tutorial on her Omni 3Ds. By the time she arrived on campus, she understood how the damn things worked.

But ugh, did she really have to go through signing in at Reception for the third time?

Wait. What if I turn the watch crown forward? It hadn’t worked on the night of the acquisition celebration, but maybe that was because Talia had already been at the future-most moment that she’d lived through up to that point. But now, she had already lived past this current moment, and she didn’t need to change the next few minutes.

Tentatively and slowly, she turned the knob on her watch.

The world around her went a little blurry, like she was on fast-forward but not too fast. Talia grinned.

She kept the pressure on the crown until she reached T-3 and the Omni employee petting the Segway goodbye. She released her watch as he jogged away into the building.

“All right, let’s try this again.”

This time, Talia managed to ease the Segway out of its station gently. She experimented with leaning forward, then slightly to the left, then right, to test out its supposedly “intuitive” steering.

It worked.

Soon, she was whirring along the pathways toward the headquarters, which sat in the middle of the campus. The breeze rippled through her hair as she increased speed, and she almost whooped out loud as she maneuvered the Segway all over the map. It drove so smoothly, the controls incredibly responsive to a simple lean this way or that. Amazing!

Talia had been wrong—this wasn’t a motorized podium. It was more like she’d suddenly grown wheels of her own and they were a part of her. What a shame Segways hadn’t been more popular! She understood now why that Omni employee had petted it like a favorite horse. When she worked here in the future, she, too, would take the Segways out for a ride every day.