Maddaddam by Atwood Margaret

Author:Atwood, Margaret [Atwood, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780385528788
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Published: 2013-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

He bought the suggested outfit, or most of it: the round glasses were too much to take, as were the shoes. He broke in the pants and the shirts – spilled food on them, frayed them a little, ran them through the wash a few times. Then he tossed his previous clothes into various dumpsters and wiped his biotraces off his cheesy Starburst room as much as he could.

After paying up at Starburst – no sense in having the skip-tracers on your tail, if avoidable – he made the cross-continent trek to San Francisco. Then he reported at HelthWyzer West as instructed, presented his fraudulent docs, and underwent the welcoming Hi, Buddy, Happy You’re Here, We’ll Help You Feel at Home minuet of the podge-faced greeter.

Nobody said boo. He was expected, he was accepted. Smooth as grease.

Inside HelthWyzer West he was assigned a bachelor condo unit in the residential tower. Nothing rundown about these facilities: nice landscaping around the entranceway, swimming pool on the roof, and the plumbing and electricals all worked, though the interior design was a little Spartan. There was a queen-sized bed, an optimistic signal. Bachelor did not mean celibate in the world of HelthWyzer West, it appeared.

The workspace high-rise had a cafeteria where he was issued a swipe card that would record his consumption: everyone had a points allowance, which they could use on anything on the menu. The food was real food, not spurious glop like the stuff he’d eaten at Bearlift. The drinks had alcohol in them, which was the least you could expect in a drink.

The HelthWyzer women were brisk, and had jobs to do and not much time for small talk, and – he guessed – no tolerance at all for cheap pickup lines, so he didn’t even bother; but though he’d vowed to be careful about personal involvements because of the kinds of questions they could generate, he wasn’t made of stone. Already a couple of the younger females had looked at his Seth name tag – name tags were a fashion statement at HelthWyzer – and one of them had asked him if he was new because she couldn’t recall seeing him before, but of course she was kind of new herself.

Was there a little twist of the shoulders, a giveaway flutter of the eyelids? Marjorie, he read, not lingering too long on her name tag, which was perched on a breast of no more than ordinary prominence: obvious bimplants were not common inside the HelthWyzer walls. Marjorie had a blunt-nosed, brown-eyed, acquiescent face, like a spaniel, and in ordinary circumstances he would have proceeded, but as it was he said he hoped he’d see her around. Such a hope was not the top hope on his list of hopes – that spot was reserved for not getting caught – but it was not the bottom hope either.

The job description for Seth was that of a routine low-level IT guy, dime a dozen. Data inputting, using a packet of snoreworthy

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.