Broke and Famous by Elizabeth Gannon

Author:Elizabeth Gannon [Gannon, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-05T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“Azealia Westgate. Died 1999. Killed fixin’ the Y2K crisis. Don’t ask.”

– Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

The music playing softly over the speakers in the lobby of the Westgate building was mid-century era jazz. As far as Sasha knew, no one in the building liked it, but Thraex had decreed that it play anyway, because that’s what had always played in the lobby.

So, it was basically the theme music of the complete lack of power the residents of the building had over their own lives. They were prisoners of their legacy, the mistakes their ancestors had made, and their own former greatness. They were being strangled by expectation and tradition.

But at least their depressed misery had its own jazzy soundtrack.

She absently stared through the window as the long-dead trombone player performed the same recorded solo he’d been performing every 55 hours and 42 minutes since 1958.

Behind the pane of glass, her brother Baxter was sitting in the building’s interior atrium area, among the flowers.

Bax had always loved the flowers there. And that apparently didn’t stop merely because the man’s mind wasn’t his own anymore.

Rationally, she knew that whatever made Baxter Baxter was long gone now, and his body was just inhabited by a prehistoric animal… but…

In 1915, paleontologist W. D. Matthew said, “We all believe that the Dinosaurs existed. But to realize it is not so easy.”

Her relationship with Baxter was a lot like that. She recognized that he wasn’t entirely her brother anymore. She knew that, obviously. But she also believed that he would be her brother until the day both his mind and his body died. And until that happened, Baxter wasn’t really gone. She couldn’t let him go. And she’d always love the pieces of him she had left.

The man looked over at her from his place in the enclosed clearing, and Sasha waved at him in greeting.

He immediately slunk back into the bushes cautiously, disappearing from view like a skittish animal.

She hadn’t been a part of his plan to rescue their grandfather, but the weight of Baxter’s accident still fell on her. She should be smart enough to somehow fix it and save her brother, but… she wasn’t. She just… wasn’t.

She let out a long sigh and stepped away from the window, returning to the main part of the lobby area.

Most of her earliest memories took place in this building. But that didn’t mean that it had aged particularly well. The Westgate Foundation building had a ‘photo analysis lab’ in an era of digital photography. It had a computer system on the 35th floor that took up several entire rooms, yet had the same processing power as the average iPhone. It had an observatory on the roof, in a city that was one of the worst in the world for light pollution. It had a mess hall which could feed close to a hundred, despite the fact that only a half dozen people lived here. And it had a room

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