1????????Soul Bound
1.1??????Finding her Feet
1.1.1????An Unexpected Reunion
1.1.1.3??Unboxing
She undid the wrapping, revealing a sturdy fabricated box covered in tessellated cats chasing each other, undoubtedly Heather’s work, just like her bed cover.
Heather MacQuarrie had been unlike anyone that Nadine had ever met. A fellow Womble, Heather had also been a foreign student at UCL, being from Scotland which was part of the Northern European Union that spread from Greenland to Germany. (There was talk of Canada joining, but nothing official had happened yet). The ‘United Kingdom’ now mainly consisted of England plus Wales, and unofficially was more generally referred to as “Little Britain”.
Whatever Heather did, she exploded into it like a skinny red-haired bomb of energy and ideas. Staunchly independent, irrepressibly talkative, she studied engineering and had the fastest hands Nadine had ever seen. One day Heather would be expounding the flaws in medieval armour designs, and after pulling an all-nighter, the next day she’d be proudly walking around in a fabricated suit of armour that had built-in pockets and a rampant tiger on the crest. Heather couldn’t resist cuteness, and felines were her favourite motif.
With a little trepidation, Nadine lifted the lid of the box and looked in.
Conventionally they were called a “tiara”, a slim metal circlet worn around the head that acted as a passport to augmented and virtual reality. But this, this was more like a crown, with darkly glowing jewel-like sensors on self-adjusting filigree, all lustrous coloured alloys perched upon a few sculpted gel pads. It looked comfortable, very advanced, and very, very expensive. This must cost as much as a car, she thought, or maybe a small house. A note peeked out from where it had been wedged underneath:
<blockquote>
Dear Madame Kafana,
I am abjectly sorry for missing for so many years the signal honour of being permitted to gift to you upon seasonal occasions, the tokens of regard that rightly belong to an artiste and person of your quality. I beg your gracious acceptance of this humble offering as an emblem of my sincerity.
Your fellow Womble,
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Wellington
</blockquote>
Curiouser and curiouser. The person whose alias was signed at the bottom of the letter was indeed known to her. Richard Tang had been by far the youngest of the Wombles, entering UCL in 2033, her final year, at the age of 15. Apparently he was a maths prodigy, and she’d always wondered why he’d chosen UCL rather than somewhere like Harvard or MIT, but he never answered questions about himself. His passion seemed to be protocols and security - he was the one who’d insisted that they all use aliases for their Womble activities, and no prank was too complicated for him to organise - he had an amazing ability to manage details, giving out a stream of short precise orders, never getting rattled under pressure.
For herself she’d picked the alias “Kafana”, after a location her mother had once taken her to. It wasn’t a name from the TV series, but she liked it and Heather had stuck up for her right to be original. She’d quashed any remaining teasing by learning to brew coffee so well that even hinting she might change her alias led to protests.
The wording of the letter was utterly unlike Richard. But it was like Alex Hamalain, the huge guy she’d first seen when he was acting as a protestor outside the lecture hall. Subtle wasn’t in Alex’s nature. He always did things larger than life, whether that was romantic gestures or declaring undying loyalty. He had a cheerful enthusiasm about him that made it hard for anyone to dislike him; even those few of his hoard of female lovers who’d initially allowed wishful thinking to delude themselves into believing that they would be the one special exception when he carefully told them upfront beforehand that he was polyamorous and non-monogamous. Nadine had been wise enough to take him at his word and avoid ever getting romantically entangled with him. Not that she hadn’t day-dreamed about it, a time or two.
Carefully replacing the crown in its box, she slid it under her bed and finished getting ready for the day, before going back down to the public area to refresh people’s drinks and welcome new arrivals. She’d have to think about this. What were her fellow Wombles up to, and why were they contacting her now, after all this time? The box had no return address, so she couldn’t send it back; but it was far too expensive to accept. Nobody gives something like that, without expecting something significant in return. She’d have to think about this, but other than ignoring it (the coward’s way out), it looked like putting the damn thing on was the only solution available to her.
-- * -- * --
<hr>
That evening, after the last customer had been tactfully shooed out, the cooking finished, the business area cleaned and set up for the next day, and she’d grabbed a hasty shower and a bite to eat, it was very late and she was more than ready to just crash out and go to sleep. Sleep! She never got enough sleep. She could save so much time if she just turned even half the tasks over to a robot swarm controlled by expert systems. They could clean. They could learn any recipe she wanted, just by watching her a few times. They could…
Ach, what was the use? She’d put herself in this spot, and damned if she’d let bone-aching weariness stop her now. She shook her head to clear it, putting off any thought of sleep, and instead drew out the box again.