Delivery
"Print Your Dreams" the longest running joke this millennium.
Many of Merida’s own reporters had asked the question, and as Editor in Chief she’d personally authorised at least a dozen articles on the very subject: why, after so many years of laughter, did the multi-trillion dollar company of CompileCo insist on keeping their slogan as "Print Your Dreams," despite the fact that the same slogan had long since become a household joke?
It was a testament to the company's trademark style that, every time, they would always gave the same nearly straight answer: 'having every household thinking fondly of your slogan isn't always a bad thing' Especially when the 'joke' was exactly what kind of dreams CompileCo’s patented bioprinters would let you print.
"Print Your Dreams", the words were now hovering in holographic blue before the burnt reds, golds and radiant blacks of the sunset bursting through the city skyline. The blue slogan looked a hundred feet tall from here, but in truth the text was only a few inches high, projected on the clear inside of the plastiglass elevator shaft that Merida ascended, the single-person elevator whooshing her and only her ever higher above the sunset and smog filled city below, taking her up to her own apartment.
She still had time, so, biting her lip with anticipation, she extended one carefully manicured finger, pressed the projected slogan, and opening the message.
The slogan shrunk and vanished, instantly replaced with a block of bluish text that silently screamed: "Congratulations, and thank you M. E. Rex", the psuedonym she used for this very purpose, “for your continued service to CompileCo’s quality assurance program. Your advanced order of the model TM-609, The Mobius, is ready, and has been uploaded to your LX-5 personal bioprinter for your expert review."
She smiled at the last word, the restrained red of her lipstick reflecting the blue sheen of the message as she considered the last, loaded word: “review." For that was the job of Edo Rex, anonymous contractor and special correspondent to the Daliy Profit newspaper. To... review.
Merida hired two other correspondence for the same task: Ms. Lilith Grand reviewed CompileCo’s female-target products and Mr. Steven 9Iron reviewed their male-target products. Not for the first time Merida smiled at the juicy secret: at the thought that she alone knew that Lilith and Steven were really just Mr. and Mrs. Dresden from accounting, a middle-aged working couple who were the picture of boredom - or so they appeared.
As the plastiglass wall before her turned white, the glorious sunset muted then lost through the cloud layer the elevator ascended through, Merida wondered yet again at what the Dresden’s would really be like to get to know: not as the mild-mannered office-drones they showed the world, but as Lilith and Steven, secret writers of some of the sauciest, the raunchiest, and the most well-circulated opinion-pieces the Daily Profit ever printed, reviewing the latest and greatest in CompileCo’s most innovative and exciting male and female targeted bioprints. And not for the first time, Merida wondered how much fun would it be to get to know the true Dresden's not as their boss: as the respected, perfectly professional, utterly civil and serious Editor in Chief of the Daily Profit, Ms. Merida Nhatia; but as M. E. Rex, the secret writer of the paper’s even raunchier pieces, if she said so herself, the no-holds-bared, all inclusive, tell-all reviews of CompileCo’s… other products, such as The Mobius.
The clouds parted before her in one moment, becoming a fast descending ocean of rolling white extending out below, as above her the black swirls of stars exploded into view, their collective half-lights contrasting to the solid pale grey orb of Phobos and the light grey of Deimos as the two moons orbited past overhead. Nearly home, Merida thought, trying and failing to remain calm despite the closing distance.
The grey hem of her skirt swished slightly as she turned in the elevator, one finger pressing and dragging the holomessage around the wall behind her until it was overlaid across the clear door ahead, just behind which level after level of building silently rushed past. She then tapped the message, the last paragraph shrinking and vanishing, then replaced by a new, deceptively short message: "Your terms of service have been included with the upload."
Merida's whole body sighed: this crap again. If she were writing an article as Edo she could say crap, but as Merida she’d have to saying something like: 'this recurring unnecessary obfuscation', or some fluff like that.
She knew the reason for all the 'terms of service', which could more accurately be described as an exercise is pressing 'I Agree' half-a-trillion times. The reason was to legally protect CompileCo just in case, say, one of their bioprints had a neutron printed out of place and ended up with their owner yelling: 'no' and genuinely meaning it.
But such a thing had never happened - she knew, it was her job to know. If a bioprint ever did something harmful then the Editor in Chief of the Daily Profit was paid to be the first to know, and to make sure everyone on every planet this side of the Kuiper Belt knew within the hour as well. But in 25 years of operation, and to the eternal disappointment of every protest group trying to demonise CompileCo’s products, no bioprint had ever done anything wrong. Well, at least not something wrong that it wasn’t meant to do.
Finally the levels rushing past the door began to slow, the last line of the CompileCo message blinking and shrinking to a fraction of its size to make room for a new, orange message: "Welcome home Ms. Merida, preparing your apartment." There were other, unimportant words as well, like labelled status bars about gravity-plates spooling up to earth-norm, heating and light levels fine-tuning, all things that, right now, Merida could not care less about.
This was it - the latest TM model was out, and she was the first customer to have the upload, would be the first user to experience it, experience the hell out of it, and find out everything the brand-new Mobius had to offer. She loosened her somber black tie until she threw it off completely, leaving it discarded in the elevator as, finally, the doors hissed open and she stepped inside her apartment as Edo Rex, expert bioprinted tentacle monster reviewer, ready to get to work!
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