coffee and was now too far in the black, sobriety-wise. It made me notice things like that whenever I come back to my apartment, it's empty. It's a nice apartment, fully colour coordinated and with happening furniture, but I use it just as somewhere to store my stuff, and to crash when I'm in the Neighbourhood. When I come back to it, it's always empty. No people. Or no person, to be more precise.
I have an apartment, I have more money than I need, I have a job, of sorts. But have I got a life?
See what I mean? Foolish, unhelpful thoughts. I took a look at the packet of Jahavan and saw I'd picked up Extra Strength by mistake. 'Warning' it said in the blurb. 'Anyone except alcoholics may find themselves experiencing foolish and unhelpful thoughts.'
I wasn't feeling tired, but decided to try to get some sleep anyway. When I get immersed in a job I tend to have to go days without any, which is one of the reasons I end up so tired. There was nothing more I could do tonight, so making a deposit in the sleep bank was the clever thing to do.
Before I turned in I checked my message tray, on the off-chance that Ji might have transfaxed something through. It was empty apart from a note from the council. The Street Colour Co-ordinator Computer had sent me a message saying how much it had enjoyed working with my trousers.
3
At 4.45 a.m. I woke up, instantly alive and alert. I turned over and tried to get back to sleep, but it wasn't going to happen. I still had Jahavan running wild round my bloodstream, shouting, carrying on, waking up all the cells. I got up, had a shower, went into the kitchen and threw the coffee away. I don't need that kind of shit from a beverage.
I made a cup of Debe, which is similar to coffee except it has no natural products in it and doesn't taste much like it either, and sat by the wall in the living room, waiting for dawn to break. An amazingly, ridiculously large spider ran across the floor in front of me. I stared at it for a while, wondering how the hell it had got in. My apartment is on the fourth floor: I couldn't believe the thing had scaled a hundred feet of wall just to hang out with me. It had to have a lair in the apartment somewhere, though I couldn't imagine where. I found it hard to believe that there could be a crevice in there big enough to hold an animal that size. More likely it just sat around in the open all day, cunningly disguised as a piece of furniture, waiting for night to fall so it could go zipping round the floor in that way they enjoy so much. I might have sat on it without knowing, or rested a drink on it. Hell, I could have stretched out and gone to sleep on it.
Halfway across the floor the spider stopped, skittered round, and sat and looked at me. I looked back at the spider. It was a tense moment.
I take shit as and when necessary, but not from things as far down the evolutionary ladder as spiders. I think it sensed this. After a long moment it pointed itself in a different direction and slowly and many-leggedly ambled towards the door. Then, probably realising this was the last chance it was going to get tonight to do any zipping about, it suddenly accelerated to warp speed and zoomed out into the hall, taking the corner on two legs.
Unlike a lot of Neighbourhoods, Colour is open to the sky, and by 5.30 the black outside my window was tinged with a hint of pinky blue. It didn't help much, because it was still too early to do anything, but it looked nice. They always have nice skies in Colour: I think they fiddle about with them in some way.
It was still too early to do anything useful, so I went shopping instead.
Early afternoon found me back in the apartment, sitting crosslegged on the ceiling of the living room, finishing a massive lunch.
For long stretches I can't be bothered with shopping, especially for food. I try, but by the time I get to the stores either I'm bored with the whole idea or I get choice anxiety and it all gets too much for me. Today, though,