Brave New Worlds

physical activity on a hot April day.
    I start the long walk toward the front bumper, figuring I'll duck into the alley and continue on my way one block over. It seems like a good plan until another Shooter steps out of the alley.
    This one has a pistol. I'd go cross-eyed if I tried to look down the barrel.
    "Oh, come on," I say, backing away slowly. "Not the face. "
    He dips the barrel down a bit. I sigh and start pulling the zipper at the high neck of my jumpsuit in the same direction. I stop just shy of revealing cleavage—I'll get shot in the face before I give this punk an eyeful.
    He shrugs and fires.
    "You little bastard!" I yell at his retreating back as I pull out the dart out of my forehead. "I want your license number!"
    Of course he doesn't bother to stop. They never do.
    The itching starts almost immediately, and I reflexively reach up and touch the bump above my eyes. I know better than to scratch it, but I do anyway. The scratching releases a flood of chemicals that create a powerful and specific food craving. I brace myself.
    French fries. French fries from the den of the evil clown, where they don't even pretend to use potatoes anymore. I hate those french fries, so golden and crispy on the outside, so moist and fluffy on the inside—
    No no no no no, I do not want them.
    I manage to get past the first shadow the clown casts on my route with relative calm, but by the second the itching is more intense and all I can imagine are french fries. Disgusting, nasty, tasty, delicious french fries.
    This is not the way to walk into a job interview.
    The site of my two o'clock appointment looms in the office tower ahead. . . right behind a third opportunity to relieve the craving. I keep moving, trying not to think about how well the diabetes-inducing corn syrupy sweet ketchup complements the blood pressure-raising salty savor of the fries.
    I make a full circuit through the revolving doors of the office building before going back toward the object of my involuntary, chemically-enhanced desire.
    The food odors pounce immediately and I can almost feel the molecules sticking to my clothes. Even if I turn around now I'll smell like fast food.
    "Let's get this over with," I say unnecessarily to the credit scanner, staring it down until it greenlights my ability to pay for food I don't really want. None of the automat compartments contain fries, which is unusual, so I punch hard at a picture of french fries on the order panel. The dents in the panel tell me I'm not the only customer who feels antagonistic about buying food here.
    It shouldn't take more than a minute or two for the fries to appear in a compartment, so when they don't I start pounding on the automat.
    "Hey, hurry it up!" I yell, scratching furiously at the bump on my forehead.
    The back door of the empty fry compartment slides open. An eye stares out at me.
    "What?"
    "Fries. I need fries. "
    "We're out of fries," the voice behind the automat says.
    "How can you be out of fries? You've got Shooters out there making people crave the damned things!"
    "That's why we're out. "
    "Doesn't the head office coordinate this stuff?"
    The eye blinks twice and the door slides shut.
    It's 1:47, enough time to go back to the second place if I hurry. But I don't hurry. I pace in the street, muttering to myself like a lunatic. It's almost five minutes before I quit trying to control the craving and dash back the way I came.
    I give the next credit scanner an especially dirty look, then yank open the one compartment with fries. I stop only to pump blobs of ketchup from the dispenser. On my way out I pass an old man scratching his arm as he raves through an open compartment, "How can you be out of fish sandwiches?!"
    "Try the one on third and Pine," I say around a mouthful of fries.

    CraveTech's offices are both plush and haphazard, the combined result of a record-breaking IPO and the latest design fad: early dot-com retro. I arrive sweaty, greasy, nauseated, and thoroughly pissed off. I smile at the receptionist anyway, a fashionably sulky blonde boy seated in a vintage Aeron chair behind a desk made out of two sawhorses topped with an old door and a crystal vase.
    "Alex Monroe. I have a two o'clock with Mr. Avery. "
    "Two o'clock?" he says pointedly. It's 2:02. "Have a seat. Something to drink while you're waiting?"
    "Water please. " I'll probably retain every ounce. Damn salty french fries. There are pills that reduce bloating, of course—they sell them out of