The Gemini Age: Book One

[10-1] Rippled Reflections - Part One

    Despite its monolithic size and small number of inhabitants, pockets of peace were few and far between in Point Locke. Most rooms featured at least one piece of automated hardware that triggered at the first detection of pressure inside the doorway. Discreet sensors monitored open areas for sound, motion, and body heat, taking any opportunity to activate their state-of-the-art timesaving features. One step in the kitchen bathed the room in brilliant cool white light, initialised each element of the worktop, and prompted the dumbwaiter in the far corner to retract its shutter and yawn into the workspace, ready for the next plate to be sent up.

    Even outside the designated rooms, machines driven by AI algorithms roamed the corridors. Sometimes they travelled to the source of a guest's command, yet more often than not they scurried to the checkpoints of one of her father's efficiency pressure tests. From the grain of the tan hardwood flooring to the stitching of the faux leather seats in the lounge areas, Point Locke was Philemon Locke's brainchild from conception to execution. It, not Penelope, was his pride and joy. Yet of its three permanent residents, he spent the least time within its pristine white marble walls by far.

    Penelope breathed in the citrus-infused steam of her tea and narrowed her eyes at the closed door of her father's office opposite her. The room remained locked for days as her father hardly stayed home beyond a few minutes, a symptom of his obsessive attitude to work. Yet his absences had grown longer in recent weeks, and he refused her offers to accompany him with ever-growing levels of vigour. Holding conversation with him was more difficult every day, and in what brief exchanges Penelope wrangled from him, her father was detached, secretive, and quick to irritation. She often wondered if something of Philemon Locke had been sealed within the walls of his home, lost forever to build a family home for a broken family.

    She sipped her tea, and the door to her father's office clicked shut as the bitter heat washed over her tongue. "Off out again?" she asked as his spotless black shoes cantered down the staircase, causing the halogen bulbs mounted in the wall over her head to burst into life. Her daffodil-coloured blouse and loose white trousers infused the room with a soft spring warmth, a crucial curative to her father's dark formalwear.

    Philemon adjusted the knot of his tie as he strolled past her. "I've already pushed this meeting with R&D back twice, it mustn't wait any longer. The company has so many projects going on at the minute, I can't have the technicians supervising themselves!" He caught himself at the doorway and turned to face Penelope, his hands still fixed to his collar. "How do I look? Hair, sleeves, shoes, everything okay?"

    Setting her tea on the small coffee table by her side, Penelope shook her head and dusted a few straggled strands of hair from his shoulders. "You're going to a lab, Father, not a gala. There won't be any cameras watching you." She let her fingers linger at her father's side, roaming the untamed margins of her memory for the last instance where they had shared more than momentary physical contact. The haste with which she pulled away jarred with the old pictures playing in her mind.

    Her father grinned at her, the same smile he often deployed when he met important business contacts or hosted a large dinner to show off the latest bit of home technology from his company. Penelope did not know whether to be offended that her father would treat her like a remote acquaintance, or to be relieved that she got even that slight scrap of attention. "Come, Penelope. These days there's always a camera around, and I have appearances to keep up." Philemon glanced at his watch and muttered to himself as he snatched up a dull brown briefcase from its poised position on the apex of the doorway. "I'll see you later. You have my PA's new number in case you need to reach me, yes?"

    "Yes, Father." Penelope had never met her father's assistant, nor did she know their name, yet over the past couple of years they had bulldozed through more handsets and contracts than Penelope had in her life. All associated costs were recouped without issue from the company coffers, yet her father either did not notice or chose to overlook the exploitation. Perhaps her father changed handsets and numbers equally frequently. He never gave her his own contact details, and whenever he texted or called, he made sure to mask his number and block her efforts to call back after he hung up.