Author: Morrow Brady
The hot, dusty wind shrouded the desert Burj in a choir of howls.
Mazoomy flinched and ground his Miswak into fibres, as hot sand sprayed off his tactical leg guards. His visor display lit-up with the drop-off pin: the Burj – every delivery rider’s worst nightmare.
Coasting his sun-baked e-scooter onto the sidewalk, Maz looked upward at the pock-marked façade, strewn with hessian shade cloth, pillowing in the silent heat. Stepping closer, he began to see through its translucent structure and catch glimpses of formidable tessellated forms wriggling deep inside.
As marketing strategies go, the Burj’s hit the bullseye. Every apartment sold off-plan in under ten minutes.
The promotion catchline was sublime:
Security so cryptic, even promises get lost.
The Burj’s main attraction was its ever-shifting apartments. Each one moving unpredictably throughout the tower like the end game of Nokia Snake. It’s hard to be found when no one knows where you are.
Maz gripped the delivery bag and smelt kataifi and pistachio, and his tummy rumbled. Casting the delivery code at the entrance, he suddenly remembered a Thai red curry and baked Alaska he delivered here before. His lips pursed, remembering how long it took to traverse the Burj’s labyrinthian madness. Long enough to wet the bag through with chilli oil. Way too long for a tip.
Burj’s AI holographically floated in the entrance mist-gate like a ghoulish concierge, fading from view as the vapour disappeared. Maz entered, and directions to meet the wandering apartment loaded into his cache. Maz scanned the waypoints, sighing at the journey length that included four lifts, seven stairwells and a nature valley waterpark. Worst game of snakes and ladders ever. He sucked his Zynjooz tube hard, spitting out hot grape-flavoured air and sand.
After navigating a chamber of aquariums, Maz ascended a wadi filled with what looked like water-filled octopus suction caps, up to the third floor. Black and yellow holographs heralded the border of the Fetch, a titanium framework, operating as the playground for the wandering apartments. Looking up, Maz watched the domicile’s caterpillar-like form twisting through space and for a moment, a gap appeared, allowing a sunlit column to pierce the Burj’s cavernous core, where its micro-climate rained mist high from above. The sheer scale made him giddy and stumble.
Pushing onward through a structural forest of bats and bots, he passed shady residents, One, who sneered, then scent-shielded herself in a cloud of Cinnabon Oud.
A gleeful ping sounded, telling him he’d reached another waypoint achievement and received five more Microsoft Fuckalls™ – a reward system with less value than a hologram wank.
At journey’s end, he approached a doorway against a glass cube signposted Station Node Sublime. This was where visitors and apartments met. The node sparkled as a monstrous mass of quivering dark silver and black triangles, larger than a train, slithered in. Antigravity skids barking at the outrage of stillness.
The doors opened to a lifeless lobby, lit in pulsing red light. Maz walked toward a white door which suddenly opened. Inside were chunks of meat and bone. The entire room was stained red with dripping blood, like the inside of a butcher’s blender.
Maz stepped back, audibly stuttering the word ‘what’ followed closely by ‘the fuck’.
At which, the apartment AI calmly responded with something along the lines of ‘Yeah’, and ‘Nah’, followed closely by ‘It certainly wasn’t me….. zigzagging downtown’ and then some obscure reference to a motorcycle race in an old movie called Tron.
And with that, the apartment lurched forward to deliver Maz.