chapter one - continued
Rain coursed across the windscreen, great dirty inky clouds denying the city its sunset, as they had for most of this dull, wet February. The traffic, as ever, was horrendous. Sesha couldn't imagine what it must have been like before Backseat, although half the drivers out there, if surveys were to be believed, got their kicks from leaving it switched off and relying on their own reflexes. At least there were no more meetings to attend for the rest of the week. Renowned for her quirkiness, Frances insisted on a maximum of physprox and as little telepresence as possible, set great store by face-to-faceness. Which was wise, in all probability, but on a day as damp as this, simply disastrous for someone with Sesha's PsyTri profile. For the weather had, yet again, gone and put paid to her Psychotrichological Congruence. Her hair had fallen out of phase with its Quasiplatonic Ideal: that single, ultimate hairstyle maxoptimizing one's attractiveness, self-esteem and all-round wellbeing. Sesha's own QI had been defined as a glossy black helmetlike bob as worn by Louise Brooks, that old-time actress currently enjoying a giddy synthespic afterlife. Sesha's hair being by nature wavy, the requisite sleekness was a challenge to achieve, and rain–excessive humidity, even–was an absolute killer.
Fruck it anyway, Sesha thought, feeling victimized, horribly victimized, being cursed with wavy hair when you were a psychotrichological straightie. Who was that in the mirror? Medusa? She didn't know what she would have done without her mobe. If it found her in this state upon receipt of a vidcall its PhonePhace function would automatically smarten-up her screen image. Mobes were the only friends some people had. Sesha wouldn't place herself in that sad category, quite, but she'd been pretty cut up when her last mobe had haywired.
She had a bedboy coming round at nine but the mood wasn't there, what with the head, eye, and jaw ache, and now acute hairdepression to boot. She would reschedule the session, take a good long shower instead, fruck the water meter, take two McSnooze and say good riddance to a bitch of a day. And then, tomorrow, she'd arrange a reconsultation. For it was possible that she had been misdefined. It wasn't unknown–there had been rare cases: the odd erroneously prescribed fringe, cinnabar tints that had proven unquasiplatonic, one or two ill-advised headshaves. The Institute of Psychotrichology had never claimed infallibility; Frances was far too humble to allow that.
The Kilburn High Road, as usual, confined her progress to tiny mad sprints with snail's-pace interludes. And to make matters worse, they'd got rid of that ad for Dial-a-Dong, the bedboy agency. She would miss the familiar vidclip of that guy, Italianate and doubledropdead gorg, boogieing away with a big stiffie bulging out through his lime Lycra kilt. Instead, almost every single roadscreen now proclaimed:
DREAMBOX–THE ONLY LIMITATION IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION