The Virtue Of Freedom, part 1
Posted on: February 18, 2013, at 04:11:35pm

She yawned and awoke to yet another standardly lit morning in her ocean blue-tinted room. At least she liked the color even if it was the government standard for single middle-aged adults, a fact she mused on as she did most mornings on her way to the Holovice she'd installed long ago by the graphic windowpad directly across the room from the side of her personal chryobed. They may consider her crazy for not leaving the Holovice solely on automatic, but she liked having a small activity before the placidness of everyday work life. She activated the SenseNet first, then the window for the day's pleasant view; as she stared at the peaceful scene of calm water flowing down a natural stone sculpture, her mind wandered towards how her life was. There were no outcasts in this utopian society, a tradition stemming from finally realized need for teams and companionship during the end of the Final Wars, but she came close.
Then shuddered as a thought ran across her mind; no, a small manual activity was a very strange concept here, but at least it was not nearly as bad as the history she studied and taught in Older Edufice Block 6 -- that wild approach to life the Twenty-First Centurions had; it had once fascinated her, when she'd known so little about how they really lived. The romantic vids didn't include a lot of reality, and oh, how dispelled she'd come to be not even a day into her job. But a job was a job, and once one had chosen it was permanent. But oh, how could anyone have survived in such barbaric times? How could women have enjoyed -- and in some cases even encouraged!! -- such lewd attention from such beasts as the men of those times were? She shivered again as she stepped inside the cleansing device which stood in the remaining corner of her flatspace, but her morbid musings were melted away as if by the warmth as the sanipod steamed.
As her morale improved, she took comfort in the predictability of a well-controlled life.