Mina Cortez: From Bouquets to Bullets (2 page)

The pair came to a stop, then moved through
the front door scanners at normal speed, their comms beeping an
indication they were clear through security and not so late as to
need to head anywhere besides class. A good start.

“I know he requested not-Luna, but if he got
something that high profile ... those are some of the top jobs
going if you've got the computer brain.”

“Pft, he's in the running to be a chip
programmer.”

“Hardly anyone gets to be a—”

Mina gestured for silence. “A chip
programmer. He'll stay in Seattle for that. I've got to keep one of
you, and you're going to Russia,” Miko answered self-assuredly as
they stepped into their first period Social Arts class.

* * * *

Body wash. Being hit by the scent as she
walked into the room half-full of teenage boys was one of Mina's
least favorite things, but it was better than being late again.
They entered just before the first bell rang.

“Hats off in class, Miss Kimura,” Mr. Phelps
said, without turning from getting the lesson holo up. Miko
cheerily set her black fedora on her desk before getting her
keyboard and holo reader out and set up. Mina, too, opened up the
display at her desk for the three-dimensional lesson
presentation.

“You need to stop cutting it so close,” Scott
Szach whispered from his seat in the aisle next to theirs. He
plugged his input wire directly into his cybernetic eye, letting
him process the input and respond purely with eye movement.

“My fault,” Mina conceded. “Parents kept me
up doing inventory half the night again—” The horticulturists
behind some of the city's biggest projects were in high demand in
general, and she was their only daughter. Which also meant it was
generally assumed she'd end up, like her mother before her, a shop
assistant and delivery girl from the end of school until her
parents' retirement. “—and wouldn't let me borrow the van.” That
was common enough, too. The van was an occasional perk for big
deliveries. Mostly, there was the collapsible emerald-and-lilac
bicycle. “Miko would have made it easy if she hadn't gone back to
get me.”

“Yeah, but where would the fun in that be?”
Miko replied with a wink, all three shutting up when the teacher
turned back around.

Mr. Phelps stepped away from the holographic
display on Pacific Rim relations to address the class. “All right,
I know a lot of you are in the clutches of short-timer's syndrome,
especially among our seniors. First chipping wave begins next week,
and a few of you may not be here tomorrow for prep.” Half the class
looked at Scott at that. His family already had top-level security
clearance, clearing some of the hurdles more easily for top-end
microchips, and everyone knew how easily he breezed through even
the hardest tests.

While no one knew quite how the chipping
centers chose the order for students to go in, and there were
occasional surprises based on particular pressing needs, for the
most part, the highest security level chips went first. These were
the lunar colony engineers, the political science specialists,
military officers-to-be, and high-end programmers. Everyone figured
Scott’s aptitudes were likely to put him in with the first or last
of those, and Mina and Miko preferred the last.

“But even if you don’t expect to be with us
when this is done, take down the assignment anyway, and I’ll be
optimistic about my chances of receiving it,” Mr. Phelps continued.
“In the vein we’ve been working on, this week’s assignment is a
six-page paper on how history continues to affect our lives. Since
our seniors all have their chipping dates in mind, let’s be a
little more specific. There’s bound to be some surprises, of
course, but a lot of you, by now, probably have some idea what
you’re going to end up doing for the rest of your lives.”

It was a reasonable statement. By senior
year, almost everyone had been through all of the possible aptitude
tests, with any talents or affinities that might help contribute to
their future jobs already decided or found out. The last year was
mostly for general subjects that the national education and
chipping boards determined were essential for everyone, like
history and the various social interaction courses at their most
advanced levels. It was also a time for precise specification of
assignment and for double-checking, now at the age where any hidden
physical talents able to emerge would have. The latter had been
Mina’s primary hope for some time. A few latent genes might kick in
from the other side of the family. Even just an inch or two, and
she thought she might be able to make up for the rest with effort
and top marks in all of her physical education classes.

“With that in mind,” he went on. “The
Decimation event, just a little over a century ago—how did it
impact your career? And no cheating—your career specifically, not
just 'It rocketed skill-chips from experiments to a basis of
society,' people. Someone tries that every year; it will get an
‘F’.”

Half the class groaned. Miko, on the other
hand, was already intently typing away. Mina stared at her screen a
few moments, then became one of the people raising their hands. Mr.
Phelps took a moment to draw up her student file in his chipped
knowledge base, then pointed her way. “Miss Cortez?”

“What if... it doesn’t? If you can’t really
see any impact?” she asked hopefully.

With a couple more seconds to find the right
information in her file, the teacher smiled. “Your parents own
Emerald City Flowers and Design, don’t they? Carried on from your
maternal grandfather... and your great-grandparents, right? Don't
they consult on the park restoration projects? Plus, some of the
flowers you still use were probably strains and hybrids designed to
survive the environmental changes with less sunlight and fresh
water available, right? You could do something with any of
that.”

Mina sunk down in her chair. It wasn’t that
she hadn’t thought of any of that. It just wasn’t the career she
had been referring to. But when even her history teacher knew she
was all set to become a lifelong florist, she had to admit it.

She was doomed.

Chapter
Two

After school, Mina and Miko got to dance
class on time. “You rush more now than for school. Trying to avoid
a repeat of the Great Mrs. Bateman Scolding of 2151?”

“Plus I didn't beg and borrow every shred of
time my parents would give me for dance and workouts just to miss
something.” Mina did what she could to support the family shop, but
she was trying to remain optimistic to the last possible minute
that she might still have some chance at hitting the aptitudes
necessary to be accepted to a ballet academy and get chipped
appropriately. Still, only Miko seemed to really keep up hope. No
one, including Mrs. Bateman, who was one of the best teachers in
the area, questioned Mina's work ethic or fitness. The problem had
always been, simply, that in addition to physical fitness,
reflexes, and precision, dancers tended towards a certain body
type, and Mina's short, stocky build wasn't it.

Miko was always there for moral support. To
do so, she'd managed to wedge yet another extracurricular between
her piano lessons, violin lessons, history lessons, martial arts
lessons, language lessons, automotive restoration research, and
school. After the loss of his wife, Dr. Kimura had replaced the
various family projects he had shared with his daughter with simply
more classes. Still, she made time for dance to make time for
Mina.

A familiar shampoo with heavy citrus notes
hit Mina just as she took her place at the barre. Mrs. Bateman
approached and called her aside, instructing the understudy to take
Mina's place in the recital practice. At first, Mina was somewhat
confused. She’d been working hard on this presentation, even with
chipping coming up. After all, either of her careers—the likely, or
the one she had been hoping for most of her life—were not exactly
considered high priority, so she didn’t expect to be anywhere in
the early chipping dates. If this was to be her last presentation,
she wanted to put everything she could into it, and prove that Mrs.
Bateman had been right to promote her to the head of the class last
year.

“Miss Cortez...” the teacher began quietly,
“I'm so sorry to hear we're losing you. I only wish it were to one
of the dance academies.”

Mina deflated almost instantly. She had no
longer been expecting to be accepted, of course, but to actually
hear it took the wind out of her sails. “Can I at least work
through to the production?” she asked hopefully. If nothing else,
it would mean she could keep putting off full-time after-school
work at Emerald City Flowers and Design. She could pretend a little
longer that someone had made a mistake. Plus, of course, she’d put
in a lot of work towards this presentation already.

“Well you can stay as long as you can to help
your understudy, but with your chipping date before the
recital—wait, you did know about your early chip date, didn't you?”
Mrs. Bateman asked.

Mina looked a little startled at the news,
shaking her head. “There has to be some mistake, it's just
a...”

Mrs. Bateman smiled, if a bit ruefully. “They
were quite specific. It may just be a review or something. If
that’s the case, feel free to get a pass sent to the school from
the center and we’ll be happy to let you back into your spot. In
the meanwhile, I have to go on the information that I’ve been
provided.”

Mina sighed. “Yes, Mrs. Bateman. Thank you
for trying.” She meant it.

Getting through the rest of the practice
wasn’t as hard as she’d first imagined it to be. As long as she had
something to keep her mind occupied, she was fine. It was later,
after she was able to retreat away from most of the class in the
locker room, that the tears hit her. Miko found her a matter of
seconds later and just hugged her. She wasn’t sure how long they
stood like that, but she finally pulled herself together enough to
finish getting dressed and head back out to the studio.

“Hey, you all right?” came Scott’s voice. He
wasn't any kind of dancer—or even coordinated—but he ran the dance
class's computerized sound and light systems, because Mouseketeers
had to stick together. While he usually got dropped off for school
in the mornings with his parents going past, getting rides home
from Miko got him home in time to watch his little sister almost as
well as the bus did, which was all his parents tended to care about
as far as priorities.

“Not exactly, but I’ll tell you about it on
the way to the shop...” A pause, checking her chronometer. “And I’m
going to be in so much trouble,” she added. Dance was provisional
as it was, dependent upon her getting to work on time. While Jim
and Carmen Cortez knew their daughter's ambitions, of course, they
tended to be more focused on the needs of the shop ever since
business had taken off. She could only guess that as soon as they
found out that the class had no more practical application, she’d
have to fight over being able to stay on until her chipping date to
help out Miko and her understudy.

She could really only think of one thing as
they worked to load Scott’s tech stuff into the back of Vlad and
then, worse, fold Scott himself into the car, before they took off,
with Miko doing her best to bend the laws of time to get Mina to
work five minutes ago.

Yeah, she was doomed.

* * * *

While not quite a success on Miko’s part,
with some judicious use of back roads and careful breaking of the
speed laws most cars were programmed to stick to, she managed to
get dropped off only a few minutes behind schedule. “Sorry I'm
late,” she said as she rushed into the shop.

“Mail is in—something for you,” Carmen Cortez
called, without looking up from her lily arrangement as Mina raced
in the door. “Chipping center, I think, but no time for that. Get
your shirt and jacket on, there’s four deliveries lined up. They’re
all in the fridge unit. When you get back, you can help with
inventory. Late night again. We’ll have dinner ordered for you when
you get back.”

“With four deliveries, can I use the van?”
Mina asked hopefully.

“Your dad has the van. He’s working on a
project with the Unitarian church. Get going,” came the answer,
still without looking up.

“Yes, Mother,” she replied, disappointed but
unsurprised. By now, it was almost routine. She looked a little
despairingly at the central computer unit, but obeyed her mother,
forgoing satisfying her curiosity about why the chipping center
would want her in sooner rather than later. Heading into the back,
she quickly changed her shirt and pulled the company jacket on,
before racing to the fridge unit, drawing out the wrapped
arrangements for delivery, two in cold boxes and two bouquets. She
wrangled everything into a large wire basket and fit it onto the
front of her bike, before heading out for the deliveries, having to
race to make a couple of them on time. She was already late in the
door. It would be worse if any of the deliveries were actually off
schedule.

When she finally returned, sweaty from the
quick exertion of deliveries right after dance class, she was hit
with the scent of fresh-cut greenery as her father met her at the
shop door. “You have mail!”

She was a little startled, but headed for the
computer system.

“This is a big deal,” Jim Cortez continued.
“This will all be yours someday. Best to find out when you’ll get
the management programs and all so you can start learning the
individual systems.”

Mina shot her father a look. While they had,
of course, assumed she’d be taking up the family business ever
since she was born—and all the more after early aptitude tests gave
her extreme marks for color spectrum recognition and her
oversensitive sense of smell—they weren’t supposed to refer to it.
At least until it was certain.