Plotting a Course

Omega stared at her smartphone, her chest tightening like a coil of steel cables. She swallowed, trying to return any form of moisture to her mouth that she could. How the frick did she even read this kind of map? Her phone, which definitely needed an update, had lost signal thanks to the high charge of electricity that abounded in Thunderdale. It was almost like static electricity constantly prickling at her skin, especially near the surface or near the exits to the city. And her phone hated it, which left her with a map she had to manually figure out. 

Crap.

Brown eyes lifted and looked around at the surrounding buildings. OK, think. Thankfully, the package she was delivering wasn’t time sensitive, but the young woman prided herself on her quick deliveries, which only added to her anxiety building in her chest. She stopped her bike and kicked the stand down to support it, taking her phone off the cradle that held it in place. It’d been four years since she had the procedure done to get the technical display and sensor displays installed, but sometimes it was just easier to use the technology she knew and grew up with. 

She pressed her pointer finger and thumb to the screen, pinching them together to zoom in on the map to try and get her bearings. She looked up again at the holographic sign post that told her what intersection she was at. OK, so she was at that street and that one… she looked back at her phone, swiping across the screen as she searched for those crossroads. Long, winding roads and geometric shapes greeted her, with names that were vaguely familiar tickling at her recognition. Omega glanced at the empty signal bar at the top of the screen, narrowing her eyes in frustration at it. 

The change in focus drew her attention to a particular street name, and her stomach fluttered with Beautiflies. Yes! It was one of the roads she stood at! If she could find… how the hell did she end up on that side of the map? She scrolled, swiping again and again as she followed the road on the screen. Finally, she found her location, which blinked calmly at her, and for a brief moment, annoyance flared in her at it. 

Stupid phone.

Omega swiped at the technical display on her left wrist, pulling up the file that had the address she needed to deliver to on it. Checking her phone again, she once more pressed her thumb and pointer finger to the screen, this time zooming out the map to get a wider view of her surroundings. So she needed to go down two blocks, take a left, then a right and the building should have been halfway down that particular street. She could do this. Omega swiped again at her wrist to dismiss the file and put her phone back on the cradle attached to her bike’s handlebars. Kicking the stand back into its out of the way position, she mounted it and took off for her destination, the anxiety and panic replaced with a sense of pride at having figured it out. She was still young and had a lot to learn after spending her whole life sheltered, but she was getting there, one step at a time.