Within the Outer

Several soft tones ring out into the room.
Lee wakes, raising his left arm to view an alert, a message from Milo hovering above the orange hologram around his wrist: "My Glitch! They've legalized flight again!"

Half asleep, he waves the notification away and squints to scroll through his holoscreen to confirm the news before moding inward, into the quiet of his control center.

His Former, a projection of the child he once was, drifts there through fragments of memory. His Further, a projection of his psyche, waits silently in the dark. Thoughts on the screens of his inner fade to static as he drifts back to sleep.

He dreams. Phobos Station hangs over old Utah. The roar of his V8 Ronin pulls his vehicle, speeding through the air, the ghost behind the glass gazes at him and her face appears in the reflection of his screens, red hair and blue eyes.

His bed glitches again, hums two steady pitches and hovers straight into a wall with a soft bump, bringing him into moonlight spilling through a nearby window. The light passes through his projection layer, revealing a carbon-diamond skin beneath.

The wolf lifts his head, ears forward, eyes glowing a dim red, drawn to the bed's behavior as it slowly grinds against the wall. His eyes grow dark as he lays his head down once more.

Outside, Lee's car hangs in the air above the curb, muffled music pulsing from it into the night, Samuel-its AI- running diagnostics, holoscreens flowing with data.

Lee had escaped her.
And after so long, he finally felt hope.

A sharp tone wakes him into the daylight, and back into the reality of 2087.