Juice

It's remarkable how quickly one can get used to horrific visuals, once one has convinced oneself that it's normal and necessary. Mr. Hill pulled swiped the screen next to the large suspension tube, releasing the donor from the induced dream state. They dropped out of the tube and along with a large swill of otherwise sterile liquid, sprawled onto the floor. Mr. Hill took the donor under the arms and pulled them down the long corridor that was lined with exactly such tubes, many currently in operation containing a donor. At the end of the door, the otherwise otherwise airtight door opened slowly to let him and the donor through into a series of private cabins where the donor could dry off, recover, retrieve their belongings, and finally get their certificate of completion, which they could exchange for a deposit of anywhere between 800 and 1500 neocreds. It wasn't a life-changing amount, but seeing as rent in most places started at 750 neocreds for a one-person habitation cabin, it could easily bridge the gap between a warm bed and sleeping on the street for a month. Mr. Hill pulled the rubber gloves off his hands and threw them into the bin on his way outside. The next donor wasn't due to removal for over five hours, which meant this concluded his shift as an extraction operator. He pulled the valve on the side of his helmet, releasing the air within his hermetically sealed bodysuit. It practically fell off him, leaving him to step out of the already disintegrating remains on the floor of the staff room. With these new suits there was hardly ever a need to dress for a job. Mr. Hill had long since given up on making himself look nice for work. He knew of a few colleagues, the younger ones mainly, who still did. He thought it was silly. After all, they worked at a HeadJuice.

Pyotr was already cold, even though he had a habitation cabin to call a home. His bills post-education had quickly stacked up, all because he didn't feel like he was cut out for an economics degree and had abandoned it in favour for finding a job early. The subsidies that had kept the loan-sharks and extra expenses at bay had gone quickly, leaving him to shoulder monthly expenses of around 8000 neocreds on his own. A significant part of that was keeping up with the interest on his debt, which without the subsidies for economics majors or degrees stood at a towering 7.5% and climbing for every three years he had failed to pay back the entirety of it. In the interest of at least not letting it pile up, he had decided to leave the heating off and not bother with lights. Jobs as a delivery person only occasionally paid off, so he had been looking for more stable and higher paying positions, but it was of course hard. If he didn't have a degree in any of the in-demand fields, which were already very generously subsided by the big corporations, he might as well not have a degree at all, and was effectively unqualified for about everything. There were places for people who didn't have any marketable skills to make money, but most of them had a limit for times they could be used in a month. A limit he had maxed out. He sat in the one folding chair in his habitation cabin, scrolling through other opportunities. He was missing about 200 neocreds to cover his bills that month. Online, he found a number of accounts describing his situation as a "HeadJuice Classic". It wasn't too odd for companies to do their own research these days, and apparently HeadJuice was always in need of volunteers. It would cost him about about four hours, if he didn't insist on reading the paperwork, and it would net him enough neocreds to get him safely into the green for the month. Pyotr signed up without thinking too much about it. It was already difficult enough as it was without thinking too much about what exactly it was he was going to sell.

The next day, Pyotr sat in a waiting room after work. He was still wearing the bright orange City-Skipper uniform. Legally it had to be that eyebleeding colour, because the sell of City-Skipper was that it was the most eco-friendly delivery service, as their "skippers" only ever ran everywhere, which occasionally meant that they had to cross streets in questionably safe ways, for which any company needed to provide appropriate safety equipment. His legs were tired as always after a day of City-Skipping, so he stretched them into the center of the small waiting room. Opposite him sat a young lady, looking through her phone for something. They didn't speak the entire time they were both seated. Only when his number was called did she say "Good luck" in a way that made him unsure whether she meant it. He decided to ignore it and find the place in the several page long legal document where he was supposed to sign his name.

The private room reminded Pyotr of a padded cell from movies. There was a wardrobe to hang his clothes in and replace them with what looked like a neoprene diving suit with a slightly elevated collar. He could feel a number of sensors behind several of his joints as he tried moving in it. The man who had explained the legal document to him had told him that this was a sleep experiment and that it was done in liquid suspension, so to save the volunteers the unpleasant sensation of drowning that often came with entering liquid suspension, they were supposed to drink the anesthetic on the small table built into one corner of the private room. Pyotr was used to dry-swallowing pills from his university days, just because he didn't always bring something to drink and money had been tight as it was. He did the same for the anesthetic and lied down on the floor of the private room. The bench might have emulated a bed, but was just a bit too narrow for his liking. Pyotr hadn't closed his eyes for more than a few seconds, before he drifted into the void.

Pyotr was woozy when he woke up in the private room again. The digital clock above the door told him that about three hours had passed without him taking notice. His skin and hair was damp with something, but otherwise he felt fine. He couldn't remember anything that happened after getting knocked out by the anesthetic, which was to be expected, really. Sluggish, he followed the instructions he had been given before he had signed the consent form, waited until he was steady on his legs again and plodded out into the foyer. The 921 neocreds in his account were only a slight consolation. He was handed a voucher for one free HeadJuice of his choice at desk in the foyer and found himself standing at the vending machine next to the entrance. Bright colours advertised the fresh and novel flavours that "goes straight to your head!". Pyotr had never really cared for sweet beverages. The woman from the waiting room stepped up behind him just as he was about to crinkle up the voucher and leave.

"You should really take one. Even if you don't like it." she said and pressed a button on the vending machine before feeding her voucher into it. A bright purple plastic bottle dropped into the tray.

"You can have mine, if you want." Pyotr gave her the paper slip and headed home.

Stella had a hard time placing the flavour of HeadJuice. Obviously hers tasted vaguely like kiwifruit. That had been the flavour she had been handed. It also obviously only tasted vaguely like kiwifruit, since actual kiwifruit had become a luxury good for the obscenely wealthy and those desperately in need of attention. It was ironic in a way. Where this had once been the status of pineapples back when they had first been introduced into polite society, pineapples now were a dime a dozen, partially because of the pizza-chain expansion and the subsequent need for pineapple farms to supplement all the Hawaiian pizza that were prepared for sale, but rarely ever sold out of cultural reasons. Beyond the taste of kiwifruit though, there was a different taste. The reason anybody ever went to HeadJuice was because of these odd, hard to place flavours. If she were pressed to describe it, she would call it "bittersweet", but not in a literal sense. Rather, she felt it to be bittersweet in an emotional sense first and foremost. Like a chilly autumn day in a park, walking a little white dog that doesn't exist anymore. Stella thought that was odd, seeing as she never had a dog for herself and never really had the opportunity to visit a park and enjoy it. It fazed her very little. After all, she was a professional, and in recent years it wasn't the first product that had odd side-effects that she had to advertise. She turned into the camera with that same beaming smile she practiced in the mirror every morning. Presumably there was going to be a jingle underneath the footage, seeing as she didn't have any lines.

"Another take!" the director shouted from his comfortable chair, his eyes obscured by a large pair of darkened AR glasses. It reminded her of a censor-bar. She shuffled back to her position where the green-screen curved to accommodate the panning motion of the very vintage camera setup. When the red light on the other end of the set flashed red, she started following the overlay instructions projected into her contacts as they appeared. Towards the center of the set, catch the chilled bottle of HeadJuice that the stage hand tossed at her from behind the camera and twist the cap off on the count of 3. Take a swig and ignore the odd images it conjured in her mind. This was the hardest part, technically. She saw a small living room, objects that were high up and some screens with scrambled writing. It looked entirely unfamiliar, but it felt like remembering an inconsequential time from her childhood. There was a dog that almost toppled her over backwards, and she was caught by a person she had never seen, but was very certain that they were gone.

"Cut! Cut, damn it!" the director interrupted. Stella placed the bottle of HeadJuice back into the cooling container.

"Her makeup is running! Why is her makeup running- is she crying?"

Stella carefully caught a tear that had escaped the corner of her eye and wiped it on a napkin.

"Maybe we should just use the coloured water." Stella told the stage hand.