Before I start, could anyone explain why Fictionpress is displaying the first few words of each chapter twice, like a sort of heading? I can’t find how to get rid of that, or place another title instead of it.

Thanks in advance.

Dave – 3

The hotel was more interesting than the standard transparent towers that filled the city. Blue neon lights ran up it to join in a beam of skyward bound energy that gave the overall effect of a closed umbrella (the sort with the vicious spike on the tip, so old men can poke people from a safe distance.)

Lisha rode her bike up to the door and clapped her hands loudly. A pair of robots trotted up, bowing their heads obediently, and took it between them, scooting away as swiftly as they had arrived.

“So, welcome to my place, ‘The Most Famous Hotel of the City’.” Lisha said, waving her hand to encompass the gigantic building. They walked through the front door, which slid open without so much as a whisper, and entered a gleaming blue lobby. A set of glimmering orbs hanging from the ceiling set off the crystalline glass that formed the walls. Inside, it was slightly chiselled and warped, rendering it partially opaque and refracting the thin moonlight which filtered through into a gentle mist. Lisha strode swiftly on, waving to a humanoid robot that sat at the welcome desk.

A lift opened at the far end of the hallway and she pulled David through and hit the top button.

“So. What do you think of the place?” she asked

Dave thought for a moment. “It’s…” a thought struck him “It’s completely empty. I thought this was a famous hotel.”

“It is.” She said brightly “The city planners figured every city had to have a Most Famous Hotel, so they built this one.”

“That’s completely stupid.” Dave said “Why would you build a hotel in a city where nobody even needs to sleep?”

“Well don’t ask me. I just run the place.”

“You own this place?”

“Yes, I said so before, didn’t I?”

David nodded. She had said so before. “It’s just that when you said ‘My hotel’ I thought you were staying in one, I didn’t think you actually owned a kilometre high skyscraper.”

Lisha shrugged “It’s an easy mistake to make. I don’t blame you.”

Before he could ask what she could possibly blame him for, the lift pinged sweetly, and the doors slid open. Lisha led David out into a spacious apartment, with a breathtaking view of the city, all modern conveniences, thirty five television channels and 24/7 room service. Beds for 1-5 adults.

“My place.” She said simply.

Dave didn’t reply. He just stared around at the blank lifelessness of the beautiful room. Open to the starlit sky, the beams of light that scaled the umbrella building from below crowned the room in a sterile fire.

“You live in here?”

“Not always” Lisha sighed. “I change room, sometimes, but this place is the most interesting.”

The view of the city should have been amazing. It should have cut Dave’s heartbeat for a moment as he gazed out at the flaring red dawn that was erupting over the spines of the city’s towers. It didn’t. He felt sickened and drained.

“Lisha, why doesn’t your room have anything of yours in it?” Dave asked.

She stood facing away from him for a moment, her fists clenching and unclenching, finally hissing in a broken voice “Watch.”. She dropped her biking helmet to the floor and with a scream of rage kicked over the single bed that lay between the lift and the window. The sheets were still sailing through the air as she ripped a cupboard open and began to strew the clothes all over the floor. She smashed her fist into a button, and a panel slid back to reveal a perfect white bathroom, she marched in and turned all the taps on, plugging every hole. The water flooded out across the floor towards the carpet only to stop.

A pair of robots was standing there, each holding a sort of vacuum cleaner. Together they marched forward, sucking in the puddle with a disturbing absence of noise. The pool retreated until the floor was once again spotless, then one reached out a metal claw and grasped each of the taps in turn, spinning the claw with a quick buzz and shutting off the water.

Another robot had meanwhile carefully picked up and folded each garment that fell to the floor, and replaced them in the cupboard. It then folded the sheets by means of a rack which swiftly stretched any creases out of them and turned them into impersonal squares of white. A robotic arm had since emerged from a hidden orifice and righted the bed, which sat exactly as it had before.

The whole incident had taken under two minutes. Dave watched it all with confusion. “What was that all about?” He asked.

“Don’t you get it?” Lisha replied, tears brimming in her eyes. “I can’t change anything in this fucking place! I could smash every pane of glass in the room to make it feel more personalised, and by morning the robots would have replaced them! I can put a poster up, but as soon as I leave the room it’ll be taken down, neatly folded on my table with a memo from Hotel Staff telling me that posters are against regulations!”

She picked up a glass, took a green drink out from a stylish cabinet and poured herself a healthy measure. “I like to pretend this is alcohol. Where I came from they had that drink. Back when people didn’t think life had to be lived in a perfect world, back when society wasn’t some kind of planet wide goldfish-bowl, where every building’s see through, and the only privacy you get’s in a bathroom two by three metres big. Back there, on my planet, people did things like argue and break things. But here? Here the only argument you’ll get is a civil discussion about the value of plexinum compounds.” She hurled the glass at the head of a serving robot who deftly caught it and cleaned it.

“Can’t even hurt those fuckers.” She mumbled.

“Why do you stay here then?” Dave asked “Can’t you leave? Go somewhere a little more… alive?” He was beginning to sympathise with this madwoman. The entire planet was mind numbingly perfect. His eyes were aching from the smoothness of all the lines and the gentleness of the lighting.

“Leave? Nice idea, but it’s not happening. I don’t have anywhere to go, for a start, and…” She was interrupted by the ping of her lift.

Dave looked up as the doors opened to see three figures framed there.

“Hello David.” Said a familiar voice.

He groaned. Ronnie and Steve. Oh, and a slowly wobbling form he recognised as Kevin.

A tinny voice broke through the tension. “Excuse me, but you do not appear to have a reservation for this room. Please go to the reception office and or…” there was a blunt detonation, and fragments of metal showered Dave and Lisha. The remains of the robot’s face hung comically from its twisted neck. Steve lowered a bulky shotgun, a thin column of smoke playing past his hair.

“Fucking bots. I can’t stand this world.” He spat on the floor, and shot the arm that whizzed out of the wall to wipe it away.

“You know guns have been out of production in this existence for the past 800 Earth years? Makes you wonder what they’d do if someone got it into their heads to start killing shit.” Steve pointed the barrel at Dave’s face. “Hand it over David, unless you want to get intimate with fifty grams of lead.”

“Hand what over? Fuck Steve, put the gun down. Don’t shoot me.” Dave backed away slowly, his vision seeming to blur the world around him and focus on Steve’s face, Steve’s twisted grin.

“The Plot Device, David. We want it, and you have it. Until you give it over, we’ll never stop chasing you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” He shouted back. “I don’t have a plot device! I don’t even know what that is!”

Steve pointed to his jacket pocket. “The blue stone David. Did you think it was just a fluke that you found it only minutes before everything went wrong? You picked up a plot device, and until the author thinks of something original, that’s going to drive us to follow you to the ends of any universe you visit.

Dave took the stone out and held it before him. “Take it!” he said “I don’t even know what it is. I don’t give a fuck. Take it.”

Ronnie stepped out of the lift and reached for it hesitantly. He looked back at Steve, who nodded cautiously, and pressed the close button on the lift, keeping his weapon levelled at Dave’s skull. Ronnie took a step forward, his eyes were shifting crazily, watching every movement in the room. He inched his foot another step forwards, visibly sweating, his hand outstretched. Another step. His gloved palm was hovering over Dave’s. His breathing was laboured and he was gritting his teeth. “Fuck!”

Steve pivoted and let off a shell into the gut of a robot that had come in holding a tray of drinks. It crashed into the wall under the force of the impact, and between buzzes, it played out a pre-recorded message about the city’s attractions, and a few fun trivia facts. Another blast reduced it to a steaming heap.

“Alright, grab the device and let’s go” Steve yelled bringing the gun back to point at Dave, only to find a booted foot flashing through the air to connect with his gut. He collapsed with a gurgle of pain. Ronnie turned to see Lisha raising the shotgun at him.

“Come get some.” She said menacingly.

He took a step away from her towards the windowed edge of the room. “This isn’t over David.” He growled “We’ll always be able to find you. No matter where you go, we’ll be there too. Just watch.” He took a running leap towards the blazing sun and failed to go through the glass.

“Bugger.” he said, sitting and rubbing his head.

“Just take the bloody plot device and leave me alone.” Dave sighed, throwing the stone at Ronnie.

At least he wanted to throw the stone at Ronnie. Something stopped him. A force. An unoriginality. An inability to come up with a plausible reason why. There was a ripple of sound in the air, then every window pane erupted outwards and the entire Hotel flew skywards in a thousand blue pieces of glass.

Dave’s last thought before he lost consciousness was “If someone’s writing this story as it happens, he really isn’t taking very seriously.”