SCI FI Weekly Classic Gallery Image

I've been doing this series of sf-writing calisthenics for a while. Here's an early snippet, inspired by "Point of View" by Jérôme Bois, Cover no. 470 (April 24, 2006) on this page. (The seated woman and the servitor were visible when it was the SCI FI Weekly cover image, trust me).

"Birds don't fly in straight lines."

Across the room, legs crossed on a chair hung from the ceiling on slender carbon fiber, Priya looked up. Her gesture stopped the servitor carrying a tray with espresso
cups in mid-bow. Past the servitor, Arminius stood and stared out the window. He wore the gray trousers and green shirt combination she was certain represented a bug in his valet's software. Hands clasped behind him, his profile showed his gaze tracing straight lines through the air outside between their flat and the ziggurats downtown.

"You see a bird?" Every so often one strayed in from the
sea of wilderness outside the city, or snuck through the ductwork from the arcology's atrium.

He shook his head with a slight smile. "The aircars. Traffic control has them travelling in straight lines, but why? We've decoded the brains of birds and could code the same into the cpus of aircars."

"Birds fly into windows. You want an aircar to do the same?"