by Toby Weston
Stella laughed. Naïve as she may once have been, she knew that last night had probably been the most viewed material across all TeenLife™’s properties this year. They said in the note that she’d left them with no choice. They had to pull her, but they maintained that her loyal subscribers—mostly thirteen-year-old girls or seedy forty-year-old men—were owed a satisfying, if tragic, conclusion to her narrative.
Her crazy night would be framed as the end of an inevitable destructive spiral into a world of licentiousness. They would make a windfall out of her on the way out; a tragic fall from respectability, a suicide, a glamorous society funeral– it was gold dust!
She replied to the note, asking for six hundred, and they instantly agreed, making her think she could probably have held out for much more. Still, six hundred Mesh Coins was a lot of money; two years’ salary for many, an impossible fortune for an orphan from a fish farm—
For as long as she could remember, her life had felt like a roller coaster ride; she was pressed down into her seat; confined by a padded safety bar, forced to follow rails she couldn’t see; hurtling along, beyond her control, from highs to lows; always aware that, somewhere in front, wild plunges loomed.
—at least, with this money she wouldn’t need to make any hard decisions for a while.
She struggled up from the soft mattress and cracked open a chilled bottle of water from the fridge, then decided to take a shower to wash the wool out of her head. Enjoying unlimited hot water while she could and breathing the citrus smells of complimentary lotions, she might be able to straighten out some mental kinks.
The funeral was in four days. The guest list would be comprised of fans, competition winners and the very well off, plus a very small smattering of genuine B and C-list celebrities. This time, however, Stella realised that she would be the real star; despite her contempt for her ex-employer, she smiled at the thought.
Hopping out of the shower, grabbing a towel and pulling it around herself, she used another to wipe the fog from the floor-to-ceiling glass window of the hotel room. She got back into the shower, leaving the door of the cubicle open. Back under the water, surrounded by warm mist, she luxuriated in the feeling on her skin, and looked down through the open curtains to the lights of the city below.
The next morning, she read the note again carefully. Under the terms of the temporary contract, she would be provided another camera person/producer, a girl this time, named Shiori. Following their inscrutable algorithms, TeenLife™’s Sages had decided that a chirpy, anime librarian stereotype, complete with plaid skirt and clutched leather folio, would be the ideal companion for a mourning widow.
Shiori arrived at 11 am and, together, they spent several hours visiting KL’s more upmarket boutiques. The old Stella, the one from the farm, the girl in tatty clothes who sold grilled prawns for pennies, would have laughed with delight at the absurdity of buying a dress that cost as much as a boat. But Shiori insisted this would be a valid, expensable purchase which TeenLife™ would be happy to reimburse. Clearly, they were happy to dress up their meat.
Real physical human beings helped her try on expensive designer clothes, clucking and oohing as they visualised her in their exclusive 3D-printed garments. To provoke Shiori’s simpering disapproval, Stella went with an ensemble consisting of a black, above-knee, flouncy, embroidered skirt, buoyed out on a cushion of lace petticoats, and a slightly too short biker jacket with short sleeves and an oversized zipper, cut in at the waist, leaving two centimetres of bare flesh between it and the skirt. She set off the femme fatale look with black stockings and a huge pair of square, thick-rimmed Spex.
A day out with Jeno would have been a trial of dark brooding silences and passive, aggressive sulking. Shiori, by contrast, was a lot more fun. She was easily shocked, but the strongest rebuke in her repertoire was an embarrassed titter, hidden behind a mouth-covering hand.
As Stella sat drinking overpriced coffee at the solid teak bar of an upmarket café, her Companion blinked. Uday was calling. Stella dismissed the call. Shiori was satisfyingly astonished by Stella’s audacity.
Stella was shocked at herself. Casual sex was what other people did, but for Shiori’s sake she played at being aloof and cool. She wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t realise she was being manipulated—even the clothes she had chosen were most likely precisely what TeenLife™’s Sages had picked out for her. Still, it was fun playing at being a bad girl.
If it’s going to be fake, at least let it be fun.
Uday had been a one-night stand. A young fool with a pimped-out Destrier and an apartment stuffed with expensive erotic art. A rich playboy whom she had no interest in ever seeing again—kissing and telling was no way to get a second date! But, she felt no animosity towards him. He had been in the right place at the right time to perform an exorcism.
She finished the last sip of cold coffee and scooped up her bags. One thing Shiori had in common with Jeno was her inability to help carry the shopping.
Stella’s Companion chirped. She reflexively moved to block the call, but at the last moment noticed the name and plopped back onto the stool to take it.
As Zaki arrived, she offered him another seat at the bar and ordered herself a fizzy water.
“Err… Hey, Stella, you look lovely—nice—you look really nice.”
“Hi, Zaki.”
“Sorry to just call like this,” said Zaki. “I, err, I saw the news yesterday. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Zaki looked at Shiori and the bags and then said, “So, I thought you might like a friend to talk to?”
“That’s nice of you,” said Stella. “I’m okay, getting better. I think I might have been in a dream for a while, but I think I’m waking up.”
“Really? That’s great.” Seeing the real Stella emerging from under the cobwebs, Zaki wanted quite badly to hug her.
“Look, I’m really sorry, Zaki…” she said.
“What for?”
“For not… for everything. You helped me and I’ve treated you like… well, I’ve been a complete bitch, haven’t I?”
“No!” Zaki said quickly, shocked. “You just needed time. I should’ve been more understanding.”
“You are too nice. You all are. I’m just horrible!”
“You’re not anything like that. I… you… you’re amazing, Stella. You’re…” Zaki trailed off, unsure himself what he was trying to say.
They sat in silence, then Stella shrugged.
“I’m messed up,” she said, then looked out through the wall of glass at the front of the café at KL’s passing pedestrian traffic.
“Yeah, well, who isn’t?” said Zaki, relieved at the opportunity for some gallows humour.
“You know what?” said Stella. “Thinking that actually makes me feel a little better! Look at them all out there—I bet they are just as messed up as us!”
They stared out the window. Zaki’s gaze drew back to focus on their own reflections—everybody was messed up somehow.
“Who’s this?” Zaki asked, referring to Stella’s companion.
“Oh, this is Shiori. Don’t worry, she’s an Oid.”
“Hello, Zaki,” Shiori fluttered. “Your life is so romantic, living in the Caliphate, working on a farm, sending gliders to all the corners of the world.”
Zaki looked at her for a few seconds, taken aback that she knew so much about him.
“Yeah, I guess.” Then, to Stella, “So she’s the new minder?”
“Yep, but just for a couple of days. Sorry, I should have asked her to leave. Shiori, privacy please. You can wait for me outside.”
“But the sun! What about my skin?”
“Stand in the shade then!” Stella snapped.
They both watched her leave. They sat in silence, lost in their own thoughts. Then Stella turned to Zaki.
“Hey, you want to go to a funeral?”
Chapter 9 – A Heroin Heroine
The funeral was, of course,
ridiculous. The location was a conference centre on the outskirts of KL. A drab, functional building that clever MR had transformed into a vaulted chapel, moved to a hill and surrounded with fairy woods.
Huge, frothing clumps of white flowers had been ejaculated over every surface. Great, drooping loops hung between the rococo pillars. Just as the room’s decorations were mostly MR fiction, only about a third of the guests were actually present. Stella was attending in person, but most of the others—including Zaki—were remoting. Some, like Shiori, lacked any physical existence.
Camera Bees buzzed amongst the floral globs like mechanical pollinators. TeenLife™ was making the most of Jeno’s last romantic gesture. Over the past week, they had spun the funeral into a massive publicity vehicle, spending Coin and saturating the net with their ads and sponsored opinion pieces. Diverse B-list personalities and mOids had been given free tickets. B-listers paid for upgrades to A-list status and received their golden gift bags. C-listers, and personalities on their way up or down the food chain, paid to attend, and paid more to be allowed to pretend they had paid nothing.
Chat shows, cat channels, fashion-streams, news squawks, pr0n-constructions and every other conceivable re-packager of content, licensed by the second. Rates were highest for real-time fly-on-the-wall coverage, dropping to zero after mere minutes as live news became old news.
Hin-Lyn, a soft porn star and pop idol, had shown up. Before moving on to more lucrative work, she had once been a Starlet herself. In TeenLife™’s complex incestuous canon, Hin-Lyn had dated Jeno before Stella had been on the scene. They had even been engaged. Stella had always assumed Hin-Lyn was an oid, and was expecting to be pushed into some sort of Sage-scripted hysterical confrontation. However, Hin-Lyn was apparently real and physically present, standing over the casket, her tears streaking her thick white make-up, dripping from her button nose onto Jeno—or at least the chest of the disturbingly real, life-sized rubber simulacrum of Jeno—where he lay, partially obscured by flowers, in his expensive wooden coffin.
Sheena B was there, too, prominently displaying her golden gift bag.
Stella had circulated, allowing her hand to be kissed by tier-C glitterati, while feigning the heart-broken widow. She had entered the room with Zaki at her side. He had manifested in a dark suit, rocking a retro ski-mask style MR display covered in the graffiti decals of his Klan. Heads had turned as they passed and Stella had immediately received half a dozen frenetic messages from TeenLife™ reminding her that the terms of the temporary contract prohibited her from having a boyfriend present. She made sure to keep an appropriate amount of white space between her and Zaki as they circulated the party crowd.
Eventually, after a sufficient amount of histrionics, they found themselves sitting at a table on the periphery of the action. Stella, for some reason, drinking a Pina Colada, while Zaki toyed with a White Russian. He batted the glass back and forth between his hands, leaving a milky trail of condensation on the glass surface. His good hand swatted at the glass, while the crippled other rested awkwardly, thumb down.
There was a sense that the party was beginning its long wind down. The first guests were standing up from tables, many leaving their avatars soulless to make their own way on autopilot to the exits. Some of the more nonchalant A-listers had simply vanished, asserting status by deliberately flouting consensus.
“Bit of a culture shock, isn’t it?” Stella asked, indicating the media stars and needy rich.
“Yeah, not really my scene, to be honest,” replied Zaki.
“Why did you come then?”
“Because you asked,” said Zaki, “and because nobody I know has spoken more than three words with you since…”
Stella wanted to finish his sentence with something glib, about being abducted into white slavery by pirates, but she couldn’t. She was afraid her voice would crack and her face fall off to reveal the roaring hole behind it. Instead, they looked at each other, understanding passing between them.
“Does that hurt?” Stella asked finally, indicating his twisted arm and fingers.
“Sometimes.”
“Can’t they fix it?”
“Maybe, but I don’t see the point at the moment. If I wait a few more years, the tech will have improved and I’ll have the money to do it properly.”
“You could at least choose a different avatar.”
Zaki looked at her askance and didn’t answer. Instead, he changed the subject. “Marcel and Segi are both sulking, you know?”
Stella shrugged.
“I can understand why you wouldn’t want to turn up to this ego carnival alone,” continued Zaki. “Why didn’t you ask one of them?”
Stella shrugged again and looked away. “I don’t know, to be honest. Perhaps I thought it might be more fun with you.”
It was Zaki’s turn to look away. Life had changed him, too. He remembered being a different person.
A waiter came over with more drinks. Stella smiled and gave him her empty glass. Zaki appeared to do the same. However, for him the choreography was far more convoluted—
Eight thousand kilometres away, Zaki decoupled his physical body from his avatar long enough to fill his glass from the jug he had been keeping in the fridge. The simulation adjusted slightly and swapped the full glass, which the waiter had brought, for the virtual analogue of the real empty glass, which was now full again. Zaki could now hand back the empty, fully virtual glass and resume drinking in his great-aunt’s kitchen.
—it was no wonder people gave up trying to follow what was real and simply accepted life’s maelstrom of spam bot soap opera at face value.
“After all this, are you thinking of going back?” Zaki asked.
“To the Farm? I don’t think so. What would I do there?”
“You’re a star, you can do anything.”
“I’m not a star! I’m a novelty.”
“I guess that’s how stars start out...”
Stella cut him off. “Oh, shit, here comes Sheena Bitch.”
“Condolences, S Sagong,” said Sheena.
“Thanks, Sheena.” Stella turned back to Zaki, hoping that would be the end of the interaction.
“I heard you got fired? It never rains, but it pours. Right, girl?” Sheena stood with her hands on her ample hips. Her more than ample bust jutted out like a pair of cannons.
“Whatever.”
“That’s a real shame, because I was looking forward to wiping the dance floor with your mop wig next time,” Sheena said, doing the transverse head bob thing and shifting dramatically onto her other leg.
“Sheena, this is a funeral. Have some class,” Stella suggested.
“Class!” screeched the Starlet. “You fucked up your good-girl image by fucking a C-list streamer. Don’t talk to me about class!”
The waiter was still hovering on the periphery. He offered Sheena a glass of Prosecco. She took the glass, knocking back the contents of a flute she already had on the go, then handed back the empty glass.
“Sheena,” said Stella, “it was very sweet of you to come over, but we were actually having a private conversation.”
“What? Fuck you, Sagong. You don’t get to send me home!”
Something about the waiter’s movements caused Stella and Zaki to simultaneously turn towards him. His body was flickering and morphing, polygons sliding around until, in place of the elegant, white-clad waiter, stood a chubby man with a blurred face and rosy cheeks. He was wearing a black suit, which seemed slightly too tight.
Sheena took a step back from the unexpected violation of etiquette. Inexplicably, her dress remained where it was, hanging unnaturally like a giant, levitating black hourglass, as she stepped through its apparently insubstantial material. She found herself in the unlikely position of being suddenly naked, standing beside her vacated clothes.
“What the f…?” began Sheena.
“Oh, fuck!” said Zaki. “It’s a raid! They’re messing with the consensus.”
“It’s not a
raid,” the former waiter said earnestly, his hands raised in a gesture of supplication. He looked real in the grainy, dusty manner of physical matter, but his face was a shifting blur, like the soft pink outline of a body seen through the frosted glass of a shower cubicle.
Sheena had quickly moved herself back within the obscuring volume of the floating dress shape, looking alternately scared, angry and confused.
“Who is he?” Stella asked Zaki, also moving away from the newcomer nervously.
“He’s from N. The Nebulous Klan.”
“Correct,” said the man. “I’m from N, here for a spot of late afternoon subversive political griefing. Sorry to barge in.”
