by Samit Basu
-- Okay, this is the catch, Joey says,
-- Finally, the fucking point of all this.
-- Stay focussed.
'The good news is that while we make you India's new face, you don't have to give up anything you said you wanted, your whole list, it's all going to happen. It's nothing. We're going to amp up your avatars and start burning on our scheds, you should warn your bank they'll need a bigger vault, and figure out what you're going to do with all your free time. Not just games and apps like you said — we're talking shows that you won't have to bother shooting, big-screen movie franchises that never end, because you'll never age, where you can be customised to look like whatever gets each of your fans going. We're talking action figures, merchandise, international, you name it. As the tech improves, we'll be able to control micro-expressions to a point where you can win Oscars without stepping out of the house.'
'So I become an entertainment Icon digitally, and a social one in real life?'
'Exactly. It's all lining up. We've already started making movies without Bollywood actors in them — they were having so much CGI bodymorph work done anyway that we started just cutting all the flesh out, which meant the films got made much faster, lazy bastards. And the audience doesn't care, there isn't that much difference in acting quality anyway. Hollywood will take a few more software updates.'
'I think I understand. It's what Joey would have me doing anyway if there were more hours in the day. But who controls my digital bodies? Are you going to hire them separately?'
'Own, not hire. But that's all manager stuff.'
'Joey's right here. Tell us! This is amazing.'
'It's an industry standard now, really — no one signs actors up for franchises any more without buying their digital identities. You'd be doing that wherever you worked. Zaria, who's agreed to this, actually had much more to worry about.'
'Super, so I sign away all my online identities — I assume you take full ownership and control, and I don't have any say?'
'That's not how it is. You always have a say, especially with the non-fiction. We can't have you doing anything off-brand.'
'And, what, all media and all future media across the universe?'
'That's just standard contract language.'
'Of course. But what if I didn't want to be the Future Buddha or whatever you're trying to build?'
'You're free to do whatever's best for you, Indi. But we'd still own your digital selves, of course. Your new employers could buy you from us, like any other asset.'
'Or you could sell me to whoever you like. I see.'
'In fact, in a few years we'll just be creating public figures from scratch, without needing to sign up an actual human. So you're among the last generation of human stars, which is amazing, I think, because if things go well you might be a star forever. One of the first. Definitely the first from this part of the world.'
'I do feel lucky,' Indi says.
-- Is it time? he asks.
-- Yes, says Joey.
-- You with me?
-- Yes.
'Thank you for this talk,' Indi says. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no.'
'Don't say things you'll -'
'Also fuck you.'
Indi signs out, and so does Joey. They take off their helmets and wipe their sweaty heads.
'Admit it,' Indi says. 'You want me right now.'
'Did we just quit?'
'No. We won. Sure, Nikhil hates me, oh no, what to do. He can't be me, though. And he hates that.'
Joey checks her phone, to find her Narad has good news: the sushi Joey won in her bet was not only ordered, but has also arrived.
Their phones start ringing simultaneously: they silence them.
‘Hungry,’ Indi says.
‘Me too. God, that was a lot of talking. Why is there so much talking?’
Indi stares at her and decides not to say anything.
‘What?’ Joey asks.
‘You barely talk, Joey. I don’t know if you even realise how quiet you are.’
‘You do it better in these situations.’
‘I don’t know.’ Indi shrugs. ‘Talking is all we can do, right? And even that is measured and recorded all the time. But not as much as anything we do with our bodies. I feel like meat, mostly. I’m just saying you should talk more. All you do is react.’
‘Your feedback is noted. Should I smile more, too?’
‘Forget it, let’s eat. Will you invite your nerd and my wife, or will I?' Indi asks.
‘I have to call my mother,’ Joey says, and grimaces when Indi attempts a feeble haven’t-seen-her-in-so-long.
Romola picks up on the second ring. ‘Just missed you, that’s all,’ she says. ‘How have you been?’
‘What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.’
Romola laughs. ‘It’s always strange when you actually remind me you’ve grown up,’ she says. ‘It’s nothing. I just had a bad moment, but it’s gone now. I’ll see you this weekend.’
‘What happened?’
Romola is reluctant, but Joey pushes harder.
‘I went to the market because the crab guy called,’ she says finally. ‘And they were burning some tyres.’
She doesn’t need to tell Joey more: it’s not the first time this had happened. Romola had gone to north-east Delhi to do relief work with some friends after one of the bloodbaths, when Joey was still in school, and had never really recovered from what she’d seen and heard that day, the stories of children who’d been chased by bloodthirsty mobs and survived by leaping from roof to roof, of families who’d lost everything and had just been standing in the street next to the charred husks that were their houses, asking journalists and aid workers what would happen next. One family had led Romola inside, into the ruins, up a staircase into absolute darkness, and shown her what used to be their daughter’s bedroom, where everything had been slowly, systematically ripped apart and then burnt. The daughter had never been found.
The memories have faded over the years, except one: the smell of burnt rubber, from the tyres they’d lit to set fire to the girl’s room, has not left Romola still, she cannot stand it even now.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ Joey asks. ‘Do you want me to come over now?’
‘No, it’s fine, really. I’ll see you this weekend. Joey?’
‘Yes?’
‘Stay out of trouble, please.’
‘Always. But we’re safe, you know.’
‘I know.’
Joey knocks on Rudra's room, then enters when he doesn't answer. Rudra and Tara sit on his bed, helmets on, side by side. No doubt they're walking in some romantic VR world, space, Paris, who knows. By the alignment of their haptic gloves, Joey can tell they're holding hands in VR. She wants to go and knock on their helmets and yell at Rudra for letting Tara see a meeting she had no business seeing, but something about them makes her pause: they've had to go to an imaginary digital world to have their moment, whatever it is. They've found a private corner under Indi's shadow. And there's a certain innocence to that which Joey hasn't seen in a while. It's just what she needed after that meeting.
And then Tara pulls her glove off, and sticks her hand into Rudra's shorts. Joey suppresses a squeal, and is out of the room before their helmets come off.
CHAPTER SIX
IT'S A HIGH-40s day outside the Grand Ganesha Cosmos Mall in South Delhi, and Joey's grateful to be indoors, under the aegis of what a large banner declares, under the pictures of a dozen politicians, is the World-Record-Winning Biggest Air Conditioner. There's a World's Biggest Aquarium somewhere on the premises as well: there always is. What the owners of the mall hadn’t built, and haven’t yet figured out how to remove yet, is a massive E-Klav holo-sculpture that floats in the sky above it: Ashoka’s four-lion pillar, but E-Klav’s changed the lions. One wears a judge’s wig, another army fatigues, another a suit, another a politician outfit: their lower halves are animated, wearing shorts and boots and marching in unison.
Most luxury locations hate letting Flowstars perform on their premises because of the wreckage they leave behind, not to mention the chaos the more famous ones create with their flash-mob fan gatherings. Indi has a good reputation on both fronts, because Joey always brings a cleanup crew and more security men than strictly necessary. The cleaners aren't working fast enough today: there's an asteroid belt of loose wires and scattered merchandise forming in a spiral trailing Indi's orbit, because of course her experienced team can't walk through a supermarket aisle without demolishing every single shelf. Much of the damage is from the extra bodyguards she's hired for this mission: they've been warned about wrestleFlowers who wanted to make a name for themselves by attacking Indi. They seem completely unaware of how much physical space they occupy.
Joey's impressed by how everyone's conveniently forgotten the virtual-meeting argument of two days ago. It had taken just a few salmon and avocado rolls to wipe Indi's brain of all record of conflict: he'd started Flowing as if nothing unusual had occurred. She'd called Funder Radha that evening to ask her what to do next, and learned that Nikhil had been absolutely thrilled to finally meet Indi and his team, and very excited for whatever was next. 'Sorry, am I the only one who remembers a massive argument?' she'd asked, and Funder Radha had laughed and told her that was the most docile she'd seen Nick be in years, all part of the game, just a friendly initiation ritual, and Indi had been amazing as always. Nick liked to test his biggest stars from time to time. He was a hilarious prankster, wasn't he?
'Do you think everything I do is frivolous and irrelevant?' Indi had asked her last evening. He'd been quieter than usual all through the segment, watching Tara and his friends hit their banter beats, completely skipping most of the punchlines his writers typed in his glasses.
'No. But I actively produce more of your life than you do, so I'm a bit biased,' she'd said.
'I think I'm going to take Nikhil's offer,' he'd said. 'Better us than other people.'
'So there's this Russian model where the state funds and controls the resistance,' she'd said. 'So there's really no left or right, everything's a distraction, everyone's observed and under control. This sounds like an Indian version of it. But do you really want to be a piece in that game? Because I don't.'
'No, I have to be in charge. So we stay where we are?'
‘I do think we have to keep moving. We can focus on social relevance if you like. More welfare projects. More education, human rights, all of that. I'd like to.'
'I don't want to become some intellectual leftie type. Preachy and boring is great for in-groups, but we managed to hit that balance, Joey-’
'I'll work on a plan.'
She keeps an eye on the Tara-Indi patter: there's trouble brewing there. Rudra swore he hadn't let her see the meeting, they'd just been wandering around VR worlds together and chatting, but she's not sure she believes him. Tara's decided to take up more airtime on Indi's Flow, but her dialogue needs work and professional writers: Joey has always refused to allow accent coaches for any of her charges, but it really shows when Tara does rehearsed bits, she overperforms, and then overcompensates by improvising, and keeps interrupting group conversations to tell the audience things about herself and her struggle. How she learned English via correspondence course, how she got assaulted by police at a Jaipur student protest and is scared to go to Delhi ones, because she's terrified of getting caught in another mass student killing, how previous boyfriends and bosses and family members have exploited her because she's trusted them too much.
Joey can't bring herself to stop Tara. Why should she not talk about what she's been through? And what better opportunity could she have to pitch herself to her next employer? But if she's doing it to win over the audience, it's not working, and Joey can't find a polite way to tell Tara this. She's had to talk Jin-Young out of warning Tara about her dipping numbers and increasingly irritated live feedback: it just seems wrong to silence someone talking about their trauma. But the crowd is muttering today, even harsher than usual, because Tara couldn't have chosen a worse place to talk about student protests.
The Ganesha Cosmos stands over the ruins of what was once Delhi's most prestigious post-grad university, demolished after three years of demonstrations, terror strikes and bloodshed the city pretends hard to forget. The campus was vast and green, full of peacocks, tea stalls, handmade posters, red-brick buildings and odd characters. The mall and the religious amusement park being built over it are an attempt at dazzling the city into distraction. Tara isn't helping.
Next to Joey, Rudra shuffles awkwardly as he tries to stay out of Indi's eyeline: Indi's already stopped the shoot once to yell at him. Joey hasn't asked Rudra how the love triangle in Indi's penthouse is working out: it's none of her business, and she's overcome the temptation to look at the living room footage to see which bedroom Tara's slept in the last two nights. She suspects it's Rudra's, and that's why he's here, staring at Tara with a stupid smile stuck on his face. He'd made a big deal out of asking for permission, as if they weren't all perfectly aware how he spent his days.
Jin-Young reminds her that Indi and Tara haven't yet done the required promo about the supermarket's cashier-free frictionless checkout and how it works. They should have walked out of the doors by now, while explaining how the store was automatically scanning their groceries and billing their accounts, but instead they're arguing about monogamy in front of a wall of cereal boxes all displaying a grinning criminal billionaire's face. Since Joey appears unmoved by the delay, Jin-Young takes charge and waves towards the supermarket's sliding glass doors in a frenzy. Indi glances towards him, then towards the doors, and achieves genuine enthusiasm for the first time since morning.
Breezing in, surrounded by her all-female security crew (the Six-Pack: six gorgeous fitness models from different parts of India, possibly the subjects of the most AI-generated porn in the whole Flowstar scene) is one of Indi's closest rivals in the Delhi Flowstar charts, MC Sharmila, known for her out-there style palette and with-it wokeFlows. She's also one of Indi's oldest friends, they went to school together, though their respective round-the-clock schedules haven't allowed them to stay in touch over the last few years. Joey's known her since her time with Indi: Sharmila had a habit of popping up and making not-very-subtle references to unspecified school events that made Indi sweat.
'Did the venue double-book?' Joey asks Jin-Young, who runs off to check. Indi waves at Sharmila mid-Flow, and she winks at him. Sharmila's Flow crew springs into action. Three cameras, different angles. Sharmila snaps at one of the Six-Pack, who's in the way of a shot, and Joey winces: the girl, for all her muscles and supremely sexy-confident outfit, looks terrified. But when Sharmila turns back to her, her smile radiates charm. She leans in and gives Joey a warm, lingering hug.
'I'm sorry,' she whispers.
'What for?' Joey asks.
A drone flies up. Sharmila’s live.
An assistant hands Sharmila a bucket full of black paint. She flings the paint at Indi, a perfect cast, a shimmering black wave that hovers in the air before enveloping Indi, captured from multiple angles into ultra-hi-def to be replayed forever in super-slo-mo. Future generations will comment how it almost looks like a lady in a flowing dress embracing an old friend; in real time it's just a resounding sploosh, and Indi's covered from head to toe. Tara screams as the splatter hits her, zebra-striping her in an instant.
'Rapist!' Sharmila shouts. Her assistant hands her a bucket full of pink paint, which she hurls at Joey, who's still watching, frozen, too stupid, too slow to escape. Open-mouthed, which makes it worse.
'Gender-traitor!' Sharmila shouts. She turns to her cam.
'To find out why I did that, stay on this Flow,' she
says.
Joey spits out some of the paint in her mouth and halts Indi's advancing bodyguards with a gesture. The Six-Pack, all in battle-ready stances, look vaguely disappointed.
Sharmila blows them a kiss and leaves with her crew.
Everybody taps their wrists to shut up their smartatts.
Indi realises he's still live. He wipes his face, achieving very little, and gives his cam a big smile and a splutter.
'I have no idea what that was about, but Sharmila is an old friend — as you all know — and this is probably some kind of joke, or performance art,' he says. 'She got me! Pranked! But there's no doubt about one thing. Obviously there's no truth to the accusation — she's joking, okay? I'll be back when I've cleaned up. Until then, I hope you enjoy this rerun of last week's recap.'
For the first time since Joey joined, Indi's Flow goes blank. In his OB van, his editors scramble to find the right package.
'Don't say anything here,' Joey says, pointing at the store's cameras, feeling paint run into her clothes and down her back. 'Jin-Young, settle up with store management. Get Legal. We're out of here.'
She's glad she hired more muscle than usual, because mainstreamer crews are lined up in the car parks along with the usual paps. Every mall shopper nearby has gathered to watch this circus, and there are more cameras up and pointed at them than she's ever seen before: it's like a pop concert. Whatever this is, it was well planned. She’d been a fool for thinking she had any goodwill in the industry — a hundred people could have warned her about this impending crowd-shaming, and had chosen not to. The mainstreamers don't know what Sharmila's Flowing any more than Joey does, but someone tipped them off — they don't know what they're looking for, but that's never a real problem. They taunt Indi and shove mikes in his face to get reactions to unasked questions, but his bodyguards fight them off. Everyone's just recording, stacking their footage: the edits will come later.
