by S E Anderson
“Did you intend to sound patronizing?” said Kork. “Because that sounded patronizing. And need I remind you that a very convincing military film career is what’s getting you in the door?”
“She’ll have to do more than give it a go. She’ll have to perfect it.” Blayde tossed me the sad excuse for shoes, turning to the kitchen to drink from the tap as I struggled with the fit.
Zander came over to my side, silently lacing up the other shoe as a reference for the one I was struggling with. I replicated the knots as closely as I could, his voice guiding me whenever I messed up. Blayde watched from the kitchen island, her legs crossed, a glass of water in her hand, her eyes stern as they locked on me. Kork sat beside her, a little dazed.
I got to my feet, struggling to keep my balance. Flashbacks of those ballet classes I had fought so hard for only to despise so much flooded my periphery vision. The shoes tried to relieve a bit of the difficulty by shifting the weight off the tip of the toes to the heel of the foot, but that meant you had to teach yourself how to walk again by using only one pressure point on the shoe instead of walking heel to toe.
At this point, a new song had started, the rhythmic interlude only at its beginning. I stood to face Zander in the small space of the apartment, wobbling slightly in my new shoes. He gave me a reassuring smile as we started to circle, while Blayde coached loudly from the kitchen.
“Knee, clap, knee, clap, knee, stomp, clap, and again.”
And again and again, until, as predicted, my feet slipped out from under me, and I fell face-first into the floor, a loud crack resounding from the collision.
“Are you all right?” Zander asked, helping me back up.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Hold on,” I replied before pushing my nose back into its rightful place. He wiped the blood off my lip.
Kork gaped. “What the hell happened in those two-month-minutes?”
“Well, maybe you can cram a lifetime’s worth of dance classes into next week,” said Blayde. “Because you’re going to have to do better than that. I don’t think I have time to make a new plan, anyway. So, dance like your life depends on it.”
“Give her a break, Blayde. It’s not like she’s going to get it right on her first try. Most people spend their whole lives perfecting it.”
“All the more reason for her to step it up a notch,” she snapped. “Sally, I’m not sugarcoating this. Appearance is everything here. Any power we want to reclaim from the Alliance starts now, and it starts here. Dance for your parents’ lives. Dance for Felling’s life. Dance for Marcy’s life. Because in a way, their lives all depend on it.”
I nodded, following his instructions as we attempted the dance once again. I lasted twice as long this time before tripping over my own toes and tumbling over again, my nose remaining intact this attempt. Again, Zander helped me up, instructed me on what I did wrong, and as soon as a new song started up, we were at it again.
By the end of the evening, I seriously wished my parents could see me now.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
My love language is cereal
True to our word, we didn’t overstay our welcome—any longer than we already had. We jumped out of the apartment before Kork was even awake. It was easy enough waking early when you didn’t have a cozy bed to sleep in and the couch was more decorative than actually meant to be sat on, let alone slept on. When this was all over, that’s what I needed most: sleep. I never thought I’d miss a motel before.
Despite the city spanning the entire planet, Zander and Blayde insisted we couldn’t take the metro. This had nothing to do with their fear of being recognized, though, admittedly, it was a possibility since some entrances were covered by LifePrints. Instead it had everything to do with an ancient feud between city planning AIs, which despised each other or something. Which is how we found ourselves on the ground level of the infinite city, strolling down a market street in the rumbling hours of the early morning.
It was nothing like Da-Duhui. Here, sunlight reached even the lowest tier, thanks to a complicated set of mirrors that focused the light no matter what time of day it was. The street we were on was packed tightly with people from every corner of the galaxy: humans side by side with furry monsters and gaseous globs. Market stalls lined the road as far as the eye could see, which wasn’t particularly far due to the aforementioned crowd.
It was a world of color and sound and, above all else, smell. Spices from every plant from every planet were sold in drifting spheres of stock. Vendors shouted their wares, bright holographic lights sprawling in lieu of banners. A beautiful day if I ever did see one.
“You see?” said Blayde, flinging her arms wide, much to the frowns–and other unrecognizable expressions of those around her. “This is what a real market looks like. Not like that rinky-dink place you took us to in Washington.”
“I didn’t take you there. Felling had been kidnapped,” I said. “But I get your point. This is a beautiful market.”
“Pyrina is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to,” said Zander. “And it doesn’t matter where you visit; it’s always gorgeous. Clean. Sunny where it needs to be and shady everywhere else.”
“Speaking of,” muttered Blayde, before dashing off to a side alley, Surly-Bop bouncing on her back.
“Should we go after her?” I asked, as she disappeared into the shadows.
“Nah. Less conspicuous this way. Have you seen the monkeys?”
He gripped my hand and led me across the road to a small stall covered with what most definitely were not monkeys. Something I might perhaps call a land squid: eight fleshy appendages connected to a small head with massive eyes; the critters were about the size of a Yorkie and oddly cute. Zander was stroking a blue one sitting on a little swing, and I couldn’t tell which one was cooing at the other.
“Are they … pets?” I asked, afraid to pet one myself. They didn’t look soft, a bit like a hairless cat, and that just made my skin crawl.
“Yeah. For those who can’t afford robots, these little beasties are the next best thing. More like service animals, if you will.”
The person running the stall looked like the creature they were selling, except larger than me. They got up, taking a monkey down from the perch, babbling so quickly I could not catch what she was saying even if I did have a working translator. Zander must have gotten the gist of it, taking the animal she offered him and placing it on my shoulder before I could retort. Instantly, it clambered up my hair, sitting itself on the top of my scalp.
“Zander,” I sputtered, “what’s it doing?”
“Just showing off,” he said as he reached for my phone, and I heard the unmistakable sound of the shutter snapping shut.
“Oy, pics? Really?”
“Come on, a monkey is sitting on your head, braiding your hair. A moment to remember, right? From what I learned about Instagram, this is prime material.”
“It’s not a monkey,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure the Agency would literally kill me if I put this online. Also, it’s braiding my hair?”
“And it’s amazing at it.” He reached his arm up, the little creature scampering up it to his shoulder, where its eight legs immediately got to work on him. “Cute, right?”
He fished in his pocket for the right currency, tipping the stall owner as the critter returned to its perch. Zander’s gravity-defying hair now had long French braids up the sides, following the curve of his scalp and giving him a sort of faux-hawk in the middle.
“You have to tip them well,” he said, turning back to me. “Cosmetology school is expensive. Trust me.”
I slipped back into my comfortable confusion. It was the only way to enjoy this foreign place without having my brain explode. Take everything surprising as it came, without asking any questions I didn’t have the brainpower to store the answers to.
Such as, why were there butterflies on chains over there? They might not have been actual butterflies, come to think of it, and were they pets or food? I saw one gu
y petting them and another chomping on them. Another bought a dozen and strung them up to his grocer bags, which promptly flew away. And all this in the matter of minutes I was watching.
“Pyrina to Sally?” asked Zander, reaching for my hand again. “You okay?”
“I need to upgrade my brain’s processing power,” I said. “There’s just so much here.”
“Let’s get some breakfast,” he said. “Sit down for a bit.”
We grabbed a seat at a hole-in-the-wall cafe, and I let Zander order for me, seeing as how I couldn’t translate what I didn’t even know. The result was a pink drink about the consistency of a latte and a sweet-smelling bun covered in herbs.
“You didn’t get me any?” asked Blayde, sliding in between us before I could take a sip or a bite or even pick which I wanted to start with.
Zander signaled the waiter. “Didn’t know how long it would take. How’d it go?”
She grinned one of her very proudest smiles, dropping three black grains onto the table. “New identities. ID chips, brand new, stolen from a hospital before they were put into circulation. I’ll load them up when we reach the apartment. It’s a bit of a slum, but I spent the last of the stress balls to get it, so it’s the best we can afford if we don’t want to show up to the ball nude.”
“You got us a roof?”
“And a few leads on ways into the ball. Eat, and we’ll track down our new digs. Oh, and Sally, I grabbed you these on the way.”
She handed me a square bag, and I didn’t even have to take it to know what it was. “Not those torturous dress shoes!”
“You have to learn to dance in them,” she insisted. “Your training starts today.”
“I thought it had started last night?”
“That was just the warm-up. Now put them on and drink your bilk. That’ll fortify you, and you’re going to need to be heavily fortified.”
Zander sighed for me as I endured his sister’s pushing. We ate, paid, and were back on the street, though this time I was now a whole foot taller and flopping around like the wacky inflatable balloon man.
“Is this really necessary?” asked Zander, following behind me like I was learning to ride a bike without capsizing for the first time. Blayde was entirely against any handholding, though I wasn’t sure that was part of her so-called training.
“She’s the one who wanted this,” she replied. “If she finds this difficult, how could she handle tearing down years of systematic oppression over her own people?”
She had a point there. I sucked in my gut and powered on, flailing, yes, but with determination.
***
After a long walk and a confusing encounter where I almost crushed the entire micro-organism district, we finally found our new home. The second the door closed behind me, I knew very well I wouldn’t have to worry about losing the address because I wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon.
“You call this a slum?” I said as Blayde brushed past me.
“Yeah, have you seen it?” She threw her arms wide.
“It’s nicer than my place!”
“Why do you think I hated your apartment so much?”
Cleaning nanos were literally dirt cheap in this city—the hives of smog nanos frequently rained them down—and every surface of the apartment was spotless. White and clean like Kork’s place, the only difference was that there no windows, though a large television on the wall pulled off the illusion rather well.
So, not only had we found a clean apartment with a TV and I don’t know how many bedrooms, but all it had cost was a few stress balls too.
“Right,” said Blayde, “I’ll craft the new identities. Zander, you start building an organic gun that’ll make it through the weapons detectors at the ball. And, Sally, you work on your footwork.”
“Isn’t there something more, I don’t know, useful I could be doing?”
“Not really,” said Blayde. “By the way, I like the hair.”
And with that, she locked herself in a room, leaving the two of us alone with the TV, cool braids, and a whole lot of confusion.
“Well, you heard her,” said Zander. “I guess we get to work.”
So, I clapped until my hands were raw. I stomped until my heels and my shoes had become one with each other, not just by feeling but by flesh as well. I stomped as I watched the TV advertise pictures of Earth as a travel destination I didn’t have the translator for, and I stomped as I drank carton after carton of milk.
The shoes stayed on every waking minute in the apartment. They stayed on as Blayde came and went, each time her hands full of new wonders: yards and yards of exotic silks one time, buckets of bones the next, fifteen cartons of cereal nearing the end of our first day.
“I’m going to need your help on this,” she said, dropping the boxes on the kitchen island.
“Shh, I’m practicing,” I said.
“Don’t be facetious. Come and help, or do you want to spend the ball pretending you took a vow of silence?”
I sat down at the bar, my feet tingling from ten straight hours of dancing, and followed her lead, ripping into the cartons and shaking the baggies of cereal around.
“What are we looking for?” I asked.
“A translator, dummy,” she said. “The cereal brand has got this goody thing at the moment. Not every box has one, but the odds are good. Plus, it’ll keep us fed all week. Ah!”
She ripped open her bag, pulling out a small box. Inside, the washer-shaped device that held my salvation: access to all languages in existence.
“Hold on,” I said. “If the Agency can’t afford a decent translator for Foollegg, how can cereal brands afford to give them away?”
“Corporate branding,” she said with a shrug. “They’re not the best quality, but it’s the best we can do right now. Need help putting it in?”
I knew the drill by now. She was kind enough to lend me her laser, and all it took was a small cut behind my ear to insert the translator.
I blinked at the cereal boxes before me, once covered in gibberish, and saw their letters rearrange themselves into English. Alphabet Breakfast, they said, bright yellow letters on red. Put the eating back in reading.
“So?” asked Blayde. “Does it work?”
“Oh my gosh,” I stammered, and for an instant, it felt like I was on solid ground again, even with my feet dangling from the chair in their strappy shoes. Without language, I had no voice. Now, speech was all mine again.
“I take that as a yes. Ah, Zander, you’re done?”
Zander stepped out of the bathroom, brandishing the ugliest weapon I’d ever seen in my life. It looked like those catapults you make out of pens and rubber bands in primary school, except this one had a second job as the skeleton of a yet unknown animal.
“That’s disgusting,” I said, and Zander nodded.
“But it won’t register as a weapon,” he replied, putting it on the table amidst the piles of cereal. Not very sanitary.
“Will it even fire bullets?” I asked.
“Not bullets,” said Blayde, leaning her head back and pointing at her mouth. My face lost all color as I put two and two together.
“No, no way. Absolutely no way. No way.”
“Fine.” She shrugged, throwing her head back further and reaching her hand into her mouth. Her bloody fingers clutched a molar. “Coward.”
“It’s gross!”
“Who cares? Unlimited ammo!” She grinned, and I sank into my chair. It wasn’t too late to call this whole thing off. Throw ourselves a traditional little revolution instead of this whole mess. “How in the universe are you still sane and stable right now?”
“Well, you’re the one who broke me out of a mental institution. I guess that says a lot more about you than it does about me.”
“No, it doesn’t! And if you want the power of fresh, clean teeth, but you’re also craving pudding, you know you should always turn to Chummy Chews first! Now available at any local pharmacy. Races from the gamma sector may expe
rience a slight tingling in their tenth extremities.”
I clapped my hands over my mouth. At first, I thought the stares were bad, but those were made worse when the siblings burst out laughing.
“Stop!” I begged. “I don’t know what just happened!”
“Blayde,” said Zander, forcing himself to frown, though I could see his laughter was still going strong in his gut. “You couldn’t find her anything better than a corporate-sponsored gimmick?”
“I was out of Starburst,” she said. “They’ve decreased in value since the last time we were here, and you ate half our stash!”
“Get it out of me!” I screamed. “I’m not a walking billboard!”
“Hold on, we can fix this,” said Zander. “For the time being, just stay calm. It’s going to be fine, okay?”
I nodded. I didn’t want to speak any more than I had to, lest I discover the other sponsors programmed into my head.
“It’s the only translator we have,” said Blayde. “She’ll have to get used to it.”
“You created new identities out of nothing. You can probably fix the thing, can’t you?”
“Maybe. But that’s not a priority right now.”
“Not a … hello? She can’t go to a ball and start telling everyone to buy pharmacy-grade gum! They’ll know right away she’s not supposed to be there!”
“Well, I guess she’ll just have to keep her mouth shut, then,” she said, huffing in frustration. “But at least she’ll know what’s going on. Look, you two, I have a meeting with a contact in just a few minutes about getting the rest of our presidential invites. We’ll talk about this when I get back. Until then, practice talking with your feet instead of your mouth. All right? All right. And leave some cereal for me.”
I’m pretty sure she jumped instead of walking the last few feet to the door because she disappeared faster than I could say anything, leaving Zander and me alone at the table. He looked as shocked as I felt.
