by Susan Juby
She’d never seen that particular model of helmet before, or that colour. She definitely hadn’t seen one with a light on top! It was so fun. And there it sat in front of Fon’s station. As if Fon needed any more advantages. She had a new jetpack that actually worked and a brand-new tint and now this hard-core awesome construction helmet that couldn’t be more perfect for the House of Gear. It was the kind of helmet that could get a girl noticed by scouts from the House of It.
Bright stroked the top of the pink hard hat. It seemed to glow like a living thing in the extremely flattering light of the dressing room. It would look amazing with her Blonder than You hair colour.
Bright scanned the dressing room to make sure neither Pinkie nor Peaches was around to see what she was doing, breathed deeply of the perfumed air, and grabbed the helmet. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if she tried it on. Just for a second.
Bright slid the pink helmet onto her head. She felt a foot taller, in part because the helmet actually made her a foot taller. She smiled seductively at her reflection. Even without her #7 lateral incisor she looked fantastic. Maybe the helmet could become her trademark, like Fon’s halo, and take her to the next level, credit-wise. She’d never had a trademark before.
Then she remembered that the pink construction helmet was Fon’s. It was a new release, affordable only for someone in Fon’s credit bracket. Bright was mid-level, credit-wise, which meant that she could only afford second and sometimes third releases. If you had to go below fourth, you might as well just give up. There was no coming back from that.
Bright started to lift the helmet off her head to put it back on Fon’s ready station, but she hesitated. It was so smooth and warm in her hands. Such a natural fit. And after the shift she’d had so far, she needed extra help to get back on the board.
No one would ever know.
“Hiiiiii!”
When Fon spoke from the doorway, Bright nearly jumped out of her outfit.
“Oh my job, isn’t the music awesome out there tonight?” squealed Fon. “I am having the BEST shift EVER!”
The helmet seemed to constrict around Bright’s temples.
She heard Fon suck in her breath. “Oh. Mah. JOB. Times. Two. I LOVE your helmet!”
Bright’s smile was stuck on her face like a mask. Fon wasn’t smart, but eventually she would realize that the helmet on Bright’s head was hers and that Bright was totally touching it.
Aware that her expression was more like a pre-throw-up face than a welcoming one, Bright tried to put a little genuine in it.
“Thank you,” she said in a low voice.
“I’m serious!” said Fon. “That is just the greatest helmet ever! EVER!”
Should she take the helmet off and apologize? Say she’d thought it was hers? Say the whole thing was a mistake? Fon was super-nice and not exactly bot-like in the brain department, but she was a favour, and there were rules of conduct to be followed inside a dressing room. Don’t mess with another favour’s gear was pretty much numero uno. Or at least in the top three.
“I was just—”
“Looking for good old #7,” said Fon, pointing sympathetically at the gap in Bright’s dental layout. “I have been there. If I’m not careful, I’ll be getting #11 replaced after this shift. Awesome client from a credit perspective, but clumsy.”
Bright finally took her hand away from the helmet on her head and reached for her tooth, which lay like a bloody little clue near Fon’s Gotta Get Some Glow On tint.
“Yeah,” Bright said.
She sidled away from Fon’s ready station to her own, where she stood, too nervous to sit down. Was she really going to blow past touching and move into stealing another favour’s stuff? The thought made her stomach heave.
She needed nutri with calm plus energy properties like ten minutes ago. Where was Pinkie? Probably caught a wheel on a door jamb and got stuck again. Pinkie was an entry-level service bot, but Bright had never even considered trading up.
As if on cue, Pinkie emerged from the bot door on the side of the dressing room holding a large glass of Keep Going and two Hard Charger pills. Peaches was right behind her.
Fon unclicked her halo so that the semicircular frame fell in front of her, like a wire bib. She settled into her chair with a sigh.
“Nothing so nice as nutrition!” she sang.
Bright gazed at herself in the mirror. It was hard not to. Dressing-room mirrors magnified and were surrounded by enhancement lights so that favours could make the most of what they had. She looked … pinched. Guilt was taking a toll on her skin, probably causing fine lines and wrinkles.
She willed her facial muscles to soften.
That was better. She took the glass from Pinkie’s grasper and drank deeply. Instantly she relaxed, as confidence and well-being flooded through her. No one knew what was in the nutri drinks or the pills, but everybody loved them.
Bright held out her hand and Pinkie dropped the pills into it.
Bright tossed them back and chased them with the last swallows of her nutri.
She checked out her reflection again. Damn, she looked good. The pink helmet was bathed in the rose-tinted light of the dressing room. Every shadow flattered. Her skin was fine. She’d been seeing things earlier.
“Turn the light on. I want to see it!”
Bright swivelled to look at Fon, who smiled back at her, radiating gorgeousness and good will.
“I should probably get Pinkie to put in a temporary tooth. Can’t go out there all gappy,” said Bright. It was the best excuse she could come up with. She didn’t want to test out the helmet light. It was one thing to wear someone else’s new gear. Somehow, it seemed like a whole other dance party to activate it.
“Come on! I’m dying to see!”
Bright bowed her head. The light feature was cool.
“I’m saving it for important occasions,” said Bright. “And really important and exclusive people.”
“Oh,” said Fon, her face falling slightly.
“It’s just so next-level, you know?” added Bright, starting to enjoy her moment. “Not everyone is ready for it.”
When she saw the look of genuine disappointment on Fon’s face—a look she had never seen before—Bright relented. Her finger found the hard little nub on the side of the helmet and pushed it. Nothing happened.
“It’s not working.”
“Let me look,” said Fon.
Fon came over and stood on her tiptoes to peer at the top of the helmet. “Hit the switch again,” she said.
Bright pushed her finger against the button and left it there. “Anything?” she asked.
“It’s kind of going on and off.”
Bright jerked her head away and pulled off the helmet in one movement.
She hit the button again and stared down at it. The small, round bulb flickered insistently, strangely. Strands of yellow and white and pink, with a piercing needle of light at the centre, seemed to be trying to escape the glass. It was beautiful. She bet it would be even more beautiful if the light worked properly. That combination of colours would look fabulous with a wide range of skin tones.
Suddenly, the light blazed on, nearly blinding her.
Bright heard a thump and dragged her gaze away to see Fon lying on the ground. Fon’s eyes had rolled up into her head so that only the whites showed. Her mouth was slack. It was actually a pretty good look, in a passed-out sort of way, and for a brief moment Bright wondered if she should try it sometime. Then her vision was clouded by shadows. She hit the button to turn out the light. The helmet went dark and so did she.
04.00
Grassly’s fingers moved in a blur at the side of his temple as he hacked the feed to disable the bots’ standing order to report all unusual behaviour inside the dressing rooms. The screen showed two favours lying on the floor. What was happening? What had gone wrong? It seemed that the light hadn’t worked correctly—again. He’d been dancing the slip slide in his workshop and stopped paying close attention to the fee
d for a second. When he looked back, both favours had been exposed to the light, and both had collapsed. He decided to be safe and, with a couple of decisive flicks of his hand, took both bots’ feeds offline entirely.
Lucky for him that the feed was a tangled, twisted mess of missed connections, shorts, and dead ends. There were at least a thousand satellites and drones still operating on and above Earth, and they flooded the system with information. The remote data joined the glut of information coming in from every area in the Store. At this late stage in their development, the ancestors were so incapable of independent thought and so far removed from the foundation of their technological past that none of them could fix, troubleshoot, or even streamline their own clogged and erratic network.
On his screen one of the favours stirred. She carefully raised a hand to her large and complicated hairstyle. “My head hurts,” she said. He couldn’t tell which one she was. Favours were difficult to differentiate from one another, especially when they had the same hair colour and skin tone.
The other moaned. “Do I look okay?” she asked in a blurred voice.
He watched, relieved that both favours were alive and no one was gushing blood or chewing on wiring. That was progress, at least.
One of them appeared to be staring at the helmet, which lay on its side in front of her.
“I super-love that shade of pink,” she said.
“It’s hot,” said the other, slurring slightly.
The first favour shifted so she could grab the helmet. She hit the button, and he saw the light flood into her face.
“Ooooh, pretty!” she said.
“Fierce,” said the other.
They sounded like any other favours. Not enlightened at all. But if the light didn’t work, why had they fallen down? He knew that, during their nutrition updates, the ancestors were fed a steady diet of pharmaceuticals to manage their moods and attitudes. Perhaps they’d ingested too much.
“Hey,” said the favour who wasn’t shining the light directly into her own face. “Why are we lying on the floor?”
The one hugging the helmet to her chest said, “Does this light make my chin look big?”
“No! How could you say that? You just had it done. No light could make it look big! Unless it was like the world’s giantest light for making things look giant.”
The two favours slowly sat up, superstitiously air-touching their faces to make sure everything was in place.
The audio came through clearly.
“It’s weird, right?” said one. “Being on the floor?”
“The floor is pretty hard. You know, harder than when you wake up in bed,” said the other.
Then both favours looked over toward the doorway of the dressing room. Grassly adjusted the cameras to bring up another angle so he could see what they were looking at.
A third favour stood in the doorway. The young man had on a red pointed helmet, yellow plastic pants, and no shirt. Grassly knew from his time undercover in the House that the look was known as Firefighter. The male favour had just opened his mouth to speak when the edge of the beam from the pink helmet slid over his face. His mouth fell open as the light reached his eyes. He staggered back and disappeared from view.
Inside the dressing room, the two favours paid little attention.
“I hate it when people can’t even keep track of what tier they’re on,” said the one without the helmet.
“It’s happened to me before, but that was different because I’d had that no-blink treatment done on my eyes. Anyway, we better get ready to go back on shift.”
Grassly found a camera that showed the View Walk just outside the dressing room. The young favour had fallen onto his back. He stirred, rolled over, and sat up. He pushed his fireman’s hat off his head and ran his hand through his perfectly mussed hair. “I’ve got to go,” the boy said in a toneless voice.
Grassly turned up the sound on the nearest micro-transmitter, feeling confused and hopeful.
“I’ve got to go,” repeated the favour. “I’ve got to find the light. It’s time for me to go.” Then he burbled something unintelligible and began crawling. At the end of the walkway, he bumped headfirst into the wall. He backed up a few inches, then crawled into the wall again.
Two black-clad figures stepped into view. PS officers.
“Oh Mother,” said Grassly.
05.00
During the following shift, it took Bright over an hour to get away from Fon, who had insisted on riding down the same rope on a double-descent. Fon was a faster slider, and she nearly flattened Bright. Fon’s boot knocked the pink helmet askew on Bright’s head, preventing Bright from activating the light, which had been her plan to get higher bids. That was disappointing. Even so, the two of them drew heavy bidding.
Bright couldn’t tell who was bidding for whom, and neither could the Choosing Room computer that tracked such things. Two of the lit wands turned purple, indicating accepted bids, and immediately the rest of the clients’ wands winked out. The two lucky bidders screamed and jumped in the air and high-fived each other. They fist-bumped, then hip-checked each other in an exuberant little dance. Everyone circled around them, patting them on the back. Since everyone had bid on Fon and Bright, the two winners would be broke for a long time, but no one would think about that until after the party ended.
Bright’s client was a shambling, round-shouldered man from Stuffed Baby Things. Fon’s was a tall, thin woman whose badge indicated she worked in Extrusion. Bright wondered which one was paying more credits. She hoped her client was.
Bright quickly led her client from the Choosing Room to Big Guns, hoping that Fon wouldn’t follow. As they passed through the crowd, lures—who were new favours just out of the Party Favour Training Centre—clapped and made a big fuss. Lures were in charge of getting the crowd excited, so they would bid more.
Bright had enjoyed her time as a lure. Less responsibility, less gear to buy. But less prestige, too. Lures didn’t even earn enough credits to go to Mind Alter or Gaming. The only entertainment they could afford was the Natural Experience, which no favour in his or her right mind would actually pay for. Lures earned just enough credits for fourth-release gear and the updates they needed to do their jobs. They often had to go deep into debt even for that.
After six months, lures graduated to one of the easy rooms, where they helped experienced favours entertain clients. When a lure got promoted to full favour, he or she could party in one of the prime rooms, like the Total Access Room or Big Guns or Scatter Hoses. Unless they were recovering from major maintenance or updates, favours worked excellent rooms until they got too tired. By age eighteen, most started the slide into less prime areas and got fewer bids for fewer credits. By age twenty, the average favour was looking at contract release, or maybe a short time at the House of Pretty Olds.
Big Guns was one of the most exciting and exclusive rooms in the House of Gear. Favours here danced like the professional party athletes they were. They performed hilarious hand-to-hand combat with clients and demonstrated feats of strength and skill, such as headstands and somersaults and cartwheels, while strobe lights burst in rapid-fire succession out of gun-shaped fixtures. They made their clients look great and feel better. Favours who were good enough to party in Big Guns were watched by a host of personal support staff, who made sure no one interfered with the flow of credits or anyone’s productivity. The number of PS staff was a sure sign of how expensive a room was.
Bright looked around and saw, with satisfaction, that there were at least eight PS officers watching the party in Big Guns. No one would mess with her. She was a valuable asset—a highly desirable consumable not intended for just any old productive with two credits to rub together!
Bright danced her guy from corner to corner. She ran playfully across the room, pretending to spray him with bullets from a light gun she’d picked up. When he looked away, she used the tiny can of sticky spray she’d hidden in her tool belt, surreptitiously applying it to her hands a
nd her feet. Then she climbed straight up the wall, like gravity was just a boring rumour.
The client from Stuffed Baby Things enjoyed her performance, but once or twice she saw his attention wander. The Big Guns scene was chaos, as always, with dancing and people shooting other people with light and spraying Zip Fizz and Saucy Sauce into each others’ eyes and generally having a fantastic time.
Bright danced harder. She was the high-credit favour in the room, so why was her dumpy-butt client looking at the favour in the see-through haz-mat suit? Was Bright’s linesman outfit boring? Fon had said it went perfectly with Bright’s pink helmet, which was meant to be the focal point of the outfit. (She had changed her mind about returning the helmet. In fact, since Fon didn’t seem to realize it was missing, Bright had almost forgotten she’d stolen it.)
Bright pulled her sticky hands and feet off the wall and returned to the floor. She summoned a service bot to bring her some cleanser. By the time she finished spritzing her second foot, her client’s gaze was wandering again. It was clear that he was disappointed with his experience. Everyone else’s clients liked their favours more. Sure, he kept saying “Hot!” and “Oh wow! You’re so fun!” but there was something sort of casual about the way he said it. If a favour was going to make it to the House of It, the most super-elite house of them all, she or he had to consistently produce top results.
Out of the corner of her eye, Bright saw Fon and her tall, skinny client enter the room and start dancing the dip shizz. Once Fon had moved her client into the middle of the space, she dropped to the floor and began to spin. She supported her entire body on one bent arm, her legs held out straight a few inches off the ground. Fon’s client leapt over her legs as they passed beneath her, screaming with laughter every time.
“It’s like flying!” the woman cried. “I’m flying!”
