Once Upon a Star

by Anthea Sharp

  It was pretty, but not real.

  Echo looked at the star speckled walls for several seconds before finding Boomer’s bright gaze.

  “I am hungry,” she said.

  “You don’t require food.”

  “I am naked. I cannot walk around without clothes.”

  Boomer sighed with exasperation. “I will give you clothes right after I attach your legs.”

  She had half a mind to kick him with those legs once they were securely connected to the rest of her body, but she still needed clothes.

  Boomer relit the lantern before extinguishing the stars and closing the box. He brought the first leg over from the worktable, kneeling in front of her to affix first her right leg, joining wires with black tape before smoothing together the synthetic skin.

  “Your clothes will cover the seams,” he assured her. “Can you wiggle your toes?” Her toes curled and uncurled. “That’s good.” Boomer pulled out a trunk from beneath the worktable and fished out a pair of worn jeans and a thin navy sweater. “You’re skinny, but so am I. These should fit.” He handed the clothes to her and turned around to give her privacy, though he’d seen her parts, put her together with his own two hands.

  At the sound of the zipper, he turned and saw her dressed and striding to the door.

  “Echo, where are you going?”

  “To see the stars.”

  And with that, she ran out into the night.

  [ 2 ]

  Wild wind whipped at her shoulder-length hair. It blew brown strands in front of her eyes. Her new toes touched rough sand covering a one-lane dirt road between dark shacks. Clouds covered the sky, but bright lights illuminated a city on a slope in the distance. She jogged toward it.

  “Echo,” Boomer’s voice cried into the night. “Ech—”

  The last of her name was swallowed up by the wind as though sucked into a black hole.

  She ran and ran toward those city lights, twinkling from towering buildings, skipping and jumping along the way. What wonders awaited? What novelties running through her data feed that she had yet to see and experience firsthand?

  Her energy never flagged, not even a half hour into her run. The swift, steady pace she kept brought her to the north end of the city lights after another eight-minute jog.

  From a blacked-out window, a neon green flickering sign read: The Thirsty Martian. A door to the establishment opened and a rotund man ambled out with a belch. He pulled a wide pair of goggles over his eyes, belched again then took out a comm.

  “Pickup at corner of sector eight west—hiccup—and Neptune,” he slurred into the tiny device.

  Fascinated by everything around her, Echo waited and watched as, five minutes later, a hovercar appeared at the end of the street, kicking up sand with its thrusters. A door on one side lifted and the man who had left the bar stumbled inside. The door reclosed and the hovercar shot off, disappearing behind the buildings.

  Echo blinked then turned to the door of The Thirsty Martian and pushed it open, stepping into a cavernous room lit up by glowing yellow orbs on small round tables. Patrons slouched over these tables drinking from tankards as skinny women with green skin and platinum blonde hair bobs replaced empty glasses with full ones.

  A deeper scan showed Echo that these women were not extraterrestrials, as she’d hoped, but descendants of the human race with green paint rubbed over their skin.

  “Oy! What are you doing in here?” Snapped a burly man in an oversized jacket.

  He’d been standing with his back leaning against the bar’s counter. Now he thumped over to where Echo stood near the entrance, a thick black scarf coiled around his neck like a snake with its tail hanging over his shoulder ready to strike.

  “I want a drink,” Echo said.

  “Do you have any bracers?”

  Bracers, the currency on Enyoid, her data feed informed her. They were used to purchase all manner of services and goods: shoes, hair extensions, clothes designed for a woman’s body, electricity, and entry into all of the local establishments. Echo needed bracers.

  “Where can I get some?” she inquired.

  The burly man laughed. His face hardened like baked earth a second later.

  “Get out of my bar, borg.”

  As she turned to leave, she saw him lift a comm to his wide lips. Turning up the volume on her hearing, she picked up the words “running loose” and “owner nowhere in sight.”

  Echo dashed out the door and onto the dusty street, sprinting in the direction the drunken man had gone to wait for his hovercar. Maybe one would pick her up and zip her away. But the corner of sector eight west and Neptune was deserted. Murky light from an oval streetlamp filtered down. Echo didn’t want to wait around beneath that light.

  She raced down the next street and the next, reading store signs as she sprinted past them.

  Andromeda Outerwear. Nova’s Novelties. Estrella Salon & Spa. Amplitude, trade in your old comm for our newest model. Absolute Zero: The Coolest Sports Drinks On The Planet.

  “Bracers,” she kept thinking, “I need bracers.”

  Here and there, she slowed to peer into windows. The city’s buildings acted as a wind buffer, shielding the shops from the incessant gale whipping across the barren land beyond.

  Echo nearly ran into a hovercar around the next bend. Both doors lifted like wings ready to take flight. Two men jumped out. They were dressed in identical brown trench coats and thick blue scarves. Jetters, planetary police, her feed told her. Behind their backs, disgruntled citizens referred to them as “drillheads” or “nozzles,” but “jetter” was the formal term.

  One of the jetters strode toward her and, as she began to back away, pulled a taser gun from his pocket and shot her in the stomach.

  Echo’s internal wires shrieked in outrage. “No good, nozzle,” she thought right before her data feed flickered off then began rebooting, leaving her confused and barely able to stand.

  The second jetter grabbed her arm and yanked her to the hovercar, pushing her into the back. He and his partner leapt back in and closed the doors.

  Echo stared at the scooped metal seats with their plastic padding and all the buttons on the front console near the steering wheel.

  Her thoughts were as jumbled as a meteor shower knocking around through her consciousness while her data feed finished completing its reboot.

  “What do you think, Zav?” the jetter in the driver’s seat asked, looking over at his partner. “Fresh off the assembly line, got out before her owner could program her to obey?”

  The other man, Zav, glanced back at Echo before answering.

  “Nah,” he said, turning back around to face the scratched-and-dinged-up windshield. “Illegal,” he stated with confidence. “I bet you twenty bracers she’s a home project with no permit.”

  “Bracers?” Echo repeated, perking up.

  “Yeah, let’s hope your creator has some for the fine we’re slapping him with if he doesn’t have a permit to build.”

  “Time to go,” the driver said. “Who is your creator?”

  A name flickered through Echo’s conscious.

  “Boomer.”

  “And where does this Boomer live?”

  Information filled Echo’s head. She read it back robotically.

  “Rusty Lane in sector sixty-seven south.”

  “Sector south.” Zav snorted. “We might as well book her. He’s not gonna have enough bracers to buy her back.”

  “We’ll check it out,” the driver said. “The cubes are already overcrowded, and you never know what these sparks have tucked away. Might be we uncover ourselves some hidden treasure.”

  The thrill of the hovercar flying down the streets was soon replaced with disappointment as they left behind the city with its lights and shops. Darkness fell over the hovercar’s windows like blinds as they traveled southward. The homes outside the city had faint lights, but the streets did not.

  Echo peered out the window, taking it all in, which is how she
noticed Boomer, his coat flying behind him like a cape as he ran, arms pumping, toward the city.

  “That’s him,” she said, tapping the window. “That’s Boomer.”

  [ 3 ]

  The driver turned the hovercar around and flicked a switch on the dashboard that made a loud click. A yellow beam of light illuminated Boomer. He stopped running, turned around, and held his arm up to shield his goggled eyes from the spotlight. His brown hair was windblown and lips cracked.

  The doors of the vehicle lifted again, blasting the occupants with wind and sand.

  “You, stay inside unless you want to be zapped again,” Zav warned.

  “But Boomer will be happy to see me.”

  “Will he?” Zav grunted before jumping out.

  She watched the jetters flank Boomer. Correction: drillheads.

  All three men were lit up in the spotlight for Echo to sit back and watch like a play, but even with her sharp hearing, she couldn’t pick up their words in the whoosh and rush of wind. She tried reading their lips instead, but they kept turning sideways rather than facing her fully.

  Boomer spread his arms at his sides, his hands flapping as he spoke to the drillheads. Several times he glanced at the hovercar, and Echo was certain she heard him speak her name.

  The driver crossed his arms over his chest, and his partner patted the taser gun on his hip. The drillheads stared Boomer down with eyes like leaser beams, waiting for something—bracers probably, which Echo knew Boomer didn’t have.

  His lips moved more, but the drillheads said nothing back. Shoulders hunching, Boomer rubbed his forehead. When he faced the hovercar, Echo caught his lips forming the words “at my dwelling.”

  The drillheads looked at one another and nodded before escorting Boomer to the hovercar. He bent his head to get in and kept it bent for the remainder of the ride to his shack. No one spoke. When they arrived, Echo was told again to wait inside the hovercar. After the three men went inside, a faint light appeared from behind the plastic window. They were inside for several minutes before returning. Zav held the metal box pressed against his side with his arm.

  “Go on, get out,” Zav said.

  Echo climbed out and heard the blast of the hovercar jetting down the howling lane as she followed Boomer to the door of the shack.

  He dropped his goggles and scarf on the empty table rather than hang them on their hooks.

  “Echo, you can’t take off like that. You’re lucky the jetters didn’t take you straight to the cubes and have you contained.”

  “Those nozzles took my stars.”

  “Yes, and if I hadn’t had them to give, they would have taken you away. You can’t run off like that, especially into the city or after dusk. I was so worried about you.”

  She had enough sense to hang her head.

  “I’m sorry, Boomer. I won’t run off like that again.”

  “I understand that you’re curious. It’s not the city, but there’s a bazaar in sector fifty-two south on Wednesdays and Sundays with lots to see. I think you’ll enjoy it. I can take you on Sunday and once you’ve settled into a routine, you can go on your own to the bazaar on Wednesdays.”

  Echo beamed.

  “And will you give me bracers so I can shop?”

  Boomer grimaced.

  “We’ll see what I have left over after payday.”

  Which reminded Echo that he would be away all day, leaving her in the tiny shack with nothing interesting to occupy the time.

  “You cannot expect me to sit in this chair all day staring at the wall.”

  Boomer ran his hand through his hair, pulling at the ends.

  “I’m sorry, Echo. This is all I can afford right now.”

  “But I’ll be bored while you’re away.”

  Boomer looked around the shack as if hoping to find something to please her amongst the scraps and parts.

  “At least buy me a vidscreen Apollo so that I will have stories to fill the hours.”

  Boomer chewed on his bottom lip, eyes scanning his worktable. He crossed the shack in four strides, reaching for a foot-and-a-half tall machine with a stainless steel compartment and spout and glass water chamber attached to the side.

  “I might be able to convince Amiroid to spend fifty bracers for this Fluxpresso. He mentioned his old one malfunctions every few days and that he’d rather drink jet fuel than instant coffee. That wouldn’t be enough for the Apollo, but it would buy a Pioneer.”

  Disappointment, a force to rival gravity, pulled Echo’s lips into a frown.

  “But the Apollo is thinner and lighter, and the screen’s brightness has twenty settings rather than ten. It also comes with a yearlong subscription to over a million titles.”

  “The Pioneer comes with the same subscription,” Boomer said, “and it looks almost exactly the same. Do you still want it if I can get enough bracers?”

  “Yes,” Echo said.

  The following morning, Boomer left with the Fluxpresso and returned home that evening with a vidscreen Pioneer.

  Echo powered up the vidscreen and began thumbing through all the titles available.

  “I’m going to read so many books, Boomer, just you wait. And I’m going to learn all kinds of new information. Maybe I’ll even be able to help you build a new Galaxy Box.”

  Boomer chuckled.

  “You won’t need the Galaxy Box. With your new Pioneer, you will be able to travel through space to all new worlds without ever stepping outside.”

  For the next three days she read from the time he left to the time he returned home, sharing the highlights as though the adventures had been her own. On Sunday, he took her to the bazaar, where she was reminded of how much more exciting the real world was to the ones on her vidscreen.

  The outdoor bazaar was a kaleidoscope of canvas tents jam-packed with clothing and foods; shelves and bins overflowed with trinkets. Multicolored scarves hung from ceilings like banners. There were tents filled entirely with green herbs growing out of white tubes that ran up and down and sideways.

  A fifteen-foot wall enclosed the bazaar, keeping out the winds. Citizens were able to peruse the stalls with goggles pulled over their foreheads or hanging loose around their necks. Kids zipped by on hoverboards. Vendors sold roasted potato wedges from carts and poured coffee imported from Zeron into thermoses.

  Echo soaked it all in.

  When citizens rushed toward an enclosed tent, Echo hurried with them. Boomer jogged by her side to keep up. She pushed through the flaps of the tent, entering a dark interior, save for the long, thin beams from a laser harp illuminating the white canvas at its back.

  Citizens quieted and crouched on the rugs at their feet. Echo remained standing for a better view when a skinny young man wearing all white stepped up to the harp. The beams shot up through a framed base at the floor. He bent down to press a button then rose as a hypnotic, pulsing tempo emitted through a speaker hooked up to the harp.

  Hands moving over the beams, the young man played the harp in tune to the tempo. The beams lit up his fingers, reverberating with his touch. All the while, lasers flashed in the dimness and bounced off the ceiling. It was electrifying, and it ended too soon.

  Applause filled the tent. With his arm, the young man sliced through the row of light beams before making his exit.

  Echo wanted more of the music. More of the stalls with their treasures from near and afar. More of the excitement.

  She wanted to return on Wednesday, and every Wednesday and Sunday thereafter.

  “You must promise to go straight from home to the bazaar then straight back,” Boomer warned. “No running off to the city.”

  “I promise, Boomer. I will go only to the bazaar.”

  “It’s for your own safety.”

  It was on that first Wednesday, on her own, at the bazaar, she met a male cyborg hanging out with two human girls beside the puppet theater. But they were neither watching nor listening to the marionettes. The girls smiled and giggled at everything the male s
aid, clinging to his every word as though he were a prophet.

  “Hey, you’re new,” he called out to Echo. “My name’s Proto. What’s yours?”

  She joined his group, thinking they meant to welcome her.

  “Hi, Proto. My name is Echo.”

  “Echo,” he said. There were no dimples when he smiled. “Echo,” he repeated.

  Wondering if his audio wiring might be faulty, she confirmed, “Yes, that’s my name.”

  “Echo. Echo. Echo.”

  The two girls beside Proto giggled, causing his smile to stretch up his narrow synthetic cheeks.

  “That’s not funny,” she said, stomping her foot over the dusty ground.

  “Echo. Echo.”

  Her circuits overheated. In a flash, she rushed up to Proto, ripped off his arm, and smacked him in the face with his own hand.

  The girls gasped, eyes expanding. They backed away slowly before running off, probably afraid Echo would do the same to them.

  Proto, on the other hand, laughed. “You broke my arm.”

  Echo chuckled with him and handed the arm back for reattachment. After that, they became best friends.

  “Careful who you keep company with,” Boomer warned, but Echo ignored him. What did a poor mechanic know?

  [ 4 ]

  Proto’s home was nicer than Echo’s—it had electricity, rugs, and glass windows with fabric curtains—so they spent their late afternoons there. The only downside was his owner, the widowed Matron Bitly. She wanted Proto to always be helping out, doing chores as though he was her human son to order about.

  When Proto didn’t turn up at the bazaar one Wednesday, Echo went to call on him at home. He answered the door and beckoned her inside where she saw Matron Bitly rushing about, round cheeks red with exertion. Steam rose from the two pots and a pan crowding the stovetop. Matron Bitly stirred one then the other before leaping to the counter where she sawed at a thick loaf of bread. An oval cleaning bot ran into her foot and she gave a screech.