by Susan Juby
“The Natural Experience,” said Bright.
“Purpose of your visit?”
“Adverdrive. Our Mistress sent us.”
The on-board music continued to play, and it made the bus feel small. Bright wanted to shove the PS officer back down the stairs, but she could make out another one beyond him in the still night.
The officer studied the paper he held. Bright imagined herself running through the Natural Experience, the sand whispering under her feet. She imagined going to sleep in her cloud-soft sheets. She tuned back in just in time to hear the PS officer say, “By order of the commander, on behalf of the Deciders, it is hereby announced that everyone on this adverdrive has been released from their contracts. We thank you for your service.”
Bright felt shattered, like a Hard-Froze Nutri-Pop dropped from a tall ladder.
The second officer was mounting the stairs. The first one had made his way past her and headed down the aisle.
“Oh my job,” said the nearest favour. She had, Bright realized, been stress sleeping, which was a common coping method among the Citizens United Inside the Store. Her voice was muffled by the goat head she wore and her recent sleep. “I was just—”
The girl didn’t get to finish her sentence. The PS officer held his releaser to her neck, and her head snapped back. The goat head flew off, an ungainly shape hurtling through the air. Bright couldn’t make herself move. Thanks to the low light from the bus’s emergency strip lighting, she could see the twin streams of red liquid seeping from the favour’s small nostrils and carving their way across her top lip. The favour’s hands grasped at the officer’s shirt. He pushed her away and was reaching for the favour in the deep-sea diving suit when Bright remembered her light.
She looked at the officer on the stairs, his mirrored glasses trained on her, and then down the aisle. The first officer had released the deep-sea diver and was moving toward a client who was trying to climb over the back of his seat. The other clients and the remaining favours babbled and bounced helplessly in their seats. “Not yet,” they cried. “I’m sure I have more time on my contract!” Fon had backed up against a window, and her halo pulsed panic in the darkness. Bright could see Fon’s mouth moving, but couldn’t make out any words. All pretense that releasing was a natural and desirable process had dissolved as instinct kicked in. Bright knew then that she believed Grassly. No one was coming back better than ever.
“Hey! Officer!” said Bright. The PS officer in the aisle looked back at her, and she hit him full in the face with the light. The beam bounced off his mirrored glasses and back into her eyes, blinding her for a moment. He stared at her blankly, and she hoped he’d gotten enough. She swivelled her head to shine the beam in the face of the officer on the stairs. He didn’t budge. The light wasn’t working on him!
She looked back at the first officer and saw him reaching for another favour.
Bright turned off the light and jabbed the button that controlled the safety windows. The panes descended steadily into the sides of the bus. Then she hit the button that controlled the seat heights, and the seats jerked up.
An instant later, the remaining clients and favours began spilling over the sides of the bus and onto the ground below. The officer in the aisle grabbed at the nearest client, trying to hold the release button steady on the client’s neck, but his aim was off. The man, a productive from Fun Surfaces, shrieked when the black box touched his back. His body bowed cruelly, his legs spasmed, and he knocked the officer sprawling into the seat behind him. The client screamed as he lay half over the side of the bus. His body twitched—back and forth, up and down—and his head slammed crazily against the outside of the bus.
Bright tore her gaze away from the horror of the scene and shoved herself out of the driver’s seat and ran toward Fon, who stood swaying in the air where the window glass had been only a moment before.
The second officer was right behind Bright. He grabbed for her and she clawed at his face, pulling off his glasses. She felt his releaser graze her hip, but then the glasses came away in her hand and she and Fon were falling, tumbling out of the bus and into the dirt. Favours and clients, some released, some not, lay tangled together all around them.
Bright spit some grit from her mouth and moved her arms and legs to make sure they worked. She looked up and saw the two officers staring down at her from the bus.
Keeping her eyes on them, Bright felt around beside her. Her hand touched Fon’s broken halo, Fon’s broken fingernails, Fon’s hand. The officer who still had his dataglasses on was screwing an attachment onto his releaser so that he could use it from a distance. He aimed at a favour crawling toward the gate. There was a noise like a can of Zip Fizz opening, and the girl sprawled face-first into the dust.
More soft pops sounded and the tangle of clients and favours jerked on the ground, beating fists raising little puffs of dust.
Bright lay flat and wondered, with unexpected calm, if the PS staff would leave their bodies there as a warning about the dangers of the Natural Experience. She’d never really thought about what happened to the bodies of people who got released, so confident had she been that they were all coming back better than ever. She closed her eyes, waiting for release to come. A fat second ticked by. She could feel the beat of Fon’s heart through her hand, which she clutched.
As she drew in a ragged breath, she heard the sound of boots near her head. Then a second pair of boots approached. Bright opened her eyes and craned her head to look up. The officer without dataglasses stood above her. She couldn’t see his eyes in the shadows that lay upon his face. She wondered if he was blind.
The other officer, who stood near Fon’s head, began to speak: “By order of the commander, on behalf of the Deciders, I hereby announce that you are—”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Fon. She raised herself out of the dirt beside Bright and got to her knees.
Fon’s halo was, finally, broken beyond the possibility of repair. Wires hung from the busted frame, and a dusting of broken bulbs sparkled on Fon’s shoulders and glittered dully in the dimness. Fon looked … angry.
“By order of the commander …” repeated the officer uncertainly.
Fon’s bottom lip stuck out even more than it was designed to. “So unfair,” she said, her voice a growl. “Do you know how much work it takes me to get dressed for shift? Or what it takes to be so fun all the time?” She got to her feet, like a tottering collection of dented cans levitating. Her voice rose with each word. “Do you know what it takes to get and keep a high score in the House of Gear? WELL? DO YOU?”
The PS officers seemed lost. One of them shook his head.
Bright sat up.
“Some of those girls you just released had awesome outfits,” said Fon. “And those clients were just trying to help us with our adverdrive. And now you want to release us from our contracts in spite of the fact that we—or I, anyway—have top credit scores and are being actively recruited by the House of It.”
Bright was on her feet. She brushed the dust off her voluminous shroud of an outfit. Her hand found the button that controlled the helmet’s light, and she aimed it at the bare-eyed officer. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be so good at resisting the beam without his glasses. Her heart pounded with a feeling that made her burn from inside. Fon was right. It was all so unfair! Bright pushed the button.
“No!” said Fon, putting a hand in front of the beam. “These officers don’t deserve the House of It alter light. It’s for people who are … not them.”
But she was too late. The officer had staggered back the instant the light hit him, holding his hands in front of his face. As they watched, he dropped to his knees. Fon stomped up to the other PS officer, yanked the dataglasses off his face and flung them aside. “No special gear for you!” she cried.
Bright hit the second officer with the beam. Seconds later he was flat on his back.
Fon and Bright walked, quickly but cutely, away from the adverbus and all the bodies.
24.00
Grassly walked around the scene, looking for clues. He’d been tracking Bright and Fon using the chip search engine, but it had seized up when he turned off the lights. He would have to reboot the entire feed to fix it, and he had a bad feeling that if he turned the feed off, it might not come back on.
Slater was no help. “Whoa,” he said, tiptoeing around. “Lotta released dudes and stuff here.”
“Thank you,” said Grassly. “That’s very helpful.” Of course, it wasn’t helpful. Grassly hadn’t wanted to leave Slater alone inside the ship—who knew what the boy might touch if he got bored? Besides, he thought Slater might be useful in escorting people back to the Sankalpa. But now he was regretting the decision to bring him along.
“Dude, I don’t think the girls are here,” said Slater.
They’d been there for ten minutes and already firmly established that Bright and Fon were not among the dead party favours from the House of Gear.
“We know that. We’re trying to figure out where they might have gone.”
“Riiiiight,” said Slater. Then he changed his mind. “Except, how can we find them when it’s so dark out?”
Slater had commented on the darkness no fewer than twenty times during the run to the gate. Because Slater had no dataglasses that allowed him to see in the dark, Grassly had carried him on his back, which Slater thought was pretty cool and righteous, although he said Grassly could stand to work on his lats. “Your definition’s a little undefined, if you know what I mean,” said Slater.
Grassly had set him down harder than necessary.
Now Grassly was working hard to be like his Mother, who had never seemed farther away. How he longed for some of her patient advice and positive feedback. These poor cloned ancestors had no one counselling them in their heads. They could barely even rely on each other. Small wonder they were such a disaster.
“We’ll just keep our eyes open,” Grassly said, though what he wanted to say was “For the love of the multiverse, will you please stop talking?” He felt proud of his restraint.
“But dude, you have those glasses. I am keeping my eyes super wide open, and I still can hardly see.”
Grassly had stopped listening. He’d heard a noise some distance away and at the same time spotted a shiny object half-buried in the dirt. He reached down and picked up a pair of broken dataglasses.
The rustling noise persisted, and Grassly crept toward it. He was having trouble catching his breath. Was the seal failing ahead of schedule? He’d forgotten to check the readout on the ship before racing out.
“Right behind you, man,” said Slater. Grassly could feel the boy on his heels. It was like having a needy, vocal, very muscular pet. Grassly gave his head a shake. Focus, he told himself.
A minute later he found the PS officers. They were crawling in circles, obviously enlightened. Bright must have used the light on them.
“They’re not wearing their dataglasses,” observed Slater in a hushed voice. “It’s gross.”
Grassly gently turned each man to face the ship. “Don’t run into a tree,” he said.
The officers crawled off in the direction of the Sankalpa. Grassly hoped that once the sun came up again, the enlightened would have a better idea of which way to crawl.
“I don’t even know what to say about that,” said Slater. But that didn’t stop him from talking about how crawling wasn’t on anyone’s list of rad moves, and how Grassly should try this new calf stretch he’d learned about, and how his bot usually stretched his muscles for him while he was relaxing, but he thought he could do it himself if he had to, but he was very tired, maybe too tired to do calf stretches. Did Grassly like his shorts? A pause. Did Grassly think he looked … old?
“No,” said Grassly, who was surveying the scene for clues. “You’re a teenager. A few years younger than me.”
But Slater’s face, smeary and green in the night vision image, did look old.
“I’m nineteen.” He shook his tousled hair. “Sucks to be an eld.”
Grassly thought about telling him that he would be okay. But before he did, he wanted to be sure it was true.
The sky visible through the ceiling was growing lighter. Soon the Natural Experience would be washed in filtered sun.
“Follow them,” Grassly told Slater.
“The crawling dudes?”
“It will be safer. With the wisdom and maturity of your advanced age, I trust you to take responsibility for these men. Guide them to the ship.”
Slater smiled and his face lit up. “I like the ship. It has a lot of buttons,” he said. “Thanks, man. See you later?”
Grassly nodded. “I’ll be back. And please, don’t touch any buttons. I’ve programmed the door to open for you and the others when they arrive.”
“Rad.” Slater jogged after the two men crawling through the grey dunes of the morning.
Grassly continued to look around at the carnage. The favours and clients were all dead, their outfits and accessories strewn around. The bus had a smashed, empty look to it, as though the violence done in and around it lingered. What had the girls been up to? Why had they gathered all of these people together? More importantly, where had they gone? Since the chip search engine didn’t work, he’d have to start going through the most likely surveillance cameras, one by one, until he spotted them. But there were thousands of cameras inside the Store, so he didn’t have high hopes for success.
He hoped they’d headed for the Headquarters and the central switchboard. It would be much safer for him if they turned the lights on, and there was no sense in him duplicating their efforts if they were already on their way.
If Bright and Fon weren’t carrying out his directions, he would have to go to the Headquarters himself. But first he wanted to check whether the girls were retracing their steps from their last visit to the Natural Experience. He imagined that they would have been afraid to leave through the gate, in case more PS officers were waiting for them, crouched against the membrane wall or hidden in the dunes. They might have made their way to the same place in the membrane they’d cut through before. The material would be weaker there. It would be faster to cut through it, and there was less chance they’d be spotted when they emerged.
He broke into a run, scrolling through screens on his dataglasses as he went.
25.00
Bright and Fon walked beside the membrane, looking for the place they’d cut through earlier that night. They used Bright’s light to illuminate the way.
“We need new disguises,” said Bright.
“Can we get more attractive ones?” asked Fon.
“Look,” Bright whispered.
Just ahead of them, a pair of sensitives stumbled blindly along. Between the darkness and their overwrought emotional condition, the sensitives didn’t notice Fon and Bright, who’d shielded her light under her hand as soon as she spotted them.
Bright had an idea. She elbowed Fon and pointed her index and middle fingers at her eyes, at her clothes, and then at the sensitives.
“Oh no,” said Fon.
“Those would be the perfect disguises.” The two sensitives had finally noticed the muted light coming from Bright’s helmet.
“Hello?” said one, dejectedly. “Is someone out there?”
“We see your light,” said the other.
Bright and Fon made their way over. Bright removed her helmet and kept the light aimed at the ground. “Not hot” didn’t begin to capture the sogginess of the sensitives. Everyone knew that being a sensitive was just about the worst purpose you could have. In fact, if things didn’t need to look pretty and sound good, and if there was no need for cool new stuff to spend credits on, there wouldn’t even be any sensitives in the Store.
One time, a sensitive who wrote adverdescriptions for new kinds of nutri had come to the House of Gear and used what must have been his lifetime supply of credits on Bright. He was the most exhausting client she’d ever had, more work than ten normal produc
tives. She had to dance harder and laugh harder and be impossibly entertaining. Even so, halfway through the party, he sat on the floor in the hallway between Dance Room #3 and Big Guns, and wouldn’t get up again. She tried motivating him by talking about all the fun they’d have if he would just get up and dance, but he kept saying, “How can you stand it?” and “You could be so much more.”
If anyone but a sensitive talked that way, they’d be released in about two point five seconds. But sensitives were never happy. In a funny way, Bright thought that was part of their purpose.
Now, standing in the dirt in the dark, Bright thought she understood sensitives for the first time. Life was sad. Tears were totally appropriate!
Bright considered what to say. “Hey,” she ventured.
One of the sensitives screamed. The other one threw herself on the ground. Face-first.
Bright’s empathy evaporated. What kind of a person would do that? The risk to one’s face was profound!
“It’s okay,” she said. She knew she didn’t sound convincing. She seemed to be losing whatever it was that had ever made her willing to be nice.
“We’ve been lost in the dark,” said the one who remained standing. “For the first time, the outside matches my insides.”
“That’s interesting,” said Bright.
The sensitive on the ground lifted up her face. It was badly scratched and covered in dust. “I think it would have to be a bit darker outside to be as dark as my insides.”
“You always have to be the darkest,” said the standing sensitive. “We could be in a cave inside a cave inside a vault, and you’d still be the darkest.”
“It’s true,” mumbled the sensitive on the ground. “I’m sorry. But that’s how I feel. Very dark.”
Suddenly the standing sensitive began to sob. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t take my feelings out on you. It’s just been so hard lately …” His voice trailed off.