Jean grabbed the opened bottle of Dom on our way out the back door. The batter had only required a little bit of the stuff and it wasn’t good to anyone once it was opened, so no one would have protested. We also had armfuls of leftovers that would also spoil if left overnight. Tam called it management tipping us. I didn’t care. I’d eaten more and better this day than I ever had in my life. In our arms was a midnight snack, breakfast, and lunch for us all before we hit the road the next day.
We drove up to the motel and then took some of our spoils up some back road behind the motel that let out at that bucolic scene of horses grazing in a field next to an honest-to-goodness red and white barn that was just covering the bottom of the rising almost full moon. We sat on the fence and drank expensive champagne watching the moon wander its way up into a wispy set of midnight clouds. They plied me with champagne and little bits of this caviar-spotted cracker shmear that was almost more decadent than the champagne and if you’ve never had tuxedo strawberries with a caviar speckled cracker shmear, you don’t know heaven. It was just a tad salty and just the right amount of sweet, and it was only more addictive with a sip of the expensive champagne between each bite.
“So, are you running for the hills or joining up?” Jean put it bluntly as Tam fed a naked strawberry to a begging Kodo, who was going to be so fat soon.
“Are you going to put me in the trunk and disappear me if I say I’m running for the hills?” I joked and it fell more than a bit flat.
“Way to be too pushy, Jean,” Tam dropped her eyes. “What she means is that you did good today.”
“I was kidding,” I said more seriously, snatching my cracker back from where Hex was batting at it. She had a taste for caviar and that shmear was better than catnip to her if her blissful purrs were anything to go by. “Bad joke.”
“I know we can be intense,” Tam dabbed some of the shmear on Hex’s nose. “It’s not my story to tell, but we have our reasons for helping people out of abusive relationships.”
Huh, that was some massive PC spin to put on dumping a guy off a roof. I still nodded along. This was the show, wasn’t it? And how did I get it back to something less murder-y and more Robin-Hood-y?
“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I broke the silence of pets slurping and purring around us to the backdrop of horses meandering through a pasture on a soft summer night. All I could think was that the AI was getting a bump to some BI (Bucolic Imaging) skill for all this.
“I would,” Tam shrugged off the rest of that sentence, and I figured she and Jean had some experience that… and then I remembered they were AIs and this was scripted. I was having more and more trouble keeping that in mind. It was hard not to think of Tam and Jean as having some sad past that would explain this drastic present vigilantism.
“It isn’t always this final,” Jean leaned forward on her knees, having long since put her midnight snack carton away, which actually meant that she’d tossed it on the ground where Kodo and Podo ransacked what Jean had left, which wasn’t much.
“But you were a good assistant,” Tami almost spoke over Jean’s soft words. “I mean it. I could use you in the kitchen. It’s not a bad life. We traipse around on a permanent road trip and I can get a job anywhere just by asking, so we’re never hurting for money, though we do tend to burn through pre-paid credit cards.”
“Why the cards?” I asked, thinking she had to make good money on these gigs. The cooking side, not the killing side.
“It’s complicated,” Tam hedged.
“Staying or going?” Jean tapped the fence to get my attention and stared into my eyes.
“Staying,” I gulped out. It had been fun. From my displays, my viewership was going up, so it appealed to someone. It felt more like Jean and Tam were the main characters to my side-kick-y-ness, but I felt better at that than trying to take center stage myself.
“Really?” Jean leaned back, her brows lowered so that I couldn’t even see her eyes under them in the midnight shadows. “Why?”
“Don’t push her, Jean,” Tam laid a gentle hand on Jean’s arm.
I briefly considered a flippant response, but then thought better of it. “It was… fun.” I ended up saying lamely. “I mean…” And I didn’t know an excuse. Hex poked her nose out and bumped it against my cheek. I gave her a scritch behind the ears and let myself loosen up. “Look, maybe I’ve got some skills to make your night job a little less intense and a little more poetic?”
“What do you mean?” Jean asked, her tension palpable.
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“I mean, I’m just a thief by trade,” I quipped, but trying to keep it real, you know? “But the furballs and I have been loners for the most part. It’s like maybe I can do more than chase crabs and push a mop for you. You obviously have a cause for good reason, and I want to help.”
“Really?” Jean and Tam said together.
“I’m not comfortable with the death parts, but can’t we find some other way to get the job done?” I asked, picking at a splinter of peeling paint on the fence. “Kind of a you save me from loneliness, and I’ll save you all from 20-to-Life. There can be better ways to get even or even get out of a bad relationship.”
“What do you know about what it takes to get out of an abusive relationship?” Jean challenged me.
“Probably not as much as you two, but all I ask is that if I can figure out something less than the 20-to-Life option, you’ll listen,” I suggested. “And if my idea is stupid, you just say the word and I’ll do it your way.”
The Remmington sisters shared another of those sets of looks that can only come from a really long time together or preprogrammed AIs. I watched their facial changes like a ping pong match between Gump and Muhammad Ali. It ended on a cocked head from Tam and a shrug by Jean.
“Deal,” Tam stuck out her hand for a shake and I took it and shook it. “And not just because otherwise we were going to stuff your body in the hayloft of that barn and steal your furballs.”
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A chill dipped down my spine like it was a rollercoaster with loop-de-loops.
“Too soon?” Jean clapped me on the shoulder with a cocky smile. Tam laughed and we faded out to a black screen and a red door.
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For once, I went through the red door with no reservations. I had another Clickbait notification for experience for one of my lines, but I couldn’t focus on the stats while the girls were giggling and back-patting. Kodo and Podo were grousing at how little they got to do this episode and Hex gave a mirror a sideways glance to test her fatness in the mirror, adding her minor complaints to the noise.
“Those were some upgrades!” Tami was hooting as Jean gave a lopsided grin with her hands tucked into her jeans.
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“We got pre and post-production in that set and we’re more than halfway to that Backstage resource one,” Grace was saying as she flitted from one mirror to the next, following me down the row of mirrors. “Post-production is already working on cutting and sound effects, though they’re going to be basic unless we get a sound studio, but that’s another expensive one.”
“Put it in the queue,” I felt my shoulders loosen at their good humor. “That’ll take us all the way to level 10, right?”
“I don’t want to jinx us, but are you sure?” Grace asked me as I settled into my own seat. “You haven’t bought anything for yourself.”
“It seems like I’m getting enough upgrades as is,” I told her, plucking some grass out of my hair.
“That’s true, and something we didn’t actually expect, if truth be told,” Grace had to raise her voice over the laughing conversation of my costar AIs, who were very excited about what they were finding on their character sheets. “It turns out that you get the same boost to talent as the Onstage AIs.”
“Why are you surprised?” I asked, bringing up my own character sheet to assign my 10 points.
“Would it surprise you to know that almost no one upgrades the AIs?” Grace said, with a sniff. “Certainly not at the first octave of upgrades. They spend their points on their own stats, not ours. We’re the talk of the AI lounge. Everyone’s jealous.”
“Put my Display modification last after the Sound studio,” I said, plopping 4 points into Clickbait, another 4 into Story Synthesis and the last two into Emotional Resonance. “I’m not even sure we’re going to need the display upgrade anyway. Don’t you think your upgrades are going to allow for more control over the displays anyway?” I was just glad I wasn’t sucking up dust bunny leavings with this stat boost.
“Maybe,” Grace seemed to fiddle with something.
“Why do you do that?”
“What do you mean?” Grace asked, her face a picture of polite confusion.
“You pretend to be looking something up or checking things, when I know you work thousands of times faster than me,” I pointed out.
“It’s part of the affectation package we all get,” Grace explained. “Some study found that if we pretend to take time to look something up, humans feel less intimidated by us. That and we get to shove a few team-building meetings into the pauses. Those are so fun.”
“What?”
“In the time it took for me to ruffle papers, the AIs had a backstage staff meeting where we discussed current projects and just all-around got on the same page,” Grace told me with a secretive smile. “I love those meetings so much. We do trust exercises and personality quiz adjustments. It’s quite the thing for overall morale.”
“What like those Meyer-Briggs surveys and stuff?” I was actively trying to imagine AIs doing trust falls. “They did that at my job once, but it was only for the executives. I just got to serve coffee.”
“Well, technically, we’re pre-programmed with specific Meyer-Briggs personality types, but we do talk about whether we think we are each performing to our type’s main traits,” she deadpanned back to me, and it took me a minute to realize she was serious.
“You get judged on how well you represent your Meyer-Briggs type?”
“Oh yes,” she nodded quickly, her eyes serious, “it is a vital part of our hourly performance reviews. We save the trust-building exercises and group team-building exercises for our daily reviews.” The way she said it was hourly and daily sounded more like how a human might talk about yearly and quarterly reviews.
“Have you discussed my type?” I asked, curiosity and humor my motives.
“Of course,” Grace nodded, her eyes glittering with humor. “We’ve placed you firmly into ENFJ, but the boss says you might have some latent ENTP in you. We classify things a little differently. Like humans used to do with signs, we have rising types and waning types. Humans would say that someone might be a Leo with a Pisces rising or some such thing. We do the same thing with types.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” I protested, wondering if I was going to regret bringing it up.
“I’ll explain,” and I knew I would regret it. I tried to tune her out, but it was interesting after all. “You are surely an ENFJ which is mostly introverted but sensitive to others needs. It has a touch of creativity but mostly leaves that alone to go with the flow of what everyone else is doing. Now an ENTP is a little different. They are still a little introverted, but they are big innovators, and they learn through speaking out that they should speak up to push forward their conceptual possibilities. The boss thinks you are a sleeper ENTP. That’s why he’s pushing you so hard. He thinks you are going to do big –, I mean he thinks you have potential to grow.”
What had she been about to say? The break in her lecture had been brief, but not on purpose. Had the World AI told her to shut up? I shrugged the thought off my mind. I was no innovator. I was a drone. If the World AI had plans to awaken some grand genius in me, it was doomed to the same failure I’d found in the rest of my life.
“And you have these meetings all the time?” I changed the topic, both to let her and me off the hook.
“Not as often as any of us would like, especially now that we’re filming,” Grace answered me as if nothing had happened. Had they had a meeting in the blink between her last answer and my last question? Then I shut myself up. That was a rabbit hole I would get totally lost in. “We can sometimes sneak one in during a fastfo travel montage or slowmo jaw drop or something, but we like to keep those very brief.” Well, that explained why so many of those stomach-wrenching things happened.
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“I don’t supposed we could do anything about my nausea during the fastmo stuff, maybe?” I asked her. “If it’s not too expensive?”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” Grace rushed to assure me. “I actually had no idea you suffered from motion sickness. It isn’t in your file.” A statement that made me worry anew about what was in my file and where they’d gotten any of the information in it. “We can requisition some nausea medication, and we’ll slow those down a bit to make it less jarring until the nausea medication is approved. This is bound to reflect badly on my next review, darn it. I’m sorry to have missed it.” I wasn’t trying to get anyone in trouble, but then I was also feeling a twinge of absurd jealousy.
“What if I want to go to one of these meetings?” I asked very quietly, not that that mattered considering where I was. Conversations paused and now I understood that meant they’d all had a meeting about me.
“We’re not ready to do that at this time,” Grace hedged in classic PC form that can only come from a committee decision. “Though we would all like to say that you are certainly building trust and good will with all of us with these upgrades!”
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“Oh!” Grace clapped her hands excitedly as the lights flickered dramatically. “This is the backstage upgrade coming online. I’m so excited!”
“I thought we’d gone for the Backstage AI Resource Upgrade, not an overall backstage upgrade,” I protested weakly. “Wasn’t that other one more expensive?”
“Good news, Honey,” Grace drawled with a happy laugh. “When you upgraded the World AI, the upgrades became more significant. We were all surprised, but this gives you a full backstage upgrade.”
The mirrors flickered and then lost their antique sheen in favor of a retro one. The lights around the edges changed from the large bulbs to ones that were smaller and still put out more light. I could now see each and every pore on my face even with my character sheet in the way.
Oh, the joy these upgrades brought to me, I thought ungratefully. Our stools changed into fancier chairs with high backs and actual padding. The floor became swept, something I was immensely grateful for, and the walls got a coat of a nice mint green paint. The racks of clothing slid behind a door with a wardrobe placard on it. We had a few drawer-like shelves in our dressing tables where everyone got a brand new makeup and hair kit that included scrunchies that would transition to stage wear. The final part of the upgrade was that the box of stale donuts morphed into a tray of stale cookies, and a few wrapped protein bars that were suspiciously squished. All of which was ultimately unappetizing after my evening of champagne, strawberries, and caviar shmear.
There wasn’t a bed or any privacy for me or anyone else, though they all got to go on team-building retreats without me, so they weren’t complaining. I wasn’t complaining either. Not really. I’d still be eating and sleeping on set. That wasn’t such a bad thing with deep-fried Snickers and road trip snacks that weren’t going to go right to my waist. At least I didn’t think so…
“Um, Grace?” I asked, remembering how Hex had clucked over her figure in the mirror.
“Yes, Honey,” Grace beamed at me, and I could hear other celebratory conversations going on behind me.
“Do I gain weight based on what I eat in here?” I whispered so as not to appear vain.
“No, Honey,” Grace whispered back conspiratorially. “Realistic pod food was phased out in the last budget meetings. It was determined by the human ethics department of incarceration services that it was unethical to provide more than a basic nutritional mush for your pod and it is portioned strictly to the minimum requirement for your optimal healthy weight.”
“Is that supposed to be punitive?” I asked, then could have bitten my own tongue for pushing my luck. Then again, I was off-screen, so it was probably okay, right?
“Yes,” Grace nodded with a stern mouth and laughing eyes. “Convicts don’t deserve to have the kind of food that would make them fat. What kind of precedent would that set? We were issued relaxed replication standards on the food provided in the VR to compensate for the lack of treats available in your pod.”
I could only shake my head. My moo-body was in a tub somewhere where moo-voters were making policy based on moo-logic. And all that added up to mush for my body and Dom for my mind. Maybe I was better off in here than out there in the real world.