Riff scrolled through her own vids on the screen in the wall. Al lifted her hair off her neck from behind and dusted her shoulders with microparticles of gold dust harvested from Psyche16. So pure and golden. A small, naked Venus. Al pressed the asteroid-harvested diamonds to the tops of Riff’s cheeks, wiping away the excess skin glue with an acrylic pad. Riff was assigned the lead in a new Pornographic Art Film – Minority Rape-ort – for her debut. Al wetted the powdered blood rouge with a dollop of white spit and swirled it in her palm before rubbing circles into Riff’s cheekbones, chatting about this director and how it was an honor and a blessing and such a good sign.
One of the specialty-bred androids came in to check the lighting, his yellow eyes slashed through with slitted irises. The Corporation spliced snake DNA into six percent of the androids’ eyeballs in the tube in an attempt to create an android that could see the flumes from planetary scans, but the spectrum was too broad. The Corporation discovered a new use for them when, in their six month childhood, they created forests of light and vibration with the Easy Clean Up Lite Blox™. Perfect light vision for perfect entertainment.
Tix sales at The Commissary went up 18% when they used the android light designers rather than the Compu lights. And androids were cheaper. Voice log surveys indicated the viewers were reminded of words like “home”, “soft”, “hold”, and “resting” rather than “hard”, “flappy” and “sad”, when viewing the Pornographic Art Films. Concession sales went up. Commissary accounts were drained. Asteroid miners broke their bones for a little more.
“Progress is God, God is Progress” flashed on Riff’s monitoring bracelet. Show time.
“Do good, mija,” Mama said the night before. “Get the units posted. Find El Mago.”
***
When Riff was very small, before the evacs and the cold Pacific Ocean pulling at her heels, she went to a place called “school.” Her mother wore slippers over her pantyhose, the white light reflecting rectangles in her brown eyes from the personal data device, her fine blue suit crinkling as she tossed a shiny packet of breakfast powder to Riff. Before the men in boats. Before the Second Coming of Mechoben.
Her school was a great shining white building near a structure that she couldn’t remember anymore, only that it was orange and crossed the water a long time before. Someone told her that it once connected to an island made completely of trash.
She had a teacher named Mrs. Martinez who wore floral dresses that gapped at her breast, showing her beige bra and freckled chest. They were supposed to write a story about a hot air balloon once, and Riff got an F. Mrs. Martinez said “this isn’t a story about a hot air balloon. It barely has anything about a hot air balloon. This is about a dragon and dragons don’t exist.” Riff cried.
Her brother met her at the bus stop that day and told her that Mrs. Martinez was evidence that dragons existed and held open his shiny bag of Hot Cheetos for her. Her lips burned as they walked home, licking the red dust from their fingers.
That was the year that The Corporation introduced The Chip: Everything in One Place Implant. Never worry again! Your child will never be abducted! You will never lose a spreadsheet! Keep track of all your followers! Never get lost again!
Mama took her to a special doctor listed on the registry distributed by The Corporation. The bright room was covered in screens flipping through images of smiling children hugging one another in red t-shirts. Red and yellow, black and white they are precious in OUR sight, the images said. The windows covered by gray blinds. The paper on the exam table slid under her as the doctor rolled his stool up to face her.
“This won’t hurt, even a little bit.”
He took out a roll of golden stickers and lifted her arm by the elbow so that the soft underside of her arm faced him. Mama stared at her device, her thumb rolling past images. The doctor’s purple gloves creased and whispered as he wiped the inside of her elbow with an antiseptic wipe and waved his hand over it to dry. He peeled off one of the stickers and showed her the dissolvable backing that would absorb the tracker into her bloodstream. He pressed it to her arm and held a white plastic gun with an orange tip over the center of the golden dot. It turned into a jelly and soaked into her arm.
“That’s that.” He patted her knee.
The chips sent out a signal that allowed The Corporation to truly know them. It measured chemicals in their blood and, when it detected ghrelin, sent them to special, approved ramen shops, where the menus featured identical pictures of cartoon cats and bubble fonts. The tiny eye saw when their oxytocin was low and alerted their friends. HUG ALERT. It smelled the adrenocorticotropic hormones and played a sample of a calm song, flashing signs across their devices for discount codes and software platforms to market their bodies and brains and beings.
It was only natural to repurpose all of the things and desires into one. It only made sense to cater to the most important person: the customer. The birth of The Commissary. The birth of a convenient place to elevate or suppress, to give meaning to them in this hollow place.
One day after school, Mama snatched Riff by the back of her jacket as she walked in the door and put her hand over her mouth. Her brother had stayed at school for a reason. Perhaps he played an instrument or was in an organization. She could smell the sweetness of Mama’s jasmine lotion, selected by her personal Corporate A.I. to make her smell feminine, but powerful. Riff struggled against her mother’s grip, but Mama only tightened her fingers over her mouth and whispered hot into her hair.
“Be very quiet. They are listening.”
Riff nodded up at her mother. Looking for signs. Mama did not like to be this close to anyone.
“Escuchame, hay un problema con el implante en el brazo. ¿Entiendas?”
The memory wavered here. She DID understand. Sometimes she dreamed in this language about great creatures with red feathered wings that only had one sharp tooth.
“Si Mama.”
“¿Te acuerdas de tu padre?”
“No, Mama.”
“Que bien. Era malvado.”
Mama released her and pushed her against the wall. Jackets and umbrellas swung over her head as she thumped backwards. Other mothers gave their kids Cracker Snips All Natural™ – a brand name to show their love.
***
The Holy Book™
Chapter 13 Verses 12-18
12 There was a great prophet in those times who did streamline the production and consumption timeline, so that he was called beloved by The Father.
13 When the people came to him and asked, “How is it that The Father has blessed you so?” He retrieved his 3D printer and did bestow upon them a firearm undetectable by the enemy.
14 The people looked on and still doubted. They grumbled “why has The Father not blessed me with a 3D printer?”
15 Overhearing them, the prophet said, “All of this I earned with the sweat of my brow and the toil of my hands.” The people looked out onto the fields of production and saw the Secondborns working alongside the metal sons.
16 “But prophet, the Secondborns and the metal sons are the true laborers here!” And the prophet knelt and traced his finger over the scroll of light. The metal sons ceased their labor and the Secondborns rushed to them, lifting their jointed arms and wailing “Oh Father, why hath you ceased your overlook? Why hath you left us here?”
17 The prophet swiped once again and the metal sons came back to life and the people marveled at him.
18 And the prophet said unto them “The swipe of my little finger produces more than all of your arms and legs at once. And should I not be rewarded by The Father and The Market? Go in peace.”
***
Fern glided over to Riff and tilted her head to peek up her nostril as the crew set up for Riff’s first scene. She squinted and sighed, though Riff could taste blood at the back of her throat as something shifted there. Her familiar. An overwhelming feeling of warmth rose as Fern scratched her scalp lightly, her bare breasts grazing the back of Riff’s arm.
“First scene, worst scene. As they say,” said Fern smoothing her thumbs under Riff’s eyes. “We need to get some Frosty Baby Eye Cream™ on you, though. You are looking a bit puffy.”
“How will I know what to do?”
“The director will tell you, sweet one.”
“Where are you from, Fern?”
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Fern stopped playing with Riff’s hair and leaned forward to whisper in her ear.
“They are monitoring us. I am from a place that used to have a name, but now it’s just water. I remember when where we came from was called the United States. Before The Split.”
Fern leaned back and laughed high and fine. Her glossy eyes opened too wide, only the slightest crease of a laugh line showing above the tiny incision marks. Her grip tight on Riff’s wrist.
“I’m from Mars now, my darling, and so are you. Aren’t you glad you are too pretty for manufacturing or mining? Mechoben told us that it’s a sin to waste your potential.” Fern picked up a passing android, bred and engineered to look like a child, and swung her onto her hip. “Just like those things back on Earth. Friend animals that could be very small or very big, but they were the same thing. They lived in houses before The Event sometimes. Oh you know what I’m talking about. Dogs! Mecho on a leash, how could I forget that? We eat them now.”
“I don’t really remember dogs either,” Riff said.
Riff noticed that Fern was picking out hairs from the base of the miniature android’s scalp. Her flawless skin flushed at her high collarbones.
The director kept pulling the lever to spin the circular stage, pacing around it, peering into the camera.
Fern reached into a bowl on a nearby table filled with Shine Gummiez™ and drew out a fistful, still holding the mini-android on her hip. Its little legs dangled like a baby doll’s. She fed the transparent candies one by one to the mini-android. The creature stared at Riff while it chewed, clutching to Fern’s scarred upper arm.
“What’s her name?” Riff reached out to touch the fine engineered curls.
“Whose name?”
“The baby android.”
“There’s no such thing as baby androids. Is there such a thing as babies anymore?”
Riff couldn’t remember ever seeing a baby, though Gram from the Girl Factory had told her that they grew babies like hydroponics, and only the worthy and the blessed grew babies in their bodies. It was very chic. Very expensive. You had to be a model, and not a pornographic one, to even get The Corporation handbook for reproduction.
“I think there are. Somewhere. How else would we fill the Girl Factories?”
The director approached Fern and put his hand on her lower back. She put down the mini-android, and it vanished into the darkness behind the heavy curtain behind a group of music robots. The director gestured at them, grinning and rubbing Fern’s back, his eyes darting up at the cameras.
“They are expensive, but so is our product. This run won’t even be screened in the mines. Private consumption only.” He winked at Riff. “Only the finest and the youngest.”
He nodded toward the stage, and Fern buttoned her breasts into the SlingShot Breast Compactor™ and turned the dials at the tops of her shoulders, wrenching her soft flesh into four tight mounds with her trim pink nipples pointing toward the ceiling, and walked away.
“Let’s give them a real show, sweet Riff,” she said over her shoulder.
Al, swaddled in a Silkie Short Short Jumper™, barreled over once the androids had Fern cornered across the room, squirting her with a thick, opaque blue liquid while she feigned drowning. Al was in They-form today, with feminine eyes and large masculine hands. Professional. Al proceeded to glue tiny silver tips to the ends of Riff’s nails that flashed and glinted under the lights.
“Al, how do you feel about the mini-androids?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Why do we have them?”
“What do you mean?” Al rubbed Shine into their skin and massaged it in, distracted by the countdown timer on the wall.
“I mean, how do they serve The Corporation?”
“Um, they are cute, and people will buy cute things.”
“Did someone buy you?”
“Listen, you are going to be on stage in under one minute. Can we talk about this later?”
The lights flashed, and Al dashed two streaks of bronzer under Riff’s blood-rouged cheekbones.
“That’s our cue,” Al said, and nudged Riff toward the stage under the blazing white lights.
The mini-android leaned against a metal box on the center of the platform, watching as the Rosie’s Cleaner Bots™ scrubbed the brownish android blood from the floor. Fern wiped the bottoms of her Louboutin Pumps. A fine spray tracked up her right leg.
The mini-android beckoned her up on stage. The uncanny child replica was dressed in a tearaway Factory Girl uniform. Yellow for happiness. Red for productivity. A Factory Girl is always on time with a smile. The director pointed toward the metal box.
“Pick two or three romance assistance devices from in there. You are going to love this,” the director said to Riff, turning back toward his android production assistant. “It makes the girls so much more invested in the scene.” The android nodded, dabbing at a bit of sweat on his upper lip.
The box had a baton, an ElectroDischarge Crowd Control Poker ™, a plastic mask with real human teeth, a braided piece of dog leather, a Flip Flap Fun Cutter with REAL STEEL JAWS, a ball gag, a branding iron shaped like a smiling mouth, and a package of industrial lye with a patented pouring spout.
Me duele más a mí que a ti.
The mini-android expanded her eyes, using some distant gene to make the pupils fill the iris. She practiced a human child cry, first sucking in her breath in small gasps, her chest hitching. Tears poured down her face, her neck and cheeks mottled pink. The director focused the camera on her.
“That’s so good, Hundy! Can you bring your knees in more? Bring her a prop! Something she can suck on. That’s perfect. Has the new girl picked out a prop yet?”
Riff stared into the box. Her very own show. She would never have to scrub components or sleep on a rack again. The Commissary was hers after this. Any filter she wanted for the vids. Real meat. Al could stay with her. Mechoben demanded her obedience. She dipped her hand into the box and pulled out the first thing she touched: the ball gag.
“That’s even better than that baby sucker thing. Look, she has a knack for it. Ok now pick something else so we can get rolling. This ain’t cheap, little freshie.”
Al stood on the fringes of the set, nodding at her. She reached in again and touched something the size of a button at the bottom of the box. She closed her hand around it and pulled it out. It was a small brass cylinder, capped on both ends with red rubber. Not knowing exactly why, she put it behind her ear and reached back into the box and retrieved the braided dog leather, wrapping it around her palm.
“Very hot. I like it.” The director adjusted the lens of the camera. “Can we get some Shine for her lips please? Let’s make some magic happen.” Riff could smell his cologne.
The mini-android lay down on a bed set up in the middle of the stage with white pillows as billowy as marshmallow. The golden bed frame had replicas of all the planets holding the joints together. A dog fur rug sprawled on the floor beneath. Her tiny body striped with purplish scars from the waist up.
“Ok,” the director turned back to his assistant and whispered something, “Raff, I’m going to need you to take that dog belt, and we’re going to make it like poetry, ok? Do you know what poetry is?”
She shook her head.
“Well, don’t worry about that. You just do what we tell you and remember that it looks real if it is real, so don’t be afraid to really get in there and hit the mini there with that leather strap, ok?”
The floor was cold under her feet when the first lash connected with a snap. The mini shrieked and turned her head on the pillow so that she faced the camera. Fern leaned on Al and nodded. Her green eyes distant. Her pearly nails digging into her own skin.
“Ok Raff…That’s her name, right?... Really get in there. They don’t feel pain like we do. Remember that.”
Riff leaned back and slung the strap against the top of the mini’s scalp. Bluish blood oozed from the mini’s scalp line into her eyes. She felt her jaw clenching. Her heart drumming against her breastbone. Her shoulder burning. Her brain was alight with the power of the stroke. She raised back again aiming for the back of the pale, bare thigh. The strap split the skin cutting through to the pale pink dermis. Blood gushed and then beaded. A thin tendril slid from her nostril and stroked the tip of her nose.
“Oh yeah! We got a natural performer here.”
The mini turned back to face Riff. Tears rolled from her immense eyes. There was a thickness in her throat. It was the same feeling she had in the Girl Factory when she told the monitors that Gram took non-Commissary food back to the racks. When Gram came back from Pearson’s ReDo School™, she was missing two teeth.
“Don’t stop, Raff. The more the mini cries, the more money goes in your Commissary account.”
The strap dangled at her side. She could see the mini’s ribs through her back.
“Cut. Just cut for a minute.”
The director came over and knelt in front of her. She had never been so close to a bio-male before. He had so much Shine injected into his lips that the skin at the edges melded into one swollen expression. His long orange braid brushed the floor behind him as he squatted on his heels.
“Please. Please do this. I need you to do this. My retirement age is coming up, ok? If I can pull this off, I can leave Mars. They don’t feel pain like we do, ok?”
“I can’t.”
“Mechoben demands sacrifice so that the shareholders may live.”
“Please don’t make me.” Her own tears. Undeserved tears.
He curled his hand over hers onto the strap. The mini sobbed as her skin started to knit back behind them. He stood up, his knees popping. He still held her fist and squeezed. She felt the pressure on her knuckles under his polished nails.
“Go get the ball gag and stop crying. You will ruin your makeup.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and touched the scroll behind her ear she found earlier. Violence loped through her again. Images of the director, crushed under her heel, surged into her mind. His dyed purple eyes filling with red, red blood. Al shook their head at her, smelling her fury.
Riff smiled at the director. All teeth.
“There’s a good girl. The Corporation rewards good, sexy girls like you.” He nodded at her from behind the monitors.
She went to the box and fetched the ball gag. As she pulled the straps around the mini’s head, she whispered to her about Earth’s moon. Silver and pitted and fecund and immense and feminine. The mini stayed silent. If wishes were Shine, we’d all be fat.
***
Document 20/47
Prime Execution of Mining Operations: Personal Logs
My mother told me that if I didn’t read or write that I was spitting in the faces of my ancestors who died just for a chance to hold a pencil. You probably won’t know what pencils are. Everything was on screens for you. You could type or scroll better than your old man, I’m sure.
They have separated me from your mother. It was like I was back in Iraq again, just seeing her and you through a tiny screen. You falling forward and looking into the screen, little mouth open in wonder, pudgy hands opening and closing at the sound of my voice. Maybe it was just the shiny eye of the camera. Sometimes after you waved bye bye to me, snuffling like tired babies do, and the screen went black, I reported to fire watch in that big, strange darkness and watched the sand puff in tiny geysers as bullets from miles away hit the ground just a few yards away. Do you remember hot sauce? We put it in our eyes to stay awake. Can you believe we were sleepy with bullets coming at us?
This time it’s not the Marine Corps owning my body and my mind, and that’s what made it so appealing. Because they lied to us. I mean, the military did. When I walked into that recruiting office, it was because our house on Gravier was gone from the first floods. Before The Quarter went. Before the tops of the great oaks in City Park peeked through all that brown water, before turning brown themselves and withering and sinking. This was before I met your mother.
The recruiter saw that I could read and write really well. Your grandmother made sure of that. I read Kindred when I was just six years old. I’m not sure if The Corporation buried this book under a mountain of flashing vids, but if I can find a copy of it, I’ll send it to your tablet. They put me in a special class because I could read like that, but then they sent us all back to our regular classrooms. Do they still have classrooms where you’re reading this? I won’t explain it.
The recruiter, I think his name was Staff Sergeant Eames, asked me what I wanted to do because of my high scores. I told him I wanted to write. He looked at some papers, drew his finger down it, and said, “Oh yeah. You could do that as an 0311. They need writers over there. They like writers over there,” with such confidence. I had to believe him.