“Depending on who you ask, the Act of Preservation of Media of 2045 may be the best or the worst thing that ever happened. I just know, though, that I can leave sitcoms and videogames untouched for decades and not fear that they become lost media.”
-Geoff Downer, 2092, Next-Gen SSD Advertisement
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“Okay, let’s assume as a hypothetical, that I accept.” I slowly and clearly stated.
“You accept?” Gloria hopped on the spot, her eyes brimming with enthusiasm.
“What part of hypothetical did you not understand?” I frowned.
“Sorry.” She added weakly. “My mind is just overflowing with ideas.”
“Right…” It would have been easy to snark at her, but I held myself. “I’ll start from the beginning. As a hypothetical,” I couldn’t put more emphasis than that, “I accept your condition as a model. What does that entail?”
“Well, I said model, but what I had in mind was more something along the lines of muse or mannequin.” Had this woman no idea how terrifying her words were?
“And what does that mean?”
“The problem with working with bland mannequins is that I have no inspiration whatsoever.” The seamstress explained, strolling herself to one of the many so-called bland mannequins and locking her upper arms around its collar. “They have no essence, no humanity. I don’t care if they can have a female or male shape, I need some vitality, some juice, to make a dress for someone.”
“Didn’t you say you had whales to support you? Ask them so.”
“But those are customers!” I raised my brow. “That’s different. You are a customer, but you are not coming to me as a customer.”
“Fair.” I was just a human asking a fellow human for advice.
“I can’t run experiments on my customers.” Once again, nonchalant words containing the dread of dead worlds left her pink lips.
“Experiments?” I responded with the most neutral possible tone, not showing any surprise in my visage.
“Erm… Bad usage of words.” She unlatched from the mannequin. “I meant trying new styles. Nothing creepy or awful I swear.” She thrashed her hands around in negation, though she looked like more a flyswatter.
“So I’m not going to be a true model? I won’t need to go down the aisle and pose?” Honestly, that was the most awful part of the deal.
“Technically, you will be my model, but no, you are not going to be a model.” Gloria clarified. “Think about this, I just need your body for inspiration and as a dress-up doll. You don’t need to do anything at all. You could be connected to your tycoon whilst I work on your body!” She said with too much glee to my liking.
“Al…right.” I doubted Gloria could do anything to me. Security and law enforcement in the Terra Nova Enclave were top-notch, they wouldn’t allow any crime at all to take place here. “I think I can accept.”
“Splendorous!” Gloria jumped on her toes and clasped all her hands in the air. “Then let’s get started with the classes.”
“Here, right now?” Her enthusiasm pushed me out of my game for a moment.
“Of course not, silly goose, we require of a few things to make this right. Follow me!” Gloria stepped out of her shop, skipping steps and hopping around as if she were a cartoon character.
“What about the store?” I asked her as I made my way out. “Don’t you need to man it?”
“Nonsense.” She smiled at me. “It’s mostly a private establishment working on a commission basis, only students like your friends come to buy normally. I just sell the dress and cosplays I don’t use because I run out of space.”
“I see…” I thought I had seen truly extroverted and energetic people with Mérida, but Gloria was in a league of her own. She was so… easy-going. Makoto and I could never.
My mind couldn’t comprehend how Gloria wasn’t boiling in embarrassment. I didn’t know her age, but statistics alone told me it was likely she was old enough to be my grandmother. I was even getting ashamed by her antics, as she hopped happily, yet the sight alone was amusing enough that I didn’t become Proxima Centauri.
Though I was getting a bit too red.
We reached a gravitational elevator and Gloria stopped in front of it.
“Why did you stop?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” The seamstress pouted and embraced her torso with all her arms. “Two floors upwards, come on.”
I rolled my eyes and did as commanded. I can’t fathom what goes in the depths of her mind. Gravity became an illusion as I slid into the tube and kicked the wall, sending me up to my destination. Not to boast, but I fared well in zero gravity for someone who had reached space only 3 days ago.
“Alehop!” Gloria landed behind me with a twirl as the artificial gravity pushed her down on the floor. “Why did you stop? Come on!”
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I refrained myself from doing anything at all, not even a gesture, let alone a remark. Then I noticed what was our destination.
“A bar?” I frowned.
“Indeed!” Gloria twirled on her heels to face me. “We are going to need some alcohol to work, and Jill’s cocktails are to die for.” Once more, I ignored the creepiness of her tone. Though I guess most of my terror came from the dissonance between the words and the apparel.
The place had an old-world old-history look. All walls – or rather, all surfaces – were paneled with wood, barrels working as seats and tables, and a large counter stood in the front that occupied all the length of the locale. The place was currently empty – my experience told me that all stores in the enclave tended to be most of the time – with only the barista at the counter, a wall filled with a myriad of expensive-looking alcohol bottles behind him.
The man had a majordomo look to him as he washed a glass with a cloth. It’s an act. There were so many infinite, more efficient, and effective ways to clean glass that it was apparent to me he was just performing an act to establish ambiance.
“Quite… rustic…” I followed Gloria to a stool on the counter and we both sat down.
Old-world decorations never liked me. Maybe I was too utilitarian or minimalist, but the only style that resonated with me was brutalism. Mérida always liked saying that was the reason why I didn’t have friends.
“Yes, I love it! A mixture of a pirate safe haven, a Wild West saloon, and a wine cellar. Such a mixture is hard to achieve.” Gloria praised the place, her eyes feasting on the ambiance.
“You are one of the few that give such ovations to my establishment, Gloria.” The barista talked to us, putting the glass down. “Anyhow, what can I get you both?”
“Two Extinction Events.” Gloria and the barista exchanged a look of someone doing a transaction petition.
“That name sounds… extreme.” I butted in.
“Fret not, worst can happen is you puking your guts out.” The barista added, one of those cocktail-mixing things on his hands.
“That seems bad, though.” The man shrugged at my words.
“Oh, come on, don’t scare him, Jill.” Gloria raised her butt from the stool and perched over the counter to grab a bowl with nuts behind it. She put it between us three. “And honestly, puking a bit will do him good. Look how tall he is!”
I honestly didn’t know if she was joking or being serious. But it was true that I was taller than the two of them. Jill was around 1.85, whilst Gloria was short for all standards, around 1.69m, but it was clear where all the mass had gone.
“So why do I need that alcohol, then?” I deducted that the best way to get answers out of her was to just converse and adapt to her flow. I grabbed a single nut from the bowl and shot it at my mouth with a flicker. Salty.
“Shapeshifting is a weird thing, it’s like combining the mimetics of geckos and squids, and then adding weird regeneration abilities like those of starfish.” Gloria picked nuts between stops, not letting the chewing impede her speech. “If your body is at peak performance and health, then there’s no need to shapeshift. It’s like an instinct, a survival one at that. You need to be ‘hurt’ or ‘in danger’ to activate it. Of course, that’s only if you are a novice.”
“And alcohol is a poison,” I added, picking my second nut.
Gloria smiled at me. “Jill? The drinks?”
“You’ve only given me a minute, woman.” The barista hissed at her, and she hissed back.
“Either way,” the seamstress turned back to me with a smile, “shapeshifting is a mostly conscious effort.”
“What about those arms?” I pointed with yet another nut in hand. Mostly because I felt it would have been impolite to point at her with an empty hand.
“Oh, these?” Gloria dropped her lower arms and swung them like pendulums. “Ascension process. I didn’t make them myself.”
“That can happen?” My eyes opened a bit.
“A lot of things can happen in the evolutionary process,” Jill interjected.
“Yup, four arms are not the weirdest thing,” Gloria affirmed. “I guess the most common mutation is a tail. You know, apes and common ancestors, and all of that. However, most tails end up being cat or fox tails. Anime did a lot of damage to the brain of the young.”
“You are not one to speak, Gloria.” Jill shook one of the cocktail thingies which name I didn’t know as he spoke.
“Oh, come one. I’m not that far gone.” She denied with a sway of her hands. “There are worse out there. Virtualized ones at that.”
“If what you say is true, then why does the boy wear a yukata from a shoujo manga?”
“He bought it himself!” Gloria pouted in protest and slammed the counter. “I will not stand for such accusations!”
Jill gave me a doubtful glance. I sighed. “She’s saying the truth. A friend convinced me to buy it as I had no more clothes.”
“I see.” He had the whole barista schtick assumed as he didn’t judge before such an extravaganza. “It makes sense, that one is popular amongst students right now. Probably why Gloria had it in the first place.”
“What do you mean ‘it’? Don’t call by ‘it’ Hitori-sensei’s works!” The seamstress snapped at the barista.
“I didn’t know it was based on a series.” I ignored Gloria’s antics as I would do with Mérida’s. The yukata didn't look strange nor out of place with my limited knowledge of the so-called land of the rising sun.
“You don’t strike me as the type of person who reads manga in the first place. It makes sense you didn’t know.” Jill did the same as me.
“I guess I could read it now that I have apparel from it.” I grabbed the sleeves and waved them around.
“I’d recommend otherwise.” He slammed the cocktail apparatus on the counter and slowly filled two small glasses. “It’s pure schoolgirl brain rot. It has been for over a century now.” Gloria screamed an obscenity, but we ignored her. “School romance can only go so far. At that point, it’s just grown-ass women playing dolls with handsome Kens. You know, before immortality, series just didn’t advance the main cast ages - forever locked into eternity, but now, it’s just a given. Excluding, the children, of course.”
“Can’t say I watched many series.” Jill pushed the glasses onto us and I accepted it. “I’m more of a documentary guy.”
“Documentaries? Ugh.” Gloria groaned in disgust and made a puking gesture, the glass in one of her many hands. “Do students even have access to them? They are one of the most expensive and selective pieces of media.”
“Engineering scholarship.” The other two mumbled in acknowledgment at those two words.
“Influential and scholarship. Who are you exactly, Lorem?” Gloria toyed with the glass, the sways hypnotic.
“Just an orphan.” I did the same, but I had my doubts if to drink the glass. The name of the cocktail still lingered in my mind.
“No parental help and Influential? That’s not something you say every day.” Jill commented, finally taking a nut for himself.
“Do you see Influentials every day?” I countered.
“Touché, mon ami.” Likewise, my friend. I recognized the simple foreign words spoken by the barista.
“Well, stop indulging in the past.” Gloria butted in and took a sip of her glass. “Ahh.” She squinted her eyes hard, and her face deformed as she groaned. “Oof, harder than I remember.”
“You sure this isn’t lethal?” I faced Jill. “She had like a milliliter.”
The barista shrugged. “Don’t take a whole shot, that’s my recommendation and legal warning.”
“Right…” When a drink came with a legal warning, it wasn’t safe for consumption.
“Wooo.” Gloria buffed and coughed twice. Her expression gained two decades with her wrinkles and teary eyes. “Take a gambit and let’s start. Don’t let me suffer alone.”
I led the crystal-clear glass and contents to my nose and smelled it. The fact that I couldn’t smell it already scared me. The alcohol should have been burning on my nostrils.
“Bah, fuck it. You only live once.” And I simply wet my tongue.