“This is a dump,” Leviticus commented as they stood on the dusty street outside Sleeping Beauty Inc. Io Division.

“It used to look a little more glamorous,” Gage agreed, aware that all buildings that managed to stay intact on Io soon started looking like crap. “Okay,” Gage said, pulling the three of them together. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to give Leviticus my bracelet and he can go sign in with you, Iona. Once you’re signed in and you have a room, take the bracelet off him and bring it down to me. Then I can come upstairs and join you.”

“Why do we need to go through all that?” Leviticus wondered noisily.

“Because they won’t let you come up with us unless you have a Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet on you,” Gage said, removing his bracelet.

“I don’t have a bracelet right now,” Iona said with a tilt of her head.

“It’s okay. Right now, you’re a buyer. Your information is in my bracelet, and even if you aren’t considered an owner right now because of all the time we spent in space, a tiny conversation with the front desk would show that you have multiple men bidding on you right now. You’re famous and they are expecting you.”

Gage handed his bracelet to Leviticus, who promptly tried to put it around his own wrist.

“What the frick are you doing?” Gage asked before he got it fastened.

“Putting the bracelet on, like you told me to?” Leviticus said slowly.

“Do not ever put a Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet around your wrist, moron,” Gage said harshly. “It comes off me because of an uncoupling device I inserted under the skin in my wrist.”

“What?” Iona and Leviticus wondered together.

“Look, I don’t care what contract I signed. I’ll keep my end of the bargain as long as they keep up their end of theirs, but I am no one’s slave. Put the bracelet in your pocket, keep your hand in your pocket and let them scan it in the doorway arch through your pants.” He pushed the two of them toward the front doors.

Iona turned back. “You should have been wearing one the whole time, shouldn’t you? You were lying to me when you said all that stuff about the Cannonball III being your wristband, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said frostily, despite the sweaty wind that tossed his hair.

“What else have you lied about?”

He pulled her close for a second. “I lied when I said I didn’t want to go to bed with you. I just can’t be a slave when I do it. It has to be free. Do you understand? I’ve never been free and I can’t be myself if I’m under contract.”

“Our contract is over now, isn’t it?” Iona whispered back.

“Go inside and find out,” Gage said back to her. “Put my bracelet in your pocket when you come to get me and see if there’s a back door you can use.”

She kissed him briefly and let him go. She took Leviticus by the hand and they went into the building together.

Gage leaned against the wall and waited. He looked around for cameras, but he didn’t see anything.

Five minutes later, Iona came back.

“Turns out there was no need for any of that hoopla. There’s no one there.”

“What do you mean?”

“We can go in with your wristband, just like you said, but there’s no one there. The place is empty. There are instructions for buyers and there are instructions for returned models. The models can go inside, pick a room and make themselves at home. The whole thing is like a giant vending machine. Except we only have one wristband so we can only get one room. The one we got has one bed, one computer station, one shower, one sink, one toothbrush, one everything. There’s a vending machine for frozen dinners, a vending machine for a change of clothes, a vending machine for toiletries, a vending machine for wristbands, and even one for desserts.”

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Gage took the wristband and put it on. “Let’s go inside.”

Once inside, he really got the feeling Iona had described. He also found out very quickly that he was going to have to pay for anything they got out of a vending machine, except they were all starving, so he called over Leviticus and they chose from the menu of frozen food.

“These all look like we’ll be eating ass,” Leviticus complained.

“You haven’t spent much time in space, have you?” Gage shot back.

“Okay, I haven’t. Is this a step up from what you’re used to eating?”

“No. It’s very similar to what I’m used to eating. I’m going to get the pineapple chicken because even though it is fake chicken, it’s real pineapple, and that’s good enough for me.” He pressed the buttons to order it.

“What about you, princess?” Leviticus asked.

“Oh, I’m going to get the french onion soup. It has real onions in it and like Gage, I agree you can really tell when they use a fake nutritional meal to make things. The chicken tastes like the beef which tastes like the pork and they all taste like a nutritional meal. At least with the soup, they’re not trying to fool you. It is a bowl of salty brown onions.”

“Aren’t you used to eating like a queen?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t always a queen and from what I can remember from before I was crowned, this soup was my favorite.” She prompted Gage to order it for her.

He pressed the buttons. “And what for you, your majesty?”

“Oh, just order me what you’re having. I’m sure it must be the best one if you’re still willing to eat it.”

Gage ordered a second pineapple chicken and the three of them waited like idiots as their meals heated up.

“What’s the bedroom like?” Gage asked.

“The bed is pretty big. We can sleep on it like three pigs in a blanket. Iona can sleep in the middle and later she can tell the story of how she slept between two identical men.”

Iona stared at them. “You don’t look the same.”

“What?”

“We definitely do.”

“No, really,” she defended. “I thought you did at first because I mistook you for Gage during the Sleeping Beauty Inc. model show, but now that I’ve seen you more closely and together, you don’t look alike.”

“Explain in more detail.”

“You’re fatter,” she said, pointing to Leviticus.

“Ouch,” Gage said in mock pain.

“I am not!”

“You’re not fat, but you definitely have more flesh around your jawline than Gage. The red hair is an easy clue, but you do different things with your face than Gage does. He looks curious, alert, like his ears are perked up and he’s listening for something. You smile way more than he does. Your vocabularies and the way you two talk are completely different. Yet, you’re rubbing off on each other and becoming more alike the more time you spend together.”

Leviticus frowned. “I want to hear more physical markers.”

“You mean other than that you’re wearing different clothes? Your hair is cut similarly but not exactly the same? Gage has a few chips in his bottom teeth that you don’t have.”

“Yuck. They didn’t always use a teeth guard on you, did they?” Leviticus asked, turning to Gage.

“I didn’t see one again after we were separated,” Gage admitted. “You got one?”

“I didn’t need one with Raylynn. She wasn’t that kind of psychopath.”

“What did she want?”

“Just a lot of sex. It was pretty easy.”

“Lucky,” Gage said with a pouty stretch as he checked on their food. “Almost done. Notice any other differences? So far, all that you’ve mentioned is in line with what the scientists who worked on us achieved. We were exactly identical when we came out of our tubes at birth, but stuff can happen to us that makes us different as we go along. It’s that whole nature versus nurture thing. It’s too bad they didn’t get to learn all the different things they hoped to learn from their experiment.”

“What happened to them? Are they still around making sets of identical boys?”

“Oh, they were all gunned down and their lab burned to the ground,” Leviticus said sullenly.

“Why?”

“Because a very twisted rich man saw us. He’d never seen boys that beautiful before and ten of them meant something different to him than it meant to the scientists, who were… what would you call them, Gage?”

“Not physically abusive, but merely psychologically,” Gage replied.

“Do you ever think about it?”

“I try not to,” Gage responded. “I try not to think of any of this old stuff and we’re going to need to stop talking about it, or I won’t be able to eat. Let’s just leave this conversation with the idea that Iona doesn’t see us as the same and I, for one, am happy about it because I don’t like being seen as a set. Do you?” he asked Leviticus.

“No. Let’s finish up and get the hell away from each other.”

As if on cue, the heater inside the vending machine went off and their food was ready.

“Gage, please tell me you’ll buy me dessert,” Iona begged as she saw the actual size of her soup. It was small.

The vending machine prices were more than reasonable. Sleeping Beauty Inc. did not want anyone dying on Io. He wondered if he could have bought the building, bones and all.

“Here? I’ll buy you anything you want.”