The crowd before her writhed in excitement, pulsed in anticipation. Sixty thousand people, packed together side by side, back to back. They were a diverse crowd, at least when it came to their adoration of her. Some carried photos of her in various poses, glossy copies sold for two thousand yen each. Others carried small lightsticks, another branded item designed to show their admiration for her while filling her bank accounts. Others had gone a step further, etching a part of her on their bodies as they sported the latest line of cosmetic augs connected to her name. Those could only be found in Japan. Irises branded with her logo, a peacock whose tail was in full bloom, littered the crowd while others had grafted it onto their skin, subdermal lights pulsing in a pre-programmed sequence. And all that even before she had taken a single step on the stage.
They went mad as she appeared, walking slowly towards the center of the stage that had been set up for her in the shade of the Tokyo Dome, a single spotlight tracking her passing. With each click of her heels, resonating throughout the Dome through carefully placed speakers, another layer was added on two holograms that tracked her movements.
She cradled the microphone, a painful anachronism in a sea of cybernetic modernity as she lifted her right hand to the heavens and as if they were her puppets, the sixty thousand of Tokyo Dome were silenced. She cleared her throat with trained class and poise, eliciting a few gasps that could clearly be heard through the air. Craning her neck, she lowered herself towards the microphone, a whiff of her breath amplified through the stadium.
“Tokyo… Bist du bereit?”
Streams of light translated her words into English and Kanji
“Ja!!”
“Tokyo… Bist du sicher?”
“Ja!!”
“Dann komm mit mir”
As the electronic tones of the intro blasted all around her, Renata Gerhard knew of one thing with perfect certainty. Japan might have an Emperor but Tokyo had one Queen.
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She walked out now, security guards forming a corridor for her to pass through, as if she was Moses through the Red Sea, her waiting limousine standing in for the Promised Land, fans screaming their lungs out around her. Renata walked with poise and an attitude that would have been more fitting to a walk down 5th Avenue or Frankfurt’s Westend, ignoring their pleas and supplications. It was all a part of the carefully curated persona that she exhibited both in the NET, where her fame had been born as well as in the flesh, the Ice Queen of Europop. At the end of her walk of fame, stood a hulking mass of muscle and metal, dark shades hiding the unnatural eyes of an enhanced killer. Reinhardt Götze or as he was widely known as, the Panzer, opened the door of a black, sleek MV Valkyrie 3, a gift to Renata from a Mercedes-Vauxhall AG executive. She refused to part with the car wherever she traveled around the world. Partly to maintain appearances but also because the whole thing could double as an armored personnel vehicle with enough security systems to make her impervious to whomever decided to go after her.
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Stopping for a quick wave and kiss to the adoring and expectantly disappointed crowds, Renata lowered herself within the Beast, while Reinhardt secured the door and moved to the passenger seat at the front. There was no driver next to him, the Valkyrie starting with a mind of its own, racing towards the streets of downtown Tokyo.
“Yes, yes thanks for the cash, thank you, thank you”, Renata muttered under her breath as she waved at the crowd through the window before it blackened to hide its occupants. At last, she found herself completely alone for the first time since stepping on the tarmac of Haneda Airport. Grunting, she let her head slide back onto the cushioned seat, resting her neck. She hadn’t expected that the life of a Europop idol would require such physical exertion when she posted her first vid three years ago on a rickety old teen talent forum, trying to combat the boredom of being fourteen, homeschooled and cooped up within the walls of an admittedly luxurious penthouse in the Rhine-Ruhr MK. From there, through the power of the NET and careful marketing she had been taken around the world on a trailblazing career that had forced Forbes to create a whole new category just for her.
A ping invaded her thoughts, coming from the screen that was carefully hidden in the armrest on which she had haphazardly laid herself. Mutti, she thought, right on schedule as usual. Her mother was always watching her performances right as they aired irrespective of the time zone she happened to be in at the time. Tokyo concerts were always around the time she woke up, so she naturally preferred them to all other venues.
Renata rolled back the cover and lo and behold, she was correct. She retrieved the pair of NET goggles, a thick device similar to that of an optometrist's glasses and fixed them on her nose. With trained ease, she connected them to a socket at the back of her neck while retrieving another cable whose intended port was on the device itself.
As soon as the cables locked into place, Renata was transported from the comfortable surroundings of her Valkyrie to a familiar cabin in faraway Appalachia. The digital wind caressed her face, the familiar stone path that she used to tread all the time as a child felt so natural under feet that weren’t there, the birds sang in ones and zeroes.
It was so natural and all encompassing that Renata barely felt the armored truck crashing at the Valkyrie’s side.