Chapter Five
“What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.”
—Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Inside, cool air filled a dim, rounded room. The stale, acidic tang of atmospheric reprocessing left it smelling like an airplane before takeoff. A lighted booth dominated the far wall, pulsing with inscrutable electronics. Behind an AlluClear window, a bored valkyrie in day-glo makeup checked IDs and collected cash like an electric Charon. Her platinum blond mohawk brushed the booth’s ceiling.
Two security minions in suits hulked, one to either side of the enclosure. They guarded twin, neon-lit passages that curved out of sight behind black curtains. Each bouncer stared blankly, apparently stock still, but I knew better.
They ensured none passed without first tithing the club’s gatekeeping goddess, so their TAPs scanned the foyer, possibly the club exterior as well. No surprise if they controlled hidden weapon emplacements, too. I coded security systems like that on Earth. Just like on Earth, some areas of TRIC City CorpSec didn’t patrol. This place fit the bill.
With the insouciant ease of familiarity, Rike strode past me to the booth and blocked its occupant from view. The valkyrie’s hair waved around. I squinted until I had it right and pretended her mowhawk was Rike’s. He gestured while he spoke, hands always in motion, and as he did, her orange or pink or blue makeup flashed through his fingers.
Club Anyone vibrated with music, contesting and muting the THUM of the Chute. The refinery’s omnipresent vibrations unsettled my balance, but the Club noise itched my teeth. I hoped this wasn’t a dance club. I don’t dance, especially with an orbit-to-ground smelter hammering planetoids on us while I struggled for rhythm.
I leaned to the left and peered around the edge of the booth, hoping to catch a glimpse beyond. One eye of the nearest bouncer tracked my progress. I stayed where I stood, wary of irritating him, but caught a glimpse of mirror-lined walls that stretched out of sight. Was that the edge of a stage? An edge of tight black clothing and heels gyrated into view and out again in a flash. Shit. He brought me to a strip club.
I hate strip clubs. Time to leave.
Rike waved me over. The goddess inside her techno case pointed her chin at me. “What about him?” The gesture tinkled a row of chrome piercings in her lower lip, each clinking metal tube etched with gold circuitry.
“Yep, he’s with me.”
She grabbed a stack of plastic cards from a shelf at the back. Her tattooed back was bare above the low swoop of her top. A realistic owl, eyes replaced with opalescent dermal studs, cocked its head and blinked at me. Then it covered its eyes with one wing and peered between its feathers. She turned around, hiding her owl again, and slid two passes through a slot.
“Two drink minimum. Even for you and your friends, Rike. Don’t forget.”
Rike nodded and headed left. He shoulder slapped the mute security guard as we passed. I hurried after. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was only a dance club. I could always leave if it wasn’t a dance club.
We rounded the short passage into a blaze of pulsing lights and throbbing sound but an otherwise prosaic, narrow room. A stage dominated the left wall, mirrors lined the right, and a row of black left-facing couches filled the center.
The music confused me. I caught a rhythm, the melody registered, and I began to follow it. Then zoom! The volume swelled and the sound warped. Distortions blurped into being, held, released into white noise, and settled.
I struggled to pick out the music all over again, caught a rhythm … It was as if some massive hand squeezed a large rubber bulb of sound into unrecognizable shape, then released it to slowly expand back to a familiar, understandable round.
I hated it. It pushed and pulled at my ear. How could anyone dance to this? But dance they did. The stage held four poles in classic chrome, and around each a person gyrated.
Great. A strip club. My heart sank.
Except … the performers showed almost no skin. A little around the ankles, above their shoes. Or if they were barefoot. Instead they danced encased in matte black rubber suits, dotted in chrome discs. Head included. They wore matching open-faced masks, like a wet suit, but chrome mesh veils draped across and hid their faces. Their hands were uncovered to grip the poles. It was hard to imagine something less erotic, but faceless they strutted and postured like porn stars. Performance art?
Rike slapped an arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “Can you tell the difference?”
“They’re not naked?”
“Not that. Feel it man … no Chute!”
Once pointed out, it was obvious. The relentless hum of the Chute was gone. I had to put my hand to my mouth and yell to be heard. “How?” That vibration shook the bedrock for miles.
He didn’t hear me. It didn’t matter. I peeled Rike’s arm off and looked for an exit. Instead, I saw her. Across the club, on the last stage without a mask, her hazel face ovaled by the suit’s strange hood. My eyes hit and stuck, like licking an electric socket. Blue bolts arched into me. I was alive, electrified, trapped.
Time spindled. Everything toppled into slow motion.
On stage she held a pose, slung through the trough of a warping beat. Chin and one knee to her chest, she curved off the pole and froze, as if waiting on a beat to be born. A swoop of black hair streaked with red dangled from beneath a curve of rubber prison.
The sound belled, warped again, and she unleashed her leg in perfect synchronicity. Unfurled her body to the rising distortion, and blooming out, rode the sound round the thin, chrome pillar to the ground.
The music returned to recognizable and the tempo accelerated. She whipped her hair and threw her body into another spin, this time up the pole. Down again. A rising and descending spin of sheer grace. She landed finally, crouched and breathing hard, her chest palpitating the tight rubber suit.
She stood to bow and stumbled, wobbled on ridiculously high black shoes, all pretense of grace abruptly gone. A huge grin, innocent as a child’s, spread across her face. It invited us to giggle at the absurdity of it all—the stage, the lights, the dance.
A swan of air returned to clumsy earth and laughing.
She stepped toward the edge of the stage, nearly fell again, but caught her balance. She clumped, one shaky fawn-step after another, plunked down, and swung both legs over the edge like a restless teenager. She leaned and spoke to some customer on a couch, but I couldn’t hear them.
I was riveted by what little I could see of her in a rubber body suit, from a distance, over another man’s shoulder. I craned for a better view. Was she still talking to the same guy?
A warm voice whuffed into my ear. I jumped three inches straight up and dropped my drink.
“Suck your dick? I want to. I’m Vanessa. Hi!”
What the—I whipped around and nearly lost my balance. Vanessa’s hand on my arm steadied me.
“Hey there, big guy. Too much B?” Vanessa was paler then the woman from the stage. She dressed exactly like the others, except her rubber shower cap and its metal face screen dangled from a finger. Blonde curls exploded from her head in a sexy riot. She smirked gently, like the joke was on me. “Too much, right?”
“Uh B? No. You startled me. What did you say?”
“I’ll be the best. I promise.” She stuck out her hand, all friendly business, like we’d only just met at a company party. “What’s your name,” she asked?
I shook on reflex. “Derek. I’m Derek and um … I doubt you actually want to. You don’t even know me.” I backed up a step, casting around for Rike. Vanessa inched forward, sticking to me step for step like a boxer.
I spotted Rike and waved for his attention. He leaned against a mirrored wall, chatting with a Club Anyone dancer in the signature rubber one-piece. The dancer tossed her hair. It was her! The wobbly woman from the stage.
I TAPped a zoom, and they swelled in my sight. The red streaks in her hair shone too brightly to be real, but who cared? She swished it to the side again, nodding at whatever Rike said. I drank in her face, mesmerized by the freckles splashing across her tawny nose.
I dialed back the zoom. It might spoil the illusion if I accidentally entered a nostril.
“That’s Natasha,” Vanessa said. “She’s a sweetie.”
Natasha placed a hand on Rike’s shoulder like she knew him. A strange queasiness roiled my stomach. Butterflies, because Rike could introduce me? Or disappointment, because she knew him well and that could mean … anything.
It could mean anything.
“So, what do you say?” I jumped again. I’d forgotten Vanessa.
“Natasha.” I rolled the name around in my mouth. “Natasha. Thanks.”
I watched her rock back and forth on her black and chrome heels, laughing at some joke of Rike’s. Her smile lit their shared corner like plasma fire. Beautiful, rare, and out of place. A little scary.
Vanessa stepped in front of me and blocked my view. She grabbed both my wrists. “She’s a sweetie, Derek, but I’ve got skills.” Vanessa tugged me toward her, and I stumbled forward. “Don’t be shy, Mr. Man. Come on, you won’t regret it.”
I twisted and extricated my wrists. “Uh … thanks, Vanessa, thanks anyway. Really. You seem very nice, but I have to go.”
It would be rude to run out without telling Rike, but I needed to leave. I looked for him again, but they’d moved and I couldn’t spot them. Forget Rike and Natasha. Just go. I headed for the door.
Not fast enough.
“Whoa whoa there, Derek. Wait a sec. Damn you’re eager, running off with Vanessa so fast.” I looked behind and there stood Rike, grinning again. Did the man ever frown?
He towed Natasha along behind. She wobbled up and slipped an arm around Vanessa for support. The lighter girl leaned into Natasha and raised an inviting eyebrow at me. Clearly suggesting I do … something … with them both.
All the lights and sound in the club abruptly died. What now?
Everyone around me exhaled a low groan of disgust. A loud “Goddammit!” rang in the dark. I felt the heavy THUM of the Chute shake my feet and buzz my teeth. Before my next breath, sound and lights rose, and the club ramped back to life exactly as before to scattered claps. One enthusiastic fellow fist-pumped. “Fuck yeah!”
“What was that?”
Rike shrugged, “Nothing to fret, my man. Happens all the time. Chute-shakes.”
Natasha took pity on me. “Vibrations outside always knock something loose eventually. We’re on backup now. Should be good for most of the night.” She smiled at me like an electric heater. “Rike says you’re new here?”
Rike answered for me. “Yep, he is.” I shot him a look. I could speak for myself.
Rike’s arm hung around Natasha’s neck like a wet blanket and dragged her a half-shuffle to his side. He continued, oblivious. “Hey V, I was telling Natasha my boy here’s just in from Earth. His first time’s on me, and I kinda promised him to Natasha.” Rike squeezed the arm about Natasha’s neck into a headlock and kissed the top of her head. “No hard feelings.”
My heart lurched. He released Natasha and pulled Vanessa tight to his body, nibbled her ear. “Not robbing food off your plate hot stuff. How about you and I go practice those skills of yours instead?” His mouth drifted from her ear to her neck.
As Vanessa lolled her head back, apparently enjoying Rike’s neck chewing—I couldn’t tell—he extended a fist over her shoulder. Natasha covered Rike’s extended hand in both of hers and slipped something from his palm.
“That should take care of him, no?”
“Sure, Rike. It’ll be great.”
Natasha kissed my cheek. “Be right back, cowboy. Gotta grab my cap.” Then she flounced off. My eyes nailed themselves to her backside. How do you flounce seductively and stumble awkwardly at the same time? Was it riveting or adorable? Or both?
Both.
Rike also took a break from Vanessa’s neck to plaster his eyes to Natasha’s departing ass. That felt … wrong. Vanessa punched him in the arm. “Hey, I’m still here!”
Rike laughed and winked. “Vanessa has skills.”
“So I heard.” I tried for stern, “Warn me next time, Rike. Bars are fine. I don’t like clubs like this.”
Rike nodded and then vanished so deeply beneath Vanessa’s curls he appeared headless. Discomfort slid across her face but vanished when she caught me looking.
While Rike—did whatever he was doing in there—Vanessa reached out one hand and patted my arm. Her other firmly massaged the back of Rike’s head. “Natasha’s nice. She’ll treat you right.” Vanessa cocked her head, “You’re a sweetie, too, aren’t you? Now don’t worry. She likes her job. You two are made for each other.”
Rike came up for air and dragged a giggling Vanessa into the crowd. I started for the exit, but Natasha returned and slipped her arm in mine before I made it more than a few feet. She smiled. I could stay a little, I guess. Talk some. No harm in that.
“Vanessa said you … uh, you like your job?” What a stupid thing to say.
“I do. I get to be everybody I want to be. Sooner or later.” She winked and tugged me along, “Come on, cowboy.”
I tried a joke, “Do you know what a cowboy is?” That came out wrong. I sounded like an ass.
Natasha patted my arm, “A working man, largely 19th century. Employed coordinating the movements and eventual sale of a common Earth herbivore and food animal, called a bovine. Pre-clone genetic variants were killed off in the late 21st century in a panic response to the failure of early efforts combatting climate change. Cowboys were known for their wild furloughs and independence from governmental authority.”
“Wow. That’s … Wow. Clearly you know cowboys.”
“I looked it up, silly head!” Her grin stretched wide.
I wanted to lay down and fall asleep beneath that smile. “So how do you know Rike, exactly?”
She waved a hand, pointing at nothing in particular. “I’ve known him for years. From around.” We passed beneath a ceiling light shining pink instead of blue. Under the new light she leaned in close and stole a thorough look. “Oh you’re cute, Derek!”
Cute. I could live with cute.
As we walked toward the back of the club, I tried again to strike up conversation. “What’s with the strange music?”
“How do you mean strange?”
“Well, it sounds like music at first. Then it blows up and goes weird and off rhythm. Then it sort of shrinks, and its music again.”
She laughed. “Oh that. It’s the countering waveform.”
“The what?”
“Countering waveform. You understand sound has a frequency, like a wave, right?”
“Sure, of course.”
“Okay good. So they warp the music to match the troughs and peaks from the Chute.”
I shrugged, still confused.
“It’s simple. Software reads the incoming vibration then shifts the waveforms of the music to dampen them. Music trough to Chute peak. It helps cancel out, so we don’t feel the Chute so much. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.”
“That’s some serious processing power.”
“You have no idea.”
We stopped before a mirror at the back of the club. There was nowhere else to go. Natasha pressed her hand against a section of wall. The mirror clicked and slid to the side with a hiss.
She slipped into the dark. I lingered without crossing. “Why go to all the trouble?”
“With what?”
I jerked a thumb behind me. “With the vibration and the music and all that?”
She reached from the darkness, slipped cool fingers around my wrist and drew me across the threshold. “Couple of reasons. Come on, Derek. Follow me. I stepped inside and the mirror-door slid closed behind us.
I couldn’t see a thing. She said, “Chute-shakes sometimes knock a girl off the poles. For a lot of guys, believe it or not, the vibration kills an erection.”
A small blue lamp on a waist high table glimmered to life. The chill light revealed the edge of a sofa and a section of wall, coated in the same rubbery material as Natasha’s suit.
Natasha turned her 100-volt smile on me, which zapped me to my toes. She stepped close as if for a kiss, never quite connected, spun me in place and pushed me backwards onto the couch.
She laughed at my confusion and rooted in her purse. “So this customer of mine from Texas, he talked about cowboys all the time.”
“Texas. Sure. I was there once. I’m from Earth.”
“Yeah, you said that. So you’ve heard about the steers in Texas? This guy I knew went on about steers and genetic modifications. He was kind of a douche.”
Natasha pulled rubber head gear from her purse then tossed the bag onto the couch beside me. She bent over the tiny lamp. The bulb pulsed red then back to blue after it scanned her eye.
“All set. Clock is running.” She popped the rubber cap on her head and tucked her hair under it, chatting away, getting ready for work.
“Palsy, poor thing.”
“Palsy?” Was that a safe word?
“The guy from Texas. He beat this rhythm on my thigh in the middle of things. I didn’t mind, because he couldn’t help it. He wanted me to be an old girlfriend, but I don’t think he liked her very much. He smacked my butt and shouted, ‘Bad girlfriend!’ the whole time.”
Headgear firmly in place, Natasha dropped onto the sofa beside me and crossed her legs. Thin light reflected off the shiny chrome discs embedded in her black rubber suit. That’s all I saw of her body. Without the chrome veil she appeared a disembodied face, eyes floating in darkness. With a start I realized one of her eyes was darker than the other. She reminded me of a bizarre nun. I wished I could see her legs. In the dark, they looked like narrow black lakes flickering with stars.
“Who do you want me to be, Derek?”
“I don’t understand. You, of course. Who else would you be?”
She froze. Guffawed. “Oh my. You really are a noob, aren’t you? Okay. Here’s how this works.
“There’s a room charge. It hits your TAP like a restaurant bill. Normally you tip the girls, but Rike took care of that for you tonight. With me so far?”
I nodded. She patted the couch between us. “Good. Now, why such a stranger. Come here.”
I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know how to open the door, so I scooted closer. Natasha placed one hand on my leg and reached across my lap with the other to rummage in her purse. “Relax. This’ll be fun. Here it is.” She held up a sheet of chrome colored mesh. “This is the Veil.”
She placed the top of it across her forehead. Instantly it adhered, leaping down the sides of her jaw and around her chin with a magnetic snick. It covered her face entirely. Where once Natasha sat, an android in black with a chain screen for a face stared back at me.
This kept getting creepier.
Natasha’s voice was muffled but still kind from behind the mask. “Now don’t worry, silly. I see that expression on your face.” She patted my knee again and pointed one finger to her chest. “This is the Suit. Our TAPs mirage onto the Suit and the Veil together. These chrome disks,” she touched them in turn as she lectured, “register sensory and pressure data. Also movement, which means between both our TAPs, with a little help from the club wares, I can be absolutely anyone for you. Isn’t that cool?”
“I don’t think I get it.” But I did, a glimmer at least. I wanted her to talk more.
“Hmm, do you like Charity Bells?”
My blank look said it all.
She shook her head and the veil shimmered like shells on strings. “Really? Charity Bells, the singer? She’s the slam rage on the B’Dance trip. No?” Natasha’s blank and faceless mask shimmered while she spoke.
“I’m new in town, remember? New on Mars actually.”
“Sure, new. But Charity? Okay, okay. Here then!”
Abruptly, Natasha was vanished. A voluptuous woman in a slinky cream party dress sat next to me. Her shock green hair floated above golden shoulders. Tiny mirrors were embedded directly into her flesh, transforming her body into a living mosaic. She was frozen like a statue, but Natasha’s voice issued from between her pouty, white-coated lips.
“See. I’m Charity Bells.” Natasha’s voice dropped low and smoky, no longer Natasha at all. “And we can do anything you like, cowboy.”
Her voice popped back to normal. “Charity’s so pretty. I even dubbed her voice. We’ve got a full license for her. I get a lot of requests.”
Charity winked out. The android with the featureless, chrome face returned, reached up and parted a small, previously invisible slit in the Veil. The real Natasha peered through the gap in the mesh.
“There’s an opening here.” She tapped her lips. “And here,” she pointed to her lap, “for all the nice stuff.”
“Charity was … you were … like a statue. Stock still.”
“Oh that.” Natasha waved a hand. “We need your TAP logged in to handle some of the movement and stuff. Like I said it takes both TAPs and the club computers to make this as close to real as possible, especially if we’re trying to mirage an environment on the walls too.”
My head spun, but I nodded. “Would you remove the Veil, please? It’s weird talking and not seeing you.”
With a practiced flick she peeled off the Veil and became Natasaha-the-undersea-diver again.
“Better?” I nodded. “Cool. So it’s not VR of course, but it’s as close as you can get. Here’s the hot part, Derek. The club has a full library of politicians, news casters, famous people in general, and lots of generics.” She leaned close and whispered. “But the very best part is I can be anyone. Bring your own footage and upload it. The computers do the rest. Isn’t that kinky?”
A bulb finally went off and my pants grew tight. I was rock hard and focused entirely on her. “Anyone?”
“Anyone. It’s in the name.”
Club Anyone.
Natasha leaned in and said softly, “Technically, it’s illegal without a consent from the person you’re filming, but who’ll know? Grab enough vid and voice with your TAP, load them up, the Club extrapolates, and I become your every dream. All of them. Give it a try?”
I nodded hungrily, angrily, and uploaded a vid capture of Crystal.
* * *
“Don’t sweat it, hon. It happens all the time.”
My god. This was an episode from a bad soap opera. Was I really hearing the consolation speech?
“Really? You’re not just saying that?” I winced. The whine from my mouth, the pathetic hurt lurking in my words. Ugh. Of course she was just saying that. What else could she say?
Natasha patted my leg. “Honestly, it’s kind of endearing.”
I snorted. That confirmed she was lying.
“But Derek, if you don’t mind a little advice? I’m only observing, not criticizing or anything, but who was she?”
“Ex-wife. Soon anyway.”
“Oh, that explains it. If you don’t mind me saying that’s kinda not a good choice. Lots of new guys make the same mistake.”
She kept her hand on my knee. Warm, caring, very not Crystal. “This club is about blowing off steam. Wives come with a lot of emotional baggage.”
“Ex-wife.”
“Ex-wives. Enough to shut down any man’s machinery.” She tossed an unopened condom at me. “Why don’t we try again with a generic?” So we did.
For hours.
In the afterglow, I told Natasha about Alfred.
“It still bothers me.” She ran her fingers through my hair as I lay in her rubber-coated lap. “There’s no universe in which Alfred’s plan succeeded. He had to know that. Unless his code was that incoherent, but then they would have caught him sooner. I can’t make sense of it.”
“Maybe it didn’t?”
“What do you mean?” I lifted my head, and she uncrossed her legs. I scooted back and settled into the cozy spot between her thighs again.
“When I studied, my professor said once a bioroid goes more than five percent off its core programming, it gets incoherent. Starts acting ways you and I’d call crazy—”
I popped upright. “Wait, you studied bioroid mechanics?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“No, of course not, I didn’t mean—”
She pulled me back down with a laugh. “You didn’t think is what you mean. Most guys don’t. I studied before I started dancing.”
“Why—”
“Don’t interrupt. I’ll forget what I was thinking. Oh yeah, five percent. Believing he could run sounds more than five percent off.”
“Exactly, but Alfred was sharp. Too sharp for six plus. Control the other bioroids, fake us out, reach the Lift … Code edging into contradiction doesn’t execute a plan like that.”
“Well silly, if his actual escape proves he wasn’t six plus but running and hiding was a six plus play, then maybe escape and hide wasn’t his plan? Maybe Alfred had a different end game?”
I thought about that while Natasha said, “That’s process of elimination.” She shrugged, “Just a guess. What do I know? I never finished … But Alfred could have killed you, and he didn’t. That feels important.”
She was on to something. “Go on …”
“In your story at the part about the Lift, I thought you’d say Alfred knocked you out. After you sent the Ampule to the lobby he didn’t need you anymore, right? Except maybe as a hostage.” She warmed to her theme and excitement edged her voice. Her hands underlined her thoughts like a conductor’s baton. “Only he didn’t take you hostage. Alfred tossed you into the corner, out of the line of fire. He could have just killed you or,” she tapped her chin and then pointed, “used you for a shield. That’s kind of like taking you hostage, I guess.” Natasha sighed and lowered her hands to stroke my forehead again. “Like I said, I never finished, so I’m rambling.”
“I think you’re right.” She paused, startled by my agreement. “There existed no universe in which Alfred’s plan succeeded. He had to know that before we reached the lobby. Possibly only after we entered the Ampule, but still …” I sat up. That was no escape attempt.
“I helped Alfred commit suicide.”