Chapter 13

Manon, July 9, 3110 CE

I grabbed a bottom corner of the mattress and pulled. I didn't stop until the whole other half landed on the floor, which was fine because staffbots had the schedule of hotel housekeeping but the mentality of whoever did surgeon's implements. I dropped my end and pushed from the other side all the way to the door.

I took the blanket off the vanity mirror and wrapped it around my shoulders like the goddamn cape of sorrow it was. It trailed on the ground behind me as I gathered the sports drinks I'd room-serviced off the table. I'd been crying this entire time, so I had to keep hydrated or I'd get a black-out-drunk-hangover-level headache. I lined up the biodegradable bottles along the side of the mattress, but not the vanity side, in case I stopped crying long enough for me to apply today's makeup.

I stepped onto the mattress-it had to be made from the descendant of infomercial foam because the sports drinks stayed erect. I jumped a couple times to make sure, and they moved about as much as a county fair's knock-down bottles. I huddled up with my back against the door and untucked my tablet from under my arm. I floated it around to get the best angle while I adjusted my cape for max comfiness. I found the angle, brought the tablet in to set the timer, and sent it back. I didn't need to make a face. I was documenting my current face once an hour, so if I died of dehydration before I opened the door a certain perfectly-toned ass would feel as guilty as he should.

I caught his aura outside my door as though magically cued by finishing my long-term sadness preparations. 'Go away.'

'Manon, I'm so sorry. Please let me explain.'

'How about...no!'

He didn't get it and was incapable of getting it. The future seemed pretty feminist, so any sex-gender probably took the same flack for a sex tape, but I didn't have any foundation Loegria, future Loegria. Agreeance lived his entire life here and made all sorts of names for himself. The first thing I'd done was have a sex tape released and distributed without my consent-it was a socioeconomic death sentence. I'd be forever known as the Sex-Tape Kid without any Butch Agreeance to stick out the same level of stigmatic repercussions with me.

My tablet buzzed beside me with a new message. Oh my fucking god, he'd texted me through the door. It was nice knowing how desperate he was to make it up to me, but I still didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I'd read his message. I forwarded it to Morgue without opening it. Thank god she knew exactly what I'd done and sent me a message with his message inside-I loved Morgue.

Apparently it'd been a case of just business that'd gotten hacked when the Head of Security themself left their tablet unlocked. If I'd had any higher standing in Court, this would be like an inescapable-fate level of scandal. But no, I'd only achieved insta-celebrity as the Sex-Tape Kid.

I'd had to put that name out in forums on anon to keep the less catchy Intersex of the Night from sticking. That and fighting some up-in-my-box troll over how my suggested name wasn't promoting pedophilia had taken up most of my morning. The dude needed to watch a classic homoromantic asexual flick sometime.

'Manon, I know you don't want to talk to me right now, but if there's anything I can do to make it up to you, please let me know. Now, or anytime in the future, as long as it's illegal.'

My tablet buzzed. He'd sent the exact same offer in a text. I considered blocking him, but he seemed so sincere, enough that my anger could only hold out for a month max. My pain was too raw to give him any relief by response for now, so I let him walk away unrelieved.

I texted Morgue once I stopped sensing his aura. Her aura took his place outside the door in about ten minutes. I used the edge of my blanket to dab my eyes, but the tears kept coming. I bit the algae cap off a sports drink and knocked it back. I floated the bottle and cap into the hermetically sealing trashcan-it prevented eau-de-overnight-trash-in-the-sun.

My tablet buzzed. I should've guessed Morgue wouldn't strain her voice to talk through a door. That, or she wanted to keep our private conversation from the Alloparents. I woke my tablet and read her message.

'Sorry, but my life is ruined. I should probably just stay here and deal with the ocean leaking out of my body.'

'If you don't want to be recognized, we can change your face, your body-you'd be a completely different person.'

'Thanks, but I love how I look. I mostly want to have a future outside pornography-although if there are royalties, I'll take them.'

'What? You're not guarding me forever?' She sent a bunch of animated, big-eyed and pouting emojis. 'Also, you're a psiber, so you're contractually obligated to deal with melties once you've got nothing as important as guarding yours truly to do.'

That was news. I searched 'psiber contractual obligations' and it turned out adult film would've been a better career path outside of guarding Morgue. A ton psibers who weren't in Court all day suffered some form of PTSD. They couldn't even get rid of the tech that made them psibers without tearing up vital organs and killing themselves, which hadn't stopped about 30% of them from trying. They basically had to fight every day for the rest of their lives because so few lived to the psiber career's 60-year retirement age.

'Can I guard you forever? Can that be thing?'

'Sure, except I'm not living forever. You'd have to pass to one of my children. I suggest Mauve-she's ambitious enough to make enemies for the cause.'

Great, I had my whole life planned out for me. I knocked back another sports drink. I'd either have to leave my room or piss in the trashcan at this rate.

'Morgue.'

'Yeah?'

'I don't feel better. I feel trapped.'

'Let's go on a roadtrip-just you and me.'

'Where to?'

'Still want to see Mother Lake?'

I thought she knew people who knew who ran the industry. This was so much more fucking convenient than I could've expected. I stood up, adjusted my blanket so it hid everything above my knees except my head, and opened the door.

'Let's do it. Excuse me.'

I shot off to bathroom too fast to hear Morgue's reply, but it couldn't have been negative.

A staffbot handed me a cotton candy blue rolling suitcase. I asked them to toss it on the mattress, unzipped. I tossed in a couple sports drinks for the journey. Mother Lake Industries was a little over an hour's ride by dogbot, but we'd stay a whole week.

I went to the shelves hollowed out in the wall and started throwing clothes over my shoulder. The ancestors made sure they stayed folded all the way into the suitcase. I packed seven everyday robes, seven evening occasion robes just in case, a nightgown, a sexy nightgown, and a backup for each. Each of my seven days of underwear got backup and sexy versions as well. Morgue said we'd have to get special travel gear for the ride, so that was one thing to worry about.

I zipped up the front and turned the bag over. It had a separate compartment for shoes-getting stranded in the future had its perks. I packed three different everyday sandals, three different sexy sandals, and my favorite pair of shower shoes. Mother Lake Industries provided shower shoes with the rest of their complementaries, but I'd customized mine with platform heels and my own signature carved into the plastic band.

I unlatched the accessory bag from the suitcase for my makeup. The inside had adjustable elastic straps sheer but sturdy pockets to keep everything and their caps in place. It was possible I'd get inspired by something or someone there, so I packed all of it to be safe and reattached the bag.

I saw myself in the mirror when I looked up. My whole face had puffed up and my eyes were almost swollen shut, but the tears had stopped. Thankfully, part of that travel gear included a full head covering mask to keep out Adban sand and Dog's Back stank.

Building Mother Lake Industries in the Dog's Back was counterintuitive to the point of hipsterish outrageity. Nobody wanted to go to a stanky old swamp even if mosquitoes that sucked human blood weren't a thing anymore, so it was great for privacy. But apparently Mother Lake kept up an interactive exhibit/theme park and advertised it all over the fucking trams. They'd had the gall and/or total lack of foresight to build it open-air, so the park guests wore suits and masks at all times as though the theme were hazmat masquerade. It would've been cool instead of absurdly cynical if the real theme hadn't been future tech.

Morgue and I and the staffbots toting our luggage met in the courtyard. I thought I'd been prepared, but she'd packed three full-sized rolling suitcases, triply prepared. After a quick adjustment to her purple flower crown in her log's virtual mirror, we were ready to hit the Doghouse.

I slumped forward, but I had to hunch to rest my head between Morgue's shoulders, hurting my back. I moved my hands to the golden fur behind me and leaned back, but every time the dogbot's paws pounded the sand, I turned into a fucking bobblehead. Elate had a private jet. We needed a private jet.

You'd think riding around a dogbot like a horse would be scenic. Too bad we lived in the middle of the goddamn Adban and its duney sea of sand that was basically dirt that never stayed wet. You looked to the left, sand. You looked to the right, sand. It looked exactly the same to the surprise of exactly no one. On a very rare occasion the top of some buried building poked out of the endless ennui of sand, and Morgue would realign the dogbot to go further out of our way to avoid breaks in visual boredom.

Morgue reached back, tapped my black-robed arm, and pointed ahead. Difference, sweet, sweet, difference-I didn't care if it was a mirage, but Morgue wouldn't have played me like that. A spiky line of green so dark it was black stretched across the horizon like a shitty old comb with dark clumps stuck to the teeth. The spikes got taller as we got closer and the clumps separated into layers on layers of trees. Somehow all the trees stood up and out of the water like they'd collectively decided they were cool with a waist-high waterline.

Morgue slowed down as we reached the edge of the swamp. Dark, murky water moved thick and slow under a long wooden bridge tied between pairs of trees by the trees' own vines or roots or something. She realigned the dogbot toward the bridge.

Someone in a bright green mask contoured to look like a harlequin puppet's caricature of a face flicked through something on their tablet at the bridge kiosk. Morgue rode up to the kiosk and the attendant straightened up. You couldn't tell with the mask, but I'd bet they were still looking at the tablet.

The attendant raised their arms and swayed them from side to side. 'Welcome one, welcome all, to the wonderful world of Mother Lake!' They transitioned to jazz hands. They gave us three seconds of jazzing then immediately folded their arms back on the desk. 'If you'd like admission, I have to do a full scan. Removing your masks or suits anytime out-of-doors is a health risk and discouraged, but you don't have to dismount for the scan.'

'Do it,' said Morgue.

Apparently they'd been playing around on a business-issue tablet because they pressed something on it to start the invisible scan. 'Welcome, Morgue and Manon. You have a one week all-access reservation including a private meet-and-greet with Mother Lake Gen 4, herself...every day.'

I hadn't expected Mother Lake to be a person or an A.I. It did make sense that they'd be an A.I. since they were a person. That way, they could be the theme park's eternal mascot and the industries' eternal face.

'Confirmed.'

They placed two, adjustable rubber bracelets in bright green on the desk. I floated them to us and they were more hideously, plastic-palm-frond green up close.

'Please wear your bracelet at all times. It will be scanned automatically and admit your all-access package. You may cross the bridge at your leisure and our staff will assist you with your luggage and dogbot.'

Morgue walked the dogbot across to a wooden platform with dark planks half under a green and black pinstriped canopy. At the end of the covered half was a clear plastic tunnel just like the decontamination tunnel at the police station. It led into a wide window wall of the kind of black-tinted glass so often found in a douchebag's indoor sunglasses. A team of staff in those awful green masks and green and black pinstripe suits walked down the tunnel.

I followed Morgue off the dogbot, climbing down by taking full fists of hair-thankfully, the bots couldn't feel. The team grapevined out of the tunnel in a blast of wind and a god-awful mix of country and found object. I wished I wasn't wearing a mask so they had to look at the disgust they'd forced on my face. I'd still tip them if that was a thing because it wasn't the parts' fault that the system forced them to crap out this aural shit.

The dance and mercifully the song ended with a group freeze pose. A second blast of music cut off my sigh of relief. The group flung out their jazz hands. The music transitioned after three seconds to an ambient version of the found-country theme song. The staff welcomed us and split into three groups for the luggage, the dogbot, and us.

Morgue and I followed our group into the decontamination tunnel. The mist, music, and moving belt started together as soon as the doors shut. The staff faced us the entire time, singing, tirelessly, tunelessly singing. A 3D map opened over their heads, a much needed but hopelessly insufficient distraction from the ear-assacre.

The MLI theme park, MoLak, was pronounced exactly like in the howling poem apparently every white hipster had memorized and felt the need to quote at least once in my presence to reassure themselves they were on my level. I groaned, but the music drowning my will to live drowned that, too. Someone had approved this. If MLI operated anything like the businesses I knew, an entire board of people had approved this.

MoLak's seven artificial islands over the swamp connected with each other by artificial tree-root bridges. Our human-sized sushi belt was taking us to the central island, Mok 1, which was the first pun so far that hadn't personally offended me-I actually found it chucklish cute. Moks 2-7 surrounded Mok 1 in an evenly spaced semicircle. All the islands of MoLak, ugh, sat in front of MLI, built on an artificial island bigger than the seven Pangea-ed.

The belt stopped and so did the mist and music. The doors behind the staff opened and they grapevined out, backward.

I threw my arms around Morgue's shoulders. 'This isn't a theme park,' I sobbed. 'It's camp, goddamn camp.'

Morgue shrugged. 'Price of admission.'

'I nearly died.'

'That reminds me,' she pulled off her mask, and shook out her silver hair, 'it's great to get back to filtered air.' She said it with a stand-up worthy deadpan, expressionless as a staffbot.

My mom used to make a similar joke about the fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. She'd point at the bolded, glaring 'fresh' and say, "Fresh to you."

I chuckled but also started crying. I pulled off my mask and met Morgue's eyes. The silent shakes exploded into sobs tearing straight through my boobless chest.

Morgue snapped her fingers and a green and black blur appeared out of nowhere. She put my hands on her shoulders and led me through the now indistinguishable building we'd entered. We entered an elevator at some point whose ambient theme music inspired louder, throat-tearing sobs so I wouldn't have to hear it anymore.

Morgue took my hands off her shoulders and guided me by the arms to a seat. I recognized the combination of soft and hard that let you jump but wouldn't waste your booze. I patted my hands around for a tissue box. Morgue put one in my lap. I pushed my glasses onto my head and wiped my face.

I knew this suite was serious swank as soon as I saw the space between the two king beds, enough for its two full-sized desks to fit someone between them. The window-wall on Morgue's side, of course, opened to a 'conservatory' with a dining table, chairs, and a fucking fountain in the middle of a jungle of all real plants. I had the wall side. I couldn't see the suite door from the bed, but I caught one door of what had to be a walk-in closet.

Morgue ran her hand along the bottom frame of the generic hotel landscape in front of her. It faded into pixelly flowers that folded in on themselves like holographic origami and left behind a mirror. She unzipped one of the suitcases lined against the wall under it and pulled out a brush.

'If you want to use the bathroom, go ahead. I'll be a while.'

I walked around the wall. A short but still qualifiable hall stretched out opposite the closet. I opened the door at the end. The bathroom had a clear-walled shower that could've held all the Alloparents, a jacuzzi cut into the fucking marble of floor's accent corner, and a long counter with three sinks and enough space for three rolling suitcases full of makeup. They provided everything from towels and toothbrushes to bathrobes and personal shaving lasers. The toilets didn't have golden seats, but those self-opening, -closing, -cleaning, -deodorizing models couldn't have been cheap. The optional bidet and hot air ass-blower came as an eco-conscious consolation prize.

Morgue was still brushing by the time I'd finished using the toilet and washing my face. I left my robe in the bathroom, hung my travel gear in the walk-in closet and sat on my bed in the soft, fuzzy bathrobe.

She lowered her brush. Her hair fell like the silk sheets in the closet. 'How're you doing?'

'I'm not really better, so I need to get involved in something.' It'd give me the time and space I needed to process things later without turning into a randomly emoting but barely communicating human being.

'Well,' she dragged the word out into two words, 'there are restaurants and rides, and we can have the meet-and-greet anytime but only for an hour a day.'

'If Mother Lake's in that much demand, they should really consider more clones.'

'One's easier to control.'

I knelt in front of my suitcase on the short but soft carpet. I needed a new robe to wear under the safety suit and mask in the closet. I stopped in mid-zip. 'Oh my god. Morgue, please tell me you aren't on the MLI board.'

'How boring would that be. My parents could testify if they weren't fertilizing a tree in the middle of our apartment complex.'

She and her sisters were born socialites. Morgue and Morrow followed Elate to Court after her first marriage and became psibers to be Court fashionable. Their parents wired them with the best and latest tech, and their kids got even better, later but less tested tech. Morgue's kids got 50% tested. Elate's one got 25%. MLI hadn't released the tech to the public because the tests still weren't finished.

'So, what do you want to do, Honored Guest?'

'Restaurant first. Maybe we could have a meet-and-greet on the rides?'

'Genius.'

We zero-bumped.

We waited for Mother Lake on a green and black bench beside a balloon hawker and their pushcart of green and black balloon animals. The hawker targeted a masked family walking down Mok 5's cobblestone main street. They grabbed a handful of balloons and the checker-print air hose and crouched down, noisily twisting the balloons together at the children's eye level-the kids didn't stand a chance. They ran over, clapping and shrieking in some kind of ritual happy dance I'd seen at least twice in the past thirty minutes.

The kids cut off in mid-shriek, their gloved hands curling to point. Someone slightly taller than Enid thanks to a jade mask that looked like water flowing up an androgynous face into a liquid crown walked around them. Their suit had a diamond pattern in black and jade. The stranger gave the kids a little wave, barely opening their hand, behind their back.

Morgue rocked off the bench. 'I swear you Lakes get slower every generation.'

Mother Lake bowed her head at a side angle straight out of Uncanny Valley. 'My apologies Morgue, Manon, but we've included a clause allowing forty minutes of travel time.' She turned her head over her shoulder, her neck still doing the U-bend. 'I saw a particularly fat pigeon eating out of a restaurant wastebin and stopped to watch for...thirty-eight minutes.'

'One, I think you might need to get your personality recalibrated,' I said. 'Two, how the fuck are there pigeons here?'

'Three,' said Morgue, 'the minimum wait time on this island just jumped to fifty minutes.'

'Please, allow me to lead us to the nearest ride.' Mother Lake spun out of her bow and glided with her hands out to her sides. We ran to catch up with her. Morgue took one gloved hand, so I took the other. I could practically feel Mother Lake's artificial smile growing under her mask. 'Shall I tell you about the pigeons?'

'I can't die happy until I know.'

'It's not public knowledge, but the Dog's Back is a wildlife sanctuary.'

MLI had dedicated centuries to tech that purified the water, air, and soil. They'd reintroduced all the indigenous plants and animals behind a facade of artificial plants and VR projections. MoLak was just a front to net the rations necessary to keep up the sanctuary, and all the new tech on display were rejected prototypes.

I let go of Mother Lake's hand and walked up to the end of line for the "Wormhole to the Future." 'Why keep inconveniencing everyone with the suits and masks and warnings?'

'It's part of the thrill.'

I shuffled forward. I'd pegged MLI as a classic evil corporation, so the fact that Mother Lake made MLI sound reasonable made me uncomfortable.

'Tell me about the barrier.'

Mother Lake put a U-bend in her neck to tilt her head.

'Please, could you not?'

She snapped her head and neck back into place like the end of a tape measure. Thank god we hadn't had the meet-and-greet at the restaurant.

'There's like this magic dome over maybe half the city of Logres.' The ancestors said it was magic, but they called most tech magic.

'Ah, the rain shield. It neutralizes the acid before the rain can finish falling.'

'Why isn't it-why aren't all your purifying tech everywhere? Countrywide, nationwide, worldwide.'

'There isn't enough clean energy in Loegria, much less Logres. It's difficult to speak for the rest of the world.'

A handful of countries had the resources and used the tech to purify all their land and any surrounding waters. More had the resources, but were waiting for their population, specifically poor population, to decrease before they applied the tech nationwide. 80% were in the same position as Loegria.

I grabbed the metal divider between the lines and leaned back. Mother Lake pulled herself onto the top bar and sat with her head propped in her hands. Morgue leaned on the divider opposite us with her hands in her suit pockets and her head casually over her shoulder.

'Selfie time.' I searched my pockets, but I hadn't brought my tablet.

'Please, allow me,' said Mother Lake.

She reached out a curled hand and a screen floated down from the metal rafters showing our classy ass poses. The screen copied itself on either side of the original. It kept copying until a full reverse panorama blocked out all the other guests in line. She opened her hand, spreading her fingers, and the screens separated and raised, lowered, or tilted. They found our most dramatic angles like a virtual hall of funhouse mirrors with face and body recognition.

'Are you ready?' she asked.

Morgue and I sounded off. 'Ready!'

'Say masquerade!'

We did but I didn't like it.