Author's note: It dawned on me a few days ago that I didn't really explain what Lena's / Nene's 'corneals' were, and that I really should explain that as quickly as possible.
Basically, cybernetics have largely replaced the smartphones of today, but only very limited cybernetics – more on why that's happened a little later. The 'suite' that most middle-class humans worldwide have varies widely in quality and functionality, but by and large it's these items:
Corneals are augmented-reality contact lenses, micrometers thin compared to the bulky plastic ones of our time (look up Magic Leap), grafted by laser-ablation onto the cornea and wirelessly hooked up to a nanocomputer mass embedded in one of the temples. They move with the dilation and relaxation of the pupil to project AR holograms of various types onto the eye, which means that others can see if your corneal feed is active. Old fogies use a hologram pane which floats around their palm as a smartphone once did; younger types break up different functions into different parts of their vision.
Masties are bone-induction microphones wired into the jawbone. They allow for wireless spoken communication without actually speaking, hearing sound wired into an AR holoscape, stuff like that.
Haptics are sensors embedded in the fingers and palm. They respond to holograms to make a hologram 'bounce' if touched, and to give a user a virtual sense of touch.
A Stemjack is a classic cyberpunk neural interface, magnetic plugs in the back of the head that hook up to wireless nanodust electrodes in the brain. They're still mostly implants used for specialized purposes, unable to really supersede corneals in sheer usefulness to the average citizen, since the science of directly downloading data to the brain through a stemjack remains a decade or two outside of commercial reach – for now.
All this is wired up to the Holocloud, which are various types of AR overlays that one can join like joining a wi-fi network, but we don't need to get into a whole lot of detail there. Anyway, while obviously all these devices are usually sold by GENOM or the handful of electronics-based keiretsus that remain worldwide and heavily surveilled as such, Celia provided all the Sabers with implants that would remain off-the-grid and capable of contacting other Sabers via a cutting-edge entangled-particle network. Lena and Nene use theirs extensively, while Priss uses hers only as needed. She writes things down analog style, actually.
Sylvie
"Oi, Priss! Sylvie! Good to see you two! The other job kept you?"
"Yeah, basically. Sorry I had to cut out the morning sesh, but it was important."
Gojo 'Deckard' Saotome, our lead guitarist, shrugs. "Well, no big deal. Actually, Cody's late. I called him a couple of times but I think he's still asleep."
"Again?" Priss rolls her eyes.
Seung-Je 'Kowalski' Moon, our bass guitarist, comes in from the stage. "You should call him, Priss. He listens to you."
"Yeah. Yeah. Hang on."
She taps the side of her temple, bringing up her corneal feed, eyes darting through holographic information. Stops. Pauses. Leans back. She's calling over her mastie.
I look towards the other two Replicants. The 'other job' crack is, well… I was in the band before the confrontation in the Nosferatu, and then after the confrontation with Largo, Kowalski sort of… figured it out regarding Priss. All the midnight cancellations, all the strange injuries, it all came together.
It's funny. They were angry at her for not telling them, even a little angry at me for doing the same, but once Priss just said it — committed to being Saber Blue — they were fine. Celia knows they know, too. But they can keep secrets, she said.
"So," I say, desperately trying to make conversation, "How was your day, Seung-je?"
He shrugs, strokes the little moustache he's been cultivating as if to compete with Cody 'Batty' Hesh's massive beard. "Eh," he says. "Wife still wants me to find a day job even though we're so close to an album release. Working on a schedule opposite hers and all that." He sighs. "It may not work out, you know?"
"Oh!" I gasp. "That's so sad. You're going to give up on her just because of a job?"
"I never said that! Although I'm starting to think I shoulda married a Ginza hostess on the sly. They aren't supposed to do that but at least we'd have each other in the daytime."
Gojo laughs. "You spend too much money on booze in the clubs we play at, Kowalski. Heaven forbid you start flirting with women whose whole jobs are look-but-don't-touch-and-buy-me-thousand-yen-sake-while-you're-at-it-buster."
"Hey, I could do it! I've got that K-boy charm, don't I?"
Priss leans forward. She's done with the call. "Oh man, we're going down this line of thinking again? K-pop was only a thing when South Korea actually existed and shit. No offense, but the Busanese stuff just doesn't quite cut it. Besides," she grins, "corp-pop isn't really your speed, is it, Seung-je?"
"Whatever, when's Cody getting in?"
She sighs. "Less than an hour, he swears. For real this time. I think he might be coming down from a high."
"Who the hell gets high in the middle of the day?" Gojo says. "Oh. Wait. Nevermind. Cody does, bless 'em."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, I'll chew the Amerijin out when he gets here."
"Should we stage an intervention?" I ask. "Isn't that what people are supposed to do when their friends do stuff like that?"
Priss nods. Gojo shrugs. Seung-je frowns.
"Fuck," he says. "Sounds like one of those shitty flatscreen shows where they have a drug subplot." He raises an eyebrow. "What kinda stuff do you usually stream, Sylvie? Games? Shows? What?"
"Um…"
Oh no. Will Seung-je catch on to the fact that Master Kaufmann never let us watch anything on our own? That all I ever saw were the fights he liked to bet on? No no no, he won't, he won't, but – what if he does? Ours is an age, so Priss tells me, where networked media washes over us like an ocean. The Noosphere, people call it, because what they used to call the internet was so saturated with cyberweapons during World War Three that they had to build it up all over again. But to not have the Noose? What kind of person could I possibly pass myself off as?
Lie. Or tell a half-truth. "Well," I smile, "I mostly watch what Priss watches! She has good taste!"
Which is true. When Anri and I were hiding out, our media feeds were unbricked by Largo, but I never used them for anything. I didn't think I needed things like that. So now, when Priss and I are together and we're both tired after a long day, she finds a movie and we watch it. It's that simple. I know there's so much more to see in the world, though. Someday I'll start consuming media on my own, maybe even try a flatscreen game or two.
Gojo laughs. That's not good. "Priss has… singular taste, Sylvie. I wouldn't call it good. I mean, I didn't even know Walter Hill was a person until I watched Streets of Fire with her. God, did she subject you to that crap too?"
"Okay," Priss laughs, "Fuck you, Deckard, that's one movie of his. The Warriors? 48 Hours? Geronimo? Man, I just thought the opening and ending songs were good, that's all."
"Ehh," I say, "but it did feel like the movie was just a bunch of people driving around and yelling at each other…"
"It is, it is," Priss says, "but isn't it still kind of fun? No one liked the sledgehammer duel at the end?"
"It was unearned," Seung-Je says. "I could choreograph a better duel in one of those CGI programs they use to make movies now. Make Keanu fight Liu Zansheng with sledgehammers on the top of a ruined arcology…" he trails off. "Yeah."
"Okay, but the time when what's-his-face goes ham with a lever-action rifle blowing up motorcycles?"
"But he doesn't kill anyone, so it's boring."
"Yeah, but he has a reason — okay, yeah, you know what, it's a bad reason."
"All I'm saying is it's just a bad script, Priss. I know it's like your third-favorite movie or something 'cause you think Diane Lane's hot-"
"Dude, she's smokin' in that red dress, though-"
"But there are hotter chicks in better movies! In the end, you can't save a movie if the script gets in the way of the movie being good!"
Priss rolls her eyes. "Okay, okay, okay, fine. Meanwhile, you unironically like Highest Ground. Which is — wow."
Oh! I remember that one, or at least I remember Priss talking about it. "That's the one where they actually shot in orbit, right?"
"Ohhhh," Gojo says, "Yeahhhhh. See, that's the thing, Seung-je, your whole practical-effects-uber-alles thing means you've got no grounds to shit on Priss's taste."
"They filmed in space, guys! That's cool, isn't it? I'm not wrong here!"
"Yeah," Priss cuts in, "and it's straight-up propaganda for Ameribloc military interests, dude! Might as well have had a 'Powered by GENOM' watermark on the footage!"
"Oh come on," Seung-Je says, "It wasn't that bad. Besides…" he stops himself. "I was about to say GENOM wasn't that bad, but I guess they kind of are. Or at least you're convinced they are 'cause of the other job and all that."
Silence. Gojo's eyes go wide. He told me once that back when the band started she was more punk, more on-the-nose about the Great and Mighty GENOM rendering all of humanity superfluous. She almost got in a knife fight with some Boomer-herder from one of the construction projects out in Chiba because of it. But Seung-Je – his parents live in Busan, fled there from Seoul during the war, and he's convinced that the edge GENOM's given the Quad military is the only thing keeping the Chinese from overrunning the entire peninsula. A necessary evil, he says.
Seung-Je… You don't know what necessary evil really means. What it lets true evil get away with.
But Priss just laughs. "You wouldn't be in this band if you didn't care about what GENOM does to us, dude. But sure, you can like that kind of movie, I guess. They're made to be likeable. Algo-honed to the maximum amount of likeability. I can't blame you."
Seung-Je strokes his beard.
"After all," Priss says, "There was a time eighty years ago where rock n' roll was as corporate as you could get. The only subversive part of what we're doing here is the distillation of old technique into something our own. Claiming something everyone else forgot about, you know?"
Seung-Je nods. "Okay, but Highest Ground is good. Let me have that."
"What'm I, your mother? It was never mine to take."
We all laugh at that.
It goes on like this for a while. Even if I don't say much, it's hard not to be happy around people who enjoy each other's presence. I don't know if I'm a wallflower by nature or by programming, but it seems to be who I am. I like to watch
Soon, the conversation turns to business. The club we're playing at tonight is bigger than our usual fare, just on the verge of being popular with Megatokyo's middle class but not quite.
"So," Gojo says, "If a record exec approaches one of us, what then?"
"In that extremely unlikely event," Priss says, "you send them to me, and I'll act nice and urge them to fuck off in a kind, dignified manner. Something to the effect of 'oh-gosh-how-kind-of-you-but-I'm-not-sure-I-can-afford-to-commit-just-yet.'"
"Seriously?"
"Yeah! Look, we've already lined up a distributor to print the physicals for the album, and we can distribute through one of the federated platforms easily enough. We should be able to make our money back on this one, Saotome."
"You sure we don't want to keep our options open? Try to hook up with EMI or something? I thought you said one of your girlfriends was fucking the boss there."
"Oh, that," she says. "Wow. Yeah. That… oof."
"She was his fitness coach before graduating to being his lover," I say. What? I heard the story, too. Lena was incredibly cranky after that breakup, told everyone about it in incredible detail. "But it turned out that he thought she was 'too needy' and 'too intimate' to be someone he wanted to have regular sex with. He said he couldn't afford to be 'tied down' as someone important."
Gojo nods. "Damn. That's – shitty. This is the one with the bowl haircut, right? The one with the skullcrusher thighs? Kinda got a dancer's build?"
"Yep." Priss grins. "Oh, and you can't hit on her. I'm gonna see if I can hook her up with that one fanboy cop tonight." She raises a finger, gets up, makes bigger and bigger motions with her hands. "Anyhoo, my point is I don't think we need to sell out just yet. If ever. We'll lose our audience, we'll be stuck with a shitty contracted where we don't own half our own songs, we'll be watered down so we don't criticize the corporate order too much, we'll be discarded after five years of fake fame. People will forget about us if we go too big too fast, and for what? We'll be miserable, guys."
"So it's better to never be famous than become famous and then, um, un-famous?" I say.
Priss goes still. "Well–"
There's a knock on the door. Gojo's closest to the door. He gets up and lets Cody in. Cody looks the same as ever: big, American, long puffy beard and big blue eyes. He's miserable when he isn't on something mildly psychotropic, as best as I can figure. He's a man made out of prescriptions. But he was the first to accept Priss when she came out about her other job. I like him.
"What're we all talking about?" Cody says. "The same ol' get-rich-or-die-tryin' argument?"
"Yes," I say, standing up, smiling. "But now that you're here, that doesn't matter." I put on my best idol face. "Everyone, let's do our best and get ready to rock!"
Priss's smile widens even further. "Now that's what I'm talking about."
Priss
Time passes. We practice. We've got a long, long set to play, a good hour and a half of nonstop music. It's our last night here, after all, so we might as well really shake the place up. More importantly, we want the club owner, who's probably in bed with some criminal group or another, to tell his friends that we brought people in and they should absolutely hire us as soon as they can. Keep the cash flowing. We've got an album coming out, after all.
I know, I know. I keep denying myself – and the band – the chance to be big. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you. I could be so much more if I just rode the wave. Let one of the few non-GENOM keiretsus with a record label sign me the fuck up in the years before they finally go bankrupt. Do concerts. Be famous.
But – it's like – I feel like three people, sometimes.
There's Just Priss. She rides her bike, she hangs out with her girlfriend, she gets by. The city wants to kill her, same as it wants to kill everyone who isn't a megacorp exec. Her purpose is to not be the other two.
There's Priss, The Replicant, the alien witch from beyond the Tannhauser Gate here to suck out your brains with the power of rock-and-fucking-roll, hopped up on radio signals from eighty light-years out. She never screams, never cries, only roars into that old-style microphone from a place of absolute power over only-humans. She fears nothing. She's in control. Her purpose is to be my joy.
And there's Saber Blue, the leading edge, all hard armor and heavy weapons. She rips open Boomers without mercy, rips and tears and gores what Lena and Nene weaken. She's the one who lands the most killing blows on the team. She wages war against GENOM, against the system it rules, against all those important people who claim that this is the fate of lesser people, to be choked to death by human creations. She is my rage.
You see? If I sign some big contract, then The Replicant automatically becomes more important than The Saber. I can't let my joy bury my rage. I can't let that anger die out, or else I'm just another sellout who left behind the old ruins of Megatokyo, forgot about the abject misery GENOM imposed on this city. And I can't let my rage be all I am, otherwise I'll just fuckin' hate myself too.
It's all about balance. Sylvie understands this. The other Reps, well, they can guess, they can know in the abstract. But they'll never understand.
"Priss! You're on in ten!"
"I know, I know!"
Okay. Showtime.
The outfit – the regalia, I like to call it – is an armor all its own. Celia said she gave the suits curves because she wanted to make them unmistakeable compared to a K-Suit, something that people would want to watch move. It's the same with the regalia. It's something the crowd will want to watch move. Want to look at, but never touch.
It goes on effortlessly. Red bustier, tied off in the back; black hosiery, sheer and shiny; vacuum-fit leather miniskirt; black-strap high-heeled boots that wind up, up, up; fingerless red opera gloves; little bangles, a choker, a triforce necklace; heavy makeup; and the wig, the wig's the piece de resistance – I put it on and I feel the Replicant rising.
I'm ready to rock. Nothing else matters.
Fuck yeah.
