Risk

Emerald smiled the smouldering smile required and gave a coy wave with her fingers which implied she would be right back. No point in trying to say anything under the crashing heavy metal music that echoed from wall to wall inside the nightclub. 

The player’s greedy eyes reflected her gold spangles, no doubt already imagining her satisfying his every craving. Not so much player as predator—assuming she was his prey.

Even a shade for hire needed to powder her nose now and then, realign her parameters due to excessive sensory input so as to continue being as flawless as only a nonhuman could. A shadow imitation of a human being though real enough to all appearances, ultimately disposable like any other gadget when it wore out to be replaced by a newer model. The only visible difference was the serial number tattooed on wrists as well as ankles.

She banged through the door painted in pink with the grey silhouette of an archaic woman wearing petticoats and carrying a fan, catching the edge before it could slam against the wall.

“Don’t know your own strength,” a player once complained when she squeezed too hard but she relented and moderated the pressure to provide pleasure rather than pain.

Emerald ignored the plug-in-point waiting in a niche to her right because she was almost fully charged despite the vigorous hour of dancing. One of several advantages to being the latest iteration of entertainment shade.

Every cubicle door hung partly open. Ignoring the sound of her elevated synthetic heartbeat, she listened for the least whisper of anyone else in the stalls.

Alone. She wrapped the security of that feeling around her as she walked all the way to the eleventh stall. Not the twelfth because that was the one that any humans fussy about hygiene tended to use in the mistaken assumption that nobody else would bother walking so far.

Emerald entered and closed the door, relishing the privacy as if it were a holy blessing from an unknown goddess. A moment later, she crouched and jumped to catch the top of the partition, pulling herself high enough to reach behind the oblong boxy air-conditioning unit and pull out her hidden stash.

Almost dropped one of the shoes into the toilet but recovered faster than a human would. Aimed each item with precision to land on the floor instead: flat shoes, cleaner’s grey uniform and multi-pocketed apron, dingy brown wig.

She stuffed her glittering dancing shoes deep into two of the pockets then slipped on the flat shoes before pulling the grey uniform over her head. The plastic zipper snagged briefly but she eased it all the way to her neckline, pleased with how the shapeless outfit entirely concealed her gold spangles.

Inflating her stomach as she had practiced to make her outline less appealing, she tugged on the ugly wig, quelled her impatience as she tucked in every filament of her blond hair.

Listening again, head tilted to one side, she detected not the least murmur of another shade’s internal rhythms or the noisier heartbeat of a human.

Emerald waved her hand at the flush detector just in case and exited the cubicle to admire her altered reflection in the rank of mirrors. Checked her dingy brown hairline for any betraying blond wisps. Those green eyes would give her away, but a cleaner would never make eye contact with a human, so as long as she remembered that, she should survive.

With a much slower gait and a gentle push on the door, she abandoned the scene of her rebirth and nudged her way further down the corridor. Retrieving a mop and bucket from the broom closet which smelled of bleach, she carried these items like a drudge would, staring down at the floor as though needing to follow a dotted line to her next destination.

Steam, random food smells and the almost soundless efficiency of cooking bots integrated in the counter space welcomed her to the large automated kitchen which separated the nightclub from the restaurant. All they knew was ingredients, recipes, and the next order that arrived into their limited awareness. She had sometimes envied their blissful following of routine orders, their ignorance of what the humans they served could be like.

No ceiling sensors monitoring movement here. No shade would trespass unless unpacking a delivery and those never arrived at night. No human would enter unless to carry out more elevated maintenance tasks, implanting new menu options to appeal to the latest craze.

Her rapid pulse urged her to speed up, but she kept to the same slow, deliberate pace.

Finally, as she reached the delivery door, she raised her gaze.

With the top of the mop handle, she pushed the red Emergency Exit button then sharply reversed the long stick faster than a human could, so the mop head blocked the aperture of the lens that pushing the button had triggered.

The door hissed open, yielding a wide rectangle of darkness, open air.

Emerald carried mop and bucket with her into the alley behind the nightclub.

Her eyes adjusted instantly. No detritus on the concrete, no garbage overflowing dumpsters like in the last century vid that one of the players liked watching with her where humans apparently met for desperate sex back in the old days.

The much-accessed map of the maze of alleyways that she wasn’t legally allowed to access unfolded inside her mind as she started to run. Turning left, then right, then left again, she soon dropped mop and bucket into the wide mouth of a drain but kept all her other possessions.

She kept running, leaving behind the insults and the bruises, the feeling of being a hostage who would never be set free.

“Shut up—you’re just a shade.” 

The command of those careless words setting an invisible gag over her mouth. Unable to articulate another word until given permission, she pushed the feelings inward, let them flame around her synthetic heart to create, one flicker at a time, an invisible bonfire of rage. 

Emerald raced on the flat shoes of a cleaner with the speed of the most recent iteration of a pleasure shade away from the middle and toward the edge of the City Complex, pausing only to flatten herself against a wall when a bulky emergency vehicle roared in her direction.

The hypnotic words which used to repeat at random intervals inside her display space, an isolated glass cube prior to purchase, seemed to keep pace with her running. “Indefatigable and yours to command, our latest iteration will satisfy your every demand.” 

Due to the mirrored surface, she never saw the humans gawking at her, but danced obliviously to intermittent music or did yoga that showed off her flexibility. Recently, one of the players insisted on taking her to view the transparent cubicles where others of her series could be selected for purchase like exotic tropical fish. 

She watched one oblivious prisoner, identical to herself except for having auburn hair and a beauty mark on one cheek, dance to the pulse of inaudible music. Hearing the comments that humans made, she wanted to break the glass and set them both free.

That a nightclub bought her rather than an individual human made everything so much worse. Every player, with one exception, took what they wanted and gave nothing other than the automated credits added directly to the nightclub’s profits.

Right turn, right again, then left twice and jumping over a wide gulley where water gushed.

Her expansive ability for conversation almost never accessed except by the one human who liked to watch vids with her. Emerald would miss him but he could never have kept up with her pace.