Makemake slumps obediently while Sharon gets to work with the scissors. She doesn’t even flinch when Sharon accidentally nicks her ear and blood dribbles sluggishly onto the collar of her robe. The hairstyle isn’t as easy to pull off as it looked on the 2D. Sharon can’t get the edges even and ends up cutting Makemake’s limp black hair shorter and shorter until she resembles one of the pre-euthanised oldies on the holos. “There!” Sharon says with forced cheer. “Makemake, you are still in the running to be America’s Next Top Model!” Sharon looks into the mirror and starts hacking away at her own hair, slicing her fringe into what she hopes is a straight line. It’s easier the second time, although the scissors aren’t as sharp as she’d like.
There are only two things that Sharon wants. One is to be able to smize; the other is for her sister to love her. The things Pluto says sometimes, it’s as if she blames her for their parents’ death. But how can that be? She didn’t inject them with the euthanising fluid, did she? She was only eight when they died. Pluto won’t let her see their holos, and Sharon can’t even recall their faces. When she tries to remember them, an image of Tyra Banks and Nigel, Tyra’s fellow cycle-sixteen judge, pops into her head.
But maybe, now that she’s had another makeover, now that she looks beautiful, like a real model, Pluto will want to spend time with her.
“Come on,” she says to the Ugly Pretties. Makemake moans in assent, the others dribble and fidget but file obediently behind her as she makes her way to the library where she hopes she’ll find her sister.
The power stutters again and the screen goes blank. Shit. Pluto considers ripping the tablet out of its bracket and hurling across the room, but she can’t be bothered. Besides, she’s got too much on her mind.
She checked the maintenance rosters this morning, just as Sister Margaret showed her. Everything’s still at optimal levels. There shouldn’t be a problem. “Eskombot? Eskombot?” she calls. “Are you here?”
Bleedity-bleat, goes the logistics system’s voice interface in response.
“I’m trying to read,” she says. “Why is there intermittent power in the library?”
Eedilty-bleat.
Pluto’s grown practised at interpreting the system’s failing voice chip. She guesses he◦– it◦– is saying the power’s been restored. True enough, all the tablets are rebooting themselves.
“Now I’ve lost my fucking bookmark,” she mutters. “When I–” but something makes her stop. A small hitch in the background noise. She spins around, but there’s nothing, nobody. The door’s closed, as always; the library vacant except for her, as always. She listens. The air system is pumping along as inconspicuously as ever.
But now the nuns are all dead and the bots are malfunctioning. If the power can fail, even for a second…
A thump of panic cracks her ribs. She forces herself to calm down and looks around her. She’s sitting in a medium-sized room outfitted to be comfortable, the upholstery smelling of mould, and has been complaining to the wires in the wall. It’s not productive if she’s going to keep this place running. This is her life now, just her and her twin, rolling in darkness, alone. She can’t find solace, like Sharon, in the cold company of the braindeads. She sometimes wishes that her parents hadn’t given them the expensive immune boosters before they died. If she and Sharon died along with all the others, there would be nothing to worry about.
She tries to disappear into her novel about a robot law-enforcer who rides a camel, but she can’t relax. She keeps running through the maintenance tables in her mind. Is it her fault? Is she doing something wrong?
“Eskombot?”
Eedle.
“Send Sister Margaret’s maintenance roster to this screen, please.”
Eedle-doot. The figures array themselves in front of her.
The rock topples just so and there’s a flash from the outside, then a glare. Pluto gets up and walks across to the viewport. It’s probably another panel failing in one of the generator stacks, but she can almost imagine a golden hue to the light, that the air outside is warm and fragrant. She feels the cold sweat of her hands cleave to the glass and closes her eyes. She imagines◦– or does she remember?◦– a place where there was blue water lying all over the surface, and blue sky, and bending trees with huge, green leaves; and people, lying in their underwear in a glaring sun. So many people, little children too, laughing, running, all smelling of fruit and flowers and blue and green, saturated and hot. Something inside her remembers the heat, the sense of being wrapped up in colour and moisture. It doesn’t feel like a holo memory but surely that’s all she’s got. Did she ever go to a place like this when she was small? But places like this didn’t exist when she was alive; the world was burnt black when they had to send her away. All the holos of places like this were from a long time ago.
But still, the memory’s so strong, it’s as if she’s there. She presses her face to the cold surface and breathes in, deeper than she ever has. She’s in a place where she could walk outside and not freeze and not burn and take off all her clothes and melt into the air and the colour. She remembers being there, how the sun thawed them like something sweet and sticky and brown. Her mother was lacing her fingers up Pluto’s neck and into Pluto’s hair. She swears she can recall her father holding Sharon on her hip. Sharon was giggling, eating something◦– that soft, cold thing they used to have◦– and offering it to her father. Who was laughing. If she tried hard enough, she could become one with the –
The door punches open.
“We thought we’d find you here!” Sharon trills. “Why’re you crying?”
One of the braindeads, the egg-shaped one, gurgles hur-hur-hur behind her.
And Pluto’s back here again, locked in a metal box on a cold rock, with a cluster of dense freaks for company. She’s going to fucking kill Sharon.
“Pluto! What do you think of my makeover?” Sharon twirls in front of her sister, who pushes away from the viewport, which she’s been kissing or something, wipes at her face, and takes a hit of her inhaler. Sharon rarely needs hers. She isn’t as susceptible to motion sickness for some reason. Haumea bangs against the bulkhead as Eros’s cycle reaches its zenith and Sharon automatically reaches out to steady her. “Don’t you think I look beautiful now, Pluto?”
Pluto snorts and shakes her head. “You look like a fucking idiot. Take your retards and leave me alone.”
Sharon struggles to keep her smile in place. Sister Angelique used to advise her not to take Pluto’s spiteful words to heart. “Jealousy is a terrible emotion, Sharon,” she’d say whenever Pluto sniped at her during Mass or in class. Still, Sharon has to admit that the nuns and the older girls always gave her far more attention than they ever gave Pluto. She and Pluto may be twins, but they don’t look or act alike. Pluto’s hair is dyed a flat lifeless black whereas everyone said that Sharon’s hair shimmered like the sun. Maybe, Sharon thinks, the way to Pluto’s heart is to make herself uglier, rather than beautifuller. But what would Tyra say about that? She’d say that by not making the most of her appearance Sharon wasn’t being true to herself, she say that Sharon wasn’t owning her look, and that if she’s not careful she’ll be eliminated.