Chapter 2, concluded: When She Knew
Thanks for your patience this week
Hello everyone! I’m reposting from the Patreon late this time because I was in Vancouver for the Tapestry Festival, a celebration of treble-voice choirs to which my humble ensemble from Halifax was invited. I managed to get the Patreon post out in some spare time, but Monday was a completely full day away from screens (blessedly, honestly). But here it is, late on this lovely Wednesday.
This week is the conclusion of Chapter 2, looping back to Eden and her concert in the Middle East. Having found her way onto her flight home, bombastically hung over (honestly, who among us), she gets her own signal like the others — and finds out more than she bargained for.
Content note for mentions of drug use, suicide, and growing up in New Jersey.
As always, if you enjoy this teaser, please pass it on, and if you’d like to read this whole thing as it comes out serially, consider supporting me on Patreon for even $1 a month.
FOUR
Eden
We flew out of what turned out to be Abu Dhabi at 5pm as planned. The inside of the terminal was dizzying, an ancient pattern of gold and blue hexagons spilled from the ceiling along a funnel-shaped curve in the center of it, like a beehive had sex with a tornado. I was still sick from earlier, and was incogged in my huge Jackie-Os and headscarf. Ty and Mona would barely look at me, and I was sensible enough to feel a little bad about that, too. They’d done a great job the night before, after all. And they never complained, even when I bit their heads off for no reason. Even then, even before everything that happened, I could bring myself to feel bad for them when I’d been especially shitty. Or at least to feel bad for, and about, myself. That, I was an expert at.
The dextro had long since worn off and my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and other less beneficent substances. I hit a touchpad on the earpiece of my Jackie-Os and turned them as dark as they would go. Ty and Mona flanked me through priority security, holding onto my arms like they had me under arrest. Cleo, my driver, brought up the rear. I wasn’t famous enough for a private jet. Looks like now I never will be. But at least I got fast security clearance and first class.
I took the window seat and Mona sat next to me, carefully arranging herself so our legs wouldn’t touch. She’d had the sunglass mod done, all William Gibson style, except she could retract the eyeshield whenever she felt like it. The implants were on the sides of her head, just over her ears, and when she willed it, a bulletproof, UV-blocking, polarized eyeshade would wrap itself around the front of her head. It was pretty slick, I had to admit. Gave her a higher badassery quotient, for sure. But I also knew that when she was near me, not actively guarding me, and didn’t take it off, it meant she wasn’t up for talking. I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to talk to me right then, either.
I leaned my head against the little window and listened to the whine of the engine. Compared to the noise in my head, it was actually rather soothing.
Mona nudged my leg, microscopically, and I looked up. She was holding out a hand with two pills in it, without looking at me.
I stared at the side of her head for a minute, her hard features, her close-cropped hair. The jaw that looked tightly clenched. I wished I could see her eyes. I wished she would talk to me.
She didn’t, though. Instead I took the pills from her hand with a mumbled “thanks,” and threw them in my mouth without asking what they were or for water to swallow them with. Sleeping pills, I was pretty sure. She knew how I hated flying, knew it had been a rough night. I was grateful. I took the pills and leaned back into the window, staring at the sun as it started its long descent below the desert horizon.
The sun. Sinking west.
I’d nearly figured it out before, you know. Before any of this. Of course you knew that. It’s why I became such a mess, why I never measured up to your expectations of me. Because of course my greatest goal in life was to have that magical “exceeds expectations” box ticked next to my name. “Eden is an exceptional employee, and we expect her to reach pop superstar status any day now. A few more image shifts, a bit less cocaine, and her meteoric rise is inevitable.” It was never inevitable, though. Once I figured out who I was – what I was – the only inevitable thing was that I would fall apart.
Now I think you knew that, too. It’s hard to say, though. Was my behavior typical of the pattern? How many of my type had you made before, and what were their trajectories? Could you predict the various failure-states of your living dolls? How many of them suicided? How many became hopelessly addicted to drugs? How many had a meteoric rise, only to have an equally meteoric fall?
How long did they last, once they knew what they were?