Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

She was glad she hadn’t driven the farm truck; she’d be stuck watching the road ahead and listening to the misfiring engine, which roared too loud for her to bother with music. In the truck she’d be stuck on the rutted county roads, since Rattlebang wasn’t allowed on this smooth new automated highway. This way she got to look out the windows at everything she’d missed for the last dozen years stuck in Jory. Not that she could see much from the highway, but she caught glimpses: shopping centers turned detention centers turned Superwally distribution centers; barns with winter-bare oaks thrusting through caved-in roofs; the skeletal spines of roller coasters in an abandoned amusement park; a motel captured in time; a cinema, where total strangers used to gather in large groups to watch movies. Everywhere, the ghosts of a past she was old enough to remember, barely, but not to remember well. Her parents’ world, not hers.

Her own world overlay theirs. The silent-running cab meant she could listen to Whileaway songs as she rode, the perfect soundtrack. She kept her new Hoodie in mapview, generated highways painted onto blacktop, landmark identifiers whizzing by in the periphery. Ads for the latest Patent Medicine song and Nightlights birch beer hovered in the cumulus clouds. Migrating flocks, flying north, tagged on the wing with the BirdGoggles app. Here and there, a walled compound, the houses of those who had fled the city with more money than her family, or a trailer enclave, for those with less.

She didn’t resent the tiny safe place they had built for her. She’d had friends, even if they were online. There was always enough to do to keep her from getting bored, except for at work, which was expected. If she took this one opportunity to see what went on outside of her Hoodie, her house, Jory, then she could say she’d done it. Done something, even if it led right back to her room.

Her stomach tied itself in knots as the single-cell exited the highway and navigated a series of quick turns to arrive at a ten-foot security gate. NO UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES read one sign on the gate, alongside NO UNAUTHORIZED VISITORS. A bored-looking white guard at the gate inspected her ID through a clearviewed Hoodie. “You’re on the list,” he said after a moment. “But the vehicle isn’t. I can get them to send a car up here for you, but if you’re able to walk, it’ll be less hassle.”

“I can walk.” No point in making trouble. The single-cell puttered off toward its next customer as soon as she’d lifted her bag from the trunk and released it. No turning back.

She wanted to ask where she was supposed to go, but she didn’t want to be a bother. Anyway, there was only one road, wide and tree-lined. The ancient suitcase she’d borrowed from her mother had one cracked wheel and pulled to the right as she walked. Too early for budding back home, here trees bloomed pink and white, big puffballs she didn’t recognize. It must have rained recently, because the ground was carpeted with more blooms, making it that much harder to pull the suitcase, even if it did serve as a delightful welcome mat rolled out just for her.

After a ten-minute walk, an enormous building loomed into view. Bigger than the abandoned high school in town, bigger than the Superwally Fulfillment Center between Jory and Belgicus. There was a giant door and a human-sized door, so she picked the human side.

A man about her age smiled at her from across a reception desk, and she realized with a shock that she couldn’t identify his features. Online she knew the shorthand that told you an avatar’s ethnicity, or where to check if you didn’t know. It was considered appropriation to wear an avatar of a culture that wasn’t yours, unless you were Quality Control, and even they only did it for a minute. She wasn’t sure how to categorize his ethnicity at all, and her assumption of male pronouns might be wrong, too. Nor was she sure why it mattered, or if it mattered. Maybe she cared because she liked the idea of being from somewhere, even far back in family history, since she wasn’t from anywhere special. Maybe she was used to inhabiting spaces where people had ways of telling you how they wanted to be perceived. All those thoughts ran through her head in the time it took him to say, “Welcome to the StageHolo family, Rosemary,” in a Texan accent.

StageHoloLive had the same Talent Management hoops to jump through as Superwally; they called it People Operations here, perhaps to distinguish from the actual talent onstage, and after letting her drop her bags in the dormitory room, they ran her through all the paperwork required to get paid and stay employed. She waited for the part where they’d start listing workplace restrictions, but they didn’t seem to care. They didn’t require inspirational posters, or put any demands on her workspace at all. She also wouldn’t be doing much work from home, though they didn’t say what that meant. Those were the pleasant surprises.

Her private room was a pleasant surprise, too, with its own tiny bathroom and meals delivered to the door during her stay; she hadn’t realized how apprehensive she’d been about sharing space until she walked through the dormitory area. The macaroni and cheese she ordered had different spices from those she was used to—onions, and paprika—but it was still a relief not to have to eat in a cafeteria. She’d seen cafeterias in her parents’ old movies, and they always looked chaotic and dirty to her.

It turned out the main reason they brought new employees in to the compound, other than the paperwork, was to show them how the actual concerts were recorded. It made sense. Some new hires would be working on the broadcasts, as stagehands or technicians. Others supported the talent: makeup, wardrobe, artist liaison. There were eight altogether in her training group, all around her age or younger, but Rosemary was the only new hire going out to work “in the field,” whatever that meant.

The second day started with a tour. Her training group all eyed each other, assessing, leaving as much space as possible between their bodies in the small classroom. Rosemary had agonized over what to wear to an in-person training, settling on something not too unlike her Superwally uniform. The others were a little more casual, in jeans or tights and unbranded long-sleeved T-shirts. They all looked scruffy in comparison to the avatars she was used to interacting with. Their colors were off, their hair frizzed. A couple had pox scars on their cheeks or arms. She’d been lucky enough to get through the outbreak with scars only on her torso, hidden beneath her clothes.

“Ah, you’re all here! Welcome!” The new woman in the room had a military bearing, ramrod spine, and a geometric twist piled on her head that surpassed even the most gravity-defying av hairdos. She had the darkest skin Rosemary had ever seen outside hoodspace. “My name is Jeannie. I’ll be your mama duck, and y’all will be my ducklings. Follow, ducklings.”

They followed. Jeannie marched her gawking charges through artist lounges, dressing rooms, practice rooms, and editing studios at a pace that left the group gasping for breath.

As they passed people in their work environments, Rosemary wondered how anyone had gotten the experience to wind up in these careers. She’d been led to computers the moment she had shown aptitude, and had never gotten any hint that any other path existed. High school funneled her classmates to one of eight concentrations: medicine/nursing, farming, military, construction, teaching, trade, computers, or some aspect of the Superwally empire, which technically bled over into the other seven. Did people teach themselves sound and makeup, or was there someplace they learned those things? She kept her mouth shut, afraid she’d sound silly or provincial, until Colton, the wardrobe guy, asked, “How do people become musicians, anyway?” and nobody laughed.