Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

“Oh my god, yes, it’s so hard to find Canto-speaking people here.” Helena immediately switches to Cantonese. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I’ve been dying to speak it to someone.”

“Sorry, it never came up so I figured it wasn’t very relevant,” Lily says. “Anyway, POMEGRENADE mostly did covers after that, you know, ‘Kick Out the Jams’, ‘Zhongnanhai’, ‘Chaos Changan’, ‘Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues’. Whatever got the crowd pumped up, and when they were moshing the hardest, they’d hit the crowd with the Cantopunk and just blast their faces off. I think it left more of an impression that way—like, start with the familiar, then this weird-ass surprise near the end—the merch table always got swamped after they did that.”

“What happened with the girlfriend?”

“We broke up, but we keep in touch. Do you still do art?”

“Not really. The closest thing I get to art is this,” Helena says, rummaging through the various boxes under the table to dig out her sketchbooks. She flips one open and hands it to Lily—white against red, nothing but full-page studies of marbling patterns, and it must be one of the earlier ones because it’s downright amateurish. The lines are all over the place, that marbling on the Wagyu (is that even meant to be Wagyu?) is completely inaccurate, and, fuck, are those tearstains ?

Lily turns the pages, tracing the swashes of color with her finger. The hum of the overworked rig fills the room.

“It’s awful, I know.”

“What are you talking about?” Lily’s gaze lingers on Helena’s attempt at a fractal snowflake. “This is really trippy! If you ever want to do some album art, just let me know and I’ll totally hook you up!”

Helena opens her mouth to say something about how she’s not an artist, and how studies of beef marbling wouldn’t make very good album covers, but faced with Lily’s unbridled enthusiasm, she decides to nod instead.

Lily turns the page and it’s that thing she did way back at the beginning, when she was thinking of using a cute cow as the company logo. It’s derivative, it’s kitsch, the whole thing looks like a degraded copy of someone else’s rip-off drawing of a cow’s head, and the fact that Lily’s seriously scrutinizing it makes Helena want to snatch the sketchbook back, toss it into the composter, and sink straight into the concrete floor.

The next page doesn’t grant Helena a reprieve since there’s a whole series of that stupid cow. Versions upon versions of happy cow faces grin straight at Lily, most of them surrounded by little hearts—what was she thinking? What do hearts even have to do with Splendid Beef Enterprises, anyway? Was it just that they were easy to draw?

“Man, I wish we had a logo because this would be super cute! I love the little hearts! It’s like saying we put our heart and soul into whatever we do! Oh, wait, but was that what you meant?”

“It could be,” Helena says, and thankfully the Colorado server opens before Lily can ask any further questions.

The brief requires status reports at the end of each workday, but this gradually falls by the wayside once they hit the point where workdays don’t technically end, especially since Helena really doesn’t want to look at an inbox full of increasingly creepy threats. They’re at the pre-print stage, and Lily’s given up on going back to her own place at night so they can have more time for calibration. What looks right on the screen might not look right once it’s printed, and their lives for the past few days have devolved into staring at endless trays of 32-millimeter beef cubes and checking them for myoglobin concentration, color match in different lighting conditions, fat striation depth, and a whole host of other factors.

There are so many ways for a forgery to go wrong, and only one way it can go right. Helena contemplates this philosophical quandary, and gently thunks her head against the back of her chair.

“Oh my god,” Lily exclaims, shoving her chair back. “I can’t take this anymore! I’m going out to eat something and then I’m getting some sleep. Do you want anything?” She straps on her bunny-patterned filter mask and her metallic sandals. “I’m gonna eat there, so I might take a while to get back.”

“Sesame pancakes, thanks.”

As Lily slams the door, Helena puts her iKontakt frames back on. The left lens flashes a stream of notifications—fifty-seven missed calls over the past five hours, all from an unknown number. Just then, another call comes in, and she reflexively taps the side of the frame.

“You haven’t been updating me on your progress,” Mr. Anonymous says.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” Helena says flatly, having reached the point of tiredness where she’s ceased to feel anything beyond god I want to sleep . This sets Mr. Anonymous on another rant covering the usual topics—poor work ethic, lack of commitment, informing the Yuen family, prosecution, possible death sentence—and Helena struggles to keep her mouth shut before she says something that she might regret.

“Maybe I should send someone to check on you right now,” Mr. Anonymous snarls, before abruptly hanging up.

Helena blearily types out a draft of the report, and makes a note to send a coherent version later in the day, once she gets some sleep and fixes the calibration so she’s not telling him entirely bad news. Just as she’s about to call Lily and ask her to get some hot soy milk to go with the sesame pancakes, the front door rattles in its frame like someone’s trying to punch it down. Judging by the violence, it’s probably Lily. Helena trudges over to open it.

It isn’t. It’s a bulky guy with a flat-top haircut. She stares at him for a moment, then tries to slam the door in his face. He forces the door open and shoves his way inside, grabbing Helena’s arm, and all Helena can think is I can’t believe Mr. Anonymous spent his money on this .

He shoves her against the wall, gripping her wrist so hard that it’s practically getting dented by his fingertips, and pulls out a switchblade, pressing it against the knuckle of her index finger. “Well, I’m not allowed to kill you, but I can fuck you up real bad. Don’t really need all your fingers, do you, girl?”

She clears her throat, and struggles to keep her voice from shaking. “I need them to type—didn’t your boss tell you that?”

“Shut up,” Flat-Top says, flicking the switchblade once, then twice, thinking. “Don’t need your face to type, do you?”

Just then, Lily steps through the door. Flat-Top can’t see her from his angle, and Helena jerks her head, desperately communicating that she should stay out. Lily promptly moves closer.

Helena contemplates murder.

Lily edges towards both of them, slides her bracelet past her wrist and onto her knuckles, and makes a gesture at Helena which either means “move to your left” or “I’m imitating a bird, but only with one hand.”

“Hey,” Lily says loudly. “What’s going on here?”

Flat-Top startles, loosening his grip on Helena’s arm, and Helena dodges to the left. Just as Lily’s fist meets his face in a truly vicious uppercut, Helena seizes the opportunity to kick him soundly in the shins.

His head hits the floor, and it’s clear he won’t be moving for a while, or ever. Considering Lily’s normal level of violence towards the front door, this isn’t surprising.

Lily crouches down to check Flat-Top’s breathing. “Well, he’s still alive. Do you prefer him that way?”

“Do not kill him.”

“Sure.” Lily taps the side of Flat-Top’s iKontakt frames with her bracelet, and information scrolls across her lenses. “Okay, his name’s Nicholas Liu Honghui… blah blah blah… hired to scare someone at this address, anonymous client… I think he’s coming to, how do you feel about joint locks?”