Каарон Уоррен - The Lowest Heaven

“It’ll be like a holiday camp,” her father would chip in, but so unconvincingly. She’d watch him turn and wipe his eyes dry.

Sharon has decided that it’s time for another group makeover. As the leader of the Ugly Pretties, it’s up to her to choose the group’s new hair style. After much deliberation, she’s chosen something called a “short Dutch boy cut” from cycle sixteen of her all-time favourite history show, America’s Next Top Model. Last night she managed to procure a pair of scissors and a mirror without L.O.L.A the hygiene bot noticing (an easy feat as L.O.L.A’s surveillance units have decayed past the point of no return) and a comb from the box containing Sister Angelique’s last effects. While she waits for the Ugly Pretties’ feeding tubes to be removed by the canteen bots, she heads to the solarium to practice her walk. It’s hard to keep straight-backed and focused now that Eros’s gravity stabilisers are on the fritz, but she does her best to imagine that she’s striding down a fashion show runway, Tyra Banks and Miss J cheering her on from the sidelines. She loves Tyra Banks. Tyra’s what a perfect mother should be. Harsh yet kind, always full of advice on how to smize◦– smile with your eyes, find your inner confidence and pose for that perfect ugly-pretty shot.

The rest of the Ugly Pretties finally file into the solarium. Pluto calls them brain-fucked retards, which isn’t really fair as they can’t help the way they are. Before Sister Margaret’s bones deteriorated and she went to the great nunnery in the sky, she told Sharon the reason why the Ugly Pretties are unable to speak and understand only the most basic of commands. According to Sister Margaret, their parents put them into cryogenic storage during the Canadian cataclysm decades ago in an attempt to keep them safe. No one knew what to do with them when they were accidentally defrosted and brain-damaged, so they were shipped off, like Sharon, Pluto and the other unwanted girls, to Our Lady of Eternal Resolution’s orphanage on Eros. Sedna is the most damaged of the group (“nothing more than a meat puppet” Pluto calls her), Makemake’s skin is always clammy, and Eris and Haumea’s eyes never seem to focus. But they’re all Sharon’s got since the other girls succumbed to the bone-rot that wiped out the nuns and the counsellors. “You and your little followers,” Pluto likes to hiss whenever they run into each other in the canteen, “make me fucking sick.” Still, Sharon always feels a thrill when her twin sister speaks to her. Insults are better than being ignored.

“Welcome,” Sharon says to the Ugly Pretties. “I see before me four beautiful young ladies. Four beautiful young ladies who are in need of a… makeover!“ Sedna merely grunts, Haumea absently bats at the drool that continuously leaks from the corner of her mouth and Eris and Makemake sway as the gravity pull knocks them off balance. Sharon wishes, just once, that they’d squeal and jump up and down like the models on Tyra’s 2D show. Any reaction at all would be good. Sharon smothers a wave of despair. She can’t give into it. She’s the leader, the queen bee, she needs to keep upbeat and perky. She decides to start with Makemake. “Girlfriend,” Sharon says to her, “I’m going to wipe away that dreckitude for once and for all.”

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.