Чарли Андерс - Six Months, Three Days, Five Others

The attractive, romantically compatible man is waiting for me, the KloudsKape says. He is lonely or lonesome, whichever sounds sadder, and he too knows the unbearable chasm between desire and communication, the starving awareness that the only thing anybody values you for is your opinion on random topics. The long rainy nights—how high a concentration of smart-fungus nanospores in rainwater is too much?—the solo meals in restaurants—is it lonelier to be alone at home, or in a crowd?—all of the existential misery of the overpopulated sensorium.

I think I may have spotted the romantically compatible man. He’s sitting in the corner, and he sneaks a glance in my direction. He’s showstoppingly good-looking, with exactly the shape of sideburns I like and one of those noses that’s almost like the front of an airplane. He has cuff links and a half-loosened tie. He’s a bot, right? He’s got to be a bot. I squint and he seems to flicker, just the way a virtual artifact would. Definitely a bot. Right?

At last I unscrew the temporal nodes of the KloudsKape and peel it off the sides of my head, to settle it one way or the other. He’s still sitting there, staring at some virtual blob of his own. The restaurant looks emptier and sadder without the KloudsKape on, just walls and tables and distracted people.

I put the KloudsKape back on, and the question about neurotoxins is back. Its arms and legs are fully grown, and it’s doing jumping jacks. I’m not a chemist—if the question was about how to help a robot process the death of an insect or the explosion of a sun hundreds of light-years away, I would have a meaningful answer. But screw it. The romantically compatible man is getting up from his chair.

I answer the neurotoxin question, more or less at random. I pick a number that sounds plausible.

Immediately the dating profile comes up for the man with the perfect sideburns. He’s ideal—all the same movies, books, political opinions. We’re like 98 percent, which is unheard-of. This is it. I’ve found my soul mate. He looks up at me and smiles. I feel my whole heart open up.

Soon, he and I sit together at the teak bar, neither of us able to move or speak. We only need about five minutes to list all the things that we agree on. Oh yes, I hate that too. Do you do that thing? I do that thing too. Oh, I love that show. You love that show too? I love it. My faux angora sweater is twice as itchy. The questions still bubble in my peripheral vision. The romantically compatible man smiles and mumbles something about corgis. Yes, I love corgis too. We both love corgis. Aren’t corgis great? I want to scream. The newsfount splashes another story: The police have begun gassing protesters in the park. A glimpse of hand-lettered signs and anoxic, choke-eyed faces. Up close the man’s sideburns are the wrong shape after all. I start to make excuses to get away. I have to get up early. Robots are grieving. We exchange contact info, and I sign up for his Kloudburst. Then I’m hurrying out into the night, where the rain has left tiny spatters of purple and white blooms all over the sidewalk, glowing with a faint phosphorescence. They keep me company all the way home.

Sion sent a drunk text to Grant Hendryx at four in the morning, whipping off her hoodie and bra, snapping a pic and writing a sexy caption before hitting send. Except she aimed the camera the wrong way, and she picked the wrong entry in her address book, so Grant Donaldson, senior project manager at Aerodox Ventures, was surprised to receive a blurry photo of a pair of parking meters with a message that read, ‘LICK MY LEFT ONE.’

The next day, Sion had an invitation to go to outer space.

The sun blinged up the floor of Sion’s pink bedroom, like a kaleidoscope made of Cheetos and tequila bottle shards, and she growled and tried to build a pillow fort over her head. But nausea got the better of her and she had to stagger to the bathroom. That’s when she saw the text from a recruiter at Aerodox.

She showed it to her friend D-Mei as they chugged mimosas over at D-Mei’s house, except they didn’t have any OJ or bubbly, so they were using orange creamsicle soda and Industrial Moonshine No. 5, imported from the Greater Appalachian Labor Zone, instead. Sion showed D-Mei the email. Modeling Opportunity , it said. First near-light-speed flight to another star system , it said. Open Bar , it said, perhaps most significantly.

D-Mei read the email while the Pedicure Robot worked on her right foot, stopping and starting over and over whenever its operating system crashed and rebooted. Every time the robot jerked into motion again, D-Mei spilled some of her creamosa on the carpet. Her mom would be pissed.

“Oh my god,” D-Mei’s eyes widened, sending glittery waves across her forehead and dimpled cheeks as her nanotech eyeshadow activated. She had blue hair and a face just like CantoPop idol Rayzy Wong. “We should so go. Rager in space, man. It says Raymond Burger will be on board. The founder of Aerodox. He probably parties like a madman.”

“I dunno,” Sion said. “I get airsick. I probably get double space sick. I don’t want to be throwing up in space. And this is more like a hostessing gig than a modeling gig, and there’s a difference, you know.” Sion had bright red hair, with pink highlights, and a round face with big green eyes accentuated with neon purple eyeliner.

“Don’t be a wuss.” D-Mei snorted. “It says you can bring a friend, as long as she’s hot. I made up that last part. But you gotta bring me. I want to meet Raymond Burger.”

“I mean,” Sion said. “I am trying to clean up my act and stuff.” She took a long chug of the creamosa. “I mean, my dad says –”

“Your dad,” said D-Mei, “is still butthurt about the Singularity.” The Pedicure Robot sputtered and she kicked it, so it fell on its side for a moment, then righted itself and started attacking D-Mei’s pinky toenail with a tiny scythe. Scraping, failing.

“The Singularity,” Sion reached for the No. 5 bottle. “It was like fun while it lasted, right?”

“Everything is fun while it lasts,” D-Mei said. “And nothing lasts forever. That’s why we gotta grab it while we got it. With both hands, dude.”

“Okay, sure,” Sion put the bottle right to her face and inhaled the stench of sweat and despair from the millions of bonded peons working off their debts in the bowels of the mountains. They wished they all could be California gurls, she felt pretty sure. “Totally. I’ll say yes. Let’s go to space.”

Sion rolled up to the Aerodox hangar in her Princess Superstar car, which was bright pink and convertible, with furry disco balls hanging from the rearview, and she piled out of the car in her silver platforms and silver fake fur jumpsuit, with hood. She had big sunglasses and lipgloss that showed an animated GIF of pink bunnies on her lips.

D-Mei was already there in the tiny departure lounge overlooking the main hangar, and she had a fistful of tiny bottles from the minibar, with real brand names like Vermouth and Scotch, none of that nasty generic stuff. “They have Cognac,” she squeed. “I heard that Cognac is the best kind!” She showed Sion where to get her own toy-size bottles, but Sion shook her head and showed D-Mei the black “X” she’d Sharpied on her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Sion said. “I promised my dad that I would stay straight-edge on this trip. We’re going to be some of the first people to leave the solar system, and history is watching us, and all that shiz. Plus I don’t want to be the one who throws up on the first alien life we meet. What if they decide that’s how humans communicate? So I’m sticking to like space coffee or something.”