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bloodyrosemccoyChugging along!
Prologue and index here!
Previous chapter!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
CW for a depressive episode, a repressive dad, and the words "suicidal ideation." Also a slightly nonconsensual bath; I know someone on Twitter found that sort of thing upsetting. It's more of a surprise bath, but yeah.
• I feel as though we're going to have to have a cultural conversation about robots as stand-ins for people in fiction, because I've been hearing people being concerned about robot stories being "pro AI" when the robots are clearly not written as the dumb computer tool AI actually is. Come on, dudes. We anthropomorphize everything. Doesn't mean we're pro-technocrat.
• As somebody who can happily live in a story for months or years at a time, I absolutely do not get people who "already saw it once" and then never want to watch a thing again. In that sense, I guess I'm Jonathan Sims' Wario.
• Sometimes when you're trying to discipline your kid, he drops a total shocker about alternate endings to the cool movie you enjoyed, and you have to tear yourself away from that rabbit hole and try to focus on discipline. Parenting is hard.
---
"I don't want to tell you how to do your job," Thoren said to Dexer, "But do you think Lone Light Distribution could get some new stuff in? I'm dying to see Ugly Blood, and I don't think the Board's gonna approve of it."
"We'll take your suggestion under advisement," Dexer said, zeir voice pitched to a perfect customer-service drone, spitting out the disc Thoren had rented. "But we are experiencing a slight technical issue, which has slowed distribution."
"You gotta get going," Jod complained, looking over the menu. "I've seen all of these before."
"You don't like repeat viewings?" I asked, though I knew the answer.
"Why would I watch something again?"
Next Chapter!
Prologue and index here!
Previous chapter!
It feels a little weird to add a ✨Paypal link, ✨ but hey, writing is hard, so if you want to tip me, I wouldn't say no!
CW for a depressive episode, a repressive dad, and the words "suicidal ideation." Also a slightly nonconsensual bath; I know someone on Twitter found that sort of thing upsetting. It's more of a surprise bath, but yeah.
• I feel as though we're going to have to have a cultural conversation about robots as stand-ins for people in fiction, because I've been hearing people being concerned about robot stories being "pro AI" when the robots are clearly not written as the dumb computer tool AI actually is. Come on, dudes. We anthropomorphize everything. Doesn't mean we're pro-technocrat.
• As somebody who can happily live in a story for months or years at a time, I absolutely do not get people who "already saw it once" and then never want to watch a thing again. In that sense, I guess I'm Jonathan Sims' Wario.
• Sometimes when you're trying to discipline your kid, he drops a total shocker about alternate endings to the cool movie you enjoyed, and you have to tear yourself away from that rabbit hole and try to focus on discipline. Parenting is hard.
---
"I don't want to tell you how to do your job," Thoren said to Dexer, "But do you think Lone Light Distribution could get some new stuff in? I'm dying to see Ugly Blood, and I don't think the Board's gonna approve of it."
"We'll take your suggestion under advisement," Dexer said, zeir voice pitched to a perfect customer-service drone, spitting out the disc Thoren had rented. "But we are experiencing a slight technical issue, which has slowed distribution."
"You gotta get going," Jod complained, looking over the menu. "I've seen all of these before."
"You don't like repeat viewings?" I asked, though I knew the answer.
"Why would I watch something again?"
I had a few answers—noticing things you hadn't before, realizing how the screenwriter and director structured their narrative, knowing what was going to happen. Watching a new movie made me nervous. I had no way of knowing what might happen or which emotional beats I might hit. I was combing the Greater Database for any hints about the upcoming sequel to The Golden Hammer, knowing I shouldn't spoil it but trying to be emotionally prepared if it killed off Drack or Jazy, as rumor had it they would. But my answer took too long, and Jod didn't wait for it.
"—in the cinema," Nielli was saying. "At least it'd be new."
"But it would be Board-approved junk," Thoren protested. "All the smart stuff is taken out."
"But it'd be new!"
"Fine." Thoren rolled his eyes. "Let's go, then."
I sighed. It was weird, going to the movies with my friends. They didn't seem to care about what they were watching at all. They'd whisper together and ignore big chunk of plot and character, completely oblivious. Like, why even watch a movie.
Yeah, Giro and I talked when we watched movies, but we were talking about the movies, asking questions about the plot and commenting on the characters' actions; Giro was in the habit of pausing to offer an opinion, or to analyze a shot.
At least, usually he was.
That was the big holdup in getting our new stuff out: Giro. Normally my fidgety friend was bouncing to burn discs, and he'd gone into an outright frenzy modding Ronf to become a walking, talking A/V rig that could skulk into the ag ring and entertain the farmhands. He'd gotten into stealth technology and had opened quite a few tabs on Dad's browser to try to pick up some tricks on eluding security. ("Hope this doesn't scramble your dad's browser's algorithm too bad," he'd commented, and that was how I learned that Dad's tablets would share data, which was good to know.)
And it had worked out great, at least once we'd figured out how to avoid ag workers throwing tools and rocks at Ronf on sight. (The secret was for Ronf to already be playing a film when the workers saw zem. Enough of them were like me that they'd be completely hypnotized by the story and forget to attack the evil tech.)
(It probably also helped that Ronf looked less like a sleek, fancy tool of the technocracy and more like an animate pile of junk. It was hard to be suspicious of the omnipresent threat of the Silicon Menace when the potential infiltrator was wobbling around on legs that had clearly been sawed off a school desk and soldered to hell and back.)
But once we had gotten that step taken care of, Giro had apparently lost any drive to do, well, anything. Now when I wedged my way through his door, I didn't find him industriously coding, or soldering something, or fussing with his A/V setup. He still had the Follow the Beacon movies going, but I'd find him flopped listlessly in his little nest (which was starting to give off WASH ME vibes, enough that I had stuck a bottle of body wash in my bag for him), eyes pointed at the screen but not seeing it.
As far as I could tell, he wasn't even rousing himself to eat. I had to remind him, relentlessly quoting Let's Eat! to try to get through to him.
So, yeah, output was kind of down.
I was still contemplating this as the reel started in the theater. Was there a way to reinvigorate my friend?
And when the probably haunted, inoffensive public-domain music for Follow the Beacon began, I found my answer.
#
"Giro! You've got to see this!"
I wriggled into his hideout, wrinkling my nose at the smell of unwashed paquo for a moment.
"Giro!" I said, practically vibrating. "Have you seen the latest Follow the Beacon yet?"
Giro didn't respond. Didn't even move.
"I haven't gotten the chance to pick 'em up," Dexer informed me huffily, having returned from the alley while I was at the movies. "Too busy earning an honest living, you know. And garbage duty."
"Yeah, it is getting kinda rank in here," I agreed. "Has he been eating?"
"Not much," Dexer said. "Which is probably good, since he also hasn't been going to the bathroom. It's not just food I'm chucking in the bio-bin."
"Gross, dude," I said, trying to aim a judgmental look at the subject of our conversation. It was hard, though, to keep up the judgment when there was so much unease tangled into it.
Giro didn't even offer a sassy retort.
I looked at him for a moment, then came to a quick decision. I set the takeout boxes on his workbench (kuush, which I was looking forward to), swung my backpack to the floor, and dug out the bottle of body wash. Thus fortified, I crossed to the big industrial sink and started to run it, checking the temperature before I put in the plug.
Then I rolled up my sleeves and approached Giro.
"Hey, what," he said, listlessly startled, when I got a grip on his collar and belt.
The good news was that paquos were smaller than koranos, and Thoren and I had inherited Dad's muscular build, so my indifferent straining did work to lift him.
"I gotta tell you about the new Beacon short," I informed him, hefting him over to the basin. "It's about us."
His ears perked toward me a bit. I decided that was a victory.
"What's it abblblh?" he asked, the last word dissolving into a splutter as I dunked him, clothes and all, into the water.
"It's called Piracy is a Crime," I said when he emerged and shook the water off. "Which is pretty self-explanatory, I feel. It's about a kid who pirates a movie and it's a Bad Influence, so she goes on a delinquent rampage, gory movies and sexy ones, so much vandalism, and a lot of petty theft. In the end her little brother almost gets blown out of an airlock because he was trying to stop her from tagging it." I shrugged. "I mean, it escalates wildly. And narratively, it'd make more sense if he actually died, and she had to face the—okay, dude, you can't just sit there, you know."
Because he was. Just sitting there, huddled in the water, his ears drooping as though he hadn't the strength to keep them up.
He blinked slowly, seeming to gradually notice that I was waiting for a reply.
"The temperature's okay," he offered.
"Come on," I said. "I know for a fact that you've seen Blooming and Grooming; you know how to take a stupid bath, at least theoretically."
I held out the body wash bottle. He stared at it as though he was trying to figure out what to do with it.
I rolled my eyes, squeezed a blob of it onto his head, and started lathering, telling myself that it was just like giving Toast a bath, only I was way less likely to get clawed or bitten.
"Anyway, we're famous now, I guess," I went on. "Your criminal empire is gaining notoriety." Then, because I couldn't help myself, I went back to critiquing Piracy is a Crime! "But I dunno; the Board doesn't seem to have a real directorial vision. Dexer, hand me a cup—a clean cup." I frowned. "I kind of want to know if Beacon Studios is full of frustrated artists or, like, soulless bureaucrats. Is it just an extension of the Board of Civic Hygiene, or is it a load of theater kids just trying to make the best of their boring existential nightmare?" I frowned, assessing my handiwork thus far. "How do you feel about me taking your pants off?"
The only acknowledgement I got of the awkwardness of the situation was another twitch of his drooping ears, but after a moment he began to wriggle out of his jumpsuit himself, the motion sending little splashes over the sink's sides.
I watched as he pushed the garment over the rim. It tumbled and landed at my feet with a wet plop. The body wash was plucked from my hands.
"Well, don't look at me," he said, squeezing the bottle.
"Right." I turned away as he disengaged the handheld faucet. I pretended not to hear him grumbling to himself as he splashed.
"Hey, Dexer," I said. "Are there any towels around here?"
"Buncha clean rags in a utility closet not far from here," the robot answered. "And you want me to take that to the washing machine?"
I blinked down at the sopping jumpsuit at my feet. "There's a washer in this basement?"
"For the rags, you know." The robot scuttled over and picked it up.
"Wait," I said. "Take the blankets, too!"
Between us, we managed to get Giro's stuff, and Giro, washed and dried. I kept up a running commentary as we did, and he'd periodically grunt in acknowledgement and even grudgingly ate his kuush. Finally, though, Dexer brought back his blankets, and he fell into his nest and proceeded to curl up in a wordless ball.
"At least you're cleaner now," I offered.
He didn't reply.
"Okay, well, I gotta go home," I said, trying to ignore my unease. "I'll come check on you tomorrow, okay? And if you have to use the bathroom, freaking use the bathroom, got it?"
Giro halfheartedly reached for his remote.
"Bye," I said, unable to quite keep the hurt from my voice as I started toward the door.
I was intercepted by Ronf, folding skeletal limbs to fit through the half-open iris. I stared at the new gashes over the Lone Light Distribution logo Giro had etched onto the chrome and gasped fully as Ronf stood upright.
A corner of Ronf's monitor was cratered in, cracks webbing outward in jagged fractals from the pellet hole. A few pixels flickered desperately around the cracks.
"So, uh," Ronf said, "we have a problem."
#
When I got home, Thoren and Grandma were at the kitchen table with their heads together—an unusual sight, but one I didn't have attention to spare for. Somebody—Security—had shot Ronf. They'd been breaking up a gathering of farmworkers watching, of course, Feral Cannibal Cruise; Ronf had barely escaped the fight that broke out. Admin was clearly mad about the movies, or the farmworkers watching movies, or something. It wasn't a good sign for business.
More to the point, how would we fix Ronf? It wasn't exactly like old, abandoned A/V equipment was sitting in every alleyway on Bright Beacon. Raiding the recycling facility on the industrial ring was risky, and it wasn't like we were guaranteed to find something there, either. And Giro could only do so much fabrication, and that was when he could get to the industrial ring.
… And that was when he was at all motivated to do so. And wasn't that an issue. He should have loved hearing about Piracy is a Crime!, but he'd barely noticed what I'd said.
Was it something with his implant? Dad's notes had listed similar problems. I'd have to read them—
"You're in trouble," Thoren informed me smugly, glancing up from whatever project Grandma had him working on.
Any thought of Giro and Ronf evaporated like water in vacuum. "What?" I managed.
He just gave me a cryptic smirk as Dad emerged from his office.
"Dreedo," Dad said, and there was something hard in his voice. He was holding a video disc—one that clicked into place in my mind with a surge of recognition. "We must talk."
Oh, krag.
Dad spun and marched back through the kitchen to his office, clearly expecting me to follow.
Busted. I thought. I'm gonna lose it all. If he finds out I've been using his tablet—
Now that would be unacceptable. I reluctantly followed him, but in the kitchen I swung my backpack around and slid the tablet out of its pocket. Toast was snoozing in her little nest in the scullery. I paused and bent to rub her belly—and to slip the tablet under her pillow.
Then I steeled myself and crossed into Dad's office.
He was studying the label we'd applied as practice, as this was one of our early burns.
"Your brother says this is yours," Dad said.
I mean—"Yeah," I said, my story already lined up.
But Dad beat me to it. "I didn't want to believe it," he said, "but when Vilda found this, it was difficult to deny it." He turned icy eyes to me, that muscle twitching in his cheek.
"Would you care to tell me," he said, every word like an ice chip down my spine, "why my son is involved in criminal activity?"
My heart sped up. I swallowed.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded when I dithered too long.
"Lone Light Distribution, I guess," I said, pointing to the label. (I was proud of "Lone Light Distribution"—it felt like a play on "Beacon Studios.") It occurred to me that I had no idea how much he knew. I tried to channel Jazy's coolness when giving Detective Britter the runaround. "Did you know Beacon Studios made an alternate ending to The Golden Hammer? That's the original director's cut."
A couple of noticeable expressions warred over Dad's face; he shook them off irritably. "That's not the point. The point is that you got it from pirates."
Oh, okay, good. He didn't know I was Lone Light Distribution. He just wanted me to know that Piracy is a Crime.
"Piracy is a growing problem," Dad went on. "I need to know how wrapped up in it you are. Give me your bag."
I handed it over, silently thanking Toast for hiding the tablet for me.
Dad didn't find any more contraband—I tended to stream stuff, or watch video on demand, on Dad's tablet, or on the monitor Giro could hook up to it. He handed the backpack back to me. "You are not to get any more pirated materials," he said. "Artists work hard on those movies. We owe it to them to consume media legally."
"Yeah, censored media," I grumbled.
Dad's head snapped up.
"What was that?" he said.
"The Board of Civic Hygiene makes stupid rules," I said. "It ruins good stories." Well, except for Tech Demo, but my point stood. "Artists can't want that."
Dad's facial tic ticked again.
"If that is your attitude, then obviously the Board has not done enough to get their point across," he said. "I thought I was getting through to you two, with Thoren's project, but it is clear that you are incapable of making good moral choices."
That stung. I stared at him, mouth hanging open.
"That's drombash," I finally spluttered. "Just because I care about artistic integrity—"
"You're grounded," Dad said with finality, which was a bold thing to say to someone on a space station. "You are not to leave the house except to go to school, and you will not be getting your allowance."
I floundered. Grounding was the sort of thing that happened to delinquents. I had no idea how to react.
"For how long," I heard myself say.
"Until you can learn to follow the rules!"
Dad never raised his voice. He looked startled at himself.
He'd half-stood with the outburst; now he sat back down.
"Go to your room," he said more quietly. "And think about why we have rules. They're to keep you safe."
Safe from … who? Angry movie directors? Slighted cinematographeres?I felt like I was having only half an argument, and I had no idea what the other half looked like. I left his office, and paused next to Toast's nest as Dad exited to go confer with Grandma. When he was out of sight, I slipped the tablet back into my pocket.
I had to be quick, because Thoren came strolling back toward the stairs toward our room. But he was the one who looked guilty.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"I'm grounded," I said flatly.
He winced. His stupid lockdown stunt hadn't even warranted grounding.
(Then again, Dad had never grounded us before. Probably because we weren't all that badly behaved? Grounding was a thing that happened to other kids. Had somebody suggested it to him? Was Dad being Peer Pressured?)
Thoren still looked uncomfortable.
"Look," he said, "sorry I ratted you out. Vilda was 'tidying up' in our room and found the disc."
Okay, so I was going to have to be more careful about the stuff I kept around.
"I mean, it is mine," I shrugged. "You weren't wrong."
"Yeah, but—" He frowned at me, like I'd confused him. "I should've covered for you."
"You—what?" Now I was confused. "Why?"
"Twins gotta cover for each other," he said, as though we were Drack and Jazy pulling a heist.
That was a source of anxiety for me, actually. I didn't think I could cover for anyone. Which was constantly on my mind when I hung out with Giro.
"What were you doing with Grandma?" I asked, following him up to our room.
"Oh, she wanted my advice on a program for the ag ring," he shrugged. "There's been some trouble with piracy over there, and she's working on a program for mandatory movie nights. She's asking me about what movies they might like." He grinned. "Wholesome stuff, you know, that teaches Good Values. Beacon junk."
That sounded … miserable. If I was an ag worker, I'd probably want to just, like, take a damn nap after a long day of … picking courgettes and trying not to fall in the thresher, or whatever it was ag workers did. Being dragged to a cafeteria or somewhere to watch Follow the Beacon videos—oh, krag, was Grandma going to make them take tests on the films?—would suck.
"You think they'll get the wrong idea from interesting stuff?" I asked.
"Grandma does," he shrugged, picking his robe up from the foot of his bed. "She's gonna try to get an exception to the assembly policy."
"The what?"
"It's a proposed policy amendment. No more than five tangentials may gather in one place now. Admin's gonna vote on it."
"Krag," I said, and meant it.
"Gonna go take a shower," Thoren added.
I wanted to consider the implications of an assembly prohibition, but I had a brief window of time to use Dad's tablet in privacy here, so I had to use it to do what I'd been meaning to before all this hit me like a meteoroid.
I had to see if I could find something to help Giro.
#
The shower noises were done; I shut off and hid Dad's tablet before I heard Thoren's steps on the stairs, trying to find something to grab onto in the smoking crater that Dad's notes had blown in my mind.
Okay, so the Phase II trials of Giro's implant were reporting a lot of the same stuff I was seeing, and "suicidal ideation" was definitely worrisome, but I could barely focus on that.
It was the notes from Dad's second experiment, the one he never talked about—the fresh, new notes, just since our discusion—that had struck me this time.
"Redirection" was a nice word for him yelling at me about my pirated movie. And "subversive material" was the pirated movie. (It sounded like he was despairing that I was watching a bunch of porn, but I didn't really seek that out. (Okay, the fics I read sometimes had a lot of porn, but I just sort of skimmed it and hoped everybody washed their hands.)) And I was definitely defending "artistic integrity," but he wasn't giving me credit for that; he thought I was just regurgitating something someone else had said.
Dad was describing his fight with me, and his talk with Thoren.
I was C0.
I was the control.
"—in the cinema," Nielli was saying. "At least it'd be new."
"But it would be Board-approved junk," Thoren protested. "All the smart stuff is taken out."
"But it'd be new!"
"Fine." Thoren rolled his eyes. "Let's go, then."
I sighed. It was weird, going to the movies with my friends. They didn't seem to care about what they were watching at all. They'd whisper together and ignore big chunk of plot and character, completely oblivious. Like, why even watch a movie.
Yeah, Giro and I talked when we watched movies, but we were talking about the movies, asking questions about the plot and commenting on the characters' actions; Giro was in the habit of pausing to offer an opinion, or to analyze a shot.
At least, usually he was.
That was the big holdup in getting our new stuff out: Giro. Normally my fidgety friend was bouncing to burn discs, and he'd gone into an outright frenzy modding Ronf to become a walking, talking A/V rig that could skulk into the ag ring and entertain the farmhands. He'd gotten into stealth technology and had opened quite a few tabs on Dad's browser to try to pick up some tricks on eluding security. ("Hope this doesn't scramble your dad's browser's algorithm too bad," he'd commented, and that was how I learned that Dad's tablets would share data, which was good to know.)
And it had worked out great, at least once we'd figured out how to avoid ag workers throwing tools and rocks at Ronf on sight. (The secret was for Ronf to already be playing a film when the workers saw zem. Enough of them were like me that they'd be completely hypnotized by the story and forget to attack the evil tech.)
(It probably also helped that Ronf looked less like a sleek, fancy tool of the technocracy and more like an animate pile of junk. It was hard to be suspicious of the omnipresent threat of the Silicon Menace when the potential infiltrator was wobbling around on legs that had clearly been sawed off a school desk and soldered to hell and back.)
But once we had gotten that step taken care of, Giro had apparently lost any drive to do, well, anything. Now when I wedged my way through his door, I didn't find him industriously coding, or soldering something, or fussing with his A/V setup. He still had the Follow the Beacon movies going, but I'd find him flopped listlessly in his little nest (which was starting to give off WASH ME vibes, enough that I had stuck a bottle of body wash in my bag for him), eyes pointed at the screen but not seeing it.
As far as I could tell, he wasn't even rousing himself to eat. I had to remind him, relentlessly quoting Let's Eat! to try to get through to him.
So, yeah, output was kind of down.
I was still contemplating this as the reel started in the theater. Was there a way to reinvigorate my friend?
And when the probably haunted, inoffensive public-domain music for Follow the Beacon began, I found my answer.
#
"Giro! You've got to see this!"
I wriggled into his hideout, wrinkling my nose at the smell of unwashed paquo for a moment.
"Giro!" I said, practically vibrating. "Have you seen the latest Follow the Beacon yet?"
Giro didn't respond. Didn't even move.
"I haven't gotten the chance to pick 'em up," Dexer informed me huffily, having returned from the alley while I was at the movies. "Too busy earning an honest living, you know. And garbage duty."
"Yeah, it is getting kinda rank in here," I agreed. "Has he been eating?"
"Not much," Dexer said. "Which is probably good, since he also hasn't been going to the bathroom. It's not just food I'm chucking in the bio-bin."
"Gross, dude," I said, trying to aim a judgmental look at the subject of our conversation. It was hard, though, to keep up the judgment when there was so much unease tangled into it.
Giro didn't even offer a sassy retort.
I looked at him for a moment, then came to a quick decision. I set the takeout boxes on his workbench (kuush, which I was looking forward to), swung my backpack to the floor, and dug out the bottle of body wash. Thus fortified, I crossed to the big industrial sink and started to run it, checking the temperature before I put in the plug.
Then I rolled up my sleeves and approached Giro.
"Hey, what," he said, listlessly startled, when I got a grip on his collar and belt.
The good news was that paquos were smaller than koranos, and Thoren and I had inherited Dad's muscular build, so my indifferent straining did work to lift him.
"I gotta tell you about the new Beacon short," I informed him, hefting him over to the basin. "It's about us."
His ears perked toward me a bit. I decided that was a victory.
"What's it abblblh?" he asked, the last word dissolving into a splutter as I dunked him, clothes and all, into the water.
"It's called Piracy is a Crime," I said when he emerged and shook the water off. "Which is pretty self-explanatory, I feel. It's about a kid who pirates a movie and it's a Bad Influence, so she goes on a delinquent rampage, gory movies and sexy ones, so much vandalism, and a lot of petty theft. In the end her little brother almost gets blown out of an airlock because he was trying to stop her from tagging it." I shrugged. "I mean, it escalates wildly. And narratively, it'd make more sense if he actually died, and she had to face the—okay, dude, you can't just sit there, you know."
Because he was. Just sitting there, huddled in the water, his ears drooping as though he hadn't the strength to keep them up.
He blinked slowly, seeming to gradually notice that I was waiting for a reply.
"The temperature's okay," he offered.
"Come on," I said. "I know for a fact that you've seen Blooming and Grooming; you know how to take a stupid bath, at least theoretically."
I held out the body wash bottle. He stared at it as though he was trying to figure out what to do with it.
I rolled my eyes, squeezed a blob of it onto his head, and started lathering, telling myself that it was just like giving Toast a bath, only I was way less likely to get clawed or bitten.
"Anyway, we're famous now, I guess," I went on. "Your criminal empire is gaining notoriety." Then, because I couldn't help myself, I went back to critiquing Piracy is a Crime! "But I dunno; the Board doesn't seem to have a real directorial vision. Dexer, hand me a cup—a clean cup." I frowned. "I kind of want to know if Beacon Studios is full of frustrated artists or, like, soulless bureaucrats. Is it just an extension of the Board of Civic Hygiene, or is it a load of theater kids just trying to make the best of their boring existential nightmare?" I frowned, assessing my handiwork thus far. "How do you feel about me taking your pants off?"
The only acknowledgement I got of the awkwardness of the situation was another twitch of his drooping ears, but after a moment he began to wriggle out of his jumpsuit himself, the motion sending little splashes over the sink's sides.
I watched as he pushed the garment over the rim. It tumbled and landed at my feet with a wet plop. The body wash was plucked from my hands.
"Well, don't look at me," he said, squeezing the bottle.
"Right." I turned away as he disengaged the handheld faucet. I pretended not to hear him grumbling to himself as he splashed.
"Hey, Dexer," I said. "Are there any towels around here?"
"Buncha clean rags in a utility closet not far from here," the robot answered. "And you want me to take that to the washing machine?"
I blinked down at the sopping jumpsuit at my feet. "There's a washer in this basement?"
"For the rags, you know." The robot scuttled over and picked it up.
"Wait," I said. "Take the blankets, too!"
Between us, we managed to get Giro's stuff, and Giro, washed and dried. I kept up a running commentary as we did, and he'd periodically grunt in acknowledgement and even grudgingly ate his kuush. Finally, though, Dexer brought back his blankets, and he fell into his nest and proceeded to curl up in a wordless ball.
"At least you're cleaner now," I offered.
He didn't reply.
"Okay, well, I gotta go home," I said, trying to ignore my unease. "I'll come check on you tomorrow, okay? And if you have to use the bathroom, freaking use the bathroom, got it?"
Giro halfheartedly reached for his remote.
"Bye," I said, unable to quite keep the hurt from my voice as I started toward the door.
I was intercepted by Ronf, folding skeletal limbs to fit through the half-open iris. I stared at the new gashes over the Lone Light Distribution logo Giro had etched onto the chrome and gasped fully as Ronf stood upright.
A corner of Ronf's monitor was cratered in, cracks webbing outward in jagged fractals from the pellet hole. A few pixels flickered desperately around the cracks.
"So, uh," Ronf said, "we have a problem."
#
When I got home, Thoren and Grandma were at the kitchen table with their heads together—an unusual sight, but one I didn't have attention to spare for. Somebody—Security—had shot Ronf. They'd been breaking up a gathering of farmworkers watching, of course, Feral Cannibal Cruise; Ronf had barely escaped the fight that broke out. Admin was clearly mad about the movies, or the farmworkers watching movies, or something. It wasn't a good sign for business.
More to the point, how would we fix Ronf? It wasn't exactly like old, abandoned A/V equipment was sitting in every alleyway on Bright Beacon. Raiding the recycling facility on the industrial ring was risky, and it wasn't like we were guaranteed to find something there, either. And Giro could only do so much fabrication, and that was when he could get to the industrial ring.
… And that was when he was at all motivated to do so. And wasn't that an issue. He should have loved hearing about Piracy is a Crime!, but he'd barely noticed what I'd said.
Was it something with his implant? Dad's notes had listed similar problems. I'd have to read them—
"You're in trouble," Thoren informed me smugly, glancing up from whatever project Grandma had him working on.
Any thought of Giro and Ronf evaporated like water in vacuum. "What?" I managed.
He just gave me a cryptic smirk as Dad emerged from his office.
"Dreedo," Dad said, and there was something hard in his voice. He was holding a video disc—one that clicked into place in my mind with a surge of recognition. "We must talk."
Oh, krag.
Dad spun and marched back through the kitchen to his office, clearly expecting me to follow.
Busted. I thought. I'm gonna lose it all. If he finds out I've been using his tablet—
Now that would be unacceptable. I reluctantly followed him, but in the kitchen I swung my backpack around and slid the tablet out of its pocket. Toast was snoozing in her little nest in the scullery. I paused and bent to rub her belly—and to slip the tablet under her pillow.
Then I steeled myself and crossed into Dad's office.
He was studying the label we'd applied as practice, as this was one of our early burns.
"Your brother says this is yours," Dad said.
I mean—"Yeah," I said, my story already lined up.
But Dad beat me to it. "I didn't want to believe it," he said, "but when Vilda found this, it was difficult to deny it." He turned icy eyes to me, that muscle twitching in his cheek.
"Would you care to tell me," he said, every word like an ice chip down my spine, "why my son is involved in criminal activity?"
My heart sped up. I swallowed.
"Where did you get this?" he demanded when I dithered too long.
"Lone Light Distribution, I guess," I said, pointing to the label. (I was proud of "Lone Light Distribution"—it felt like a play on "Beacon Studios.") It occurred to me that I had no idea how much he knew. I tried to channel Jazy's coolness when giving Detective Britter the runaround. "Did you know Beacon Studios made an alternate ending to The Golden Hammer? That's the original director's cut."
A couple of noticeable expressions warred over Dad's face; he shook them off irritably. "That's not the point. The point is that you got it from pirates."
Oh, okay, good. He didn't know I was Lone Light Distribution. He just wanted me to know that Piracy is a Crime.
"Piracy is a growing problem," Dad went on. "I need to know how wrapped up in it you are. Give me your bag."
I handed it over, silently thanking Toast for hiding the tablet for me.
Dad didn't find any more contraband—I tended to stream stuff, or watch video on demand, on Dad's tablet, or on the monitor Giro could hook up to it. He handed the backpack back to me. "You are not to get any more pirated materials," he said. "Artists work hard on those movies. We owe it to them to consume media legally."
"Yeah, censored media," I grumbled.
Dad's head snapped up.
"What was that?" he said.
"The Board of Civic Hygiene makes stupid rules," I said. "It ruins good stories." Well, except for Tech Demo, but my point stood. "Artists can't want that."
Dad's facial tic ticked again.
"If that is your attitude, then obviously the Board has not done enough to get their point across," he said. "I thought I was getting through to you two, with Thoren's project, but it is clear that you are incapable of making good moral choices."
That stung. I stared at him, mouth hanging open.
"That's drombash," I finally spluttered. "Just because I care about artistic integrity—"
"You're grounded," Dad said with finality, which was a bold thing to say to someone on a space station. "You are not to leave the house except to go to school, and you will not be getting your allowance."
I floundered. Grounding was the sort of thing that happened to delinquents. I had no idea how to react.
"For how long," I heard myself say.
"Until you can learn to follow the rules!"
Dad never raised his voice. He looked startled at himself.
He'd half-stood with the outburst; now he sat back down.
"Go to your room," he said more quietly. "And think about why we have rules. They're to keep you safe."
Safe from … who? Angry movie directors? Slighted cinematographeres?I felt like I was having only half an argument, and I had no idea what the other half looked like. I left his office, and paused next to Toast's nest as Dad exited to go confer with Grandma. When he was out of sight, I slipped the tablet back into my pocket.
I had to be quick, because Thoren came strolling back toward the stairs toward our room. But he was the one who looked guilty.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"I'm grounded," I said flatly.
He winced. His stupid lockdown stunt hadn't even warranted grounding.
(Then again, Dad had never grounded us before. Probably because we weren't all that badly behaved? Grounding was a thing that happened to other kids. Had somebody suggested it to him? Was Dad being Peer Pressured?)
Thoren still looked uncomfortable.
"Look," he said, "sorry I ratted you out. Vilda was 'tidying up' in our room and found the disc."
Okay, so I was going to have to be more careful about the stuff I kept around.
"I mean, it is mine," I shrugged. "You weren't wrong."
"Yeah, but—" He frowned at me, like I'd confused him. "I should've covered for you."
"You—what?" Now I was confused. "Why?"
"Twins gotta cover for each other," he said, as though we were Drack and Jazy pulling a heist.
That was a source of anxiety for me, actually. I didn't think I could cover for anyone. Which was constantly on my mind when I hung out with Giro.
"What were you doing with Grandma?" I asked, following him up to our room.
"Oh, she wanted my advice on a program for the ag ring," he shrugged. "There's been some trouble with piracy over there, and she's working on a program for mandatory movie nights. She's asking me about what movies they might like." He grinned. "Wholesome stuff, you know, that teaches Good Values. Beacon junk."
That sounded … miserable. If I was an ag worker, I'd probably want to just, like, take a damn nap after a long day of … picking courgettes and trying not to fall in the thresher, or whatever it was ag workers did. Being dragged to a cafeteria or somewhere to watch Follow the Beacon videos—oh, krag, was Grandma going to make them take tests on the films?—would suck.
"You think they'll get the wrong idea from interesting stuff?" I asked.
"Grandma does," he shrugged, picking his robe up from the foot of his bed. "She's gonna try to get an exception to the assembly policy."
"The what?"
"It's a proposed policy amendment. No more than five tangentials may gather in one place now. Admin's gonna vote on it."
"Krag," I said, and meant it.
"Gonna go take a shower," Thoren added.
I wanted to consider the implications of an assembly prohibition, but I had a brief window of time to use Dad's tablet in privacy here, so I had to use it to do what I'd been meaning to before all this hit me like a meteoroid.
I had to see if I could find something to help Giro.
#
EXP: T1PQ8?96
DATE: 02.04.90
Significant percentage of temporary major depressive episodes in E group; subjects report listlessness, anxiety, hopelessness, emotional numbness, and suicidal ideation. Implant synthesis cycle seems impeded. Recommend return to Phase I trials to calibrate cycles.
#
EXP: IP262
DATE: 02.15.90
Despite some influence of peers, consequences of E0's behavior have led E0 to internalize wider social context, allowing for greater civic hygiene.
C0 continues to exhibit narrowed thinking and lack of imagination with regard to actions and their effects, despite attempt at redirection. Continues to pursue subversive influences. Claims "artistic integrity" as a defense.
Effects of Grewell treatment significant.
Recommend an official pilot study on the Grewell treatment for koranos.
#The shower noises were done; I shut off and hid Dad's tablet before I heard Thoren's steps on the stairs, trying to find something to grab onto in the smoking crater that Dad's notes had blown in my mind.
Okay, so the Phase II trials of Giro's implant were reporting a lot of the same stuff I was seeing, and "suicidal ideation" was definitely worrisome, but I could barely focus on that.
It was the notes from Dad's second experiment, the one he never talked about—the fresh, new notes, just since our discusion—that had struck me this time.
"Redirection" was a nice word for him yelling at me about my pirated movie. And "subversive material" was the pirated movie. (It sounded like he was despairing that I was watching a bunch of porn, but I didn't really seek that out. (Okay, the fics I read sometimes had a lot of porn, but I just sort of skimmed it and hoped everybody washed their hands.)) And I was definitely defending "artistic integrity," but he wasn't giving me credit for that; he thought I was just regurgitating something someone else had said.
Dad was describing his fight with me, and his talk with Thoren.
I was C0.
I was the control.
Next Chapter!
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Date: 2025-04-14 08:04 pm (UTC)