Bright's Light (13 page)

“Okay,” said Grassly, for the tenth time. “Let’s see you try the move again.” He pointed at a favour wearing a black-and-white-striped bathing suit with a small skirt.

She looked side to side, produced a tube of lipstick from somewhere on her person, and stealthily applied it. Then she smiled, her head cocked to the left. She gave a tiny cough. “I didn’t totally
get
it.”

Grassly sighed. “Do you need me to show you again?”

They all nodded.

He’d chosen the windowless filtration room so that they wouldn’t catch a glimpse down at the dozens of PS officers on the Choosing Room floor, armed with releasers, trying to get to them. As soon as he’d gotten away from
the commander and out of sight of the other officers, he’d hooked into the sound system and interrupted the music to announce, “All favours report immediately to the filtration room for a mandatory edutainment session!”

The favours, exquisitely obedient, had run for the privators and lifts and converged on the tenth floor just as the PS staff burst onto the Choosing Room floor, only to find it abandoned. Grassly then disabled the privators and lifts so the PS staff couldn’t use them. He’d already locked every door in the House of Splash.

The PS officers had responded by trying to shimmy up the descent poles and scramble up the waterslide that twisted its way down to the Choosing floor. The few favours who were still out on the walkway watched, goggle-eyed, as the officers worked their way up, only to be washed back down by violent bursts of water that Grassly had programmed the pumps to release every fourteen seconds.

Grassly had ushered the shocked favours into the filtration room, assuring them that the scene outside was all part of the training module on emergency edutainment. Once inside, the assembled favours milled about the large, barren room that housed the water filtration equipment. The walls sweated with condensation, and the floor, a dull green-tinged concrete, was covered with half an inch of tepid water.

“This is a drill,” Grassly told the group. “A disaster dance drill.”

“Oh,” said a male favour in a small Speedo. “Right.”

“Yes. We are testing your ability to learn new dance moves while … under stress.”

The favours looked vaguely reassured. Grassly gave silent thanks for the breeding and training that made them so cooperative.

“That’s right. You’re going to learn some new moves.”

“In here?” asked one.

“From you?” asked another in a doubt-filled voice.

Outside there was a shout. It sounded uncomfortably close.

“That’s right. Sometimes a party can break out where and when you least expect it.”

A few of them nodded in agreement. “I’ve had that,” said a favour whose face was mostly obscured by a snorkelling mask.

There was nothing Grassly could teach these people about dancing. But he was going to have to try. His first few attempts at demonstrating steps failed miserably. The favours, talented dancers though they were, couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around how to imitate his awkward movements. He decided to keep it simple.

“Okay,” said Grassly. He was beginning to experience a sense of parental affection for the sniffling figures in front of him.

They looked at him with expressions of fierce but unintelligent concentration.

“Here’s how it goes,” said Grassly. He shook his head like a badak about to charge. “Do that,” he instructed.

All the favours shook their heads from side to side.

Grassly flapped his hands. “Do that,” he said.

They obeyed.

“Walk around in a circle!”

They began to walk around in uncertain circles, flapping their hands and shaking their heads.

“Faster,” Grassly commanded.

The favours sped up. Some began to jump, while others grabbed hands and started to twirl each other.

“Good,” said Grassly. “That’s what I like to see!”

A giggle sounded from one of the favours as she and her partner turned faster and faster.

Satisfied that they were busy, Grassly opened the door and saw, to his dismay, a PS officer clinging to a drenched slide pole outside. The officer was almost level with the platform that would allow him access to the walkway.

“Keep it up! Looking good!” cried Grassly, before he darted out of the filtration room and onto the walkway. He shoved the officer, and the man slid helplessly back down the pole like a soaked black lump.

Grassly checked the pump program and increased both the volume of water and the propulsion with which it was released.

He looked down. Ten floors below, dozens of PS staff swarmed like two-legged skudrins. For each one who was knocked down, four more waited to begin climbing. Grassly didn’t see the commander.

The roaring pumps, working far harder than they were designed to, drowned out the noise of the onslaught. At this rate, the mechanical systems wouldn’t be able to cope. Grassly hadn’t allowed enough time for the water to circulate back up to the higher floor to keep the bursts of water coming. He could smell something burning. A motor.

He longed for his Mother.

He lifted his hand to his temple and began desperately scrolling through the water system controls.

“Twirl,” he yelled, hoping the favours in the filtration room behind him could hear. “Everyone twirl!”

On his left, a pump gave an exhausted gasp and released a trickle of water instead of a violent burst. The PS officer at the bottom of the slide, who had been bracing himself against the impact, realized the wave of water was barely enough to dampen his hair and began to climb faster.

Like every Citizen United Inside the Store, Bright had been to the Natural Experience on school trips to look at what used to be. But she’d never gone on her own. The only people who willingly visited the Natural Experience were sensitives: the productives who made advertisements and picked colours and decided how things should look and sound and feel. They seemed to crave exposure to natural things and were unable to do their jobs effectively if they didn’t get it. Normal productives and those who worked in the Entertainment Zone treated the place like the waste of credits it was.

During the school trips, Training Centre buses doing the full tour, known to the kids as the Most Boring and Long Option, ground slowly along the curved road so the teachers could point out dangers and give warnings. The skin over the top of the Natural Experience was tinted from black to a bilious yellow. Beyond the translucent ceiling, the real sky outside was visible and, everyone agreed, extremely disturbing and dangerous looking.

There were a few trees in the Natural Experience, and some grass, but mostly it was dirt and dunes and rock and boringness, as well as vast sections no one ever visited because they were just too pointless and ugly and illustrative of how awful things used to be when nature was allowed to get in the way of fun and productivity.

The PS staff at the entrance to the Natural Experience looked out of place against the brown-on-brown background that could be glimpsed behind them. It was widely known that only the worst PS officers got stuck working the gates of the Natural Experience. After all, they were essentially looking after dirt, which had to be about the worst thing ever, from a support perspective.

Bright pulled the cart in behind a tour bus full of small productives. The kids were dressed in brown. Even though they were young, they looked capable and ready to make some things and fix some other things.

“Cute!” cried Fon. They waved at her, laughing with excitement. They had probably never seen a live favour, just the advermercials on the sides of the houses.

Slater muttered things that Bright couldn’t understand. He was becoming more verbal and was now able to sit up by himself. She hoped he would stay quiet when they had to pass the officers.

As they neared the entrance, Bright noticed that Fon’s skin looked surprisingly pale. Bright wondered if she was pale too. Even Slater looked less tanned in the unpleasant semi-real light.

“Don’t talk,” Bright whispered to Slater.

She couldn’t tell if he was listening.

“The light in here,” he said. “It’s so beautiful. It reminds me of something.”

Fon rolled her eyes. “Hello?” she said. “Skin damage much?”

They were up next. The six PS officers around the gate kept referring to printouts in their hands. That was odd. Personal support staff used the data feed for everything. Bright had never seen one handle a document, which looked like a prop from the House of Office.

Bright pulled the cart up beside the PS officers, and one of them held up a sheet as though checking it against her face. Three officers surrounded the cart.

Bright felt her hair shrink up against her scalp. She told herself not to freeze. Brave and fun. That was her. She put on her most entertaining smile. “Well, hello!” she said to the closest officer.

His mirrored glasses reflected her face, distorting it.

“Purpose of your visit?” he demanded.

Bright didn’t allow her smile to falter. “We’re here as part of our leisure unit’s motivation program. We’re reminding ourselves what’s fun and what’s just a waste of credits!” She laughed, making a sound like a pretty bell, and Fon joined in. Slater stared up at the sky, faintly visible overhead.

The officer questioning her whispered something to the officer beside him. They both stared more carefully at the document. Bright tensed. There would be no getting away this time. A school bus idled behind them, the hideous
Natural Experience stretched in front of them, and suspicious PS staff stood all around.

“It says the ones we want are from the House of Gear,” she heard one of them whisper.

“I think we’re also looking for some favours from the House of Boards. Check the feed.”

“We’re not supposed to use the feed. The commander says to use discretion.”

“None of these people look like the one on my sheet. Different noses. Different lips.”

“They’re favours,” said a third officer. “They change all the time.”

“Yeah, but they’re from the wrong house. I’m telling you, they have boards. Which makes them from Boards, not Gear. And we’re looking for favours from the House of Gear.”

The third officer muttered, “Same difference,” but Bright could see he wasn’t going to argue. She was glad Fon had convinced her to go back for the boards. She was even happier that she and Fon had attached them in such an attention-getting manner. They’d strapped one to each side of the cart. A third was tied on behind. Bright had also tied towels over the flashing side panels, surprising herself with the smartness of the idea.

The first PS officer swiped each of their neck chips. “Credits sufficient,” he said. He waved them through.

Bright wanted to accelerate to the cart’s top speed, but she felt the officers’ gazes following them as they putted away from the gate at what she hoped was an unremarkable pace.

A hundred feet inside the entrance to the Natural
Experience, a gamer’s body hung suspended from a tree as though he’d tried to climb it and failed. Badly.

The Natural Experience was full of such displays. There were bodies crumpled at the bases of hills, victims of twisted ankles. There were bodies sprawled out from heat exhaustion. In the cold chamber, with its ice and snow, there were bodies frozen in caves and one body frozen half in and half out of a pond.

None of the little ones minded the displays much at first. They just looked at the scraggy trees and lined up to touch the sparse grass. But after an hour in the Natural Experience, bathed in its uncanny yellow light and real smells, and surrounded by the unpleasant accidental death dioramas, they just wanted to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. And they never wanted to come back.

A hundred feet beyond the suspended gamer’s body was another tree with a cart smashed against it. A body hung half out of the cart, and another had been thrown clear. A tour or two of the Natural Experience drilled home the lesson that releasing was right and proper, while accidental death was humiliating and shameful.

“They changed that one,” said Fon, pointing. “When I came here on my tour, the bodies were greeters from Mind Alter. Now they’re favours.”

Bright drove slowly even though there were no other vehicles on the flat, unpaved road. The tour bus they’d driven in behind had turned off and gone another way. The Natural Experience was even less popular than it had been when Bright was small.

Overhead, the sky hinted at the many threats that lay outside the skin of the Store.

Sensitives wandered alone and in unsexy pairs along the side of the road, staring at trees and sitting beside patches of plants. They looked terribly sad, as usual.

Bright thought they probably wouldn’t look so sad if they occasionally partied with favours.

“It’s too big in here,” said Fon. “And there’s no music. I’m having trouble imagining this as the hot new House of It place.”

Bright couldn’t imagine it either.

She looked over to see how Slater was reacting. His mouth hung open and he stared around him with … what
was
that expression on his face? In the time since he’d been hit with the light, his face and body had slowly returned to normal. He could stand. He could speak, sort of. But until they drove through the gate, his expression had shown none of the anticipation that was the hallmark of every Citizen United Inside the Store. Now that he was in nearly natural light, his face seemed to register not just eagerness but awe.

“This is it,” he said. “This is where we should be.”

Fon’s head jerked around to stare at Slater. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Don’t you feel it?” he asked.

Bright didn’t feel it—not one bit—and she could tell Fon didn’t either. She reminded herself that being tested by the House of It, no matter how confusing, was a huge honour. She wasn’t going to blow her chance by getting all
critical and asking questions. She would do what the strange officer had told her to do, then wait for the House of It to recognize how amazing she was.

“Everything is fine,” Bright said firmly.

She put her foot down harder on the pedal. The cart whirred along so briskly that there almost seemed to be a wind blowing in their faces.