This lady asked me what aisle she could find tinned pineapple in and I told the lady she might have to get a mech to show her and she rolled her eyes. People hate dealing with robots. When you work at DeliDiscount, you're supposed to know where stuff is off by heart, but all I knew off by heart was the prom. It was 129 minutes away (and 51 seconds, 50, 49). I had the whole night storyboarded in my mind. I wanted to ankle my suckyass job, anyway, I only did ten hours a week, and my allowance from Mumshine and Dad paid tonnes more, but you had to be seen to work so no one could say you were a mechalover. Plus Chan was assistant manager of the bakery and I got to stare at his back muscles flexing as he lifted heavy trays out of the ovens. Chanvatey Prach: lead in the school production, head of marketing for the 40 Hour Famine fundraiser. On the beach volleyball team, plus the football team, God, everything. Total blue chip boy. Six feet tall and he had Luddite tattoos and dressed just gangsta enough to look dangerous but not get in trouble. Hot. I even liked his name. It looked like it rhymed with 'man' but it was more like Charn, like Charm, like Prince Charming…
I pulled my mind off Charming Chan and the prom. The Mopomatic was hovering beside my Wet Floor sign, putting pressure on me to work faster. Mopomatics aren't cute like my Robopup or anything, they're just one more mech that's a way harder worker than me, according to my manager, who got a cyopsy on his lungs, so he's a quarter mech (and also three quarters dickhead). The Mopomatic doesn't sulk all day when it's got its period, it doesn't have itchy bra straps, it can search answers to customers' questions if they're not too bummed out to get help from a mech. The Mopomatic doesn't forget its nametag so when old ladies ask your name you have to tell them your name's Eden and they say "Ooh, that's a lovely name, deary, I have a granddaughter named Eden" and your manager tells you off later for too much chit-chat on work time and says he's gonna give your job to a StockBot.
There was one thing the Mopomatic needed to be jealous of: I was going to prom in two hours. I was going to get crunk, sing karaoke, maybe ask Esther if I could borrow Chan to dance with, brush up against his abs. If I wanted to badly enough, I could make babies with Chan (and I did want to, pretty bad). Yeah mechs can live forever, but they WISH they were us.
As I counted down to the end of my shift, I put some bags of garbage from Produce into a trolley and wheeled them through the plastic flaps out the back of the supermarket and past the loading dock, where heaps of people used to unload the trucks before drones started delivering everything. There's only a third of the workers that were here when I started two years ago. It's mostly stack-o-matics now, grade-o-matics. Carbon fibre all up in my face. Spray-o-matics. Plus my manager, Dick-o-matic.
I wheeled my garbage over the stained concrete floor, past the skyscraper of perfectly mech-stacked banana boxes and out to the incinerator. Round back it stank all fruity and warm and rotten like Chan's Nikes that I sniffed one time cause Maeve dared me to. I felt empty from all the prom stress. I'd eaten about one day's worth of food in the whole past week and I was getting the starves pretty bad, like I probably wouldn't even last through Prom tonight if the excitement didn't keep me wired.
Beside the chainlink fence was this conveyor belt where you loaded your garbage bags then they got pulled in and the machine separated out recyclable minerals then incinerated the remnants. Sometimes Fleshies that have lost their jobs and live on the streets try to eat the bread that we throw out, but DeliDiscount's policy is we can't risk some homeless fleshy suing the company if they get E. coli. Dickomatic always used to say my job would be first to go if I got caught giving food to homeless peeps.
I was chucking the bags into the mineral separator when I noticed someone crouched underneath the conveyor belt.
'I can see you, Adam. Having fun down there?'
Adam Turing: the skinny pauper from my class, the only one who didn't have to diet to get his cheekbones and ribs to stick out. Adam was from all my schools, had all my same teachers. From my kindergarten, even. Me and him used to put praying mantises and spiders in a jar together and make 'em fight, that is before I grew up and realised how embarrassing he is. The bug-jar thing was so stupid and childish, I can't believe we ever got that little electrified thrill between our legs as we made the bugs battle. First they were united as bugs or whatever, but after a while the hunger made them savage. Adam never got over that science stuff, never grew up and became chill like I did. Like, we'd been at the same sports days and assemblies every year, since, God, like forever. I even think we had the same mech nanny carrying our dirty diapers out to the garbage when we were little. He'd always been there on a scholarship half because he's such a brainbox and half because his family's so poor – if you can call it a family. All he had was a dad. They used to live in that Mahonyland subdivision 'til that big global credit thing made all the loser families sell their homes to the Mechastructure and go move into the projects.
'I was just… tying my shoe,' Adam said lamely, standing up straight amongst mounds of garbage bags, eyeing up the dumpsters, looking for an exit. Adam had a mullet he couldn't afford to cut, so bouffy and thick with grease it made his whole body look little.
'Seriously? You won the Young Inventors Fair. Can't you invent a better excuse?'
Adam was in Robotics Club at school and everyone said he was a mechalover, especially cause he loved tech so much and wanted to be a journalist and was always creeping around school making secret movies of people. KT's brother Kane smashed up the Robo Homoes one winter lunchtime when we were all bored and we all filmed it on our Organisers and it was like lolocaust.
'Share something with me, Eden,' he said, reaching into a hole in a garbage bag and pulling out something that looked like a piece of wood. 'You look famished. Here – these Danishes are wonderful.'
'Thanks but I'm on a diet where I can't eat garbage.'
'You're saying – ? Oh. Another jibe.' He sighed and said, 'Exeunt.' He tried to disappear between two dumpsters but I spotted the paper bag between his legs.
'You're not supposed to take that stuff, even if it's junk. I told you that last week. See?' I banged on the recycling machine. 'There are elements in that food. Metals. Gotta let the machine take out the selenium and all that. The supermarket wouldn't even break even if it didn't sell metal to the Mechastructure. What if, like, me and Chan lose our jobs? I oughta snitch on you.'
'Please don't.'
'And you've got mouldy bread crumbs in your little moustache! I seriously gotta get a pxt of this.' I activated my organiser and the hologram screen appeared in front of me. With the holoscreen I snapped a photo, loosened my stress a little bit. 'Imagine if I sent this to everyone. Like, I'm not that mean. I'll spare ya. I'm feeling generous today. Just imagine, though.'
Adam picked up his sack of tired bread and rock-hard cake and tried to climb some pallets and escape. I set off the alarm sound on my Org. Adam winced and covered his ears.
'OMIGAWD, dude. How hungry ARE you people?'
'My father doesn't exactly manage to provide… look, Eden, c'mon, don't you remember our project?' His voice got squeakier the more desperate he got. 'For Ethics? Our Zero Waste model? We got Highly Commended? When we rule it'll be a capital offence to waste food and all that? You said you'd be queen to my king? I said we could rule together? I said the mighty should look on my works and despair?'
I wanted to geek out with Adam, kinda, but I was trying to train myself to be less sentimental and more gangsta. Since I was about 13 I'd been obsessed with strong women leaders, girls like Shirin Ebadi, I did a whole assignment on her, she was this human rights lawyer in Iran like ages ago who won the Nobel Prize for fighting in court to stop the tyrants in government treating her friends like shit. Even her husband and sister got beaten and chucked in prison and she still stood staunch. Every time we got made to do a report on a famous person from history, I always chose strong women who stood up to assholes. I used to lock my Kindle midway through reading 50 Fierce Females and fantasise that I was in some smoky futuristic prison camp and someone was trying to take my baby boy away from me. I'd try and feel the exhilaration of righteous rage flowing into my fingers and feet. Then I'd quit daydreaming and go back to the real world, where everything's too safe for anyone to do anything defiant.
'We were, what, 12? I say dumb stuff when I'm happy, okay? This is the real world. Kids don't rule nothing. Plus, we're not in class. Quit it with the nerd words already.'
Adam reluctantly put the bakery waste on the conveyor belt and backed off, putting one leg through a hole in the fence. He hovered, though, eyes darting.
'So d'you think we'll get in? To the Treasure Island thing?'
Our school was in the running for this biodome experiment where you get a chance at winning a sweet million bucks EACH if you lasted on a tropical island for 12 months with 12 friends, not that it was necessarily an island, or tropical. They hadn't told us what country the kids would get put on. We just guessed it would be a Survivor-type biodome deal cause that's what you saw on TV. No one was sure if it was, like, a behavioural thing or an economics thing, like starting a civilisation from scratch and studying how the money spreads. All we knew was the university was paying peeps a mil and if you went in, you weren't allowed out for the whole year, no matter how antsy you got. 12 months paid holiday on a beach, or in the jungle, or tropical rainforest? It was gonna be krayyyyzeee – not that we'd get chosen, though.
'Some other school will get in, guaranteed. Besides, I'm starting to regret entering if you're gonna be there eating my scraps like a freakin raccoon.' I picked a cabbage and a hard cube of bread up off the gravel and shoved it at him. 'Here. Take. Go. It's hardly got any metal in it anyway.'
His lips started wiggling like he was gonna weep with joy and his eyes went all wide. Love, lust – whatever it was, it creeped me the hell out.
'Go get dressed for prom already.'
*
I got into the car and Mumshine was like, 'How was work, sweetie?' and she tried to hand me a PB and J sandwich, like as if I really wanted carbo-bloat before the biggest night of my life, and I epically laid into her as she hovered on the lip of the carpark, trying to pull out into traffic. She'd said she would fetch me in eight minutes. It had taken her 11. Mumshine wasted tonnes more time fighting the car. It would drive itself if you put it on automatic, but Mumshine refused. She said she didn't trust the car to look after her baby girl. Every time she squeezed the gear stick – which she wouldn't have even needed, if she'd just trusted the car to drive itself – I got an eyeful of the 01XX tattoo on her wrist, all wrinkly, the black ink faded to a thin green. The tat was some shit she got when she was stationed at Camp Kampf, which is supposed to mean Camp Struggle, apparently, this multi-national Luddite resistance settlement where Mumshine used to put together pipe bombs and programme viruses and shoot bullets at targets of Mechalovers who sided with the mechs, all that gangsta rebellion stuff back when her skin was tight and her chest was firm, until she pussied out and decided she wanted to make life instead of ending life. Sad.
I pressed my Org and screened her out on the drive home so her voice was all muffled. I messaged my friends. Tonight would be heaven.
'Good to see you, big girl,' Dad said as the nose of the car touched the driveway, walking across the lawn, arms outspread. 'Hey, if you have a moment, I was hoping I could talk to you about –
I barged past him and hit the stairs, letting out just two words that said it all: 'PROM, Dad!'
I had my belt unbuckled before I'd even made it into my room. I slammed the door, tugged my pants down, lay on my back on the carpet and pulled the pants over my ankles, then pulled my work shirt over my head and took off my bra, too, and put my robe on. Robopup sensed I was home, activated and marched over and gave me some sniffs but I paused her and pushed her back under my bed. You have to watch how many snuggles you give mech pups cause they're programmed to get all attached if you let 'em. Like Adam Turing or something. Ech.
Dad knocked on the door while I opened a gym bag and pushed into it all the stuff I'd need to get ready with the girls round at Maeve's place. I could get there at 7.50 if Mumshine didn't drive like a retard, get Maeve's mechmaid to put my hair extensions in by 8.25, maybe. The limo was arriving at Maeve's place at 8.30, it was one of those programmable Tesla ones, so the schedule would be majorly tight. Jesus Christ my mum had botched a lot of things tonight. I packed my heels, my toothbrush, deodorant, tampons, pads just in case, water, hairbrush, makeup bag and especially The Pill and condoms, just in case Chan broke up with Esther for some reason and me and him hooked up after prom. Losing my Big V to Chan would be even better than winning that million dollar experiment thing. Or maybe me and Chan could, like, get rid of Esther. Not tip her out of her wheelchair, just make her disappear somehow. Esther was my friend, but Chan was… Chan was like a prince. A guilty glow spread through my flesh thinking about him coming up behind me at work, whispering orders in my ear, patting my butt. His breath smelled like sweet Gatorade.
I took my prom dress out of the cupboard, draped it over my shoulder, went into my ensuite bathroom and put foundation on and spray tan and just a little basic lipstick. I would get my real makeup done round at Maeve's, cause her mechmaid can spray on the perfect amount of makeup that reacts with the lighting with, like, scientific precision. Luminescent microbeads or whatever.
I came out of the bathroom and was about to cross the floor and grab my perfume when I realised I had an intruder.
The intruder was wearing my prom dress.
'MUM! GET OUT! Get OUT of my dress! Take your Ritalin already.'
Mum looked down at her hands. 'Getting out the wrinkles for you, honey. It just needs some body-heat. On the back? You haven't noticed, but there are just a couple of creases. You don't want the bots working on it. Needs human hands. You do your makeup, hon, wrinkles can be my– '
'TAKE. IT. OFF, MUMSHINE. GOD.' I kicked the zombified tower of folded-up carbon fibre in the corner. 'Let the housebot take out the stupid wrinkles.'
'I never went to the prom when I was your age, angel, I, I left the Camp because, because I was expecting. Expecting you.'
'What do you want, an apology for me being born?'
I pulled Robopup out from under my bed and shoved her at Mumshine. 'You want my life, here. Her kinetic battery's low. You have to take her walkies to charge her.'
'I thought the two of us could go. Just the girls.'
'Hashtag: psycho. Just drive me round to Maeve's already. And you're not coming in. And please don't give Maeve's mum any more seedlings and cuttings and shit. It's not… normal.'
I put on a miniskirt and a long-sleeved tee and made the housebot do up the laces on my knee-high boots, just to look okay when my girls saw me.
'Just let me run my fingers through your hair, Edie. What if it's the last… .' Mumshine got all choked up, put one hand on her collar bone and flapped the other to cool down.
'Mumshine, you know I love your bipolar ass. You honestly need to chill though. For real. It's only prom.'
I put the housebot and Robopup on sleep and locked my bedroom door. Dad was standing right outside in the hall with his organiser screen hovering to the left of him. Dad's a short guy whose dorky Cosby sweaters seem to make him real chirpy, except when he's got work on. He's got this love-hate thing with work. If the mechs haven't told him to stay home for the semester, he's usually second in charge of computer programming at the university. He'll talk to anyone about programming if they can endure the way he licks his nerdy moustache when he's excited.
He was licking that frigging moustache tonight, alright, and trying to read me an email, right then and there. On the most important night in history.
'Edie, there've been a couple of developments today— Christ, it's been a long one— so I'm wondering if we can sit down and go over— '
I took a deep breath, squeezed his shoulders, pressed my nose against his, gave him a kiss to distract him. 'MUMSHINE! Start the car. Dad: tell me tomorrow.'