Alias Space and Other Stories by Kelly Robson

Author:Kelly Robson [Robson, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781645240280
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2021-04-30T05:00:00+00:00

“What do you think would attract the biggest crowd,” Kass asked her roommate Brio. “Prince/ess Pie from Sooper Bloopers or Ksai and Trombo from Team Mucho Bad Manners?”

Brio rolled his chair back from the packed and stacked communal sewing table. He rolled the pointy tip of his beard between his thumb and forefinger.

“Those are both difficult designs to pull off.”

It was what he always said when Kass started dreaming up a new costume. Entertainment franchises ruthlessly enforced intellectual property rights on their characters, raking through data for unlicensed skins and squashing pirates under every available legal steamroller. But franchises couldn’t do much about analog costumes. They could monitor data streams from city cameras, but search bots were easily dazzled by slight differences in color, photo-iridescent fabrics, and silhouette-disrupting props.

Kass had a Milady Captain Sterling costume with peekaboo cutouts and dissolving panels that put a super-saucy twist on the buttoned-up classic hero. To fool the bots, she performed a hula-hoop routine using a prop painted ultra-matte black. The hoop disrupted the silhouette and also provided a cheap gesture at Milady’s ouroboros-like alien familiar.

“Prince/ess Pie, I think.” Kass climbed on her stool to reach a bolt of purple fabric from the overhead rack. “I love Ksai and Trombo but my shoulders aren’t broad enough for a second head.”

“Yeah, but Team Mucho is better for you,” Brio said, still fingering his beard. “Prince/ess Pie is for little kids.”

“Kiddy stuff is what I want.” Kass jumped down. “No skin. Just cute and popular.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Brio looked confused.

“Prince/ess Pie will draw a general-interest crowd. Big enough that even someone from Fearsville will wonder what’s going on and drop the wireframes to look. The point is to get noticed.”

Kass spent two days perfecting her costume, then lugged her portable stage to a plum spot just outside Osgoode Station. She targeted the mid-morning and late-afternoon time windows she’d previously seen the woman in the area, and also captured the younger crowd on their way to and from Queen Street’s most popular kittengarden.

In eight performances over four days, she lost herself in the joy of her tiny fans. They screeched louder than any burlesque audience ever could. Each performance, she spun faster, jumped higher, swirling her floating, iridescent purple trouser skirt. Her vest pockets sprouted with flower-like mini-bots, and projectors behind her ears approximated Pie’s shimmering whiskers. It was so much fun, she almost forgot why she was there. She began to think maybe kiddy shows were her true calling after all.

And then she saw the woman coming up the slideway ramp. Kass stumbled off the stage and fell to one knee. Her pint-sized audience moaned in sympathy.

The woman’s gaze swept across Kass like a searchlight. But she didn’t stop. Didn’t even pause. When she rounded the corner and disappeared, Kass went hollow with disappointment. But she jumped up and gave the kids a huge smile.

“That’s okay, kids. Even a prince/ess falls down sometimes!”

Ten minutes later, a conflict resolution contractor showed up. He waited patiently until Kass pulled off her big finish and the children dispersed.

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