Chapter 17: Don’t You Hate It When You Go To A Party And Get Separated Instantly From Your Friends? I Actually Haven’t Been To Any Parties So I Don’t Really Kn

I wouldn't say that we got separated immediately when we walked in, since we still had an awkward elevator ride and a guest check between us and the crowded party floor, but... yeah, I'd estimate around fifty seconds before I'd lost sight of Alice in all the people walking around. Which, y'know, you'd think would be more difficult — white-haired catgirl, and all — but nope! Gone, and the remarkably varied fashion tastes of the party patrons didn't help. I'd been a little worried, but she pinged me back when I contacted her through my HUD, so... woo!

As for our Persons of Interest, I hadn't seen either on the main floor. From my assessment of Kari, she'd probably be up on one of the overlooking catwalks or balconies — I was pretty sure that those upper floors were unspoken business areas — and for the Third Sister, she'd either show up or not. I was hoping not, because all three seemed like stereotypical white women with too much money and not enough philosophy. Certainly not fun to talk to, and likely less fun in a fight. (Dear lord, I wanted anything but to hear a shitty, outdated meme told in a grating, nasal, super-condescending voice.) Though, then again... if I wanted any good information, I probably needed to head up to the business floors... and that risked being found out.

I'd worry about that later, though. For now, I listened to the (robotic?) jazz band being played over the speakers and passed among the mingling crowds as a silent observer. My first time as an outsider, looking in.

It was strange, to an extent. I was referred to occasionally, and some people reacted oddly — the same way I'd seen well-meaning folks react to Valor back home — but for the most part, everyone just ignored me. The guest check just gave me a short nod when Alice introduced me as her plus-one, and that was pretty much the extent of most people's signs of interest. Almost a shame, honestly — this was the first time I felt truly free to screw around and mingle and socialize and make friends in several years, and it just so happens to be where and when I'm being categorically ignored and have to lie low? Seriously?

Ugh. I could totally step up that one girl wearing a patched-up denim jacket and trousers back at homecoming looking like this, and literally nobody at this party looked cooler than she did. Or, well, step to the side of her, I guess? Suit and tie is a little different than repaired jackets aesthetic-wise, it's a little hard to compare the two.

All the same, I was enjoying it. The dim incandescent lighting was a far cry from anything I'd seen in any other building, which was at the same time comforting for power concerns and deeply unsettling for political reasons. The Art Deco decorations and patterns and facades on the walls were truly all-in, which was... yup, just reassuring. I was beginning to worry that we'd never see any actual decorations in this world, only fake plants and one-color walls. As gaudy as they could feel in absence of any real Art Deco design philosophy, at least they actually tried. The atmosphere felt like sparks of humanity in a desert of unfeeling capitalism; the food tasted fine, as far as I could tell, and they even had some nice cream-based pastries and desserts (which tasted REALLY good to me, for some reason.) 

Still, I couldn't handle all of it forever. At my core, I was an introvert (I think, at least. I was pretty sure I was an introvert,) which meant that all this noise was hurting my damn head. And, considering there were a great deal less people on the catwalks, I decided to move up there. Had to anyways, to do my damn job. Plus, hey! Overall a solid 6/10 party, from what I'd experienced so far! Just wish it wasn't a rich person party — the whole deal would mean a lot more if I could relate to anyone around me, rather than constantly hearing shit about business quarters and revenue.

I sighed, leaning on the railing. Right about now was when I really missed being analog. At least then I could fake being sneaky and listen in on conversations while sipping champagne, or something. Now that'd be useless. I was recording every goddamn thing within thirty feet of me, using open-source libraries downloaded from Valor to subtitle it using spare processing time, packaging it up in video files, and then sending it all off to Pidgin's servers where I'd be storing it until I could send it in for Alice's approval back at base. I was doing all this automatically, in the background, and I couldn't fucking touch it for fear of accidentally disabling the system when someone said something pivotal — imagine that, right? A pitch-drop incident except way more important. The fate of the world in the balance, you must pledge to be bored as shit for the next several hours.

"You" in this case being me, and "the next several hours" being however long this damned party lasted. From up here it looked like a pitiful mockery of an anthill — ten meters of height will do that to you, I supposed. This time, I let out a short groan. When I signed up for this, I was really hoping I'd at least get to talk to someone.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I whirled around with a yelp. The person in front of me was familiar...

Ah. Right. The research I'd done. Kari Larson, a robot headhunter, about two feet away from me, with a grin on her face. Fuck. She looks good too — really need to get a restraining order on girls with ripped denim jackets.

I need to get the social advantage. Redirect or don't answer questions. Alright. "Hello," I say, straightening my back and resting against the rail. "You, uh, seem to have me at a disadvantage. What's your name?"

"Larson. Kari Larson. Pleasure to meet you..?" She held out her hand. Do I shake it?

Ah, fuck it. The more I act natural, the higher a chance there is that she'll just ignore me. Plus, this was a public space. I just needed to not draw attention and I'd probably be fine. "Berry No-Last-Name. Fatal work accident. Don't ask." Wait, no, she'd totally see that as invitation. "Seriously. Don't ask."

Kari held her hands up with a placating expression on her face, and I was suddenly aching for a glass of something I could sip on dramatically. "Sure, sure! So, what's a sharply-dressed gal like you doing alone up here? Partner stand you up?"

"Got too loud downstairs. I mean, I'd estimate the level of conversation down there at a solid eight? I usually work best at a five or so. I think." I shrugged. "You?"

"Same as you, I suppose. Got too loud, not enough interesting stuff happening for it." Kari flipped around and leaned on the railing beside me. "I've never seen such vapid conversations anywhere but a penthouse party. I'd have a better time talking to a robot. By a long shot."

"Pff, yeah." Little does she know... "Least there's super-secret stuff happening up here, I guess. Down there it's all 'oh, how's your research team?' and 'ah, last quarter was great!' — god, I was gonna cry."

Kari nodded enthusiastically. "Absolutely! And it's basically all business people, no hunters or anything. Not even scientist-execs. Seriously a shame. I was looking forward to talking real business with someone, but nobody's been interested. See, I thought it was ol' Leebot over there—" she jerked her head over towards a tall, lanky android lurking near a corner looking sullen "—but even with him at a distance I've been outta luck. You're the first one who's talked to me all night."

"Yup," I said. "Me too." A possible reason why she was so out of luck with regards to social function was slowly forming in my head.

"Oh! Well, in that case — er, on that note? One of the two — want to hear about my work?" Kari's eyes were shining. It kind of seriously sickened me, given her work involved reprogramming and physically augmenting people like me, but... information was kind of the whole reason we were here...

"Sure." I really did do my best to seem interested, you know. I hope it worked. "Go on."

"Right! So, I kind of, I mean — I do have a website, but that's all the boring stuff for clients. It's like a description of what I do rather than how I do it, you know? And all that's boooooring." Hook and line, meet sinker. Though at this point it was hard to tell who was getting caught. "So instead, I've wanted to talk to someone about what I actually do for a while. I know, I know, divulging company secrets and all that, but it's just... god, I dunno!"

"(Looking for a confession booth, huh.)"

Kari didn't hear my whispered remark. "Anywho, I can't really handle the psychological stuff. So Leebot does all that. But, but! Just last week I did this really cool job on a corpo android? Don't remember the title or whatever. Er, but I did this really cool modification to their thrust systems to outfit them for flight on a personal request! Took a lot of doing, like, their fuckin' power generation systems were not up to snuff for that, but I made do with a capacitor and some experimental stuff, and then hooking that up to an amplifier with some gravitic generators made it possible for them to use wind currents to fly! I'm honestly surprised more people don't use grav-gens. Everyone always says they're 'inefficient' and 'dirty', but they're just effective without being pretty. Nowadays it's all about fuckin, uh..."

"Voidtech?" I said. It'd been on the lips of quite a few investors even in just the time we were up here. "Something to do with 'drawing in infinite energy from nothing', right?"

"Yeah! It's all stupid, like, that's a generation method. And they're still using grav-gens, just in a different and less effective way. Instead of directly creating the gravitic wave-particle-things, they're just manipulating the ones that are already there. Less effectiveness, but it looks better on them, so whoooo cares." Kari took a swig of a drink that wasn't in her hand a second ago. "Pisses me off. Use all this good tech, it falls out of fashion, what happens? Break it and sell for a lower price. Don't even repurpose, just trash."

A strange feeling churned at my stomach. Wasn't expecting her to be even a little bit okay, honestly — I'd expected full-on bigot. "Planned obsolescence does suck, yeah."

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"Oh, is that the term? Smart." Kari took a second to think. "Yeah. I've seen like, 100,000 dollar androids get sold for scrap after I'd done $50k worth of rearmaments and repairs just because their specialization model wasn't in fucking fashion anymore. Loved those remixes of old hardware, too. Certain charm to them that you can't get with today's sleek shit."

"Bit of an old fogey, I guess?"

"Heh. You could probably smell it from a mile away — 'Kari Larson likes things that are obsolete!' Who would have guessed." She leaned in. "Don't tell anyone, but I'd honestly rather spend my time with androids. Better than most of the folks here, yeah? No offense intended."

For the briefest of moments, my chest tightened with the impulsive urge to let go of my hologram and immediately out myself as a fucking robot to everyone within a 20 meter radius. Thankfully, I reined it in. "None, uh, taken." As much as I'd love to, it'd probably be a bad idea. Also, Alice would kill me even after I went to android heaven.

Was there an android heaven? I wasn't sure. Absently, I also realized that Kari hadn't made eye contact with me once during this whole escapade (something I was surprised but definitely onboard with.) Over the shoulder, the ceiling, off into space — yes. My eyes? I was pretty sure she'd been looking at the space in between them most of the time.

"Sorry anyways. Rambled." Kari sighed, and paused again. "Anyways, what's your deal? Your business?"

Aw, shit. I couldn't just wave off the question without sounding like a dickhead, and I couldn't actually say what I was here for for very obvious reasons. "...Charity?" I tried? Maybe? "Um, yeah. Take from whoever gives... give to whoever needs."

"Oh, yeah, of course."

There's a moment of silence, which lasts about twice the amount of time it took me to realize that Kari was actually trying to be biting with that remark. I'd gotten the perception that she would have bumped me on the shoulder or playfully... I dunno, done something to indicate humor just after saying that, but she seemed mostly serious. "Wait you're trying to be hurtful here right? Am I reading that correctly?"

"...yes?"

I blinked. "Oh. Okay."

Wait. Why was she saying that. "Disregard previous statement. What do you have against charity???"

Kari groaned. "The like, three charity organizations on the planet that actually do things are extreme outliers. Every single company does charity! And none of it actually works! So do excuse me if I'm a little tired of people coming up to me and acting all high-and-mighty for embezzling funds or some shit."

"...Huh. Actually a fair point. I guess I don't really have any way to prove that our charity is actually... effective, so sure." Well, I did — I could reveal what I was doing. Certainly a bad idea, though. Definitely...

"Mmhm. Least you actually realize it. God knows that's better than most of the charity workers I've seen." She scoffed, muttering "...not like that stops anyone from believing you. Idiots, the lot of em," under her breath.

Initially, I didn't catch the last part of that. Someone thirty meters to my right had said something about nuclear energy, but it turned out to just be a marketing tactic for some kind of... anyways. "Huh?"

"A hundred thousand corporations doing what I can only assume is fake charity wouldn't do it unless people bought into the shit. Everyone's an idealist except for the ones running the parlor games, and it kills them." 

"Oi! Don't diss idealism! That's... not cool!" Kari snickered. "Seriously! I mean, where would we be if not for hopefuls and romantics?"

She shrugged, and I suddenly realized I'd raised my voice. "Probably a hundred years in the future, possibly with better living conditions... more space travel... maybe instant oatmeal that's good. What's actually come of idealism? Real idealism? The dumb kind?"

"Well..! I!" I stammered, not sure of what I could or couldn't say. "I mean, the bigger the thing, the harder it is to actually say it's idealism because of... uh, the government and shit. So really it works best in smaller environments, like, trying to get better at something is kind of inherently hopeful? Without outside interference? You gotta actually believe it's possible before you start trying. Even if it's impossible to conceive of a world where you're good at like... art, or whatever, you have to believe in that impossibility before you can get to that world."

Kari leaned back over the rail, looking down at the lower levels while inverted. "Eh, maybe for you. I do it out of spite."

"Spite's a gateway drug. Eventually you buy into hope. I think." Sighing, I looked for an out. This had gone on for probably too long, and I probably had revealed way too much about myself in the process. "Anyways, I have to go to the bathroom."

"Oh! Want me to accompany you?" Huh? I turned around and looked at Kari blankly. "You know... to the bathroom. I kinda also have to go honestly."

Ah, right. I looked like a girl. "Um, uh. Sure." I probably couldn't decline. Even if it was a bad idea, it was just to the nearest restroom — only a few hallways away. The walk was... anxiety-inducing, if uneventful? I was still logging everything, I was walking normally, my hologram was fine; by all accounts, it should have been entirely fine.

As I entered the restroom, though, Kari got shoved into the back of me by a particularly large passerby. There was an impossibly-short moment where the entire room was lit in yellow, and then the door swung shut behind us. For what it's worth, the bathroom was decent! Just stalls, a tiled floor, gray accents — nothing special, but it was very clean. I stumbled into it with a decent amount of speed, but Kari had stopped just at the doorway; she had a calculating look on her face, right before she dashed into me and snapped a layer of my face's holograms into flesh-colored polygon shards.

Shit. "Android," she growled, with some sort of intense emotion in her voice — rage, irritation, possibly excitement? Pick your choice. This was also when Alice chose to scramble through the bathroom door and hold it shut against banging fists, which probably meant I should have been paying more attention to what I'd been recording, and also meant we were likely in trouble.

With our track record... I probably should have seen this coming.