Riding Free at the Bear Lite Bulb
The Zombie Kittenz were playing and
Shawana was dying to go. But it was at the BLB, an under-21 show.
She couldn't pass any more, not since working as a bud mother. That
left two choices, but the one she could afford was hitching a ride in
her kid sister's cerebellum.
The worst part was the teen angst. It
had been forever since she felt this way. Actually, she had never
felt this way. Noemi was a spoiled brat. But the Kittenz were the
smog. She had to be there.
At the door they were doing brain
scans. Shawana had to mantra. Lucky they didn't notice her; she'd
have been evicted on the spot. Inside, Noemi and her age mates
formed a teenoma right in front of the stage. Shawana had not
expected to be so close. The Kittenz were known for putting on a
pretty wild show, but there was nothing she could do about it.
The front band played a lot of
AI-synthocrap on flamboyant instruments that were nothing more than
glorified MP6 players. Finally, the lights went low. Foreboding
music throbbed in her borrowed bowels. The sound quickly rose to a
shriek as the Kittenz leapt onto the stage. Their performance went
far beyond audiovisual. They were using gravity waves. They were
beaming coded sequences directly into the audience. Tygger stopped
right in front of Noemi and her friends and leaned so close it was
clear her costume was painted on. "No free rides," she
snarled. She pointed a REM gun directly at Noemi/Shawana and fired.
Everything disappeared.
Don't panic, Shawana thought, and tried
to remember the drill. She repeated her emergency mantra, and
wondered when Noemi would notice she was gone. She tried to scream,
but nothing happened. She desperately sought something, anything she
could latch on to. There it was! Somehow, she had found Noemi
again. Or, maybe her own body. It didn't matter. She dove for it,
slamming into the cerebrum like a ball into a glove. It was such a
relief to be corporeal again. She opened her eyes.
She stood, nude, in a transparent
fluid-filled cylinder. She'd heard about this room, but never seen
it before. She was in a clone body, and at least 20 other body tubes
were occupied. Damn! She hoped the show would end soon. And that
she could talk her way out of the fine. She slammed her fist against
the wall of the tube.
Publ. Daily Cabal 2009
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