To her equally great consternation, everyone was here for her sister, Celia.
Case in point: “Fifty bytes she shows up tonight,” a girl on the dance floor said to her partner, her words captioned in Kasey’s mind’s eye thanks to her Intraface. The most portable computer yet, the Intraface was an interface within the brain capable of capturing memories, transmitting thought-to-speech messages, and—in this instance—lip-reading sentiments Kasey found ludicrous but forgivable. Crashing her own party would be a Celia thing to do. She’d show up fashionably late, bedecked in sequins, and everyone would stare, the fear of missing out on a laugh, a kiss, a whispered confidence written over their faces.
Even then, they missed things.
Like the way Celia never failed to find Kasey among a crowd.
The way Celia found her now.
A pulse went through Kasey. She tore her gaze from the sea of bobbing heads and focused on the city she was modeling out of cups. It was the lights. The music. Too dark, too loud, messing with her senses. Withdrawing inward, she tended to the slew of log-in requests cluttering her mind’s eye. ACCEPT GUEST. ACCEPT GUEST. ACCEPT GUEST. More people appeared on the dance floor. None, however, could outclass her sister, and Celia was still there when Kasey dared another glance. She was dancing with a boy. Their gazes met, and Celia lifted her perfectly lasered brow as if to say: This one’s a catch. Want to try your luck, love?
Kasey tried to shake her head. Couldn’t. Was transfixed as her sister abandoned the boy and slipped through the partiers with ease. She joined Kasey by the island, dispersing the group that was blowing rings of hallucinogenic smoke in Kasey’s direction.
The smoke cleared.
Celia disappeared.
In her place was a girl with electric-blue hair and Newton’s cradles for earrings. Gimmicky, Celia would have said, whereas Kasey might have actually found the earrings pretty cool if her mind hadn’t flatlined, deleting all opinions, fashion or other-wise, her heart racing 100 bpm as the girl seized a cup and filled it. “Quick, talk to me.”
Was she still hallucinating? “Me?” Kasey asked, checking to see that the kitchen island had, in fact, been deserted.
“Yes, you,” said the girl, prompting Kasey’s Intraface to launch SILVERTONGUE, a conversation aid recommended by Celia. It’ll make things easier, her sister had promised.
Mostly, its rapid-fire tips just made Kasey dizzy. She blinked, popping the bubbles lathering her vision. “Talk to you about…？”
“Anything.”
Insufficient parameters. Annoyed, Kasey surveyed her surroundings for inspiration. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube?” The fact came out sounding like a question; she corrected her inflection. “The entire human population fits into a one cubic kilometer cube.”
“REPETITION DETECTED!” chimed SILVERTONGUE in disapproval.
“Really?” said the girl, peering at the dance floor over the rim of her cup. “Go on.”
“About the homo sapiens volume?”
The girl laughed, as if Kasey had told a joke. Had she? Jokes were good. Humor was a core trait on the Coles Humanness Scale. It was just … Kasey hadn’t been expecting laughter as a reaction. This wasn’t going well, by standards of an experiment. She had half a mind to ask the girl what was so funny, but was outpaced by the conversation.
“Thanks a million,” said the girl, looking away from the dance floor and finally facing Kasey. “Some people can’t take a ‘not interested’ hint to save their life. So, you here to see her too?”
Questions were straightforward. Questions, Kasey could handle, especially when she knew the anticipated answer. “Her?” she asked, only because she didn’t want to encourage it.
She waited for Celia’s name. Braced herself for it.
“Yeah, Kasey? Party host?” The girl nodded at the city Kasey had built out of cups when she failed to reply. “Guessing you aren’t here to mingle. Gets old fast, once you get over how real it feels. The younger sister, though…”
Don’t ask. Nothing good could come of it.
“What about her?” Kasey asked, caving to her curiosity.
“I don’t know.” The girl sipped her drink, eyes veiled. “That’s the lure, isn’t it? One minute, she’s dodging the press. The next, she’s e-viting everyone within a twenty-stratum radius to her party. The disconnect is disturbing, don’t you think? Like, I have a sister too, and I don’t know what I’d do if she went missing.” A new song came on, heavy on the delta-synth. “But sure as hell wouldn’t be jamming it up to Zika Tu.”