When Lisbet got serious about trying on all the clothes in the closet, she immediately realized why such a thing had been necessary. A lot of them were not her size. Soon she recognized that they had been purchased as part of a lot sale. Maybe a clothing boutique had gone out of business and Vantz had bought their inventory. 

She used the mirror camera to take pictures of all the dresses, even the dresses that didn’t fit her. She didn’t know if Vantz had any favorites he was hoping to see her wear. She thought it unlikely considering how disinterested he seemed in her. However, it was part of her job during their ‘honeymoon’ to get ready to represent him in public.

She wanted to look nice in the pictures. She wanted to look beautiful. She wanted to flaunt how gorgeous she was with each picture she sent to Vantz, but all the pictures looked the same. She had not been a selfie girl, the kind of girl who took pictures of herself doing everything, and she couldn’t boost her look with makeup or even beautiful hair. Her hair, which normally had so much volume, had none on Mars.

At some point, Charcoal came in and saw a mountainous pile of discarded clothes. “What’s wrong with those ones?”

“They don’t fit.”

“Oh, poor you,” Charcoal said coldly.

Lisbet turned on her. “For your information, some of them are too small. Besides, I’m super jealous of you, so please stop with the attitude.”

Charcoal laughed through her nose and for the first time, Lisbet realized that they might be closer to the same age than she originally thought. It was the gray hair that threw her. “Why are you jealous of me?”

“You clearly have a higher calorie count than I’m allowed,” Lisbet replied frostily. “I’m starving.”

“Too much sex will eat your calories,” Charcoal said in a taunting tone.

“I’m not sleeping with Beck,” Lisbet said frostily as she put a dress back on its hanger. “I didn’t even sleep with him once. He just let you think that I was because even though he claims to be unlike the master miners underground who enjoy the sexual discomfort of their slaves, he still likes it. Otherwise, he would have made the truth clear to you. He wanted you to suffer.”

Charcoal rushed Lisbet. “How dare you say that! He’s nothing like them!” She suddenly slapped Lisbet across the face and was rewarded by a sharp jolt of electricity at her wrist. Charcoal crumpled on the floor.

Lisbet stared at her. There was no way the slap Lisbet received had been on the same pain level as the electric shock Charcoal received. Lisbet was still standing while Charcoal was writhing on the floor. 

“What voltage was your bracelet set to?” Lisbet demanded.

Charcoal collected herself. It took a minute.

“Let me help you,” Lisbet said, bending to give the other woman a hand.

“Gross,” Charcoal wheezed. “Keep your hands to yourself. If you touch me, I might get shocked again.”

Lisbet sensibly retracted her outstretched hand. “Can you help me understand what’s happening here that’s pissing you off? I don’t get it. You wanted my job? Was that just so you could sleep with Beck?” 

Charcoal rolled her eyes. “Look, I couldn’t get the job for a lot of reasons, but mostly I couldn’t get it because Mars is Mars.”

Lisbet was bewildered. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that it gets lonely here. Crazy lonely. I hate your guts, but I’d rather come to see what you’re doing than spend the whole day alone.”

“I heard Beck say you had someone waiting for you downstairs,” Lisbet prompted.

“I do, but he’s gone almost all the time. I only see him for a few hours at night and I’m not allowed to go to Noachis city proper because of confidentiality contracts. I could get kidnapped by someone who knows who I am and what I know and get tortured for information. At the end of my contract, me and my lover will be shipped out to the moons of Saturn where no one has ever heard of us so we can start fresh.”

“If you’re with someone, why are you so sore about Beck?” Lisbet wondered.

Charcoal groaned. “Look, you obviously heard what I said to Beck. He bought me as an assistant, but that was all he wanted me for. I broke my bracelet so I could have an affair with Tavis. I never got to sleep with Beck. I was just working as his personal assistant. He didn’t want me and I was so lonely I could die. He really isn’t anything like the miners.”

Lisbet didn’t understand. She and Charcoal weren’t that different. Why did Beck get so fresh with her and keep Charcoal at arm’s length? If everyone was truly as lonely as they claimed on the red planet, why didn’t he like Charcoal?

“But if you’re not sleeping with Beck, then I’m over the moon,” she said as she forced herself to stand. 

“This is weird,” Lisbet said, taking a step further away from Charcoal. “He’s a baby. Why would you even be interested?”

“He’s not a baby. Mars is Mars. That’s why I’m here now. I don’t care how you look in your dumb dresses… just so long as Beck is as disinterested in you as he was in me. Now that you’ve said you aren’t rolling around in bed with him, I’m satisfied. Even if you decide you want him, you won’t get anywhere with him either. He’s too messed up. Sometimes it goes that way… on Mars.” She trailed out of the room, shaking out her wrist like that would empty her hand of the electricity that had cracked through it.

Lisbet stared at the space Charcoal had occupied even after she was gone. She said Beck didn’t fool around with anybody. Yet, Beck had said he wanted to have sex with her. He had said it so boldly that it couldn’t be misinterpreted. How did that make sense? 

***

“Did you tell Beck he could sleep with me?” Lisbet asked Vantz that night.

Vantz had abandoned the attempt to make it look like he wasn’t smoking during their VR sessions. She couldn’t see the smoke or smell whatever he was pulling on, but his hand moved to and fro in a pattern that only matched smoking. 

Vantz chuckled and gave her a sideways look. “I did, but if he’s mentioning it this early in the game, he must have downplayed his interest in you when we were selecting you.”

“What do you mean?” Lisbet pressed.

“Well, not to make it awkward or anything, but I really didn’t have the time to go through the whole Sleeping Beauty Inc. catalog. I asked him to go through it and make a list of five candidates for me. You were on the list and you were marked as his first choice, but he didn’t say a single word about why you were his first choice.”

All the air left Lisbet’s lungs. She hadn’t even been Vantz’s first choice. She had been Beck’s. It took her a solid eight seconds to get the air back in her lungs enough to reply. “He didn’t?”

“He didn’t need to,” Vantz continued blandly. “The other choices were substandard compared to you. You are a fantastic candidate. I’m very pleased with your selection. However, you’re clearly offended by what was meant to be a merciful allowance.”

“You think giving your underling permission to sleep with your wife as a merciful allowance?” she repeated coldly.

The cigarette Vantz was smoking was not going to the deer’s mouth. Instead, it was going to a spot under his chin in a way that came off as quite glitchy. “Even after all I’ve told you and all you’ve read, you still don’t get how Mars works yet. Allow me to take you on a tour.”

With that, the space around them changed. Instead of being on the dusty, rocky surface of the planet, they were suddenly surrounded by huge pipes running in all directions.

“This is how the majority of Martians get around. These pipes are surrounded by dirt and even if they aren’t, they’re still in caverns underground. They try to put windows in the transportation tubes, but the glass they have to use is more expensive than the metal. There also isn’t much point when the transportation tubes are underground. For most Martians, it’s dark all day every day. You have a room on one of the top floors and you have a stunning view. The radiation from the sun is a major problem. It’s easier to build underground than to make a skyscraper radiation-proof. You live in Martian paradise. Many of the people on Mars don’t see sunlight for years on end. It’s dark, gloomy, and depressing.” He looked at Lisbet like he was waiting for her reaction.

She gave none. 

“This is the shopping district,” he said, changing their surroundings again.

The shopping district was little more than a warehouse store. There weren’t many display pictures and there weren’t many products. Lisbet hardly knew what she was looking at. Most of her shopping experiences on Earth had been in classy boutiques with sales girls who catered to her.

“How does this correlate? What does this have to do with that?” Lisbet asked impatiently.

He flicked his wrist impatiently with several terrible snaps. “I’m saying that this place is dreary and lonely. Setting the two of you up to live together as a priest and a nun was never going to work. Once you and I finish our meetings, you will be alone with him. You’d sleep with him even if you weren’t aware that I’d given my permission. As soon as you realized he could touch you without causing an electric shock, you’d go to him for comfort and one thing would lead to another. That’s how it works in isolated places. Relax. I’m merely surprised he brought it up so quickly.”

“I refused him,” Lisbet said with her nose in the air.

“Was that for me? How sweet,” Vantz said in a tone very close to mocking. “I’m not telling you to go to bed with him. You can refuse him all you like. I’m not interested either way. What is far more interesting is how many of the clothes in your closet do not fit you,” he said, changing the subject. “I’ve been going through the images you’ve sent me and I have to tell you, you need to see how many of those outfits would be wearable with a little alteration. I can’t spare any more money for your attire, so you’re going to need to make those clothes work. Do you think you can trim the ones that are too big down to fit you? I’m sending you an information pack on how to alter clothes. I’d send Charcoal to work on it with you, but I see that she was administered an electric shock for slapping you today. What was that about?”

Lisbet looked up and shook her head wearily. “I said something rude about Beck and she couldn’t stand it.”

“Ah. Well, maybe don’t say rude things about Beck. I doubt he was rude to you and as I said, you need not slide yourself into his back pocket if you don’t want to.”

Lisbet hissed her breath in. “I just don’t understand why he had to bring it up.”

“Obviously to get you thinking about it as a possibility,” Vantz answered soundly. “One day the loneliness might get you and you might find yourself strolling into his bedroom because you’ve discovered, rather painfully, that Mars has snapped you in half and if you aren’t held by another human being, you’ll die.”

Lisbet grimaced.

Vantz ignored her and continued, “However, the day after tomorrow you’ll start your work in The Boiler Room, but if you make a romantic connection there, you’ll be shocked within an inch of your life… Once you get home. I’m only going to warn you once, do not let another person touch you. When I say that I mean, don’t let anyone touch your face, neck, chest, waist, bottom, or thigh. Some wise-cracking moron might try to see if you get shocked by trying to touch you inappropriately. You can shake hands, someone can pat your back, or put their hand on your knee. It’s your responsibility to make sure their hand doesn’t travel upwards. Watch out for handsy people.”

Lisbet nodded. She didn’t imagine it would be much of a problem. In the past, she hadn’t had many men try to lay their hands on her.

“Have you gone through all the information packets I’ve sent you?”

Lisbet nodded again. The packs had been so thorough that reading them had taken up almost all her extra time, and unfortunately, stripped her of a percentage of her innocence. Bold black redactions scared her. They were things they didn’t think an adult could take and maybe she couldn’t. 

“Ah, I see the files are marked as read through our file-sharing system. Do you feel prepared to field any questions that are thrown at you?” he asked, peering at her.

“Yeah. As long as I can get a word in edgewise, I should be able to say the script you’ve given me. If the questions get weird, I hope that I’ll be able to answer to your satisfaction.”

“It’s okay if you lie to them,” Vantz said kindly. “I will back up any lie you have to tell.”

“Can I lie and tell them what you look like?” she asked. “Or will there be someone out there who knows what you really look like and will be able to contradict me?”

He huffed a breath of smoke through his nose. “No one will be able to dispute whatever you say. I have kept my face private for many many years.” He pulled up his red-rimmed to-do list that hung in the air in the VR world. “You know, I think we’ve covered everything. Would you like to skip our meeting tomorrow? Or would you like more prepping? Or would you like to play a game with me in the VR world?”

Lisbet didn’t think twice. “Play a game.”

“Then that’s how we’ll spend our last meeting,” he said cheerfully.