The designer assigned to dress Ornette for her first fashion show was a man named Fenrir Charming.  It wasn’t his real name.  That was the name of his designer label.  He went by Fen, and yes, he was a wolf of a man.

In appearance, he was the kind of man who had all the muscles a male physique demanded, but he dressed like an eighteenth-century courtesan.  A male courtesan, to be clear, but the fashion had changed so much, it didn’t translate. All that meant that he dressed much more like a modern woman than a man, with frills at his cuffs and his shirt mostly open.  He grew his hair long and wore it in a low ponytail down his back.  He also wore a goatee.  No one was actually going to mistake him for a woman with his facial hair and pecs partly on display.

Ornette was delivered an invitation to his studio that morning and then she had cameras in her face while she tried to replicate Desmond’s makeup.  She got it wrong half a dozen times before she got it passable.  At the very least, she looked like the same person who had been in the cryochamber the day before and that was what was most important.

It didn't matter if she got the makeup right.  She was supposed to look plain and boring when she arrived at the studio.  There wasn’t any point in taking a beautiful woman and making her look the same, so Ornette’s passable makeup and ordinary hairdo were just what the TV producer ordered. 

Transportation on Venus was all by air because even though it was possible to travel between the multitude of domes that made up the city, Nepra, it wasn’t at all glamorous to do so.  Some of the tunnels were glass above the foundation and that was beautiful, but it was hard for them to keep the transparent tube tops clean, so it was far more glamorous to battle the wind in a helocarrier designed to combat it.  If the weather was bad, they wouldn’t be able to fly, but on that day, the wind was downish (it never died down completely on the floating city), so they were flying.

Ornette got on the helocarrier, flying with three other models.  She flew with Tania, Jane, and Yilin.  So, she was flying with numbers nine (Tania), ten (Jane), and eleven (Yilin).  

They were all loaded into the back and given noise-canceling headphones, with speakers inside them so they could talk while they flew.  

Tania, the blue-haired, blue-eyed, mermaid girl was the first to speak.  She turned to Ornette and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I heard a little of what you were saying to Clandestine in the cafeteria.  Did you say that you were the lowest-paid model here?”

Ornette nodded.  “Was I wrong?  Do you make less than me?”

“I don’t know,” Tania said, showing the same hesitation to talk about financial compensation as Clandestine.

Ornette was not in the mood to play games.  She was going to be eliminated in the second round.  There was no point in holding anything back.  She opened her mouth and simply said how much her contract was for.  It didn’t matter much.  She’d already heard her talking to Clandestine.  Then she finished up with the question, “Do you make more than me?”

Tania was horrified Ornette had simply said such a thing.  

“I make more than you,” Jane, the other cheap blonde voiced.  The reason why was apparent immediately.  She didn’t think she was different from Ornette.  She thought they were exactly the same.  “If you can’t be eliminated in the first round.  It will be me.  Blondes are out of vogue.”

Ornette laughed.  “What are you talking about?  Blondes are never out of vogue.  Blonde hair makes men insane and it has for as long as it’s been a thing.  That’s why I dye my hair.  If blonde hair didn’t do the heavy lifting, I’d dye it a different color.”

“She’s right,” Tania said fervently.  “I don’t dye my hair blue because it makes men insane.  I do it because it makes me distinctive.  I need the distinction more than I need a man to get hot for me.  I mean, that’s what I normally need, but this is a competition where we’re supposed to be hot, hot, hot!  I’m going to dye my hair blonde as soon as possible.”

“But then you’ll look like us!” Jane shouted into her microphone to make sure she could be heard.  “And we’re getting eliminated first thing.”

“I think she’ll get eliminated first,” Tania said, pointing at Yilin.  

Yilin gave no indication that she’d heard what they were talking about and maybe she didn’t.  Maybe she’d turned off her microphone and the speakers in her ears.  Her black hair kept getting swept toward her mouth and sticking to her lip gloss, but she didn’t move like it didn’t bother her.  She was dead inside.

Ornette got that.

Tania went on.  “We’re not just getting voted on by designers, but also businessmen and the three bears… And who knows what they want?”

“They want hot.  They said that’s what they want,” Jane reminded them.  

Tania smiled.  She had such beautifully shaped teeth that Ornette practiced smiling with her lips closed.  She absolutely could not compete against Tania’s open mouth.  If she became a blonde… It didn’t matter.  Ornette already knew she was going to be eliminated in the second round.

“Can you be hot enough for them?” Tania teased, putting her elbow into Jane’s ribs.

Jane rolled her eyes back into her head.  “Let me ask you a question.  How many times have you been sold?  What number is this?  Your third?  Your tenth?”

“Seventh,” Tania said with almost the same amount of outspokenness as Ornette when she told them how much money she made.

“Then you know,” Jane said crankily.  “That nothing that is supposed to be sexy is sexy anymore.  Not to us.  Is there anything you haven’t done to please your master?  We are not like other women.  We’re not even like whores who make an art of it because we’re not hired with the intent that we’ll be used for sex exclusively.  I don’t know about you, but I wear the clothes they give me and then I look bored in a corner until I’m asked to do something, usually just fixing drinks.  I’ve done more bartending than if that was my career.  My masters thought that if they threw enough clothes at me and let me stand beside them, then I must be the happiest side-piece in the world and that I would be delighted to crawl under their desks.”

Ornette knew exactly what she was talking about.  Her earlier masters had been exactly what Jane described.  Ornette stopped accepting contracts like that and instead got actual jobs designing clothing, though not for the clientele she imagined.  She wanted to ask Jane how many masters she’d had.  Tania was considered a seasoned model at Sleeping Beauty Inc. with seven contracts, but Ornette had had fourteen.  This was her fifteenth sale.  When she finished it, there was an award waiting for her back at Sleeping Beauty Inc. North America Division.  She’d store it in her attic… If she ever got anything as fancy as an attic.

What Jane said hinted she was going to get killed at the design portion of the competition.  Her work experience meant she might do a lot better impressing the businessmen as a runway model than the others.  She was blonde and she knew every thought those disgusting men had before they had it.  Who knew?  She might go all the way.

The helocarrier landed before Tania could answer.  As she was number nine, she was the first to be dropped off.  She swung her blue hair and smiled for the cameras that were in her face as soon as she got off the helocarrier.  Of course, they were being filmed all the time they had been flying, but the cameras mounted in the helocarrier were not designed to get beautiful angles.  The drones and cameramen that flocked to Tania when she got off the helocarrier were a completely different matter.  They were designed to make her look beautiful, not to act as surveillance in case any of the women said anything juicy while they were being transported.

“I agree,” Ornette said to Jane once the doors were closed and they were back up in the air.  “Nothing is sexy anymore.  I don’t have any idea what’s hot.  I mean, I know what’s hot to those men, but nothing is hot to me anymore.  Part of this is that they want to see their contestants get sexually excited.  Which one of us isn’t going to fake liking them?  We’re models from Sleeping Beauty Inc.  That’s our job!  Does Papa Bear Varner think that his muscles will make us swoon?  When I see a man with muscles, I feel myself getting slammed against a wall and I hear the sound my head makes when it hits drywall.  And it doesn’t echo.  I hit a stud every time.”

“Same.  How do the dudes even know where the stud is?  I have never once broken through the drywall between the studs,” Jane wondered, shaking her head.

“I’ve thought about this,” Ornette went on.  “It’s cause they’re rich and their homes have double drywall and better structural engineering than the places where most girls like us grew up,” Ornette explained, but she didn’t get to explain anything else before the helocarrier landed and Jane had to flip her pretty hair and get out of carrier like she was a Playboy Bunny.

Alone with Yilin, Ornette tried to have a conversation with her.  “Hey, can you hear me?” Ornette asked in as soft a voice as she dared through the speakers.

Yilin pointed her face further away from Ornette.

Which answered her question.  She could hear her.  She just didn’t want to talk.

Ornette could respect that, but it was a longer flight to where Yilin was getting dropped off than it had been for the other women.  Ornette busied herself with braiding her hair.  She was not going to get off the helocarrier like a supermodel.  No one explained it to her, but she needed to give the illusion that Fen made her over and turned her from an ugly duckling into a swan.  And more than anything, she needed to do exactly what he told her.  If she thought he could do better in some way or another, she needed to keep it to herself.  If he failed in some way that she recognized, and she later had to design a dress for herself, she could use that information.  She needed to learn from Fen’s mistakes and she needed to present herself as someone who was completely moldable.  She would smile and do everything he asked.  

Pleasantly.  

She reminded herself she had to be pleasant.

That was when Yilin was dropped off.

As soon as the door shut, something amazing happened.  The co-pilot who was riding in the front took off his helmet and joined Ornette in the back.  To Ornette’s astonishment, it was Desmond.  He grabbed a discarded headset, put it on, and buckled himself across from Ornette.

“How’s it going?” he asked pleasantly, placing his navy-colored eyes on her in a way that let her know she had all his attention.

“Could you hear our conversation?” she asked without saying hello.

“Yes.  You should know that someone is always listening, even now.  It’s just that when I talk to you, the recording will be deleted.  Though you should try not to say anything too salacious to me in these moments, someone might be tempted to click ‘save’.”

Ornette did not want to smile.  She didn’t want to think he was cute and that his taking a second to speak to her privately made her a little happy.  She leaned into it.  “Okay.  What do you want, Hotstuff?”

“Hotstuff?  Don’t talk to me like that.  It won’t have any effect,” he said, giving a tiny hint as to who he was behind his white-laced navy eyes.

“Kay.  Do we have much time to chat?” she asked. 

They were already back up in the air.

“We don’t.  I just have to tell you one thing.  Do not try to impress the designers in this competition.”

“Why not?” Ornette complained.  All men were a little gross to Ornette (except Desmond), but the businessmen were worse than the designers.  The designers were trying to make clothes, which was at least interesting to Ornette, but the businessmen were bratty losers who knew they could get whatever they wanted if they threw enough money at it.

He took one of her hands in his, proving he could touch her… but maybe everyone could touch her with her bracelet’s current settings.  She could still be shocked though.  Desmond wouldn’t have bothered to change her voltage if she couldn’t be.

“There’s one reason. I have seen your designs and I’ve seen the other women’s designs.  Considering what the designers are looking for this year, you’ll lose.”

“And you don’t want me to lose?” Ornette asked mock-suspiciously.  She didn’t care what happened because she didn’t believe in happily ever after.  There was only the end of the two-year contract and getting a more prestigious master didn’t necessarily mean having a better time while she waited out the clock.

He cleared his throat.  “This isn’t just about the game.  I want you to impress the businessmen and if you do, you have a much better chance.”

“A much better chance for what?” she asked, her interest finally piqued.

“Money,” he said without hesitation.  “The girls are going to be awarded bonuses based on how long they stay in the competition.  The top prize adds an extra zero to your usual fee.”

“Why didn’t they open with that when Papa Bear was explaining the competition?” Ornette whined.

“I don’t know.  I’m not in charge of this thing.”

“Then are you cheating by telling me this?” she asked frostily.  “Am I cheating just by talking to you?”

“There’s no such thing as cheating in this,” Desmond said, looking bored.  “What are they going to do to you?  Send you home?  Look, I don’t have anything else to say except that you can’t play this two ways.  You can try to win it following Varner’s instructions, or you can play it sideways and decide that I’m the person to please if you want to win.”

“And who are you?”

“I’m the Cheshire Cat,” he said with a grin.

Ornette squashed her feelings, but she wasn’t able to squash them enough to deny that maybe something was still sexy.  Okay, a man openly calling himself a cat, even a confusing cat who confounds the heroine, was exactly the kind of thing that got Ornette.

He put a hand on her knee and patted it.  “Try to impress the businessmen,” he advised, before giving her one more convincing look before pulling his headset loose and returning to the front of the helocarrier.