The rest of the time leading up to the gig seemed to pass at 200 BPM. When I wasn’t at work, I was working on Naya’s look, or my songs, or trying to figure out what I would wear and how I would introduce my set. I ended up taking some of the scrapped recordings of Ocean and cutting the syllables into abstract vocalizations and mixing them into some of the other songs I was going to play, to try and make the whole thing sound a little more like a unified whole.

The makeup thing went surprisingly well. I didn’t exactly have a vanity table in my apartment, so I dragged the chair from my studio space into my bathroom for the brighter lighting and made Naya sit before going to town. I wiped her opaque blue eyeshadow and inch-thick eyeliner off with the acetone, and applied a thinner liner look and shimmery gold eyeshadow like a kind of sticker on her eyelids instead. The sticker went on evenly, and I didn’t even tear off the corner by accident or anything. For the lips, the kit included a paint roller that was shaped almost like an actual lipstick. Since Naya’s face was stiffer than a human’s, it was easier to apply that too.

The whole situation reminded me of being a teenager again and helping my friends get ready for prom. But while doing makeup on a human girl meant feeling her warm breath on your hands, doing makeup on Naya just felt like painting an oddly dimensional canvas. She stayed perfectly still in the chair, eyes closed, perfectly immobile. Just like a life-sized doll.

I added the glitter cheekbone contour stickers to either side of her face and stood up. “Okay, done. You can open your eyes now.”

Her eyes flew open, and I could see how different the new makeup style made her face look. The subtler lines and softer colors made her look younger, like an up-and-comer in her early twenties rather than a mature songstress. The sparkles and glitter reflected my bathroom’s fluorescents in a way that seemed to make her glow from within.

She was beautiful. 

Not that she wasn’t beautiful out of the box, but now she was beautiful because I’d made her beautiful. 

I felt like Pygmalion, in awe of his own creation.

I took a step back and spun her chair around to face my bathroom mirror. “What do you think?”

“You need to wash this mirror,” Naya said immediately, which was probably true but uncalled for.

“I meant about the makeup.”

“It’s nice,” she said, looking at herself. “I do look different.”

“I’m glad. Now don’t touch any of that until–” I looked at my watch. “5:37 PM tomorrow. It has to set for 24 hours. We start setting up at 7:30 so that should be fine.”

Naya nodded, still staring at her own reflection.

“Are you sure you want to go on stage tomorrow?” I asked.

She smiled, stretching the coral lipstick from ear to ear. “Now that you’ve put all this work into my look, how can I not?”

Easily, as it turns out!

But that was later. First, we had to get over to the show in the first place.

The Sparkplug was a few subway stops away from my corner of the city, closer to the tourist center. It was a bigger and cooler venue than any of the little gigs I’ve played before, but at least I have played gigs before. They had a lot of the equipment I needed already, but I still had to lug my synths and cables through the whole subway.

Naya, however, was another story. 

Normally, Syrens got powered off and packaged up for easier transport– they weren’t capable of independently navigating transit systems. But I couldn’t make it onto the subway with a boxed-up Syren and all my sound equipment. I just wouldn’t be able to carry all of that. And like hell was I going to afford a taxi into Center City from all the way out here.

So I threw an oversized hoodie on top of Naya’s skimpy concert fit and told her to hold onto the edge of my shirt, like a kid following her mom in a grocery store.

“Don’t look around, don’t get distracted by anything else, just stick to me and we’ll get there, okay?”

“Okay,” Naya said, in a voice so small it sounded like she’d turned her volume dial down before speaking to me.

Cupids could walk around town holding hands with their owners, but Naya wasn’t supposed to go outside like that at all. I wasn’t sure if she was even capable of walking while holding hands with someone, syncing her movements with someone else that way (although Syrens were often backup dancers for human singers, they rarely had to physically touch each other). So I figured I’d just let her follow along behind me, like a large humanoid duckling. I still had to carry my equipment, after all.

Naya pulled the hood over her head and grabbed the hem of my shirt, and we marched into the subway.

I paid the fare for humans and had Naya put her hand on the scanner to get the reduced rate for androids (usually Cupids.)

The train wasn’t jam-packed like it would be during the peak hours of the weekday commute, but it was busy. Lots of people going into the city center for some Saturday night fun. I steered Naya around a pole and arranged her hands on it, posing her like an action figure. “Keep your feet planted so you don’t fall over.” She had to have some sense of balance, right? She was supposed to be a dancer.

I put my hands over hers on the pole just to make sure she was holding it firmly. Warm, hard, matte-painted plastic. She kept her eyes fixed on me, and the attention was intimidating.

I put my speakers between my feet and tried to focus on the number of stops we had left.

When we finally made it to the Sparkplug, the place was both mostly empty and abuzz with activity. People were running around, fixing lights, setting up check-in queues, holding clipboards and yelling instructions to each other. It was a little bigger than the clubs I’ve played before, and had the high ceilings and exposed plumbing of a converted former warehouse.

Glitch Princess had a merch table set up at the front of the venue, which reminded me that I should probably also have merch to sell. It hadn’t really occurred to me before. The teeny-tiny baby gigs I’d done in the past didn’t seem so merchandisable.

A scraggly guy in a black t-shirt spotted us when we walked in. “And you are?”

“I’m Dessie, and this is my Syren, Naya. We’re opening for Glitch Princess tonight?”

“Oh, yeah, hi! I’m Jax, my cousin showed me your stuff. I can help you set up.”

He stuck out his hand. I shook it. “Nice to meet you. Cierra’s told me… absolutely nothing about you besides the fact that you work here.”

He laughed. “We’re not actually very close, I was just messaging everyone on my contact list who might know someone who could fill in for the opener tonight. And C came through!”

“Thank you so much for this opportunity,” I said. “Like, this is the biggest show I’ve ever done in my life.”

“The biggest show of your life so far,” he said with a grin. “Everyone deserves a lucky break. And I liked what I heard of your stuff, so I didn’t see a reason not to give you one now.”

We ran through the checks as the space started to fill up. I assumed most of the people filtering in were there for Glitch Princess, but I’d posted about the show on my own socials so maybe some of my 28 entire followers had come to see me too. I hadn’t seen Leaf yet.

Naya was… I wasn’t sure if I could describe a robot as “freaking out.” But she pulled the hood tighter over her hair, and kept looking out into the audience. Then she suddenly crouched and hid behind me, like she’d seen a monster in a horror movie.

“Do you have stage fright or something?” I asked her. “You don’t have to go out until the last song, so relax.”

“It’s not that…” She shook her head. “Actually, is there a curtain we can rig up so I can sing behind it?”

“What? God, is this about the outfit? Do you really hate it that much?”

“It’s not about the outfit,” she said, “but I just… I can’t go out there. Please ask about the curtain.” 

I figured it wouldn’t be that difficult to get a curtain set up, and I was right. There was a spray-painted curtain on a wheeled frame in the backstage area of the club, and we pulled it out behind my DJ table. Naya calmed down and finally took off the hoodie, fluffing up her new short orange hair. I could see a few techs sneaking looks at her, curious, approving.

“Ready to go when you are,” I said. The nerves finally hit me. What if I sucked? What if everyone hated me? What if Glitch Princess hated me? What if Naya just totally froze up and didn’t sing at all?

“Uh,” the sound tech said, “I don’t think you’re ready to go at all, unfortunately.” He pointed to a light on my speaker that was blinking red. “You’re missing a wire here.”

My nerves instantly liquified into pure, leaden dread. How could I have been so stupid as to forget the connecting cables for a live show? I grabbed my shoulder bag and started to dig through it. I had to have a backup somewhere…

“Would this work?” said a familiar voice behind me.

I whirled around. Glitch Princess herself! Ahhhh, she’s so cool!! 

She was shorter in person than I’d expected, tiny even in her chunky platform sandals. Her oversized clothes and huge hot-pink Afro puffs made her seem even smaller, but her dark skin seemed to sparkle from the inside out. A real rising star. “Hi! I heard you’re opening for me. Dessie, right? I go by Glitch Princess, but you can call me Gina.” She winked.

Gina! “Yeah! Oh my gosh, I’m such a huge fan!” I couldn’t help but start gushing. “I’ve been listening to your work ever since your first EP went up on SoundShare, and you just keep getting better!”

“Aw, thanks. I checked out what you posted so far too, you’re not so bad yourself!”

“T-thank you,” I stammered. “I hope I can do a good job opening for you today.”

“You’ll be just fine. Just play your songs and everything will turn out exactly the way it should.” She patted me on the shoulder. She had to reach up a little to do so. I thought I was going to evaporate right then and there.

“Anyway.” She handed me the cable, carefully labeled with neon pink paint pen. “Just don’t forget to give it back at the end of your set, okay?” She winked at me again. I really was going to evaporate into a cloud of excited fangirl steam. But I couldn’t do that yet. I had a set to do.

Naya was running through her warm up diagnostic moves, a sequence which looked a little bit like that 20th century “robot” dance no one did anymore. I still had ten minutes before I was due to go on. The Sparkplug employees made their warning announcements, and the show floor was starting to look very full. People were grabbing drinks and snacks from the bar, catching up with their friends. I saw Leaf with a group of similarly-pierced and tattooed people. They waved at me. In the back was a pair in matching ApolloCorp hoodies. Maybe they heard there was going to be a Syren performing and wanted to check up on their merchandise. But I wasn’t sure how they’d know that, I didn’t advertise Naya’s involvement very widely.

I could hear some people talking closer to the stage, two guys in matching Glitch Princess T-shirts purchased from the merch table by the entrance.

“Do you know what’s with the curtain?”

“No idea. I think the opener’s got a Syren. I guess they want to keep her look a secret for now or something.”

“Ugh, Syrens,” said the other guy. “That’s such an expensive way of saying ‘I don’t know how to work with other people well enough to collaborate with a human singer.’”

The first guy laughed. “I mean, I like how Syren voices sound all computer-y, so that’s a reason to pick them over human singers. The people who are really into them are so weird though. Just buy a Cupid if you want to fuck robots, don’t project onto the pop star droids.” He looked up at the stage, and I quickly looked away to hide the fact that I was eavesdropping. “I hope this producer knows what they’re doing, at least.”

I glanced in Naya’s direction to see if she heard that, but she seemed to be almost in a meditative state, eyes closed, mouth smiling softly, arms at her sides. The men’s words rankled me, though. I wasn’t weirdly into Syrens. And I know how to collaborate with humans, I just didn’t know anyone who’d want to sing my stuff!

Except Naya. Who wanted to work with me more than I probably deserved.

The crowd seemed to have doubled in size in the few moments it took me to process that weird overheard discussion. It was almost standing room only. At least a few hundred people now.

“I wanna throw up,” I muttered.

“Don’t do that,” Naya said. With the curtain in front of her, a light casting her in silhouette, she seemed much calmer. 

I’ve done gigs before, DJing mostly. They always went fine. Not spectacular, generally, but I could get the crowd reasonably pumped and nodding along to my tunes. And sometimes a few people asked me where I got the songs I was playing, and I got to tell them that actually, I wrote them myself! That’s how I got some of my 28 followers.

But I’ve never done a gig with Naya before. Or with anyone else.

We’d done a practice run-through of the set a few times already. She was going to be singing live (or, “live”), and doing some of the dance moves she’d practiced for the songs where she wasn’t singing. But with this curtain set-up, I was further away from her than we’d planned for. I wouldn’t even be able to see behind the curtain. And I’d be the only one in the spotlight, literally.

“If you’re going to be in silhouette the whole time, you’ll have to exaggerate your movements more, keep that in mind,” I told her. 

She nodded once, still in her weird meditative zone.

“Are you okay now? What freaked you out so much anyway?” 

“Focusing,” she said. “Recalibrating out of practice mode and into performance mode.”

“Huh. I didn’t know those were two different modes.” She didn’t answer my question, I noticed, but I guess she had other things to worry about.

“Practice allows for learning and evolution, performance mode is for efficient and flawless execution.” Her voice sounded flat and detached, like she was reading from a manual.

“So long as you do manage to execute everything flawlessly, I guess.”

She closed her eyes again, then opened them about thirty seconds later. “Okay, I’m ready now.”

I nodded to the techs, and the lights over the audience went out.

I looked into the darkness.

“ARE YOU READY?!”