Velva watched the pleasure dome drift across the twinkling cityscape of Metropa on the surveillance monitors, steering the aircraft with a remote control joystick from the shadows of her observation deck. She sipped from a glass of scotch and rattled the ice cubes as it approached Boutique corporate headquarters, a conical high rise wrapped in sheet glass and burgundy steel, with a spire shaped like a tube of waxy red lipstick. She pressed a button on her console, and watched the lipstick spire blossom apart into conical sections on the surveillance telepane.

The pleasure dome dropped down into the landing shaft of the high-rise, and the conical sections closed tight like a Venus fly trap. As the pleasure dome drifted down the central shaft, passing through beams of landing lights, Vela inspected the status of the crew with the aid of concealed cameras mounted inside the pleasure dome cabin. On her surveillance telepane, she could see Xeno, Trianne and Holly passed out on the circular couch, dozing like floppy house cats.

The dome passed through an open chamber in a vaulted ceiling, touching down on the snowy marble floor of the Boutique Training Center, surrounded by concentric rings of white worm sofas, sparsely populated by beautician trainees, taking their sixty-minute version of a fifteen-minute break. Beyond the sofa rings, only a few students took advantage of the lavish salon stations, practicing their makeup application skills on each other.

Velva's silhouette appeared in the deck window facing the training center, peering down at the loafing trainees lounging on the worm sofas. She activated the hatch of the pleasure dome with a handheld remote, exposing Xeno, Trianne, and Holly, still passed out inside the cabin. The trainees shrugged at the spectacle like it was no big deal, went back to gossiping, doing each other's nails.

“Bring Xeno to me!” Velva bellowed through the speaker system. Her icy blue eyes widened with impatience in a cold wash of light behind the deck window.

The beautician trainees looked up at the menacing silhouette of the tall woman with the towering black swirl of hair.

“If you don't do as I say, you'll be sleeping at The Pods!” Velva threatened.

The girls just shrugged, and went back to their life of doing whatever they wanted with their time and makeup.

“Faris!” Velva massaged the bridge of her nose, trying to relieve a swell of sinus pressure.

“Yes, miss Velva?” Faris, emerged from the shadows of the observation deck, awaiting his orders.

“Go down to the pleasure dome,” she ordered over her shoulder, “and bring Xeno to the board room.”

“Yes miss Velva.” Faris hesitated.

“Well? What is it?” She turned her head half way towards him.

“What about Holly?”

“What about her?” Velva lit up a chemorette and puffed.

“She's my girlfriend. Can I bring her too?”

“No, Faris. She's not your girlfriend. You were created for her amusement. That's not the same thing. Leave Holly and Trianne in the pleasure dome. Just bring Xeno to me. My god, who do I have to screw to get someone to take orders around here? Just be a good little houseboy and do exactly as I say!”

“Yes miss Velva.” Faris lumbered away, frowning.

Xeno woke in a padded swivel seat, slumped over a slick cherrywood conference table. He lifted his head and let his vision adjust to the empty conference chairs beneath the glare of the track light.

He peered across the table, through the glass panel walls of the ovular board room, seeing nothing but large sections of office space shrouded in darkness. The furniture beyond the pillars appeared as faint shapes made visible by the specular light of the electrified corporate structures outside the massive windows.

“I don't think we've met, formally,” Velva said from the shadows, lurking outside the glass panels of the board room.

“You must be Velva.” Xeno looked towards the rattle of ice cubes. “Am I under some sort of haute couture arrest?” After an awkward silence, he heard the echo of stiletto footsteps clicking towards him on the marble floor.

“I don't like bright light.” Velva said, her silhouette appearing outside the glass panels. She lifted her drink to her lips, swallowed gently, letting the booze trickle down her throat.

From the faint backlight of the city, Xeno could see she was horse-faced, broad shouldered, voluptuous like a female athlete, wrapped in a black leather business suit.

“Are you Trianne's new toy?” Velva flicked on her chemorette, French inhaled and blew from her nostrils, letting the smoke coil over her face.

“No, just friends from the bad old days.”

“But not lovers?”

“Is that any of your business?”

“Yes, as her stepmother and legal guardian.”

“Your guardianship is commendable. Do you always evict your children and force them to sleep at The Pods?”

“Trianne didn't want to model for the corporation, generate revenue with her beauty, and she stole what little I have of Sunlite.”

“She didn't burn down the Shoki Pao.”

“If you say so.” Velva sipped her scotch, half-smiling, forcing a sigh of empathy. “Maybe I pushed her a little too hard.”

“So, now you push Holly?”

“Hollymonde,” Velva corrected. “That's a copy-righted stage name, and she must be referred to as such, in all public places of exhibition, at all times.”

“Seriously?”

“No . . . It's just fun to do that to people. It fills some sort of perverse void.”

“You didn't drag me all the way up here to scold me for that.”

“No . . . Not exactly . . .” She sipped her scotch, rattled the ice cubes, circled the glass panels of the transparent board room until she was behind Xeno. "Have you seen Lew?”

“Lew? What do you want with Lew?”

“The lab I built for him has been idle for days.”

“Lew was working for you? Here in Boutique?”

“Yes, if you must know. Just down the hall. I'm not much of a chemist. He hasn't come back in some time. I thought maybe you knew how to synthesize Black—”

“I'm no chemist,” Xeno snickered at the thought. “I was a bartender, delivery boy, and a few other things in between, but when it comes to things like butane torches and ether, I'm all butterfingers.”

“And you don't know of anyone with Sunlite?”

“No. Downtown it's all Black Magic.”

“Lew's Black Magic is the only strain the doesn't cause brain bleed, and all those other nasty side effects.”

“Like death?”

“Yes, death is one.”

“Why don't you ask your fashion friends?”

“They just know what everyone else knows. The crops don't grow, because real sunlight can't get through the atmosphere, and the ships no longer come from the other side of the ocean.” Velva ran her hand over a wall sensor, and the glass panel doors of the board room slid open. “You can come out now. This way.”

Xeno stepped into the interior gloom of the suite and followed the clacking of Velva's stiletto heels across the marble floor. He caught up to her, through a milky haze of incense smoke, her torso and shoulder blades gyrating in the splinters of light.

“So this is your office? Xeno asked, a few steps behind.

“No,” Velva stopped and snapped her fingers, activating a pair of grand shoji doors to her private quarters, exposing a sweeping sheet glass view of Metropa, “this is my office.” She crossed the room, without missing a beat or looking back, stepping behind a dressing screen.

After a few hesitant moments, Xeno wandered past the threshold to get a better look at the interior. The motion activated shoji doors shut behind him, like a snare. Velva's sprawling oval mattress lay nested against a semicircle frosted light backboard with the radius of a utility tunnel. Opposite the bed, Velva's self portrait hogged most of the wall, the size of a movie screen, a photo of the industrial diva sitting up in the grass as a young angelic teen, on a blanket of summer countryside. She had the expression of being asked some innocuous schoolgirl question that made her blush, and the camera went CLICK.

“Tell me, Xeno.” Velva flung her bra over the top edge of the screen, followed by more pieces of lingerie. “Who do you think burned down the Shoki Pao?” A pair of delicate robotic arms with tiny claws crossed overhead on a ceiling track and paused above Velva's head.

“I think it was an accident.” Xeno crossed to the windows, unnerved by the apparatus, and admired the view. “Why?”

The mechanical arms retracted and descended from the ceiling like long sinewy vines with tiny claws. When the claws came into contact with Velva's head, they clamped down on sections of her hair and yanked the black mass clean off, making a suction sound as the tacky wig base snapped from her scalp. Xeno watched the mechanical arms retract towards the ceiling with Velva's wig, crossing back the way they came on the ceiling track, until the whole assembly disappeared into some dark corner of architectural space.

“What's the matter?” Velva peered over the top edge of the screen, bald headed, threw on a robe and fastened the sash.

“Where does your hair go?”

“I have no idea. It's always been there for me in the morning. So, I've never questioned it.” Velva crossed along the wall, towards her vanity station, the silk tail of her robe dragging along the floor. “Perhaps, Trianne burned down the club out of jealousy. After all, she was obsessed with Lew.”

“No, Lew was obsessed with Trianne. She gave him the shaft, before the club burned down.”

“Whatever for?” Velva sat at her vanity mirror and began applying makeup remover to her face from various containers.

“Lew wanted to settle down and have kids.”

“Trianne doesn't want children?”

“Not with Lew. He's not what you'd call stable.”

“Do you have a job?” She began wiping the makeup from her face and scalp with a washcloth.

“I'm house sitting for Blouse Demise.”

“That electronic spook hasn't dropped dead from cirrhosis?”

“Still bitter about the Insto-Plas lawsuit?”

“We pleaded no contest—admitted no wrongdoing. All we had to do was change the original formula . . . sort of.” She continued wiping her face, revealing raised eyebrows and lashes that were nothing more than tattooed ink. Her lips had a malnourished bruise coloring, her cheekbones marred with rash marks. “Now we have permission to manufacture a . . . safer product . . . as soon as Lew returns to work out the kinks.” She wiped the foundation from her scalp, revealing poorly healed scar tissue, riddled with varicose veins. “Everyone stares at my ugliness, but you don't cringe like the others.” Velva reached into one eye and removed a blue contact lens, concealing an iris that was almost white. “I suspect Trianne finds that attractive in you.”

“What happened to your eye?” Xeno stood behind her shoulder, surveying the wreckage.

“Insto-Plas. The old formula caused infections if it got under the eyelids, but I couldn't stop rubbing it into my face.” Velva opened a container of beauty cream and rubbed it into her cheeks and jowls. “It did something to my brain. My self image became vivid. Vibrant. Like a video game. The skin softened and I could mold my face exactly the way I wanted it. The pouty lips! The high cheekbones! The aristocratic nose! But it wasn't to last . . . Now, I use a placebo cream . . . I made myself into his fantasy woman and then—”

“His fantasy woman? Who is he?”

“And then . . . and then . . .” She gazed at her reflection in the mirror, looking forlorn, lost, sighing at some private memory.

“You were sleeping with Lew?”

“I don't like to go to bed with makeup.” Velva capped her placebo cream in sorrowful silence. She rose from her seat, moved in close to Xeno, and ran her finger down the ridge of his nose, letting it fall across his lips. “I like men I sleep with to see me as I am.” She crossed to her bed, and let her robe fall to the ground in a band of shadow, then slipped under the covers and pressed a button on the nightstand console, illuminating the mattress, and her shadowy figure beneath the translucent comforter. Taking it all in for a moment, Xeno could see shadows of sentient life swimming beneath Velva's nude body. He went to the edge of the bed and lifted the comforter, revealing a school of multi-colored koi fish swimming inside the mattress of the custom waterbed.

“My god,” he let the comforter fall from his fingers, “you have fish swimming around in your mattress.”

“Can you sing or dance?” Velva curled towards him under the sheets. “If not, we have all night to work out the details.”

“I'd like to go now.”

“In that case,” her tone soured, “I guess you should be the first to know. I'm having Lew's child.”

“You don't look very pregnant.”

“The embryo is safe in plasma. Mia will show you out.” She pressed another button on the nightstand console and the shoji doors flung open.

A small slender teenage girl in a cosplay stewardess uniform stood in the open entry, holding a toy machine gun. Xeno exited with Mia and the shoji doors shut behind them, clipping Velva from view. The young girl led him out of the office, and into an exterior glass elevator. The two descended towards the ground floor with a view of the city lights outside the glass panels.

“This is my favorite elevator,” Mia said. “You can see everything on the way down.”

“Yeah, thanks for the lift . . . Do you enjoy working for Velva?”

“Yeah, most times,” Mia said. “Room and board is free as long as I complete beauty school.”

“Do You want to be a beautician?”

“I'd rather be a model on the catwalk, but I wasn't selected for that kind of training. There was something wrong with my measurements.” She frowned towards her toes.

“Let me guess—they weren't perfect.”

“Yeah.” She smiled at Xeno kind of cockeyed. “How did you know?”

“I'm psychic.”

The elevator clunked to a halt. The doors opened and Xeno stepped into the main lobby with Mia. She pointed the barrel of her toy machine gun at the back of his head and pulled the trigger, hitting him in the neck with a faint stream of fluid.

“What the hell was that?” Xeno said, wincing at the fragrance.

“Perfume. It's called Disaster by Hollymonde.”

“It certainly smells like one.”

“It has patchouli oil.”

“Ah, there's nothing like the smell of strawberries and auto parts.”

“Here's some Klownburger gift cards.” Mia shoved two gift cards into Xeno's hand. “Hope to see you at the exhibition!” She ducked back into the elevator, smacked the call button, and toodle-ooed goodbye as the doors shut in front of her. Next to the elevator, a telepane displayed rolling text message:

COMING TO ARCADE

MALBORG & BOUTIQUE

PRESENT A PILOT MERGER

ALL NEW SYNTH ESCORT EXHIBITION

WHERE FASHION AND TECHNOLOGY COLLIDE

SPECIAL APPEARANCE BY

HOLLYMONDE

“Also known as the electronic prostitute show,” Trianne said, standing in the lobby by the entrance doors.

“You want to go?” Xeno bounced his brows.

“To do what? Get together with a copy of Faris?”

“No.” He held up the Klownburger gift cards and walked towards her. “To have fun.”

“I need to put food in my mouth.” Trianne snatched the gift cards from Xeno's fingers and blew through the lobby doors. “I'm starving.”