Arabella, surprised by the strength of the woman’s grip, allowed herself to be led back to the living room. Mrs. Constantino mixed and poured two martinis with the ease of a hotel bartender.
“What was wrong with your lenses?” she asked, once she and Arabella were seated.
Arabella sipped tentatively. She usually drank white wine. “Well, the apartment was different, but that wasn’t the real problem. I couldn’t see myself!” She held out a slim, manicured hand. Still there.
Mrs. Constantino laughed, a disturbing half-cough, half-chortle. “Oh honey. Finish that drink and come here.”
She swallowed hers in a gulp and waited for Arabella to choke down a bit more of the astringent liquid.
Back in the bedroom, Mrs. Constantino pointed to the charging station. “Get back on there. Choose ‘Charles’ from the settings menu. Don’t worry, we’ll put you back to basics after that.”
Arabella did, hesitantly. Once her lenses were updated, she stepped back and faced a beautiful, lithe, 20 year-old woman with waist-length black hair.
The woman gazed at her with bewitching, long-lashed brown eyes. Smiling coquettishly, she turned slowly, showing off the kind of figure Arabella failed to attain despite hours a day at the gym.
“Your lenses aren’t broken, honey,” the beautiful woman proclaimed in an incongruously weary, feathery voice. “Your husband hasn’t decided what you look like yet.”
Arabella recalled the Miami beach scene, the garish colors in Hugh’s office, the altered furniture in the living room, and her own invisibility.
“Unfortunately,” she replied, “I’m afraid he has.”
………………………………………………
M. Luke McDonell is a San Francisco-based writer and designer. Her near-future fiction explores the effects of technology on individuals and society, with particular focus on the growing power of corporations and the associated voluntary and involuntary loss of rights and privacy.
The Brat and the Burly Qs
David Perlmutter
1.
It seemed like the usual scenario: fly in, tell the bad guy he sucks, stomp him up a bit, and “save the day”, as they put it. But there’s always a sort of complication involved before you can go ahead and restore order, and this was a bit more unusual than most.
First, allow me to introduce myself, as it’s likely we’ve never met or spoken before this time, right?
My given name, such as it is, is Precious XY-300. The reason being is that I come from a planet (yes, I’m an alien) where the natives have half their bodies made out of metal on account of our evolution to the climate – you don’t see it on me so much ‘cause I painted my mechanical parts so that they’d look more “human”. I’m here on your Earth, and going under the cover name Precious O’Reilly, on account of some skullduggery in my homeland I’d rather not go into now. Too painful. The point is, I ended up in your solar system, and I now fight crime etc. within it as the Brat. That accounts for the “B” on my shirt, in case you were wondering.
Now, you might also be wondering what a “three year old girl”, blonde haired, blue eyed, wearing a blue wool jacket, white skirt and boots, and the aforementioned shirt, is doing here in a bar unaccompanied, and drinking a beer. Well, let’s get something straight, pal. I’m not a three year old girl! I can pass as one, as you’ll soon see, but, in all other respects, I am an adult. Everyone on my planet is the same, diminutive size as me through youth and adulthood. Anyone over 4 feet tall is considered as much of a freak of nature as someone who weighed 400 pounds or more would be amongst you guys. Still, people see me as a little girl and treat me like it. Until I open my mouth or throw a punch at them, that is.
Sorry for the info dump, but it’s necessary to understand the story I’m gonna tell ya. I don’t want the good readers of “Super Heroics Illustrated” getting the wrong idea about me, after all. And it’s a sign of good faith on your part that you can keep that thing going, considering how many of us don’t want to talk to you. But my friends say you’re legit, so I guess I can trust you. Up to a point!
Anyhow, this is what happened on Mars:
2.
I was alerted to the situation by my associates in the Interplanetary League Of Girls With Guns (referring to our collective Herculean musculature, but, in my case, also to my built-in weaponry). The five of us, as soon as we knew of each other’s existence, struck up a gentlelady’s agreement that we’d each patrol a particular sector of the universe, and wouldn’t interfere with each other’s business unless things got too hot for us to handle alone. (Like it does, once in a while.) Anyway, they told me that that son of a bitch Machine Gun Steinberg had managed to escape from his confinement on Earth, overpowered the nearest set of security guards, and re-established his burlesque business in the ugly imitation French Quarter they set up in New New Orleans, so named as it’s at the extreme southern tip of the newly terraformed Earth colony in the shadow of Olympus Mons.
This rattled my coils. Who do you think was responsible for putting that guy in jail in the first place? Me, that’s who! And thus, by the informal ILGWG rules, I had to put him back there. Not that I minded that!
Steinberg, as you probably know, was the man who single-handedly revolutionized the “art” of “burlesque” (i.e. stupid young humans taking their clothes off) by managing to create pliable mechanical strippers for the first time. Or, I should say, part mechanical. He scurried around human graveyards, finding undecomposed human body parts, and then had them welded together with a variety of mechanical features to make them….interesting enough for the “patrons” of the “art”. Electronic legs, remote controlled boobs, and so on. Naturally, the girls have automatic brains, so that they only do as they’re told all the time. No free-thinking real human woman I know would actually get involved with that crap unless they were really desperate for cash.
However, he made money. And aroused the ire of feminists, besides. And, ultimately, I had to step in and destroy his assets before anything apocalyptic happened. ‘Cause he was actually getting women coming to him for jobs, women who wanted a mechanical transplant added to their natural bodies. They were lining up outside his club for work on their own free will. Jeez!
Thus, I found myself flying to Mars. (Yeah, that type of flying, of course. I’m a superhero, after all.) That John Gray fellow was damn right when he said men came from Mars. Imagine Texas, or better yet, your average big city downtown on a Saturday night, and that’s exactly what Mars has become ever since the creation of synthetic water allowed that liquid to flow through those mythical canals and make Ray Bradbury’s dreams a reality. Naturally, you have settlements that resemble the Wild West in the days when it actually was wild. Like New New Orleans. Ugly as hell, and not the place that even a three year old girl can walk around for fear of having her feminine virtue permanently immolated.
Not that I’m one of those.
3.
I made New New Orleans in good time, and was soon in the ugly imitation French Quarter, with Martian natives coerced into adopting phony Creole and Cajun patois and strutting around like they owned the place. (Two words: em-barrasing!). I was soon able to find Steinberg’s, owing to the giant neon sign displaying both his name and the backside of a giant woman with outlined 3D boobs.
As Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids would say- no class!
