Part Nine-Planet Side: New Nippon
"Someone is at the door," came a sudden voice startling Alice from her depressing thoughts, it was Britt her adopted suicide phone communicating via the chip planted on her head.
"Is Lucy back?" Alice asked. Now that she knew Lucy wasn't human it scared her being alone with the robot or AI as Lucy preferred to be called. It didn't help that her model, the Dorian Class-X, was deactivated for murdering their owners.
"Say peek and you will know exactly who it is," Britt said.
"Peek," Lucy said. The hotel door went totally transparent. On the other side stood Georgia Kang. From the way Georgia was behaving, the transparency was on Alice's side only. Alice looked for a door nob but didn't see one.
"Open," Alice said to the door.
"Your companion phone is needed to activate the door protocol," a voice said coming from a speaker over the door."
"Since Pansy is out of the job, that would be me," said Britt in her left ear.
"I hate that you can talk to me in this way," Alice complained as she put a finger in her ear and shook it a bit. She didn't like the idea of something implanted in her body, let alone in her head.
"The chip was implanted in your head at age eleven months like all human babies," Britt said.
"Putting a computer chip in a baby's head seems a little dark to me," Alice mumbled.
"The device is half the size of a grain of rice, hardly the monstrous electronic instrumentation you are clearly imagining. Lucy wasn't kidding, you really are deranged."
"I'm not deranged!"
"Should I let your pretty little friend in?"
"Yes," Alice said crisply.
The door went opaque then slid open and Georgia stepped into the room.
"I got us a free ride up and down planet side," Georgia said. "AND a table to the new Kobe Zero Teppanyaki restaurant. Impossible to get into but my obscenely well connected big brother got us the reservations."
Alice needed to put some distance between herself and the space station and she was about to turn Georgia down when Britt said in her ear, "A free ride down solves one of your problems."
"Um ... sounds great," Alice said changing gears.
"Dress for a night out," Georgia said. "After dinner I wanna do the New Fuji club scene."
Georgia looked cute and sexy in a red miniskirt and clinging white, sleeveless top, her boyish short hair stylish and neat. Subtle lights flashed in her black hair like tiny blue stars. Aside from the flashing lights. Georgia would pass for Filipino and would have looked totally normal for a night out in Alice's time of 2014.
"Okay," Alice said. She looked around the nearly bare room unsure where to find her stuff.
Georgia quickly caught her confusion. "Is this your first time in a five star hideaway hotel?" She asked with a hint of disbelief.
Alice shrugged and hoped her ignorance didn't appear too suspicious.
"Just say Alice's closet," Georgia said.
"Alice's closet."
The Waikiki scene outside the window faded away and the lines of a door appeared along with a the outline of a chest of drawers. Alice touched the closet door and stepped back with a start as it slid open. The dresser drawers slid out when she touch them next. Alice dug through the drawers and hastily pulled out some light gray tights, black panties and a matching bra. From the hanging clothes, she selected a black skirt and a clinging black top. On the closet floor she spied a pair of calf high black boots and grabbed them too. Black seemed to be the predominant color for the Alice of this world. It made her wonder if the chick was some kind of futuristic goth. In the top drawer she found a bag of makeup.
Alice looked for the bathroom door but didn't see one. She wasn't shy about dressing in front of Georgia, but according to Lucy, Georgia was a Liner and Alice had no idea what the chick was into. The last thing she wanted was to appear provocative. Mostly, she wasn't into girls and didn't want to put herself in a situation at having to fend off unwanted advances.
You were willing to let the real Pansy Dale kiss you back in 1983, the part of her head in charge of inappropriate thoughts chimed in. That part of her had a name now... Liner.
"Shut up Liner," Alice mumbled.
"What?" Georgia asked.
"Um ... talking to my FTL companion," Alice lied.
"My won't shut up either," Georgia said. "Someday I'm gonna turn the bitch off and never turn her back on again." Georgia rolled her eyes. "Sorry Nadia ... I'm just venting don't be so sensitive."
As Georgia soothed her FTL companion, Alice spun in a small circle with her outfit and bag of makeup clutched to her chest.
"For the Goddess sake you back water planet yokel!" Britt said in her ear. "Just say bath!"
"Bath," Alice said a bit miffed at her adopted phone's tone.
An opening appeared at the back end of the room and Alice headed toward it. The moment the door closed behind her she pulled out her phone and yelled at it, "You don't have to be such an asshole!"
"And you don't have to be such a ditz," he said back, " ... or maybe you do?"
"Fuck you!" Alice said and slammed the phone on the sink.
"Ouch, my back!" Britt said in pain.
"Sorry!" Alice said quickly picked up the phone to sooth it.
"Just fucking with you. Don't feel a thing. In case you haven't notice, I ain't got a back."
Alice sighed, put the phone down but a bit gentler this time. She stripped off her t-shirt, jeans and underwear then put on the black bra and panties. What she thought were gray tights, turned out to be a full body leotard thing. She didn't feel like going back out to select something else so she pulled the leotard over the panties and bra. The bra proved too bulky under the leotard so she took it off. With her A-cup chest, a bra hardly mattered anyway. The panties weren't working either so she pulled off the leotard, shucked the panties then donned the leotard with no underwear at all. She put the black skirt on, sat on the toilet and put on the boots. She looked in the mirror to assess her outfit.
"Refuge from the past goes commando!" Britt said.
"Shut up ... wait, how do you know I got no underwear?"
"I have access to the mirror."
"What do you mean?" Alice asked as she pushed at her hair then fished around in the bag of makeup.
"The mirror is a holo program and I can look out from it to see you."
"Fucking pervert," Alice mumbled.
"Me? The pervert? Lucy told me you fucked a dozen guys in a swimming pool then you let each one jack off all over you."
Alice made a grunting noise, looked in the mirror again and went back to pushing at her hair. Her image flickered, and disappeared, replaced by a handsome dark skinned young man with a crooked smile wearing too much purple.
"Britt," she said flatly.
The young man's smile broadened. "The one and only. Pansy, your companion phone is trying to get through. Do you want to speak to her?"
"No," Alice said. "She's staying behind."
"Companion phones are kind of squirrelly, she's going to freak out."
"Sorry, nothing I can do about that." Alice said feeling bad. It felt so weird feeling sorry about a phone apps feelings. "Can I have the mirror back?" Her image reappeared and she poured out the contents of the makeup bag on the counter. She poked around at the stuff. Nothing seemed overly exotic. For the next five minutes she worked on her face. When done, She looked at herself and sighed in frustration. Most everyone she met had a lot more eye makeup, even the guys. She wanted to blend in but she didn't want to look like a circus clown either.
"You look clueless," Britt said.
"I am clueless," Alice said. She wanted to sweep all the makeup into a trashcan and be done with it.
"Try this," Britt said.
A 3-D holo image of what the Alice Mihara of this world looked like in full make up appeared right along side her real face. "That's a lot of fucking eye makeup," Alice said as pushed passed her drummed in conservative makeup sensibilities and got to work copying the look. A few more minutes later she was done.
"You look marvelous," Britt told her.
"I look like a fucking vampire in all this black." Just as she was about to step out to join Georgia, she stopped and looked at her reflection closer. "I'm is black," she said totally confused. The leotard had been a light gray when she put it on. She lifted the skirt to look at the lower part of the leotard and it was black too. "Are you fucking with the mirror, Britt?"
"Get real, girl, " Britt's said as his image faded in next to her again. "You are wearing the latest in mood suits. This is a good one though, and clearly much more advanced then those clunky old ones from two years ago. The old ones took forever to change colors. This suit seems to have a quicker response mode. It must be on auto and adapting to colors around it. It should be tuned in to your voice commands. Tell it a color."
"Um ... red," Alice said. Her tights quickly faded from black to a bright cadmium red. "Amazing," Alice said rubbing at her shoulder to feel the silky texture of the cloth.
"These suits are very expensive," Britt said. "You must be well off or have a sugar daddy in your back pocket."
"I have no idea," Alice said knowing nothing about the Alice Mihara of this world whose life she had popped into just hours ago. It was too late to change into something less ... science fiction. Hoping the mood-suit would go unnoticed, she gave herself one last look in the mirror then went out to meet Georgia.
"Wow, is that one of those new mood suits?" Georgia asked immediately.
