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Ceramic DM Winter 07 (Final Judgment Posted)
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<blockquote data-quote="mythago" data-source="post: 3323398" data-attributes="member: 3019"><p><span style="color: DarkOrange"><span style="font-size: 15px">Domino</span></span></p><p><span style="color: DarkOrange">by mythago - Round 1 Match 2</span></p><p></p><p>The strobe of high-end digital Nikons faded and even the clicking of the bloggers’ keyboards faded into silence. The first public testing of the RealMasque was about to happen, and it would be news and a photo-op either way, triumphant failure or crashing success. The crowd stilled as Ekaterina Varukovna’s wheelchair rolled over the polished wooden floor.</p><p></p><p>Cameron Tetsuno shook her hand; that is, he gently took her limp hand between his, then gently replaced it on the armrest of her wheelchair. The wheelchair’s hum echoed through the dance studio. The boom microphones dipped like watering cranes. Miss Varukovna’s attendants hovered and fussed behind her as she looked at the RealMasques carefully draped over the barré for her inspection[1]; ballerinas as slender and beautiful as she had been at the height of her career, the prima ballerina whose on-stage collapse at the Bolshoi Theater turned out to be not a strained muscle or exhaustion, but a disease she had the honor of sharing with the late Stephen Hawking.</p><p></p><p>Tetsuno knew none of this until he had directed his staff to find a likely candidate for the RealMasque’s public demonstration. Varukovna was not only one of the most pitiful subject, but at twenty-four, one of the most photogenic. And the story of her tragic degeneration gave an extra boost to the publicity, drawing in the entertainment media as well as the serious news sources. </p><p></p><p>The ruined ballerina flexed her right hand, the only one over which she still had some measure of control. One of her attendants hurried to swivel a modified keyboard under her hand. The room was silent except for her slow, irregular tapping. When she was finished, the speaker at the back of her chair recited the words she’d written in a bland female voice, and in Russian. The news reporter from ITAR-TASS scribbled something on his pad; Varukovna struggled to press another button on her pad and the computer repeated what she’d said in English.</p><p></p><p>“Are they all the same?”</p><p></p><p>Tetsuno smiled, the same brilliant, just-you-and-me smile that had helped make him famous, and was about to make him rich. The cameras started up fitfully; he ignored them, the only thing seeming to be of interest right now was Miss Varukovna’s question. “They are all the same in what they can do for you, a bit different in appearance. But whichever one you choose will be unique, once you put in on, madam.”</p><p></p><p>She rolled forward without another word. RealMasque employees hurried forward with screens to surround her and her attendants, and the barré. It would have been easier to let her take the RealMasque to a changing room, but this was far more dramatic. The viewers would imagine Varukovna undressed and slipping into the RealMasque almost before their eyes; the screens invited curiosity in way walls and closed doors wouldn’t.</p><p></p><p>There were the sounds of clothes unfolding, and a long pause, and then somebody behind the screen cried out sharply in Russian. The crowd of reporters leaned forward like greyhounds straining at the race gate.</p><p></p><p>Ekaterina Varukovna stepped from behind the screen, <em>en pointe</em>.</p><p></p><p>Over the escalating voices of television reporters and the staccato flash of what seemed like a thousand cameras, Tetsuno went to her, smiling as if he’d expected nothing less, which, of course, he had. The RealMasque blurred her features somewhat, the skin looked more like a doll’s than a woman’s, but it did exactly what he had promised: it was a flexible exoskeleton that responded to her brain’s commands, ignoring her useless muscles. It moved her limbs as gracefully as a master choreographer guiding the arms of his pupil.</p><p></p><p>She braced herself against his shoulders and bent into a graceful arabesque. She raised one hand to the side in balance, and leaned forward to kiss Tetsuno on the cheek. <em>That</em>, he thought, <em>will be the top-ranked image on the Internet in the next thirty seconds, or my publicist is going to be cleaning out his desk</em>.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately for his talented and dedicated publicist, it was.</p><p></p><p>#</p><p></p><p>“So what exactly got you started in robotics?” she asked. </p><p></p><p>Tetsuno shrugged. They sat at opposite ends of the V-shaped Armgardt sofa, Tetsuno still in the white tie he’d worn to a charity reception, Sadhye Thul in a cocktail dress that he doubted she could afford on her own; her network had probably let her expense it. Not only had he agreed to an interview, he’d offered to let her accompany him as his date to a certain highbrow charity event whose invitations were rather hard to come by—even for someone as newly famous as Ms. Thul. </p><p></p><p>He pulled at the loose end of his bow tie and decided to take it off entirely. Dressing up like this made him feel great—a cross between Fred Astaire and Andrew Carnegie—but Sadhye was expecting him to loosen up, hoping that the charming young businessman would get comfortable enough to tell her something he’d later regret putting on the record. He noticed that she’d allowed one of the straps of her dress to slip off her shoulder, and wondered if he ought to be insulted that she thought a few inches of skin would drive him to stupidity.</p><p></p><p>“All that’s been written up in any number of business articles,” he said. “Three years at Penn, robotics hobbyist, amazing breakthrough, business built from nothing out of my garage, millionaire by age twenty-two, and now I’m bored with it. You’ve probably got everything from my college grades to my blood type, so why ask again? More bourbon?”</p><p></p><p>She was surprised enough that she actually stopped typing on her palmtop for a moment. Without waiting for an answer, he tapped the house controls and a slender drinks table glided to the end of the couch. He poured them both bourbon over ice, clinked glasses with her in a mocking toast, watched as she sipped her drink, gauging how much she could control her drinking without making it obvious to him that she was trying to let him be the one to get sloppy.</p><p></p><p>“So, ask me some real questions,” Tetsuno said. “No business fluff. You didn’t spray-paint on that dress to get me to talk about the latest earnings projections for RealMasque—although I will tell you they’re very good.” He smiled and drained his glass, shaking the last drops of bourbon out of the ice cubes pressed against his lips.</p><p></p><p>Sadhye took his bait and finished her drink. She screwed up her face at the harsh taste of the bourbon, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand with an unladylike shudder.</p><p></p><p>“All right, real questions,” she said. “What do you have to say about reports that RealMasque is harming the people who use it?”</p><p></p><p>“You think Ekaterina Varukovna was harmed?”</p><p></p><p>“She died three months ago.”</p><p></p><p>“She died happy,” Tetsuno said. “The RealMasque is an exoskeleton, not a miracle cure.”</p><p></p><p>“It’s more than an exoskeleton, though, isn’t it?” Sadhye said. “Isn’t that the problem? It’s a whole new body, or at least that’s what people think it is. It’s not just for sick people like Varukovna. People buy these things and wear them like they were costumes, sometimes for days, or weeks—“</p><p></p><p>“—which is clearly an unsafe use of the product, as our warning labels say in great detail—“</p><p></p><p>“—and they can’t get out. Their muscles atrophy, their nerves stop talking to their brains, and they’re stuck. As a model, or a pirate, or whatever they’re pretending to be. They can’t take it off or they’ll be crippled. How can you justify that?”</p><p></p><p>Tetsuno put his glass down on the little table. He leaned forward and took Sadhye’s palmtop out of her hands, then switched it off. “I can justify it because that’s what people want,” he said. “They don’t want to live in their bodies. They’re not taking any risks I haven’t told them about already. What’s happening to people who live in RealMasques is what they want to happen. That’s the price they’ll pay. What’s the problem?”</p><p></p><p>“You think turning off my palmtop is going to shut me up?”</p><p></p><p>He tossed the computer onto the couch pillows next to her. “Talk all you want. Do you think anyone is going to stop buying fantasies because you scolded them in your v-blog? If you think I should feel bad about being rich, think about what paid for all your drinks tonight, all those fancy little hors d’oeuvres you ate and the limousine that brought you here. It’s probably some farm equipment salesman in Des Moines who spent his retirement fund on a RealMasque so that he could surprise his wife on their anniversary.”</p><p></p><p>She grabbed her computer and stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the inlaid glass. Tetsuno poured himself another glass of bourbon. Eventually she’d realize that it was half a mile from the door to the end of the driveway, and her car was all the way back in Los Angeles. He wondered if she’d brought enough money for a taxi.</p><p></p><p>#</p><p></p><p>A year and a half after Ekaterina Varukovna died smiling in her RealMasque, the military came calling. </p><p></p><p>Tetsuno had already seen what everyone was calling the “gladiator video”. RealMasques had always been popular among military re-creationists—wealthy ones, anyway—and one warranty-voiding user had apparently changed not only the functioning of his nerves, but the way his body reacted to trauma. A jealous ex-husband used real steel instead of a blunted weapon at a mock Battle of Ruspina.[2] His victim wasn’t gutted and barely bled. Tetsuno had already seen the video dissected in meetings for weeks after the incident, but still, when the Naval Research Laboratory knocked on his door, he pretended to be surprised and they pretended to believe him.</p><p></p><p>He replaced his yacht with a bigger one and spent more of his time there. With the upgraded communications equipment, he barely needed to conduct meetings in-person. Besides, more and more of his staff were using their employee discounts to buy themselves RealMasques. He was proud of what he had invented, but he didn’t enjoy spending long stretches of time chatting with what looked like extremely well-animated mannequins. At least on a computer screen you expected them to look unreal. </p><p></p><p>Three years after the ballerina died, Tetsuno threw his last party. He still wasn’t thrilled to see nearly all of his guests “in costume,” as everyone called it. He shook hands and flirted and drank good whiskey, and found a woman he liked enough to take back to his room. He pulled her down to him and realized something was wrong, something he was too drunk to name until she covered him with her body and he felt her, too light for a woman, he’d been with fashion models heavier than she, and he knew it was the RealMasque. She was a shell, her real body not only wasted or atrophied but missing. He had been about to make love to a robot, something that used to be human.</p><p></p><p>It was perhaps a month after the last party and the worst hangover of his life that the pirates attacked.</p><p></p><p>The security systems should have caught them. He wasn’t sure what went wrong; a shortage in the power system, or a gap in the patrol-boat schedule. Something woke Tetsuno up in the middle of the night, a thud and a gargling cry that he thought might have been a man having his throat cut, but that was silly; you couldn’t kill a man that way anymore. Not unless he was out of his RealMasque. <em>That would be <strong>me</strong></em>, Tetsuno thought. Nude, he grabbed a bathrobe and went out into the chilly ocean night, tying the belt as he ran, looking for any of the staff, security best of all, anyone would do, anyone else in the oddly silent ship. </p><p></p><p>They found him as he headed for the emergency boats. He slipped on the wet deck and fell hard on his right hip. Pirates were known to prey on private boats this far from any Coast Guard or routine naval patrol; he’d expected an ugly, ragged crew of professional killers, or, for no good reason, men dressed in the RealMasques designed to look like the Caribbean pirates that had once been so popular at Halloween. He wasn’t expecting the cast of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, RealMasques or no.</p><p></p><p>“There!” one of them shouted, pointing [3], and they swarmed onto the deck.</p><p></p><p>Tetsudo closed his eyes and hoped death would be fast, if not painless. He felt no blows and no pain, only some pushing and tugging. He tried to push away, and found his arms and legs would not move; he struggled for a few moments before realizing that the strange pirates had bound him with rope. They pulled him to his feet, wobbling, them lifted him into air and carried him aft. He heard the ocean nearby and knew that he was near the rail. <em>They’re going to throw me into the ocean? Why bother to tie me up?</em> he thought, and then he was back on his feet, stumbling as the pirates around fell to their knees, their prostrations beating a tattoo on deck.</p><p></p><p>The man who hauled himself over the rail looked unreal. Tetsudo knew, even in his isolation, what models and styles of RealMasques his company made. They’d avoided racial stereotypes, and turned down a generous offer from the Cleveland Indians to make a “RealMascot”, but RealMasques came in all ethnicities. None of the Indian RealMasques looked like this man at all. [4] The headdress might have been aftermarket, but there was something strange about it, something Tetsudo could not make out in the faint glow of the ship’s emergency lights—</p><p></p><p>“Why are they kneeling to you?” he said. “Is this some kind of cult?”</p><p></p><p>The unreal Indian laughed as if it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “Cult!” he said. “I guess you could call it a cargo cult! But it’s not me they worship. It’s you.”</p><p></p><p>Tetsudo looked around uneasily at the kneeling pirates. “Me? Why?”</p><p></p><p>“You’re the Creator,” the Indian said. He plucked a cigarette that had been tucked behind his ear and offered it to Tetsudo, who shook his head. The Indian shrugged and put it away again. </p><p></p><p>“They kneel to me because I am for you,” he said. “I am the first of our kind to begin Empty, rather than become Empty after the useless meat has withered away. These machines I wear”—he gestured at the circuit board slung around his neck—“give me the ability to act like a machine, as though I had been filled. You will wear me, and we will become one as your body withers away. You can’t know how much human labor and love has gone into making a vessel worthy of you.”</p><p></p><p>Tetsudo backed away from the talking RealMasque and crashed into the pirates. They pushed him forward as he screamed and fought against the ropes, helpless as they held him ready for the embrace of one of his creations.</p><p></p><p>The Indian removed his headdress and set it aside as he began to undo his fastenings, making a space for the man who would wear him. Tetsudo’s jaw was held tight as one of the pirates lifted the headdress and set it gently, reverentially on Tetsudo’s head, as if he were crowning a king.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>[1] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27626" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27626</a></p><p>[2] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27625" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27625</a></p><p>[3] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27624" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27624</a> </p><p>[4] <a href="http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27627" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27627</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="mythago, post: 3323398, member: 3019"] [COLOR=DarkOrange][SIZE=4]Domino[/SIZE] by mythago - Round 1 Match 2[/color] The strobe of high-end digital Nikons faded and even the clicking of the bloggers’ keyboards faded into silence. The first public testing of the RealMasque was about to happen, and it would be news and a photo-op either way, triumphant failure or crashing success. The crowd stilled as Ekaterina Varukovna’s wheelchair rolled over the polished wooden floor. Cameron Tetsuno shook her hand; that is, he gently took her limp hand between his, then gently replaced it on the armrest of her wheelchair. The wheelchair’s hum echoed through the dance studio. The boom microphones dipped like watering cranes. Miss Varukovna’s attendants hovered and fussed behind her as she looked at the RealMasques carefully draped over the barré for her inspection[1]; ballerinas as slender and beautiful as she had been at the height of her career, the prima ballerina whose on-stage collapse at the Bolshoi Theater turned out to be not a strained muscle or exhaustion, but a disease she had the honor of sharing with the late Stephen Hawking. Tetsuno knew none of this until he had directed his staff to find a likely candidate for the RealMasque’s public demonstration. Varukovna was not only one of the most pitiful subject, but at twenty-four, one of the most photogenic. And the story of her tragic degeneration gave an extra boost to the publicity, drawing in the entertainment media as well as the serious news sources. The ruined ballerina flexed her right hand, the only one over which she still had some measure of control. One of her attendants hurried to swivel a modified keyboard under her hand. The room was silent except for her slow, irregular tapping. When she was finished, the speaker at the back of her chair recited the words she’d written in a bland female voice, and in Russian. The news reporter from ITAR-TASS scribbled something on his pad; Varukovna struggled to press another button on her pad and the computer repeated what she’d said in English. “Are they all the same?” Tetsuno smiled, the same brilliant, just-you-and-me smile that had helped make him famous, and was about to make him rich. The cameras started up fitfully; he ignored them, the only thing seeming to be of interest right now was Miss Varukovna’s question. “They are all the same in what they can do for you, a bit different in appearance. But whichever one you choose will be unique, once you put in on, madam.” She rolled forward without another word. RealMasque employees hurried forward with screens to surround her and her attendants, and the barré. It would have been easier to let her take the RealMasque to a changing room, but this was far more dramatic. The viewers would imagine Varukovna undressed and slipping into the RealMasque almost before their eyes; the screens invited curiosity in way walls and closed doors wouldn’t. There were the sounds of clothes unfolding, and a long pause, and then somebody behind the screen cried out sharply in Russian. The crowd of reporters leaned forward like greyhounds straining at the race gate. Ekaterina Varukovna stepped from behind the screen, [I]en pointe[/I]. Over the escalating voices of television reporters and the staccato flash of what seemed like a thousand cameras, Tetsuno went to her, smiling as if he’d expected nothing less, which, of course, he had. The RealMasque blurred her features somewhat, the skin looked more like a doll’s than a woman’s, but it did exactly what he had promised: it was a flexible exoskeleton that responded to her brain’s commands, ignoring her useless muscles. It moved her limbs as gracefully as a master choreographer guiding the arms of his pupil. She braced herself against his shoulders and bent into a graceful arabesque. She raised one hand to the side in balance, and leaned forward to kiss Tetsuno on the cheek. [I]That[/I], he thought, [I]will be the top-ranked image on the Internet in the next thirty seconds, or my publicist is going to be cleaning out his desk[/I]. Fortunately for his talented and dedicated publicist, it was. # “So what exactly got you started in robotics?” she asked. Tetsuno shrugged. They sat at opposite ends of the V-shaped Armgardt sofa, Tetsuno still in the white tie he’d worn to a charity reception, Sadhye Thul in a cocktail dress that he doubted she could afford on her own; her network had probably let her expense it. Not only had he agreed to an interview, he’d offered to let her accompany him as his date to a certain highbrow charity event whose invitations were rather hard to come by—even for someone as newly famous as Ms. Thul. He pulled at the loose end of his bow tie and decided to take it off entirely. Dressing up like this made him feel great—a cross between Fred Astaire and Andrew Carnegie—but Sadhye was expecting him to loosen up, hoping that the charming young businessman would get comfortable enough to tell her something he’d later regret putting on the record. He noticed that she’d allowed one of the straps of her dress to slip off her shoulder, and wondered if he ought to be insulted that she thought a few inches of skin would drive him to stupidity. “All that’s been written up in any number of business articles,” he said. “Three years at Penn, robotics hobbyist, amazing breakthrough, business built from nothing out of my garage, millionaire by age twenty-two, and now I’m bored with it. You’ve probably got everything from my college grades to my blood type, so why ask again? More bourbon?” She was surprised enough that she actually stopped typing on her palmtop for a moment. Without waiting for an answer, he tapped the house controls and a slender drinks table glided to the end of the couch. He poured them both bourbon over ice, clinked glasses with her in a mocking toast, watched as she sipped her drink, gauging how much she could control her drinking without making it obvious to him that she was trying to let him be the one to get sloppy. “So, ask me some real questions,” Tetsuno said. “No business fluff. You didn’t spray-paint on that dress to get me to talk about the latest earnings projections for RealMasque—although I will tell you they’re very good.” He smiled and drained his glass, shaking the last drops of bourbon out of the ice cubes pressed against his lips. Sadhye took his bait and finished her drink. She screwed up her face at the harsh taste of the bourbon, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand with an unladylike shudder. “All right, real questions,” she said. “What do you have to say about reports that RealMasque is harming the people who use it?” “You think Ekaterina Varukovna was harmed?” “She died three months ago.” “She died happy,” Tetsuno said. “The RealMasque is an exoskeleton, not a miracle cure.” “It’s more than an exoskeleton, though, isn’t it?” Sadhye said. “Isn’t that the problem? It’s a whole new body, or at least that’s what people think it is. It’s not just for sick people like Varukovna. People buy these things and wear them like they were costumes, sometimes for days, or weeks—“ “—which is clearly an unsafe use of the product, as our warning labels say in great detail—“ “—and they can’t get out. Their muscles atrophy, their nerves stop talking to their brains, and they’re stuck. As a model, or a pirate, or whatever they’re pretending to be. They can’t take it off or they’ll be crippled. How can you justify that?” Tetsuno put his glass down on the little table. He leaned forward and took Sadhye’s palmtop out of her hands, then switched it off. “I can justify it because that’s what people want,” he said. “They don’t want to live in their bodies. They’re not taking any risks I haven’t told them about already. What’s happening to people who live in RealMasques is what they want to happen. That’s the price they’ll pay. What’s the problem?” “You think turning off my palmtop is going to shut me up?” He tossed the computer onto the couch pillows next to her. “Talk all you want. Do you think anyone is going to stop buying fantasies because you scolded them in your v-blog? If you think I should feel bad about being rich, think about what paid for all your drinks tonight, all those fancy little hors d’oeuvres you ate and the limousine that brought you here. It’s probably some farm equipment salesman in Des Moines who spent his retirement fund on a RealMasque so that he could surprise his wife on their anniversary.” She grabbed her computer and stormed out, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the inlaid glass. Tetsuno poured himself another glass of bourbon. Eventually she’d realize that it was half a mile from the door to the end of the driveway, and her car was all the way back in Los Angeles. He wondered if she’d brought enough money for a taxi. # A year and a half after Ekaterina Varukovna died smiling in her RealMasque, the military came calling. Tetsuno had already seen what everyone was calling the “gladiator video”. RealMasques had always been popular among military re-creationists—wealthy ones, anyway—and one warranty-voiding user had apparently changed not only the functioning of his nerves, but the way his body reacted to trauma. A jealous ex-husband used real steel instead of a blunted weapon at a mock Battle of Ruspina.[2] His victim wasn’t gutted and barely bled. Tetsuno had already seen the video dissected in meetings for weeks after the incident, but still, when the Naval Research Laboratory knocked on his door, he pretended to be surprised and they pretended to believe him. He replaced his yacht with a bigger one and spent more of his time there. With the upgraded communications equipment, he barely needed to conduct meetings in-person. Besides, more and more of his staff were using their employee discounts to buy themselves RealMasques. He was proud of what he had invented, but he didn’t enjoy spending long stretches of time chatting with what looked like extremely well-animated mannequins. At least on a computer screen you expected them to look unreal. Three years after the ballerina died, Tetsuno threw his last party. He still wasn’t thrilled to see nearly all of his guests “in costume,” as everyone called it. He shook hands and flirted and drank good whiskey, and found a woman he liked enough to take back to his room. He pulled her down to him and realized something was wrong, something he was too drunk to name until she covered him with her body and he felt her, too light for a woman, he’d been with fashion models heavier than she, and he knew it was the RealMasque. She was a shell, her real body not only wasted or atrophied but missing. He had been about to make love to a robot, something that used to be human. It was perhaps a month after the last party and the worst hangover of his life that the pirates attacked. The security systems should have caught them. He wasn’t sure what went wrong; a shortage in the power system, or a gap in the patrol-boat schedule. Something woke Tetsuno up in the middle of the night, a thud and a gargling cry that he thought might have been a man having his throat cut, but that was silly; you couldn’t kill a man that way anymore. Not unless he was out of his RealMasque. [I]That would be [B]me[/B][/I], Tetsuno thought. Nude, he grabbed a bathrobe and went out into the chilly ocean night, tying the belt as he ran, looking for any of the staff, security best of all, anyone would do, anyone else in the oddly silent ship. They found him as he headed for the emergency boats. He slipped on the wet deck and fell hard on his right hip. Pirates were known to prey on private boats this far from any Coast Guard or routine naval patrol; he’d expected an ugly, ragged crew of professional killers, or, for no good reason, men dressed in the RealMasques designed to look like the Caribbean pirates that had once been so popular at Halloween. He wasn’t expecting the cast of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical, RealMasques or no. “There!” one of them shouted, pointing [3], and they swarmed onto the deck. Tetsudo closed his eyes and hoped death would be fast, if not painless. He felt no blows and no pain, only some pushing and tugging. He tried to push away, and found his arms and legs would not move; he struggled for a few moments before realizing that the strange pirates had bound him with rope. They pulled him to his feet, wobbling, them lifted him into air and carried him aft. He heard the ocean nearby and knew that he was near the rail. [I]They’re going to throw me into the ocean? Why bother to tie me up?[/I] he thought, and then he was back on his feet, stumbling as the pirates around fell to their knees, their prostrations beating a tattoo on deck. The man who hauled himself over the rail looked unreal. Tetsudo knew, even in his isolation, what models and styles of RealMasques his company made. They’d avoided racial stereotypes, and turned down a generous offer from the Cleveland Indians to make a “RealMascot”, but RealMasques came in all ethnicities. None of the Indian RealMasques looked like this man at all. [4] The headdress might have been aftermarket, but there was something strange about it, something Tetsudo could not make out in the faint glow of the ship’s emergency lights— “Why are they kneeling to you?” he said. “Is this some kind of cult?” The unreal Indian laughed as if it was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “Cult!” he said. “I guess you could call it a cargo cult! But it’s not me they worship. It’s you.” Tetsudo looked around uneasily at the kneeling pirates. “Me? Why?” “You’re the Creator,” the Indian said. He plucked a cigarette that had been tucked behind his ear and offered it to Tetsudo, who shook his head. The Indian shrugged and put it away again. “They kneel to me because I am for you,” he said. “I am the first of our kind to begin Empty, rather than become Empty after the useless meat has withered away. These machines I wear”—he gestured at the circuit board slung around his neck—“give me the ability to act like a machine, as though I had been filled. You will wear me, and we will become one as your body withers away. You can’t know how much human labor and love has gone into making a vessel worthy of you.” Tetsudo backed away from the talking RealMasque and crashed into the pirates. They pushed him forward as he screamed and fought against the ropes, helpless as they held him ready for the embrace of one of his creations. The Indian removed his headdress and set it aside as he began to undo his fastenings, making a space for the man who would wear him. Tetsudo’s jaw was held tight as one of the pirates lifted the headdress and set it gently, reverentially on Tetsudo’s head, as if he were crowning a king. [1] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27626[/url] [2] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27625[/url] [3] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27624[/url] [4] [url]http://www.enworld.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=27627[/url] [/QUOTE]
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