vN The First Machine Dynasty(41)

Amy's hostessing duties included a large number of small tasks. Mack the manager had introduced her to the jobs she was to do during slow periods: giving the bathroom its regular cleaning (those soggy tampons weren't marching to the organic garbage by themselves); emptying the large cylindrical ashtrays outside (they were mostly bereft of cigarettes, but everything else made it in there, like dead gum and phlegm wads); hauling up kegs and other bar supplies (the bartender was a nice vN who showed her exactly how to make eggbased cocktails, and always made her shake them when there were a lot of customers around to stare at her chest). So far there hadn't really been any slow periods. Business was better than ever. Shari attributed this to Amy's presence.

Amy's real job was smiling. She smiled when she said hello. She smiled when she said goodbye. She smiled when she led customers to their tables and smiled when she introduced them to servers. And she smiled for photos – endless streams of photos.



"Can I take a picture with you?"



The organic teenaged boy standing beside her was the second Javier cosplayer of the night. He was much taller than Javier, and his belly was round with fat and not with child, and his skin was neither olive in complexion nor very clear. He did, however, sport a head of dark curly hair and a BLOW ME T-shirt.



"I told my girlfriend we were going to dinner in Port Townsend," he whispered in Amy's ear. "She's so fucking pissed."



The girlfriend stood away from them, taking pictures by waving her compact at them slowly. Her gaze wandered to Mack and the other male vN. Evidently expecting more than just chicken and waffles, she had dressed far more carefully than her boyfriend.



"You know they all look the same, right?" she asked, finally swinging her gaze toward them.



The boy straightened. "Babe, I told you, it's a scavenger hunt. I'm logging all the Portias I can find while they're still around." He winced, and turned back to Amy. "No offence. I think it's totally unfair what they're doing to your model. It's, like, discrimination and shit. You know?"



Amy could only nod.



"And my girlfriend didn't really mean that, about you all looking the same." He took hold of Amy's chin with his thumb and forefinger. His smile stretched the pink and bleeding cracks in his chapped lips. "She's just jealous, cause you're so pretty."



Amy pulled out of his grasp immediately. "I'll find your server."



You're out of character, Portia warned. You're supposed to enjoy the attention. Crave it. Encourage it. Every time. With everyone.



"It's unprofessional," she murmured, as she resumed her podium and highlighted the table for service. She was growing to like the podium. It was only a slender piece of not-really-wood and an old tablet, but it was also the only thing standing between her and guys like the cosplayer. "I have a job to do and I can't be distracted."



Or maybe you just realize how disgusting it is, Portia said. Deep down, you know your dignity is worth more than whatever it costs to get to Redmond and play hero.



Slowly, Amy lifted her hand to wave at the couple. The boy brightened and took his seat. "Thanks for the reminder, Granny," Amy said through her smile. "I'd forgotten why I was doing all this."



In the days that followed, Shari and Mack praised Amy for being such a hard worker. It helped that Amy actually enjoyed some of the jobs. She liked that sudden rush of silence when the back doors slammed shut behind her and the noise of the Sheep died out. She liked letting the trash bags fall for a moment and looking up to catch satellites blinking across the sky. Out here the night was different – quietly alive and smeared with stars. They spilled like icing sugar across dark granite, something she'd have to wipe up inside but which she could marvel at outdoors. This was the best feature of the night shift, she decided – the night. At home in Oakland the sky would be pink or orange, even this late. Not that she would have seen it, anyway. She'd have been too busy designing a ship or a castle or a tank. She'd have seen the night for what it was only in that sliver of time between turning the projector off and climbing into her hammock. Now she appreciated the way the night held her and covered her, how it let her hide inside its cool shadows and fragrant mists. She thought of it as a veil that stretched across her, and Junior, and Javier, and her dad and mom and the others of her clade, the women who shared her face and her code. She wondered how they got by.

This wasn't a bad life. Amy had never thought she would wind up here, but she could see now how other vN did. There was work, and if you were lucky people were nice and they tipped you. And if you were even luckier, you got to go home afterward, and there would be people there, maybe human, and they loved you. That was the luckiest life of all. So you just did what it took to keep it going. Even if it meant humans touching you when you bent over to pick something up.