Empire Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 18) Read online

  The clone touched the dress with his programming device again, and the fabric flowed into an A-line pattern, at the same time changing colors to royal blue.

  “It’s an illusion,” a Vergallian in the crowd cried out. “Whatever that fabric is, there wasn’t enough of it to go from a tube dress to that A-line.”

  “I didn’t see you there, Bavlah,” Dorothy said, feigning surprise. “For anybody who doesn’t already know, Bavlah owns the Courtier’s Choice boutique on the Vergallian deck where they stock the latest fashions from the Empire of a Hundred Worlds. In answer to your question, Bavlah, the thickness and opacity of the fabric is also programmable, though the particular sample we’re using today wouldn’t be sufficient for a wedding gown with a train. Lance?”

  Lancelot transmitted a new program, and the nanofabric flowed into a two-piece bathing suit, eliciting gasps.

  “I’m particularly glad that Bavlah stopped by today because I might have forgotten an important part of my presentation otherwise. How many of you have visited a Vergallian fitting room?”

  Ninety percent of the audience raised their hands.

  “And how many of you have your avatar crystal with you right now?” Dorothy asked.

  Approximately half of the women kept their hands up.

  “Who wants to volunteer as a model?”

  “Me,” Chance cried, moving around the end of the table before any of the other women could react. The artificial person who worked as an EarthCent Intelligence trainer had willingly agreed to play a ringer, and she winked at Dorothy as she handed over her avatar crystal. “Can I get something in a tango dress?”

  “Let’s start by going back to the tube dress in our volunteer’s size so she can put it on and we can demonstrate hot-swapping,” Dorothy said to Lancelot.

  The clone inserted Chance’s avatar crystal into a slot on the top of his programming device, and then touched it to both parts of the swimsuit, which flowed back together to reform the tube dress. Then he removed the dress from the dummy and handed it to Chance, who disappeared behind the curtain of the jury-rigged privacy booth.

  “Are you saying that once you’re wearing a FaaS dress, you can change it into something else without taking it off?” a girl asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Dorothy replied. “We’re filing for a patent on the custom erogenous zones filter which allows users of all species to map areas of their bodies they want to keep covered at all times. It’s actually trickier if you’re already wearing undergarments—”

  “I’m not,” Chance called from behind the curtain.

  “—and in any case, some users will undoubtedly prefer to make wardrobe changes in the comfort of their homes. But the main feature of a FaaS subscription is access to the full SBJ Fashions line without having to return to a boutique or worrying that they might not stock your size. I can tell you from personal experience that becoming a mother changed my body, but a quick trip to a Vergallian fitting room to update your avatar and your FaaS fashion will adapt to your new measurements.”

  “Ready,” Chance declared, coming out from behind the curtain in the slinky tube dress. The shapely artificial person moved with a dancer’s grace, and the floating cameras belonging to the Grenouthian news service captured her from three angles to allow for an immersive holographic broadcast.

  “Now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for,” Dorothy said, finally turning on her tab and bringing up SBJ Fashion’s full line catalog. “Who wants to pick a new look for our volunteer?”

  Bavlah employed some sort of Vergallian martial arts move to elbow past the other women and snatch the tab from Dorothy’s extended hand. She quickly scanned the options and picked a black tango dress that featured one lace sleeve, one solid sleeve, and large red frills or bustles on the opposing shoulder and hip.

  “Number six-two-three,” Dorothy called to Lance. The clone tapped the code into his device and touched it to the back of Chance’s dress. For a few seconds, it looked as if the artificial person was being swarmed by hundreds of millions of nanobots, and then she executed a spin move to show off the newly formed dress. Pandemonium erupted as the audience surged against the table demanding to sign up for the new service.

  “And how much does it all cost?” Bavlah shouted at the top of her lungs, silencing the crowd.

  “We’re waiting for the Gem to get back to us with the price for commercial quantities of the nanofabric. In the meantime, I’m gathering contact information, and when the FaaS service beta launches, we’ll start with the women who signed up early.”

  “Ten thousand creds?” the Vergallian pursued the cost issue in a loud voice. “Twenty thousand?”

  “Our initial analysis indicated that the subscription cost to apply new fashions from our catalog might be on the order of twenty creds a cycle,” Dorothy deflected the question by pulling a figure out of the air. “We’re looking into different business models for supplying the actual fabric, including the idea of fashion clubs, where a number of members could share a subscription. And for anybody who already pays a monthly fee to the Tharks for wardrobe insurance, we’re planning a free fashion backup service that offers a superior solution for loss or damage.”

  “How would that work?” another woman called out.

  “We would require you to create a high-resolution holographic image of yourself wearing each dress in your wardrobe as a backup. Tunnel network entertainment law allows us to use that imaging data to recreate the dress from our nanofabric should the original be lost or damaged.”

  “You’ll be hearing from my lawyers,” Bavlah snarled, and began fighting her way out of the crowd.

  “I’ll put your name on the list,” Dorothy called after the angry Vergallian. The other women pressed forward, offering their tradeshow badges for scanning to reserve a spot in the queue. Flazint helped Dorothy capture everybody’s information, while Chance and Myst’s boyfriend continued reprogramming the nanofabric with different fashions from the catalog, all captured by the Grenouthian cameramen.

  “Doesn’t it feel icky when the nanobots are swarming all over you?” a younger girl asked Chance.

  “Refreshing, actually. Like standing in a breeze,” the artificial person replied.

  “And how much is the programming device?” somebody else asked Lancelot.

  “These are super cheap and we use them for everything,” the clone said. “But we’re also planning to add the programming function to the spare capacity of the adjustable ballroom shoes SBJ Fashions already sells.”

  “Though you’ll have to stand on one foot and touch the fabric to the shoe for it to work,” Chance added with a giggle.

  Lancelot stepped up to the table to see if Dorothy needed help, and said, “You know that Myst felt really bad she couldn’t be here, but she promised to help Gwendolyn with the embassy reopening this morning. The station Gem are throwing a welcome back party.”

  “You should have told me,” Dorothy said as she scanned another tradeshow pass with her tab. “If I knew you had to be somewhere, I would have put off the unveiling until this afternoon.”

  “I wasn’t invited to the party,” Lancelot said. “I’m sort of the only male Gem on the station right now and Myst didn’t want her sisters thinking she was showing off. She’s going to take me around and make introductions later.”

  Stick stuck his head through the break in the curtain bisecting the SBJ Fashions booth. “Hey, if you’re finishing up over there, I could use some support,” he said.

  “Be with you in a second,” Lance told him, and tapped a few symbols on his programming device before offering it to the EarthCent ambassador’s daughter. “If you plug in an avatar crystal and touch the end to the nanofabric, it will change sizes.”

  Dorothy snatched the device from Myst’s boyfriend, eager to try it herself. “Go ahead and help Stick.”

  The aisle on the other side of the SBJ Fashions booth was mobbed by young men who had gathered for the Shadow Dance
r demonstration, and now they were eagerly buying up all the stock of the add-on product that projected foot-placement patterns on linked heads-up displays to teach dance steps.

  “We’re selling the Shadow Dancer add-on for ten creds cash or five creds and their contact information,” Stick informed his helper. “Everybody has been paying the ten creds.”

  “Why is contact information so valuable?” Lancelot asked after completing his first-ever sales transaction. “What else are these guys going to buy from SBJ Fashions?”

  “We don’t have much for males beyond the LARPing gear Baa enchants, but I’m pushing to expand the catalog,” Stick explained. “I hope you can keep working for us because I’m tired of being the only guy.”

  “Is this the SBJ Fashions booth?” a vivacious young woman asked.

  “The new product launch is around the other side,” Stick replied, and then noticed Vivian’s brother standing just behind the girl, carrying two swag bags. “Oh, hey, Jonah. You can sneak through from this side and jump the line if you want.”

  “We’re here to look at bags of holding,” Sephia answered in Jonah’s place.

  “Then you’ve come to the right mage,” Baa said, uncurling from the giant beanbag chair she’d insisted on bringing to the booth. “I conceal the display during the Shadow Dancer demonstrations to keep grubby male hands off my purses.” The Terragram mage snapped her fingers, and one of the two tables making up the booth’s front on the aisle was suddenly covered with a selection of Baa’s Bags. “What’s your price range?”

  “Something entry-level,” the girl said. “I’ve never LARPed before so I don’t know if I’ll like it.”

  Behind her, Jonah caught Baa’s eye and mouthed, “I’m treating.” The mage grinned wickedly.

  “Still, you don’t want to start too low or you’re just throwing away your money,” Baa said, and another quick gesture reduced the inventory to just a dozen or so bags. “I see you as a five-feather girl.”

  “Five feathers?” Sephia asked, examining an elegant clutch finished with cultured pearls. “It looks very expensive.”

  “It’s on me,” Jonah insisted. “You bought lunch and paid for our tickets to Libbyland.”

  “But these bags…”

  “Five-feather bags have the highest capacity for loot, and the weight reduction factor is a million-to-one,” Baa said. “You could store enough sand in there to make your own beach.”

  “Something with a shoulder strap is better for LARPing because you want to keep your hands free,” Jonah advised.

  “Like this one?” Sephia asked, picking up a leather shoulder bag that looked like something an elf ranger might wear to carry extra food rations.

  “It’s kind of plain.”

  “I’m not really into glamorous clothes, you know. I just wore that two-piece the first day to get past the audition.”

  “But I want to give you something really nice,” Jonah protested.

  “I have the perfect gift idea,” Baa said. “A unique bag from my signature line.”

  “Can we see it?” Sephia asked, replacing the leather shoulder bag on the table.

  Baa held up her index finger, which began to glow a brilliant blue. Then she used her fingertip to draw an alien hieroglyph on one side of the plain bag. There was a faint odor of burning leather. “One of a kind,” she declared. “As my first signed piece, it will show up as epic status in your inventory when you enter the LARPing studio.”

  “How much does it cost?”

  “I’ll settle up with Jonah later,” the mage said with a wink. “You can take it with you.”

  Business slacked off until the afternoon demonstration on the fashion side of the booth, where Affie arrived to take Chance’s place as the ringer for the next demonstration of FaaS. Dorothy repeated her performance from the morning with similar results, but a few minutes before closing, Flazint’s boyfriend arrived, looking grim.

  “Is something wrong, Tzachan?” Dorothy asked. “I filled out the dating calendar the way you showed me, so your matchmaker shouldn’t have a problem.”

  “I’m not here about that,” the Frunge said. “As the attorney of record for SBJ Fashions, I was served a cease-and-desist order by Aaxina, Aleeytis, and Arriviya. They’re the top Vergallian intellectual property firm on Union Station, and they’re accusing us of intention to violate clothing design patents and trademarks. What have you been doing?”

  “Bavlah!” Dorothy exploded. “I mentioned in our FaaS demonstration that the technology can be used for wardrobe backup. She must have run all the way to her lawyer’s office. But since when is the intent to do something a crime?”

  “We’re not talking about criminal law, Dorothy. Intent to violate intellectual property law is a civil matter, and Triple-A must have a judge in their pocket on the Vergallian deck. The complaint states that you solicited dress owners to create holographic images of their wardrobes of sufficient resolution to produce exact copies, and furthermore, you offered an unlicensed means of creating those copies.”

  “I specifically said it should only be used if the original was lost or damaged. I know that Blythe offers subscribers to her romance book club a backup option for their entire collection as a perk, and she’s never had any legal problems.”

  “Entertainment-related copyrights are different. Several species have laws allowing a single copy of digital works for backup purposes, though encryption may prevent the copy from working properly.”

  “But why should fashions be different from books and music?” Dorothy protested. “I wouldn’t have any problem with some other company offering a wardrobe backup service that included our dresses.”

  “Are you sure about that? Do you really want to see the SBJ Fashions logo appear on dresses that weren’t manufactured by SBJ Fashions? What if they’re poorly made?”

  “But the nanofabric can make perfect copies. The accuracy is only limited by the quality of the data.”

  “That may be true, I’ll have to reserve judgment on the technology, but as a legal concept, wardrobe backup couldn’t be limited to Gem nanofabric. It would have to apply to all methods of making copies from the original data.”

  “You mean…”

  “Yes,” Tzachan told her. “If you push ahead with this idea you’ll be opening Pandora’s box to services that will manufacture copies using the cheapest possible methods, perhaps selling them as ready-to-go backups. I’ve spoken with my partners and none of us can envision a scenario where this will end well for SBJ Fashions.”

  “So what do we do?” Flazint asked her boyfriend. “There must have been a thousand people between our two demonstrations today, and the Grenouthian News was here recording.”

  “Fortunately, the bunnies had no interest in broadcasting your sales pitch for free. They reported the nanofabric as a technology story, cutting between video of the dress morphing into new patterns on your model, and some stock footage of Gem nanobot manufacturing facilities. But no more talking about wardrobe backups.”

  “How about backups for dresses from our own catalog?” Dorothy asked. “We own all of the rights to those.”

  “Your FaaS subscribers will have no need for backups since you’re already granting them the right to create any dress in the catalog,” Tzachan reminded her. “And I hope you aren’t making any implied promises about pricing.”

  “No, I explicitly said that it’s in the works and that we’re only taking names for a beta test.”

  “That’s good,” the Frunge attorney said, finally relaxing. “I’ll draft a reply for the Vergallians saying that there was a misunderstanding and offer our apologies. I’m afraid that Bavlah is likely to send us a bill for whatever she paid Aaxina, Aleeytis, and Arriviya. Upper caste lawyers don’t come cheap.”

  Sixteen

  “Hey, Fenna. Hey, Mike,” Samuel greeted the kids as they hurried past with buckets and brushes. “Are you going to stage another dog wash event to raise money for the Station Scouts?”

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sp; “Marilla hired us to help clean rental ships,” Mike reported.

  “That’s what happens when you become a teenager. Everybody wants to put you to work.”

  “I’m a teenager,” Fenna said. “Mike’s only twelve.”

  The boy scowled at his best friend. “But I’m still taller than you are.”

  “I always thought you guys were the same age,” Samuel said. “It’s hard to keep track when Libby’s school doesn’t have grades.”

  “Marilla even asked her little sister to come help again,” Fenna said. “We’re really busy.”

  “Orsilla? The girl who was on Let’s Make Friends with Mike?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, somewhat mollified by the reminder of his fame as a child actor. “She’s all happy because it means a break from doing homework. Hortens study too much.”

  “All of the alien kids study too much,” Samuel said. He had meant to spend his first evening off in weeks with the Vergallian meditation manual Aabina had loaned him, but he decided to find Marilla instead and offer his help.

  “Aren’t you busy keeping the observers happy?” the Horten girl asked when he finally tracked her down in one of the rental craft parked at the check-in area. She was trying to scrape something off the heavily padded chair without damaging the upholstery.

  “Aabina hired InstaSitter to take care of the observers when it’s nothing important,” the EarthCent ambassador’s son explained. “Mike and Fenna told me that you’re so behind on cleaning that you even brought your little sister in to help.”

  “Orsilla is doing her behavioral psychology term paper on Humans, so I’m basically paying her to do her homework. My parents never would have let her out of the apartment otherwise. Sixth grade is such an important time in life.”

  “You couldn’t get Mornich to come?” Samuel asked, referring to the Horten ambassador’s son who was officially courting Marilla.

  “I pinged him, but the band is playing a wedding. I’ll do a better job planning next time I try a special promotion. And part of the problem is that the franchisees don’t all clean ships to the same standard. I’d swear this gum has been stuck on the seat for at least a week.”