Late to the Party

Author's note: this story is one created by my late husband, Laston Kirkland. I've gone through and done some light editing - he liked ellipses almost as much as Diet Coke - but the core of it is his. He wrote it well before digital fashion became a thing.

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First, the base. Lana carefully applied the cream to her face, neck, and arms; she'd be wearing a long bodysuit, so nothing for her legs today. The base is always where you start. It coats over the pores so it can wick any moisture and oils away from the powder. It also gives it a good connective medium. Default is always white - makes it easy to tell if you miss a spot - it goes clear when you tap the control to it.

"Honey! Where's my other jumpsuit?" Jack yelled from the other room.

Lana sighed. Some things never change. "You threw it at the cleaner a week ago. It's clean and hung in the back, exactly where it’s supposed to be!"

"Ahh, found it!" Lana could hear him struggling into it. "How's the time?"

"We’re doing fine."

The eyelids need a different applicator, and so do the lips. Lana applied cream from the same container to the eyelids very carefully - she hated when she got too much in her eyes - harmless, but it made her vision watery, and that always annoyed her; sometimes when she was in a hurry, she just used her finger. Same for the lips. Whenever she got some in her mouth it always coated her tongue and dried it out, and she couldn't taste anything till she used the control to remove it. So keep it really thin on the lips and the eyes.

"Are you sure?"

Lana didn't stop while she answered, some of the words were a bit mangled while she did her lips. "Yes, I'm sure. We aren't going to miss anything."

Once everything was coated white... then she got out the dusting powder. She opened the case, pulled out the resin bag, closed her eyes and poofed. She liked this company best. "Magic Dust, with Intel inside". They had the brightest blue and darkest black.

The dusting never took more than a couple of seconds; the electrostatic attraction between the cream and the dust meant very little powder was lost. What didn't adhere tended to float back to the bag or container. She waved the bag through the air slowly to make sure she got any that was floating free... she hated to waste any.

"Should I call for the car?" yelled Jack

Lana grunted. "The car isn't here?"

"Dave was pretty drunk last night, and he said he didn't know how he had gotten here. I bundled him into our car, and told it to take him home... as far as I know he's still in it."

"Why don't you just check?"

"Oh... just a sec."

Lana smiled. She liked Jack, she really did, but he'd forget his own arms if they didn't have integral homing tags.

As always, her coloring started out a pale creamy pink... always reminded her of bubble gum. Perfectly hideous color, she thought to herself. She checked everything... face, arms, armpits, neck. All were coated well.

"It’s on its way, now. Dave got out of it somewhere in the U-district... I think he went to another bar."

Lana frowned. "This is his second liver, right?"

"Yep... he's going to have to break down and buy an augmented model. The doctors are starting to really lecture him about his self-control issues. But he insists on real whisky, and won't drink the healthy stuff."

"Is he going to be there?"

"Yeah, he'll make it... it's really all about him and the rest isn't it? They're making history tonight."

She grabbed her control and then the projector inside instantly mapped her face and body, displaying it on the SmartMirror right next to her own real reflection. Idly she flicked through dozens of patterns looking for the perfect combo. She eventually chose a blue and gold pattern that made her eyes into butterflies. She selected it from the mirror, then with the control, touched the application end of it to the cream.

Instantly her arms, neck, and most of her face turned the exact same shade of deep purple-blue. She blinked and the butterfly around her eyes fluttered... very lifelike. This particular butterfly was her own. She was certain no one else had mapped it.

Lana idly wondered if it was one from a natural species, or something engineered and released. So many species had been reintroduced now. All you needed was a little DNA, and you could bring it back.

She had seen this one the other day, fluttering in the roof garden, and she had recorded it. From there she used her control to map it into her makeup file. There was an app she had found a long time ago that had a huge database of movements, integrated to allow for makeup effects. The one she had used for her eyes was called "Flutterfly". It would be a hit.

Lana asked "Didn't Dave also get the trip implant? The one that sends random signals to your cortex so you hallucinate?"

"Yeah, he tried that but had it removed. Said it was too safe for him."

"I think he's really trying to fry his brain beyond repair."

"Huh, maybe. Have you ever seen Dave sober?"

"Nope. He's living the stereotype...a real party animal."

"Me neither."

Lana vaguely recalled how her makeup worked. How the control, and the mirror, and the dust all communicated due to the tiny chips inside. How the powder had the ability to change its index of refraction, allowing it to become whatever color you wanted. And how because each mote of dust, embedded as it was in the cream, could be assigned its own number, allowing the controller to map locations with precision and command every single mote as an individual pixel. The Intel ones she preferred could glow too, emitting their own light. It didn't matter much to Lana how it worked. It simply worked.

Jack came into the bathroom and looked at Lana. "Nice." That's the butterfly from the garden you were playing with isn't it?"

Lana smiled. "You noticed!"

"Yeah, we were watching from the kitchen. Dave was talking about it too, he said something about wishing he was the butterfly... but he was pretty wasted."

Lana used the control on the embedded chips in her jumpsuit, and again her mirror displayed a second image, showing her entire body this time. She found a pattern to match her makeup and applied it to her fabric. Her clothing now looked a bit like tall grass, the stalks swaying in the wind. Her own body was mapped onto her jumpsuit, painting her own curves. It looked like she was naked and blue, with the stalks of brilliant green grass carefully keeping certain parts modestly hidden. She smiled as she saw that Jack was mesmerized by the effect.

Lana checked herself in the mirror again, body paint and jumpsuit working perfectly together, clothing and makeup enhancing her natural looks. She liked what she saw.

"Do you think they'll let Dave on the stage?" Lana wondered aloud.

"Probably not. It'll likely be that doctor doing all the talking. The one that found out about the colony and made them release them all.. He’s the one that said it's slavery to keep them there, treating them like lab animals. He'll probably bore us all on the ethics of what is and isn't OK to create. Dave would have never known about the world if it wasn’t for him.”

"This is a big day for Dave. It’s not every day that an entire people are declared legally sentient."

Lana looked Jack over and noted that he had set his jumpsuit to "Black Tie". She approved; most of the time he just had advertisements playing of his favorite drugs and alcoholic beverages. Even though it wasn't a real tuxedo, like the wealthy had, it certainly made him look dashing.

"Besides," said Jack, "There are plenty of Nean's who can give a good speech."

"Don't call them that. It's offensive."

"Would you prefer I call them "Cavemen"?

Lana slapped at Jack teasingly. "Don't even call them ‘Neanderthals’; call them 'Reintroduced people'."

"Car's here."

As they walked through the garden, Lana saw a butterfly madly fluttering, trapped in a spiderweb. “Oh look!” she said. “It’s the same as the one I mapped!”

Jack looked at it closely. “Wow, look at it squirm.”

They both watched it for a while.

“We’re late.” Lana said.

“Let’s go.”