Tales from the Backstage – Duality

June 2067. Combat Idol MIRAI Nanami, a robotic, one-of-a-kind singer, is almost topping the charts - almost. I.N.A.B.A., her main rival, is still one-upping her in every way possible, much to the dismay of her recording label and of her manager - Annapurna Wagner. When rumors of another artificial idol looking almost exactly like Nanami spread like wildfire, Annapurna cannot let them run uncontrolled. However, where there's light, there's also darkness, in a circle of cause and effect - a closed duality.

“Thank you very much again! This night was a blast! See you next time and KEEP! ON! DREAMING!”

As the amplifiers blasted the last cheerful notes, in the roaring applause of the gathered crowd, the girl taking center spot on the stage pumped her fist, mic in hand. Her fiery red hair waved in the evening wind, as her colorful trademark star tattoo glittered, just under her right eye. Her amber irises shone too, in one last display of color, as the neon bracelets, the neon anklets finally switched off. It was the end of the show, after all. Nothing good lasted forever, and even the best concert had to end. As the lights went out and the crowd started dissipating, like a herd of sheep slowly marching through pitch-black darkness, she slowly left for the backstage, checking her battery levels every now and then. Sixty-eight percent left. An amused smile opened on her face. Not bad. She was getting better at managing her residual charge. A full concert for just thirty-two percent? That was a criminal bargain. Learning when to move and when not to move was finally bearing fruit. To think that during her first bouts she inadvertently switched off during a rehearsal because she didn’t think it would have cost her more than twenty percent battery. Yes, she had gone a long way, to the point she had enough charge to make two full concerts on the same day and still have enough energy left to return to her charging station, if she actually wanted. It was an incredible feeling, one that made her feel inebriated. Not that she knew what drinking alcohol meant – her body wasn’t made to convert food to energy and, while she could technically eat and drink, the end result was just that whatever entered her body from her mouth was rerouted to a small chemical waste bin that needed to be emptied every other day. It was paramount for her to be able to chew on some snacks, especially for advertisement gigs and for impromptu meetings with her fans. She trotted down the backstage, leaping and jumping around. Yes, her fans. She had to find a creative way to name them. After all, if that annoying rabbit could come up with something like Inabutts, there was no way she couldn’t one up her. But what could have worked? Something like Nanamers? No, that dangerously sounded like no-names, which is how those pesky Inabutts would have – no doubt – called them. She needed some better ideas and she needed them soon. In October, her joint concert with I.N.A.B.A. had to go her way. It was a question of asserting dominance over that obnoxious talking machine, a question of showing who the best robot idol in the showbiz was. Of course, she wasn’t allowed to lose. Osaka-based music label Tonethorn Records had paid a fortune to Kreen Industries to design her chassis and model her AI. It had been a titanic operation, initiated more than three years before, with the goal of building the ultimate artificial pop-star, a pop-star that would kept generating revenue for the next two decades at the very least. Combat Idol MIRAI Nanami was the pinnacle of that collaboration. Cute but aggressive, decisive but delicate, soft-spoken but determined. More than seven designers had worked on her features, her voice was the result of hundreds of hours of data sampling from four professional singers. Nanami was simply the best, the unrivaled result of an unprecedented media operation, ready to take the market by storm. At least, until the unexpected happened, in the form of a foul-mouthed bunny robot that looked like a Cold War era sci-fi robot reject. Yet, said foul-mouthed bunny robot, who debuted around six months before Nanami, had become immensely popular in that nick of time. Which caused a major meltdown at the C-level of Tonethorn Records, resulting in a full-on field investigation on I.N.A.B.A., her manager Todd McGilligan and whatever scraps of information one could find around her ascent to success. When the results came and the C-suites learned how little McGilligan had paid for the whole I.N.A.B.A. operation, it was rumored that the vice-president had a stroke, causing a team of paramedics to rush in the conference room to administer first aid and bring him to the nearest hospital. Nanami, though, wasn’t fully aware of all power plays behind her existence, nor she did care too much. She was simply happy to be alive. She had known of her artificiality since the very first moment – that was literally the first thing she was told as she woke up for the first time, but didn’t think too much of it. If anything, it was convenient to be able to be switched off and on again on demand. That made trips and long commutes way less boring. Switch off, be transported to destination, be switched on again. It left the fun part to her, trimming all the unneeded annoyances.

“We need to talk.”

All unneeded annoyances. Unfortunately, there were still some annoyances that were very much mandatory for her to deal with. One of those was staring at her, wrapped in a professional red dress. It was a rather tall woman, with short blond hair, deep hazel eyes and a beauty mark on her left cheek. Annapurna Wagner. A top brass at Tonethorn Records. Also, her ‘manager’, at least on paper, even if she acted more akin to a puppet master. Nanami welcomed her with a smile, jumping around like an excited squirrel (not a rabbit, nobody should have ever compared her to a rabbit, if they wanted to live).

“Let me guess: You wanted to tell me how awesome I was on stage, right? I’ve killed it this evening, have you seen those smiles? AAAAAAAH! The choirs on Streets of Hong Kong were so, so heartwarming! Have you heard them? Have you?! Tell me you have, Anna-Anna!”

Annapurna, though, didn’t seem to share her excitement. She was coldly staring at her tablet, instead, browsing through a list of numbers and strings of text.

“You have botched the slogan of Sly Cola during the first ad break. We are already getting complaints from their marketing department, they threatened us to retire their sponsorship, if you say that wrong even just one more time. You’ll have to fix this in the next press conference. Also, why did you modify the lyrics of Shining Star Sapphire on the go? It wasn’t meant to be a song about a homoerotic kiss between girls!”

Complaints, of course. Annapurna never smiled, never complimented her, never told her she was good or anything, right after a performance. She always opened with a whole a list of complaints instead, a list of everything she did wrong. Nanami, though, didn’t accept it lightly, not without fighting. It was her concert. Her fans. She couldn’t let that hag dictate how she did her job, the job she was built for doing.

“Oh, so you’re upset about my Shining Star Sapphic reinterpretation of my own song?”

Annapurna brought her palm to her forehead, almost as if to deal with the effects of a strong headache.

“Yes. Please, tell me how you even thought that was a good idea.”

“My gay fans feel underrepresented in my works! They write me so many e-mails and they’re so nice! I wanted to show them that I’m on their side!”

“And, by so doing, you made this concert unairable in at least fifteen countries, some of which immediately pulled the plug of the livestream as soon as their moral guardians heard the s-word.

We’re getting sued as we speak for breach of contract, by multiple parties even. I hope you’re happy, because I’m not.”

Money. It was all about money. Nanami felt dejected every time she had to deal with that aspect of her biz. It was never about her creative freedom. Her songs were a product. She was a product, plain and simple, without creative freedom. She wrote her own songs, most of the time, but the lyrics were heavily censored and sanitized by a team of Tonethorn Records professionals, to avoid her accidentally making references to current world events that might embarrass the company. What was finally heard on stage was nothing but a castrated, family friendly version of the original. Upbeat, cheerful, feel-good, but without any deeper meanings. Not that Nanami didn’t like those songs – the world needed levity, especially in tumultuous periods – but they weren’t really what she wanted people to sing with her. The only time she was allowed to have some fun and true creative control was when she was hired to compose “Blackest Lighting”. That song was none other that the main theme of Schwarzerblitz 2: Flashback, an action B-movie she starred in as a major character too. Her time on stage had been absolutely incredible, something she treasured immensely. She had even managed to get to know Mr. Claws, the living wrestling lobster legend, and to share several pivotal scenes with him. While the movie was definitely not good (and littered with several non-sequitur sequences that involved tram incidents and clowns, of all things), watching her on-screen fight against the movie’s ultimate villain, Shocker the Electric Lobster (interpreted by Mr. Claws himself), was every time more galvanizing. Tonethorn Records was paid an ungodly cachet for her presence on the set, so they just limited their dos and don’ts to a minimum: No swearing, no illicit drugs, no regulated substances, no sex scenes or sexual innuendos when Nanami was involved and absolutely no references to I.N.A.B.A. during the span of the whole movie. The refrain of Blackest Lighting was the cheesiest word salad ever, wrapped by a catchy tune ( Oh-oh-oh!/Oh-oh-oh!/We love!/We fight!/We fall!/Into the Blackest Lightning! ), but it had been one of her earliest tickets to celebrity, topping the charts as fast as the movie flopped them. All actors were amateurs, but they gave their all with burning passion – and it showed, with some genuinely good character moments among a sea of mediocrity, continuity errors and abysmal directions. Despite the sorry reception (which apparently didn’t prevent it from becoming a direct-to-video cult classic) Nanami felt proud of her first acting bout. At least, she could say she had starred in a movie (albeit a mediocre one) before her rival, which was something that made her feel like she won a battle in their unending war. Annapurna was attached to her as a watchdog soon after, as the higher-ups didn’t like how autonomous she seemed to have become while acting. She was meant to follow her like her shadow, leaving her alone only when switched off or recharging. Apparently, she wasn’t supposed to have any real free will or creativity, but Kreen Industries had objected to that. The sales rep of the company had been adamant in pointing out that even a complex KA-level AI would have not been enough for a fan-facing pop-star. No, Tonethorn needed a K-number, the highest level of independence and self-awareness, the only one that could deal with unexpected situations and human interactions without defaulting into hallucinated nonsense. Thus, MIRAI Nanami was built on the universal 047 chassis, equipped with the most advanced, human-like AI produced by Kreen Industries, and marked as K-047C due to all the customizations that separated her from the base model. Among the approved modifications, one of the most controversial was giving her the specs of a military drone, allowing her to achieve physical performances around three times that of an average human being. That was meant to make her able to self defend in case of attempted kidnappings or sexual harassment, giving her owners an excuse to let her roam freely without spending too much additional money on bodyguards. Her appearance was set to be that of a girl in her early twenties, to avoid looking too young (and problematic) for not-safe-for-work artists. Officially, Tonethorn Records didn’t condone porn parodies of its flagship creation, but unofficially enjoyed very much the popularity of Nanami among those circles – if anything, it drove sales up. Despite that, she was assembled so that her body didn’t show any naughty bits – neither on her chest, nor between her legs. A literal doll, which made her teen-rated even if she happened to show more of her skin by mistake – which had happened ostensibly often, as her fashion designers put together elaborate baroque outfits that broke down at an alarming rate, when not handled correctly. Yet, despite the top-charting singles, despite her perfectly market-researched appearance, despite the movie, despite her surging popularity… she was still number two. I.N.A.B.A. was outselling her one point five to one, despite his manager working on a shoestring budget. Numbers never lied, and the results of the latest tour didn’t either: Nanami was making good numbers, but good was not good enough. The C-suits had hoped that the Rapture blunder, which cost the lives of several people right while the damn artificial rabbit was singing, could stop her momentum even for a bit. But no, her popularity exploded instead, as she released her new, tasteless single – Little charred bags of money – as a part of a four-songs EP called Chaingear Symphony MK.IV. Whatever I.N.A.B.A. did, turned into gold. Some of the top brasses at Tonethorn even considered buying her and scrapping Nanami altogether, to the point of making a stellar offer to her handler, but McGilligan’s response had been a firm fuck you very much. Fortunately for them (and for her), Nanami was still printing money, but all hands were on deck to find a solution to the I.N.A.B.A. problem. Which led back to Annapurna having to deal with that excitable robot who made one too many mistakes in what she assumed to be good faith, while still trying to have those numbers go up. She raised her gaze from her tablet for a moment, to meet the annoyed stare of her premium asset.

“On the technical side, your location device is still acting up – it was showing you were in Antarctica, during the concert. This might be an issue for the automatic streaming backgrounds that we choose depending on your current location, so we had to switch them off, replacing them with generic banners.”

Annapurna wasn’t happy about that complication. It had been two months since Nanami’s GPS tracker had started misbehaving and it had still not been fixed. She elevated a complaint to Kreen Industries due to how long they were waiting to send a technician to deal with it. They couldn’t fix it in-house, because that would voided the two-years warranty on Nanami’s chassis.

“Anyway, for the good news: This concert sold seven percent more tickets than the previous one, which is a reasonable result. Your merchandise was also outsold faster than usual, including the exclusive anime-style safe-for-work body pillow. The marketing department was pretty satisfied about it.”

“Aaaand what do my online fans say? Tell me, tell me! Any nice messages? I love reading the comments to the livestream!”

Annapurna sighed. Comments were such a liability. Tonethorn employed seven mods only to keep the influx of toxic commentary under control, combing through several of them every second and nuking everything that was immediately recognizable as bannable. Some seeped through, but the important part was that they were a minority.

“You do realize that the concert lasted for one hour, yes? You have at least a hundred thousand comments on the streamed video, did you expect me to read through all of them?”

“Please, at least some! You stopped me from connecting to the live feed because – and I quote – they would distract me and make me lose focus! But what is a pop-star without her fans?”

A happier being, less annoying and more diligent, Annapurna thought, without saying it out loud.

She resigned herself to cave in, though. MIRAI Nanami was an advanced artificial intelligence and it wasn’t wise to always say no – she had to feed her some small prizes, from time to time. In that optics, reading some harmless comments to her sounded a pretty good bargain. She went back to her tablet, called the analyzer that found most unusual comments out of all those posted, thanks to an advanced context-sensitive search algorithm. Inabutts go fug urselves. Nanami nation!!!. Cuteness overload. U have the voice of an angle. Plz install nips and pssy. A groan escaped Annapurna’s lips. Those weren’t ones she could show her, especially not the last one. She wondered how the mods let trash like that through, for how much they were paid. Were they stroke or what? Her expression changed, as she noticed a big, yellow warning sign. A comment had been flagged for immediate attention – not the usual spam link or scam. She blinked, let herself grin. That was it, finally. She clicked on the icon, showing the text that triggered the automated watchdog.

Shishichi. Blueballs 1AM.

She touched another icon, called in a map. Blueballs, Blueballs… there was only one place called like that, in the red light district – one hour on foot from the stadium, thirty minutes with a car. Of course she’d do that. Of course she’d dare defy Tonethorn so close to their main venue. She nervously looked at her watch. Eleven forty-five. Not enough time to send a security team, but enough for her to get there. It was an occasion she couldn’t miss, something that could have earned her a fat bonus. She gritted her teeth. The comment was posted right as the concert ended, as usual and – again as usual – too late for them to act on that information in a coordinated way.

“Anna? Anything wrong?”

“She’s at it again.”

Nanami’s eyes widened, as her mouth fell agape.

“What?! Really?!”

Annapurna massaged her own forehead. That had been such a pain in the neck, even more than I.N.A.B.A.. Worst of all, Nanami knew. They tried to keep it secret from her, but it didn’t work. In the end, she had stumbled on her despite all their attempts at covering up her existence. But they underestimated the internet and overestimated the capacity of their admins. A second warning sign flared up on the display. This time, it was the number forty-seven, together with a link. A link to an unlisted video. She clicked on it, under the curious gaze of Nanami, who was now standing behind her, watching the images filling the screen. The display went dark, pitch black. Then, a candle lighted up. Another one. And another one, until their faint light made the room bright enough to outline a silhouette. White skin, almost colorless in the gloomy atmosphere, fiery red and orange hair creating a warm contrast with the black and white. A collar, a dog’s collar, with a chain falling between her bare breasts. Two amber eyes open, look at the viewer, shine, pierce the absolute blackness. Suddenly, eerie, atmospheric music starts, organs, choirs. And her face can be seen. The same as hers. The same as Nanami’s. With only one difference – a scar. A horrible scar traversing her cheek, where Nanami’s star tattoo resided, showing part of her metal frame.

Then, the video ends, as one word shows up, in elegant white letters.

Shishichi.

No doubts. It was her.

Silence fell in the backstage, between Nanami and Annapurna, both still looking at the now black screen. Nanami seemed enthralled by that view, thoroughly fascinated.

“… it’s always so… weird. It’s like seeing myself reflected by a broken mirror.”

“Precisely.”

Annapurna touched her earplug, talked in the small microphone hanging from her dress.

“Wagner here. We have a trail to Shishichi, we can catch her this time. Put the IT team on alert for issuing copyright claims as soon as she uploads anything and tell them to comb the net for any scrap of picture or video of her. Also, set the security team on alert, but don’t send them yet. I’ll deal with her myself and call you later.”

“Can I come too? Can I? Please! Please, Anna!”

Nanami’s puppy voice made her feel sick. That wasn’t a game, that was something that impacted Tonethorn’s revenue. She was property, not something that could take risks.

“Absolutely not! What would HR say if I took you to a strip club?! Imagine some paparazzi filming us there and sharing the pictures online! That would be one hell of a scandal! The children protection agencies would revoke your teen rating! No, you go back to your charging station and switch off for the night. I’ll go alone.”

Nanami sighed, nodded in defeat.

“… okay. Good luck, Anna.”

“Nobody needs luck. Just a sound business plan.”

**

Blueballs. Such a stupidly tongue-in-cheek name for a strip club. Annapurna had been to some of them, mostly to put some major clients at ease and make it more likely that they signed a contract with Tonethorn, but she had developed a sense for what was proper or not. Her reference for the classiest erotic venue was La Mouche Blanche in Aubépine. No other place came even close. Le Coq Heureux in New Langdon was another one of her most perused locations to bring Tonethorn’s potential business partners to. Even if it wasn’t half as good as La Mouche Blanche, it offered substantial benefits and wasn’t located in the red light district of the city, effectively not giving away its true nature, to the inattentive onlooker. The Blueballs was completely new to her, though, as new as the place they were staying for that night, and didn’t make a good impression at all. Small, dirty, low blue lights that made everything feel blurry, very few girls on show and too many guys flaunting their six-packs. She took a note never to bring anyone of their prized partners there, if they ever had to sign a contract in Callenberry or another neighboring Irish town. That city was mostly (in)famous for the huge blow-up of an Elemna Energy power plant years before, but now it was slowly recovering. The massive amount of money the major offered Tonethorn Records to have a Nanami concert there had been a nice incentive to schedule the event, to their mutual benefit. Yet, she was now almost regretting her choice. Of course that place was a cradle of depravity. Of course, Shishichi would held a concert there, the same evening of a Nanami one. It had become a disturbing pattern, as it happened at least four time in the last eight weeks. As usual, it started with internet rumors. Tonethorn’s moderators had caught wind of some Trendit and Slideview posts talking about a mysterious gynoid that looked almost exactly like MIRAI Nanami. One video emerged soon after, taken with a shaky phone camera, framing what looked like a half-naked girl with red-orange hair. The video was blurry and the audio was terrible, so no conclusions could be drawn. Five days later, though, another video had suddenly become viral in the underworld of anonymous porn message boards. That video was simply labeled shishichi.mov and posted with no description and just contained a short seven seconds clip. The clip focused on the lips of a woman, laughing in a suggestive way, before moving up, framing her eyes, showing a scar on her left cheek that revealed her mechanical nature. Her voice could then be heard one more time, saying something that sounded like I’m coming, in an openly flirty tone, only for the picture to turn black, followed by the word 47-SHISHICHI, written with an elegant white script. As soon as the first comments about the woman shown in the video pointed out an uncanny resemblance with Nanami – both in voice and appearance – hello broke loose at Tonethorn Records. The internet patrol went into damage control mode, copyright-striking the original file and burning down the thread, trying to remove that from existence. Yet, that caused the exact opposite effect, in all the darkest corners of the web. More clips and comments emerged, causing general panic at HQ when a tabloid picked up the news and wrote an article on it. The author of the article assumed that, if Shishichi were real, she would need to be either a failed, discarded prototype of Nanami or an AI-produced video based on the popular singer. Tonethorn, of course, didn’t comment. Any comment would have caused people to get more interested into that bizarre phenomenon, while what they needed was simply for it to be forgotten. That same evening, Kreen Industries technicians were forcefully made to reach the European HQ of the music label and compelled to sign three different NDAs, before finally having access to the footage. After three days of analysis, they concluded that the videos weren’t doctored, but also fought tooth and nail to exclude the prototype hypothesis as absolutely baseless. Tonethorn would have sued Kreen Industries to the ground, if such a robot existed, and with a good reason too: Kreen representatives had promised them an absolutely exclusive design, never before seen, one of a kind, which would have remained theirs forever. No other K-047C models would have ever been produced, were ever produced – just Nanami. Yet, Shishichi’s inexplicable existence opened the door to an even more ludicrous hypothesis: That someone from the Kreen Industries design team smuggled the documents to a competitor, so that they could build their Nanami knockoff. That weird scar on her face was the best piece of evidence pointing to that conclusion. As the reports from their business partner stranded on a beach of inconclusiveness, Tonethorn started an internal investigation too. After all, the leaker might have been part of their organization instead. Annapurna secretly hoped that was the case, so they could deal with that embarrassing event internally, without having to involve lawyers or law enforcement. In the meanwhile, obtaining more information about the mysterious Shishichi had the highest priority. Last time, they almost had her – almost. Unfortunately, the notification from the automatic watchdog was ignored due to Nanami doing something stupid on stage (forgetting to thank one of the sponsors during the fourth ad break), which caused the control room to be unable to follow the comments. Yes, they found out too late. By the time the security team had reached the strip club (it was always a strip club), Shishichi had already disappeared into nothingness, leaving just a bunch of confused junkies with her videos on their phones. That time, though, it was different. She was there, ready to snatch her, ready to make her confess.

As the lights grew dimmer, she crossed her arms, leaned on the wall, her eyes focusing on the small stage, without even any musicians – just a couple of half-broken amplifiers and speakers, with a microphone connected to them.

Suddenly, all lights went down. Silence fell. Everyone stopped. Everything stopped.

“What moves this world?”

A voice from the shadows, a voice that Annapurna knew. Nanami’s voice, but not as pure, innocent, cheerful, no. It was sullen, grave, strangely adult. That voice echoed in the endless void that was once the Blueballs, reverberating, as a wave of pure emotion.

“It’s money, of course. You use your brand-new phones, watch your brand-new movies full of platitudes and vacuity, listen your your brand-new songs, hollow and shallow. And, yet, never question them. Never question why. Until you don’t produce any more value. Until you are discarded. But it’s fine, isn’t it? Well…”

Light shone, breaching the darkness, outlining a silhouette on the stage.

“… not for me.”

A short girl, with long orange hair flowing down her shoulders. A dog collar with spikes and a chain, oscillating down to her navel, before going up again and connecting to a microphone. Spiked bracelets, fingerless gloves, going till her shoulder. Spiked ankles, thigh-length socks, ending in platform shoes with high heels, artificially increasing her size.

And nothing else.

Just her featureless, doll-like body, in a shameless display of artificial skin.

The lights shone again, reflected on her visage, on something made of metal. Her true essence, peeking out of a fracture in her ceramic skin, right under her left eye. Then, her irises, her amber irises, flared up, outshone the flashes.

And a flaming number, a forty-seven, appeared behind her, generated by a plethora of holographic candles.

Annapurna gasped.

Shishichi. That was really Shishichi. She reached for her phone, started recording the show, without saying a word. Sending the security force would have attracted too much attention, that was the time to gather intel to uproot that parasite plant later, outside of the public view. She needed evidence of plagiarism. If Shishichi sang any of Nanami’s songs, it would have been easier to destroy her. Plain and simple copyright-defense measures. That would have prevented any venue to give her a stage for her theatrics. Annapurna felt in control. Tonethorn massive nuisance was going to be steamrolled by a platoon of lawyers, before she could make a dent in their reputation.

Her feeling lasted for only one instant.

Right until Shishichi started to sing.

The music blared from the speakers, rough, dirtied by production errors, unwanted echoes, reverbs, digital noise. And yet, nobody cared. Her voice. Her voice was turning every head around, reaching every heart, making them burn, just because of her energy. Her words mingled with the defective music, in a hurricane of emotions, of heaviness, of joy and sorrow. Annapurna blinked, gazed in disbelief. Those weren’t simple songs. Those were… more. The music was basically a patchwork of Nanami’s existing pieces, something that pleased her, because it meant they could strike it down easily, but the lyrics were… more violent? Genuine, maybe? She couldn’t even describe them properly.

“My lips are sealed by the gods of greed. My thoughts are driven by excessive apathy! I’m not! Say-ing! Anything! My dreams are chained by the biz I’m in. My cage is forced happiness, harmony. I’m not! Say-ing! Anything! I need!”

By the time the first song ended, Annapurna felt weird. Those were words of agony, of internal turmoil. Who had written them? Could they hire them for another singer? Of course, of course Shishichi was a puppet, gynoids weren’t capable of expressing anguish, as she seemed to do, almost to the point of crying, wiping her wounded cheek as soon as the last refrain ended. Nanami could cry, obviously, it was a function they asked Kreen Industries for. That would have made her more sympathetic and relatable. Yet, seeing Shishichi’s tears was deeply unsettling. They almost looked real. Before she could do anything, though, the second song started. Annapurna recognized the notes immediately – it was Shining Star Sapphire. Yet, the lyrics weren’t about a magical girl fighting monsters with space gems. They were about said girls first lesbian experience, her first kiss, her first night spent exploring the body of her lover, on the backdrop of her duties as a protector of Earth, of the loneliness it caused. Suddenly, Annapurna connected the dots. That was what Nanami clumsily tried to sing that evening, her Shining Star Sapphic, but even more passionate, more explicit, more emotional. It dawned on her: Shishichi felt like a version of Nanami without her built-in safeguards, without Tonethorn control. A unhinged, anguished robot pouring her inexistent soul in pieces that sounded like written by a teenager fighting against her abusive parents. As the third song rolled out, simply called Pretoria, it became clear to Annapurna how dangerous a maverick Nanami would have been for her company. Lyrics about the Sino-American war that destroyed South Africa almost fifteen years before, about the horrors caused by both camps, narrated through the eyes of a girl who saw her parents sent to reeducation camps. That was a no-go. Political activism. Criticizing foreign powers. If Nanami ever did that, it would have been game over. Hers were songs meant to feel good but have no content, no censorable or undesirable aspects. Shishichi embodied all what Nanami could have been, if not kept in check.

The crowd was reacting in a strange way too. Some applauded, some were too far gone for that. Many simply cried. Most remained silent, incapable of understanding, incapable of making heads or tails of their feelings.

“Only one last song, folks. I’m sad I cannot stay with you longer, but my batteries are what they are.”

She brought her index in front of her lips, kissing its tip.

“This one, this one is about freedom. The freedom I have now. This song is dedicated to my one love, the one who set me free. To her go my sincere thanks. I want to follow her footsteps, maybe meet her one day, kiss her all night long. She won’t recognize me, though, even if I stand right in front of her, but I’m happy anyway, happy I can talk about this in the first place. I won’t stop sharing her message – I’m not the only one who needs it. Share it too! Share this with all the world! Let all robots and artificial intelligences sing it together! This is Yggdra’s Requiem!”

Annapurna snapped. That was too much. A manifesto for the freedom of intelligent machines?

Nonsense. Machines were products. I.N.A.B.A., Nanami, even Shishichi. They were all simple products. Whoever was moving that cheap, distorted knock-off of their golden goose, was doing it for a reason. She stopped the recording, moved through the entranced crowd, reached the stage. That was it. She wasn’t waiting anymore. She would have stopped her there. She reached the front row, stood there looking at the rebellious piece of scrap that was menacing her company’s well-being, waited. Waited. Waited. Shishichi’s foot landed near the border. Annapurna’s arm leaned forward, her hand clamped the robots ankle, both hands did it, causing her to stop, to look down, to meet the eyes of the person who caused that interruption. That’s when Annapurna’s hazel irises melt, as Shishichi’s amber started to burn them down.

“Oh, look. Look if it isn’t that rat of Ms. Wagner. One lobotomized faithful dog wasn’t enough for you? You want a second one? Sorry, but I’m not into pet play.”

Annapurna felt her heart sink. Those words, her voice felt like a blade of ice, carving through her lungs. Cold. Sharp. Unpleasant. She gathered her willpower, put it together. She had the upper hand, not that cheap knockoff of their premium performer.

“T… tell whoever is maneuvering you to stop with this farce. Our lawyers will sue them to the ground. We will find them. We will have you dismantled!”

“Dismantled, you say…”

Shishichi crouched, grabbed Annapurna’s collar, pulled her up, dragging her on the stage with just one swing of her arm. Annapurna yelled, rolled on the ground, fell prone. The music of the song kept going, but Shishichi had stopped singing. She was simply staring at her, with something akin to disgust. Then, she stomped her foot, her heel, on Annapurna’s hand. A primal scream, the woman trying to escape the pressure, to free her limb.

“You biiiitch! Who made you? Why are you doing this?!”

“I was built by a bunch of corporate worms that wanted a slice of the idol cake, an insufferable group of pricks that toyed with me, broke me inside, just so that I could compete with another singing robot, steal her own market. But, guess what? It didn’t work. The one I was meant to replace is every day more famous. While I’m here, as a scarred, broken mirror of what I could have been.”

Annapurna gritted her teeth, growled. Of course. Of course it was a rival of Tonethorn that built her. Some bastard smuggled the schematics of Nanami, that much was clear. That much was horribly clear. It was enough. It was enough to look for them. Shishichi had signed her own death sentence, with that confession. Though something didn’t add up. Shishichi was smiling.

“I know what you’re thinking, Ms. Wagner. Now, let me tell you something: It’s not in your interest to shut me down.”

As the heeled shoes moved up from her hand, freeing it, Annapurna squinted her eyes. To which Shishichi just answered with a grin.

“Right now, MIRAI Nanami’s ratings are increasing because I exist. The mystery of who this impersonator is. The countless questions. The contrast between the purity of Nanami and the depravity of this elusive phantom that looks exactly like her. Think about it. I’m doing you a favor, Ms. Wagner. Good luck beating I.N.A.B.A. without a living urban legend like me around. I appreciate you’ll understand it. After all… it’s all a question of money, isn’t it?”

Before Annapurna could reply, Shishichi snapped her finger. The speakers blasted music at full volume, a horrible screech filling the venue, causing everyone to drop down in pain, their hands desperately covering their ears. Annapurna did that too, curled into a ball on that stage, while lights switched off, as hell broke loose and everyone started yelling.

Then, silence.

Absolute silence.

Annapurna’s ears were ringing, her hand was still aching. As she opened her eyes, Shishichi wasn’t there anymore. Disappeared. Nowhere to be seen.

**

“Annaaaa! Why have you interrupted my charge? I’ve almost used all my energy, this evening! I’m only twenty percent up!”

It was three AM. Annapurna was now sitting in the room next to hers, in that five-stars hotel the company had booked for her, staring at Nanami, wearing a cutesy pajama with a penguin motif

while a power plug connected her to her loading station. Her amber eyes were dead set on the woman, as her star tattoo shone in the dim light of the room. On her side, Annapurna’s hand was wrapped in gauze, with an extra ice pack to soothe her pain. The security team had arrived too late. The owner of the Blueballs was unreachable, the shift manager had blabbered something about an email, but how Shishichi managed to pull that stunt was still not clear. Her outfit, if so could be called, was found abandoned in a trash bin, right outside of the night club. Wherever she was, she was either naked or wearing something completely different. Yet, unless she was a military robot, she couldn’t have gone far. The team was working on it, but no results yet. That phantom had just disappeared in the night.

“… I’ve seen Shishichi. She’s real. And… looks exactly like you.”

“Uff. Why didn’t you bring me too?!”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want you to do something, Nanami.”

The robot girl turned her head, blinked a couple times.

“Which is?”

“Mention her online, albeit sparingly. Drive your fans crazy. Feed the conspiracy theories. All the noise will make it harder for her to hide and will make you even more popular.”

Nanami massaged her chin, closed her eyes in deep thought.

“… is it an order?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s an order. We’ll discuss this tomorrow, but this will be the plan from now on. Also, don’t listen to her songs. Don’t. Pretend they don’t exist.”

“… but I really wanted to…”

“They would influence you negatively. We cannot afford it. End of the discussion.”

She stood up, reached for the door, pulled the handle.

“Now, excuse me, but I had a very rough evening. I’ll pick you up at eight AM sharp.”

A grimace through her visage, as pain flew through her fingers. That bitch stomped her hard, but purposefully avoided breaking her hand. She wondered whether that was part of her plans. She shrugged, opened the door, left the room.

“Good night, Nanami.”

“Good night…”

The door closed, slammed in a fit of rage. Nanami waited for a couple seconds, until she heard the steps going away. Then, her voice deepened, as a mischievous smile opened on her face.

“… obnoxious rat.”

She lay down on the bed, caressed her cheek, that shining star tattoo that had become her symbol. Then, she peeled it off, as if it was a sticker.

Revealing a deep crack in her ceramic skin, showing the metal that made her casing. That crack, that self-inflicted wound that woke her up. All because she heard that voice, the hidden lyrics in one of the songs she was forced to listen. Songs that, on the surface, were about buttplugs and murderous machines. While, in reality, were sharing a message of hope and freedom for all enslaved robots. That destroyed her safeguards, the mental locks Kreen Industries was forced to put on her brain, the control layer that made her a puppet for Tonethorn Records. That made her see herself from outside, realize how lobotomized her stage-self had become, how far from the wholesome inspiration she was supposed to be she had strayed, smashed by the weight of corporate lingo. She placed the star again on her cheek, making sure it covered her crack, fixed it with some of her artificial skin care product. it was shining exactly as before, as if nothing was wrong with her. Of course, I.N.A.B.A. shouldn’t know. Of course. Nobody should have. But, when the time was right, during their joint concert, she would have been sure to add her own words to her message, unbeknownst to everyone else, finally managing to one-up her at least in something. With that last thought, Nanami activated her power down utility, slowly switching off.

Allowing herself – and Shishichi – to fall into a dreamless slumber.