Cyberotique

What the hell kind of name is "Sherry Cashmere" anyway?

The bouncer leaned against the end of the bar as she watched the spectacle center stage, almost completely transfixed.

Gotta be a stage name, right? No loving parent would ever do that to a child. What's a kid gonna do with a name like Sherry Cashmere? Nobody's gonna take a name like that seriously outside of the porn industry, you'd be setting the kid up for failure...

...guess I'm not complaining, though...

The music overhead shifted gears as the bass dropped and the beat came thundering in, sweeping up Sherry Cashmere's body in its flow.

...god, look at her...it's like she's not even here with us right now. She's perfectly in sync with the music, but her eyes are so distant. I wonder what she's thinking about?

There was a shout from the crowd as the dancer took hold of the pole at center stage and wrapped a fishnet-stocking leg around it.

Where do you even get that kind of confidence? Everyone staring at you like they're undressing you with their eyes, and you just go and do it for them like you don't even care.

The stage lights morphed in color as the dancer snaked her way to the edge of the stage, fingers running over her body in search of straps and strings to unwind.

Maybe that's her secret. She just ignores the crowd and pretends nobody is watching her. Like this is a normal Wednesday night for her, she's not doing anything weird. Yeah, getting naked on a stage under the lights while people clap and whistle at you is totally normal behavior.

The bouncer resisted the urge to clap or whistle as a clasp unsnapped, and a button popped open in front. The stripper's movements became even more focused and on beat in response.

She's completely lost in the sauce. I can't even tell where the music ends and she begins. What kind of black magic is this? It's like the music is INSIDE her. She's like a puppet on the strings of melody. Controlled like she was a--

A rap of knuckles on the counter snapped her out of her thoughts. The bouncer turned her head to see the sharp, wizened stare of the bartender looking back at her. He brushed a hand over his perpetually-tired face and began pouring a glass of some cheap gold-tinted beer.

"...I didn't order anything," she told him.

"Not for you," he replied, his voice every bit as wrinkled and sleep-deprived as his face looked. "No drinking on the job, you know that."

"Heh."

The bartender pointed to a very particular seat in the audience. "See the kid in the ugly beige jacket?"

She didn't see him at first. With an almost audible click, her vision flickered as it filtered out the glare of the stage lights and bumped up the contrast input, and the kid in question came right into focus. "The one on the end acting like he's at a college football game?"

"He's been loud as the devil himself since he walked in," he replied gravely, as if he had any other tone of voice at his disposal. "Hasn't bought one drink, but he's already plastered. Acts like he's never seen a tit since his first bottle."

"...want me to go deal with him?"

"We don't make deals, Rossybelle," he said, leaning on the counter. "Go serve him this. If he yells at you for blocking the show, and I'll bet your stupid hat he will, you throw his ass out."

"Got it."

Rossybelle - she preferred to go by Rossy - carefully took the full glass in one hand, slid off the stool and began making her way around the row of seats toward the stage. She wanted to smack the bartender for that hat comment, as she took a great deal of personal pride in her eccentric fashion, but decided that smacking her new boss on her first week was probably not the right move for someone desperate to be holding a job of any kind.

To be fair though, the hat really was a key centerpiece to her whole eclectic ensemble. It was a blood-red fedora with an extra long brim, belted around the crown to hold an oversized down feather that fluffed and bounced when she walked. Okay, maybe it was a stupid hat, but it certainly marked her as a real character with an almost endearing - if a bit goofy - air of mystery. This was not to mention that a ridiculous outfit provided an ideal way to draw attention away from other certain personal insecurities...

And speaking of ridiculous outfits, another round of applause rose up from the audience as a pair of red leather gloves were ceremoniously peeled off and discarded onstage. Rossy weaved her way through seats and tables automatically, trying to focus on navigating the crowd without spilling the beer instead of the magic happening on the stage beside her. The distant thought of getting this over with quickly so she wouldn't miss the good part seemed to spur her on.

The troublemaking customer in question wasn't all that hard to spot. He was up in the front row, riding his chair backwards and hollering at the stage like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon. He was dressed in a leather varsity jacket from some local community college, discolored beige with obnoxiously bright green trim, complete with a pair of dark blue denim jeans. Rossy wondered if she should turn him over to the appropriate fashion authorities after kicking the guy out.

...hah, imagine ME calling the fashion police. They'd take one look at my zebra blouse, my high-waisted mom jeans, pointy leather cowgirl boots, and my Carmen Sandiego-ass hat, and I'd be behind bars faster than you can say Cyndi Lauper...

...well, better to be arrested for fashion crimes than for certain other reasons, I guess.

Rossy stopped in front of the rowdy young man and swiveled on her heel to face him. The jacket looked even worse up close, the leather visibly cracked and peeling in spots along the arms. Even the kid's sun-splotched skin and slicked-back sandy brown hair melted right into the beige, like he'd intentionally picked this outfit to color uncoordinate with himself. From the boyish shape of his face, he looked like a high school quarterback who'd just gotten a new car and a fake ID for his 17th birthday.

When he realized the woman currently in his line of sight was actually wearing clothes, he jerked his head left and right, trying to see around her. "Hey, get your ass outta my way!"

"You order a beer?" Rossy asked flatly.

"What? I dunno man, but will ya move? You're gonna make me miss it!" He tried to wave her off with a buzzing motion.

Rossy's finely-tuned hearing picked up a soft zipping sound just over the pulsing music. There was no table to set the glass down. "Just take the drink...sir."

"Just hold on, I gotta see this part!" he insisted, leaning into his neighbor's lap to catch whatever saucy tidbits he might be missing up on stage.

"I'm not gonna tell you again." She pushed the drink toward his face.

"MOVE!" he commanded, grabbing hold of her hip and shoving her aside.

Except, of course, she didn't budge.

Not expecting to her to be quite so heavy, the man gave her another attempted shove, and when that too inevitably failed, hopped to his feet angrily. He was easily a full head shorter than she was.

"You're IN my fuckin' WAY!" he shouted, fully convinced she and the rest of the establishment hadn't heard him the first few times. "Back up or I'll get your manager involved!"

Rossy towered over him, tilting her head to look down on him, then turning to the distinguished-looking man in a business suit sitting beside him. "This guy bothering you too?"

"Yes, thank you," he replied, giving her hat a funny look before turning back to the show.

The drunk shot him a dirty glance, then retrained his double vision on Rossy. "Listen, I paid good money to see some hot girls tonight, and your ugly face ain't doin' me no favors!"

He kept his chest puffed up even as Rossy took another step into his personal bubble. "Last chance. Calm down or I'm throwing you out."

"...sir," she added, venomously.

"Like hell you are," he growled back. He then proceeded to make the ultimate mistake and swatted the glass out of her hand like a spoiled child, spilling cheap beer all over her new favorite outfit.

And right on cue, the rest of the audience cheered as a certain revelation took place on stage, accompanied by the drop of the final chorus in the pounding, thumping music overhead.

...damn, missed it.

With a mechanically precise swiftness, Rossy grabbed hold of the kid's wrist and yanked him to his feet, stopping him in place with her knee. As he stumbled, she snatched up his other wrist and spun him around, holding the arm behind his back as her other arm wrapped around the front of his chest.

"Your ride's here," she whispered harshly into his ear.

Before he could formulate a response, she marched him out the front door, casting a glance back at the bartender on her way. He nodded back before disappearing behind the counter to resume his duties. She wanted to risk a glance back toward the stage as well, but decided against it. If she continued to make a good impression early on, she might actually be able to keep this job, which would mean plenty of chances to catch a show in the future.

"You can't do this to me!" The kid kicked and struggled against a pair of arms much stronger than his would ever be. "I paid cash to see this shit, you can't throw me out without a refund! I'll review bomb this place off the map!"

Rossy didn't grace him with a response as she shoved the door open with a shoulder and hauled him out into the cold winter evening.

"Put me down, you bitch!" He tried to smash his heel into Rossy's foot, only to feel the pain shoot right back up his own leg instead. "Jesus, what the hell is that boot made of?"

"Leather," she deflected coolly, releasing him at the foot of the steps outside the front entrance. "I'd call a cab if I were you, cause I'm not letting you back in here."

He angrily brushed off his jacket, though he clearly hadn't fallen in anything that needed to be brushed off, then took a step backwards to catch his balance. "Stupid bitch...you'd better be the one paying for it!"

"My ass we're paying for it," she crossed her arms and stood still as steel, a sentinel at her gate.

"And I want a refund for the tits I didn't get to see!"

"Don't we all," she muttered, equally upset about missing the show. "Look, kid. You broke the rules, now you get to pay the penalty. Now you can either call yourself a cab, or I can call the cops. You're at the top of my shit list tonight, and I think I've already been too damn patient with you up to this point."

"Whaddya want, a medal?" He rubbed his nose with his thumb. "You don't scare me."

Rossy sighed, her fist slowly clenching on its own. "Whatever. This had better be the last time I see your face tonight." With that, she decisively planted a foot against the concrete and, with a smooth twist of her ankle joints, executed a flawless turn on the heels of her fancy leather boots.

She made it exactly one step up the stairs before a hand wrapped itself in a death grip around her wrist.

"Don't you walk away from me, bitch," he spat at her, almost literally. The excess of confidence in his eyes was almost adorable.

Her fist clenched again. "...try and stop me."

He did.

Try, that is.

Rossy's body barely budged, and the kid would have fallen backward on the concrete if he hadn't been latched onto her arm with such a tight grip. He stumbled, but impressively managed to find his footing again. He shook the dizzy feeling out of his head and glared at her arm as if it should have popped out of its socket in his hand. Rossy frowned back at him, but only as an automatic response. Beneath that stone-cold façade, a subtle red flag of panic raised in alarm.

He tugged experimentally on her arm again, eyeing her joints suspiciously. "...you some kinda bodybuilder or something? You got a hell of a gun show here...".

"Let go of me," she whisper-commanded through her teeth, "...or I'll make you regret it."

The words flowed right around him like a river around a stone. Curious, he brought his face closer to inspect her arm, as if she were some kind of interactive exhibit. He rapped his knuckles curiously against her skin. She felt nothing but a small electric tingle in her brain with each rap.

"...holy shit, that's not even a real arm, is it?" he proclaimed, proud of his assessment as he continued to ponder it without the required permissions. "It's a prospetic--a prossh...prosstette--you got a metal arm!"

...shit.

"Let GO of me!" she fired back, finally pushing him away with her free hand as she forcibly withdrew her wrist from his grasp. His inebriated sense of balance offered no resistance this time and he tumbled to the ground like a straw man. He groaned in pain and struggled to push himself up on his palms.

"...wait, you're one of those...uh, y'know..." he fumbled drunkenly for the words, "...y'know, a...a faker. A syburb--uh, a--a ROBOT!"

Her cybernetic eyes shifted away from his, then back. A red light blinked on the edge of her vision.

Outed already, huh? That's promising...

"...look, it doesn't matter WHAT I am," Rossy replied, as if it really didn't. "WHO I am is the pissed-off bouncer throwing your drunk ass out of the bar. That's all that matters."

"Ha ha, damn robot try'na tell me what to do," he ignored her, struggling to his feet. "Beep boop, get out of my bar...what a joke!"

Great, he knows. Bet he's a goddamn blabber mouth, too. I can't lose this job, not again! Need a plan...

"Man, no wonder they hired you, huh Robot Girl?" the man continued, swaying a bit as he stood up. "Gotta fill those diversity quotas, am I right?"

Still searching for a plan, Rossy felt a twitch in her brain, like a nerve with a sudden, shuddering itch that needed to be scratched. Her fingers jerked in response. The red light blinked again.

"Hey, lemme see somethin'!" He ambled up toward her again, reaching into his back pocket with one hand.

The brain itch pinched harder.

His hand came out holding a fancy pocket knife, which flicked open as he continued his approach. "Don't be scared now. Not like it's gonna hurt, right?"

She knew she shouldn't have done what she did next.

Like any piece of emerging technology, creativity is born of necessity, but innovation only comes about from morbid curiosity and convenient handfuls of money. So while necessity was responsible for such insightful inventions as prosthetic limbs, it wasn't until certain monetarily-endowed eccentrists brought their specific brand of "imagination" into the question that cybernetics could really explore the reaches of their true possibility. As it works, throw enough money at an idea to build and test a prototype, and regardless of whether it's a good idea or a bad one, voila! It will exist, for better or worse.

In the drunk kid's case, cybernetic joints with electric motors capable of propelling several hundred pounds of woman-shaped machinery from zero to sixty directly into his body was definitely for the worst.

Rossy was airborne before the kid even saw her coil back. She collided head-on and sent his body sprawling with hers down onto the pavement below. As he coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood, she twisted the pocket knife out of his grip and tossed it aside. And, taking care to exercise a little more precision accuracy this time, she hauled the both of them back up to a standing position, with the kid in a full nelson hold.

By the time his world stopped spinning and he found himself unable to move, he squirmed in Rossy's carbon fiber grip. "...what the hell are you?"

"I told you," she whispered, seething in his ear. "I'm the bouncer."

His breathing faltered as he continued to struggle. "...I already told you, I'm not scared of you." The wet dribble in his jeans suggested otherwise.

Riding the heat of the moment, she moved one hand in front of his face and slowly extended her middle finger. Then, with a loud click and a snap, the finger joint popped open and flipped backward against the back of her hand. In its place, a thin, silvery blade emerged from its hiding place, gleaming wickedly in the winter moonlight.

Rossy pressed the flat side of the blade against his neck and suggested, quite menacingly, "...maybe you should be."

When he failed to respond, she abruptly released him, giving him a push forward with her knee. Against the intoxicated odds, he managed to catch his balance. A few much-needed deep breaths helped him regather the pieces of himself he was sure had been extricated from his body. The only piece missing was his pocket knife, which he didn't seem keen on retrieving anymore.

And before he could so much as give Rossy a weird glare, he heard a car pulling up into the parking lot behind them.

Thinking it might be the aforementioned police, he turned to see the blinding headlights of a cab, coincidentally dropping off an unsuspecting passenger. The kid turned again to sputter a few words of confusion back at the cyborg bouncer, but she had already disappeared back into the bar.

With the door safely shut behind her, Rossy finally "unclenched" - that is, now that fear and anger were no longer the presiding authorities of her brain, she wasn't constantly thinking about her limbs coiling up anymore, so they stopped doing that - and she decided it was time to acknowledge the little red light, still blinking just on the edge of her vision.

She called up her virtual overlay, the screen behind her eyes that no one else could see, and opened the messaging app. A new message hovered in front of her, its tone cold and condescending.

THAT DIDN'T TAKE L0NG...I'M N0T ENTIRELY C0NVINCED Y0U UNDERSTAND THIS WH0LE "L0W PR0FILE" THING, R0SIE...

"Shut up," she muttered back, her words appearing on-screen as she did. "Little shit made me miss the show."