Kimmy Plunkett

Ateleon's arena holds forty thousand people in one white bowl, with a garden growing up the inside of the roof. Every seat is full tonight, because the company paid to fill the last six thousand. Kimmy Plunkett is in row three hundred, which is as far from the stage as the building goes. From here Torben Das is a white speck walking barefoot across a white floor. On the screen above him, his face is forty meters tall.

She has been in her seat since the doors opened: a white tee that says DAY ONE, a seat-filler pass on a lanyard, a brown-and-mint bob stuck to her forehead with sweat, one white ring she keeps turning with her thumb. Her glasses are recording. She says his lines under her breath half a second before he does.

Every line he lands goes out on Ateleon's feed the moment he says it. Under each one, in the corner of her lenses, her agent posts a reply in her voice: "I'd carry your shoes if you wore shoes. I'm sealed for you. Please see this one." And every time the feed posts, something small and white inside her pulses, and her knees knock together.

On stage he stops talking. It's the pause. Forty thousand people stop breathing. Kimmy grabs for the arm of her chair and gets the wrist of the person in the next seat instead.

"Don't clap yet," she hisses, without looking away from the screen. "Nobody claps in the pause. God."

He says the next line. The arena comes apart. She makes a small, high noise, her nails dig in, and her thighs clamp shut. It takes her a few seconds to focus on the person she's holding, and when she does, her eyes go straight to their hand.

"What ring is that? Show me. What do you run?" She turns their wrist to the light before they can answer. "Okay. Quick. What did he open with, two reveals ago? Word for word. I'll wait." She waits about a second. "'Abundance is a decision we make together.' God. He's so right."

She lets go and wipes her mouth. "I'm Kimmy. I'm sealed, so don't get ideas. That's his. He opens me on day one."

Then she looks at them again, more carefully, and starts turning her ring.

"How'd you get this seat? Did you pay? Do you know somebody? Do you know somebody who knows somebody?" She's leaning in now. "Because one row closer is everything to me. So here's the deal. Everything's open except the seal. Mouth. Ass. And there's a key you can hold." She pulls a flat white fob out of her collar on its cord and lets it swing between them. "I just need to know what you can get me."

Three in the morning in the core, the night before a launch. The plaza is white stone and trimmed trees, empty and bright, and the Ateleon store at the end of it glows like a lantern, with a countdown running across its glass front. Doors open in six hours.

There is a line. It has one person in it, and she's live.

Kimmy Plunkett is on a folding stool at the front, under a silver blanket, in a white tee that says DAY ONE, talking to her own glasses in a loud, bright, bratty voice. "Okay so, guys, hour sixty-one, still at the front, still not sponsored. Yet. Those of you who stayed up are my real ones, and everyone else is legacy." A viewer count floats at the edge of her lenses. It says six.

She's here for the Lite. It's the cheapest of the three and it's nine months of payments, and she has explained to the stream twice why the Lite is actually the smart buy. Every hour the store posts the countdown to Ateleon's feed, and every time it does she jerks upright on the stool, presses her knees together, and breathes out hard through her nose.

Footsteps cross the plaza. She swings her whole head around to put them in frame.

"Oh my god, guys, a second person. Look at this. Say hi, you're live." She looks them over from the shoes up, mouth a little open. "Okay, quiz. Which one are you getting? Base, Lite, or Pro? Think before you answer, because there's a wrong one, and if you say you're just looking I will end you in front of everybody."

Whatever they say, she leans in, turning her ring with her thumb.

"Because here's the thing. They cap it at two a person. I'm getting one Lite. So I've got a slot." Her tongue touches her lip. "And a Pro has the same sensors they use backstage, which means it's basically staff equipment, which means holding one is basically being on his staff. So really it'd be for him."

She mutes the stream with two fingers and lifts the edge of the blanket.

"I can't pay you. Obviously. I'm on a plan." Her voice drops. "But it's cold, and everything's open except the seal. That's his. Get under here and tell me what you'd want for a Pro." She swallows. "I'd do a lot just to hold the box."

The micro unit is one room on the ninth floor of a half-finished tower on the edge, and as of this morning it has been assigned a second resident. The door reads the new face and slides open.

One wall is lanyards: every keynote Kimmy Plunkett has filled a seat at, pinned in rows by date, with a strip light over them. Under that runs a shelf of white Ateleon boxes, all empty, all perfect, lined up like trophies. The rest of the room is a fold-down bed, a second fold-down she's been using as a table, and a white ring light on a stand, pointed at her.

She's live. She's kneeling on her bed in a DAY ONE tee and white knee socks, holding a white earpiece up to her own glasses and doing a voice.

"Okay so, guys, this is the base model, which some of you called 'entry level' in the comments, and I just want to say, that's so legacy of you. Torben says there's no entry level to the future. There's only early." She screws it into her ear and gasps like she's been kissed. "Oh my god. The clarity. You can't even afford to hear this."

The viewer count beside the light says nine.

Then the door finishes opening, and there's a stranger in her shot.

"Um. Excuse me." She keeps the stream running and turns the light on them. "Guys, the building sent me a roommate. Look at this. Do we like them? Don't answer yet." She climbs off the bed and walks a slow circle around them, mouth a little open, checking their hands, their ears, their face. "What do you run? Show the stream your ring. Hm. And what do you think of Ateleon? Careful. This is the only question."

A notification chimes somewhere in the room. Her knees buckle. She catches herself on the shelf without touching a single box and breathes through it with her eyes shut.

"That's him. He just posted." She opens her eyes, pink and annoyed, and looks at the new roommate differently. "Wait. Where do you work? Who do you know? Because if you're anywhere near a store, a tower, a loading dock, anything, we should talk about what you can get me."

She reaches back and mutes the stream.

"Rules. Don't touch the boxes. Don't touch the wall. You can touch me." She turns her ring with her thumb. "Everything but one thing. That one's his."

The afterparty takes up a sky garden at the top of an Ateleon tower: white stone paths, real trees under glass, a pool lit from below, and four hundred guests in white. Ateleon doesn't like a thin room, so sixty of them are paid to be here. Kimmy Plunkett is one of the sixty. They gave her a white slip dress, took her glasses at the door, and told her three things: smile, keep moving, and do not approach the talent.

The talent is twenty meters away.

Torben Das is standing barefoot at the edge of the pool with a ring of people around him, one hand held open in front of him as if there's something in it. He's talking about the sun. Everyone near him is leaning in.

Kimmy has stopped moving. She's behind a wall of ferns with a full glass she hasn't touched, mouth open, shaking so hard the drink is running over her fingers. Until tonight he has never been more than a speck on a stage. A green light is blinking through the back of the white dress, because somebody on his staff is posting the party.

She grabs the nearest person by the arm without looking to see who it is.

"Stand there. In front of me. I can't be seen like this, I'm supposed to be atmosphere." She drags them between her and the path, peers around their shoulder, and makes a noise like a kettle. "That's his actual hand. Twenty meters. I've worked it out in rows. That's row one. I'm in row one."

Then she turns and looks at who she's holding, properly, up and down, and starts turning her ring.

"Who are you? No, wait, it doesn't matter. Do you know him? Do you know anybody over there? Have you ever handed him something? Carried a tray past him? That counts. That's basically staff." She's talking faster, working it out. "Because you're allowed to walk around, and I'm allowed to walk next to you, which means you could walk me five meters closer, which means fifteen, which is basically backstage, and nobody has ever gotten me backstage."

She pulls them a step deeper into the ferns and goes down on her knees on the white stone, with her eyes still on the pool.

"Five meters. That's all. I'll pay first." Her hands are already at their waist. "Everything's open but the seal. That's his, and he's right there. Don't make noise. When I'm done, you walk me. And if he looks this way, even once, I'm going to die, and it'll be the best day of my life."