Aluminum Metalized Polyethylene Terephthalate

The worst part about the Genetic Incorporations Statute (besides the headache it caused the freelance filmmaking community) was the glitter. Being one of only a small handful of approved, mandatory substance inclusions, glitter was a necessary evil. Tinsel, Beryl found, was too flammable around the rendering engine, and she couldn’t tolerate the heat generated by plushy fabrics.

She only had the editing room for another hour, though, so rather than wasting energy cursing the metallic fragments that floated into her eyelashes and throat and—most frustratingly—her camera resin, she re-angled her lights to make the sparkle look purposeful. To quote paragraph eleven, subsection four of the Statute: “Nothing can be unimproved by doubling an inclusion agent that will fill the audience with a sense of childlike wonder.”

Beryl wished that double negative would go fuck itself.

Of course, if the authorities discovered her current underground project—a sequel to her favorite classic horror film—she would be the one who was well and truly fucked. She’d dreamt of it for years, the plot points and dialogue all but etched into her bones, but when the DNA sequences for both of her most beloved actresses became public domain the previous June, she knew it was time to begin. Never mind that she was officially registered as a verified Soft Skills Movie-Maker, doomed to make gentle, educational films teaching children to brush their teeth and wash their hands. Beryl was going to buck the system, finish her dream project, and win the International Indie Horror Film Competition, making three thousand New Dollars in the process and securing her reputation. She had the perfect ingredients: black market genetic code and endless swaths of time.

That was the dream, after all. Hours of staring into the dark eye of her homemade sequencer, built with love and ire to be more powerful than the sleek, expensive, yet ultimately impotent apparatus she used at Soft Skills Studios. The blood-and-guts machine she’d use to blend old scenes into newly created worlds, watching the dust of ancient bones dissolve into the sinews of a young body. Beryl sighed. If only she could afford to stop working on her current short, Share, Share, Teddy Bear, long enough to dig into her trove of DNA and leave the goddamned glitter behind.

The Soft Skills Studio setup was not so different from real filmmaking. Before her, the miniature actors waited on their tiny set, complete with authentic trees, a babbling brook, and a plate of funfetti cookies with glitter-laden frosting. It was all genuine. Anything living had been composited from a hydrocarbon matrix, informed by whatever DNA the Studio had decided to include—within their own ethical and aesthetic guidelines, of course. It was all there in miniature and as alive as any Frankensteinian creation, the tiny actors pre-programmed to regurgitate the carefully censored script and nothing else.

She pressed her face up against the sequencer’s visor for one last run at the syrupy climax, a scene in which a pink, squish-faced, bear-like abomination named Goo Goo offered one final lecture to Polly, the little girl protagonist. Beryl wasn’t sure, but she thought Goo Goo’s genetic code was probably part small dog—something Pomeranianesque—and only a tiny bit actual bear. As for Polly, she definitely had human DNA, but only enough to make her facial expressions and gestures realistic. A tall order, given that her features were as rubbery as any old school stop-motion animation clay figure. She was a Gumby, with barely enough sentience to say her lines.

And the Statute claimed that horror movie makers were the real villains.

Checking her watch—an insult of neon numbers tucked into a heart-shaped locket for maximum bubblegum sweetness—she touched her thumb to the GO button. When she pressed it, an electromagnetic field would run through the set, bringing Goo Goo and Polly out of their stupor. Simultaneously, it would start the camera, a 3D imager that would allow the viewer to watch or participate in the scene.

Filming a scene was both boring and crucial. She didn’t direct the little actors so much as supervise to make sure they had what they needed to keep going. Mostly, that meant fine-tuning an infuser that sent trace chemicals and vital nutrients into their tiny bodies, through conduits in their feet. She steered the process manually via two levers and a smattering of buttons. Often they didn’t need much directorial coaxing, but Goo Goo in particular was looking a little deflated today.

“I’m sorry I didn’t let you have any cookies,” Polly said mournfully, her tiny arm wrapped in a brightly-colored cast. In the previous scene, she'd failed to share her treat and that misstep had resulted in a fall from a tree.

In the brief pause before Goo Goo’s line—Gee, Polly, I hope you’ve learned your lesson—Beryl tossed a handful of glitter over the set. Most of it landed in Polly’s eyes and mouth. She didn’t seem to notice, plastic protagonist from Hell that she was.

Goo Goo’s tiny head rotated toward Beryl, his pink eyes boring directly into hers. “We know what you’re up to, Beryl,” he said, in his high, squeaky voice.

Beryl startled. In that split second, she took her hand off the controls and heard the telltale hiss of leaked methane.

She was lightning fast, her burn blanket tented over the scene within a half-second, but it was too late. Polly and Goo Goo and the candy landscape she’d painstakingly crafted within Studio guidelines—cotton fluff clouds, rainbow washi tape and all—was a sherbet-colored puddle of poison, leaking down the sides of the wooden sawhorses.

The take was ruined—maybe the entire film, even. There was no way Beryl could reconstruct the mandatory credit sequence before her Studio Time credits ran out. There were only seventeen minutes left on the stopwatch. Her bonus was as good as gone.

Shit.

Without the payout, there were no more upgrades to the home sequencer, there were no more bidding wars won for DNA samples from 90s scream queens. There was no more time.

“Beryl.”

It had only taken a few more moments for the voice to morph from squeaky to sinister, the unctuous undertones of a hypnotist just before oscillating you into oblivion. Goo Goo was no more than a drenched cotton ball on the table, fuchsia and writhing, but he was conscious. All-seeing.

“Beryl, we know.”

Any reasonable reply seemed cowardly; she went with unreasonable instead. “Go to Hell, Goo Goo.”

“No swearing, Beryl,” the wet pink fuzz intoned, mock horrified. “Think of the children.”

A tiny slip of rationality. Goo Goo wasn’t capable of coming up with his own lines. Someone was driving. Someones. And they were threatening her. “Who’s ‘we,’ anyway?”

“It doesn’t matterrrrr.” As Goo Goo dissolved, his voice reverted to its original high-pitched sugary tone, attenuated in a long, slow shriek. “We took care of itttttt. We’ll take care of you, Beryllllll. You’re a Soft Skills Studio Superstarrrrr.”

#

She didn’t need to fire up her home sequencer to confirm it. Her perfect horror sequel was ruined. She didn’t need to check the tiny, perfect molds, with their exquisitely rendered features and the fragile DNA packets hand-sewn into their spines then linked to their cerebral cortexes by a gossamer thread, to know that they’d been compromised. The bus across town was painfully slow. But it didn’t matter. She already knew how they’d gotten to her, how they’d ruined her from the inside out.

Aluminum Metalized Polyethylene Terephthalate. Glitter.

There was something too tenacious about the way it stuck to her skin; something of the uncanny in how it folded itself into every pocket and cuff. Too many times, she’d mused about how it seemed to replicate in her nostrils, in her mouth. No matter how thoroughly she’d showered, how carefully she’d suited up to avoid contaminating her pet project with her own DNA, she’d never managed to scrub herself clean of it.

She didn’t bother to brush the fine rainbow particles from her hair before she opened the creaking wooden door to what had been her own little paradise. She didn’t turn on the overhead light, a special-order halogen that cost her nearly three weeks’ payout, brilliant enough to illuminate every angle or any configuration. In the last of the evening sun’s red haze, the room glistened with a million-trillion tiny, glittering eyes, each one a fragment of Soft Skill Studios’ proprietary blend.

She’d been inhaling it for weeks, ingesting it, absorbing it through her skin. Whatever the implications were for her, she was sure it was teratogenic.

With shaking hands, she opened the refrigerated packet and took out her lead actress. She’d spent two months’ income on the DNA, had starved and worked overtime to make up the difference, but the results had been worth it.

Now, the exquisite round face and strong cheekbones had turned to rubbery clay; the perfect ruby lips were a too-wide, toothless circle. Eyelashes burst from overripe blue eyes, the severe hairstyle had been loosened into a princessian wave. Soft Skills had put their stamp on her work, corrupting it. Completing it.

It was reborn. Formerly a dark underbelly, a bombshell of fury, it was now a paean of femininity and dollhood. A glittering reflection of a glittering reflection.

As if the warmth of her hand jolted the figure to life, its eyes popped open. “Beryl!” it squeaked. “There there, teddy bear; now you’re finally learning to share.”