Final Injury

Manon’s morning is in a particular state of malfunction.

In fact, the night itself had been rough–sleeplessness had become counting to lull herself to sleep, numbers bouncing around in her skull with varying degrees of force as she lay flat on her back, lumpy pillow curving around the edges of her skull. That’s fine, though. Sleep is for the weak, the rechargeable.

She spends thirteen minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, unable to release her grip on the basin of the sink as she forces eye contact with her reflection. A single curl flops over onto her forehead, the same dark curve as the bags below both eyes. Finally, her eyes drop, the stare breaks, losing the battle with herself. She sweeps her hair back, dots her face with makeup, rolls her bottom lip in two fingers until it looks less pale. Manon’s stomach rumbles.

She brushes her teeth twice.

It’s still dark outside by the time she gets to the studio, blue light washing through the parking lot and into her weary eyes. It’s empty, entirely, except for the one other car parked adjacent to hers, perfectly parallel and without a scratch on it. She slams the car door closed and scurries to the elevator.

Her checkscreen, a simple sheet of silicone glowing brightly, chimes delicately as a reminder to clock in. Once, twice, three times, until Manon is smashing the first floor button as if the speed of the elevator hydraulics will bend to her will. The checkscreen chimes turning to vibrations and the vibrations turn to her trembling finger poised above the screen, ready to clock in as soon as the elevator doors open with their own characteristic ding. And then they do.

Manon clocks in to work, steps out of the elevator, takes long strides down the hall, focusing on the minty smell of her rapid breath, just about the last cool particle in her body. Sanahita, the stage manager, appears like a tall shadow, a cresting wave behind her. Manon doesn’t need to see Sanahita or her shadow to know she’s there. She can smell her like a shark would have smelled blood, that terrible perfume on Sanahita that’s making her want to put a bullet through her brain.

In the trainings, these feelings–these jaw clenching, hand-trembling, person-hating sort of feelings–are said to be expected. Not welcomed, but expected. As they race to the dressing rooms, Sanahita’s voice cuts through Manon’s swirling thoughts, and she stumbles.

“Nine minutes until they start up.” Sanahita hurriedly disappears off to her left.

Checkscreen still clutched in hand, Manon braces her shoulder to the swinging door of the dressing room and wedges herself in, the yellow light of the room already making her sweat. She tosses the silicon screen to the vanity and flings herself out of her morning clothing, then carefully slides into her performance dress, making sure it sits precisely before doing the same to the bandages on her feet, then her dance shoes and their ribbons. Manon has been counting down the seconds in her head, the five hundred and forty from Sanahita’s notice and the two hundred remaining. She drops into the swiveling chair in front of the mirror, fiddling with her face. Fishing around in a basket of brushes, the wicker cracked and splintering, she retrieves a flat silver rectangle and balances the thin blade of foil between her lips, the powdery stick of gum pressing through the sides of the wrapper.

Manon never bothers to unwrap gum before putting it in her mouth, a behavioral oddity–a way to get as close to metal as she can, a way to train herself for this new reality.

Still, she isn’t a robot.

After a chew per second, and a meticulous count of each (fifteen), she reaches to her mouth and picks the silvery paper from the sickly sweet wad of gum perched on her front teeth, hoping the satisfactory pluck will settle her stomach (it doesn’t). The gum follows the paper, stretching about as thin as Manon’s patience before she sticks the gum to the table, leaving a pixel-thin border of white condensation on the cool steel around it.

There are fifty five seconds remaining, as Manon makes Sanahita well aware when the woman knocks at her door. Manon herself is always aware, an awareness that clocks the fact that this is her fourth of four performances, the final one. The performances are meticulous, prepared for and executed precisely without using one extraneous cell, but she still finds enough room for contempt that she swirls her chair fiercely as she stands.

She pulls open the door and follows the illuminated arrows to the stage. The countdown is done, the seconds at zero.

Manon enters the stage, the lights shining down on her harshly. There’s nothing dance-like about the way she enters, simply a mechanical action on two feet. When she arrives mid-stage, in the very center, she begins.

Her feet tap, a swirling movement of left and right, up and down. She’s astutely aware of her movements, her feet above all, the feeling of flushed pinks and whites cleaned up by the cool peppermint of her breath, masking ketones of a pitted stomach and the heat of the lights above. Every movement is precise, every fraction of time and fraction of the fraction counting.

After this, in only minutes, she’ll hobble past an ever-annoying Sanahita to her dressing room and peel off the layers to reveal the same sight as always–swollen feet, ragged cuticles, blood poking itself from the corners of her toenails. After this, she’ll light a cigarette, a real-world taboo (or rather a contraband), letting it take the place of her tinny, sugary, gum and filling herself up with a second burn. After this, Manon will clock out again, bite her tongue at Sanahita, and exit quietly to the parking lot. She’ll drive past five factories, five skyscrapers, ten human development centers. She’ll see one hundred acres of dead grassland and smoking craters, hazy enough to be as pixelated as every other piece of the life she lives.

But there’s no time to think about the future, no matter how immediate. She shouldn’t, or she’ll stumble. And then, by the grace of anything holy and unbelieved, Manon is done, stumble-free and unfaltering. She freezes, holding the final pose, gracefully trembling and dress settling, peering to the audience over her own bottom lids and through the bright light. Stretching out in front of her, for the last one hundred and forty two seconds, has been an empty auditorium. Rows of velvet-clad wood stretch out to the soundbooth, where, behind the glass, she can make out a glowing screen, embedded with two large, orange lights that begin to flash. Below them by only a distance are two equally large glass circles, darkened lenses reflecting the hazardous orange. All lights but those go out, the electrical hum with them. Over the speakers, a tinny, unnaturally cadenced voice rings out.

“Performance Four. The Final Dance is now completed. All training models please exit stage left. All training models please exit stage left.”

Manon exits stage left.

She returns to the dressing room. It means nothing, its contents the same. None of it is hers, nor has it ever been. It’s been at least two years since it was used. There’s very little need for dancers any more, or artists of any kind. Same for laborers, athletes, workers of any kind, at least of the human variety. She undresses, she grabs her checkscreen, she clicks to clock out as she enters the elevator.

The fourth of four shows completes the last of her work, putting her on the edge of a vast and cavernous ravine. Below, there is only uncertainty, a thick fog wrapping her and cutting off the air. There has never been a plan for the Artists. She performs her pain and her training for the cameras, the functions, the programs. The recording becomes archived data, put into a new model that will, unlike her, never use a dressing room to prepare or even use a chair to sit in, because it’s not human, it’s not real. It’s one of a thousand, million, billion pieces of data that is mining the humans, the live. The model is built for its life purpose, to be Manon and every last person who performs like Manon and suddenly Manon is stopping her car, getting out, putting herself into the gray and ashy air. This is it, the awareness, the only overwhelming sense of emotion and without a chasing wave of relief.

This sort of thing is expected, like it says in the training.