fashions. You could choose among a million kinds of beauty or weirdness, or even keep your natural-born face your whole life. These days 'pretty' meant whatever got you noticed.
But one thing about Prettyville was still the same: If you hadn't turned sixteen, you weren't supposed to go there. Not at night, when all the good stuff happened.
Especially if you were an extra, a loser, an unknown.
Gazing at the city, she felt engulfed by her own invisibility Each of its sparkling lights stood for one of the million people who had never heard of Aya Fuse. Who probably never would.
She sighed, urging her hoverboard forward.
The government feeds always said that the Prettytime was gone forever, freeing humanity from centuries of bubbleheadedness. They claimed that the divisions among uglies, pretties, and crumb lies had all been washed away. That the last three years had unleashed a host of new technologies, setting the future in motion again.
But as far as Aya could see, the mind-rain hadn't changed everything It still pretty much sucked, being fifteen.
'Are you getting this?' she whispered.
Moggie was already shooting, the shimmer of safety fireworks reflecting from its lenses. Hot-air balloons swayed over the mansion, and revelers screamed down from the rooftops in bungee jackets. It looked like a party back in the old days: self-indulgent and eye-kickingly radiant.
At least, that was how Aya's older brother always described the Prettytime. Back then everyone had gotten one big operation on their sixteenth birthday. It made you beautiful, but secretly changed your personality, leaving you brain-missing and easily controlled.
Hiro hadn't been a bubblehead very long; he'd turned sixteen only a few months before the mind-rain had arrived and cured the pretties. He liked to claim that those months had been awful?as if being shallow and vain was such a stretch for him. But he never denied that the parties had been awesome.
Not that Hiro would be here tonight; he was way too famous. Aya checked her eyescreen: the average face rank inside was about twenty thousand. Compared with her older brother, the people at this bash were total extras.
Compared to an ugly ranked at half a million, though, they were legends.
'Be careful, Moggie,' she whispered. 'We're not wanted here.'
Aya flipped up the hood of her robe, and stepped out of the shadows.
Inside, the air was full of hovercams. From Moggle-size all the way down to paparazzi swarms, each cam no bigger than a champagne cork.
There was always plenty to see at tech-head parties, crazy people and kick new gadgets. Maybe people weren't as beautiful as back during the Pretty time, but parties were a lot more interesting: serious surge-monkeys with snake fingers and medusa hair; smart-matter clothes that rippled like flags in a breeze; safety fireworks skittering along the floor, dodging feet and sizzling incense as they passed.
Tech-heads lived for new technologies?they loved showing off their latest tricks, and kickers loved putting them on their feeds. The endless cycle of invention and publicity bumped everyone's face rank, so everyone was happy.
Everyone who got invited, anyway.
A hovercam buzzed close, almost low enough to peek in at Aya's face. She lowered her head, making her way toward a cluster of Reputation Bombers. Here in public they all kept their hoods up, like a bunch of pre-Rusty Buddhist monks. They were already bombing: chanting the name of some random member of the clique, trying to convince the city interface to bump his face rank.
Aya bowed to the group and joined the blur of name-dropping, keeping her ugly face covered.
The whole point of bombing was to dissect the city's reputation algorithms: How many mentions of your name did it take to crack the top thousand? How quickly did you drop if everyone stopped talking about you? The clique was one big controlled experiment, which was why they all wore the same anonymous outfits.
But Aya figured most Bombers didn't care about the math. They were just cheaters, pathetic extras trying to talk themselves famous. It was like how they'd manufactured celebrities back in Rusty days, a handful of feeds hyping a few bubbleheads and ignoring everybody else.
What was the point of the reputation economy, if someone was telling you who to talk about?
But Aya chanted away like a good little Bomber, keeping her attention on her eyescreen, watching the view from Moggies lenses. The hovercam drifted over the crowd, picking out faces one by one.
The secret clique Aya had discovered had to be here somewhere. Only tech-heads could pull off a trick like that She'd spotted them three nights before, riding on top of one of the new mag-lev trains, traveling at insane speeds through the factory district?so fast that all the shots Moggie had taken were too grainy and blurry to use.
Aya had to find them again. Whoever kicked a crazy trick like mag-lev riding would be instantly famous.
But Moggie was already distracted, watching a gaggle of NeoFoodies underneath a pink blob floating in the air. They were drinking from it with meter-long straws, like astronauts recapturing a spilled cup of tea.
NeoFoodies were old news?Hiro had kicked a story about them last month. They ate extinct mushrooms grown from ancient spores, made ice cream with liquid nitrogen, and injected flavors into weird forms of matter. The floating pink stuff looked like an aerogel, dinner with the density of a soap bubble.
A small blob broke off and floated past. Aya grimaced, smelling rice and salmon. Eating strange substances might be a great way to bump your face rank, but she preferred her sushi heavier than air.
She liked being around tech-heads, though, even if she had to hide. Most of the city was still stuck in the past, trying to rediscover haiku, religion, the tea ceremony?all the things that had been lost in the Prettytime, when everyone had been brain-damaged. But tech-heads were building the future, making up for three centuries of missing progress.
This was the place to find stories.
Something in her eyescreen sent a flicker of recognition through her.
'Hold it, Moggie!' she hissed. 'Pan left.'
There behind the NeoFoodies, watching with amusement as they chased down stray bloblets, was a familiar face.
'That's one of them! Zoom in.'
The girl was about eighteen, classic new-pretty surge with slightly manga eyes. She was wearing a hoverball rig, floating gracefully ten centimeters above the floor. And she had to be famous: A reputation bubble surrounded her, a cohort of friends and groupies to keep extras away.
'Get close enough to hear them,' Aya whispered. Moggie eased to the edge of the bubble, and soon its microphones caught the girl's name. Data spilled across Aya's eye-screen Eden Maru was a hoverball player?left wing for the Swallows, who'd been city champions last year. She was also legendary for her lifter mods.
According to all the feeds, Eden had just dumped her boyfriend because of 'a difference in ambition.' Of course, that was just code for 'she got too famous for him.' Eden's face rank had hit ten thousand after the championship, and what's-his-name's was stuck at a quarter million. Everyone knew she needed to hook up with someone more face-equal.
But none of the rumors mentioned Eden's new mag-lev riding clique. She must be keeping that a secret, waiting for the right moment to reveal the trick.
Kicking it first would make Aya famous overnight.
'Track her,' she told Moggie, then went back to chanting.
Half an hour later, Eden Maru headed out.
Slipping away from the Bombers was bliss-making? Aya had chanted the name 'Yoshio Nara' about a million times. She hoped Yoshio enjoyed his pointless face rank bump, because she never wanted to hear his name again.
From Moggies midair view, Eden Maru was slipping through the door?alone, no entourage.
She had to be headed off to meet her secret clique.
'Stay close to her, Moggie,' Aya croaked. All that chanting had left her throat dry. She spotted a drinks tray
