“Please don’t,” Helena says, careful not to let her Cantonese accent slip through. It tends to show after long periods without any human interaction, which is an apt summary of the past few months. “It’s best if no one pays attention to it.”
“You know, Helena, you do good work, but I’m very concerned about your self-esteem, I know if I printed something like that I’d want everyone to appreciate it! Let me tell you about this article my daughter sent me, you know research says that people without friends are prone to …” Mr. Chan rambles on as Helena sticks the labels on the boxes—Grilliam Shakespeare, Gyuuzen Sukiyaki, Fatty Chan’s Restaurant—and thankfully hangs up before Helena sinks into further depression. She takes her iKontakt off before heading to the drone delivery office, giving herself some time to recover from Mr. Chan’s relentless cheerfulness.
Helena has five missed calls by the time she gets back. A red phone icon blares at the corner of her vision before blinking out, replaced by the incoming-call notification. It’s secured and anonymized, which is quite a change from usual. She pops the earpiece in.
“Yeah, Mr. Chan?”
“This isn’t Mr. Chan,” someone says. “I have a job for Splendid Beef Enterprises.”
“All right, sir. Could I get your name and what you need? If you could provide me with the deadline, that would help too.”
“I prefer to remain anonymous,” the man says.
“Yes, I understand, secrecy is rather important.” Helena restrains the urge to roll her eyes at how needlessly cryptic this guy is. “Could I know about the deadline and brief?”
“I need two hundred T-bone steaks by the 8th of August. 38.1 to 40.2 millimeter thickness for each one.” A notification to download t-bone_info. KZIP pops up on her lenses. The most ambitious venture Helena’s undertaken in the past few months has been Gyuuzen’s strips of marbled sukiyaki, and even that felt a bit like pushing it. A whole steak? Hell no.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t think my business can handle that. Perhaps you could try—”
“I think you’ll be interested in this job, Helen Lee Jyun Wai.”
Shit.
A Sculpere 9410S only takes thirty minutes to disassemble, if you know the right tricks. Manually eject the cell cartridges, slide the external casing off to expose the inner screws, and detach the print heads before disassembling the power unit. There are a few extra steps in this case—for instance, the stickers that say “Property of Hong Kong Scientific University” and “Bioprinting Lab A5” all need to be removed—but a bit of anti-adhesive spray will ensure that everything’s on schedule. Ideally she’d buy a new printer, but she needs to save her cash for the name change once she hits Nanjing.
It’s not expulsion if you leave before you get kicked out, she tells herself, but even she can tell that’s a lie.
It’s possible to get a sense of a client’s priorities just from the documents they send. For instance, Mr. Chan usually mentions some recipes that he’s considering, and Ms. Huang from Gyuuzen tends to attach examples of the marbling patterns she wants. This new client seems to have attached a whole document dedicated to the recent amendments in the criminal code, with the ones relevant to Helena (“five-year statute of limitations,” “possible death penalty”) conveniently highlighted in neon yellow.
Sadly, this level of detail hasn’t carried over to the spec sheet.
“Hi again, sir,” Helena says. “I’ve read through what you’ve sent, but I really need more details before starting on the job. Could you provide me with the full measurements? I’ll need the expected length and breadth in addition to the thickness.”
“It’s already there. Learn to read.”
“I know you filled that part in, sir,” Helena says, gritting her teeth. “But we’re a printing company, not a farm. I’ll need more detail than ‘16—18 month cow, grain-fed, Hereford breed’ to do the job properly.”
“You went to university, didn’t you? I’m sure you can figure out something as basic as that, even if you didn’t graduate.”
“Ha ha. Of course.” Helena resists the urge to yank her earpiece out. “I’ll get right on that. Also, there is the issue of pay …”
“Ah, yes. I’m quite sure the Yuen family is still itching to prosecute. How about you do the job, and in return, I don’t tell them where you’re hiding?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but even then I’ll need an initial deposit to cover the printing, and of course there’s the matter of the Hereford samples.” Which I already have in the bioreactor, but there is no way I’m letting you know that.
“Fine. I’ll expect detailed daily updates,” Mr. Anonymous says. “I know how you get with deadlines. Don’t fuck it up.”
“Of course not,” Helena says. “Also, about the deadline—would it be possible to push it back? Four weeks is quite short for this job.”
“No,” Mr. Anonymous says curtly, and hangs up.
Helena lets out a very long breath so she doesn’t end up screaming, and takes a moment to curse Mr. Anonymous and his whole family in Cantonese.
It’s physically impossible to complete the renders and finish the print in four weeks, unless she figures out a way to turn her printer into a time machine, and if that were possible she might as well go back and redo the past few years, or maybe her whole life. If she had majored in art, maybe she’d be a designer by now—or hell, while she’s busy dreaming, she could even have been the next Raverat, the next Mantuana—instead of a failed artist living in a shithole concrete box, clinging to the wreckage of all her past mistakes.
She leans against the wall for a while, exhales, then slaps on a proxy
