The Cyborg's Daughter ( I'm close to 100K reads! Then Party)

Chapter 16/lip-syncing with fire

We arrived in the hall. It was a large space with numbers of seats laid out. I checked the exit. Technically fighting between slaves was illegal, police raids happened but were rare. It didm't make me feel less nervous. Bret Fox had told us that you should always know the exits incase of a raid. We were due to have two matches. One 'warm up' and one proper one.

"You can see the Pretty Little ones over there" said Bret Fox nodding. There are two matched slave girls in blue over on the platform were we 'performed'.

"Their owner is Marcellus he's a col-lab, he likes to think of him self as quite the talent spotter. He's never danced him self. He's made most of his money from a pair call 'Containment' a while back."

"What happened to them?" I said. I knew most of the groups which people talked about had got to the finals and typically won their freedom. Bret Fox new enough about motivation to keep going on about the unlikely but fabulous upside.

Bret Fox leant over so little Jenny couldn't hear "Two brothers. Got to the finals being held on city 9 that year. One of the brothers had a heart fault. They worked in a match which set the bar at level 7 and it was enough to kill him. But this is level 1 pain only. You just get out there and enjoy your self."

We pulled our harnesses on. The harness held the pain projector, and the mechanism for scoring and a real pain collar, they also held the bracelets on.. My low power so called 'period' collar wasn't going to be of any help. Both owners had agreed we were going to dance to a pre-rising track called 'No good' by The Prodigy. True Kimjodo had a random track selection which prohibited too much pre-rehersal. We watched a couple of other 'dance-off's before getting started. The first was two singles - by far the most popular category in Kimjodo. There were larger groups but they tended to be put on later. I was almost glued to my seat with fear but then our turn came and little Jenny jumped up grabbed by hand and ran on stage. We dusted our shoes and got to the points marked on the canvas. I looked around there were about a few hundred people watching the capacity was much larger and most of the people watching had got there early to get good seats. They chatted to each other and ignored us. I was surprised such a fragment of the crowd were robots. Mom had said they had evolved their intelligences by absorbing the internet and that meant a lot of human attitudes to pain and suffering in flicked on others that they had sucked from the internet when they were created. Every cruel youtube video, every nasty prank and happy-slapping had been summed up with the rest of the internet which had formed their minds and attitudes. They thought that this cruelty was in integral part of what it meant to 'think'.

88 had pointed out there were some cyborgs in the audiace, the were the ones who looked perfect. The rest were co-labs while most had transitioned to eternal life in android form they dressed more normally and drank and ate while they waited. The crowd mostly ignored us as we stood to our spots.

The referee was a slave. He looked at each of us and we both nodded and formed our positions. The song was fast and had a long intro. This gave you time to get into the rhythm and look at the eyes of your opponents. The kick drum broke in and we started to do our opening move. By synchronising between little Jenny and myself the moves emitted more 'power' (i.e pain). We began as planned with the wild flower movement. Which hit but the two twenty year olds we were 'fighting' had a 'windlash' move in motion which stung. After that we kept moving and six minutes and 20 seconds later we both stopped.

I was out of breath but pretty excited. Little Jenny seemed OK and was smiling. With level one pain no one was really going to give up so it was down to who got the most hits. In the end we were only two points ahead which was enough for a win but Bret wasn't too pleased.

"That was sloppy you missed points by not being on the beat." Bret said "The kick drum is there for a reason use it!"

We drank water and waited while the hall filled for our next 'match'. Little Jenny seemed pleased and Hunter came over to see how we were doing.