The Famoux

Chapter 8

Somehow, I don't think the rules of Delicatum would read like that, no matter how egoistical the world can be.

"How do you plan to make Miss Essence a model today," Zoya asked, "if there are no working computers to manage this during a Darkening, and our little Emeray over here doesn't want us to steal a little electricity?"

"Well, who said we needed any of those fancy cameras?" Norax retaliated. "I'm telling you, Z, we don't need any of that to make Emeray a model. I'll show you . . ."

She disappeared down a hallway, leaving me standing and Zoya shaking her head.

"Sometimes I don't understand the way her mind works," she told me. "She's got no vision for complications--it's like she believes every choice she makes is going to work out for the better in the end."

"I guess that's why she's the leader of the Famoux," I said. When she gave me a look prompting to elaborate, I added, "She takes a lot of risks with confidence, right?"

"You're quite right about that," she said. "If I were in Norax's position, I wouldn't make those members do half of the stunts she pulls for them. I don't know how, but it always makes them more popular than before. She's got a talent for that."

At that moment, Norax click-clacked back down to the lobby, a large square object in her hand and a wide smile on her face.

"Look!" she exclaimed. "A camera that doesn't need any extra technology!"

Zoya snorted. "That has to be ancient. How did you even find that?"

"Do you remember when the Famoux got to visit the rubble from the Prohibited Areas of Eldae, and we didn't even get to film it for media because it was verboten?"

"Norax, that thing doesn't take video."

"I know it doesn't," she said. "I just found it in the wreckage of what would've been an apartment, and thought it ought to be put to some use instead of sitting there collecting dust."

She handed it to me to look at. It had this perennial sort of pep, visible in its cream colored curves, in the faded stripes splitting down its center. There was a circle in the middle, and in the back a long, open extension. The base looked something like a mouth, its lips open ever so slightly, creating a thin line. The word to describe it struck me as vintage, but I couldn't quite recall where I heard it from.

"What is this?" I asked.

"They called it a Polaroid camera," Norax told me. "It develops its picture almost instantly."

"How is that possible?"

"Why don't I show you?"

She grabbed the camera from me and pressed the extension to her eye. Angling its lens toward my face, she squeezed the button before I got the chance to even smile, much less register she was going to take a photo of me. A bulb flickered through the dim candlelight, momentarily blinding my vision. It came back with splotchy black dots, which I swatted furiously in the air at.

"Wait!" I exclaimed, far delayed. "I wasn't ready for that!"

"Nonsense," Norax said. "Emeray Essence is always ready for a photo. Have you ever seen a bad photo of the Famoux?"

"I guess I haven't," I admitted.

"You haven't, because they don't exist. They couldn't possibly. Zoya and I made you so that you'd never look bad in anything."

A slip of thick paper spat slowly from the Polaroid, I watched with awe as Norax pulled it out, waving it in the air nonsensically.

"Shaking it speeds up the development," she explained. "Your photo will show up in just a couple of seconds."