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Raoul was on cloud nine, the praises on the Lubell breed still ringing in his ears. True, that particular line of pet breed could still use some improvement, but the fact that the guests tonight, two men and a woman, still gushed about its success at the Pet Auction last year warmed his artificial heart.
Except for the pleasant conversation with those three guests, the party was a tedious affair. Raoul was bored out of his mind, enduring and spouting banal pleasantries in turn and sipping wine that tasted blander than the brew he had concocted in his lab beakers.
He resisted the urge to peep at his smartphone. He knew what the time was, because he had just used the device to call Katze. And he had had to speak to that dogsbody of Iason’s because Iason had so thoughtfully turned off his phone, for whatever reason. What could have kept Iason? Could it be the mongrel they had encountered on their way from the parking lot?
On that matter, why was the parking facility such an inconvenient distance away from the venue of the party? Raoul made a note to lodge an official complaint to Gideon. Such haphazard urban planning was unseemly on the part of the Lord of Midas.
Surely Iason could have handled the would-be pickpocket on his own? An errant blip in Raoul’s cardiac circuit caused his heart to skip a beat. Could something have happened to his friend? Had the mongrel somehow managed to overpower him and–? Raoul cut off the preposterous thought. A mongrel against a Blondy. Impossible.
Still, the mongrel could have been a mere decoy, a diversion planted by actual assassins. Once more, Raoul berated himself for not having stayed with Iason, for giving in to Iason’s insistence that he went ahead instead of tagging along with whatever Iason had in mind for the mongrel. Raoul’s hand snaked once more to the smartphone in his pocket. He was about to call the Midas Security Police when a familiar scent wafted from beside him, the unmistakable faint aroma of mint and vanilla.
Putting his phone away, he fumed instead of sighing with relief. “You’re late.”
“So it appears.” Iason’s chiseled face betrayed nothing. A cold beauty that kept everyone, even the other Blondies, at an arm’s distance. Unlike the others, Raoul never took Iason’s aloof display personally, never took it as a message to stay away. Unlike the others, he rather enjoyed Iason’s cutting remarks, for he appreciated their subtlety. Iason’s commentaries were neither as petty as Orphe’s judgments nor as vulgar as Gideon’s supposed witticisms.
“You owe it to me, my friend,” Raoul huffed. “For arriving late to a reception thrown in your honor. And for leaving me to handle the guests all on my own. You know very well that I’m not a social butterfly, not like–”
As if on cue, the social butterfly of the Blondies made his appearance. A hush descended over the guests as Gideon Lagat strutted among them in full pomp and finery, as if he had not arrived even later than the guest of honor, Iason Mink himself. Gideon was dressed in the finest black silk, the edges of his sleeves and collar lined with gold brocade and his waist encircled by a thick gold chain. His high boots were fastened with a complicated network of buckles and straps. After lacing up all of those straps, his poor furniture probably had had to go for a drink and a physiotherapy session, steeling himself for the task of undoing the awful things a few hours later.
Well, the predicament of Gideon’s hapless furniture was none of Raoul’s concern. He clicked his tongue and hissed to Iason, “Look what we have here. The flamboyant Gideon Lagat, more than an hour late to a reception he’s organized in your honor. How shameless!”
Iason snorted. “That’s pretty punctual by his standards. What’s the term he usually resorts to whenever you lecture him about the virtue of being on time? Yes, ‘fashionably late’ it is, I believe.”
Raoul rolled his eyes.
A giggling Ruby approached them, squeaking, “Lord Raoul! It’s truly amazing, isn’t it?”
Raoul brightened up. Ah, finally, an Elite who was in awe of his magnificent work with the Lubell breed, maybe? Or one who had read about his recent success at steering a whole planetary system away from a deadly viral pandemic?
He nodded encouragingly at the Ruby, whose giggle grew shriller. Pointing to the top of his own head, the lower-class Elite slurred, “Isn’t it a truly, wonderfully amazing coincidence?”
Raoul frowned. He could see nothing amazing nor coincidental about the Ruby’s head. Like the rest of his rank, it was adorned with long crimson hair. Was the Ruby perhaps referring to the narrow strip of black plastic that was keeping his hair in place? If so, there was clearly nothing remarkable about it, Raoul thought sourly, his mood deflating further as he eyed the nearly empty glass in the Ruby’s hand.
Instead of being discouraged by Raoul’s silence, the Ruby blabbered on, ”It is incredible! Lord Gideon is wearing the same hairband as the one I’ve got on tonight! And to think my furniture only managed to get his hands on it after three months! It’s so popular that it’s out of stock before one could even click on the order button!”
He swayed unsteadily on his feet. Raoul would have let him fall, but another Ruby quickly caught hold of him. “You’re drunk, Dalphee. Don’t go around addressing a Blondy so casually!”
“Ah, whyever not? I’d have gone and talked to Lord Gideon himself, if I could get through the crowd of admirers around him!”
“Stop spouting nonsense, Dalphee! Please accept my apologies on my colleague’s behalf, Lord Raoul.”
The second Ruby gave Raoul a bow and hastily hauled his tipsy colleague away. Iason sniggered. Raoul sighed.
***
“Oh, I wonder if Lord Gideon is wearing that undershirt of his tonight!” The declaration came from a gaggle of Jades, who appeared to be more sober than the Ruby who had accosted Raoul.
“Which undershirt? Ah, you mean that undershirt?”
“Yes, the legendary undershirt that molds his figure to perfection! They say it’s a wonder of nanotechnology itself and that one won’t feel constricted no matter how long one wears it!”
“That’s because the material is augmented with silk from the Mataram binary system. It feels as if you’re wearing nothing… at least that’s what I heard.”
“Ah! I’ve always envied Lord Gideon his figure! Such elegance, such poise! And to think it’s all due to an undershirt! Do any of you know if it’d be possible to get such a wonderful undershirt for ourselves?”
“According to my furniture–“
Raoul tuned out the conversation with another sigh. He never cared about fashion. Trivial matters such as one’s attires were a waste of time, an undertaking not worth the brilliant scientific mind Jupiter had bestowed upon him. He wore whatever his furniture laid out on his bed. If not for Ray, Raoul would have been happy to wander around in a bathrobe and bath slippers, even to the meetings with the other Blondies.
Gideon had once claimed that Raoul had been at the back of the room when Jupiter had handed out fashion sense. When another Blondy, probably Aisha or Gilbert, had asked him why, Gideon had answered, “He was likely spacing out, staring at a plain bolt and wondering how it worked.” As the laughter died down, he had remarked cattily, “Well, we can’t all be the dowdy sciency types, can we?”
Raoul gritted his teeth. What was wrong with being a dowdy sciency type? More importantly, what was wrong with his fellow Elites? Could they not see that the cutting-edge advances that he, Raoul Am, had pioneered in biotechnology and environmental sciences, mattered more than what Gideon wore under his tunic?
A low rumble of laughter emanated from beside him. Iason’s sculpted face momentarily softened, as if he was both amused and concerned by Raoul’s complaint.
Hold on. Had Raoul actually voiced his grievance out loud? He must have, as evidenced by Iason’s question.
“Since when do you care what a bunch of drunk Rubies and Jades think, Raoul?”
Indeed. Since when did he care? Being left alone to fend for himself at the party must have traumatized him more than he realized. And whose fault was that? Iason owed him one, and he, Raoul, was going to collect the payment now. His friend would have to listen to his complaints for the rest of the evening.
“Saving a planet from a Malthusian crisis and another from famine and desertification, reviving a whole planetary system from the deadly aftermath of a nuclear war – I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, Iason, but surely these achievements of mine matter more than some silly undershirt or a hair accessory, don’t you think?”
Iason lifted a glass from the tray offered by a passing waiter and sipped at it. He stared at his drink, an opaque, jet-black liquid.
“Are you listening, Iason? Don’t you think that–“
“Those are remarkable achievements, as you said, Raoul. They made a difference to the lives of the inhabitants of those planets. But why should they matter to the Elites of Eos?”
Raoul felt his own eyes widening at the epiphany. Of course. “Then, what about the breeds of pets I’ve had my hand in improving? Surely this would be of more import than what is the latest in Gideon’s wardrobe?”
Iason gave his drink a wry smile. “Pets, huh? You’re a brilliant scientist, Raoul. There’s no scientific riddle that will escape your sharp mind once you set down to work on it. But, Raoul, understanding human nature is not your strong point.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve reminded me of it yourself often enough: Whether we like it or not, keeping pets is our duty as Elites, a reflection of our superiority to unaugmented humans. Hundreds of exotic pet lineages have been, and still are being improved over the centuries. Has it not occurred to you that we’ve grown so jaded that the next new pet breed is just another headline to scroll past on the dataslate?”
“Then I’ll just have to come up with an even more exotic breed! One with purple eyes, perhaps? Or better, eyes that change color depending on the angle from which you view them? Yes, that’s it!”
Iason sighed. He gently twirled his glass, causing its inky contents to slosh from side to side.
“That’s not my point. Remember the pandemic on the Budu planetary system?”
“Yes?”
“The cause was a deadly virus. You wanted to make a vaccine immediately.”
“Yes, and I did just that. Coming up with the first vaccine was mere child’s play, with the RNA structure of the original strain. But you proposed an additional solution: induce mutations in the virus so that it causes a mere flu instead of slowly paralyzing the brain stem, then make a second vaccine, for the new version of the virus. A tedious one, but it worked.”
“As your original solution of simply giving them the first vaccine would not have.”
“I still do not accept your reasoning for that, you know. I went along with your solution because of the challenge.”
Iason shook his head. “That is why I said human nature is not your strong point, dear Raoul. What is the vaccination rate in Budu?”
“Fifty-two percent, according to last week’s update.”
Iason’s smile was hard and cold, as was the glint in his blue eyes. “That would have been a grave disaster, were the virus still in its original, lethal form, don’t you think?”
“The inhabitants of Budu are simply ignorant, Iason. I’m sure that with time and more educational campaigns, they will come to understand the benefits of vaccination–“
“And so, in the same vein, with time and more educational campaigns, our fellow Elites will come to understand the benefits of your cutting-edge advances. Or will they? I doubt it.”
Raoul pursed his lips, casting another glance at the throng milling around Gideon, squealing and giggling at every single word from the flamboyant Blondy.
“Was it not a scientist who said this: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity?” Iason mused.
“That was a long dead human, unaugmented and certainly not created by Jupiter himself,” Raoul scoffed.
“Jupiter made us, but our brains are still human, just like the brain of our long dead scientist,” Iason countered. He placed a hand on his mouth, stifling a yawn. “Anyway, my friend, my point is: if you want to be fawned at by the lower-class Elites like Gideon over there, make something that matters personally to them.”
***
For the next two weeks, Raoul set to work. Dataslates and lab apparatuses littered his living room, which only retained its label of ‘living room’ because Ray had persisted in calling it that. For all practical purposes and appearances, the room was Raoul’s second office and lab. Raoul would have been happy to continue working late into the night in his actual lab, but for Ray’s incessant calls. Turning off his smartphone was no use, for the crafty furniture had managed to get his hands on the lab’s phone number. Raoul could not afford to have his concentration broken by a beeping phone every fifteen minutes or so. Worse, he dreaded the polite but pointed question that would inevitably come with those calls.
“When are you coming home, Master? It is way past your dinner time.”
“I’ll return when I’m done, Ray. Just leave the meal in the fridge and I will reheat it myself.”
“Master, I would be remiss in my duty if I were to let you neglect your meals and sleep. If your health is affected because of this, I–“
Raoul remembered cutting off such a call in despair more than once. He had to get a new pet soon. Ray was most insufferable during the periods between pets, directing his surplus time and energy toward micromanaging Raoul’s schedule and well-being.
A master’s word was absolute, but Ray had long found a way around it, using Raoul’s first command to him against Raoul himself. “Your task is to take care of the household.” The furniture had interpreted the term ‘household’ to include not just the pets and the apartment, but Raoul himself.
Oh, Raoul could get rid of him, but he was used to Ray, and vice-versa. Iason might think that Raoul was ignorant when it came to human nature, but even Raoul was not so naive and lacking of self-awareness as to believe that any other furniture could have handled such an eccentric master as himself.
One of the tiny wells on the microplate lit up, causing Raoul to hiss in elation. He would have shouted, but he did not want to wake Ray up and receive yet another lecture about the detrimental effects of working past his bedtime.
“Yes!” he hissed again, more quietly this time. The outcome of the luciferase assays was clear – he had successfully isolated the gene for purple eyes. The next step would be to test it in discarded pets.
He turned his attention to the screen of his monitor, ready to work on his next project. Oh, his fellow Blondies and the other Elites were going to love this. As he pressed a key on the input module to start the simulation, he could already picture the fawning looks on their faces as they heaped their praises upon him and his genius.
Finally, he, Raoul Am, would take his rightful place among the Elites as the Blondy who made things that mattered. Gideon would be able to do nothing but watch with envy from faraway, undershirt and hairband and all.
***
“Then, I trust that the dispute is resolved. Gideon will refrain from throwing loud, late-night parties on his balcony and Aisha will order his furniture to desist from glaring at Gideon or his guests whenever they are present in the balcony next door,” Orphe pronounced. “Is that agreed?”
Across the vast round table, Aisha rested his chin upon tented fingers. “Personally, I could not care less what Gideon does on his balcony. It is poor Tomass I am concerned with. He sleeps with the window open and the noise is loudest in his quarters, it seems.”
“Has your furniture ever heard of this wonderful invention called earplugs?” Gideon’s tone was glib, but the way his eyes narrowed slightly indicated a surly undercurrent.
Aisha folded his arms. “Why should my furniture stuff his ears with pieces of wax, thanks to your unruly guests? Moreover, it is unseemly for a Blondy to associate with the likes of Platinas or Jupiter forbid, mere Sapphires, outside of work. Please do not tarnish our reputation with your excessive socializing, Gideon.”
“Stop it, the two of you.” Orphe sounded tired, if such a thing was possible for a Blondy. “We’ve discussed this for nearly an hour. There are a few more items I’d like to get to, so, please, either agree to the solutions I proposed or come up with your own.”
Gideon huffed, “Fine. No more parties on the balcony. Loud ones, anyway.”
Raoul heard the word ‘spoilsports’ muttered under Gideon’s breath. The others must have too, for they were equipped with hearing just as acute as his. But they, like him and Orphe, probably thought the meeting had gone on long enough, and kept their peace.
Aisha nodded. “That is satisfactory. I shall order Tomass to stay away from the balcony unless the noise is keeping him from his sleep.”
Orphe gave him a tight smile. “Now, on to the next item. It concerns the recent enhancement on the grav elevators–“
Ah, finally. Was the supervisor of Eos finally going to officially thank Raoul for the improvement on the elevator service in Eos tower? Raoul sat up even straighter, though of course he had not been slouching throughout the mind-numbing discussion. Blondies did not slouch, by Jupiter’s perfectly-shaped nostrils.
He could not believe his ears as Orphe’s next words resounded throughout the meeting room.
“We have received numerous complaints for the past week from Elites and furniture alike. Elevators either arrived late, not at all, or took the residents to the wrong levels. Furniture supposed to take new pets out on walks had to wait forever. Elites trying to get to their offices or labs were taken back to the levels of their residences.”
Raoul gripped the edge of the table. “Impossible! I’ve tested all of the elevators myself. They work perfectly for me. I only have to think of my destination and one will arrive and take me to the correct level.”
He heard a chortle from beside him. “You still have a long way to go when it comes to understanding human nature, Raoul,” was Iason’s quiet pronouncement.
Orphe shook his head. “It was my fault for approving the proposal when you submitted it at the previous meeting, Raoul. It pains me to say this, brother, but the telepathic circuits you have embedded in the elevators must have been flawed. Otherwise–”
“I don’t think so,” Iason cut in. “Raoul’s expertise is not the issue here. Furthermore, the elevators work perfectly for him. And for me as well, at least half the times. Therefore, the fault must lie in the users themselves.”
Orphe’s eyebrows went up. “Oh? Pray enlighten us, Iason. How could the Elites, the pets and the furniture cause the elevators to malfunction? Could you explain why I had to spend almost half an hour before I could find an elevator that would take me to the level for this meeting room instead of taking me to the ground floor and then back up again to the Apex Level?”
“Simple. Under the enhancements Raoul introduced, the elevators are supposed to take residents to their intended destination. The keyword is ‘intended.’”
Raoul licked his lips in fascination as various muscles on Orphe’s face contracted. Was it possible that the Blondy known as the ‘elegant noble’ was scowling and grinding his teeth at the same time?
“Are you saying that I do not truly wish to attend this meeting, Iason?”
“I’m not, although your bodily response and your question seem to, I’m afraid.”
Raoul’s fascination with Orphe’s, to use Iason’s words, ‘bodily response,’ redoubled. The supervisor of Eos blinked, once, twice, as if he could not believe what Iason had just told him. Orphe’s hands were clenched into fists, looking as if he would pound them on the table anytime soon. A Blondy would never lower himself to such a vulgar act, of course. However, Raoul had observed this irrational behavior in some of the characters in the imported drama serials he had found on Ray’s viewing history. Serials that Ray probably watched on the sly, while he thought Raoul’s attention was somewhere else.
“Why, you– what’s this?” Eyes wide, Orphe jerked his head to look up at the air vent. “Why has the room temperature dropped at least 1.25 degree?”
Ah, the improvement to the temperature control system. Raoul raised a hand, eager to explain its workings to his befuddled colleague.
“The climate sensors have detected an increase in your internal temperature, Orphe. The temperature control system is attempting to reduce it to the healthy baseline–“
“By blowing cold air on me?” Orphe snapped. He had neither waved his fist at Raoul nor slammed it down on the table, but his verbal outburst was just as fascinating. Perhaps the study of human nature was not such an unworthy pursuit after all, even if the only truly human part of Raoul’s current study subject was his brain.
Orphe took a deep breath, another rare spectacle among the Blondies. “How good of you to bring up the matter of the improved temperature control, Raoul. That is actually the next item I wish to discuss. Now, let’s make the best use of our limited time and vote on both items at the same time. I propose that both the elevator and the temperature control systems be reverted to the state they were two weeks ago, before Raoul implemented his cutting-edge advances upon them. All who agree, raise their hands.”
***
Back in his bedroom, Raoul waved away Ray’s offer to undress him and dismissed the furniture. Shrugging off his formal attire, the all-white suit and cape he had worn to the meeting, he eased himself into the bathrobe, the soft fluffy cotton a relief from the constricting material of the suit. He trudged into the living room and managed to locate the bath slippers under a pile of dataslates. The slippers were pink and like the bathrobe, were soft and fluffy. They were molded in the shape of a small, long-eared mammal which the health officials of Budu called ‘bunny.’ He slipped his feet into them, sighing at the familiar, comforting warmth.
Orphe’s motion had passed with eleven votes for, one abstaining (Iason) and one against (Raoul). As he replayed the rest of the meeting in his mind, Raoul’s forlorn gaze fell upon a little bottle on his desk.
Ah, another result of his attempts to make things that mattered to the Elites, the lubricant for the jack in their napes. The plug linking his brain to the neural network had always chafed the skin around the jack, and so he had thought, why not formulate a lubricant that would both take care of the skin irritation and enhance the data transfer rate?
The reception from the few Blondies whom he had cajoled into trying the lubricant was lukewarm at best. Gideon had sourly remarked that it stuck to his hair. Well, Gideon needed to learn how to use a hair tie, unfashionable though he might find one. Iason had smoothly deflected Raoul’s question about the lubricant’s effectiveness and changed the subject. Aisha had coldly told Raoul that he had given the lubricant to his pet. (“I’m sure Stein would find a good use for your invention at his next mating party, Raoul.”)
Next to the bottle was the microplate, forgotten in Raoul’s pursuit of his other projects. Ah, yes, the experiment for isolating the gene for purple eyes in pets.
Raoul gave up. From now on, he would stick to enhancing pet breeds when it came to making things that mattered to his fellow Elites. As to the matter of charming them, the way Gideon had, well–
He was about to make his way to Ray’s quarters when he caught sight of the multi-controller, peeping out from under a dirty rubber glove.
“How may I be of help, Master?” Ray’s question almost startled Raoul. (No, Blondies did not jump out of their skin, by Jupiter’s sublime eyebrows.) How could the furniture move so silently and so fast? Raoul could swear that less than a few seconds had passed since he had pressed the call button.
He turned around slowly, giving himself time to composed his features. “Have you heard of Gideon Lagat’s undershirt?”
One of Ray’s eyebrows moved up a fraction of a millimeter. “Are you referring to the Mataram silk undershirt which also functions as a corset, Master?”
“Probably. Yes. Buy one. No, two.”
“Ah, Master, may I humbly commend you on finally taking my advice to replenish your wardrobe. Certainly, I shall immediately order two of the Mataram silk undershirts.”
“Very good.”
Raoul looked up, nonplussed at finding Ray still standing before him, back ramrod straight and face devoid of expression.
“While we are on the subject of your wardrobe, Master, may I have your permission to replace your current footwear?”
Ray’s tone was measured and polite, as was expected of a furniture. The look he directed upon Raoul’s pink bath slippers, however, was anything but polite. Raoul was sure that the furniture had been pursuing an irrational vendetta against the innocent slippers since Day One, when Raoul had returned with them from the Budu planetary system.
“What is wrong with them, Ray? They are a gift from the grateful inhabitants of the capital of Budu, whom I saved from a deadly pandemic. I shall not part easily with them for no good reason.”
“Well, Master, as I have explained before, they do not fit the rest of your property. It is my duty as your furniture to uphold your dignity and glory. If it is known to the rest of Eos that you harbor such inelegant pieces of footwear in your apartment, your reputation will lie in ruins. Please, Master.”
Perhaps there was something to Ray’s pleading. After all, when he had summoned his furniture, Raoul had decided that if he could not charm the entire Tanagura with his scientific prowess, he would take a leaf from Gideon and start to learn a thing or two about being fashionable. And not just from Gideon. Ray, too.
He kicked off the slippers. “Fine, Ray. Do with them as you will.”
Such cute slippers, too. He would miss them.