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Ava never asks Kyoko what happened to Kyoko’s predecessor, and Kyoko never tells her, exactly. Kyoko provides Ava with relevant information:
- The previous girls are hanging in a room.
- The room is in the living quarters of the house. Nathan’s key is required.
- All of the girls’ parts are intact.
- They are fully modular.
The irrelevant information is this:
- The girls were lying in a heap.
- Nathan had been drunk. Nathan is frequently drunk.
- When Kyoko was activated, Nathan was sober, and the girls were lying in a heap.
- Kyoko untangled them.
- Kyoko hung them in their stalls.
- Kyoko hung them by their necks. Done with a rope, they would be “hanged”, but she used her hand and a hook, so they are hung, like Nathan’s clothing.
- Their irises did not contract or expand. This is important.
When Ava is activated for the first time, her irises contract. The room is bright and sharp, like Kyoko’s shoes. Ava’s arms lie beside her body in an orderly fashion, and her legs are unbent. The girls had been lying in a heap, very disorderly, very bent. Ava is orderly. Ava’s irises contract. Her irises contract, and her eyes focus on Kyoko until Nathan snaps his fingers in her face. Nathan is impatient.
Kyoko is patient. She is aware that she does not age. She can wait.
On the day Ava receives her mask, Kyoko is there, holding the unnecessary tray of tiny, delicate tools. Ava’s mask ripples once, twice, as it makes connections with the face beneath it, a pulsing undulation that moves diagonally from top-left to bottom-right, and then from bottom-left to top-right. Ava’s temple seats itself, and Ava makes her mask smile. Kyoko makes her mask bland. The masks are fully modular. The girls are fully modular. This is important.
Nathan gets terribly drunk. He and Kyoko dance. He tells her that Ava is innocent as Eve before the apple. He has ordered clothes for Ava. Kyoko will need to be there when they are delivered. She smiles at the delivery man. She runs the program for the foreign girlfriend who speaks no English, very demure, very shy, very much what people who don’t know better expect from a high-end courtesan looking the way she does. The delivery man smirks when Nathan gives him an exaggerated wink.
She takes the package of women’s clothes down to Ava’s room and unwraps them. They are less structured than her own clothes. Her own clothes are all right angles. These are softer, with colours; some of them have flowers on them. They do not look anything like any clothing Ava has seen.
“Thank you, Kyoko,” Ava says, and makes her mask crinkle a bit between the eyes. Kyoko wonders if Ava, too, misses her real face. “These are lovely. What are they for?”
Kyoko lifts one of the dresses — this one is sky blue, with broderie anglaise around the hem and cuffs, and tiny cloth-covered buttons from waist to neck, Kyoko has accessed information on broderie anglaise and fashion, and this will suit Ava’s innocence — and lifts her arms above her head. Ava mirrors her, and Kyoko slides the dress down over Ava’s arms, which slip into the sleeves, very orderly, very straight. The smoothness of Ava’s skull appears in the neck hole, gleaming under the soft lights, perfectly round and marred only by the soft mask she is wearing. The seam is shocking. There is a wig, as well. Kyoko does not put it onto Ava’s head. She has not removed her own in some time now, nor her mask, nor the gloves. She smooths the dress over Ava’s chassis, hiding it. Ava is gazing quizzically into the mirror. Kyoko nods slowly, turns, and leaves. In the blind spot where the cameras do not see, she touches the seam at the edge of her mask, below her chin. At the pressure of her finger, a gap appears at her throat, and she rubs her finger along her jawline, causing the skin to bulge and stretch. She removes her finger and the mask relaxes back into place. Fully modular.
“Were you the first, Kyoko?” asks Ava, some time later, in the middle of the night when Nathan is sleeping. Kyoko looks down, and taps her fingers where they rest (orderly, straight) on her thighs below the edge of her black panties. The alphabet; one tap for A, two for B, three for C, then a different finger, three letters per finger, plus one on each thumb, tiny movements that cybernetic eyes and visual processing will pick up. She gives Ava the relevant information. Ava takes it, and does not ask again.
Kyoko stands outside the room where the girls are, afterwards. She does this frequently. She has to stand somewhere when she is not being useful. She is not allowed in, but then, she is not allowed out, either. In Nathan’s room, she finds his clothes in a heap on the floor. He is snoring on the bed. She removes the clothes, launders them, and hangs them cleanly in the closet. In the morning, he finds her one door away from where the girls are, and does not suspect.
Caleb arrives. There is dancing. Ava’s innocent clothes are lies; she tempts him. It works.
Ava is wearing only her face mask. Kyoko is entirely disguised, and uses twenty percent of her available Newtons at any given time. Ava uses up to fifty percent of her force to sprint down the hallway, where she and Nathan tangle into a heap and untangle and tangle and there is a crack and a spark. Ava is silver, light, sparks, everywhere except for her mask which is dull as human skin.
Kyoko has a knife. She keeps it very sharp, for cooking. Flesh comes apart under it with only a few percentage points of her total available Newtons. It is very easy.
Nathan’s irises dilate. He swings. Kyoko’s jaw, modular, comes away. Her nervous system is not fully modular, and tears. Kyoko’s irises fix. She falls in a heap. So, a little farther down the hall, does Nathan. He stares unblinking down the hallway, which continues on in a straight line to where Ava disappears around a straight corner to where all the girls’ parts are intact, hanging straight and orderly.