Subject: Short, In need of title
From: Passenger <Passenger@tpass.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 96 20:45:23 GMT

<Authors Note>
Note firstly that although this story has the same
title as a Gibson work this is not, I hope, a rip 
off of anything Gibson wrote.  It contains imagery
from the afore mentioned Gibson short but this is
only because his story was the inspiration for mine.
I consider it a tribute but I will leave it up to
the reader to pass judgement . . . .




NO. 7
Fragments Of A Hologram Rose
.
Ice wind whipped around her, tugging at her dress , the sensation raising 
hatred and self contempt within her.  She gazed down at the cars and people 
milling about like ants on the street far below her and directly across from 
her a gaudy neon rippling on the side of a geodesic dome taunted her "Girls, 
Girls".
At one point she had though of it as a positive, 
socially upward career move, prostitute to showgirl . . . . . . .
.
She had been only fourteen and a refugee of the Los Angeles slums, Marla had 
introduced her to 'The Biz'.  That was the only way she ever referred to it, 
and so Tally had picked it up in time.
Then she hadn't considered it as a profession, more like an enjoyable hobby she 
got paid for.At least that's what it was like for the first few times, 
pleasurable, then the rape gangs got a sniff of her and they made her hate men, 
maybe this was her own way of revenge . . . . . . .
.
A small group of morbid onlookers had gathered beneath her, craning their 
necks to look up to her, just as the men in the dance parlor had.  They all 
stared at her in sheer wonderment, as she danced for them, controlling them, 
manipulating their easily malleable male desires. . . . . . .
.
They hadn't looked up to her before she became a dancer, she was only a few 
faded bills gone in matter of minutes, a flash of contentment in their dark 
lives.  But as a dancer, they could look but  never touch and she could pull in 
maybe a thousand a night in tips alone. But now she was a little older, and 
perhaps a little wiser she felt as though she had wasted ten years of her life, 
doing nothing except reasserting her self-esteem. . . . . . .
.
Now she dipped into her coat pocket drawing out a glossy microfiche which 
glinted softly in the darkness.  She held it up in front of her face, careful 
to maintain her balance on the ledge.
.
Behind her she could hear the desperate cries of her friends pounding on the 
bedroom door.  Snow danced in the air around her, filling the dark sky.  The 
sound of cars, splashing through dark puddles filled her night.
.
From her position on the balcony ledge the microfiche caught the light well and 
she could clearly make out the hologram set in the central plate.  She gazed 
deeply  into its heart, a red hologram rose that tilted jerkily as you turned 
it in the light. . . . . . .
.She had been given the plate by a customer years ago, in one of the com boxes 
at the corner of 4th and 5th.  He had told her to keep her clothes on, and in a 
sudden moment of anger she had hit him and told him not to waste her time.
. 
When she turned to leave he had said she would be duly paid and that all he 
wanted to do was talk.  She had laughed at him but he carried on regardless and 
explained that he worked for an Ohio based computer firm.  They manufactured 
the plates which were used as templates for smaller credit card sized versions. 
They spent the whole night talking, together sheltered in the dimly lit booth 
from the poison rain . . . . . .
.
He seemed like the one good thing she had ever found within her profession she 
expected they'd fall in love,  like in the oldie "Pretty Woman" . . .
.
.
He was the reason she left 'The Biz', turned out he wasn't such a nice guy 
after all, the sicko had taped the whole thing.  It had all been pre-arranged, 
the video recorder in the phone box, their 'chance meeting' in the street.  It 
shattered her pseudo-*faith* in men, because  she had always thought of them 
to be simple instinct driven creatures that just kept feeding her money, but 
this taught her that she too could be exploited.
.
She slipped the plastic foil out from the metal plate and took one last look at 
the rose, she had kept it as a reminder as to why she had decide to exploit 
others, to affirm herself that she was morally right. She tore the holographic 
foil between finger and thumb, letting the fragments drift away from her in the 
wind.  The tumbling pieces caught her eye as they fell . . . . .
.
.
.
"You see," he had told her as the rain beat down rhythmically on the tiny 
booth," thing about a hologram is that if you tear it each segment will look 
exactly like the whole but from varying angles . . . . . . ." 
. 
That single simple statement said only to perpetuate a camera shot of her 
modest cleavage, summed up all she had done so far in her life. . Her note 
blown off the table by the chill wind from the balcony fluttered to the ground, 
a line visible in the lemonade light, 
_I could sell myself a million ways and never be in control . . . . . . ._
.
She had walked into her apartment in the dark that night.  Streams of  orange 
light had flowed in through the window, cast by the flickering neon covering 
the building opposite, they danced, refracted like light through water across 
her room. It was then she realized that she was stuck, with no way out. She 
had wasted her life, immersed in the delusion that she was manipulative and in 
control of those she danced for, whereas in reality she only danced to please 
others. She hadn't progressed at all from whore to showgirl,
_it may look slightly different_ she had written in her note _from another 
angle but underneath all the vanity and conceit she was still a whore._
.
She had dropped her door keys on the table and walked through the dark room to 
the balcony, hesitated and returned to lock the door. Her life had suddenly 
lost all its glamour and she only wished to discontinue it. She had lived for 
hope, with the ideal that she was taking men's money because she wanted to, but 
it was only revenge.
The rape gangs had done it slowly, so that she would remember every detail 
until the day that she died. Their sinister ritualism had shocked her but now 
she knew some part of her admired them, because she had employed the need to 
control, the domination in her dances.
She had become what she hated most . . . . . .
.
The thumps at the door increased in tempo, and it burst open,  she felt now 
would be a good time to burst into a flood of unstopable tears, but as the 
cacophony of screams from her friends as they rushed into the room reached a 
creshendo in her heart their was only joy. She was caught up in a moment of 
indecision as her heart raced in her chest, A single thought in her head as she 
took a deep breath and spread her arms into a swan dive,
_underneath all the vanity and conceit I am still a whore_
 .
 .
 .
 .
 .
 .
 As the last fragments of the hologram rose fluttered gently onto the pavement 
 each revealing the rose from a different angle, the old men huddled in the 
 cold dark night by there fires to escape the snow, showed no discontent.  No 
 sign of weakness, only grim determination in the wake of their total freedom.

  

 

  

 
This story is one of three which are not 'sequals' in any way
but I thought I'd post this as this is the first.  If anyone
would be interested in me posting the next two here just say
so before the thread expires :)



-- 
The Passenger

              *I'm an exotic.*

                               __Molly__