Right Back After This

Season 2, Episode 11

Sometimes Riz looks at the full chat, pointless as it is, just to get dizzy from how fast it's moving, so quick that not a single letter can be distinguished in the flashing lights. It reminds him of the weight he carries, and if he looks at it wrong, it makes him wonder if he should give up.

Today, it's the heaviest weight he's ever been asked to carry, and he's not convinced that just because he is carrying it, that he's truly capable.

"Oh my, you all need to slow down," he says with a little laugh as he sits in front of the screen. Most screens naturally give off a blue light, but you'll never guess what colour his screen reflects onto his eyes, for the aesthetic pleasure of the viewers seeing him through the camera behind it that he always pretends not to notice.

The slow-moving chat, filtered through to the highest financial tier, still moves quick. Riz gets intimidated looking at the long messages in begging tones, struggling to read as fast as they fly past. This is where it's helpful that Amello's pulling up a chair beside him, although Riz struggles to admit that.

"Oh, my. For those of you who don't know, I'm kind of dyslexic, so if you go too fast I'm going to struggle to catch up." He feels fresh on the set, blinded by the stage lights. He tilts his head and tries to get a gist of what any given person is asking; in real time, the messages slow down, the invisible moderators strangling questions even further. Riz doesn't like that the few people he'll get to respond to will be the luckiest of the most elite- but millions have to be cut to a handful somehow.

He keeps a vacant smile on his face. "What sort of music do you listen to?" he reads out, from someone whose username looks like their full legal name. He doesn't have time to question that, nor to ask how they haven't seen the hundred times he's answered such a basic question before. He chews his lip and recalls the lie, spinning a thread from the established canon. "You know, when I was younger, the main thing I would hear is the church hymns, right? Outside music wasn't really a thing. And, I don't, um, love the hymns anymore- they meant something to me growing up, they still do- but I think that's why I like softer, slower, more meaningful music, you know? I like the music we write, but maybe it's just because I'm around it so much that I like a change."

Flashes on the screen tell him that uncountable numbers of people heard every word, and somehow liked it. They weren't bored by something so banal; they want more.

If only Riz could tell them about his brother plucking at a makeshift guitar around a campfire, could tell them about the way his simple lyrics could make you see the beauty of the stars you sat under, could make you see the beauty of the mud beneath your feet; could make you see the blood mixed in with the soil as less of a reason to drown in that mud, and more of a reason to keep fighting. That, if nothing else, is a story worth listening to.

Amello pulls his chair up next to him, but doesn't say anything, as Riz leans forward and reads out another message. "What's your opinion on extreme body mods? What're you classifying as extreme?" he says with a little laugh. Body mods were reserved for the elite, by and large, and what Riz did have was forced on him- but they never wanted to stray too far from the natural with idols. He's lucky that idols are worth too much to risk the worst; he's lucky that, for Thornton's purposes, mining slaves were worth too little to replace their arms with drills or to implant tracking chips.

He subconsciously scratches his left wrist. Once, there was a burn scar, a brand, showing 4172-A. His slave barcode, his serial number, the designation on his birth certificate, which is a generous term itself to call the receipt of his birth. The numbers in his skin were misaligned, because the staff member who'd burned it in hadn't been able to get him to sit still. He doesn't really remember that day, but he remembers the day it happened to his little sister Inaya, when he was ten, and she had just turned five; they didn't do it as babies, because as babies, it healed too well. He remembers multiple armoured police holding her body down, ignoring her strangled cries, the mud she'd kicked up- the way other Majadhans averted their gaze. The way they had no choice.