The 217th Performance on Our Voyage to Mars

CHAPTER 1 (1+2)

The two android roommates were debating on whether to respond to that audition notice when their landlord pressed the door buzzer.

"Hello, Mr. Oda," Mimi said warily after opening the door.

Mr. Oda wanted a rent hike. Ten percent more than the last time, which was ten percent more than the last time. Altogether, there had been three rent increases since they'd moved into this dingy studio nine months before. Should the girls decline, they'd be kicked out promptly. A shrewd miser in his sixties, Mr. Oda lived upstairs with his family.

"All right, where were we?" said Mimi after closing the door. "Suspicion. You suspected this audition could be a scam. But Daphanie, we should at least give it a try and find out."

But Daphanie wasn't listening.

"Heartless jerk," muttered Daphanie. "He won't stop until he sucks us dry. Maybe we should just go find another apartment."

"It'd be the same." Mimi shook her head. "We're in no position to sign any lawful leases."

Aggrieved, Daphanie looked Mimi in the eye, then looked down.

"Because we're Weeds."

"Because we're Weeds," Mimi concurred before pointing to a holographic screen. "And that's why we need to find a way out."

The holographic screen was projected by her watch computer, placed on the only table in the apartment. On the screen was the audition notice that Mimi had first seen earlier that day.

***

Mimi was deemed a subpar android and discarded by the laboratory that had brought her to this world, along with twenty-one other girls in the monthly quality inspection. They walked, talked, thought and smiled just like any normal seventeen-year-old lass living next door, but didn't deserve the basic human rights according to the law.

Roughly a hundred thousand androids were produced every month by five major companies. About sixty percent of them were seventeen-year-old girls, the bestselling type, ordered by a variety of clients from all over the Solar System, from casinos, restaurants, touring companies to households and lascivious men. The girls were given their first names before their birth. Last names were unnecessary.

The discarded androids had a collective name, the Weeds. They lived at the bottom of society.

Life of a Weed was so undignified that when Mimi saw a recruitment ad, she had to suppress an excited squeal. She had been browsing an internet forum for the Weeds during a break at the restaurant where she worked as a waitress.

It was an audition notice. Gynoids under twenty years old were wanted by an entertainment company. If hired, they would work as a girl group based on a cruise spaceship. It specified that Weeds were especially encouraged to apply.

"Something interesting?" a voice said behind her back.

Mimi jerked and whirled, instinctively putting up a defensive arm, for she had recognized the voice as that of Justin Downs, a young cook who had constantly attempted to grope her.

Fembots were seldom ugly. At five feet four, Mimi was the type a shy sixteen-year-old lad would easily fall in love with, pretty in an unintimidating way, with soft green eyes and mellow chestnut hair.

Downs was anything but shy. He was a predator.

"None of your business," Mimi said, tapping on her watch computer to close the holographic screen, turning to walk away. But Downs, being the jerk he'd always been, blocked her way.

"Come on! I'm just curious," Downs said with a smirk, extending a hand toward Mimi's shoulder. "You should learn to open up—"

"Back off!" Mimi warned, pulling out the electroshocker that she'd tucked in her waistband. Downs threw up his hands, flashing her a flirtatious sneer.

After work, Mimi took the metro straight home. The studio she shared with Daphanie was located in District 8, one of the shabbiest areas in Centrapolitan City. Mimi had met Daphanie last year at a small hotel, where they were working as respectively a waitress and a housekeeper. The Weeds tended to stick together to survive, and they soon became roommates.

"I've got something to show you!" yelled Mimi as she entered the dingy, cramped studio that they called home.

"Be a star and cruise among the stars!" Daphanie read from the holographic screen after Mimi took off her watch computer and placed it on the table. "So it's some kind of showgirls?"

"A pop group, just like the Solargirs!" said Mimi enthusiastically, referring to a famous android girl group. "And we'll get to do space travel!"

"It just sounds too good," said Daphanie doubtfully. "I mean, why would anyone want to hire a Weed to perform? This could be some sort of trap set up by a prostitute ring."

"We'll just stay vigilant," Mimi said. "If we sense anything fishy, we'll run together."

"It says we'll have to prepare a song, with dance if possible, for ninety seconds. But I'm not even sure whether I'm good at singing or dancing."

"Me neither. But listen, you've been cleaning hotel rooms while I've been waiting tables, both illegally. We live in fear of getting bullied or even raped every day on our way to work and home. The cops would ignore our cries for help. The bad ones would even try to rape us as well. We need to find a way out of this plight."

And then came Mr. Oda, carrying his malignant message. And so Daphanie finally nodded. The girls then had a meager dinner, consisting of a stale loaf of bread and some leftovers that Mimi had brought home from her workplace.

After the meal, they emailed their applications and then researched on the Internet, each picking a pop song as her audition piece and then working together on the accompanying dance moves. They practiced till daybreak.