Outcasts by Vonda N. McIntyre

fuzzy balloon bounced from Jannine’s
fingertips, rose in an eerie, slow curve, and touched its destination. The
viddydub forces took over, sucking the squashed ball into place with a loud,
satisfied slurp.
    “Work always reminds me of that Charlie Chan movie,”
Jannine said.
    Neko, farther along on the substrate, pitched an identical
elemental balloon into the helical structure. She had an elegant, overhand
throw; she had played ball before she left school, but she was too small to get
a scholarship.
    “What Charlie Chan movie?” she asked. “Not
that I go out of my way to see Charlie Chan movies.”
    “The one where he’s dancing with the globe?”
Jannine checked the blueprint hovering nearby, freed an element from the substrate,
and moved it into place.
    “Do you maybe mean Charlie Chaplin?” Neko said. “ The
Great Dictator ?”
    “Chaplin, right.” Jannine picked up a third
element, tossed it, caught it again, danced on one toe.
    Neko tossed an element through the helix. A perfect curve
ball, it arced, touched, settled, like a basketball into quicksand. Its fuzzy
outlines blurred as it melted into the main structure, still a discrete entity,
but pouring its outer layers into the common pool.
    “I don’t think you’d go too far as a dictator,”
Neko said.
    “I don’t want to be the dictator. I want to be
the guy who pretends to be the dictator.”
    She leaped again, twisting as she left the ground. But the
system wouldn’t let her spin. It caught her and stopped her with hard
invisible fingers. She found herself on the ground, with no sensation of
falling between leap and sprawl.
    “Are you all right? I wish you wouldn’t do that. Jeez, it makes me nauseous just to watch you.”
    Jannine picked herself up. Smiling, she glanced toward Neko,
but Neko’s blurry face showed no expression.
    “I’m okay,” Jannine said to reassure her
co-worker. Neko couldn’t see her expression any more than Jannine could
see Neko’s. “Someday the system will handle a spin. How’ll I
know if I don’t try?”
    Neko picked up one more of the furry elemental balls and
dropped it into place. The elementals scattered at her feet, bumping and
quivering, sticking briefly to the substrate or bouncing off. Once in a while,
two melded into dumbbell-shapes, then parted again.
    “The system will handle a spin when you grow a
ball-joint in your wrist,” Neko said, exasperated. “You could read the documentation when there’s an upgrade.”
    “Oh, when all else fails, read the instructions.”
Jannine laughed. “I don’t have time to read the instructions.”
She wished the company would let her take the manual home, but that was against
the rules. You were only allowed to read the manual in the company library.
    Jannine and Neko walked down the helix, positioning the
elementals, now and again prying one out and replacing it.
    A herd of elementals quivered toward Jannine, like bowling
balls under a gray blanket. Several escaped and flew off into the sky.
    “Warm fuzzies today,” Neko said.
    “Yeah.” Jannine went to the system and asked for
cooling. The elementals calmed, settled to the ground, and re-absorbed their
covering blanket. Once in a while, an elemental emitted a smear.
    The helix extended out of sight in both directions. Jannine
and Neko had been working on this section for a week. Jannine loved watching
the helix evolve under her hands. The details of substrate, helix, and
elementals changed so fast that a human could alter the helix better than a
robot, even better than enzymes.
    A flicker in Jannine’s vision: the helix and the
substrate and Neko vanished.
    Jannine found herself in the real world. The couch held her
among water-filled cushions, cradling her body.
    Quitting time.
    The screen of her helmet reflected her face, an image as
unreal and distorted against the smoky plastic as Neko’s face had been,
back inside the system. The screen’s color faded. The audio fuzz cut out.
    The clamor and