Chapter 1: The Fall

Autumn is free, until she realizes she isn’t. Go-X has turned her into an Idol, a singing-dancing machine broadcasted on holovisions all around the world. She sings like a bird, and she is orange-haired and round-eyed and dolly because, well, she is a doll. By Go-X’s advanced and invasive (but advanced!) technology, she’s been wired into a system controlled by a boardroom hidden in the basement of a sleek and silver building. It’s a building disguised and somewhat truthfully a training center for aspiring musicians. State-of-the-art studios, award-winning producers, and even award-winning chefs to feed staff that works late into the night — “Go-X” is the answer when children are asked where they want to work when they grow up.

The boardroom hidden in Go-X’s headquarters is the heart of it all, and the heart is green and greedy and all too good at convincing Autumn that she won’t notice the wires implanted in her head. They’ll poke out from time to time, sure, but it’s nothing her trained hairstylist can’t fix with a few strategically placed extensions. And those little pricks at her temples waking her at 5 a.m., persuading her that ten cashews (and only ten!) are a much tastier breakfast than that bowl of Sugar Bombs? It’s all for the sake of making her a top Idol. The same wires feed her answers during interviews, jolt electrodes through her body to keep her energized on as little rest as possible, and most importantly listen to every word she speaks. Which better be on the script, or else.

But Autumn isn’t the only one of her wired kind. She’s sure at least her roommate is, at the Go-X dormitory. They were trained as a duet, and Sunny is dolly in her own way, with deliciously curved lashes and blonde locks to cover her wires — wires that are so intermingled with Autumn’s that they can’t go longer than a day without each other before their systems begin to yield. It’s a strategic move, to have their systems so reliant on each other, to avoid that pesky thing called bandmate conflict. Sometimes, Autumn and Sunny crawl into each other’s beds and run fingers through each other’s hair to nurse their aching scalps. The boardroom scolds them for it because it messes with the circuits, but it’s hard not to hold each other close when they finally realize two years in that they are prisoners dressed in silk.

The day after Autumn and Sunny’s sophomore album goes gold, Autumn gets the courage to ask her manager for a hair change.

“I’ve been the color of my least favorite fruit since our debut,” she points out, slicing fingers through her perfectly geometrical bob.

“You just got it cut short, isn’t that enough change?” her manager replies, incredulous. “And don’t be so dramatic — you have orange juice every morning with your breakfast.”

“Because you make me,” Autumn barks back, but it’s hard to take someone seriously when vocal chord surgery has given them the voice of a twelve-year old child.

Her manager speaks to her as if she were even younger.

“Do you know your name? You’re Autumn. You were born in autumn. Orange is the color of autumn and that’s the image the company gave you. How hard is that to understand?”

My birthday is in March, Autumn thinks. But Go-X changed her birthday to the day she was scouted in that dingy street downtown. In a concrete jungle that time of year, there were no leaves falling in a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges; and the only things that crunched beneath her steps were food wrappers and broken glass.

Before Autumn can protest any further, her manager begins swiping through channels on the holovision at his desk. Commercials for a self-driving hovercraft and Go-X’s top Idol holding a spoonful of Sugar Bombs flash over Autumn’s face.

The next several months are a whirlwind as Autumn and Sunny dive into their first world tour. It’s the first time Autumn has been out of her native city, and it’s the first time she feels like her dreams are finally coming true. Her new haircut is a hit – the matching wig is the top-selling merchandise at concerts – and while she doesn’t see an increase in income (not that she’s ever really seen one), big-name designers are sending her more fur and jewelry than she could wear in a lifetime.

But smoke and mirrors don’t make up for lack of rest, and even their daily jolts of electrodes can’t keep Autumn and Sunny from wilting in their hotel room after the fiftieth concert in the fiftieth city in less than four months.

Autumn sits on the ledge of the hotel window, her view a busy air freeway. She doesn’t flinch at the hovercrafts flying inches away, nor does she hear them through the soundproof glass. Headlights flash across her face in passing, quick and silent in their strikes.

She can feel the creaking in her joints as she slides off the ledge and goes to the bathroom, rapping her knuckles on the door.

“Sunny, are you almost done in there?”

Sunny has been in the bathroom an hour now. Autumn can hear the trickling of water as her counterpart shifts in the bathtub, a maddeningly long pause before a muffled replied comes through the door.

“Ten more minutes.”

“You’ve been in there forever, Sunny. I’m tired and I need to wash up, too.”

More trickling water, and silence.

“Sunny.”

But Autumn is just talking to the door now. One of her wires fires a sharp pain in the back of her head — the same wire that’s been bothering her all week — and she winces, waits for it to subside. Then she plucks a bobby pin from her hair and wriggles it through the hole in the doorknob until she hears a click. When she swings the door open, a warm fog hits her face; through it, she sees Sunny turning in the bathtub, her face wrinkled and obviously confused.

“What in the world?” Sunny’s little voice echoes off the walls. “I told you I was almost done.” She sinks down into the water again, laying her head back against the tub with a sigh. She closes her eyes, too dismissive of her intruder to notice her storming up from behind.

“Get out!” Autumn screams, and for once she sounds serious – scary, even. She plunges a hand into the bathwater and grabs Sunny’s wrist, giving her arm a violent tug upward. Sunny bellows, but it only makes Autumn grip harder. Only when Sunny’s body is folded over the side of the tub does Autumn notice the blood under her own nails, dripping from where she’s pierced into the skin of Sunny’s wrist.

She lets go, horrified.

The next day, the tour is postponed and the Idol pair is sent back to Go-X headquarters for inspection. The company’s suspicions are right – one of Autumn’s wires is damaged; it’s the reason she’s been asking for a hair change and fighting with Sunny and overall misbehaving the last few months. Or so the company thinks.

Even after Autumn’s wire has been restored, she’s still angry that she’s not allowed to change her hair color. She’s craving sugar. She’s haunted by the image of blood snaking down Sunny’s wrist, dark and thick like melted asphalt.

Sunny’s blood was gray.

Autumn knows Sunny is just as shocked by it, but neither of them dare mention it to the other, let alone ask the company about it. Instead, Autumn takes the time to look at her body more. She counts her freckles. She studies the lines in her palm, sees her lifeline stretching all the way down to her wrist. She holds her wrist and brushes her thumb over tiny, blue, unsuspecting veins. One day in the shower, she gets the courage to press her razor to the delicate space there.

Red, she pleads, but she knows she’s not Autumn no matter what Go-X says. And so she bleeds gray.

Today marks three years since Go-X scouts picked her up from the streets. She wonders how she could have stared that long at the sun to be blinded. She cries, struggling to discern at what point someone stops being human and becomes something entirely different. Is it when you stop bleeding red?

She gets out of the shower with these thoughts still racing in her head, too distracted to hear Sunny’s gasp at the sight of the other’s leaking wrist. She dries off, dresses herself and heads out of the dormitory, letting the door shut on Sunny’s terrified face.

She ignores the jolts in her wires as she exits the company building, walking several blocks down and turning onto an old, familiar street. She feels a crunch beneath her step and looks down at broken glass. She realizes, then, that this is her fall. She’s soaked in the bright lights, she’s sung and danced with the sun – even loved the sun. But she’s looked away and now she knows too much. Her sunny days are over.

And she realizes, with surprising acceptance, that Go-X is right – she is Autumn.