Night had long since descended over the southern sprawl of New Mason—what was left of it, anyway. Half-buried strip malls, heat-scarred highways, the neon glow of obsolete fast-food signs... and tucked deep in the industrial grid was Studio 7A, a bunker-like building where “Two Barrels” Harlan ran his media operation like a digital warlord.

  Harlan himself had vanished hours ago, as usual. He never stayed long in one place—not with the kind of stories he cooked up.

  Inside the studio’s core—a windowless, crypt-like control room—Elmo hunched in front of the editing console, eyes flickering with the soft bioluminescent glow of screens. There was no natural day or night in here. Just blue-tinted artificial twilight and the pulse of LED readouts from a dozen instrument racks. A mechanical heartbeat. Rhythmic. Cold.

  The footage on his monitor showed Mrs. Lawrence. In real life, she had smiled. Praised Ethan Stipe—the tech idealist, the Martian colonist, the dreamer. Her daughter had even giggled at the mention of Ethan’s android bodyguard.

  But the edit told a different story.

  With the studio’s AI-editor plugged directly into the feed, Elmo was reshaping reality. The machine had replaced Mrs. Lawrence’s words with something venomous—subtle, but damning. Her daughter—through a few lines of code and a distortion algorithm—now appeared hollow-eyed, traumatized, borderline dissociative. A child damaged by the encounter with Ethan Stipe’s robot.

  It was slander. Illegal, if anyone could prove it.

  But above all, it was effective.

  A soft whoosh cut through the low hum of electronics as the studio door dilated open. In stepped Tess, Dale Harlan’s multifunctional PA unit. She moved gracefully, her synthetic skin catching the screen light like wet porcelain. In her hands, a tray: sustenance—steam curling from a cup and a freshly made sandwich.

  Tess wasn’t just a studio assistant. She was everything to Harlan: housekeeper, medic, technician, bodyguard… lover. And sometimes, a target for his violent temper.

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  The beatings never fazed her—at least, not visibly. Elmo often wondered why Harlan bothered. Beating Tess was like kicking a refrigerator. A very expensive one.

  Still, for all his admiration of the man’s vision, Elmo was quietly glad Harlan had never married a human.

  He took the tray with a nod. Tess smelled clean tonight—washed, reset. Sometimes she carried the scent of sweat and chemical pheromones, Harlan’s genetic imprint clinging to her outer dermis like shame. Elmo had sent her to the wash bay more than once, ordered her to peel off the seamless polymer skin and run a full sterilization protocol.

  But tonight, she was fresh. Harlan, it seemed, had moved on to newer toys.

  “Is there anything else you require?” she asked, voice smooth and emotionally void, with just enough synthetic empathy to unsettle.

  Elmo took a bite of his sandwich, chewing before replying. “Yeah. Help me finish the edit. And… keep me company.”

  “Activating: studio technician mode. Companion protocol engaged.”

  Her optics dilated momentarily. She sat beside him, interfacing with the console. Her neural uplink synced with the colour correction array, and the image on screen began shifting subtly toward broadcast-safe hues. Elmo adjusted the goose neck light to shine on his face, giving her a clearer scan for biometric syncing.

  Her movements were fast. Precise. But never creative.

  That was why Harlan kept Elmo around. Machines could fabricate data, mimic tone—but they didn’t understand narrative. They didn’t understand the art of bending lies into something believable.

  Tess smiled at him, as if the “companion mode” had gifted her a soul.

  “You look tired, Elmo,” she said gently. “You should take a few days off. Get a bit of sun.”

  Elmo gave her a faint, tired smile. “Chance would be a fine thing.”

  He paused, watching the footage they had created. It was nearly perfect—a 180-degree manipulation that, if aired, would shatter Ethan Stipe’s public image.

  Ethically bankrupt.

  Beautifully done.

  He thought of his father, back when they still spoke. A man of principles. A man who’d warned him about this world.

  You’re not just drinking the Kool-Aid anymore, Elmo thought grimly. You’re mixing the powder. Bottling it. Distributing it door to door, screen to screen.