Model Citizen Tara Payne

chapter one - pearly whites

Quentin Brunhilm, the famous movie star from the hills of Terselsaw, has rather unimpressive teeth. At least this was Tara's impression, trying to glean his dental records through her screen. Although they were a fairly startling shade of bleached white, so white that you could be pretty sure it was a public health risk, they seemed rather insubstantial for a man of his calibre. They were short, stubby, in a neat, packed line. Claudia Riley, on the other hand, had a tooth gap. It was between her maxillary right central incisor and her maxillary left central incisor, around 2 millimetres wide. It was a defining characteristic of her face and a landmark reason why she became a worldwide famous model instead of the last poor hopeful with a mere 1.8-millimetre interstice. She had just the perfect amount of gap. Tara wasn't sure whether she wanted to be Claudia or wanted to date Claudia or steal Claudia's teeth. Tara decided that one could aspire to do all three, in a perfect world.

The world she inhabited now was steadily approaching morning. All across the well-to-do side of the Empire, identical, self-polishing, government-issued alarms, with large green glowing letters, were itching to explode in their well-practised manner. Knocker-Uppers were polishing their peashooters, snuffer outers and batons to rouse the citizens of the less well-to-do Tadbryth. There was once an Upper and Lower Tadbryth, but the poor wouldn't stop growing and the rich could not stay where the poor had to inhabit, and so all of Tadbryth existed in a grieving desolate mass. 

Tara had a secret affinity for lateness. She liked the feeling of everything being over. The day was finished to everyone but her, and she could just clutch on to those straws of the moment for just a moment longer. This theory was flawed. By staying up late, she only slept into the morning longer, enjoyed her day less and her enjoyment of her slice of the night was ultimately dashed by her putting too much pressure on it, and she would be tired and upset that she wasn't happy. In the brief moment that she managed to convince herself that this bad habit really worked for her (the brief moment that had thrived for these past several months), she was content. She felt the thrill of emptiness. For a moment, it felt purposeful. The clock was resting at 3.45am, and here she was. She was here. Enjoying the silence immensely. Just for an instant. 

City silence was special. For any born and bred country dweller, no less than pure nothingness would count. Say the neighbours' cats are fighting. That is not silence. But for a city dweller in Tadbryth, the absence of such a palaver would require some strange magical reckoning upon the place. City silence lived in the noise, the meaninglessness of sound to the person listening. They could take it all in, let it wash over them, scrape away the blandness of their soul like a chemical foot peel. They could listen to the city being the city and being alive, and because all the sound meant nothing really factual to them. It was the opposite of existential dread. Tara couldn't worry about anything while listening to the city thrive. How anyone could fear mortality when they could touch the waves of life in the air was beyond her. The top window was cracked open so she could feel the rush wash in. The moment where everything felt a bit less frantic than the morning before, the drunkenness of ants had sobered. Tara was just about to research 'Ryan Hickman teeth pics' when her Gage buzzed on her wrist. She twisted her wrist round, a small hologram hovering above it, projected from a watch-like device. Her Gage. It was a present from her Dad for her sixteenth birthday, stolen from bins whilst visiting the Great Morpheme City. It was an old bit of tech now. It was already out of date when she'd first got it, some seven years ago. The notification was from a dating site her sister had convinced her to try. She downloaded it for the primary purpose of shutting her sister May up. She found it was an alert to remind her she hadn't finished setting her account up. She sighed, how anticlimactic. 

She jadedly swept through a few profiles. Her Gagetop fell asleep so she semi-consciously pawed at the sensors to wake it up. When it did it she was greeted with her open tab, a wall of thick teeth. She brought her two Gages next to each other, flicking across profiles of potential love interests, eyes flicking between them and her idols. She huffed in disappointment. Their teeth were nothing more than dulled blades, and quite a few needed to floss more. 

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I'm coming back to re-read this and edit but what the hell I'm just gonna publish it now. I hope it's okay! Love you all xox

-G.W.