It was May 5th, and that meant the residents of the Former-Suncoast-Video district microhomes (themselves in the bustling Tide district of Southus) were off at free movie night watching a classic D. W. Griffith film in the cinema. But for KAT-7740, who had stayed behind in her cube to smoke and chill with her roommates, May 5 ^th was the day that she won the lottery.

She hadn’t LITERALLY won the lottery, of course. She still lived in the bottom-right-most chicken wire cube in what used to be a Suncoast Video, and even the THOUGHT of affording a top-right-most cube free of rat bites, falling post-coital ejaculate drip from the couple two cubes up, and more-than-occasional sewage overflow from below seemed like a pipe dream. But that was okay, because today, on May 5^th, KAT-7740 had won the PROVERBIAL lottery, because she had received something even better than money or a cum-free microhouse—she had received a nickname.

She was now “Kitty.”

“You can’t do that,” LMA-2833 whispered, her voice giddy with fear like a child playing games past bedtime. “You have to pay for those! If they find out that you’re just giving those out smack-fast, they’ll k—”

“Don’t listen to this uptight bitch,” XCN-0431 slurred loudly, sloshing her dumpster-find foam Taco Bell cup full of moonshine around for emphasis. A huge splash soaked LMA-2833’s tattered white scarf. “She’s just jealous that your namecode already kinda sounds like a name, when hers sounds like a street name for some kind of S…STD.”

“You ruined my scarf,” LMA-2833 huffed. She was mostly fuming because XCN-0431’s assessment of her was correct. She didn’t dare risk starting a fight with her over it, though—as much as XCN-0431 loved her, XCN-0431 was still drunk, and built like a human Panzer tank.

Kitty giggled. “That’s not bad,” she said slowly, taking a drag from an ill-gained blunt, “but I think her namecode could make a very pretty name. I think she could be… hmm,” Kitty leaned in towards LMA-2833’s face, who pulled her scarf bashfully over her cheeks and turned away, “how about Luma?”

“Aw, hell yeah! Luma is SEXY!” XCN-0431 boomed, taking a celebratory swig of liquor. “That’s the Spanish word for moon, you know.”

“That’s luna,” LMA-2833 groaned. “But please, keep your voice down! I do NOT want to be a part of this, I am NOT getting involved with this—”

“Who’s gonna tell?” XCN-0431 guffawed. “I’m not. You’re not. And Kitty’s not—”

“Stop it stop it stop it!” Kitty giggled with delight, playfully slapping XCN-0431’s massive arm through the sleeves of her oversized black hoodie. “My heart is pounding so fast right now, I just, I like, I never thought I’d ever hear myself with a fiver—”

“I can do better than a fiver,” XCN-0431 interrupted. “You, my lovely, would make an excellent… Katherine.”

LMA-2833’s heart dropped. Katherine practically squealed with delight. “K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E,” she spelled out, her face beet red with a potion of excitement, nerves, marijuana and togetherness. “Nine letters… I feel like I’m gonna’ be shot for saying it, let alone getting called it, but it feels so good!”

“Tonight, we are fucking QUEENS!” XCN-0431 bellowed, throwing her arms around LMA-2833 and Katherine’s shoulders, inadvertently pouring even more moonshine on LMA-2833’s scarf. “Can anyone think of a niner or better for little old me?”

“Xula Candidacy Nolanda!” Katherine blurted out, headbanging in excitement.

LMA-2833 trembled nervously. Behind her square-framed glasses, her eyes darted nervously between the seventeen or so cameras very obviously hidden throughout the microhome cluster. “None of those are names, th-though—”

“WHO GIVES A FUCK, THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!” Xula Candidacy Nolanda shouted. “God damn, that’s… uh… 21 letters!”

“A thunder goddess like yourself deserves a twenty-oner,” Katherine replied, offering Xula Candidacy Nolanda a hit of her blunt. In response, Xula Candidacy Nolanda somehow managed to lift her cup to Katherine’s lips and pour in a decent swig. Katherine offered LMA-2833 the blunt, who took a massive draw and held it in as long as humanly possible.

“Go Luma!” Katherine cheered as LMA-2833 exhaled several perfect rings of smoke.

“I guess that name is kind of nice,” LMA-2833 replied, blushing slightly. This new hit was starting to make her first hit, taken several minutes prior, finally start to kick in. The rusted chicken wire on all sides suddenly felt like a cradle instead of a cage. She didn’t understand why this shit was legal, but she wasn’t complaining, even if a single blunt did cost a full week of the girls’ salaries combined.

“Yeah, that’s our Luma,” Katherine grinned, slumping over onto her. The warmth made Luma feel like she was flying through a pleasant volcano. She hoped it didn’t show on her face. Katherine opened her mouth for Xula Candidacy Nolanda to slosh more booze into, and the local weather for Luma’s scarf changed back to moonshine showers. She giggled. Her scarf giggled—nope, that was Katherine. But this high, Luma didn’t even care that her scarf was now more purple than it was white. That problem, and whatever others LMA-2833 had been worried about, no longer existed. Luma was in charge now, and she was here to feel good.

“We need to think of a better, and-and longer name for you, so get your ass over here,” Xula Candidacy Nolanda slurred, pulling Luma closer in a headlock. The microhome was so crammed their crossed-legs knees were all already overlapping, but Xula Candidacy Nolanda was a very friendly drunk.

As Luma’s torso was yanked towards Xula Candidacy Nolanda, Katherine slumped into Luma’s lap and took a deep exhale off the blunt. “I’ve got it,” Katherine said, careful not to let any smoke escape until she was ready. Katherine took great pleasure in vocalizing the name “Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda,” billowing clouds of smoke up into her face. The warmth of her breath, the poetry of the name, the thought of having a twenty-eighter, and the embrace of each smoky tendril melted into a single all-consuming sensory euphoria for Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda. “That’s a fifteen-billion-dollar name,” she replied, breathlessly.”

“You deserve it,” Katherine replied, offering Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda another hit, which she eagerly accepted. “We all do. We’re putting in 10 hours a fucking day, 6 days a fucking week, busting our fucking asses and we can’t even afford a fourer or a fiver between us! Why can’t I have a niner? Why can’t Xula Candidacy Nolanda have a twenty-oner? Why can’t Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda have a twenty-eighter, when she deserves it more than the chucklefucks that run this dump—”

“I really hope nobody hears you,” Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda slowly crooned, giggling. “We’re risking death right now, you know. It makes me feel kind of sexy and dangerous, like a twenty-eighter should.”

“I don’t think they could kill us if they wanted to,” Xula Candidacy Nolanda aggressively mused aloud. “I could take ten of them. Katherine could probably shank three. You’re pretty smart, Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda, so you’d probably hack the mainframe to take out five hundred thousand somehow or something. That’s five hundred thousand and thirteen right there. How many do you think they’d send for using undocumented vanity namecodes?”

“For that? A dozen. For calling them chucklefucks? Ten thousand,” Katherine replied.Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda and Xula Candidacy Nolanda cackled uproariously. The laughter settled into coughs which settled into passing around the rest of the blunt until it was used up.

“You’re really good at names,” Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda slowly slurred, looking down at Katherine. “You named me and you named Xula Candace Nolanda too.”

“Xula CANDIDACY Nolanda,” Xula Candidacy Nolanda corrected her.

“I just felt so special and powerful when Xula Candidacy Nolanda called me Kitty,” Katherine replied, reaching up and idly stroking the red curls cascading down from Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda’s head. “I was so thrilled just to have a fiver, let alone a niner. I know tomorrow I’ll wake up and be back to just a default ‘coder, but right now I feel like a phoenix rising from the ashes, flying high through this maze of rust and wires, burning it all to a crisp with the forbidden power of words.”

“You are so fucking high right now, shut up,” Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda chuckled. She was clearly on a tour of the stratosphere, herself.

“Make me,” Katherine replied. She leaned up, Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda leaned down, and their lips met in the middle for the first time.

-------

The next day, Luma Luxuria Limoncello Lolanda was stopped at the metal detectors at the plant entrance just past the Former-S’Barro-District. The guard told her that the scanner had found a weapon on her person, but she knew that wasn’t the case. She figured from her hazy memories that this shit must have been about the night prior. What she didn’t know was that it was in fact she and not KAT-4470 who had won the proverbial lottery.

--------

KAT-7740’s first feeling upon seeing Luma come around the corner of the microhome cluster’s oversized entranceway was as usual, but especially after last night, arousal. The next feeling--after a familiar middle-aged man in an all-white suit stepped around the corner as well, flanked by a dozen drone—that feeling was an indescribable combination of textures that made KAT-7740 suddenly feel like gravity had been turned up to five hundred thousand and fourteen percent.

“Hey Lu—uh, “LMA-2833,” a very hungover XCN-0431 mumbled, adding yet another bloody scrape to her muscular back through her cheap t-shirt as she crammed her way through the chicken wire cube’s rusted entrance cut-out. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were bringing company.”

“My name is Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson,” the oligarch boomed.

“I know damn well who you are,” KAT-7740 replied. “You’re the chucklefuck who wrote the Namecode Bill.”

“I presume you refer to the Freedom Funding act,” Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson replied. “Then that makes this easy. You know what the penalty for violating Section 4.92 is.”

“One thing I do know is that I’m going to see you in hell, where our names will be the same length,” KAT-7740 replied, slowly walking towards him, arms stretched wide. The drones adjusted their formation, and, with a snap of Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson’s divinely empowered fingers, they began precisely shooting at KAT-4470’s left wrist. Predicting her motions and adjusting trajectory accordingly, they homed in for a perfect hit in the perfect spot from every drone at once--a process to be repeated until she’d been dismantled alive. XCN-0431 leapt into action, but was swiftly executed by a single 9mm round through the forehead in a precision instant kill by the drone’s flawless and emotionless AI pilot.

“You can kill me,” KAT-7740 shrieked, unflinching as the bullets vaporized her wrist. “But you know what?” she continued, as her twitching hand fell gushing down to the shit-caked tile, “you can’t keep me from dying AS Katherine.” Another hail of bullets, this time to the right wrist, as Katherine’s right-hand plopped limp into the growing puddle of blood. “You killed XCN-0431 already, but you can’t keep me from calling her Xula Candidacy Nolanda to your face without paying a goddamned red cent for the fucking privilege, and you can’t take back the times she called me Katherine. Or even Kitty.” Next went the right eyeball, popped like a balloon at a carnival game by a precision laser strike, designed to splatter but not kill for maximum torment’s sake. “This minute, in corners your cronies’ cameras can’t reach, there are people like us calling each other by niners, and twenty-oners, and maybe even sixty-niners, and you can’t stop it.” Katherine looked back at Luma, who couldn’t quite bring herself to make eye contact but didn’t look too horribly bothered either. While it was hard to see through the single remaining eye, Katherine even thought she could detect the hint of a smile. Katherine gritted her teeth so hard one snapped in half as her left eye, too, was unceremoniously popped, another tear-stained splattered sacrifice atop an endless checkerboard of blood.

Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson snapped his fingers faster. The AI drones’ pilots quickened their pace. Left forearm, flesh on the ground. Right forearm, chunks on the wall. “I don’t need eyes to know how close I am to you now, you milquetoast taint-sweat-stain subhuman leech,” she continued. Left foot, swiss-cheesed. Right shoulder and tendons, plopping to the ground with a crunch and a splat. “Katherine is here. Katherine didn’t pay to say Katherine, and she’s still saying it.” Left shoulder, fragments and ligaments. Genitalia, vaporized. “You can tear me apart piece by piece…” Right midriff, a shower of multicolored moisture. Left thigh, a flurry of bursting and sizzling fat and muscle. “…but you can’t EVER—” Right thigh, firecrackers of flesh. Left cheek and jaw, vanished. “—geh thihs stain…” Right cheek and several jaw fragments, pulverized. “…owb ob’ yuh thuit.”

Can’t get this stain… out of my suit? Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson glanced down in abject horror as he processed the meaning of its final words. It was in fact very close to him, and his suit was indeed now turning a bold new color from its disgusting gushing—and they were still shooting! “Okay Eva, stop shooting,” he shrieked, but the drones heard him wrong. The criminal’s skull was next on the popping-board as originally planned, exploding like a volcano as eruptions of brain matter, mucus and bone stained the previously flawless pressed milky-white authentic Stuart Hughes suit that poor Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson had just spent $50,000 having pressed. His heart sank. This was truly a tragedy.

“I’m sorry,” the drones replied in sync, “I didn’t quite catch that. Here’s a few results from around the web for: ‘smart shoe bling.’”

“God DAMN it,” Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson screeched, angrily kicking the few remaining linked bones of KAT-7740’s skeleton over into the slushy pile with the rest. “This suit is going to cost the taxpayers a fucking fortune.” Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson cleared his throat. “Anyhow, thank you again for your patriotism and cooperation, Ms. Luma Luxuria Limoncello.”

“That’s Luma Luxuria Limoncello LOLANDA—”

“You’re getting a 2-billion-dollar name--don’t push it. Or did you want to trade that top-level microhome in the Former-KB-Toys-district for—”

“Luma Luxuria Limoncello is fine,” she quickly replied.

“That’s what I thought. Anyway, I’m gonna go hit the green. I’ll have one of my underlings fax you the paperwork for the top-most cube.” Imperial Senator Extravaganza Grandiloquence Quincy Roosevelt Stonewall Johnson yanked Luma’s scarf from her neck, wiped the remains of KAT-7740’s face from his cheeks, then handed the scarf back to her. “Thanks, Luna.”

“You ruined my scarf,” LMA-2833 huffed.