Jumping off the Planet

SPACE SHAVE

Stinky was whining about wanting to play with his new monkey and Weird had gone back to being the techno-geek and Dad was annoyed about something else, I didn't know what. They just came in like a door blown open in a sandstorm and swept around the room for a while before they settled in.

I guess we were all tired. And not just physically. We'd been through a lot, and now it was catching up with us. Dad said that traveling was tiring, and even though most of what we'd been doing was sitting around and watching the scenery slide by, what little there was of it, I could see why he would think so. Not having anything to do is a lot more tiring than having everything to do. But I think we were tired of each other. I know I was.

The screen was blinking with a reminder to please watch the important informational video. Weird is datatropic or something. If it's educational, he has to read it or watch it or listen to it, so he punched up the program immediately. I flung myself down on a chair and glowered while Weird watched intently. Eventually, Dad put down his book and watched too. Off in the corner, Stinky happily made up his own code phrases and taught the monkey to do silly things whenever he said them. He had the monkey belching, pretending to fart, giving the finger, mooning and waggling its butt. If he could have taught it to crap on the rug as well, I bet he would have.

The video turned out to be a lot more interesting than it looked at first glance. It was full of funny stories about how to look like a jerk in micro-gravity. They had that red-haired comedian, you know the one, with his hair flaming out in all directions, stumbling through all the different ways to hurt yourself. So it was kind of interesting to watch after all.

There was one part that gave us pause. The guy who was narrating said, "If you're planning to go on to Luna or any other deep-space destination, body shaving is strongly recommended. If you are heading out to any military or scientific destination, it will be required."

"Huh?" I asked. "Body shaving?"

The program went on to show how the body flakes off zillions of tiny bits of skin and hair every day. In micro-gravity, this stuff floats around like a nanotech snowstorm. The hair is apparently the worst, cause it can clog up the micromachinery. As a long-term maintenance measure, the Loonies shave themselves and rub stuff on their skin so it doesn't flake so much, and apparently this was now recommended for anyone who was planning to spend any amount of time in space.

Dad said this was part of the economics involved in Elevator Theory. Macro events have micro effects; micro events have macro effects. In space body hair is a luxury. Hair holds dirt and bacteria and smells. When you have hair, your scalp also flakes a lot. And underarm hair and pubic hair gets into everything too. It's nasty.

And if that weren't disgusting enough, the program showed how all that stuff builds up in the recycling equipment and sometimes you get pockets of goop where bacteria can live—so minimizing all those flakes of skin and hair floating around is also good for preventing the spread of infection. The show didn't specifically mention what happened on the Miranda. They didn't have to. The lawsuits still hadn't been settled.

But they also said that without hair on your head or on your body, you don't use up as much water washing. So if you want to have hair, you have to pay for it. Dad said that there's a surcharge at some of the orbital hotels if you don't shave, because it costs more to clean up. More Elevator Theory economics.

Then the program showed the red-haired guy shaving everything—and I mean everything—even his head. He looked real sad about losing his hair and even sillier without it, but they let him keep a real short buzz on top, so you could still tell he was the same guy. The short hair looked better on the women, for some reason.

I thought the whole thing was a little extreme, but Dad said that it made sense to him, and the next thing I knew he and Weird were in the bathroom looking at the shaving equipment. Mostly, there was this big vacuum tube that came out of the wall with a kind of clippers in a big mouth at the end. It sucked up all the hair as fast as it clipped. The clipper was really a forest of micro-machines, first you set it for your age and your sex and how close you wanted to be shaved, and then you moved it slowly back and forth across your skin until the light on the end showed green, then you moved on to the next place. You had to do this for the hair on your head and your legs and under your arms and down below if you had anything there yet, which I did, but not really very much and I wasn't sure yet I wanted to lose it.

Weird said we should have gone to a shaving station at Terminus, where we could have gotten the full treatment, including the services of a professional shaver, and it was too bad we hadn't taken the time, but Dad just shrugged it off. "We have twenty-four hours of travel before we reach Geostationary. The equipment here will be sufficient."

Dad also said that the micro-economics of space were already becoming a part of Earth society. A lot of people who never went into space were shaving now, some because they thought it was sexy, but just as many were doing it to cut back on their water consumption. I could understand that. Mom was always complaining about the clean water taxes, which were almost as much as the water bill in El Paso. Now that he'd mentioned it, I realized there were a lot of bald people back home in our Tube-Town. I'd just never noticed it or thought about it before.

Anyway, after you shaved, you were supposed to take a special shower. It wasn't a shower like on Earth where the water jets come out of the wall. Instead, you get a little sprayer at the end of a hose, which you use for getting yourself wet, then you rub yourself all over with some foamy stuff, which is supposed to keep your skin from drying and flaking so much, and then you shloop it all off with another vacuum tube. If you do it right, your skin ends up feeling all slick and slippery, as soft and smooth as a baby's ass.

Dad went first, then Weird, then me, then Stinky. I thought we ended up looking like fat brown slugs. Bald fat brown slugs. Mom was going to kill us when we got back. And it felt kind of weird to be so smooth all over. My clothes felt a lot rougher too.

There were some nylan space-clothes in one of the closets. All different sizes, each set a different color. They were real light and soft, like one of Dad's silk shirts. When you opened the package you were automatically billed for them, but they didn't cost that much and Dad said we'd probably all be a lot more comfortable than if we tried to wear Earth-clothes. Earth-clothes are for protection from the weather. Space-clothes are for comfort and cleanliness.

The nylan space-suit is sort of a one-piece jumpsuit that you step into and zip up the front. It's one of those nano-zippers that disappears when you zip it. You can't even feel it. The wrists and the ankles are snug-fitting. So is the collar around the neck. This is again to keep skin flakes and hairs from being spread around. There are slipperlike shoes to wear too. The whole thing is kind of like dressing for a clean-room. There were also shower caps for people who didn't want to cut their hair and other caps for people who did, but the caps were optional; we didn't have to wear them. Stinky and I both did. Dad and Weird decided not to.

It felt like Halloween and after we were done, we all looked like Hallo-weenies. After Weird told him he was as smooth and as cute as a girl, Stinky went dancing around the room singing, "I'm a girl now, I'm a girl now." I just made a face and looked embarrassed. Was this really necessary? But Dad said we'd get used to it and we'd probably find it a lot more comfortable than trying to keep wearing our Earth-clothes. So we packed them all up in the dirty clothes bag and put them in the closet and forgot about them.