wildcat

Steel nozzles showered them from above with liquid costumes that stained and clung to their skin as they danced (always, always, always moving, not a moment's rest, lightning flicking off their elbows), that reacted to body temperature and posture to form strange patterns. Rumpled splashes became capes, belts, or sashes. All danced except the nudist, King Koan, lost in thought and universes and keeping perfectly still in a way none of the others could imitate, not a jot - he kept away from the showers of latex. Perfect bodies emerged naked, aroused, and fully-clothed at once.

Through the wet/dry crowd slid butlers, tuxedoed robot-mannequins with awkward joints delivering obscene precision -- no way those legs should be able to deliver trays of drinks without spilling. The squat XL-32 shook a martini to the delighted Privateer's specifications and then offered it to the drippingly-gloved hand. Panda-Woman and the Voice of Reason giggled to private jokes and swept forth from the showers to sip glasses of warmed goat's milk laced with nano-bibles. Epiphanies! Entropy-Man and his sidekick, Kid Heat-Death, met them on the balcony and the four slipped off the marble floor and into a seething envelope of anti-gravity. The Voice took Kid Heat-Death's hand and waltzed; Panda-Woman tangoed with Entropy-Man. The music was different for each, or possibly played only at different speeds; ultrasound guns fired different melodies into their heads.

Their forgotten drinks rolled about, exposed, on the floor for only a moment before the butlers rounded about and approached; each stray molecule collapsed into pure white light and dispersed. The butlers hummed together for a long stretch, electronic eyes trained upward toward the dancers until footsteps marked Pale Ranger and the Surrealist stepping up the steps in freshly dried uniforms...