In the course of brainstorming the story I’m intimating at in (among other posts) “Crash Dive, Auntie!”, I’m wondering about the main characters’ hair color, how their aesthetic might have evolved in the eighteen years since the previous story; I know it might seem silly, or perhaps anime-esque, to be concerned first and foremost about characters’ hair dye, but hey, it’s cool…especially since “auntie” Decca changing her natural copper red hair to platinum snow white was such a big moment at the end of “Children of the Storm”, signifying her reaching a new stage of life as she entered middle age, and finally moved away from her married life in a dance studio in Middle Tennessee and into widowed retirement in a winery in Slovenia. “Cousin” Georgia, meanwhile, kept her natural copper red shade…and her best friend (and auntie Decca’s successor at the dance studio) Henrietta also has red hair. Georgia’s son Gunston also has copper red hair…at least at first.
But I’ve considered various possibilities. Georgia is so close to Decca that I could see her copying auntie’s hair color, going snow white herself despite her young age. And Henrietta might follow along too. On the flip side, Georgia is a passionate enjoyer of Japanese culture, so she might transform her copper red ringlets not into platinum snow-white ringlets but rather into perfectly silk-straight jet-black hair, like ideal Japanese beauties, presumably with Henrietta either transitioning to white or keeping her natural copper red color…or even embracing a rather more sensual platinum-blonde hue.
But as time went on in the brainstorming process I was unsatisfied with any of these possibilities. So I was wondering about Decca changing her mind and returning to her natural copper shade…but that sorta defeats the purpose of the transformation at the end of “Children of the Storm”. Then, I realized: this is a science-fictional setting. Maybe they have access to hues that we don’t.
Sure, there are any number of overtly unnatural hair colors they could embrace, all colors of the rainbow, but I don’t see people like them going for blue, green, or purple hair, for example. Or even a severe artificial red shade. So that left me stumped.
Until, I got an inspiration: since their natural shade is copper red, why not a treatment that accentuates the similarity to copper? By making the hair shiny, reflective, and frankly resembling liquid metal, copper specifically. A natural hair color but with supernatural qualities. Aha. This would be perfect.
Especially considering that Henrietta already enjoys smart contacts over her eyes which are powered by “nyxium” (einsteinium) RTGs, which in their aqueous solution cause her eyes to appear to glow blue in the dark. So there’s already a slight push toward a more ethereal and even superhuman beauty standard, already in the 2040s. By the 2060s this could be pushed further; if Decca and Georgia all get their smart contacts too, and of the same type as Henrietta’s, they could all have glowing blue eyes. Hair that’s all the way down their back cascading like liquid copper metal would complement the look perfectly.
But why would auntie Decca embrace such a look? Maybe it wasn’t available as of “Children of the Storm”. Consider that already “Enceladan peptides” are being used as an anti-aging beauty treatment, similar to certain peptides today, only these are harvested from extraterrestrial life-forms (in this case those on Enceladus). What if the liquid copper metal hair look was the product of another discovery courtesy of alien life?
Perhaps this is from Enceladus yet again, but a different source might be desired for the purposes of my story, to emphasize the diversity of life-bearing habitats in our solar system (albeit in most cases microbial). I considered Mars, Venus, even smaller solar system bodies, all the way out to Triton, but by far the leading candidate in my mind at this time is Io, the volcanic moon of Jupiter. Yes, there might be microbes on Io: they might be buried deep underground and/or be radiation-resistant, and they’d be more likely to drink hydrogen sulfide than water, but they could be there.
Jupiter in this timeline was first reached by manned expeditions as early as the 1970s, but it might have taken much longer to properly examine Io, and find evidence of these life-forms, owing to the exotic nature of these organisms as well as the hostile conditions for cosmonauts. Certainly it’s about the last place in the solar system one would expect to find a cosmetic treatment for humans.
But perhaps this is precisely why it takes until, say, the 2050s, almost a century after the first flags-and-footprints mission, for a presumably utterly mad scientist to mate Ionian microbes with human hair, and discover that these exotic microbes form a symbiosis with human hair strands’ chemical matrix, creating a striking effect with red hair in particular. Perhaps the effect doesn’t work for any other hair color, explaining why this beyond-platinum shade of platinum doesn’t just become the next iteration of platinum blonde (or platinum snow-white, as the case may be)…and why Decca might be intrigued to get the treatment after reverting to her natural red hair shade, likely after Henrietta gets it. Georgia no doubt would fall in line before too long (perhaps at Henrietta’s prodding).
So we have hair that’s been taken over by alien microbes, eyes that glow from radioactivity, and beauty courtesy of peptides from deep-sea denizens of an alien world. Already cool enough. But it’s already canonical that Decca at least is getting “Wasp Woman” treatments: skin lightening treatments that are derived from a factor discovered in wasps. Earth wasps in this case, so nothing quite so exotic as bonding your hair with bacteria that breathe sulfur dioxide (indeed, Decca doing the “Wasp Woman” regimen might be what makes them all more open to more drastic treatments in the future!).
However, I do have an idea, that the “Wasp Woman” treatment combines with the Enceladan peptides to have an unexpected effect of gradually causing the resulting unnaturally white skin to glow in the dark. Already the founder of “Wasp Woman”, the scientist who developed it, has an unnatural pallor, and this could escalate into an unnatural glow (if she’s also using the Enceladan peptides). No doubt this would be an unexpected effect, and Decca, Georgia, and Henrietta would be among the first victims…or perhaps the first beneficiaries. After all, glowing white skin, glowing blue eyes, and liquid metallic hair is about the coolest look ever.
Combine it with an all-metallics wardrobe that’s skimpy and/or figure-hugging, and these girls could become the most science-fictional yet. Especially since they live on a submarine that would be the envy of Captain Nemo himself. Not bad for a family who were unassuming western Virginians originally. By the end of the story, they’ll be fit to be one with the stars…and perhaps they will be. Watch this space.