The Fluted Girl — Paolo Bacigalupi

In "The Fluted Girl," Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi weaves a tale of the freedoms and shackles of wealth and fame. Lidia is a fluted girl, one of a pair of genetically altered and surgically designed twins, intended to win the hearts and minds of all who observe her in performance. While Lidia's patron, Madame Belari, plots to profit from Lidia's and her sister's debut exhibition, Lidia seeks her freedom, and will pay any price to seize it.

"The Fluted Girl" was featured in Ellen Datlow's "Year's Best Fantasy & Horror," Seventeenth Edition; in Gardner Dozois' "Year's Best SF," Twenty-First Edition; and in Jonathan Strahan's "Best SF of the Year," 2003 Edition.

Reviews:
"This science fantasy puts us in a decadent future world both feudal and capitalistic, in which human beings can be remade in a variety of styles, and immortality is possible at a price... Bacigalupi imagines an intricate and lush world… but perhaps the best thing about the story is that it is in no way predictable, and yet the twists he gives the reader do not jar. "The Fluted Girl" is a glorious story that will leave you hungry for more of Bacigalupi's work." --- Tangent Online

"The resulting story is a scary one, with the original premise, but also holding to a core story: what will people in power, unchallenged power, do with the tools available to them? The result is horribly erotic and immoral, but thought provoking at the same time." -- SF Signal