this world will break your heart

Part 2: The Hersteller - Chapter 8

The fire is going to start in the basement and I'm on lookout again. While I was last picked for action, at least I'm actively included this time. There are some people who just hang back during the selection process, eyes cast downwards, hoping that they are left alone at the Hersteller. I don't understand why you would leave everything and then not want to get involved. Write essays and try to demonstrate your commitment but then not be proactive. Despite being last picked, I am always chosen. Maybe I've had some valuable contribution to our re-education classes that have identified me as committed to the cause and ready for mischief. Maybe it's because three people have recently defected to another startup, AuthenticHumanity, and one has already been arrested. Who knows what it takes to change people's minds about the ability of an individual to contribute fully. Whatever it is, I'm happy to hear my name called—even if it's last.

Still, when I complain that I am explosive-ready, everyone either pretends not to hear me or just shrugs. Nobody really responds to me, even when I see the layout of our target destination. "I know this place. I've been inside here before. I know where the waiting rooms are, the champagne fountain, the surgery suites, and storage locations. I know this place." Unfortunately, as usual, I have turned invisible and nobody even pretends to care that my brain contains valuable information. Oh well...it's their loss. I'm not going to sacrifice my knowledge for another week on cleaning assignments, emptying out garbage cans and deciphering the ancient script.

Stationed in the hallway, I busy myself with counting tiles on the ceiling and categorizing them by function. There are 31 sensors and 17 flame-hesitant ones. When I finish counting and sorting, I play with the kerosene lamp, watching my shadow grow and shrink until I reach peak boredom.

I wander away from my spot; just far enough to be protecting it, but a hallway length away to feel the change of scenery. It's an old trick that I learned when working for Sonny. One eye forward and one eye back. He always did it better than me because he had those 360 lizard eyes. Not fake ones either. When he thought he was scholarship-bound, the school paid for them. Back in his glory athlete days, being able to see the entire picture made him faster. He could gage and predict an attack from every angle.

I remember the gallery of plasmas on the walls from when Tessa and I were here before. I remember the nurse proudly gesturing to the glowing screens.

"And these are some of our greatest successes. You wouldn't recognize these stars before they walked in. Some of them were here for a tune-up, but most..." she dropped her voice in a false display of modesty, "looked completely ordinary. Just like you or me."

The idea of transformation was so full of drama you could barely stand it. Tessa took deep personal offense to being called ordinary. You could see it in the scarlet flash across her cheeks. Ordinary was for losers and she was definitely not a loser. Well, in her mind she wasn't a loser. The rest of the universe might have disagreed. Former patients of Dr. Mathias Murphy, surgeon to the semi-stars, are gauzed up and the procedure is carefully documented on videoreels. You can tap parts of the image to see the before and after, focusing on the smallest details, pinching to enlarge or double-tapping to zoom out to see the entire masterpiece. Every gesture allows you to witness the drastic change in bone structure or features. There is even a gallery of repeat buyers: people transformed so beyond that it's impossible not to stare at them. There are sections for repeats, and loyalty card users, which document the myriad of changes. Some are famous. Others are rich. Most are both. I have to resist the urge to smash each carefully mounted plasma with the edge of the gas lamp. I imagine the edges of flames changing the colors from black to a deeper, glossier black with that inescapable smell of melted plastic, wires soldered together, and those weird oily rainbows spreading, to engulf the edges.

As I walk through the gallery of transformations, something—or rather—someone catches my eye. It's that creeping feeling of being watched. Or, like when you walk into a room and don't realize there's a mirror on the wall, and you come face-to-face with your own unrecognizable reflection. Here I am, but not actually me. This me is all injected and augmented. A better version of the person I currently am. She stands on that plasma, holding a tray of plastics, offering herself up like she's on display. You just need to look beyond the changes to see me in her. Her eyes are enlarged and her nose is reduced, but otherwise, we're identical. Beneath those features is something so familiar. It's like I had been born in a different dimension where all my minuses converted to pluses. Under the plasma is stenciled "Nurse Fallow gets up close and personal with Cantos Neufchatel." She sits there, perched on the billion credit lap of Cantos Neufchatel. Her smile and body demonstrate friendship and familiarity. But her eyes focus at whoever is capturing the image. Just beyond the edge of the frame, that's where her attention is. And there he is; our modern-day monarch. Cantos Neufchatel's expression demonstrates his easy possession of this nurse Fallow. I tap the plasma and the scene springs to life.

"You should be excited" an off-plasma voice instructs. I recognize it as Mathias Murphy's.

"Being chosen to be a sleeper is an honor." The nurse recites, unenthusiastically.

"No," Cantos interrupts. "Being my sleeper is a great honor." The men laugh and nurse Fallow joins in about a beat behind and clearly not feeling very honored.

The clip reset itself and I watch it again.

This girl is fucked. She knows it and I know it. Anyone looking into those exaggerated eyes knows it.

I want to rescue her but the date on the plasma is over three years ago. Where was I three years ago? I wasn't here. I was just a kid, failing school, and making every single bad decision that would lead me here.

Standing in front of a plasma, I'm puzzled as to why a version of me is submitted to the ultimate honor this society has to offer. She's probably still resting up in one of those specially designed chambers; unconscious to the rest of the world, lying there, and letting time slip by. How long do they stay there? Five years? Seven years? I can't remember, or I've actively forgotten.

I want to know more about her, this nurse Fallow. Why does she look like me? There's this one lingering thought, feeling, that I can't shake. I don't even want to acknowledge it, but what if she was me. Like deep down in a DNA type of way? What if we were just copies, both destined for the same place, except I was discarded because I was duller or a little rougher? I quickly try to banish that thought from my mind, but I know I won't be able to shake it. Once you see yourself as someone else, something changes about how you are in the world.

The idea lingers long into the night.

Even as the carefully orchestrated Dr. Matthias Murphy's clinic fire starts melting all the plasmas off the wall, as the edges curl, the feeling remains. If there is one of me out there...are there others?