Chapter Seven
Your legs are mine, your heart you can keep.
There's two ways to tell when a person is lying to you. One is of course that he or she won't look you in the eye. The second is when he's staring right at you and what he's telling you sounds pretty good. But then he smiles a little too brightly, and the fine print on his forehead starts to show, letters barely discernable that you would read if you could, but there's too many words and you just can't be bothered.
Al Junker always lied the second way. Although I knew this from the get-go, his fine print had never resulted in more than the smallest of inconveniences. Going along with Junker, with G.P.B., was always easy. Going against them was tough and offered little reward. A girl I worked with at Infrastratos once tried to transfer to another sector—she didn't like the restaurants nearby and the fact that everyone here tended to wear dark clothing—but faced with paperwork a meter high, she gave up and starting wearing charcoal sweaters.
It was Thuesday and ambushing Junker was at the end of a long list of tedious things I had to do. Most of them out of the way or handed off, I headed down the too-wide corridor to his office, on level TS3 and preceded by a drug scan, a retinal scan, and a heart serial number scan. Intoxication level: 28%, acceptable work condition. Retinal scan conclusive, access granted. Heart serial number: 00821A5BV1.
"Come on in." Junker sat behind a desk spanning nearly the width of the room, his office consisting of squares within squares like novelty containers, everything steel silver and streak-free. The blue-green fluorescent lights were on too high for my Plus-howevermany eyes. Junker's irises were an impossibly bright orange today, two candy marbles with grids of black lines criss-crossing them, a 128-bit tiger in a cage.
"What can I do for you, 008?" He asked without looking at me, focused on a set of small square blocks atop his desk, sliding around and reforming in random patterns for a bit of teckie office amusement. His suit was perfectly pressed and his tired scalp showed signs of the latest in a long series of hair transplants.
I had a seat in one of the oversized aluminum barstool chairs lined up in front of his desk. Before I was even situated, it rotated me counter-clockwise to meet Junker's eye level.
"I have some questions about ProProject," I told him once I stopped being dizzy. "I'm scheduled for it next week, and I never opted in. I'd like to get out of it."
"Hmm, let's see here..." Junker's newly purchased jungle eyes scanned the data on his console left to right, left to right. "Aha! I see what happened." I waited for him to explain.
Junker leaned forward, finally looking at me, but not really, more like looking through me. It was probably due to his upgrade. "You recently added four inches to your height, did you not?"
I tried to remember the list of items on Doctor Marc's last bill. The list was too long.
"I think so."
"Well, there you have it." Junker went back to watching the metal cubes on his desk, seemingly done with his explanation.
"What does my height have to do with it?" I was a little worried he might think it was a stupid question, but Junker wasn't my direct manager, and I doubted he cared either way.
"You're a prime candidate now. We had to select you," he said, face expressionless.
"So I can't get out of it?"
"You can't get out of it."
"Well, I'd hate for this to cut into my hours at work. It could affect my performance," I lied.
"Ah, I see." Junker tapped something into his console. "It is an inconvenience, I realize. Some people feel that way. There will be a bonus in your next pay period, for your trouble. You've earned it." He folded his hands, nodding too slowly at me, like functional liquid animation, like the gadgets on his desk.
"I guess that's fair. I'd better get back to work."
"Yes, you'd better."
The chair spun me clockwise, setting my feet on ground again.
#
The Infrastratos lobby sparkled clean and bright, shiny and sterile like Doctor Marc's office. The girl janitor Mari stood at the exit, her pushcart of cleaning supplies by her side, her blu-glo belly tablet exposed and blinking. She shoved an anti-bacterial sanitary wipe between my hands as the doors closed behind me.
"Would you like to see my greenhouse?" I asked, disposing of the wipe. "I just picked up some new Tunes from the Soundless Laser Light Symphony. You're able to, I mean..." I cupped my hand behind my ear.
I like music, the tablet said. Today her hair was piled up haphazardly like matted spun-sugar, and her lips were pale. Pretty in a way somehow different than most of the girls in the NightChapels. I wondered if I could keep her interested, at least through the night—not something I usually worried about.
My greenhouse that night was especially cold, another lo-power evening. They seemed to occur more frequently these days. Mari managed to slide past the security beams without me deactivating them and proceeded to make herself at home, moving throughout the unit as though she already knew where everything was. Then again, most greenhouse units shared the same floor plan.
Do you have any whiskey? the tablet said.
"There's some in the kitchen. Do you want any Plus 1s to go with it?"
No, thank you.
"Hope you don't mind if I have a few." I poured the drinks into two highball glasses with three ice cubes each.
Do what you like, she said.
"Did you want to hear that record stream? It's the latest—"
She kissed me, soft and sweet.
<3, the tablet said.
Mari the misplaced maintenance girl led me in Ceremony, slow and easy and a little surprising. For the first time I felt something beneath the euphoria—release and smug satisfaction—it was a bad feeling, like parts of my digestive system didn't want to cooperate with one another. I figured it was due to drinking that old style beverage and left the bedroom to look for the right meds to combat it. In two minutes I had downed two-fifths of my uppers and three-eighths of my downers. I readjusted my acu-tank—now regulating the quality of air I breathed as well as the frequency and consistency of my bowel movements. It asked me to deposit more funds to ensure maximum performance. I didn't have the correct credit chip on hand so I went to see if Mari had one.
Her serene face smiling at me from my bed was a little unsettling. I tried to smile back but the effort was too much. The tank burst into four perfectly same-sized quarters. I gasped and flailed at the intrusion of stale air while simultaneously evacuating my bowels. I would have been embarrassed but that response was malfunctioning as well.
She keyed letters into the tablet and I read them bright blue.
You're bleeding, it said. She used the sheet to blot a trail of liquid dripping from my stainless steel tank.
"It's alright," I told her. "I have insurance."
Mari was an excellent nurse, and after that night I saw her four times at least, maybe five. Atypical for me. She's a really good listener and her responses were very legible, I liked how she didn't cross her t's all the way. She recently received a ProProject summons as well, showing me a copy of it on her belly one night when we were watching the redscreen. The dates on our forms were the same and we were the same age, with similar build and complexion. It was a match.
Chapter Eight
What are you doing on this frequency?
On September 21st, my second dog had a heart attack. His neon blue eyes dimmed and he tucked his mechanical tail under him in willing surrender. He coughed and sputtered, blinked several warning lights in succession, then joined the ranks of Hitler, Mussolini, Chaplin, Einstein, and Schwarzenegger—all the best dogs whose poor, malfunctioning parts eventually gave out, despite the extent of their ambition to keep them operational long past their intended expiry date. I would have held a funeral for him but have seen too many, so into the StuffIt! CrushIt! trash compactor he goes, and hopefully the intricate wirings get reused in some greenhouse heating mechanism, and the scrap metal goes to a new automoto prototype that breaks speed records, or to an avid post-postmodern art collector.
Given my history with dogs, I wasn't sure if I could keep a kid alive. But Mari would probably be a decent mother, with her sweet demeanor and how she liked to keep things clean. There were times I'd been embarrassed of my mother—she had used an IBN computer well into the 22nd century, and everyone in the city knew how outdated she was. She'd been beautiful, sure, but just couldn't seem to stay on top of the tech like the other moms in our greenhouse block. And she was always busy. I don't recall being around her for longer than an hour at any given time.
I, at barely the age of five, could already plug myself into any Main Computer remote outlet and download the latest "Hardcore Games for Fashionable Kids" without parental assistance. I was smart above average according to all the G.P.B. aptitude tests and in comparison with my slow-moving litter mates, although I'd plodded along begrudgingly in my studies, barely lifting a finger unless it was to offend someone. But while to the casual observer I may have appeared insipid and lazy, inside beat the heart of a true and loyal Generik citizen.
To my country
I pledge body and mind
Keep me laughing
Keep me blind
Nothing is wrong
Nothing is right
We buy and we sell
By the dawn's early light
Just like me, as soon as the kid turned seven he would go off to school, and then he'd be G.P.B.'s responsibility—they'd teach him history and math and train him for whatever job he was best suited for. The kids in my division all went on to office jobs. I hoped he'd at least get to do something more fun than that.
#
Every once in awhile when I'm feeling down, I liked to watch Memories on the redscreen instead of historical documentaries—rotary adjustable telephones and the extinct peacock. Memories were kept on little red drives, 1 mm thick, 10 mm wide and 100 mm long. To stream a drive directly to the redscreen you pressed a tiny plastic button in the center of the red strip. Tonight I decided to watch my faves. The clips reminded me of how many friends I have when I forget, and they go well with the Symphony, all gem-colored eyes and clothes like on the runway. I played them on mute. I only wanted to see them, and remember what they said however I imagined it.
First up on the faves list was Hestia Hermeneutica, a girl I'd met during the two weeks I'd attended rehab and who went just so she didn't have to be alone in the evenings. Hestia had every disease ever known to mankind and wore an invisible coat of armor in order to avoid infecting anyone else. She, like I, had lied on every day of her life, and her potential for happiness was marred by the fact that she had been born without certain key glands—mammary and pituitary. Still, she had a few saving characteristics—she could sing in French and knew how to operate a mechanical screwdriver. For about a year and a half I visited Hestia every Wednesday, but one day she disappeared. I found one of her many study books in the center of the floor, opened to pages 74 and 75. On the left was a reality screenplay inspired by the drug-addled mind of Every Great Man in History, and on the right was a map of Egypt during Biblical times, a drawing of a complex molecule, and a crudely drawn six-legged figure with breasts—this was Ms. Hermeneutica, finally at home, surrounded by the things to which she belonged.
Next up was Past-life PanAsian Nam-Nam, who had one Oriental eye and one lazy Mexican one. His arms were the skinniest imaginable but the size of his thighs put the sequoias of Upper North myths to shame. I watched myself watching him in all his hapa haole asymmetry as he warmed a pot of hot tap water soup on the stovepad.
"Nam-Nam, my body is falling apart."
"I know. That's why I make you soup."
"My mental state is questionable as well."
"Drink the soup."
"My heart is broken."
"Oh. Soup no fix that." He disappeared behind a cardboard wall, returning with two Infatuate pills in a little wooden box inlaid with jade and gold.
"One for you and one for me?" I asked.
"No. Both for you. Nam-Nam already like." He took my hand and led me behind paper curtains to silk sheets, red lanterns and the most enlightening Socialist masochism my weak body and my pathetic spirit had ever delighted in up till then—the most perfect balance ever achieved between euphoria and guilt.
I skipped through a shy fencing instructor and a basement-dwelling dropout with perfect hair to International super-spy Loretta Lee Lynberg. I'd been lucky enough to travel with her on an inner-ice ferry one September during my annual two weeks off. She was the oldest woman I ever partook in Ceremony with. Wickedly rich and with a handsome waist, she reminded me why I lived in Generik in the first place—by force. Purple starlights in the black as the ferry we rode careened along the pathways of the inner-ice tunnels so fast that one felt no motion at all. Triple-L and I stood still, suspended in space, nothing in common save for our respective states of inebriation, an outdated preoccupation with her inherited wealth, and stories that for her, like so many, were now more fabricated than real memory.
I skipped forward on the remote to 1942, the year my widow died and my father remarried my cousin twice removed. That was 63 years before I met Grayson. He danced in the cabaret and acted in the sub-theater, where most skinny fops like him made their livings. There I was on the screen, sitting in my box seat and gazing down at all his splendor—streamers, petticoats and casual murder—through the waxy haze I could see him for what he truly was, a poor little rich girl playing at struggling to make a buck who could not stand being disliked by anyone.
The grating string music died down. The last notes of summer left Grayson's throat as he sang a plaintive song in Latin which I believed to be about reincarnation. I was moved and tried to follow him home that night after the show, but he left with a busty blonde male. Arm in arm with his companion as they exited through the turnstile doors, he glanced at me over his shoulder just long enough to give me a glimmer of hope.
The following Monday, I'd cornered him after his performance while he was in his dressing room removing his fishnets. After talking with him for four-and-a-half minutes I had him confessing.
"I've got nowhere left to turn," he told me. "I should become a fisherman."
"All the fish are frozen," I said. That night I found out he was killer at Ceremony, because he didn't give a damn about himself.
I figured I could watch one more chapter before the meds made me too sleepy to focus. I hit Random and wound up on an angora-grey bombshell named Sylvia Plath who had worn a smile on every day of her life. No one knew this and you couldn't see it except from outer space, but it's the smile one wears when one understands the secrets of the universe. Her hair was stark white and her skin crispy, but that didn't stop me from trying to impress her with every stale trick in the book one Tuesday night during a secret Poets' Society meeting. But my metre was off and my rhymes forced, so she wouldn't give me a second look and instead spent the whole night eyeing Lou Reed from behind her brandy snifter. Stilted and snubbed, I left in a huff to go ride rollercoasters on the pier rather than be passively overlooked by pretentious hipster snobs from before wireless lovemaking was invented.
That was it, I was too tired to watch anymore. These Memories were ones I watched frequently and now partially remembered. This meant I would need to acquire new ones. I hoped that Project wouldn't change anything. Would people see me differently once they knew I had participated? My mind conjured up a short-haired, athletic redhead with barbed-wire tattoos and glossy lips as I leaned back, fading into the dream.
Chapter Nine
She would always have a place in my heart, but he would always have a place that I usually kept covered by plastic pants.
How's your hand? the tablet asked. I had sprained my wrist a week ago and wasn't sure how—I suspected it had something to do with Berlin Ben's orange-green gel pad. I started to explain my theory to Mari, that Ben's bent wrist had afflicted me by proximity, but thought better of it. It probably wasn't something she wanted to hear.
"About the same," I said. We were sitting in the lower room of my greenhouse and all the lights were off. I'd made room for her on the grey lounge chair big enough for one-and-a-half people but she preferred to sit on the floor. So I sat next to her, making a fort playpen out of Ralph Knox pillows and 100% silk blankets.
Let me see. She took my hand between her two smaller ones, bending it slightly, examining its range of motion. You'll be all better soon. In time for Project. She kissed me gently on the forehead, then shyly on the lips. I gripped her arms and pulled her flush against me. The tablet kept brushing against my tank. Nonsensical symbols displayed on the pad's surface. She molded to me easily but was fragile, her body that of a teenager's. Her sunset-colored spun-sugar hair tickled my face and neck.
"Why do you like me?" I asked.
Because you're just like all the rest, the tablet said. Now stop talking.
Touch sensation, absence of any sound, and the time on the redscreen reads 1:33 a.m.
# #
H: 17.34. D: 26 M: 3 Y: ????. Aside from having my heart replaced regularly along with the battery in my mobile transportation device, my thought patterns are wiped clean and my gastro-intestinal tract flushed out with a high-powered hydrogen jet. A EuroAfrican woman scrubs my skin until it's translucent white and removes every hair on my body from its follicle, except for those on my head which are trimmed, dyed, teased, curled, straightened, ironed, and waxed like a luxury automoto. Everyone needs a tune-up.
The end of the world was nigh and on that day I had my gallbladder removed. Copper eyelashes and steel wool hair I was the talk of the town, the envy of all the weird guys and gals and the object of mild disgust and ridicule to the control-funded individs. With nothing else to do, I poured myself into a baking pan and stuck myself in the oven on 'Keep Warm', a setting which drives you to commit robbery and complacency, a bottle of vicodin swiped from the drugstore and take two every four hours to sleep.
Doctor Marc says I have Antiquaphobia, a common paranoia that I'm not replacing parts fast enough, causing me to procure replacements before they expire at an ever increasing rate. He said the recommended treatment for this was a Beta test med which reconfigures the hypothalamus, giving it "room to breathe", as he so eloquently put it. If my father were still around, I could have sued him over my faulty wiring and won enough to purchase a lifetime supply of the drug, called Com-A. As it stood, the Reparations department on Generik had undergone recent budget cuts so that procedures they had formerly been renowned for were compromised—B-Level thought pattern rewiring and recycled rhinoplasty. Sometimes Doctor Marc worked at Generik University hospital but he also ran a private practice, one which Main Computer didn't know about. When my 8x a month limit at Gen U had been reached, he shuttled me onwards to his secret lair, a cryo-dome where everything except for the good doctor himself was completely mechanized.
"Doc, what do you think? Is everything in good working order? Think I'm ready for Project?" If I was going to be a procreator, I would need as many upgrades as possible. How embarrassing would it be for my kid if people knew his father had outdated parts?
Doctor Marc smiled, snapping parts of his latex bodysuit into place. "You're looking pretty good. That heart's taken to your body quite nicely, and I see that you've just had your tune-up down at the Station." He studied my chart, squinting at it with eyes too big for his head. "Looks like your gallbladder's been acting up a bit though. I'll put you under and we'll have a look."
When I awoke, I almost lost my stomach due to the bill. But doctor said not to worry, that besides credits, digi-slips and old style Japi coins, he graciously accepted alternative compensation, so I brought him home to my greenhouse, where we found my cousins Even and Odd watching competitive hunting on the redscreen. I tried to kick them out but they yelled opposing arguments at me and each other and turned the volume up. It turned out for the best though. After three lite beverages each, Doctor Marc and Odd were engaged in an existential debate and Even was throwing soy nuts into my wig. As partial payment for treatment I agreed to let the good doctor take on Even and Odd as a case study, an arrangement which they seemed more than happy with. The doctor would spend the next several years studying their unusual symbiosis, scrapping them for whatever useful parts they had and providing them fodder with which to insult one another for the rest of their unnatural lives.
Chapter Ten
Take off your clothes, I'm a professional.
I entered Generik University hospital's Eternity Ward through the door on the right, long and narrow like a planter box for humans, everything stark white and stainless. Walls buffed to a shine, I could make out my distorted reflection in them. Man, I was a handsome son of a devil. I half-heartedly eyed the nurses, clad in black latex, filing through the tight corridors like German ants.
In the waiting room I encountered Al Junker; the hospital was adjacent to Infrastratos and he had stopped by to check up on things. I asked him if there was anything I would have to do for the kid once he was born. He assured me through a series of beeps, clicks, and hollow chuckles that I wouldn't be obligated to see him after he was born per article No. 5789A of the Generik residents' handbook; just his mother will be responsible for his maintenance until he's of school age. This was a relief, but I'd had a dad around for a little white—he taught me how to operate the redscreen and the dispensary. I figured I could manage at least that. Choking on my new braces, I put my signature on the Generik ProProject forms.
Mari was receiving the necessary preliminary treatments in Room C3. I peeked through the crack in the door and watched while she was poked, prodded, spritzed, sprayed and tied down—the fate of all women and cattle. She smiled serenely throughout the procedures, save for a little wince when the nurse drew a large vial of blood from her thin white arm. The black and baby blue hospital gown suited her, as if she belonged indoors and on a glass shelf, a half-broken treasure from a long-forgotten dynasty, safe from prying eyes. I couldn't wait to touch her, anticipating how the fertility treatments would affect me. How much better would it be than normal Ceremony? Would I last for hours?
She blinked evenly as I stood by her bedside. "Did all the tests come out ok? Are you ready for Project?"
Yes, I'm ready. Are you?
"I'm always ready," I said, giving her a naughty smirk.
"Jonah. We need you in Room E4." The black latex nurse gestured for me to follow.
"I'll see you soon," I told Mari, kissing her quickly and giving her hand a squeeze.
In Room E4, Doctor Marc was waiting for me. I had a seat on the immaculate observation table, laid back against the sterilized pillow, and waited for whatever he had to offer.
"I'm glad to see you in here. You're a prime specimen, especially after all the work I've done on you. Just relax. This will only hurt a little." That's what he always says before he sticks a needle in me one foot long and thick, drugging and draining and fixing me all shiny and new. I smiled at him gratefully and then it was all sweet euphoria, moss-green bile soup in the pit of my stomach and magenta disco lullabies and lies behind my eyelids. They fluttered shut, and now I was looking forward to being a father.
After about an hour or a day, I opened my eyes to blurred vision and air that smelled of vanilla and peppermint. When I turned my head to either side, everything looked like colorless cotton candy. The sizzle of sweet electricity buzzed in my ears along with artificial camera clicks, simulated shutters documenting the event for posterity. My lungs hurt, I assumed in an effort to adjust to the newly simulated air molecule ratio, meant to mimic above ground as accurately as possible. But I wasn't used to this much pure oxygen, and started panting quickly and shallowly, blood vessels constricting and a dull, monotonous ache forming on either side of my head. The cotton candy turned to vapor and I was immersed in steam, my cheeks flaming and my mind unable to focus on anything but physical sensation.
Ice water in my veins, those must be the fertility drugs. Pure, serene desire, European in form, American in execution. Guilt-free artificial additives, a free round-the-world trip. Purple starlight and sweet spots in a minor key, king of my country where the grass was eternally green.
I felt like a teenager, impatient and unsure of himself, and just hoped I could make this last.
Doctor Marc's voice was distant and echoed in low-range tones. "We're just about ready for you, kid. How're you feeling?"
"Gooood," I said. "Really good."
"Alright then. We'll let you have at it in just a second. Thanks for being so patient."
Moments later, the nurse ushered me back into C3 and shut the doors.
The cotton candy girl on the bed was naked and flushed, peach and pink, the blu-glo tablet radiating a cool light in the now darkened room. I imagined we were in the basement of the NightChapel. Mari was a supermodel from another colony—she didn't speak a word of English and was nearly six feet tall. I was a Pro sports player, maybe a linebacker or a UF:DC Flyweight Champion. We were two gods on Olympus, made to look perfect by technology and paint, made to feel perfect by technology and chemicals, overstimulated to a lazed pinnacle of cerebral and bodily perfection.
"I'm feeling good," I said to Mari. "How about you?"
In the clouds, the tablet said. Just like you.
My arms went around her thin waist, and I traced the steel plates on the edges of the tablet with my index finger. It was then I noticed that she was hooked into the bed—sprawled across ocean blue sheets and feather pillows, a network of tubes and wires crawling across her smooth skin—tied into her bloodlines, her nerves and all manner of other rhythms autonomically functioning inside her.
I kissed her, soft and slow. Lights on monitors lit up one by one.
Her breaths came in quiet gasps, stilted little animal noises. It sounded like she was in pain—the drugs were too much. I drank it in.
Electric distortion and faraway bells.
She squeezed her legs tightly around me.
Forest green lightning, iridescent meteor showers and twelve indigo moons in the sky at dusk. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of a feeling I hadn't known before and had never wanted.
One of the screens next to our bedside displayed a status bar. Behind the status bar was an image of a zygote. The screen flashed the letter "M". Then the letters "D.E.F.". The status bar was almost full, 97%.
A tube leading from the crux of Mari's arm which had pumped red now ran clear. She smiled and held both my hands. I wanted to reassure her but couldn't find my voice, so I just put my lips against hers as the sun set far up above.
Chapter Eleven
It was the end of summer as we knew it, the frost had melted and the unit's wind defractors were on at full blast. I felt like I was on the set of a Mötley Crüe video.
My friends, that is, those in the same monetary class as me, threw a party for me the following night down at Hypocrite Wedding. The theme was obvious—most were chewing on pacifiers and several wore diapers—store-bought sequined or beaded ones, homemade ones crafted with tinfoil and lace. I was just about recovered from Project's drugs, with minimum after effects, and felt hazy and friendly, energetic and lethargic, warm and sated.
I was overdressed, the party having caught me by surprise, and wondered if I should strip down like the others. But before I had the chance, a Go-go girl stuck a pacifier in my mouth and dragged me onto the dance floor. While doing the double-bump she propositioned me to participate in illegal conception Ceremony with her—she'd heard my donations were good. I told her I was flattered, but that procreation outside of G.P.B.'s aide was just a myth, and even if she wanted to do it the right way she'd have to find someone else as my name had been crossed off the list for already having fulfilled my patriotic duty. The lights flashed in strobe, and stars rained down from the ceiling. I didn't even notice when I changed partners, swapping the go-go girl for a NeoAfrican medicine man who filled my pockets with prescriptions and my head with faint memories of a place where people danced without the aid of electro-synth clicks and thumps—pulsar-sonar love directed by what emanates from the speakers the only kind of dance I'd ever learned till then.
#
The next afternoon, I was scheduled to meet Mari for tea-and-a-half portion Gummy Tummies at MaxiCreds Organic Zen EnergyUp BevHouse No. 7. She was seated over in the farthest corner—violet eyes, red dress, khaki-colored alligator-leather boots. She was easily the most stunning woman I had ever partaken in Ceremony with. For a moment I even considered asking her to marry me. After all, we had entered into Project together. It would be absurd though, we had known each other too long. She looked up at me as I entered the room with a smile I recognized as genuine.
You're early, the tablet read. It now glowed a warm pink around the edges. She scooted over to make room for me to sit next to her.
"I probably would have been late, but my redscreen was broken," I said.
Project is coming along as planned, the tablet said.
"Good news."
Generik has chosen the moniker D.E.F. Personally, I like Evelyn for a girl, Walter for a boy.
"I had a pet rat named Walter once, when I was little. I don't remember him very well." I wasn't sure what she saw in me exactly. It must have something to do with my handsomely fringed black hair and the four inches I had recently added to my height. "The EnergyUp Plus2Cred Powder in this drink is good. I can really feel the difference." I tried for coffee talk but it felt wrong. I'd have to purchase an upgrade for my tank that would help me deliver lines more smoothly.
You're not a bad man, her belly said. You just don't know any different. How could you?
"I buy what I'm told to. I invest in Generik OverCredits. I just got a haircut." For some reason I said this through gritted teeth.
Beep beep. The tablet glowed orange.
I sighed. "I think these newfangled Gummy Tummies must be getting to me. I'd better go."
Mari glanced away and sipped her coffee, Generik brand of course. We finished our drinks. I kissed her cheek, scanned my palm over the BillPay sensor and left. She was simply too lovely to be associated with the likes of me. I wondered how long it would be before she too realized this.
I knew she wasn't real—from another time and place, confused calculations had left her here on this planet by accident. The woman was practically see-through, translucent liquid. Aquamarine like the sea, she would gradually take the shape of whatever form she was forced into. Her eyes showed years of distant pain she would never express, and she still hadn't explained to me why she used the tablet to communicate. I suspected it was by choice. Her style of dress was indicative of a dreamer, someone who lived in a long-dead celluloid fantasy—Audrey Hepburn in a giant sunhat and kitten heels. In Generik there was no sun. Mari typically wore a space blanket trenchcoat—common among our sector to combat the cold, over simple printed dresses—little rosebuds, steaming coffee mugs or dragonflies. Ankle boots and barely any makeup on her flawless milky skin. She took to Project like it was neither a joy nor an obligation, as if she didn't allow herself acceptance or defiance of things as a general rule. It made me uneasy. I wished she would tell me her secrets. I wished she go away.
--------------------------------------------
INDIVID STATS:
NAME: Mari Alderon
EYES: Violet
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT: 5′ 5″
BUILD: Thin, but not supermodel
COMPLEXION: Clear
OTHER: Communication device: Tablet 4V. Consistently seeks out work beneath her skill set. No known upgrades other than tablet; part of 2.5% of the population which do not routinely or randomly install modifications.
CONCLUSION: Good for Procreation Project
--------------------------------------------
Chapter Twelve
Ladies and Gentlemen of glitter and valor, allow me to introduce you to the Amazing, the Incredible: Inside-Out Woman. Go ahead and pet her intestines. She won't bite.
Every couple of weeks I brought superficial malice and disorder to the most Zen of places—Master Rin's Tea Lovehouse on 32nd and Wilcall. I entered stripped of the outside world and on my knees, but made the mistake of raising my eyes to meet my Master's. Rhythmic drips of water and echoes of far-off explosions sounded in the distance. I triangulated my hands and placed my forehead on my knuckles.
"Your body language is respectful, but your eyes are rebellious." Master Rin slowly traced a circle around me in slippered feet.
"Forgive me," I whispered to the ground.
"You waste and want, and demand respect when you have not earned it."
"I'm sorry, Master. I was raised in the city."
Rod upon rod of straw and metal deprivation rained down upon my brow and back. I ate only rice, awoke before the sun and forgot my own name. It took 78.7 years of this for me to learn not to buy new things when I have perfectly well-functioning ones at home.
#
When I was born two hundred and fifty years ago, there was a flood. I was swallowed by a great fish whose large eye sparkled with superior deviance. I was spat up onto a glass bank in the 31st century. Naked save for the sequined sash around my waist, I headed straight for the first speakeasy within walking distance. That was where I met Jim.
Jim was a professor of literature at the Sacred Heart Society for the Modern Man and looked to be around 80 years old. He could down a new glass of scotch every fifteen minutes but had never touched a cigar in his life. That first night at the speakeasy I didn't approach Jim, just stared at him from my corner booth all night. I went back the same evening on the following week, and there he was with a voluptuous Marilyn blonde. She spilled her drink on him. He took off his pants. He walked out of the speakeasy leaving Marilyn blotting the stain, and I followed him outside to offer him a cigar.
Jim knew everything I didn't, and managed to teach most of it to me that same evening. I was unsure at first because of the age difference—though likely he wasn't as old as he appeared and had just installed fewer modifications than most, professors have limited credits since their contribution is less than that of an entertainer or a business exec—but he was patient, experienced, and knew all of my hesitations before I expressed them. We toured Old Vienna and New Greece in his living room, and ate delicacies only read about in fairy tales.
By morning I had grown tired of him quoting lines from poets, and told him his intellect was wasted on me. So he stole the clothes I was wearing and my appetite for anything more between us and was gone in a flash, out there somewhere in the plastic tubes that connected greenhouse levels. For a man his age he sure could move fast.
# #
For some reason, every girl featured on the redscreen at 3 a.m. that night resembled Mari. Their eyes glowed amethyst from the screen and they all seemed to share the same secret, giggling and smirking to one another and then back at me, displaying their tablets with their contact numbers flashing in red. I was having trouble remembering what other girls were supposed to look like and it was disturbing—I needed to get out.
I scrolled through my tank to the L's and clicked on "Lily Anne". Ms. Lily Anne was from the bourgeoisie of Generik, her father owned 51 percent of Generik Central Bank. She weighed 95 pounds, wore rabbit Fuehrers and never drove herself anywhere. An honest philanthropist in her youth, now middle-aged—in her thirties but certainly not showing it—she, like 99.9 percent of the population was now solely concerned with her own well-being and desires.
Luckily I caught her before she turned in for the night, and she invited me to drop by her grandiose greenhouse—a twelve story building with light-adjusting, shatter-proof, electronic screen-grafted walls, and white white furniture that cost several thousand credits a piece. In the foyer we drank gin like water and whiskey like cola and in the bedroom she took her selfishness out on my prone and willing self. To be fair, I would never have refused the advances of a voluptuous queen with golden tawny tresses, huge, calculating blue eyes and legs you could display as a mantelpiece. She spun gold around me, hard and liquid, and I knew that she understood. Beneath her cold eyes there was a glimmer of the altruism she had held in her youth. She was only doing me a favor.