Extreme Makeover

by Dan Wells

  “Welcome to the show.” She gestured at his crossed legs. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  “The lotus pose helps energy flow unimpeded through my central core.”

  “That’s … exactly what my yoga instructor keeps telling me,” said Amber. “Now. Can I start with the big thing first?”

  He smiled knowingly. “Everybody does.”

  “You’re dead.”

  The audience laughed at that one. They’d heard the explanations before—it had been weeks, after all—but Amber wasn’t a news anchor, and this was not an in-depth interview. Her frankness, that vague sense that she was somehow out of her depth, was what made her show unique. She was playing it well, and her producers loved every minute.

  “There is no death,” said Kuvam. “I was shot, I left, and I returned.”

  “So there is death,” said Amber, “it’s just that yours didn’t last very long.”

  “Is death not defined by its permanence?” asked Kuvam. “It is an ending—of consciousness, of thought, of metabolic function. But no longer. Now endings, too, have ended, and there is nothing left but everything. Life and light.”

  Amber hesitated just a moment in her answer, shooting a sidelong glance at the audience. “But I guess—and this is probably the second-most obvious question—but I guess that this is probably just ReBirth, right?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I’m talking about the lotion,” said Amber, “not the … metaphysical principle. You’re not the real Kuvam, you’re a friend or a follower or something, who took his DNA and made yourself into a copy of him. Right?”

  “Again,” Kuvam intoned, “that’s what I said. You speak of ReBirth, the trademark, as if it were different from the spiritual rebirth of a human spirit. The life that flows through us, as a species, is connected. I am Kuvam; I was Kuvam; I have always been Kuvam. The body I inhabit is but a single facet of who I am and who, by extension, we all are. A single organism, not just human but encompassing all life. Eternal life.”

  “But it’s eternal life as someone else,” said Amber. “Whoever you were before you were Kuvam, that’s not who you are anymore. Right? Not everybody wants that.”

  “Do you want to die?”

  The Internet picked up that sound bite almost immediately; before the next commercial break it had already become a meme: “Kuvam Threatens X,” insert your favorite movie/celebrity/politician/animal here. Amber, for her part, stumbled only a moment before responding.

  “Not … anytime soon.”

  “But eventually, then, you want to die? You choose death?”

  “My lawyers are going to run us both ragged with this,” said Amber, visibly shaken, “so let’s just clear the air right now and say, for the record, that you’re not actually threatening my life?”

  “There is no threat but impermanence,” said Kuvam, “and your own desperate need to cling to an identity you can’t maintain. Humans age. Skin sags. Muscles and brains atrophy. You will never again be the person you are right now, in this moment, and yet you boldly choose to die rather than give it up.”

  “That’s…” Amber stumbled over her words, overbalanced by the Guru’s sudden swerve. Her producers shook their heads, screaming counterattacks and advice into her earpiece, which only confused her further.

  “Who are we?” asked Kuvam, looking now not at Amber but at her audience, at the camera that broadcast his face to millions of homes and computers and phones across the world. “Do you know who you are? Do you know what makes you you? We are the ships of Theseus, broken and repaired in an endless cycle. Does your body persist? Every molecule in it, every cell, is different from the molecules and cells that constructed it at your birth. Are you still the same person? ‘Through my mind,’ you say, but does your mind persist? Your memories ebb and flow like the tide—you have lost more of your mind than you can ever regain. Are you still the same person? ‘Through my soul,’ then, that ethereal anchor that never changes and never dies: God’s serial number to mark you at the gates of heaven. Is that truly all you are? If you are less, then what does it matter? If you are more, then what more? You are not your clothes, your car, your bank account, your youth. Your body will age, your face will fade, your friends will leave; there is nothing of you that remains but the memories of others and even those, too, will disappear like mist in flame. What are you clinging to? Why do you resist the inevitable? The earth has offered you no choice but oblivion, and we as a species have filled that void with hollow dreams, but ReBirth has changed everything. True immortality—not spiritual immortality, not post-mortal immortality, but the literal continuance of your physical, tangible life. It is the great revolution of the soul, our chance to throw off our chains, to break out from the chrysalis of earthbound dust and become more than we ever dreamed—”

  “It’s time to break for a commercial,” said Amber, jumping in as the stage manager cut Kuvam’s microphone feed. Her voice wavered. “But stay tuned because my next guess is going to blow your socks off: a female lawyer who used ReBirth to turn herself into a man, applied for a new job at the same company, and is now earning twice what she made before.” She smiled hollowly at the camera. “Coming up next on Amber Sykes.”

  39

  Saturday, August 25

  10:08 P.M.

  Somewhere in New Jersey

  111 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

  Lyle counted the money in his pocket: $2.84. All that remained of his weekly food budget—which still had to cover tomorrow. Sundays were easier, though, with churches opening one-day soup kitchens. Lyle had given up on permanent soup kitchens about a week ago, when a server looked at him a little too closely. Had the server recognized him? Had she reported him to the police? Or was it all completely innocent, and Lyle was jumping at shadows? It didn’t matter, in the end; Lyle couldn’t afford not to be paranoid. He was the most wanted man in America.

  But he hadn’t eaten all day, trying to trace a web of lotion pushers, and now it was late, and he was starving. He found a burger joint—not a chain, just a mom-and-pop dive—and went in.

  The restaurant was long and narrow; the door led to a skinny walkway past the counter, with a handful of well-worn tables in the back. The walls were plastered with stickers and flyers for local bands and clubs and churches. The register was helmed by a sturdy woman with jet-black hair pulled up under a hairnet, her arms red from the heat and scarred from a lifetime of slinging greasy burgers over a hot griddle. This comforted Lyle—to see someone scarred was to know they were real, an authentic original. ReBirth erased scars just like it erased everything else.

  There were two other people in the restaurant, each sitting by himself in the back, quietly eating. Lyle stayed against the wall, as far from the counter as he could get without looking suspicious, and examined the menu. Burgers and fries and Greek food. He could afford almost none of it.

  “Take your time, honey, I’m not going anywhere.” She looked to be somewhere in her forties, but her voice was older, more rugged.

  He found a grilled cheese sandwich for two bucks; adding ham would bring it to three, which was out of his range, so he stepped to the counter and asked for the plain cheese version.

  “That all you want?”

  “That’s it.”

  “No ham?”

  “No.”

  “Fries and a Coke?”

  “No, thank you.”

  She looked him up and down, probably deducing all too easily that he couldn’t afford it. She lingered on his face, and Lyle turned to the wall to examine the various posters, feigning intense interest in the announcement of an exciting new sales opportunity.

  Next to the sales flyer was a poster for the Yemaya Foundation, giving the same address Lyle had used on his first meeting with Kuvam. It seemed years ago now, but it was only a few months. So much has changed. The poster seemed to be advertising not Kuvam’s medical clinic, or whatever multicultural work the Yemaya Foundation had been involved in, but some
kind of meeting. Lyle frowned and leaned in closer.

  Learn salvation at the feet of the Guru Kuvam. Put an end to death and suffering by embracing the light of the universe. All is as one. Every night at 6.

  “Grilled cheese.”

  Lyle turned around, fishing his money from his pocket. “Two dollars?”

  “Two ten with tax.” She placed the plate on the counter, a greasy stack of blackened toast oozing cheese from the middle like a bleeding wound. She took the money and rang it up. “Don’t I know you?”

  Lyle froze. My beard’s coming in, my hair’s growing out. There’s no way she could recognize me. “I don’t think so, I’m just passing through town.” My beard’s never been thick enough, that’s got to be it. I was stupid to come in here.

  “Yeah,” she said, “you’re that guy from the news.” Lyle turned to bolt out the door, but in that moment the door opened and a large man pushed through, filling the narrow pathway with his body. The cook seemed to recognize the new man, and spoke to him eagerly. “Doug, look at this guy, this is exactly what I was telling you about.”

  The big man looked at her a moment, as if trying to remember the context of her comments, then turned to Lyle in a rush, eyes wide. “Holy crap, Ted, is that you?”

  Lyle opened his mouth, having no idea who Ted was but wondering, just for a moment, if it would be safer to claim his identity instead of his own. The cook answered first.

  “That’s not Ted,” she said, “but that’s exactly what he looks like—it’s the guy from the news, right? The lotion guy.” She looked at Lyle as if for confirmation.

  “I’m not the lotion guy,” said Lyle quickly.

  “Who were you going for?” the cook asked him. “Ted—that’s my husband, Ted—he was trying to get one of those Brazilian kids, Ronaldo I think the name was.” She shot a salacious look at the big man in the doorway. “Twenty years old if he was a day. Body like that guy in the movies, the superhero movies, you know the ones. Delicious.” She turned back to Lyle. “But the kid’s got a good heart, right? That’s the important thing. Better than Ted’s, anyway, and we can’t afford another heart attack—we had to mortgage the house just to pay the doctor bills on the first one. Is that you, too? Heart attack?”

  Lyle, only half sure he was following her, shook his head. “No.”

  “You’re lucky,” said the cook, “they’re the worst. Ted nearly dies, we mortgage the house, and then the doctor says he’s probably going to have another one, and what else are we going to mortgage? So we look at the one hand and we look at the other, and five thousand dollars for Ronaldo is a whole lot cheaper than fifty thousand dollars for another heart attack—fifty thousand if we’re lucky—so we sell the car and find a dealer and the next thing you know Ted’s this guy, this guy from the news.”

  “You used ReBirth,” said Lyle quickly, finally getting a handle on the situation. The cook gave him a dark look and he clamped his mouth shut again.

  “Nobody’s using ReBirth,” she said loudly, “it’s illegal,” but she leaned in close to Lyle and the big man in the doorway. “He didn’t use ReBirth just like you didn’t use ReBirth—but here you are, and there he is, out on the street because he can’t hold a job with a criminal’s face. This lotion guy, Mr. Fontanelle or whatever—you know how many laws he’s broken? Public enemy number one, and there’s my Ted with his face.” Her eyes softened, and she pushed the grilled cheese sandwich closer toward him. “I accidentally put ham on this even though you didn’t ask for it. If you’re Jewish or anything I can make you another one.”

  Lyle stared at the sandwich, both touched and terrified by the woman’s story, and by her sudden kindness at the end of it. His mumbled thanks as he took the sandwich was drowned out by the big man’s booming voice.

  “Let me see you,” said the big man; the cook had addressed him as Doug. He grabbed Lyle by the shoulders and turned him, studying him with a careful eye. “Yeah, I’ve seen this one around. Ted got the same one?”

  “The very same one,” said the cook.

  “How many have you seen?” asked Lyle. The cook’s kindness had made him bolder.

  “Five, maybe six,” said Doug. “They’re hiring them at the docks, if you’re looking for work. It’s not your fault you got a criminal’s face.”

  Lyle said nothing, and took a bite of sandwich.

  Where were all the Lyles coming from? None of the NewYew lotion had been imprinted on his DNA—they’d made sure of that—and as far as he knew no one else had stolen any. Certainly he’d never been ambushed in the street like so many celebrities had. So who had gotten it, and how?

  And why?

  He turned to the cook. “I’m trying to track down the people who did this,” he said, “to me and to Ted and to everyone else. I know you didn’t buy any ReBirth,” he said, phrasing his sentence as carefully as possible, “but if you happened to know of a place where I could find some, maybe someone Ted’s talked to recently…?” He trailed off, not sure exactly how to finish the request without coming right out and saying it. The cook stared at him a long time, then pointed at the wall behind him.

  “Hand me one of those papers.”

  Lyle pulled the Yemaya Foundation advertisement off the wall and handed it to her; she scribbled something on the back and folded it in half, handing it back. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t,” said Lyle. He shoved the paper in his pocket, clutched his grilled cheese sandwich, and walked outside.

  40

  Thursday, September 6

  11:04 P.M.

  Central Park, Manhattan

  99 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

  The diner cook’s contact led Lyle to a dealer, who led him to another dealer, who didn’t like Lyle’s questions and pulled a gun. Lyle ran, the dealer chased him, and around the first corner shot and killed the wrong man. Lyle hid, terrified, but realized that the newly dead body on the sidewalk had his face: it was another Lyle, and the dealer thought he’d killed the right one. The dealer left, and Lyle struggled to calm his terror, and the next night he went back to spy on the dealer in secret, watching to see who brought him his stash. That led Lyle to spy on another minor supplier, who led him to a major supplier, who led him to a man named Stephen Nelson.

  Stephen Nelson walked through Central Park almost every day, sometimes buying a hot dog, sometimes chatting and laughing with other men in suits. Street hot dogs seemed like a strange choice for an obviously wealthy executive, especially considering that most of his other lunches were buried in private rooms at high-end Asian fusion restaurants, but after a few days Lyle noticed a pattern: on the days when he ate hot dogs, Nelson carried a briefcase. No briefcase, no hot dog. Another few days of observation revealed the final piece of the puzzle: every time Nelson bought a hot dog, the same stranger was buying one at the same time, carrying an identical briefcase. Nelson would walk up, set his case on the ground, buy a hot dog …

  … and leave with the other man’s case.

  Lyle wanted a closer look at the man, and rattled his pocket for change. He found just enough to buy a hot dog of his own—his entire remaining food budget for the week—and approached the cart, holding up a single finger to the proprietor. While the vendor prepared the dog Lyle stole a closer look at the man with the briefcase, and felt a surge of fear and excitement when he realized he couldn’t determine the man’s race. That probably wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but Lyle had made a career of identifying race—in designing his cosmetics and calibrating the various colors, he had become an expert in skin tone, in eye shape, in facial proportion. It was his job, and he was very good at it. This man had dark skin, somewhere in the middle of the African spectrum, but with vaguely Middle Eastern features and a markedly Persian nose. His hair, in its color and appearance and spacing, was Asian, and his bright blue eyes were shockingly atypical compared to the rest of him. He was handsome, but completely unidentifiable.

  To be presented with a racial backgro
und that Lyle couldn’t determine was a big deal, and meant one of two things: One, the man came from a long line of racially adventurous ancestors. Two, and more likely, the man had multiple genomes warring for attention. Before Lyle could even finish wondering which of NewYew’s various connections would experiment so liberally with overlapping ReBirth treatments, he knew the answer.

  “Kerry.”

  The man looked up sharply, his mouth half full of hot dog.

  “Kerry White,” said Lyle. He hadn’t been planning to say anything to the man, but it was too much of a shock, and he couldn’t help himself. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  The man tensed, as if ready to run, but as he peered more closely at Lyle a light of recognition dawned in his eyes. “Lyle? Like, the real Lyle? Is that really you?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “This isn’t a good place to talk,” said Kerry, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out a folded wad of bills—Lyle couldn’t tell how many, but saw that the outside layer, at least, was a hundred—and handed it to the hot dog vendor. “You tell anyone what you’ve seen or heard just now, you’d better be the world champion at hide-and-seek.” He smiled brightly and slapped Lyle on the back. “Walk with me.” He picked up the briefcase, and walked through the park. “Obviously we have to start with proof of identity: who first came up with the idea of using ReBirth commercially?”

  Lyle nodded—it was the perfect question, because nobody outside the executive board could possibly know the answer. It was too embarrassing, and they’d never discussed it with anyone. “Jeffrey.”

  Kerry smiled and slapped him on the back again. “Good to see you, man, where’ve you been?”

  “What are you doing here?” Lyle asked again. “That was a handoff, right? Stephen Nelson is selling ReBirth, and when you switched briefcases just now that was you giving him more lotion and him giving you money.”

  “Looks like we’ll have to change some procedures,” said Kerry, “or cut out the weak link of whatever chain led you here.”