Rinchi, Yeshi’s twin sister, swayed back and forth in front of him. She wore a skimpy Little Red Riding Hood outfit and a wolf mask. The mask, a one of a kind Alexander McQueen pollution mask made from the head of a gray wolf bred in captivity, bounced back and forth as Rinchi swayed her hips. She bent over in front Antimeria. He pulled her towards him and licked her ass cheeks.
“You always talk about pregnant Nelly.” Rinchi looked at him through her legs. From her vantage point, all she could see were his beady little eyes twinkling like two upside down moons over a mountainous belly peppered with age spots and hairy moles.
“Who else am I supposed to talk about? Nelly is my wife.” Antimeria finished his energy drink and tossed the can against the wall. Clink! Orange remnants from the brew splashed onto the carpet. He manhandled another energy drink, popped it open as he watched Rinchi’s ample ass gyrate.
“I wish I’d listened to him.” He redbulled the drink. His stomach shook with indigestional thunder. “If I’d just listened to him, I wouldn’t be dealing with this shit right now …”
“Who are you talking about?” Rinchi asked. She slowly worked her way up to a standing position. She stood momentarily with her back to him.
“I had this older friend, Baz, when I first started at FreddieDickMac,” Antimeria said. He reached forward and snapped the back of Rinchi’s cherry red bodice. “Baz was married to this crazy broad at the time. Hell, he died still married to that psycho female. Damn if she wasn’t a tough woman to deal with. The pretty ones are like that you know? The fucking humans …”
“Humans.” Rinchi tilted her head to the right.
“Humans! At the time I’d recently divorced and had just started dating Nelly. When Baz first met her, he pulled me aside and looked me square in the eye. ‘son,” he says, ‘she’s beautiful, and that’s a bad thing. You’re going to run into all sorts of trouble with this one. Sure, she’s a good fuck and yeah, she has a great bod, but soon enough, she’s going to suck the life out of you like … like a damned juice box. Just squeeze your cardboard ass dry.” Only Baz could say something like that.”
“Relax dear.” Rinchi bent forward again and snapped back to standing. She had never met Nelly before, but she was sick of hearing about her.
“Damn if this isn’t exactly what happened to me,” Antimeria said. “Every day more juice is being squeezed out. Nelly needs this, our flat in London needs that, the yoga instructor wants to make house calls, it’s her friend’s birthday, manicure, pedicure in Mexico, some shitty store in France just released a new line of synthetic human skin purses – you get the picture. The air is being squeezed out of me! DAMN YOU NELLY! I’ve never felt more strangled in my life! Kind of like that crazy black guy tonight. Meme was his name, right?”
“I didn’t catch his name,” Rinchi said. ‘maybe Yeshi knows … ”
“What the hell kind of name is Meme? What the fuck was that guy’s deal? Punching Sauria in the face? Strangling him? I’m glad we had security. They chased him the hell out of there!”
“Chase.”
“If only the security guard could chase Nelly out of my life. This marriage thing. What the hell was I thinking? Why do I keep getting re-married? I might not be in my prime anymore but I can still have a good time. They say forty-eight is the new twenty-five. I’m healthier than I’ve been in years! Here I am, married to a woman nearly thirty years younger than me who is about to have my first daughter. Great. This world needs less humans and more people like you … ”
“People like me?” Rinchi unclipped her garter belt. “That’s kind of you.”
Antimeria shook his head. “You’ve got to trust that instinct of yours,” Baz used to say, “Don’t be like me. Don’t be stupid like me. Don’t get with these young chicks. Find yourself a dating service. Get a woman who knows how to work it. One who knows how to take care of a man as well as you’re going to take care of her.” Damn if he wasn’t right. Hell, Baz’s ghost is probably in this room laughing at me right now. If you’re here, Baz, let me say something – you were right you old bastard! I should have listened to you!”
“It’s okay, baby.” Rinchi bent over in front of Antimeria. She unbuckled her wolf mask and dropped it to the salmon carpet.
He grimaced. “We were sitting in one of the pollution bars in San Fran, taking a little business breather. You know, strip club, drinks, some poker, blow jobs under the table – this sort of thing. A boy’s weekend. I could tell Baz was doing everything in his power not to just backhand the shit out of me. It was in his eyes. They just looked right through me… just right through me to the bar. These big sad eyes of his. And now I see why. I wish he’d done it. I wish the bastard had done it. Just cold-cocked the shit out of me right there in that pollution bar.”
“Just relax, spend some time with me,” Rinchi purred. She finished untying her bodice.
“You’re so beautiful,” Antimeria said as he admired her perfectly formed breasts. He drummed his fingers along his power paunch. “Too bad you aren’t real.”
“What’s not real about me?” She draped her arm across her breasts with a girlish pout.
“You know … but it doesn’t matter. You’re better than a real woman could ever hope to be. It’s too bad your twin Yeshi isn’t here right now. You guys are always more fun together.”
Rinchi’s smile tightened. “You think I’m better than a real woman?”
“I mean it. You don’t cause me any trouble, you don’t bitch at me, you don’t ask me to pay for your weekend at the spa, you don’t need useless knick knacks, you don’t need entertainment, you can’t get pregnant. You’re the perfect woman, and I don’t care if you are a Humandroid.”
“You’re such a flirt.” Rinchi sat down on Antimeria’s lap and tugged lightly on his tie.
“Nah, I just wish I’d picked a different path in life.” He looked down at his fat fingers. “This is what I’ve been reduced to – fucking Humandroid love dolls just to get my jollies.”
Rinchi pulled down hard on his tie.
Antimeria’s face reddened. “Careful, honey,” he said through gritted teeth, “I don’t like it so rough.”
SEVEN∞
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Are you going to get that?” I ask Yeshi, who is sitting quietly in a meditative pose. Meme here, yes, the same guy from earlier. I’m coherent enough to take the reins of the story again. Something happened between the VIP room and now. I can’t tell you exactly what it was, nor can I tell you how I got to this hotel room. C’est la vie I suppose.
Knock. Knock.
“It’s probably the pollution mask.” Yeshi cracks the door and whispers something to someone I can’t see. She’s given a tray with a pollution mask on it, its long nose freshly polished.
“Here,” she says. She sits on the creaky bed and pulls some tubing down from the ceiling. While the room is a bit outdated, the pollution mask and distributor cable are brand spanking new. It’s important to know what counts in this world.
“What are you?” I ask. I blink, failing to get a good picture of her. Everything is still blurry, inky, cryptic.
“What am I? What do you mean, Meme?” she asks as she hands me the pollution mask.
“Why are we here?” I ask the timeless question again.
“We got kicked out of the VIP room because you punched a guy named Sauria in the face. You also choked him. He’s the head of ExEx, you know.”
“Choked?” I gulp. “ExEx? Am I in trouble now?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did we get to this hotel?”
“We just ended up here.” She bends over and kisses me on the forehead. There’s something strange about the way she’s talking to me, the way her voice filters in and out of my consciousness.
Hmmmm…
As Yeshi sets up the pollution mask, I close my eyes and check my iNet messages. My co-worker, a spiky man named Tyro, has sent me two messages. He always sends me messages. I scroll up and
down my inbox. Eighty percent of the unread messages are from him. I delete the new messages without reading them and open my eyes. It’s strange, my normal vision is blurred, but when I log in to iNet, my vision is crystal clear. Technology – it always makes things better.
I close my eyes and log back in again. I do a quick search to see how many people on GoogleFace set their location to POLLUTION CLUB 512 tonight. I vaguely remember Nelly contacting her friend (was his name Carloza?) at the club. I’m pretty sure she sent something and the odds of me finding it here are good. Yes! She checked in.
“You ready?”
“Just a moment,” I say as I find Nelly’s profile. Her marital status is listed as unknown. In the picture she wears an orange scarf that drapes over her bulging stomach, a white tank top barely held together by two thin strings and leggings under a yellow pair of boy shorts. Now that’s the body I wanted to switch with…
“What are you smiling about, honey?” Yeshi asks. I send Nelly a message and a poke. Hopefully she’ll respond. I log off iNet and open my eyes.
“Oh, I was looking for a friend I met at the club,” I say. Yeshi hands me the pollution mask and I strap it to my face. I suddenly remember the questions I had a few minutes ago.
“Why are we here?” I ask.
She takes out a pollution packet, massages it like a pro, and dumps it into a reservoir with a shiny metal handle near the nightstand. It’s a small packet of Loathing Hunter Special Reserve. How did she know it was my favorite? Did I say something? I look her over and admire her tight nurse’s costume. Her smooth skin is green when viewed through my mask’s emerald polypropylene eye lenses.
“We had to get out of there,” she said.
“What did I do again?”
“You punched someone. Sauria, head of ExEx.” Yeshi turns a lever and I hear the pollution begin to vaporize. Inhale, exhale. Who’s the victim?
EIGHT∞
I feel like we’ve met before.
I feel like I’ve taken your hand in mine, like we’ve escaped together down the oubliette of a shared mind, a shared experience. We’ve sat on the balcony watching aeros whip around our heads like dragon flies; we’ve grown used to each other and the peculiar noises we make in our sleep; we’ve shared cigarettes and toilets, wet dreams and dry nightmares, socks and undershirts, deodorants and toothbrushes; we’ve embraced at the airport before being whisked away to destinations unknown; I’ve held your hair as you puked and you’ve held my hand as I cried; I paid the tab at the bar and you picked up the bill at the restaurant. We are conjoined, the result of years upon years of conceptualizing.
The things linking us are more than electronic, bigger than Homo sapiens, Homo machina or anything in between. I raise your ontological argument with a swift fist in the gut! We are the modern day philosophers; we are the blurred line between good and evil. We exist to exist alongside one another (simply to exist!). We watch the rise and fall wearing beast masks while inhaling exiguous gulps of liquid sin as if it were oxygen. Never fear – the bonfires of time consume all they encompass. We laugh and fornicate; we rape and pillage; we make up to break up; we prick our fingers and press the bloodied stumps together swearing allegiance. We are the modern day Adam and Eve stuffing our face with apples. Dine with me, dear Reader.
It’s true – I’m hallucinating again for what may be the third time tonight.
Hotel California. I’m staring into an oval mirror attached to the black headboard of the bed. As Yeshi lays her head into my lap, I inhale the pollute deeply. I feel the pollute travel past my stomach into my nether regions, down my thighs and into my kneecaps, finally arriving like a time-honored guest at the tips of my toes.
I look at our reflection in the mirror. The long nose of my pollution mask curves downward like the beak of a horny hummingbird. Yeshi’s head is moving up and down. She’s unzipped my pants. I look at my reflection. Who is this man staring back at me? Is it Meme, is it me? Is it you? Who is the man with the woman’s head in his lap? Who are you man!?
I reach out and touch the mirror. My fingers slip effortlessly into the mirror as if I were placing my hand into a still body of water. Yeshi says something but I can’t understand what she’s saying.
I push my hand deeper into the mirror and feel a tug at the other end of the mirror. I whip my hand away; the surface of the mirror ripples and I’m mesmerized by the undulation. I watch as a moth hovering around the ceiling light disappears into the mirror. It vanishes as soon as its wings touch the surface. The moth returns from the other side of the mirror glistening. Liquid mirror drips off its body as it flutters back towards the light.
I have to see what is on the other side of this mirror. Join me.
I roll my head back and sigh deeply. The light swells and dissipates. I feel Yeshi’s fingernails against my stomach. It feels like she’s trying to pull out my lower intestines, one yard at a time. A loving intestinal crank never hurt anyone. Her nails move down to my thighs. I push her off me and look back at the oval mirror.
I reach for the mirror again and slip my hand into its porcelain surface. Again I feel the faint spectral tug on the other side. I watch in the mirror as Yeshi tries to pull my pollution mask off my face. One hand goes around her neck and I toss her to the other side of the room.
I inhale more. I inhale even more.
I sink my hand deeper into the mirror. The mirror has now engulfed my entire right arm. My arm is caressed by something wet and soft on the other side of the mirror. I’m now face to face with myself in the mirror’s surface. Meme meet Meme. I’m staring into my own eyes, shielded by polypropylene, protected by plastic, as so many of us are today. Staring at myself, I’m reminded what brought me here in the first place. This magical mirror, this hotel room, this strange woman…
I look back at Yeshi.
She’s looking through her bag for something. Her top is off and her breasts are hanging low, swing low, sweet chariot. I notice a bulge in the front of her panties. There’s definitely something strange about her. She says something to me in a language I don’t recognize. I smile at her to let her know I’m fine. Inhale to exhale. She walks over to the pollution distributor and presses something on the dial. The pollution suddenly loses its strength.
With one arm still inside the mirror, I reach for Yeshi and bring her closer to me. “Why did you do that!?” I bellow, my scream muffled by the mask. The mask fills with the hot air of my words.
She kisses the end of my pollution mask and licks the polypropylene lenses. Yeshi straddles herself on top of me, wrapping her hands around my neck. She begins to squeeze. I’m surprised by her strength and try to pry her off me. She’s too strong, especially with one of my arms stuck in a mirror. She’s twice as strong as a woman her size should be. Something’s not right here.
I look back at the mirror. I’m inches away from my own nebulous face. Meme meet Meme.
I can feel something running up and down my arm on the other side of the mirror. It feels bristly and wet like a giant paint brush. There’s a ringing in my ear and all I can smell is the remnants of the pollution in my mask. Yeshi is still on top of me, biting at me voraciously. One of her hands is still around my neck, squeezing the air out of me.
I push my face through the surface of the mirror. I can no longer distinguish the difference between hallucination and reality. I’m in a vast resplendent desert with Daliesque forms cart-wheeling around in a light zephyr. Melting clocks and whatnot. Elephants with giraffe legs. A hazy cloud has drifted in front of an olive sun. My face is peeking out of a large crag circumambient with purple cacti and chunky pineapple lizards.
Half of my body is hanging out of the rock, like a calf in mid-geo birth. The other half is still in the room with Yeshi being strangled. I reach for Yeshi’s arm and slam her face first into the mirror. Her body is tossed violently in front of me. She is with me now! She lands in a pile of dust and detritus. A few of the pineapple lizards scatter slowly.
A vulture with two he
ads and black contacts is perched on a desiccated ribcage a few yards away from Yeshi. As she sits up, the dapple gray vulture spreads its wings. The two-headed vulture’s wingspan is a good fifteen feet and its shadow completely covers Yeshi’s body. It flaps its wings twice. Dust silvers in the air around it.
I pull the rest of my body through the mirror as the black-eyed vulture flies off into the distance. Several glass spiders the size of soccer balls waddle between Yeshi and me. Out of curiosity, I stamp my foot against one of the spiders. The sound of breaking glass echoes as if it were shrieked by a banshee through the desolate apricot-colored landscape. I pull my foot away, watching as small pieces of glass and blood melt into the hardened soil.
My lower half. Fresh blood is dripping down my legs. The wounds are coming from scratch marks adjacent to each other on both legs. I don’t know how I got the wounds or where my pants went. Yeshi looks up at me and grins. She springs forward using her hand as a catapult and pulls me into a pool of water that I hadn’t noticed before.
As she swims in front of me, I watch her exposed breasts sway in the water. She’s wearing ruffled white panties and knee-high stockings now. Hanging from her stockings are small strings with squares of mirror attached. Again the bulge. She leads me into a cave, past neon conodont and wavy glassine seaweed. An aqueous congress will soon begin. Let us partake.
NINE∞
Antimeria loved ladyboy Humandroids.
Breasts and male genitalia – strange and fascinating. The ability to fuck and be fucked? Revolutionary! Humandroid ladyboys were the perfect mix of androgynous and cutting edge, a late twenty-first century merger between Darwin and woman, salacious and sensational, robotic erotica and sexual exploration, taboo and robo-compulsive disorder.
Clearly, having sex with a ladyboy Humandroid escort didn’t make you gay. Clearly. As a card carrying member of the RepubCorp party, Antimeria knew the political backlash associated with being gay (even if homosexuality was universally accepted by 2083, people still held their prejudices like loaded weapons). Besides all that, Antimeria was Christian, and it was a sin to be gay. It said so in the Bible somewhere, obscurely but still.
Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set) Page 3