She smiled knowingly at her husband. They had met at UCLA five years ago, while Tyro was studying for his Master’s in Humandroid therapy and she was studying for an undergrad in nature-deficit disorder. He was a stern man, who took his job and everything revolving around it a bit too seriously.
He took off his glasses and used his tie to clean the lenses.
“Stop it.” She laughed as he looked from the glasses to her. “That was an expensive tie!”
Hannah bought all of Tyro’s clothes. Any sense of style he conveyed to those around him was due to Hannah’s haughty taste, which she borrowed from the countless electronic magazines she subscribed to and hours spent on GoogleFace’s various fashion channels.
“What should I use then?” he asked.
“Use a napkin. That tie was handmade in Syria by disabled school children. They’re disabled – show them some respect.”
He reached for the napkin. “I’m just frustrated, that’s all. I work so hard to keep things at the office in order and it seems as if Meme just comes in whenever he pleases, makes a mess, does a shit job, and leaves early. He always has something to do… always has some excuse. I’ve been sending him more messages, hoping he’ll get the hint that I’m unsatisfied with his performance, but he never responds. Hell, I don’t even think he reads the messages.”
“Let’s change the subject sweetie. It’s date night, remember?”
“Yeah, but we can’t be out late.” Tyro rubbed his temples. “I need to get home to compile some research on a new optimism ignition method that a friend of mine recently sent me. You know Dr. Bertetta at Stanford. Anyway, the self-awareness module we have been using over the last two years at the office barely has a fifty percent success rate. Of the fifty percent that show no sign of improvement, thirteen percent have conditions that appear to have gotten worse. It’s not working well enough.”
“Seriously?”
“Humandroids are losing their motivation to work. This affects both the economy and the general well-being of human society. This new research is crucial to improving the work ethic and overall happiness of the Humandroids. I’m hoping to read through it tonight so I can do a few test runs starting tomorrow.”
“Ty, maybe we could go dancing? Why not? They have that new pollution club nearby. POLLUTION CLUB 512 ... ”
“Are you kidding?” Tyro laughed. His brow furrowed and he leaned forward. “You know I don’t use pollutes. Look what it does to these people!” he pointed at the bar.
Seven or eight people wearing pollution masks loitered around a skinny dreadlocked bartender. Some laughed while the others, who were likely more intoxicated, leaned forward onto their elbows.
“Oh, those people are just high. It’s okay to get high off pollutes every now and then. Come on, it will be fun. We can get crazy, you know,” she winked at Tyro. “Come on, we never did anything for Halloween last year … let’s get wild tonight!”
EIGHTEEN∞
There are a few Origami birds fluttering around my head.
In the distance, the lone call of what sounds to be a wounded manatee reverberates through the room. The sound detonates inside my skull and dissipates. I’m standing near a pair of large dunes. Near me, the water from a jostling blue river sluices through a bed of jagged candy rocks. I can feel my body convulsing.
I stop and sit near the root of a gnarled oak tree. Brittle twigs crunch under my weight. I look up at the sandy dunes nearby and feel the urge to rest coming on. Sand sprays around me as I tramp up one of the dunes. Yeshi sits on a peculiar rock formation that juts up like a nipple seemingly out of nowhere and I wave.
I wave and wave and wait and wait for my cue to misbehave.
Suddenly, we’re standing in a house with playing card wallpaper and mauve parquet floors. I’m leaning against her. The Kings are shaking their glossy swords as they try to peel themselves from the ivory wallpaper. They’re tattooed to their cards, bewildered and agitated. Royalty hates being pinned down. The Queens are fixing their sylvanite crowns. Some are using prickly eyebrow tweezers to jab at the corners of their cards. Their faces are smeared in lard, their cheeks flush with crimson, their lips puckered, their brows lowered and menacing.
The Jokers are laughing at the kings and queens. The Jokers are laughing at the cream-colored things. The Jacks are laughing at themselves. The Jacks are laughing at me. One Jack reaches his sword to the card above him and pricks the King of Spades in the ass. The King roars. A black liquid boils out of his ass and onto the floor.
Yeshi dips her hand in the inky substance and sucks it off her finger. She wipes some on my face. It burns in a way I’ve never felt before. I touch the substance and put some in my mouth. It tastes like sour licorice.
“Where are we?”
“We’re in the hotel room,” she tells me. I continue to stare down a long corridor snaking underneath the Queen of Hearts. The audience cheers and jeers, no after claps here, no one is as ambitchous as I! Unlightening epiphanots collide!
“Why are we here?” I asked the only question worth asking again. “Why are we here?”
Yeshi’s eyelashes have been replaced with Monarch butterfly wings and her bangs have vanished. Her fingernails have elongated, her teeth have sharpened.
“I’m so scared,” I tell her. “Sorry for being such an askhole … ”
“Fear is more exciting than banality I suppose,” she says. “You can ask as many questions as you want.”
“WHAT WAS THAT!?”
I sense something moving in the room around us. Something dark, something sinister. The hairs on my arms stand to attention like a field full of pulsating erections. A bear-sized shadow moves across the room. It feels like something is breathing down on me. A hot and sticky breath – a mixture of vinegar and deceit, bloodlust and rotten apples – daggers my senses. I feel the drip of searing saliva on my back.
“Please,” I tell her, grabbing her arm.
“You want me to take off your pants?”
“No! Please, just… please…” I start to cry.
My mind has exploded and it’s dribbling out of my tear ducts. Whatever is in the room is near. Whatever is lurking in the dark is within arm’s reach. Whatever is behind me, whatever is in front of me … I fall to my knees.
It’s there! Behind you!
“Is it too strong?”
“Is what too strong!?” I plead.
“The Ukrainian pollute … ”
“The what?” I turn away. “Please stop,” I whisper to the phantom being standing behind me. Meet your executioner face to face.
“All right let’s take that mask off.”
“Don’t touch me!” I scream. The cards begin to fall off the wall, shattering all around me. Shards of glass spray into the air like waves during an H-bomb test. I cover my ears and scream.
He is here. He is near. Here is here. Near is here. Here is he. Near is he. He is here…
“Okay. Just relax, just lie here sweetie.”
I’m standing near the strange soft dunes again. The baleful cards are gone, the spectral nuisance too. I’m listening to the sounds of the forest. I’m lying near a large tree. In a haze, I begin walking towards the two dunes. My legs start to sink into them. My head is plangent. I’m dizzy and nauseous, baffled. I can see two white suns over the horizon. They seem to blink at me. Two clouds with long dangly rain litter purple hues across the dunes.
“Meme,” I hear the wind say in the distance. “Meme, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you,” I say. I lie down on the mound and sink into the fleshy earth. I press my ear against the earth and hear a strange mechanical ticking noise. I notice the whir of a processor.
“You aren’t real,” I say into the fleshy mound. I look up and see a few doves fluttering above. “I can’t switch bodies with you … ”
“No one’s real,” the wind whispers in my ear. “No one’s real, sweetie.”
NINETEEN∞
I’m being dragged by her! I
don’t know how she got me out of the purple room. I don’t actually know if it was a room. It seemed like a room. The walls swelled like a room. The walls felt constricting like I was in a room. The walls were hard like a room; confining like a room. Who knows!?
We’re in some leaky lobby I don’t recognize. Deranged faces smile at us. We’re whisked away in a sleek taxi aeros. I have no idea how an aeros works but it does. Think The Jetsons and sprinkle in a little sci-fi fantasy. Flying vehicles do exist! I’m oblivious with most technology except Humandroids – I know how they work. Better to be decent enough to pass the required exams at one trade than to be a master of none.
This I know – Yeshi was naked earlier. Now she’s in a tight white dress practically painted on. She still has white contacts in shielded by monarch butterfly wing eyelashes. She’s thin, her body long and narrow, like a gazelle, like a perfect specimen. Like everything you ever wanted in a woman yet she’s a man, or a Humandroid ladyboy, or an object, or dammit I have no idea what pronoun I should be using and fuck it I don’t care!
You’re falling in love, Meme!
How dare you say that! Falling in love? What the fuck does that even mean? It sounds like a trap to me! Admiral Ackbar is crapping in his pants somewhere! Did I just say falling in love? Can you really fall in love with a Humandroid?
Love love love love love.
I look at her again. She’s exquisite and unique, yet she’s not real. Impossible to fall in love with something that’s not real. Or is it? The FCG doesn’t recognize human-Humandroid marriages. Marriage? I’m hallucinating! Why does the thought of love always follow with a question of marriage? Damn my conditioning! Damn your conditioning. Damn our conditioning. Love? Virtually impossible I know, but so is everything I’ve told you over the last one hundred pages.
I need to get out of this taxi. I need to get out of this novel about my exploits, crawl from these thin pages and save myself from myself.
I need to escape.
I will begin my departure from this novel by using your hands to pull myself out of this book. I’ll grip your wrists, squeeze out a gasp of relief as my head emerges from the fleshy paper or the bogus electronic pages; I’ll let out and audible sigh as I careen my neck to the left, to the right, grimace and blink my eyes as I adjust to the light in the room you’re in. I’ll stick my tongue out and taste the stale air. Inhale, exhale.
I’ll scream as I’m born into your world. Shriek as I bite into the flesh of your forearms, ripping my neck from this bound debauchery. I will look up at you with a sense of wonderment. From there I pull my torso out.
I’ll use one arm to hold you down against the chair – leverage – and use the other to push away from the book. My chest will emerge, followed by my thighs. At this point you’ll drop the book. I will brace myself for impact. The veins running up and down my forearms will fill with blood.
You’ll fall on the floor, afraid that your novel has come alive. This floor could be anywhere: the subway, an airplane, your room, your bathtub, your girlfriend’s living room, your boyfriend’s parent’s house, a prison cell, a bus, the lobby at a mental clinic.
People are watching, people aren’t watching, people don’t care. No one can see me but you. No one can see you but me. See it – the book with my half-emerged body falls to the floor. I break the spine of the book in the process of my nativity. I shatter the e-ink screen of your Kindle or Nook or iPad or Galaxy Tab or Kobo eReader or whatever silly futuristic device you are reading this from.
Look now and imagine with me!
The book lies in a heap on the floor. I’m curled next to it in the fetal position. You stand and sit in the chair, afraid to look down at me, clutching your knees, sobbing. Who is this black man who has come into my home? Suddenly, I’m alive and well. I’m sitting next to you, asking you your name, ignoring what you say and calling you ‘reader.”
“Hi, I’m Meme Lamar and I’m from 2083. Please don’t call the cops. I know what they are capable of in this day and age due to my skin tone. That’s a good Reader, relax, take a deep breath, I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
Life is a beautiful naissance. Life is a horrible disaster. Life is a brief tryst, a wondrous time to fuck and be fucked. To die and let live. To learn a new language and forget your mother tongue. To dance with death and thumb your nose at despair.
I will become your new best friend. I will eat your leftovers, take long hot baths in your home, meet your parents, go to football games with you, play video games with your younger siblings, write your term papers for you, help you count your medication, clean the rims of your car, start a band with you (I call drums!), watch over you as you sleep, Texas two-step with you, have sex with you, wash the dishes for you, drink cocktails out of cracked coconut shells while we relax on a nude beach, kill your enemies for you, pet your hair while you watch TV.
After I’ve ruined or enhanced your life, I will switch bodies with you. You’ll become me and I’ll become you. I’ll become Reader and you’ll become Meme. You are a Humandroid therapist infatuated with a voluptuous love doll. You confuse infatuation with love, lust with eternal partnership. You’ve punched some higher up at ExEx. You’re addicted (not addicted – I’m a connoisseur) to pollutes. You’ve already begun questioning your sexual orientation due to the fact that you’re lusty for an artificial ladyboy. You’re riding in the back of an aeros, bundled on the floorboard with fright.
You can barely see straight.
I can barely see straight.
We are blind together.
The woman near me is a wavy line. Tall, slender, pert, soft hair, bangs, eyes, mouth, words, red lips, butterfly eyelashes, black nails. Nothing has a tangible outline. Silky skin, soft features, quirky smile, long legs, sexy dress, cute nose. The faces of the people I’ve encountered since leaving the hotel room keep morphing. The faces are synthetic; the molds are set as swiftly as they change. The cityscape is one single light. The cityscape is a million lights covered in grafedia.
The fiends, the shops, the ads, the tech, the buildings holding the sky up, the drones overhead monitoring the citizens. (Attention all future societies: you must monitor your citizens at all costs!) The city below twists into one large flash of thinly veiled neo-totalitarianism.
Welcome to the future meine freunde.
I try to crawl further under the taxi seat. The woman I’m with is trying to help me up. She pulls me into the seat and whispers something into my ear. Noli me Tángere! Her breath smells metallic. The driver stares at me wearily from the rearview mirror. His look of disappointment reminds me my father’s when I didn’t make it into Harvard. I went to UCLA instead.
Holy hell, the cab driver is my father! He’s a bastard of a man, black as a crater on the dark side of the moon and mean as a cornered animal. Rabid eyes, gnashing teeth, sharp eyes, prickly ears. His jowl hangs like a wet scarf from his neck. He’s barking at someone on a radio piece in his ear. His neck is leathery. The saliva sprays from his mouth to the dashboard. An LCD advertisement screen flashes an ad for the Stonecipheco retirement homes.
I try to dive back under the seat in front of me. The woman leading me around grabs at my arm and tries to lift my body into the chair. She does so in a way that seems absolutely routine. She does so in an almost passive, bored way.
Here, sit boy. Good boy. Aren’t you a good boy? Want a treat? If you behave I’ll buy you a treat. No, don’t go under the chair in front of you. Good boy. Stay right here. You’re a sweet boy aren’t you? Who is a sweet boy? Who is mama’s little baby?
I am mama’s little baby!
The driver is not my father. My father is a skinny man with oval glasses. As I realize this, it feels as if an epiphany has just struck me across the forehead. I look out the window and see a line of aeros moving beside us. I have no idea where we are. The city is a dark gash below, yet the lights are effulgent. Each light leaves a lacinated tracer in the cabin of the vehicle. The tracers linger like slow falling snow. There are n
o stars in the sky. Too many buildings, too much fog, too much city. I feel lost in the city!
Who is this woman sitting next to me? I inspect her by slipping my fingers under her skirt. She slaps at my hand and smiles back. Her smile stretches all the way past her cheeks and bursts off her face. It sticks to the window and beats its fists against the glass. It wants to escape. I want to escape with it.
The woman’s bangs sway back and forth as she tells me to relax. She says stop in a way that seems to encourage me to explore further. I love when women tell me to stop. I grab her neck and pull her towards me. We’re kissing and I’m sucking her tongue into my throat. She’s biting my lip. The driver makes a sound. How dare you judge us!? The woman hits a button and a barrier goes up between us and the driver.
I’m suddenly terrified. I push the woman away. The thought hits me – I’m stuck in a moving vehicle hovering in thin air over a bulging city full of simps below. The urge to vomit violently tickles my tummy. Reality starts slushing around me like a cruel joke. I start to dry heave. The woman next to me pats my back and tells me to breathe.
Just relax baby.
I beat my head against the back of the seat. I’m frantic. I try and pry open the doors but they’re locked. “Who are you?” I ask, moving as close to the door as I can. I quickly think about kicking my feet against the window. Maybe I can shatter the glass.
“Yeshi,” she giggles. “You know my name Meme … just relax. It’s the Ukrainian pollute that is fucking with you. I’ll take care of you. I’ll always take care of you.”
“What?”
I try to crawl back down below the seat in front of me. The barrier prevents me from going any further. I look up at her, cowering. She grows into a large blimp of a woman. She isn’t a woman, a voice inside my head reminds me. Fuck you, I hiss at that voice.
Who is this voice anyway? Fuck what Jiminy Cricket or whatever that old story tells you. My conscience? Find a new doll to molest, Geppetto! I cower away from Yeshi the Blue Fairy. She’s in the seat. I’m back on the floor.
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