Life is a Beautiful Thing (4-Book Box Set)

by Harmon Cooper

  “My investigators think it’s a front. In fact, they’re sure it’s a front,” Sauria said. “We just can’t figure out what it’s a front for yet. Could be terrorist activities, illegal pollutes, body-switchers, Humguns … you get the picture.”

  “Well, just give her about one month and then do with her what you will. Open any type of investigation you feel is necessary; I don’t care what you do after that. You know how I feel about terrorists. Not in my America.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Look, about catching Meme,” Antimeria shifted his weight forward. “I have an idea that may surprise even you.”

  THIRTY-TWO∞

  I stand silently in front of Tyro, waiting for him to speak. Animosity radiates off him – I’d better be ready for anything.

  “Do you see what you did to me?” he asks after a long bout of silence. His face is bulbous, one eye is completely red, his lips are swollen and his nose seems slightly crooked. He looks like a chewed up hunk of steak.

  “Tyro … ” I run through the twenty or so excuses I’d come up with on the cab ride over here. They all fail before they can reach my lips.

  “Do you see what you’ve become?” his voice rose. “Can you see what you’ve become by looking at me!?” He uses his hand to swipe a Humandroid psychology book and a pewter centaur off my desk.

  “Relax, let’s talk about this.” I place my hands up in a gesture of calm. (I’m a little peeved about what he did to my centaur, but now isn’t the time to say something.)

  “Talk about what? About beating the shit out of me in front of my wife and all those people? About your fucked up relationship with a Humandroid? About your work performance? Where should we start?”

  “You aren’t my boss,” I remind him. A few glinting aeros passing by my window catch my eye. Their shadows run across my office before disappearing in a flash.

  “No, I’m not your boss. But unless you agree to my demands, you’re going to be as fucked as if I were your boss.”

  “Demands? What do you mean?”

  “Do I really need to elaborate? You’re making a mockery of our practice and you assaulted me. It’s on video. On top of that, you’re dating a client!”

  “Dating a client?” I tense up, ready to hop over the desk if need be. “You need to stay the fuck out of my life. Got it?”

  He starts to laugh. “Your life. A seat-of-your-pants-balls-to-the-wall-LMFAO-styled life, huh? Actually, that’s what we’re here to talk about, Meme, your life.”

  “What about it?” I ask. “I don’t need an intervention here.”

  He pressed his hands together. “I don’t want to wreak the kind of destruction on my own body that you’ve wreaked on yours.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “My wife … ” He looks at me for a long time and finally takes a deep breath. “I think … I think she may be unhappy with our marriage.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “Last night after we left the club, she broke down in the taxi and told me how sad our life had become. ‘All you do is work,’ she said. ‘All I do is sit around hoping to meet the old you, the you I fell in love with, the you that would sing to me in the morning, the you that would laugh. Laugh for fuck’s sake! You never laugh or smile anymore, Tyro! You are so unhappy and it’s rubbing off onto me!’ I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to become the old me again … ”

  I almost chuckle. “The old you? When was there an old you? I thought you were always a dick.”

  “Fuck you. You’re a joke to our profession.” He looks at me over the rims of his glasses. “But that’s not what this is about. There was an old me. About four years before I was cursed by meeting you.”

  “Cursed?” My fist curls into a ball. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stand the constant barrage of insults.

  “I can’t show my wife the crazy time she deserves. I can’t fuck her like I used to … I can’t!”

  “Why are you telling me all this? What am I supposed to do?” I ask him. I try my best to cut him off before he gets too pathetic. Nobody wants to hear this shit. I feel a sharp sting in my forehead – I need to drink some water or something.

  “I want to experience … ” he says, looking at me with shame. “I want to experience your life. I want to … ”

  “Just go and do it then? My life’s not that hard to replicate.”

  “I want to fuck a Humandroid. I want to fuck Rinchi, like you. I want to get wasted out of my mind, like you.”

  “You what!?” I shake my head, trying to register if I’m hallucinating or not. “Her name’s Yeshi. Yeshi. What the hell did you just say?”

  “Yes, Rinchi,” he says, not listening to me. “I want to live a few nights of complete abandon. I want to regain this old me, you know, to shed this skin. I want to—”

  “Tyro, I’m not fucking Rinchi, I’m fucking Yeshi.”

  “Wait … ” His face lights up in a devilish way. “So you’re not hooking up with my client?”

  “No, dammit. Listen to me!”

  “Then… ” he bites his lip. “Then that’s even better!” His eyes dart back and forth as he runs calculations through his depraved little mind.

  “Are you being serious right now?” I ask him. “You really want to switch?”

  His demeanor flips. He starts to sob, a strange pragmatic sob that could easily be misconstrued as a fit of coughing. “Look, I need something, Meme. I need a change. I need a spark. I don’t want my wife to leave me. I don’t want to disappoint her.”

  “So if we switch bodies, what am I supposed to do?”

  “I want you to ravage her.” He quits sobbing and stares at me. “I want you to show her how to live! Just this weekend. I want you to help me look good in her eyes.”

  “But she’ll know,” I tell him, still uncertain if he’s fucking with me or not. “This is possibly the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. Seriously.”

  “She won’t know. You’ve worked with me for three years now. You know how I am. Just be like me. Come home, be serious at first, and then surprise her with something. Just show her how to live. God, what am I saying? Telling you to bang my wife! Trying to bang a Humandroid… look, she can’t know. You set the pace and I will get into the race once we switch back.”

  “And you’re serious?” I find my lips curving into a roguish smile.

  “This is what I want, Yeshi for my wife. You embarrassed me last night and you’re an embarrassment to yourself.”

  “Enough with the bullshit comments!”

  “I want to experience what it’s like to be a total dipshit. I want to know what it’s like to be with a Humandroid. I want to shed this shell … ”

  “I get it, Tyro, I get it. If it will keep you off my ass, I’ll do it. But look, once this is over, relax for a goddamn minute, got it? Leave me the fuck alone and do your own thing. Quit sending me messages. If I’m screwing up, let me screw up. It’s my airplane, I’ll steer it into the ground if I want to. Got it?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “How do you do it?” He takes off his glasses and places them in his front pocket. “I’ve never switched before … ”

  “This is how I do it.” I take off my guitar pick necklace. “All body-switchers are in disguise as some sort of everyday item. I’ve seen ChapStick switchers, pollute cigarette box switchers, spoon switchers, watch switchers. Last week I saw a piece of gum you could switch with. Basically, when I touch this side of the guitar pick,” I move closer to show it to him, “It activates a sensor on the bottom side, see?”

  The bottom side, which was completely orange before, now has small blue veins blinking on it.

  “I put my finger here on top, you put yours there. Accept the switch over iNet and our life chip information will be swapped. Neuro-personality imprinting, clean emotional data sweep.”

  “How long does it take to switch?”

  “It takes a
bout ten seconds and then we will be standing across from one another in each other’s bodies. Afterwards, it takes a few minutes to adjust into the body. While the switch is quick, the adjustment takes some getting used to. Things will be wobbly and you’ll feel like, well for lack of a better term, you’ll feel like you’re stuck in someone else’s skin.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It makes you feel temporarily nauseated,” I say. “Oh that reminds me, download a chip-masker from the link I’m sending you now. Apply it. Once we’ve switched, your identity will be masked.”

  “Got it.” He waited for me to transfer the link. Less than thirty seconds later, his chip-masker was installed. “What about an older person switching with a younger person? How does that play out?”

  “This is one reason why it’s illegal. A person could feasibly be immortal by switching bodies. This is why it’s a federal offense and why it’s so hard to obtain one of these.” I jiggled the neck piece. “That’s why I keep it around my neck at all times.”

  “Where did you get yours?”

  “Remember when I went to Rio for that conference on Humandroid psychology earlier this year?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to go but someone had to stay here.”

  “Anyways, a night out in Rio can procure many things at a great cost to one’s bank account and mental stability.”

  “You were supposed to be at that conference.”

  “Life comes at you fast. Listen, the only other rule about switching is no dying. I know you want to have fun in my body and you want me to have fun in yours, but this is serious shit. If you die in a person’s body, they continue to live in yours. This is why it’s so dangerous. Do you have any more clients today?”

  “I canceled them all,” he says softly.

  “So you knew I’d say yes?”

  “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

  “Right, I’ll cancel mine too.”

  He smiles wryly. “I think you’ve already missed most of your appointments.”

  “Well, I guess that makes canceling them that much easier.”

  THIRTY-THREE∞

  “How are things?” Yeshi asked.

  “You tell me ... ” Rinchi sat on her bed with her back against the wall. She’d just gotten off the phone with Antimeria and knew what needed to happen next.

  “All is well. Weren’t you supposed to go to therapy today?”

  “My session was canceled… ”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I guess Dr. T’s not feeling well this afternoon.”

  Yeshi nodded.

  “So, what did you do last night?” Rinchi asked.

  “Met someone … ” Yeshi looked back down at the small painting she’d been working on.

  “Have you reached your monthly profit goals yet? They will start monitoring you if you don’t … ”

  “I don’t care about the profit goals. For once, I just want to live my life.”

  Rinchi started to laugh but cut herself short. Now was not the time to mock Yeshi as she normally did. She needed information. She needed to help Antimeria as much as she could. “So, are you meeting this mysterious client of yours tonight, sister?”

  “Sister?” Yeshi asked. “When did you start calling me that?”

  “Well you’re as much of a sister as I can have, if you think about it. You and Anna.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So are you?”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Yeshi said, “but he just messaged me and now he wants to meet. He’s such a strange human … ”

  “Where are you meeting him?”

  “Same place as last night,” she said. “The Best Western Black Light off Grand Avenue. Room sixty-nine – got to love that.”

  “Ah, I was there last week. This one client of mine loves the black light shtick. Some of the rooms are super nice. I heard they give Korean love hotels a run for their money.”

  “Just rooms … ”

  Rinchi reached for something in her purse. She clicked the ‘on’ button. She paused, realizing that Yeshi could have heard her click the button. “Just rooms, huh?” she asked, trying to gauge her response.

  “Just rooms … ”

  Rinchi slowly pulled the Humstunner out of her purse and aimed it at Yeshi, who was busy concentrating on a painting she was making. While their Humandroid flat had a technician on hand, it generally took Walliburton a few hours to notice that one of their droids had malfunctioned. This was just the timeframe Rinchi needed to meet with Meme.

  She was well aware of the fact that using a Humstunner on another Humandroid was grounds for instant life termination. However, Antimeria had promised that Rinchi wouldn’t face any sort of termination and she believed him. After all, he was her most loyal client.

  “Sauria has connections that go all the way to the top of Walliburton,” he told her the previous night, after they had retired to a private suite. “Hell, his best friend is the president of the Walliburton Humandroid Escort West Coast Division. So, don’t worry about any repercussions. Nothing’s going to happen to you, dear. I’ll make sure of that. You’re doing something that is relevant to national security. This Meme guy is a threat to society and to himself. The fewer people there are like him, the safer our country will become. If you do a good job, maybe Sauria will be able to pull some strings at MercSecure and get you transferred … ”

  Rinchi’s poor luck had finally changed. As she aimed the Humstunner at Yeshi, she relished in the fact that she was going to experience two firsts today – the death of a human and the disablement of a Humandroid.

  ZZZZZrrrrip!

  Yeshi’s body flopped onto the floor.

  “Gotcha bitch … ” Rinchi walked over to Yeshi, who lay on the floor like a crumpled doll, her eyes open and her body lifeless. Rinchi pulled her sister back onto the bed. She had to make it appear as if she was resting, just in case anyone stopped by.

  She slowly took off Yeshi’s dress and necklace. It was strange touching her lifeless body, strange how quickly something already dead can die. She rolled the droid onto her side and arranged her hair on the pillow.

  Now it was time to kill Meme.

  THIRTY-FOUR∞

  Tyro sat inside his room at the Best Western Black Light Hotel in Meme’s body. The irony of what he was about to do was unsettling; still, he had to go through with it. He had spent countless hours hearing Rinchi complain about Yeshi and here he was, about to meet her for the first time. On top of that, Meme was going to meet his wife and who knew what he would do to her! This was the most diabolical thing he’d ever done and … and it felt great! He was nervous, but he had never felt more alive. A little scared, but at the same time, ecstatic.

  He watched as a pair of palm trees quiver in the warm air outside his window. It was dusk, or almost dusk, and a bluish grapefruit haze had settled over the city. Tyro looked down at his black hands and smiled. This is what it felt like. This is what it felt like to exist in another’s skin. For that matter, this is what it felt like to be a black man.

  After switching bodies, Meme texted Yeshi and told her to meet him at seven. He told her he had a surprise for her. He instructed Tyro to go to the Lakewood shopping mall and buy her a bonsai tree. (‘Keep your chip-masker on at all times! If she figures out it’s you, tell her to call me.’)

  Meme asked Tyro to give him his chip-switcher necklace, which he did, and promised him that he would take good care of his wife (which was weird, but whatever). The plan was to switch bodies back on Sunday afternoon, after a quick wind down session in Tyro’s office. Meme clarified that this is important especially for a first timer. He explained that he’d nearly broken down after his first time, and if it hadn’t been for the help of his friend, he might not have made it through the body re-entry process.

  At the mall, Tyro nearly screamed after he saw his reflection the shiny metal siding that covered the narrow walkway. He walked up to his reflection and looked into his bloodshot eyes.

 
; “Meme, you look like shit,” he said touching his beard stubble. He had never touched a black person’s hair before and was surprised at its texture.

  He kept touching his hair until a teenager walked by and nearly knocked him over. The teenager was chatting on iNet, blinking his eyes rapidly to see the person’s video feed when he crashed into Tyro. Tyro gave the kid a dirty look and told him to be careful. Or more accurately, Tyro-as-Meme gave the kid a dirty look and told him to be careful.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” he said. “You don’t need to see the person’s video feed while walking. You can talk without seeing the video, you know?”

  “No shit, Sherlock. I was trying to see my friends face.”

  “Watch it next time.”

  Tyro was fascinated by Meme’s skin, his height, his muscles. He’d never been too muscular before and liked the way the taut skin felt across his pecs. As he went to the restroom, he looked down at Meme’s dick and smiled. He’d never touched a black man’s cock before. He didn’t know why this was so interesting to him (as if he’d somehow reverted back to a pubescent teenage phase), but it was, and he stood in the restroom for a long time observing his member, turning it around in his hand.

  He found the bonsai store on the top floor, manned by a teenager with zits exploding across his face. Tyro-as-Meme picked out a small bonsai tree with orange leaves and a minimal rock arrangement. It was heavy, at least two kilos. The pot holding the bonsai tree was made of ceramic, glazed with a dark brown gloss. Zit-face placed the bonsai tree in a red box and tossed the box onto the counter. He paid in cash.

  He arrived at the hotel and chose to pay a machine, rather than the person at the check-in desk. Of course, something was wrong with the machine, so he had to pay in cash. As he handed the hotel clerk cash, he wondered if the man recognized him. How? He thought, almost laughing aloud. He kept waiting for someone to cry foul play but it wasn’t going to happen. He was officially Meme and no one knew otherwise.