by Cat Rambo
Sometimes Belinda wondered what life would be like without the surrogates. Most of the time she didn't. The surrogates were there to do their work, but also in case one of them wanted sex when the other didn't. Two weeks after the marriage, Belinda didn't feel like it, so Bingo brought his surrogate in and fucked it there in the bed beside her.
After that she felt aroused. When Bingo just turned over, she went and got her own surrogate. Its rubbery cock stood up like a dildo, caramel colored. It went down on her, lips vibrating as she writhed, then fucked her. She thought that maybe Bingo would rouse again, that they'd fall into an endless sexual loop, but he kept snoring.
It surprised her how much she thought about that act afterwards. The surrogates were engineered deliberately so they didn't look like real people. Their eyes didn't track right and there was an odd translucency to their flesh. So it hadn't been as though it was another person Bingo had been focusing on, his eyes half-closed, looking somewhere inside himself. Had he been thinking about her? She felt oddly reluctant to ask, even though they were always frank with each other about what they liked and didn't like in bed.
On Bingo's birthday, Belinda made a cake by mixing the contents of one packet with another and letting it set inside a plastic shaping ring. She did it herself and frosted it, painting the white surface with green fish, pink flowers, yellow guitars. The cake sang to her as she painted it and later as she woke Bingo in the morning, singing his favorite song with the cake, "Baby baby flower baby."
She got home earlier than Bingo and she took to using the surrogate when she first did, then showering so she met him, freshly washed and ready, in the hallway, on the kitchen table, on the balcony. Today she fucked it and then showered while it and the other surrogate put up green and pink streamers that she'd pocketed from work.
Several of his friends and hers came over for dinner. She privately considered his friends brittle, and she'd heard him call hers vapid. Alfa and Veronika wrote musicals; Jonny and Leeza were clothing buyers. Veronika had an Insanity Chip too, but she made a point of saying that she did it for the sake of Creativity.
"It lets you drill down into the psyche of the really great artists," she enthused. "Van Gogh. Pound. Bacon. Doesn't it help you think up some really great designs, Belinda-baby?"
"Sure," Belinda said. She looked around. She had printed up some of the fabric swatches from work. They hung on the walls in odd trapezoidal shapes, angled in and out like blueprints of rocks. She wished she hadn't picked yellow for the curtains but she changed her mind when daffodil butterflies flew out of the fabric and spelled out words in the air: Go Belinda you're great.
Bingo flirted with Veronika; he asked her what her Chip made her see and gave her wide-eyed looks that were almost, but not quite, mocking. Veronika bit into it and wouldn't stop talking. Over her head, Bingo gave Belinda ironic glances until she got the hiccups from suppressing giggles.
They drank wine and ate and played cards. Belinda had a hard time focusing on the hands, and Bingo said, a little irritably, "Can't you manage to keep track of the simplest thing?"
It made her want to cry, and that made the cards even blurrier.
"Oh, baby," Bingo said, instantly contrite. He took her cards and put them face down on the table; he brought her hand to his lips, kissing at them. "Baby, I'm sorry, what's wrong?"
She lied. "It was something I saw. Something the chip showed me."
He frowned. Much later, after they'd gone to bed, he said, "Why do you keep the chip? You have me now."
"It makes the world less boring," she said.
"Don't I do enough of that for you?"
She faltered, not sure what to say. "But there are times when I'm not with you," she said.
He didn't say anything, there in the darkness, and after a while she said, "I could get the chip modified so it doesn't go off when you're around." The words came out of her mouth and swelled like glowing balloons, colored coral and amber and pumpkin and gold.
"All right," he said quickly.
The next day she had the modification made. It was easy. She rode home on the elevator on waves of blue, and her feet turned into fish, into birds, into kittens, and then Bingo was walking down the corridor towards her and everything was gone.
It was odd that evening, sitting across the table from him to eat food that stayed still and silent on the plate. She curled up next to him on the sofa and they held each other in the gray quiet, while the purple diamonds stood statue-still on the wall.
When Bingo wasn't around, she could fuck the surrogate and ride silver rails of scent, could press her hands on his skin and feel centipedes coiling underneath, could see his eyes full of daffodils and roses.
Sometimes she hid from Bingo, stepped into the closet and closed her eyes. The clothing wrapped its arms around her and she sailed away into stars and fireworks. She could feel him outside the doorway like a leaden eye, a cloud of smoke. She wanted her surrogate to sneak up behind him and then ... she wasn't sure what. She wasn't sure what at all. And so she squeezed her eyes tighter and thought of light and its equations, like numbers on the inside of her head, and tried to dream even though she'd been forced awake.
It wasn't enough. She began to think she had agreed to things too quickly. She said to Bingo, "What if I had the chip gimmicked so it was just a little bleed through when you're around?"
His face darkened. "Why?"
"It helps me think," she said. She fussed with the food on the counter in front of her, making dinner. She laid a slice of bread on each plate, then a slice of cheese at an angle, so the food formed an eight-pointed star.
"Are you having trouble thinking?"
"Sometimes," she said.
"But only when you're with me."
"Never mind," she said. She poured white sauce over the cheese in a spiral and sprinkled it with green flakes. She could feel him watching her.
"I want you to be happy, Belinda, you know that," he said.
Then why do you want me to be something different than I am, she wondered. But she didn't speak the words aloud. It was the first time she'd ever censored herself for Bingo's sake and that night she lay awake, wondering what it meant. Bingo breathed beside her, the long slow sounds of sleep, and didn't stir when she got up and went into the other room.
There, without Bingo, an enormous golden figure eight hung in the air, blazing with a meaning she couldn't guess at. She sat down on the sofa. Her surrogate stirred in its closet, emerged, sat down beside her. It was ready to do whatever she liked, but all she did was take its hand, flesh and plastic intertwining.
The next day Bingo said, "You could get rid of the Chip. It's silly. People laugh at you for having it."
That struck her to the quick. "Who's laughing at me?"
"Everyone," Bingo said. "Your friends and mine. Even Bob and Anton think it's funny."
She thought that might not be true. She thought of Bob, sitting with his own surrogate, her discarded one, a plastic family. She knew that it was wrong to think of them like that, she knew it was like befriending a toaster or a clock. But then Bingo left the room and their toaster smiled at her, chirped hello, and slid out two pieces of toast, perfect and brown, just the way she liked them, even though she hadn't planned on breakfast.
When she came home from work, Veronika was sitting on the couch.
"Bingo let me in," she said. "But he went to get some groceries. Belinda, darling, I've got to talk to you about something."
"The Chip," Belinda said. She looked at Veronika, at the glossy red hair, the wide eyes.
"Bingo thinks you want something else. That's why you won't give up the Chip."
Veronika's face was too solicitous. Belinda thought about the two of them discussing her, discussing the chip. Discussing Bingo's dissatisfaction. It felt like a terrible betrayal.
"Get out," she said.
She expected Bingo to bring it up again that night, but instead he said, "Have you ever thought we might change our marriage,
make it a triad?"
"I don't want to marry Veronika," she said without preamble. He flushed at the accuracy of the guess. She said, "Isn't your surrogate enough?"
"I have a surrogate," he said. "I don't have you."
It made her sound like a possession, like a thing, like a toaster. She didn't know what to say, how to reassure him that he didn't need her.
His voice was tired. "Let's go to bed. Think about it. We'll talk more in the morning."
She left in the middle of the night as he slept. She travelled to the 77th Floor, to one of the many building offices that never closed. Riding in the elevator, the buttons sang to her, the carpet advised, the lights shed waves of warmth that settled on her like a feather cloak.
In the morning, he said, "Have you thought of it?" But she went on talking to the cabinets.
He said, "I thought you made it so the Chip doesn't work when I'm around!"
"It's a fine morning," Belinda said to the table, watching the wood grain melt and puddle. And then she turned and left without looking at him, because she didn't see him anymore and only a tickle of memory remained.
Afternotes
I read this story at the Wayward Coffeehouse here in Seattle with my mother in the audience. There's nothing like your mother's face in the border of your vision to make you notice words like "fuck" and "nipple" in a story. Afterwards—and this is one of the many reasons I love her so—all she said was, "That was a great story."
It originally appeared in Clockwork Phoenix III, edited by Mike Allen. It is in many ways an uncharacteristic story, but one that was a lot of fun to write, despite the seriousness of the theme, which is addiction and relationships. The names for the characters came to me early, as did the very first passage, and it set the tone for the rest of the story. The original title was "Sexual Surrogates."
FIVE WAYS TO FALL IN LOVE ON PLANET PORCELAIN
Over the years, Tikka's job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain's Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five which were distributed through the Bureau's publications and information dollops: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain's Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.
Today she was composing Five Signs of Spring in Eletak, her native city.
Here along the waterfront, she added chimmerees to her list as she watched the native creatures, cross between fish and flower, surface. Each chimmeree spreading its white petals as it rose, white clusters holding amber centers, tendrils of golden thread sending their scent into the air along with the most delicate whisper of sound, barely audible over the lapping of the water.
The urge towards love beat along every energy vein of her silica body, even down to her missing toes, but she resisted it. She would remain alone this spring, as she had every spring since she had made her vow and inscribed it in the notebook where she kept her personal lists, under "Life Resolutions," 4th under "Keep myself clean in thought and mind," "Devote myself to promoting Porcelain's tourism," and "Fall in love." The third item had been crossed off at the same time, in vehement black pen strokes.
Her first sign of spring had been the singing of the tree frogs, which had awoken her three nights ago, in the small hours when most of the citizens cracked, gave way to despair, and crumbled in the manner of the elderly.
She was afraid of cracking, examined herself with obsessive care in the sluice for any sign that her surface was giving in, allowing the forces of time to work at her. She'd lain awake in the darkness, checking her mind with the same care. Were there any sorrows, any passions that might lead her thoughts along the same groove till it gave, eroded into madness?
She knew of one, and she kept her thoughts away from it as though it were made of thorns. Pain surrounded its edges and she could not avoid brushing against them even as she avoided it, but she kept herself from touching its tender heart, when silica melted in emotion and loss. She clicked her eyelids shut and contemplated what the morning would bring: ablutions and prayers, and a walk to the stop where the balloon-tram would take her to work. The sides would be hung with flower-colored silks in honor of the season. That would be her second sign of spring.
At work, there was jostling going on over a corner, windowed office. A writer had given way to cracking, premature, as sometimes happened with those who lived carelessly. Tikka was keeping back; she liked to do her work outside, and didn't think herself enough in the offices to merit such a coveted space. Not that she would have been first in line for it; of the three Minor Propagandists, she was the most junior, with only six years to the others' respective ten and fifteen.
Attle met her with a list in hand.
"Not again," Tikka said. "I like doing my own, you know that."
Attle shrugged. She was tall and willowy to Tikka's squatter lines. "He says they're only suggestions."
Tikka took the list and studied it. "Suggestions that are heavily encouraged," she said. "If I don't take at least half of them, it'll affect my next review."
"No one really worries about reviews," Attle said. It was true; the small Bureau's turnover rate was glacial. Like most government jobs, it was steady and guaranteed work in a place where poverty was rampant.
"I do," Tikka retorted. She was all too conscious that she didn't resemble most of the other citizens in the office. She had won her post through a scholarship, was one of the tokens allowed positions so they could be held up to the lesser advantaged as what they could be if they kept their mouths shut and worked hard.
More tourists meant more money for everyone, even if it did have to trickle through the layer of upper citizens at first. She didn't think many of the topics were designed to attract tourists.
"'Five spots celebrated in the works of the poet Xochiti'? Who reads him? We need things that tourists are looking for, new experiences and new trinkets to buy. Five places where they serve fin in the manner of the Brutists is not going to do it."
"He believes in niches," Attle murmured in habitual response.
"Some niches are so small that no tourist would fit in them!" Tikka waved Attle off when she would have spoken again. "I know, I know, it's none of your doing."
She went to her desk, situated in a paper-walled cubicle. The patterns were from several years ago; the department's budget had been shrinking of late and even the plants that hung here and there were desiccated but unreplaced, delicate arrangements of withered ferns draped with dust that no one wanted to touch, lest they be mistaken for a lower-class servitor of the kind the Bureau could no longer afford.
Her fingers danced across the transparent surface of her data-pad, which dimpled beneath her touch. She pulled up a master document and transferred the least objectionable of the Master Propagandist's "suggestions" into it, scoffing under her breath.
A clink of drummed fingers behind her snatched her attention. She turned so quickly she nearly collided with the author of the suggestions himself. "Sir!" She stepped back to a safer, more polite distance.
"Am I to believe you feel you have worthier candidates for your time than those I have advanced?" he said. Master Propagandist Blikik was made of smooth white clay, a material so fine that it gleamed under the office lights in a way Tikka's coarser, low-class surface could never match, even with disguising cosmetics. His colors would never fade, while hers would eventually succumb to the sun, give way to pale, unfashionable hues.
She dropped her gaze to the felted carpet beneath his feet. "No, sir."
He waited.
"I'm sorry, sir." She met his eyes. "I thought perhaps we might consider some alternative ways of attracting tourists."
Clatter of halted movement behind her as others stopped to listen. She could feel the shockwave reverberate through the office as whispers of her boldness were hissed to outliers who hadn't heard.
Blikik's robes, swirled with gold and crimson, a style
as outdated as the cubicle walls, rustled as indignation drew him upwards, made him tower over Tikka.
"You will do as you are told," he barked, so crisp his teeth snapped together with an unpleasant, brittle sound. "You are not paid to think. If you wish to think, other accommodations can be made for your employment. Is that what you wish?"
"No, sir, not at all, sir," she rushed to supply into the shocked void his words had left.
He nodded once, turned on his heel, and walked away.
After she'd drafted a couple of lists, Tikka escaped outside to the terraced gardens overlooking the sound garden (one of Eletak's five most impressive sites). Its massive steel structures were strung with cabling and wire that sang whenever the wind stopped sweeping across the water and came to investigate the inland. Shapes huddled on the sculptures, the winged monkeys that made them their nesting grounds, where they raised their thumb-sized offspring and lived the lives of one of Eletak's five most distinctive native species.
The air smelled of monkey shit, which, combined with the unpleasant sensation of the vibrations from the sound garden, drove most visitors away. Rumor held that the sound garden could set off interior echoes that might leave someone dust on a pathway, but she had never believed it. Childhood prittle prattle, don't do this or that or you'll fall afoul of unseen forces. Meaningless superstition.
She leaned on the wooden railing, using her jacket to cushion her arms. The wires sang a song she'd heard years ago, love love careless love.
She could give way to it. She could go find a mate and the two of them could pose, take on the shape of love and freeze together in the most intimate contortion. She hated the helpless feeling afterward, where you were caught still mingled with the other person until the rigidity that came with orgasm, lasting hours, seeped away and you were your own unique person, rather than part of the larger construction, again.
How freakish, the ways of love on this planet, or anywhere else. The illusion that you had become something other than you were. The illusion that you could be something other than alone.