Osa sniffed, nodding. “Go see your sister.”
“Ja.” Lisanne turned around and strode toward the orange polarity curtain.
The fabric furled out of her way. Beyond lay a sunlit oval room that was covered with sepia wallpaper.
Lisanne stepped inside and saw her sister for the first time in nearly three years. A model 8F chromium mannequin (Petite) with short blonde hair stood at the far window. The silent and unmoving machine was turned away from the visitor and nude; gelware hands and feet contrasted sharply with the chromium body to which they were attached.
A moment after the polarity curtain unfurled, Lisanne addressed the machine. “Ellenancy?”
The mannequin did not reply.
“Ellenancy?”
The re-bodied woman did not turn away from the window.
Lisanne strode toward the nude chromium figure. Clutched in the mannequin’s left hand was the generic gelware mask that was supposed to serve as its face.
The petite visitor asked, “Wie geht es Ihnen? Sorry. How are you?” (The shepherd had advised her to speak in English, since it was the primary language spoken by Ellenancy in her later life.)
The machine did not respond.
“Can you hear me?” inquired Lisanne from a distance of four meters.
“No more exams today,” announced the re-bodied woman.
“Will you please turn around?”
Atop the inert mannequin, the head swiveled ninety degrees. The face revealed was a concave ebony hollow filled with antennas, smart bolts and pseudopodia. Two scratched lenses glinted within the insectile visage.
Lisanne shuddered. “Do you recognize me?” she asked, trying to stop her hands from shaking.
The machine’s bifurcate posture resembled a still photograph of a celebrity who had been ambushed from behind by paparazzi. “Let me focus,” said the re-bodied woman as she slid her posterior lenses up two ocular wells. “You’re here.”
Tears welled in Lisanne’s eyes. “Ja, ja, ich—sorry. Yes. I am here.” Sniffing, she walked forward.
The mannequin turned bodily, revealing the unit’s chrome limbs and torso, gelware hands and feet and pink pubic leaf.
Lisanne hugged the machine that contained her sister.
“The gelatinous parts are the only ones endowed with a sense of touch,” said Ellenancy.
The petite blonde withdrew her arms, took one step back and saw her own distended and headless reflection in the mannequin’s chrome-plated body.
Whirring, the scratched lenses within the insectile hollow slid forward, rotated and stopped. “The wrinkles around your eyes are more pronounced,” said the re-bodied woman. “And your nose and ears are bigger.”
Lisanne had always been considered the congenial twin, despite the fact that she was not at all congenial. The blunt remarks were typical of Ellenancy and very, very wonderful things to hear.
“You have aged very little otherwise,” added the re-bodied woman.
Lisanne looked at the gelware mask that dangled like a pelt from the mannequin’s left hand. “Do you dislike wearing the face?”
Ellenancy reached her free hand toward her sister. A gelware fingertip landed upon Lisanne’s forehead, slid down to a blonde eyebrow, glided along the ridge of her nose, swept over a tear-moistened cheek, circled the outermost rim of her left ear, traced back over her jaw and parted her lips. The re-bodied woman withdrew her digit, and a lone strand of saliva hung in the air, connecting the once identical twins until it disappeared.
“I prefer our face,” replied the speakers that were sitting at the bottom of the confluence of pseudopodia, antennas and smart bolts.
Lisanne suppressed a shudder. “All re-bodied people are given generic faces until they are deemed capable. Neuro-stitched gelware is very expensive.”
The mannequin did not respond to this information.
“You may have your mask cast from my face, though most people choose celebrities or younger, aesthetically-altered versions of themselves.”
“But first, CCI must determine whether or not I am worth the investment. Whether I will be a good mannequin.”
“Yes,” replied Lisanne, firmly. “CCI would like to make sure you are mentally stable before they sculpt personalized gelware for you.”
The nude mannequin threw the mask. It smacked against the wall, lingered for a moment and slid toward the floor like an obese inchworm.
“You’re angry,” said Lisanne, flatly.
“I am. I died, and now I’m this…device…this shiny apparatus with sticky ends.” The mannequin hammered a gelware fist upon a chromium thigh.
Lisanne glanced at the polarity curtain, regretting that she had asked for a full twenty minutes of unmonitored interaction.
“Last night I had a dream,” Ellenancy said through the inert machine. “The kind of dream that’s very vivid and much, much larger than reality. A dream where everything is enhanced and connected and luscious and vibrant.
“We are still children in Berlin.
“Mutti and Vati are still alive and so is Tante Hildie.
“We are in that huge indoor mall, the place where they have all of those great chocolates and chic purses and those very expensive stuffed bears. You and I sneak up to the buffet on the top floor and see a pie that is loaded with nuts and baked pears and dripping with apple syrup, and we steal it. We hide and eat it under a table while Mutti and Vati and Tante Hildie are looking for us, and we can’t stop laughing. The flavors, the smells, the joy of our crime, the fear of getting caught…it is all indescribably rich and luxurious.
“And then I woke up, and I was inside this thing. Or, more precisely, I was this thing.”
“You are not a ‘thing,’” Lisanne refuted, “you are Ellenancy Breutschen—you are my sister.”
“Really?”
Ellenancy reached into her insectile face, pinched a pseudopod with her fingertips and yanked it from its housing. Three wires spat blue sparks into the air.
“Can your sister do that?”
Tears streamed from Lisanne’s eyes.
Ellenancy threw the plucked device to the ground and again reached into her concave face.
“Nein, nein, du—nein!” shouted Lisanne, clapping her hands to the mannequin’s right arm. “Du musst stoppen! Du—”
The mannequin froze in mid-action.
“I cannot move,” said Ellenancy, her right hand thrust inside of her face.
Mr. Johnson walked into the room and addressed the re-bodied woman. “A remote computer is monitoring your actions and will do so until you are granted autonomy. It can and will override your control of the unit if you attempt to injure yourself.”
The shepherd appraised the inert mannequin for a moment and then turned to Lisanne. “I’m afraid that today’s visit is over.”
* * *
Nestled within her mate’s arms, legs and warmth, Lisanne cried until exhaustion bore her to the world of dreams, wherein she and her sister ran through sunshine as identical twin girls.
Chapter V
Ecumenical Lightning Church of
the Fourteen Rivers
Minister Leonard Durles removed his motorcycle helmet, hung it on the porch stanchion, extricated a brass key from the twelve others within his pocket, inserted it into the front door and twisted the metal. The cylinder admitted three clicks and yielded. He hated that Genet had insisted upon the security device, but after they had been robbed thrice, the thirty-nine-year-old Australian-born religious leader could no longer ignore the threat of thieves. “The ones who took from us aren’t part of my circuit,” he had said to his wife just before he drove his moped to town to fetch a stainless steel lock for the house they had shared—entrance unbarred�
�for six years. Even though he had installed the device eleven months ago, the thing still nettled him.
“They aren’t part of my circuit,” Leonard repeated to the Lord, the lock, himself and the winds that cooled the sweating, grinning, malefic faces of those who would simply take from this world without ever adding anything to it—the enemies of honesty.
The sun-bronzed, red-headed man escaped the sun, the continually glaring gift that He had given Ethiopia, and stepped into his air-conditioned home, a place where the smells of injera and wat warmly embraced him.
Genet, her belly swollen with her second child beneath her white coffee dress, padded on dark bare feet to Leonard and placed a kiss upon his cheek. “I’m pleased you are home,” said the twenty-six-year-old Oromo woman; her Cushitic accent highlighted each word in a way that reminded him of how some Indians spoke English. “Would you like a beer?”
“How about you sit down on the couch with Numero Dos, yeah? I can get my own beer.”
“But you’ve been working all day. You must rest.”
“I rode ’round on my moped, spoke to some fellas—nothing all that strenuous.” Leonard sniffed the air and grinned. “Smells great.”
“I’m pleased.”
“Is Rahel in the kitchen?”
“She isn’t.”
The minister frowned. “She’s supposed to help you extra on account of Numero Dos. That’s the deal, right?”
“She is having dinner with the Norwegian boy. The son of the silver baron.”
Leonard was not especially fond of the Scandinavian child, but he did not voice his opinion, since the girl’s absence would allow him some private time with his wife. It had been four days since the couple had last made love, and the minister was simmering.
“Let’s get you off those swollen feet, yeah?” said Leonard, escorting Genet to the shemma-upholstered air-sofa that was under a buzzing ice-coil. There, the pregnant woman sat upon the yellow cushions and reclined.
The minister gently set his wife’s swollen feet upon an air-filled ottoman. “I’ll get you a cloth for those and some raspberry tea.”
“Thank you. Please turn down and cover the wat.”
“After I sneak a taste, I will.”
Genet whistled a C-sharp and said, “General news.” The mote aquarium that was beyond her feet ran a test pattern.
Leonard entered the kitchen, walked across the tiled floor to the stone island upon which sat four convection spheres, pulled a spoon from the steaming lamb wat, blew upon it, waited, blew upon it, waited, blew upon it, ate, assessed that the stew needed more ground mustard seed (his wife’s normally excellent palate was affected by her pregnancy), added the needed powder, sampled it once more, said, “Better,” closed the convection sphere, dialed it down to sixty-five degrees Celsius, walked to the refrigerator panel, slid it open, withdrew a bulb of raspberry tea and found a beer, which he uncapped with the bronze crucifix bottle-opener that had been given to him last Christmas by one of the thirteen thousand members of his parachurch. (Some people thought that the gift was sacrilegious, but the minister felt that its giver, a kind old blind woman who was as devout as any person whom he had ever known, put it above dubious appraisal.)
At the sink, he filled a dripless towel with cool water.
“Husband,” said Genet from the other room, her voice imbued with concern.
“I only had a taste, so don’t go worrying,” Leonard defended as he entered the den with a beverage in each hand and the dripless towel over his left arm, as if he were French waiter. “The wat is stellar,” he said. (The Lord forgave small fibs that benefited His households.)
Genet pointed at the mote aquarium. “Dead people are talking to reporters.”
“That sounds ominous,” remarked the minister sardonically.
Leonard sat beside Genet (and Numero Dos), handed his wife the bulb of raspberry tea, set the towel upon her swollen feet and massaged her toes.
The minister glanced at the mote aquarium, the pixels of which were frozen. Upon the stage stood three male mannequins: two Global Senate Army soldiers, clad in green and brown, and a third individual who wore a blue and red British Royal Air Force outfit.
“What’re they yapping about?” inquired Leonard, leaning back with his lager.
Genet whistled and said, “Play: Highlight.”
The pixels flew through the air, reconfiguring, and the life-sized head of the re-bodied Royal Air Force Chief filled the stage.
The mannequin’s hair was silver and black and surmounted by a beret; his superficial lips were parted, and his expression was neutral.
“I am Air Chief Marshal Sir Gerald B. Thiggs of the Royal Air Force,” said the re-bodied man. “I was a pilot in the Chinese-Indian war, and I died on Her Majesty’s behalf during the final days of the Nepal conflict.
“I am afraid that I have some quite distressing news.
“Like most of you, I was very critical of Corpus Chrome, Incorporated’s decision to resurrect the serial murderer and rapist Derrick W.R. Dulande. Why they chose such a loathsome man, I do not know.
“I must confess that his assassination did not in any way upset me.
“But let me get to the marrow of the bone.
“I have come here today to state—with tremendous regret, but very little doubt—that Derrick W.R. Dulande’s outrageous story of the afterlife is, in fact, true.”
The reporters yelled questions at the Air Chief Marshal.
“What?” exclaimed Leonard, his voice freezing the pixels in the mote aquarium. “This is gross negligence, broadcasting this rubbish. Gross negligence!”
“He said more,” replied Genet, fear in her dark eyes.
Appalled by the global forum that madmen were given in the year twenty-fifty-eight, the minister said, “Resume play.”
Offstage, reporters clamored. The stentorian voice of an unseen moderator ordered, “Hold all questions until after Air Chief Marshal Sir Gerald B. Thiggs has finished.”
The media quietened.
Soon, the re-bodied man resumed, “Dulande’s preposterous tale of an inverted phantom moon and the giant squid-like beings within its craters, which are our cerebral symbionts, is true. I agonized over whether or not to speak of my experience, but ultimately I decided that it is humanity’s right to know.
“I killed other human beings in war.
“I was decorated for these deeds, but they were murders nonetheless. In the domain of souls, the world of the spirit bodies, my soul changed into something permanent, separating it from the rest.
“When I died, I woke up inside the squid-like being Dulande described. I drifted into space, I exploded, and then I flew into the sun, where I contemplated my life for twenty-six years of perdition.
“When I was resurrected, my mind blocked out the memory…but several months afterwards, I recalled what had happened.
“I recalled Hell.
“I convinced myself that the experience must have been a dream—an hallucination of extraordinary vividness—and I dismissed it. But when I heard Derrick W.R. Dulande speak…I could no longer deny my horrifying recollections.
“I ruminated deeply.
“It seemed possible—though very unlikely—that two men who were strangers to one another could have had the exact same hallucination.
“Thereafter, I researched what I could in private. I spoke in clandestine meeting places to some of the cult members who had believed Dulande’s tale, but they were imbalanced people of little worth.
“Then I recalled something—a fleeting thirty-year-old memory.
“During the first phase of my transubstantiation—when I drifted from the inverted moon toward the sun—I recalled passing a group of asteroids that were in orbit a
round what I knew to be Mercury. There were seventeen in total, one of which was the size of a planetoid.
“I should inform you that I have no specific knowledge of the astronomical sciences.
“When I recalled this detail—eighteen days after Dulande’s speech—I investigated its veracity. My memory was soon confirmed: Seventeen satellites orbited Mercury at that time, and amongst them was a more sizable aggregation of rock.
“I knew then that my terrible, terrible experience of solar damnation had been real.
“I flew out to Calcutta, where I met Sergeant Katuri Gwatha, and then to Tokyo, where I met Commander Shigero Iwakata. Both of these re-bodied men had killed people and died in wars.
“Each of them had been on medical leave ever since Dulande’s speech.
“After I told each soldier my story, he admitted to having had the same exact experience.”
The pixels reconfigured to show
the three re-bodied military men standing upon the dais.
The pixels dispersed. Upon the stage was written:
…End Highlight
Minister Leonard Durles cracked his knuckles and shook his head; his tranquil evening alone with Genet had just been sullied by an absurd and malicious madness. Upon the lectern in his mind, he began to compose a sermon for his flock.
“I hope Rahel did not watch that,” said Genet.
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