The Mythic Dream

by Dominik Parisien

  The glow faded, and Emily’s body became its natural medium brown again. She took a deep breath. Her body felt . . . leaden and off-kilter.

  “Wow. That’s not what I expected.” Shereen’s gaze swept up and down Emily’s body. “I still recognize you, but anyone else would wonder.”

  “Why?” Her voice rang higher and brighter than she expected, but only a little. “How do I look?”

  “Ostentatiously strong and cartoonishly exaggerated? You look like a photo from a bodybuilding magazine that got morphed, but tastefully.” Shereen opened her palms to Emily. “You know, that physically impossible powerlifter meets mixed martial artist body that you eventually gave up trying to build for yourself.”

  Emily caught her reflection on the coffee table’s glass top. Her face broadened into a smile. Her body was exactly as she had specified.

  “Well, we’ll see how well that holds up.” Emily tensed as she sat up, the weight of Shereen’s gaze still pressing against her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Emily.” Shereen placed a hand on Emily’s thigh. “You know you don’t need to look any particular way, right?”

  “Oh, sure.” Emily’s hand covered Shereen’s. “I just want to see whether I can keep myself looking this way.”

  Shereen’s gaze shifted between Emily and the bin of apples. There were three left in the bin. Shereen’s lips pursed, but she didn’t say anything.

  * * *

  Venture capitalists were already waiting in the conference room when Emily scurried in, laptop in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. The men—and they were all men, not to mention all white—sat around three sides of a long table. One of them applauded ironically. The relentless judgment of their gaze pressed down on her.

  These appeals for angel funding were all about selling yourself and your vision. For the first round, no one expected her to know how to execute her vision. Showing up late didn’t help one bit to sell herself. Emily focused on selling her vision instead.

  She made eye contact with every man in the room and opened her bottle of water to stall for time and settle herself down. She’d become hard and angular. Her face was built out of intersecting facets like a cut diamond. Her pantsuit felt wrong on her. It stretched taut over parts of her as it billowed loose across others. Parts of her body felt missing, while other parts felt as though they shouldn’t have been there. Her body hung from long, invisible strings that stretched up several hundred miles above the roof. Somewhere up there, a drunk rigger, five minutes into his first job ever, hoisted her strings as though they were chains for a derrick.

  She fumbled at her laptop. Her first slide appeared behind her.

  “Changing your body ought to be as easy as changing your suit.” Emily spread her hands to the men.

  Her drunk rigger made her arms flail instead, and a spray of water arced from the open bottle she was still holding. It landed on some guy with a perfectly tailored suit and a five-hundred-dollar haircut.

  The pitch did not get better from there. Then again, this set of tech bros, she decided about two slides in, was never going to find gender confirmation sexy enough to give anyone money, much less her. Investors tended to “pattern match,” and unlike Hock, Emily did not match their pattern of what a successful founder looked like.

  * * *

  Weeks and some uncountable number of pitches later, she was still sitting on her sofa, crouched over her laptop on the coffee table, going over her slides for the millionth time. Her hand now did the right things when she wanted to move the cursor on the screen. If she still felt like she was trapped inside a bulky hazmat suit, at least the drunk rigger animating her limbs had been sobering by the second. It had been a couple weeks since she’d knocked something over by accident or tripped over herself. Her body was so sore that it hurt to type. She was still hefting dumbbells heavier than any she could have dreamed of using before she ate an apple, but not as heavy as the ones she’d used just a week ago. No matter how intense her workouts were, they weren’t enough to maintain this body. Another apple, of course, could do that with no problem.

  The bin was where she had left it, next to the headset on the coffee table. The glowing apples continued to taunt her. It would all be easier if she could just show them off or demonstrate a transformation, but not even Hock dared to do that when he pitched. The apples and headset were beyond secret, evidence of crimes considering the FDA hadn’t approved their use on human beings yet. Implicit in his pitch was “I can make you, weakling, look like me, alpha male,” but he might have easily been that bro blessed with the genetics and the opportunity to make himself look like that without an apple.

  “Do you want to try an apple?” Emily took her hands off the keyboard and straightened her well-exercised and very sore back. “I can teach you how to use it.”

  Shereen held her hands up, as though she were pushing against some invisible wall between them. Slowly, she dropped her hands, then sat next to Emily on the sofa.

  “No, I’m fine with how I look.” Shereen placed a hand on Emily’s thigh. “How about you?”

  Emily was wearing a loose sweatshirt and sweat pants. They were the only things in her wardrobe that hid the fact that her muscles were atrophying no matter how hard she worked them. She felt beat up and exhausted. Most people weren’t strong enough to punish themselves at the gym as much as she did. Despite all that work, her body kept growing softer and smaller, not so much that anyone else might notice yet, but she did. And pitch after pitch to disinterested investors took their toll. With their folded arms and tight smiles, they weren’t even bothering to hide that she was just a checkbox they could tick off, a way to claim that they were too looking for diverse founders. It all seemed vaguely unfair. On top of that, she only had until Hock noticed she was no longer in the lab to find an angel investor. That pressure didn’t make her pitch any better. Her increasing sense of desperation was impossible to hide. Which is why she couldn’t tell Shereen any of this. She didn’t want to hear how wrongheaded she was from someone whose opinion she cared about.

  “I’m fine with how you look, too.” Emily forced a laugh.

  “Emily. Talk to me. I’m a great listener.” Shereen put an arm around Emily’s shoulder and squeezed. “It’ll be okay. You’ll find your funding.”

  Emily couldn’t shake the fact that she was killing herself at the gym to no use and that Hock, who never got within a mile of a gym, would want another apple any day now. Any man who presented as ostentatiously as Emily did—or had—would have been worshipped by investors as he pitched. Like Hock.

  “Everything is fine. Really.” Emily’s tone was unconvincingly bright and cheerful. “Well, I’m a bit disappointed that I can’t keep my body in its peak shape.”

  “Is that all? I mean if that’s all you’re worried about . . .” Shereen’s gaze shifted to the apples in the bin.

  “Oh, don’t tempt me.”

  “Did you know, Eve, that the forbidden fruit was probably not an apple?” Shereen grinned. “One theory is that Western culture associated it with the apple via a pun on or a mistranslation for the Latin word for ‘bad.’ ”

  “Thank you, Professor.” Emily rolled her eyes. “That was so helpful.”

  * * *

  “Changing your body ought to be as easy as changing your suit.” This time, Emily did not splash water on some guy with a bespoke suit and an expensive haircut.

  Their gaze, the intimation that she’d failed to conform to some arbitrary physical standard, pressed against her as always. Still, she hit all her slides—even the ones on homologous sex organs—and nailed her ask. The men with the money even seemed interested for the whole ten minutes of her pitch. Every once in a while, some investor in a red tie interrupted her asking for a clarification. Then again, when she was done, a different man, in an exquisitely tailored suit, asked:

  “Is there even a market for this?”

  She sighed. The man’s suit made a point of how steeply his torso tapered down to
his waist. If she had pitched giving him permanent, maintenance-free washboard abs or something, he probably would have thrown money at her. As she reached the elevator, the guy with the red tie hit on her, suggesting there would be money for her startup if she said yes. Of course he did. And of course she refused. It didn’t matter what she looked like, just that he had power over her. This time, her phone buzzed and she escaped down the stairs, insisting that she had to take the call. He didn’t need to know that it was actually a text.

  Emily grimaced at her phone. Hock was in the lab, but where was she, he wanted to know. She texted back berating him for expecting her to be at his beck and call. His unthinking assumption that he could barge into the lab with no warning was a cudgel that would hold him off for now. The inevitable reckoning, however, was practically here. She had no investors at all and, at best, a few days left to find some. Otherwise, so much for work on transforming people’s bodies to match themselves permanently.

  * * *

  The apples in the bin continued to taunt her. They looked exactly as they always had. Their glow bled through the bin. Their skin remained transparent and shiny. Their flesh stayed firm to Emily’s touch. Hock would have eaten another one by now and restored himself to his full preening peacock glory. However, when Shereen came home and her gaze shifted downward as she walked over to Emily, there were still three apples in the bin.

  She lay on the sofa, reworking her pitch again. Her body was sore, but only a little, and it was the good kind of sore, the kind that made you feel you’d accomplished something. Giving up on trying to maintain her transformed shape had, ironically, made her workouts more productive.

  “You look relaxed for once.” Shereen, certainly, sounded more cheerful than she had in weeks. “Did you find an angel investor?”

  “What? Oh, I wish.” Emily looked up from her laptop. “I’ve just been having good workouts lately.”

  “Finally getting used to your body?” Shereen sat next to Emily on the sofa.

  “No, I’ve just gone back to workouts I actually enjoy. That body was pretty ridiculous.” Emily sat up. Her T-shirt wrinkled around her waist. “Nothing I did could keep my body the way I’d transformed it anyway.”

  Hock had a point about how no one could exercise hard enough to maintain this sort of body. Maybe Emily was supposed to be sorry now for the snide things she thought about him eating apple after apple. But she still wasn’t sorry. Someone’s perfect body shouldn’t come at the cost of someone else’s unending toil. She decided she’d rather suffer with imperfection instead.

  Emily felt her wife’s gaze sweep across her body. It was appreciative, like Shereen’s smile, but her wife’s gaze and smile were always like that.

  “Do you mind not being built like a superhero anymore?” Shereen’s hand covered Emily’s.

  Emily stared down for a moment. She slumped into the couch.

  “No.” The word—not to mention the realization that she wasn’t imperfect, she was Emily—surprised Emily as it left her. “This is comfortable and fun to maintain. Actually, I feel more like myself than I have in weeks.”

  Emily shifted her gaze to Shereen, who looked back at her beatifically. The “what have I been telling you?” couldn’t have been louder or more obvious if Shereen had screamed it or let it show.

  “You know. I realize your work is all hush-hush but . . .” Shereen settled herself into the couch cushions. “You obviously aren’t the market for an apple. You don’t want Hock’s market, even though he’s happy with how an apple transforms him and how he needs to keep eating them to stay transformed. So, who else exactly do you think is going to buy these things?”

  It occurred to Emily that she had never tried her pitch out on Shereen before. The only reason Shereen even knew about the apples was because Emily had brought them home. It was past time to show Shereen the pitch, even if her reaction might hurt more than any investor’s.

  Slides of homologous sexual organs transforming from one to its counterpart flipped by on the laptop screen. Another slide showed how one limb could be used as a template for the other limb. Yet another was an eye chart of statistics on the value of strengthening muscles and bones during rehabilitation. Emily got a few more slides in before she stopped.

  “No, this isn’t what I want to do.” Emily closed her laptop. “I mean, it is, but these slides all dance around the vision. My pitch should be about why it’s important for people to feel the way I feel right now. Comfortable in their own skin.”

  “And why people will pay for it?”

  Emily glared at Shereen for a moment. But only for a moment.

  “Yeah.” Emily sighed. “And why people will pay for it.”

  “Otherwise, you’re making an appeal to the altruism and empathy of tech startup venture capitalists. Also, you’d be Idunn, forced to provide free labor to keep Norse gods young and virile.”

  “I am totally Idunn. Except I’m a tech startup who’s only going to deal in permanent transformations.” Emily laughed. “And I’m going to find those altruistic and empathetic investors, and pitch to them instead. I only need one to say yes.”

  Her phone buzzed. Hock again. He wanted to meet for lunch. She could only put him off for so long. He knew where she lived.

  * * *

  As she stared at this group of venture capitalists she’d handpicked and managed to cajole into attending this meeting, she tried to push out of her mind the fact that she had only this one shot left. She was going to make it count, even if it killed her.

  “Changing your body ought to be as easy as changing your suit.” As Emily’s gaze swept across yet another conference table, this time she found the occasional smile. “And with iDunn, it will be.”

  Again, as she pitched, their steady gaze pressed against her. The pressure felt different this time. Bearable.

  “Now most of you are asking why anyone would want to do that. That’s because you’re all comfortable in your own bodies.” She advanced to the next slide. “So comfortable, you’d only realize how comfortable if that feeling were somehow torn away from you.”

  It was odd but reassuring to look into the audience and see a few people who looked like her. This time, the investors included a scattering of women and someone who had introduced themself with “they/them/theirs” when Emily had phoned them. There were even two people in the room besides her who weren’t white. This time, rather than going after the big and notable investors, Emily had picked investors Hock wouldn’t ever have considered. For him, that was probably the right choice.

  “Most people are that comfortable. But not everyone.” She tapped the table for emphasis. “And ones who aren’t deserve to feel as comfortable in their bodies as you do in yours.”

  She continued to talk about expectations of convention and how they caused profound discomfort. Existing ways of making people comfortable in their bodies were difficult and expensive. Any option people couldn’t afford might as well not exist for them. That was an untapped market iDunn could reach. A few investors leaned forward with interest. A few more slides in, and they began to nod in agreement with her.

  When the ten minutes of her pitch was over, smiles lit everybody’s faces. She had them. Not all of them, of course, but enough to get started. Not that getting their interest had ever been her only obstacle. She had to make sure that Jazz and intellectual property law didn’t get in her way. That meant having lunch with Hock.

  * * *

  Hock’s pitch to Emily didn’t begin in earnest until dessert. Honestly, though, Emily saw it start from the moment he made his entrance into the restaurant. She was suddenly glad that Hock was paying for lunch and that she’d thought to suggest a place only a block away from the nearest subway stop.

  Hock had shown up in a black leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans, and midnight blue dress boots. The quality fabrics, impeccable fit, and detailed stitching were obvious even from across the room. If forced, Emily would have priced the ensemble at about five thousand dolla
rs.

  The act of taking off the jacket was its own multibillion-dollar summer blockbuster. To Emily, Hock was the slab of beef who was getting his fifth shot at making a summer tentpole movie a hit because no famous hardbody would star in it. To any male investor, Hock would have been the very embodiment of success. Some of them might have whipped out their checkbooks and cut Hock a check by the time his ass hit the chair.

  Hock had been pleasant, even modestly charming, during the appetizer and main course. Interest in her welfare as well as that of Shereen’s had been indicated. Her concerns about the implications of transforming human bodies had been listened to and acknowledged. This was all perfectly adequate and expected. If he were an asshole all the time, no one would ever fund his startup. Looking like you’ve won the “man game” several times over could take you far, but not that far.

  But dessert had just arrived. She’d opted out, settling for a cup of coffee. As his fork dug into his molten chocolate lava cake, Emily could feel Hock’s gears shift and his machinations grind.

  “You understand why I asked you to lunch.” He pressed a forkful of cake into the chocolate that had oozed out of the center. “This isn’t personal.”

  “No, not at all.” She didn’t see a reason to be confrontational . . . yet. “This is just a business proposal.”

  “Exactly.” He gestured his fork, cake and all, at her. “You’re not going to take advantage of me. I’m not going to let you take advantage of me.”

  “What?”

  Emily had not taken advantage of Hock. If anything, it had been the other way around. Both their names were on the patents. He’d made sure his name was on them. Sure, he’d done some work, but the bulk of it was hers.

  “You couldn’t have gotten any investor without information from working at Jazz. You don’t have the right to use that to fundraise for your own startup.”

  “Look, we can come to an agreement about how we both exploit our patents, or we can tie things up in court and no one gets to exploit them. And, frankly, some of the patents I can work around. Can you?” She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m perfectly happy not to be a direct competitor. My investors and I are targeting a different market, and we are passionate in our cause. You can have bros who want to look like superheroes all to yourself.”