Transhuman

  " . . .so he put the rug vac away without emptying the, you know, the reservoir thing. That crap stain from Dillard's dog was dissolved in there all week, so when he opened the closet it was just a wave of, you know, mildewed excrement. Unbelievable. We washed the thing out, but three hours later it was still fit to knock you over. That's what you get when you leave poop water standing."

  Steven laughed, adopting the accent of an old Southern gentleman. "Wasn't Poopwater Standing a general in the Civil War?"

  "For the Northern side," Don Juan quipped back, in exaggerated New Yorker tones. "He won three medals of freshness before taking a urinal cake to the forehead."

  Don Juan was a Tennesseean, and the smartest guy in Gamma Gamma Alpha, with the possible exception of Steven himself. The house was a shallow organization, mostly pointless, but it was fun, and Steven was discovering there were smart people scattered everywhere, like grains of pepper. Frat life wasn't one solid thing; it was personally made up by the individual people inside it.

  "Steven?" The voice was female, from somewhere behind him. He turned and saw professor Englund, in a little black dress with black taffeta roses on the shoulder straps. Her frizzy hair tied back with a scrunchie.

  "Hi," he said, a little too enthusiastically, taking in the sight of her. Out of context she was . . . whoa. Kind of hot.

  "Are you here by yourself?" Englund half shouted.

  He shook his head. "Fraternity function. This is my brother, Don. Up there is my girlfriend."

  "On the stage? Which one?" Englund sounded impressed.

  "Center. Her name is Nicole."

  "Wow. Very nice. I figured you for a man of many talents, Steven, but you keep on surprising me."

  Was that a come-on? Teacher to student, just like that? Surely he was imagining. "I drive a Viper," he said, for no apparent reason. To defuse the moment, maybe, but if so he needn't have bothered; the song was winding down and the Omega Rho girls were stepping back to Earth for a breather.

  "Sorry about before," Nicole said as she sidled up, wiping a bead of sweat off her lip. "I shouldn't have walked out like that." She noticed Professor Englund, gave her the quick up and down inspection she called a "county fair": Guessing the weight, checking the teeth, marking points off for skin blemishes and nicked hooves. "Who's your friend?"

  "My art teacher," Steven answered. Unspoken but implicit in his tone: Can you believe it? In this light, Englund looked barely older than Nicole: they might almost have been sorority sisters.

  Frowning and then smiling, Nicole moved in behind Steven and wrapped a possessive arm around his chest. "My man's a bit of a genius. I hope you're giving him an A."

  "I haven't seen his project yet," Englund answered, with cheerful neutrality. She raised a plastic beer cup in salute and then took a ladylike half chug.

  "It's rather brilliant," said Nicole, with the sort of intensity only drunks can muster. "It gets in your head, touches you all up inside."

  Surprised at this, Steven said, "I thought you hated it. You said it was stupid. Steven the puppy killer, very aesthetic." Too late, he realized he was sabotaging his own grade.

  But Nicole apparently meant it. Leaning forward and fiddling with one of the black taffeta roses on Englund's spaghetti straps, she said: "I was a little overwhelmed, is all. You caught me off guard. It was an ugly image, yes, but an affecting one. If the point of art is to provoke an emotion, a lot of emotions, you certainly did."

  Her hand was back on his chest now, thumping him reassuringly.

  Said Englund, "I thought we were talking about a machine. Some kind of brain scanner."

  "It makes pictures," Nicole answered haughtily. Mean girl, yes, putting a lesser woman in her place. Further endangering Steven's grade. Ah, hell, it was just an art class. Not like he needed his GPA anyhow.

  On Steven's other side, Don Juan was staring into his drink and smiling. "Poopwater Standing," he said, like the Southern gentleman he was supposed to be. Then, modifying the accent slightly: "Poopwater Harriman Treehug Standing." He killed the drink and looked up, seeming to notice Englund for the first time.

  "Hi," he said, holding out his hand. He was earnest, casual, charming. He was being a dick.

  "Lydia Englund," said Englund. "Art Department."

  "Poopwater Standing," answered Don. "Department of Apocrypha. Shaken, not stirred, I'm afraid, but . . . my God, you're gorgeous."

  "She's my teacher," Steven explained.

  "She certainly is," said Don, unfazed. "Grading papers this evening?"

  Englund laughed. "Something like that. You know you're going to put somebody's eye out with that rapier wit."

  "Hey," said Don, shaking a finger. "That's an ugly stereotype. Just because a man's in a fraternity doesn't make him a rapier." He furrowed his brow in mock distress, and tipped his cup back until the ice cubes slid into his mouth.

  "I want a printout," Nicole said suddenly.

  Steven turned to her, ready with his own brand of wit. "Huh?"

  "The picture. From your machine." Mean Girl spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable. "I want a printout to hang on my wall. I'll make a little frame for it."

  "Um, okay. I'll print one out for you on Monday."

  Nicole shook her head. "You misunderstand, sir. Your art. Touched. Me. I want a printout . . . now. Capisce? Comprende? Wakaru ka? One more drink, and then you're taking me to the art building."

  She looked Lydia Englund over again—not so much a county fair as a where's-your-purse-girl. "You should come with us, Professor. Want to?"

  "I have my key with me, yes," Englund said, ferreting out her meaning. "I'll let you in the building if you promise to behave."

  "She promises nothing," said Don Juan, now sounding like a gentleman from well south of the border.

  "You coming?" Steven asked him.

  But Don Juan magically had another drink lined up, some awful blue concoction with a spear of pineapples and cherries sticking out. "And leave all this?" he asked. "Are you mad? I'm this close to a breakthrough." He held up his thumb and forefinger, a centimeter apart.

  When they left him he was staring into another empty cup, muttering: "Tourist season be damned, Your Honor; this shark is a killer."

  Shanique Bentzen was waiting for them outside the art building.

  "Hi," she said tentatively, looking right at Steven. Her hands were out, palms up, breath steaming in the glare of the sodium lights. A single word flared in Steven's mind: supplicant.

  Nicole was all over it. "How long have you been waiting here? Shit, girl, are you hanging around here in the cold on a Saturday night, on the off chance Steven might walk by?"

  "I wanted to talk," Shanique said, ignoring her. Eyes on Steven. "I owe you an apology."

  Another one? Hell, even eighteen million dollars hadn't made Steven this popular. What the hell was going on?

  "Are you here to see the machine?" asked Lydia Englund.

  Shanique shook her head, not so much a negation as a shrugging off of the question. "I've seen it. He used it on me, and now I . . ."

  "Want the printout?" Nicole asked archly.

  Shanique slumped. "Yeah. It sounds stupid, I realize."

  "Not at all, girl. I'm here for the same exact purpose. So's the professor, even if she doesn't know it yet."

  "My curiosity is aroused," Englund admitted. "Assuming you kids haven't staged this whole thing to impress me. But how could you? I went to Paradisio on a whim."

  Englund's coat was red wool, reaching well below the knee but leaving her calves and ankles bare. Her purse was black, tucked under her arm like a football. If she was trying to look elegant and sophisticated, she nearly made it, but to Steven she seemed more vulnerable than anything. What kind of teacher went, by herself, to the student bars on the Hill on a Saturday night? A young one, a lonely one.

  She unlocked the door for them, and held it open while they filed through. Inside it was warm.

  "Thank you," Shanique chimed, rushing between
the benches to snatch her hard copy, still waiting on the machine's cheap-ass printer. She held it up, examining it, then turned it around to show it off, then flipped it again and looked some more. Her eyes were shining, her lower lip thrust outward and trembling slightly. For the life of him Steven couldn't tell if she was happy or sad or angry or what. But seeing the picture now was clearly affecting her all over again. Not as strong this time, but nothing you could politely ignore.

  "My goodness," said Englund. "May I see?" Then: "Oh. Stylistically interesting, Steven. Pointilist Cubism with an Impressionist veneer? The subject matter is . . ."

  "Uncanny," said Shanique.

  "I was going to say it's a break from the usual. Student erotica is typically cruder. It's a very attractive picture, Steven. It certainly has the desired effect."

  Meaning what? Steven hadn't "desired" anything but a working gadget and a decent grade.

  "Do mine," said Nicole. "Print mine." Her voice wasn't wheedling or jealous or needy, just slightly impatient.

  "Okay."

  Steven turned the machine's various components back on, located the file, and sent it to the printer.

  "I'm not going to overreact this time," Nicole said, half to herself. But as the image rolled out, she groaned. "God! It's so ugly. So ugly it's beautiful." She shivered a little, without losing her smirk.

  "Animal snuff porn without the usual political overtones," Englund said appreciatively. "Now that's a fresh choice."

  Steven shook his head. "I don't choose these images, Professor. They're a collaborative effort between the computer and the test subject."

  She smiled. "Mind reading? You're too modest, Steven. Machines don't produce art like this."

  She was taking her coat off, laying it over the back of a high swivel chair.

  "You, uh, want to try it?"

  Nicole and Shanique were holding out their crappy inkjet pictures like love letters, turning them this way and that, smiling and frowning. Synchronized swooning, oh brother.

  Eyeing the two of them, Englund said, "I insist on it. I'm still not convinced this isn't a put-on. Although, even as performance art this has certainly gotten my attention."

  She sat down, and held still while Steven squirted her with gel and lowered the cap down over her head.

  "You have a lot of hair," he told her, tugging its edges down, brushing her cheek half deliberately with the side of his thumb. She was soft. "We won't get as good a fit. It may affect the sensor readings."

  "Noted."

  Well, she could act all official if she wanted, make noises like she was primly checking off grade boxes in her mind, but as the brain scan came alive Lydia Englund had no secrets from Steven. Like Nicole, she was enjoying the process and the attention that came with it. When Steven leaned in close to adjust the gains, her limbic system lit up like an appreciative little jack-o-lantern.

  Well, well.

  He started up the reference images and sat back to watch.

  "Prepare yourself," warned Shanique.

  "Oh, don't worry. I've seen some art in my day."

  But no matter how well she hid it, Steven could see she was nervous, wondering if something really could punch through her jaded academic façade.

  Minutes later, a final picture began to take shape, and slowly settled into the off-focus that was, alas, the best the machine seemed able to do. Hard to tell what it meant to Englund, but to Steven it looked like a sailing ship going over a waterfall, with a white bird lifting off from the soon-to-be wreckage and flapping toward the distant moon.

  "Oh, you bastard." Englund let out a gasp, and then a kind of muted sob. "Oh, my God, you little bastard. This thing sees right into the soul, doesn't it? I'm sorry, that was rude of me. But oh, my God."

  Well, apparently the machine was working.

  "Can you tell me what we're looking at?" he asked, trying for a tone of clinical detachment.

  "My inner self, laid bare."

  Huh. Okay then.

  "Can, uh, can you be more specific?"

  Englund pulled the cap off her sodden head and set it down. "Is that . . . can I take this thing off? The ship represents society, sailing over the edge of the world. The bird is—" She choked up for a moment, then continued. "The bird is me. I have the sense I've been feeling this image all my life, and never seeing it. But here it is, right out there for the world to gawk at, to trivialize. I'm at a loss, frankly—a kind of exquisite and humiliating despair. Your soul printer is dangerous, Steven."

  She looked out at the dark windows for a moment, then pressed on: "But. Art should be dangerous, right? It should shake us to the core. By God, it should shake us to the marrow."

  Nicole had found a towel somewhere. She tossed it into Englund's lap and said, "I think Steven's seen enough of other people's inner selves today. Personally I think he should try it."

  Shanique nodded vigorously. "Oh, definitely." She was standing by a shelf of ceramic turtles glazed in every color of the rainbow. Out of order; the purple was next to the red, not the blue. Didn't artists know the visible spectrum?

  "It does seem like the fair thing," Englund agreed, lifting the towel to her hair while her other hand smoothed out her little black skirt.

  Which is why, ten minutes later, they were all laughing at Steven's expense.

  "Oh my," said Englund, around chest-seizing paroxysms of laughter.

  "Oh, brother," said Shanique, more embarrassed than genuinely amused.

  "Oh, right," chimed Nicole, laughing nearly as hard as Englund.

  "That's not fair," he tried to tell them. "That's not what I'm thinking, that's not what I'm feeling."

  "Beg to differ," Englund said, before splitting off into fresh, convulsive peals.

  And indeed, there was no point arguing about it. The picture sitting fresh on the inkjet was all the proof anyone needed.

  The image—blurred and hazy, but unmistakable—looked, more than anything, like a page from the Kama Sutra. It had that same quality of stylized watercolor cartoon, that same sense of limbs articulating in not-quite-possible ways.

  But the picture was of Steven himself, or an idealized version of himself. With bits and pieces of electronic gadgetry scattered around his feet. Sitting on a red velvet throne that combined all the worst elements of a love seat and a commode. With his pants around his ankles and a huge erection jutting up like a flagpole, and a big-ass smirk on his face. Surrounded by women who were not technically naked, but dressed in weird, angular lingerie that emphasized their own exaggerated goodies.

  Oh, God. That was bad enough, more than bad enough. But the women—three of them—were draped over the back and sides of the throne, in ultrafeminine postures that went well beyond the suggestive. They had knowing smirks of their own, but nevertheless conveyed a sense of adoring subservience.

  And that was bad enough, too, but the women could be identified as easily as Steven himself. They were, of course, Shanique Bentzen, Nicole Most, and Lydia Englund.

  "My nipples aren't brown," Nicole teased, slapping him lightly across the top of the head.

  "Mine aren't the size of radio knobs," said Shanique.

  Englund was more philosophical. "Mine are . . . mine are . . . mine are just like that. You've captured my essence exactly!"

  All three of them busted up at that, holding their sides and thumping the tables, struggling to breathe.

  God, the news would be all over campus by morning, and not in a good way. Was his soul so shallow? His ambition so venal? They seemed to think so, and that was enough. Steven was never going to hear the end of this.

  * * *

  There exists, in the fair city of Boulder, a little fast-food joint with Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut signs hanging above the front entrance. To the students it's known as Kentaco Hut, but Steven is old enough to remember Kentucky Fried's "we do chicken right" ad campaign, which lampooned a mythical restaurant called "Super," with gray-suited workers sliding gray-wrapped "super chicken", "super beef," and "
super tacos" down identical heat-lamped chutes. The idea being, you couldn't do all those things well, and a real fast-food restaurant should just stick to one narrow specialty.

  Kentaco Hut basically is that Super restaurant, although the irony seems lost on everyone but Steven himself. Give me a super beef, yeah.

  Anyway, that was where they ended up later on, when the women started feeling bad for him and offered a sodie pop to soothe his rumpled ego. And by the time they got there they'd all decided they were hungry, too, so now there was a veritable smorgasbord of Super snacks and entrees spread out before them on the brick-colored linoleum of the table.

  "You are giving him an A, right?" Nicole asked, around a mouthful of crispy-sweet Cinna Stix.

  "At least," answered Lydia, around a greasy wand of garlic bread. "I'll also put his name in for a fellowship, and encourage the biology department to do the same. But the press is going to catch hold of this. There'll be a shit storm, mark my words. Lawyers, acrobats, the works. Our boy's going to need some shelter. Are you there for him, really?"

  "As much as he'll let me," Nicole answered, favoring Steven with a doting, long-suffering look that wasn't entirely ironic. Oh, yeah. She loved him. And he was pretty sure he loved her back, for some damn reason. Oh well.

  Lydia nodded, evidently satisfied with that. "I can keep the university off his back. Give him space to work. How about you, Shanique?"

  "Hell, I barely know the man. What am I supposed to, bake him cookies?"

  "You could. I wouldn't discourage it. I was thinking more along the lines of modeling, though. You come off pretty well in the pictures, and if you like I could get the department to pay you scale for each sitting—"

  "Whoa, girl. Professor. I'm not agreeing to any damn thing right now. I'm eating chicken." She turned to Steven. "You eat something, too. Fatten up for the coming winter. You want a biscuit? With some honey and butter? It's good."

  "I'm not five years old," he complained.

  That, of course, made them all laugh again, though less cruelly than before. He sighed. "All right, you ladies have your little gigglefest. I'm going to use the restroom, all by myself."