When Theo opened his eyes, he was standing inside a chamber like a parcel in a post office tube or like a man cryogenically frozen, and the first thing he saw was Kathy outside smiling in at him in her sundress. He had the strange sensation that she wanted to eat or drink him, face first. He started to say something, but she put a finger to her lips. She put both hands on the glass and the tip of her nose, pressing them all white and staring in happily.
She took her nose off the glass and the color returned. “You know we have to do it again,” she yelled, muffled, through the shining barrier. She made a wide, teethy white grin like the Cheshire Cat, clasped her hands at her waist, and did a cute little swivel with one leg over the other.
Do what again? Theo thought, but then it came flooding back to him, more or less. A million moments and a million details at once, all packed in like a spring ready to pop open. He didn’t flash back per se, but he didn’t have to. He could feel it all there in his mind, ready to be retrieved. Expanded and explored.
They had climbed the stairs, gone through the middle door, and found themselves in the bright white lobby of Mind Leap, like a movie theatre lobby mixed with the Parthenon. Marble floors and the great mandala of Optiglass overhead, projecting an image of a blue sky and puffy, cottonball clouds. There were four rows of massive, white columns; people hustling to and fro and the long granite reception desk spread out ahead. The walls were lined with video posters bearing the images of Vessels, all wearing their purple jumpsuits and posing like models alongside their names. He spotted “SOCRATES” on the wall to his left, squatting down and staring out confidently with his name emblazoned in green letters above his head.
Kathy held a lock of her hair with one hand and twirled it with the other, and led them, weaving between Vessels, clients, and employees of all description, up to the middle of the reception desk, where a blonde secretary sat waiting, guiding them in with a smile.
“Hi,” Kathy said, still twirling her hair. “I hope we’re not late. I’m Katherine Carmichael, and this is my boyfriend Theodore Greenbaum. We’re here for a six o’clock.”
“Great! You’re right on time. Let me just check you in, and you’ll be good to go.”
“Great!” Kathy chirped. She finally let go of her hair, placed her hands on the edges of the counter. Theo bobbed around nervously. He smiled back at the receptionist whenever the Barbie Doll turned her perpetual smile in his direction. Her nametag said: HENRIETTA, but she was infinitely cuter than her name suggested. All of the receptionists were gorgeous for that matter, and all female. It felt like a business-class Hooters, with impressively high standards.
“Alllllrighty!” Henrietta sang. “They’ll be expecting you in the loading bay whenever you’re ready. That’s the room on your right. An employee will help you into your shuttle. Have a great leap!”
“We will, thank you!” Kathy said, mirroring Henrietta’s nauseating, exaggerated exuberance.
“Have a great day!” Theo called as he followed Kathy away, and he cringed as he realized that he had used the same fake, cheesy tone, and even the word “great,” which he was growing quite sick of hearing.
The loading bay was dark, calming in a way. It smelled like lavender. The “shuttles” were just clear pipes made out of some sort of glass or plastic, they lined the room in a circle broken only by the wide opening to the lobby. It looked like something you might see in a bank or a mail room for shooting parcels around, or like the pipes of the world’s largest church organ. A sleeping leaper was shot off into the upper bowels of the building. A couple that were probably his parents stood in front of the tube waving him off, and then the green-covered employee to their right gestured toward the lobby, and sent them away with a gentle push and a wave goodbye. He spotted Theo and Kathy and waved them over.
“Howdy,” the guy said, which seemed to make his face look like a cowboy’s. He was slightly tan, stubbly, and his hair was pretty close to a mullet. The green Adidas jumpsuit, however—striped purple on the outside of the limbs— made him look like an environmentally-friendly hip-hopper from the late 80’s. A white B-boy, wildly out of place, time, and fashion.
“Howdy,” Theo said.
The guy checked something on an i-Pad. “So… Youuu must beeee…. Let me see… Theodore Greenbaum! And this is…. Katherine Carmichael!”
“Exactly.”
“Great!”
This was hell, and this guy was the gatekeeper. His nametag, Theo perceived with bemused horror, held the letters “GUY,” a coincidence which seemed to confirm the guy’s satanic allegiance.
“So,” Guy said. “Let me break this down for you. You are both going to choose a shuttle. It doesn’t matter which one. Once you are in the shuttle and give the thumbs up, a mist will descend from the roof. It’s cool and it smells nice. It’s really quite refreshing. You’re going to feel drowsy, and then you’re going to fall asleep. Did you get your pamphlets?”
“Pamphlets?”
Guy sighed, in an exasperated, not-entirely-hetero way that only an iPad-holding, jumpsuit-wearing hipster can really achieve. “You were supposed to pick up your pamphlets on your way in,” he said with an air of condescension, “but it doesn’t matter. I can just relay the pertinent information, although you should have taken a pamphlet.”
There was a pause. Guy looked at both of them.
Theo coughed. Kathy was already twirling her hair, so she twirled faster. Guy rolled his head with a sort of twitch then continued relaying the pertinent information.
“The mist contains a small dose of Katharax, which will put you to sleep and prepare you for your brain scan. Once you’re asleep, the shuttle will take you to your respective labs, where one of our lab-techs will perform the brain scan. Your neurological data will be lasered into the Vessels you have chosen, at which point, you will legally become that Vessel. Your own body, the bodies you two inhabit right now, will legally belong to the Vessels you have chosen. In the unlikely event that you destroy or severely damage the Vessel, you may be legally required to switch bodies permanently. In other words, if you plan on jumping in front of a train for fun, don’t, because you’ll only be killing yourselves, and leaving your relatives a hefty fine while you’re at it. Now I don’t mean to scare you. You’ll be happy to know that the New Orleans Mind Leap has never had an incident warranting a permanent switch. We had a broken leg once, we had a Vessel mysteriously catch herpes, but we’ve never had anyone die, and we intend to keep it that way, so don’t you two try anything you wouldn’t risk in your own body.” He checked his watch. “It’s five-oh-three right now, meaning in fifty seven minutes you will be disembarking in the unloading bay, the room just like this one on the left side of the reception desk. You may not remember this conversation or anything else from the past few minutes, due to the Katharax mist you are about to inhale, so I will have someone give you a pamphlet as you come out. When you wake up in the unloading bay it will be six o’ clock, and you will have four hours to roam around and do whatever it is you two want to do— It says here you want to… ‘do something romantic for Valentine’s Day, look hot, and fuck the shit out of each other.’ Well, there will be plenty of time for that, just remember you have to be back here, right here in the loading bay, for 10 o’ clock. If you are even a minute late, you will incur a fine. The fines are shown in the pamphlets, which you should have picked up and perused, but alas, you have not. You can grab a pamphlet on your way out. This conversation has been recorded for privacy and security reasons, and may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand the information I have provided you?”
Theo looked at Kathy, who returned the look with an expression that said: What the hell is wrong with this guy?
“Uh, yes,” Theo said. “I think so…”
“You think so, or you do?”
“I do, yes, I think so. And I do. Yes.”
Guy looked at Theo like a scientist observing a strange chemical reaction. “Okay,” he said suspiciously. “If the two of you will each choose a shuttle, we can get started.”
Theo grabbed Kathy’s hand and kissed the top of it. She pulled him in and gave him a quick peck on the lips. “See you on the other side,” she said.
“Ha ha,” Theo said anxiously. “Love you.”
“Don’t act so nervous,” she said. “You’re such a worrier. I’ll see you in no time.”
"Praxis" would see "Socrates" in no time, but Theo— this Theo that was standing there hopelessly, watching Kathy clamber into the tube— he might never see anything again. He would clamber into his own tube, close his eyes, and cease to exist. In a few hours the body would wake up, believing itself to be the same person, but it would only be an impostor. A nothing in Theo’s clothing.
“Clock is ticking,” Guy said.
“Thank you, Guy,” Theo said, and he climbed into the nearest shuttle.
“It’s pronounced gii,” Guy said, but the tube was closing and Theo could only mouth his apology. He gave a thumbs up. Guy pressed something on the iPad. The mist descended, cool and refreshing, like lavender, the room became a mirror image, and Theo was Socrates. He felt calm and happy. His hands were brown. He was taller, heavier, and his breath steamed the glass. His lungs were more powerful. He wasn’t as terrified as he expected to be. This felt normal. These could be his hands, he was inspecting. They were hazel on the back, and creamy on the palms. They were large, soft, and hairless. Man hands. He was wearing one of the purple jumpsuits, and it reached all the way to his wrists and his ankles, gripping him not too tight, but tight enough to make him feel secure. His dick, Socrates’ dick, pressed against the stretchy fabric the way a penis is supposed to. He put a hand down there and smiled. It was his. For the next four hours, it was his. He felt his face, his lips and his nose and his cheekbones. All soft, like it had been engineered that way, for comfort and beauty. He could see his reflection in the shuttle door in front of him. He was divine. Socrates was divine. There was a hiss, and the clear walls began to lift upwards, letting in the cool air of the unloading bay.
He stepped out. A spectacled employee with her hair in a bun was there to greet him. “Welcome to New Orleans, Mr. Greenbaum,” she said. “Your friend Katherine will be ready in just a moment.”
“Okay,” he said, and his voice sounded like butter. Smooth and creamy. Deep and handsome. “Which tube is she coming out of?”
“Which shuttle? That’s her right there, in shuttle four.”
Everyone at this place was pretentious. Shuttle, tube, pipe, who cares? It’s a piece of plastic, one way or the other. But there was Kathy, or Praxis as Kathy, and she looked radiant. Like sleeping beauty, but with better tits and golden brown hair. She filled out the purple jumpsuit like a Victoria’s Secret model. Kathy’s breasts had been gigantic to begin with, so it almost seemed as if her boobs had, of their own volition, picked a new, prettier body to cling to. Her new face may as well have been carved from the marble in the lobby. She was a goddess. Soft and austere. A mist appeared and shrouded her face for a brief moment, and then her eyes were open, staring, as if in terror. She didn’t move. She was frozen, her features stiff and her green eyes wide. She shrieked, and you could hear it through the wall of the shuttle. She was visibly hyperventilating, and Theo ran his new body to the glass as she clutched her chest and breathed in rapid, sipping gasps.
“Babe!” he called, “Babe, it’s alright!”
She looked at him and shrieked, choked on it this time, and started to sob between her stifled gulps for air. Theo looked around desperately for the employee-woman in the glasses. She was standing exactly where she’d been a moment ago, now speaking into her iPad, “Yes sir yes sir, she’s panicking. Should I mist her or open the door?”
“Open the door! Open the door!” Theo shouted. The deep, movie star voice was becoming frightening, unreal. He needed it to be his own voice, for Katherine’s sake as much as his own.
“Excuse me, sir,” the woman said into her iPad. “The boyfriend is yelling at me. He want’s me to open the door… Alright, sir. Right away, sir.”
Kathy had crumpled to the ground now. She was looking at her wiry hands, screaming and screaming.
“What are you waiting for? Let her out of there!”
“I’m trying to, sir. If you will please calm down. You’re scaring the other costumers.” Red-faced and irritated, she pushed the glasses up her nose then punched something into the iPad with a firm poke of the finger. She looked up as if to say: Are you happy now?
The shuttle hissed, and Kathy’s crying came spilling out into the room. Theo ran to her and pulled her up into his arms like she was weightless and cradled her. “Babe, it’s me, it’s me!” He kissed her. Her teary, puffy face looked a rubber doll’s, it was all wrong. “It’s me, it’s Theo,” he said. But she didn’t seem to hear.
It took almost fifteen minutes for her to calm down. They were escorted by the snotty glasses girl into an employee bathroom, so that they wouldn’t frighten the other costumers. “Did you two even read your pamphlets?” the glasses girl asked, and when she didn’t get a response she swiveled around and marched back into the lobby.
After Kathy drank some water and threw it back up into the sink, she started feeling better. She said she’d had nightmares, endless nightmares, had imagined the leap again and again, and when she woke up she thought it was finally over, and that she was back in her own body.
Once he knew Kathy was going to be alright, Theo was happy to be of service. This was a situation that only a loving boyfriend could handle, and he was glad to put his loving brain data to good use. He gave her tiny frame a warm embrace, feeling as strong and endearing as a bear, and relishing the fact that for once he was big and strong enough to be genuinely protective. He asked her if she wanted to call it quits, and head back to the loading bay, but this seemed to activate something in her, to spark some sort of motivation.
“Didn’t you read the pamphlet?” she asked incredulously. “We have to use the full four hours. We can’t just go back now. Our brains wouldn’t accept the data.”
But when did Kathy read the pamphlet?
That seemed to be the million dollar question, because Kathy had no recollection of picking one up, either. And yet she remembered what it said, in great detail. She knew why she had freaked out. She knew it was because of her Katharax tolerance, and she knew item #44 of page three of the pamphlet stated very clearly: Katharax is critical to a safe, successful, and soothing leap. If you consume more than two Katharax tablets a day, you must inform a member of our staff before your leap, so that your dosage may be adjusted to suit your tolerance.
v“How do I—?” she asked her reflection, using her hands to splash sink water onto her new face. She stopped and peered in at herself, her glassy eyes whirring rapidly like drills, digging into themselves. Green, but dark in the glare. Black holes trapped in some fatal orbit, and swallowing the light of the room. “We should leave,” she said to herself. She looked at Theo. “Let’s go home,” she said. “We’ve already lost half an hour.”
And so they went home, out through the lobby, which had grown less crowded. There was a whole new row of secretaries behind the granite welcome desk, but the night shift girls looked no different from the other nine or ten girls. All a bunch of Barbie Dolls. Theo took a pamphlet off the wall on their way out the same door they’d entered through. He handed it to Kathy as they descended the steps toward Harrah’s and the foot of Canal Street, but she threw it into a black metal trashcan when they reached the corner. “I’ve already read it,” she said, but she didn’t bother to explain when or how, and probably she had no idea.
When they got back to The Wack, the light outside was turning pink and Kathy had become her usual self again, aside from the body of course. She waved to Terrance the security guard and Chris at the front desk, who both waved back with puzzled expressions until she yelled, “It’s me, Kathy! And this is Theo! Can you believe it?”
“Oh my,” Terrance said. Theo always thought he looked like Danny Glover. “You two look hot! Good lookin’, Theodore!”
Theo waved awkwardly, and called back, “I’m thinking about keeping it!”
Terrance laughed. “You should! Looks good on you! My oh my, Mr. Theodore as a black man. Now I’ve seen it all.”
The elevator opened. They stepped in, and waved goodbye to Terrance. Kathy pressed ’13’. There was something pleasant about one’s sense of self persisting, seemingly unaltered, in a new body, but Theo couldn’t shake the feeling that he was an impostor, that the real him lay dead in a laboratory somewhere at Mind Leap, waiting to be revived. And it felt utterly perverse that the love of his life was suffering this same fate, even if she was oblivious to it. It didn’t matter that this ‘Praxis’ was beautiful and physically flawless. There was something insect-like about both of them. Like they were just soulless automatons, no more alive than the elevator carrying them upward. It would stop on the thirteenth floor because it was programmed to do so. They’d pressed the button. And in three hours time they’d be walking back up those stairs into Mind Leap, programmed by the law, by money, by necessity. And in the next ten minutes they’d be having sex, and that too, was part of their programming, wasn’t it? Was it desire, or just data? It was just data. Kathy might begin to feel this same nihilistic dread, and maybe she already was, and just hiding it. He never knew what was going on in that head of hers, and now it wasn’t even her head. But she was twirling her golden brown hair— Praxis’s hair— and her thoughtful expression was much like her normal one. She seemed alive. She seemed like herself, more or less. She noticed him looking at her, and she took a break from staring into herself. She smiled. “You look very handsome,” she said.
Theo wasn’t sure if he should take that as a compliment, but he said, “Thank you, my dear, and you look absolutely ravishing, if I may say so myself.”
Ten minutes later, she was moaning beneath him on the couch as he plunged Socrates’ thick fingers in and out of her wet, red pussy, and tried to work his oversized rope into an erection. “Put it in, put it in!” she kept begging, and he kept saying, “I’m trying, I’m trying,” or “I can’t yet.” Finally she said, “Let me help you,” and she slid off the couch and onto her knees. Theo opened Socrates’ legs, but he knew Kathy probably wouldn’t be able to help. It wasn’t that it was too weird, or too perverse; it just felt empty. Like they were two fuck dolls left in a room together. The mirror listening in the bathroom was probably more alive than both of them put together. Horniness had lost all meaning, but evidently not to Praxis, who was now sucking away, deeper and more passionately than Kathy had ever done in her life. Socrates’ dick was big enough to be sucked on properly even when flaccid, and within a minute or so it had grown by mere cause and effect, and once it had grown Theo began to remember what being horny felt like. By default, horniness had regained its meaning. He was ready to put it in now, but Kathy seemed content where she was, and so was he, so he leaned his head back, spread his arms, and let her go to town. She’d look up at him now and then, her mouth on the head and her silver-green eyes on his. She never did it like this as herself, never looked up with her brown eyes or got herself turned on like this. The real her didn’t feel sexy enough, maybe neither of them did, but now they were flawless, and they were about to fuck like porn stars. “Come here, Babe,” Theo said, lifting her chin. “Come sit down.”
“I’d love to,” she said. She gave one final lick from the brown, hairless balls up to the mushroom tip, rose to her feet, climbed up onto the couch, and slid herself slowly down onto him, moaning and shuddering until her clit touched his pelvis. “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”
Maybe God was data too, but for the next two and a half hours, it didn’t really matter.
They finished round one after forty five minutes, leaving the green couch fabric damp with sweat, then they moved to the shower. They hooked up in the shower, and when Jane asked if she could help Theo told her to film it. The water made Kathy’s pussy like rubber so they moved to bedroom. Theo lifted Kathy up like a doll and laid her on top of the rumpled covers. They flopped against each other for almost an hour straight, and when Theo was finally spent he rolled over and stared at the ceiling fan.
“We have to take a selfie,” Kathy said as they walked back to Mind Leap. It was nine-forty-something and hot for a February night. It had to be almost ninety outside, and their Mind Leap purple jumpers were soaked in sweat and stifling. “Let’s wait til we get back,” Theo said. “We don’t want to get a fine.”
They kept walking. The ant highway was swarming tonight, and the face of The Wack looked down on it like a giant rectangle of honeycomb, dotted here and there with tenants smoking cigarettes. They crossed the streetcar tracks, waiting momentarily for a red streetcar numbered 2003. The front of the Sheraton had three giant posters reading: “RELAX” “RECHARGE” and “CONNECT.” They reached the sidewalk in front of the Sheraton and started toward Mind Leap and the Mississippi. The people around them formed a river themselves, compressing and expanding with each corner and stoplight. Most of the people were dressed in their Sunday, club-scene best. Gold or silver chains and sagging pants for the men. Short, tight-fitting dresses for the women. All the walk signs were partially burned out or broken, leaving the ubiquitous walking man in various states of non-existence, which reminded Theo of the digital, half-loaded Socrates from a week ago. They passed a “New Orleans Praline Company” with a big white sign reading CIGARETTES— ATM— T-SHIRTS— LIQUOR in big red letters. It was unclear if they actually sold pralines. A banner for the zoo hung from a streetlight with a picture of a depressed-looking gorilla. It said GO APE @ THE ZOO. A sticker beneath an orange traffic hand said MADE YOU LOOK, another said UZIT, placed by a graffiti artist that had tagged almost every block in the city it seemed like. A homeless man dressed like a purple wizard lay with an arm curled around an empty forty bottle. A cardboard sign propped against him read “Homeless veteran ANYTHING HELPS.” The Macy’s poster behind this passed out wizard— who could easily have been dead— said Shop til you drop! and Theo sighed at the pathetic irony. Meanwhile, all the girls seemed to have great asses tonight, though none as nice as Kathy’s: round, out of proportion with her slender waist, and gyrating tauntingly with the rhythmic movement of her thighs. The tail of the tiger, Theo thought. Meow. He followed her across St. Peters Street and past the crowded entrance to Harrah’s. Three goldpainted mimes with sun-masks on their faces walked up to Kathy doing some sort of interpretive dance. The one in the middle said, “Can we have some money?”
Kathy shrugged and kept walking. Still in earshot of the sun people, she turned to Theo and said, “The fuck kinda mime asks for money?”
“Good question.”
They crossed the street to the foot of Mind Leap. The wind from the river was rippling the grass and Kathy’s goldish hair as they passed a statue of a rusted guy on a horse, beneath which a drunk asian was spouting nonsense from a saxophone. When they reached the front steps, a fat security guard was yelling “Get a job!” and shooing away a pissed off homeless person, who was yelling something back like “Ler-ger-berga-der!” and pointing a half-eaten banana like a pistol. “Probably a veteran,” Kathy observed.
“Sorry about that, folks,” the security guard said as they climbed the stairs. “People these days, right?”
They reached the top of the stairs. The air was still hot and filled with car noises, random saxophone notes like a crying elephant, and buzzing crickets. The cement landing was lit up by the white lights inside and the purplish glow of the Optiglass dome, now simulating nightime and full moon. The real moon was hidden behind a building somewhere. Kathy was plodding on ahead, about to open the same middle door they’d passed through twice now, but Theo stopped her, wanting to kiss her one last time before they walked in and turned back to their regular selves.
“Something smells like shit,” Kathy said.
A car drove by blaring bass and a nasally-voiced rapper casually saying: “Spit on a bitch, punch on a bitch. After I eat some steak, have her tug on my dick.”
Above the smelly river breeze, the yelling, the buzzing insects, the revving engines, the car horns, the rambling saxophone, and the voice of that rapper, Theo wished Kathy a happy Valentine’s Day.
TO BE CONTINUED
Cover Photo: Image Source