Unwelcome Bodies

by Jennifer Pelland

  Giancarla raised her eyebrows. At least they still looked like a normal human body part. “You had surgery? I was under the impression that surgery was a frequently lethal proposition back in your day.”

  “It was dangerous, yes, but I had no choice. The growth on my mouth—” He gestured, only a moment later realizing that he’d drawn an elephant’s trunk in the air with his fingers. “It had gotten so large that I could barely chew.” He scooped some spicy peas and potatoes onto his fork and delivered them to a mouth that had no such problems. Oh, if only he could sit and eat forever.

  “Well, this will be nothing like that. There’s no pain, no recovery time. A simple facial reconstruction can be done in a matter of hours. And you wouldn’t have to look like me.”

  He set down his fork and sputtered, “Ma’am, I apologize if I’ve given offense—”

  Giancarla laughed, her mammoth mouth opening so wide that he could see partway down her throat. “Please, Joseph, I know what I look like to you. I’m sure you find my modifications just as horrifying as I find the corsetry from your time.” She shuddered, then picked up her wine glass and took a deep gulp. “Just think about it, Joseph. If you’d like to look like someone else, I can do it for you.”

  “This is the third face I’ve worn today,” Joseph said. “That’s all the change I can handle for quite some time.”

  Giancarla raised her glass and said, “Fair enough.”

  He offered to help with the washing up, but she showed him how the table could clean and store the dishes without any human intervention. He wondered what astonishment looked like on his new face. It was such a gift to have an expressive face again.

  María Luisa took his hand and led him to his room, limping ever so slightly on her artificial leg. “We just have tonight.”

  “Teach me everything.”

  She pulled her dress over her head, and he blushed furiously and turned away. “Miss Hidalgo, I—”

  She took his hand and placed it on her bare bosom, and he felt his knees weaken. “Please let me do this for you, Joseph. I don’t want your first time to be with one of them.”

  “How did you know I’d never—?”

  “Because I know how people from our times must have looked at you.”

  She pulled his shirt over his head, pressed her bare skin against his, and he was lost.

  After, as he lay trembling in her arms, he murmured a quiet prayer of thanks and penance against her skin.

  She stroked the back of his head and crooned, “It’s not a sin anymore, Joseph. Nothing is. I don’t think these people even know the meaning of the word.”

  He slept with his smooth head tucked in the crook of her sweet, brown neck.

  And when he awoke, he was alone.

  He stretched his hand across the empty bed, trying to find an indentation in the mattress to prove that he hadn’t just dreamed the previous night.

  There was none.

  He sat up and looked behind him to see if his own body had left any trace on the mattress.

  No. It was as smooth as if it had never been slept on.

  He wondered if all of 2304 was this impermanent.

  He felt tears welling up behind his eyes and blinked them back. No, there’d been too much crying in his life. This new start wasn’t going to have any more crying.

  Across the room, María Luisa had left a final message on the wall. “I’m sorry, Joseph.”

  “Don’t be,” he said, and the image faded away.

  He’d never understand this future.

  But he had to try.

  And the first step was getting out of bed. He palmed open the closet, looked at the skimpy offerings inside, and instead put on the previous day’s clothes, which were at least a modicum more modest. He silvered the wall, shook his head at the wild state of his long, curly hair, and ran a fat-toothed comb through it before tying it back with a slim band. Then he slid on his sandals and entered the main room of the apartment—

  —where Giancarla was standing at a high table, bare-breasted, and sipping what smelled like coffee. She turned to him with her ear-to-ear smile and said, “Ah, Joseph, you’re awake.”

  Joseph tried not to stare at her bosom, failed, and forced himself to look at the floor. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t realize—”

  “Don’t be so prudish,” Giancarla said. “I’m wearing a skirt.”

  He peeked up, saw that she was indeed wearing stiff, striped, floor-length skirt, and was grateful that his skin was likely too dark to show the flush that he could feel burning at his cheeks. “I’m not used to this, Mrs. Baratella.”

  “Please, my name is Giancarla. If you want to have any hope of fitting in, you’ll have to lose the formality and the antiquated titles.”

  He saw a set of bare feet shuffle into the room, and peeked up again to see what appeared to be a young man walk into the room. His face looked like a limestone angel that had spent too many decades out in the rain, his features strangely blurred and softened. All he wore were a pair of tight briefs that were the same shade of brown as the rest of him.

  “Ah, my son stirs,” Giancarla said. “Give mother a kiss, LeShawn.”

  He ignored her and touched a glowing button on the wall, revealing a cupboard.

  Giancarla rolled her eyes. “He’s a committed Do-Nothing. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.”

  “The leisure society is corrupt,” LeShawn said, pulling a wrapped bar from the cupboard. “I choose to protest by not participating in society at all.”

  “He’ll outgrow it,” Giancarla said. “Joseph, I think your new clothes should be delivered soon. You shouldn’t have let María Luisa help you design them. I’ll bet she talked you into long pants and buttons and other outdated nonsense.”

  “I just wanted to look…” He trailed off, realizing he was about to insult his bare-breasted host.

  “Decent,” she said, completing his sentence. He looked up again, this time managing to get to her face after only a few seconds lingering on her bosom. “You don’t have to worry about insulting me. You, at least, are doing your best to be polite. I learned many colorful twenty-first century curses from María Luisa the first month we had her.” She took one last sip of her coffee, then said, “I’m sorry, but I have to go to work. LeShawn will take care of you—won’t you, dear?”

  LeShawn, who was now eating the bar, wrapper and all, nodded dumbly.

  Giancarla waved two of her four hands at Joseph, and breezed out the door.

  LeShawn turned his dull gaze to Joseph and asked, “Hungry?”

  “Actually, yes, if it’s no trouble.”

  He took another wrapped bar out from the cupboard and handed it to Joseph, then pulled a scroll from the back pocket of his improbably tight shorts and handed it over as well. “Here’s a tour guide. You should go see the city. Enjoy your leisure before it consumes you.”

  Joseph put down the food bar and unrolled the small, slippery sheet. It lit up, displaying a map of San Antonio. He ran his index finger over the ribbon of blue winding through the middle of it, and the image zoomed in, showing him an animation of the Riverwalk.

  “What else does this contraption do?”

  “Everything the computer wall does. I’ve set it so its default view is the map.”

  “But… You won’t be coming with me?”

  LeShawn shrugged. “I’m too busy doing nothing. I’ve got a couple of friends coming over in a bit, and we’re all going to do it together. You’ll understand eventually.”

  “Your mother doesn’t seem to approve.”

  “My mother doesn’t care.”

  “But she’s your mother.”

  “She hasn’t cared about me in years. Why do you think she has you?”

  Joseph opened his mouth to apologize, but LeShawn waved him off, so instead he stood with his mouth agape as the young man shuffled back out of the room.

  He looked at the little map in his hand and took a deep breath. Yes, he could tour t
he city himself. After all, he’d successfully made his way across the English Channel back when he was a huddling, misshapen wretch, swaddled under a shapeless cloak, peering out at the world from a single eye-hole. Touring San Antonio in this body shouldn’t prove to be a challenge after that.

  Looking down at the scroll, he said, “Computer, silver the sheet.”

  The face gazing up at him was becoming more and more familiar by the moment.

  He picked up his meal and headed back to his room. He prodded at the wrapper, which felt exactly like paper, but he decided to take it on faith that LeShawn wouldn’t have eaten it if it hadn’t been nutritious. So he bit all the way through. The wrapper melted on his tongue into the richest chocolate he’d ever tasted, and moments later, the bar exploded with the taste of berries. Oh, it was spectacular. He’d never tasted anything more lovely. It was these little things that he’d have to remind himself to hold onto in these first chaotic days.

  And his closet door was blinking. Did that mean— Yes, he now had modest clothing. He had no idea how it had been transported to his closet, but the less he thought about it, the easier it was to accept. He pulled on a pair of chocolate brown linen pants, a long-sleeved cream-colored shirt, and a pair of soft black shoes.

  “Computer, silver the walls.”

  Now that was what a gentleman of the future looked like.

  He finished his food bar, washed up in his small bathroom, and took the elevator down to the ground for his first visit to the outside world of San Antonio.

  The door slid open to a riot of color and sound, and he stepped into a large indoor pedestrian thoroughfare. The walls flashed a variety of images his way, and as he turned to face each, different sounds broadcast in his head: the field of grain had a soundtrack of twittering birds; the crowd of naked, dancing people was accompanied by tribal drumming; and the light brown, broad-featured woman’s face filling another wall said, “…and in day two of Merrick-watch, we’ve just received a report that he’s entered the St. Mary’s Street Mall.”

  Her face disappeared, replaced by an image of his new body, standing in front of the open elevator, looking straight at himself. He raised his hand and tentatively waggled his fingers, and the image on the wall waved back. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how that was possible, so he didn’t try.

  Several of the pedestrians in the mall turned and stared.

  On one of the walls, the speaker came back and said, “And in related news, the New British Museum of Gibraltar is threatening to sue Jean-Pierre Paredes de García for as-of-yet unspecified damages. For centuries, they have been studying counterfeit Joseph Merrick bones…”

  A pack of boys ran over, wearing nothing but scores of multicolored ribbons streaming from their long hair and body paint on their naked skin. As they swarmed around him, Joseph realized that they weren’t painted—the swirls of color were embedded in their skin. He supposed it wasn’t any stranger than having four arms. “Excuse me,” Joseph said. “Can you please tell me how I could get outside?”

  The throng of boys shrieked and whirled and herded him through the building, and when Joseph looked back, he saw that they’d collected a train of followers, all murmuring and pointing at him. But escape was just ahead in the form of two glass doors, which slid open at their approach. Joseph soon found himself standing in the delicious warmth of the mid-morning sun.

  He looked up, up past the video walls, the spires, and the gondolas, all the way to the brilliant blue above. From here, the dome was practically invisible. If he unfocused his eyes, he could pretend that there was nothing between him and the sky.

  But that wasn’t the world he was living in. Out there, there was ice. He found himself shivering despite the warmth, and wrapped his arms tightly around himself, clutching at perfectly matched shoulders that felt utterly unfamiliar and wrong.

  No, he was going to enjoy this body and this opportunity. He would not waste a single moment on things he couldn’t change. He let out a long breath, then said, “Thank you. My map will guide me from here.” He looked down at the scroll and decided he would visit the Spanish Governor’s Palace. The thought of seeing something that had been built over a hundred years before he was born sounded appealing.

  But he wasn’t sure how he was going to get through this crowd.

  Why did there have to be a crowd? Hadn’t he already had more than his fill of staring crowds?

  Someone plucked at his sleeve, and he turned, his disquiet replaced by confusion the moment he caught sight of the offender. Its arms, legs, and head were swathed in red and blue fabric wraps, but its torso and pelvis were bare and devoid of any genitalia, or indeed, of any definition at all. From inside the mummy-wrapped head, a voice said, “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

  “Please, I’m no one,” Joseph said, trying to pull back and finding he had nowhere to go.

  “But you wore that body.” Wrapped fingers pointed up at a wall, and Joseph’s gaze followed. Splayed across the wall was a black and white moving image of his old body. No, an approximation of his old body. There was something not quite right about it…

  “That’s the movie,” the person said.

  “Movie? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  He looked back up at the wall just as his counterfeit self cried, “I am not an animal! I am a human being!”

  “I never said that,” Joseph said, bewildered.

  The wall changed to an image of the New York he’d woken up to just yesterday. Dr. Pemberton stood in front of the picture window and said, “Really, it would have been far more ethical to simply leave him in here. You can’t expect the man to adjust to this kind of social and technological advancement. I was very careful to craft a world that would be reasonably familiar to him, yet exciting and new at the same time. If there’s been any injustice, it’s been at the hands of the authorities who pulled him out of here.”

  Joseph spun away, unable to look at the façade he’d been imprisoned in, only to be confronted with a wall-sized view of María Luisa making love to him. “Who did this?” he cried, pointing angrily at the screen.

  He saw María Luisa on another wall, and turned. She smiled, her face radiantly unscarred, and tucked her now-whole leg up underneath her. “Well yes, of course I feel badly for using him like that, but I couldn’t think of any other way to raise the money for my plastic surgery. Can you believe that Giancarla actually offered him free surgery his very first day in the house after a year of denying it to me?”

  María Luisa had only lain with him for the money? She knew it had been his first time, and still, she… She…

  Joseph felt something wither deep inside.

  He had to get out of here. He had to get away from these horrid walls and their incessant betrayal.

  The half-mummy tugged at his sleeve again, and he yanked his arm away. “Stop staring!”

  A violet-haired woman snagged him by the arm and drew him close. “Are you kidding?” she asked, her eyes sparkling aquamarine inside of a half-moon of bone ridges. “You’re the most fascinating thing to come along in weeks. I’d love to have sex with you. I want to compare you with him.”

  She pointed to another wall.

  Joseph hesitated, then with great reluctance, looked up.

  There was his old body, sitting sprawled in a chair, with its overgrown right hand cupping a violet-haired head between its legs.

  Joseph felt his breakfast rise up his throat, and buried his face in his hands to fight it back down.

  Fingers reached for his waistband, and he slapped them away. “Leave me alone!”

  “Oh, come on,” the violet-haired woman said. “I want to do a taste test. Surely I’m prettier than that plain little bring-forward you were straining on top of last night.”

  “But I’m normal now,” Joseph said. “Why won’t you all leave me alone?”

  “You’re famous,” his old voice slurred from a wall. “Enjoy it.”

  “You’re disgusting,” Joseph sna
pped, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “Depraved.”

  “I’d think you’d be happy to see your body getting so much affection,” Jean-Pierre said. “Surely you would have wanted the same back when you were trapped in it.”

  “Never! I would never have defiled a lady in that way.”

  “It’s not defilement if she asks for it.”

  “Allowing a lady to touch that body is defilement enough.”

  “I find it sad that you’re so ashamed of who you were.”

  Joseph glared speechlessly at the image on the wall, then turned to the violet-haired woman and whispered, “Take me to an elevator.”

  Her aqua eyes twinkled. “Elevator sex. My favorite.”

  She took him by the hand and helped clear a path through the crowd, which was getting thicker by the second. Hands plucked at his clothes, and by the time they were alone in the elevator, he was missing most of the buttons off of his shirt and one of its sleeves. “Does this go to spire seventeen?”

  She pointed to a 19 etched into the wall. “No, but you can catch a skyslip to seventeen from the top floor.”

  “Top floor,” he said in what he hoped was a sufficiently commanding voice that the elevator would obey it. “Please don’t let anyone else on.”

  The woman grinned and sunk to her knees. “Ooh, a time challenge.”

  As she reached for his waistband, he collapsed to the floor, his knees tucked against his chest.

  “Oh, um…” The woman stood and backed away, clasping the vee of her neckline together in a sudden burst of modesty. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Joseph mumbled. “I’m not all right. How could I be?”

  “I…I though you were going to let me—”

  He looked up at her, momentarily speechless, then said, “How could you stomach doing that to him?”

  She shrugged. “It was new. It was different.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Novelty’s a rare thing here.”

  “And so even though I look normal now—”

  “—you’re something new. You don’t fit. That’s sexy.”

  He looked down at his black shoes. They were so covered in other people’s prints that they looked gray.