by Lina Rather
Month 2020 Volume 10 No 2
Thin Red Jellies
by
Lina Rather
When Jess died, Amy gave over her body without a second thought.
They were lucky, the doctor said. He showed Amy how close the steering wheel had come to denting Jess's cranium, shattering the bridge of her nose, pushing bone fragments into her fragile frontal lobe, bruising the precious neural tissue that let Jess talk and think and be saved. Three inches, the length of a person's thumb, the diameter of the blueberry muffin Amy was eating when she got the phone call. The taste lingered sour on her tongue and she wondered if she would ever be able to eat one again.
"In fact—" She forced herself to listen. "You're lucky it was bad enough. Impact a little lower, and she'd be looking at spinal damage and long-term rehab instead of an upload. This is the best case scenario."
He walked her to another ward two floors away from where Jess's body lay. Fewer nurses up here. They weren't necessary. This hall was server farm-cold with fans whirring behind closed doors.
The doctor brought her to a small room just like the one where they had left Jess's body. It was painted the same shade of soothing sage green with the same easy-clean armchair and the same call button affixed to the wall. Instead of a bed, it had a white metal table, and instead of a body, the table had a black machine like a wi-fi router. A barcode sticker on the side had Jess's name and hospital ID number.
Amy ran her hand over the box. It was the same temperature as a person.
"It's like sleep," the doctor said. "We've found that state of consciousness best preserves brain patterns, but they will start to degrade around the forty-eight hour mark."
Until that moment, she'd been on the edge of saying no. Six months was too short a relationship by anyone’s estimation to make this commitment. Jess had an aunt in Pittsburgh who could fly in, though it'd take time. But then she held the box and thought of Jess inside of it, dreaming, her self slowly degrading as patterns meant for flesh spun into nothingness inside the circuits, and she said yes.
~
When she woke up she felt no different at first. She had a round scab on her head the size of a pencil eraser. As the anesthesia wore off she felt a pressure in the back of her skull. Not pain. Just a presence. Like someone uncurling themselves inside her brain.
Her mouth moved without her. "Where am I?"
Amy let go of control like the doctor had taught her. She felt Jess move forward, stretch out her/their hands.
The nurse taking their vitals smiled. "You've had an accident." The IV in their arm contained something that made Amy feel warm inside, even though she knew that their heart should be racing, panic-sweat breaking out across their hands.
"I remember," Jess said. Amy’s mouth rounded unfamiliar pronunciations.
Their hands pressed against her face. Amy let them touch her body like a stranger's. She was aware, academically, of her muscles stretching and contracting, her nerves sensing touch and transmitting it up her spine. It was, she thought, just like being really, really stoned. Everything felt theoretical.
She took back control for a moment, easing Jess's consciousness to the side. "I'm here. You're in my body, for now."
She stepped back again and Jess giggled. Amy couldn't hear her thoughts, but she knew exactly what dirty joke Jess would have made. Then their body shivered.
"I died," Jess said.
"No, no!" The nurse jumped in before she was even done. This must be part of their training, Amy thought. "Only your body was damaged. That's replaceable! You are just fine."
Jess vanished and sensation flooded back. Before Amy went under she'd laid in the hospital bed reading about the procedure on her phone, scrolling through as many firsthand accounts as she could find. Some sharers could talk inside their minds, sensing each other’s emotions and sending messages across the bifurcated neurons. She reached out for Jess, and found only a smooth wall.
~
That Monday they had their appointment at the replacement fitting. Amy drove out to an anonymous office building in an industrial park. The office was tucked in between an accounting firm and an auto insurer full of people in identical khaki pants typing away. The sign read Dr. Phillip Nareem, Ph.D. Tranzior Medical Services. An electronic bell jangled happily when she pushed the door open. It did nothing to put her at ease. Jess had stayed away from the front of their mind but Amy could sense her watching.
Dr. Nareem introduced himself as Phil with the same trained joviality as the nurse in the hospital. He had Amy put her head into a machine that looked like one of those devices at the ophthalmologist that measured corneal pressure by puffing air into your eye.
"Everything's working fine!" he said. "Proof of insurance?"
She handed over her and Jess's insurance cards. Jess bought her healthcare on the marketplace at a king's ransom. The downside of being a freelancer. Amy worked for a chain of women's clothing stores, so her premiums were lower, but her benefits had shrunk over the past few years as the retail market continued its death spiral. Last night she'd stayed up reading policies, but she knew fuck-all about insurance and couldn't tell what, exactly, Catastrophic Physical Failure coverage entitled them to.
She studied Phil's face as he read the screen. Was that a frown? She couldn't tell. This office was painted the same sage as the hospital rooms and the shade made her nauseous. That was coloring her perceptions, she told herself. Bad associations.
Jess? She thought, as hard as she could. Then she wrote A-R-E Y-O-U T-H-E-R-E on her palm with her thumbnail.
Her hand moved. Y-E-S. A long pause. Phil hmm'd at the screen. N-E-R-V-O-U-S.
Phil switched off the tablet and stood up, shoving his hands in the pockets of his unnecessary white coat with the fake nonchalance of a used car salesman. "Let me take you back to our showroom and we'll discuss what insurance will cover."
Someone had tried very hard to design the showroom to look like an Apple store instead of a mad scientist's lab, but they had failed. Body parts in default-Caucasian skin hung in lit display cases. One wall had sets of skeletal armatures in titanium and resin and aeronautics-grade plastics. Another had disembodied eyes in every color a human iris had ever held and some more besides. Top of the line eyes, the display said, could be programmed to see ultraviolet light and infrared. Great for engineers!
Amy picked up what looked like a wallpaper samples book and flipped it open. It held skin samples in every tone from sub-Saharan blue-black to Scandinavian translucent-pale. The cheapest samples were just vinyl. The most expensive had actual hairs in actual pores, the patterns swirling over the four-by-four square of skin the way they did on a body. She touched one of the samples ("tanned Nordic" according to the label).
The hairs stood up.
Amy dropped the book and squeaked. It fell open on the table and she watched the hairs slowly lay back down.
Phil chuckled. "Takes a bit to get used to, doesn't it? We used to use donor skin on the high-end models, but these days all of the skin on our premium line is lab grown just for you."
Neither Amy nor Jess could think of what to say to that.
Phil guided them over to a small display in the darkest corner of the room. "With your insurance, you'd be covered for the Essentials Model."
The Essentials Model came in four body types, Male 1 and 2 and Female 1 and 2. None of them looked much like Jess. Both female models had lithe, muscular legs and hard-molded breasts. The skin felt like an American Girl doll's and titanium showed behind the knees and the elbows and the knuckles. It only came in five skin tones, though the advertisement said a custom color could be mixed for an extra charge.
Phil reached behind the head of the Female 2 model and flipped a switch. The feat
ureless white head—like an egg, Amy thought—lit up. A face appeared. The bottom layer of the head was a screen. On top of it a layer of clear plastic warped the projection into an approximation of human proportions. The face ran through its demo mode, displaying smiles and frowns and laughter and tears.
Her hands buzzed. Jess filling up space next to her. Amy retreated and let Jess bend the body's fingers and run through the demo again.
"Can these type?" Jess asked. She curled the plastic fingers around their hand. “How many words per minute?”
“Are you a writer?”
“I do ad copy.”
“Cool, cool, cool. You know, I’m something of a writer. I’ve had this idea for a historical epic about Napoleon for years.”
“Huh,” Jess said. For the first time, Amy felt a shiver of feeling that wasn’t hers—the slick squeeze of annoyance. “The typing?”
“The Essentials line preserves all the work functionality of your original body. You may experience some joint stiffness, but this model can cook, clean, type—it even has the fine motor skills to file paperwork! Its recreational functionality is more limited.” Phil rapped on the vacuum-molded torso. Clang, clang! “With the titanium skeleton, you won’t want to take this swimming. And the joint pressure cannot be adjusted for running, unlike our Everyday model.”
Amy took control and opened the replacement’s hand again. She tried to imagine what it would be like holding hands with this. The exposed metal joints would pinch, and she couldn’t get the fingers to spread wide enough to accommodate hers intertwined with them.
“I’ll go crunch the numbers on a couple different models for you,” Phil said. Clearly he worked on commission. He left them alone in the room full of dissected bodies.
“Doesn’t look much like me,” Jess said.
“No.” Jess had first caught Amy’s eye in one of the stores she worked for. A stocky, small-chested woman wearing cuffed men’s jeans and an oversized white t-shirt over no bra. She had that swagger, that swung-hipped don't-give-a-fuck walk that had always revved Amy's engine like no other key.
Jess pointed their hand at the white cotton boyshorts covering the replacement's crotch. "Think it has a nice vagina?"
"Jess!" Amy hissed, and covered her mouth before she giggled loud enough for Phil to hear in the next room.
"What? I still want to have sex." Jess's voice was light, but Amy felt something quiver. Their heartbeat quickened. "You heard him. These models have limited recreational functionality. " She stopped. Amy made them take a deep breath. Their hands stopped trembling. "How do robots get off, anyway?"
The replacement's pants parts were indeed functional, albeit clearly designed by someone whose knowledge of female anatomy came from high school health class and German porn rather than any lived experience. Jess had two choices of genital configurations. No custom mods or intersex options, unless you had a pretty penny to spend.
The replacement also didn't have a single hair anywhere on its body save for the eyebrows. Even wigs had to be custom-ordered. Jess had a choice of three standard hairstyles—long and wavy, a blunt bob, or a straight person's idea of an undercut.
The door clicked. Phil, returning with their pricing options. The Essentials model cost ten thousand dollars.
"There must be some mistake," Amy said. Jess was always the one who argued with customer service reps, but she'd relinquished control of their body and Amy couldn't sense her anywhere. "Jess's deductible is only five thousand."
"I can understand how that would be confusing!" Phil smiled again and Amy thought about putting her fist into his straight white teeth. She'd never punched anyone in her life, but Jess had, so she was sure they could figure it out. "This type of care is considered joint care between your and Jess's insurance. So you will need to reach both your deductibles before insurance kicks in."
Amy ran her finger down the page to the next model. The one that could run and came with covered joints and a molded face. The number was so high that she couldn't even comprehend it. Her brain kept pretending that there was an extra zero, that someone had surely made a mistake.
They could pay the ten thousand. They'd both been saving up to move in together. That was kind of pointless now, right? They were as close as they could possibly be.
"I'll be waiting out front," Phil said, and made his exit.
Amy made herself look at the replacement body hanging on the wall. "Do you think you could live like this?" she asked.
Jess took control of their hands and caressed the replacement's smooth mouthless face.
~
They went home without a replacement. That night they did the math. Nine months paying only one studio rent, eating for one stomach, working both their jobs, and they would probably scrape together enough for a livable model. It would be a lot of tofu and rice and beans and no nights at the movies, but it was doable. Amy kept thinking how many months' rent a body cost. When she was at work she looked at a pallet of t-shirts or a warehouse full of dresses and thought, that could buy Jess a body. Six hundred Lauren Conrad dresses at wholesale prices. One hundred and thirty-two pairs of Calvin Klein jeans.
During the day Amy went to her job and Jess worked through her assignments in their head. Sometimes Amy was having a conversation with a coworker and what came out would be The Reise campaign still needs a slogan instead of Has the Posen line shipped. When they got home Amy retreated to the back of their brain to rest while Jess typed up what she had thought about during the day. After a couple of weeks, Amy could turn off the part of her awareness that needed to see through eyes and feel through fingers, and she learned to float in the greyspace inside her head. After a few more weeks, she learned how to sleep while Jess was in control.
They still couldn't figure out how to talk to each other nonverbally. Sometimes Amy could sense Jess’s raw feelings. Sometimes she could guess based on their body's heart rate or perspiration or indigestion. Mostly it was as if Jess was still a separate body, but one whose face Amy couldn’t even read.
"I love you," she said to the ceiling, when she lay down in bed each night. Then Jess said back, "I love you, too."
As the days wore on, Jess was starting to learn how to make her Jersey-accent come out of Amy's mouth, but it still sounded almost like she was talking to herself.
The eighth Saturday, Amy made pancakes.
It had been a weekend ritual. Jess would arrive early in the morning still in pajama pants with pancake mix and orange juice and Amy would uncork champagne for mimosas. She mixed, Jess flipped, both of them still half-asleep especially on dark winter mornings like this one when the pinkish sun didn't emerge until nine.
The process was slower with just two hands. They'd forgotten the orange juice and by the time the skillet was hot they were too tipsy off straight champagne to make blueberry smiley faces.
Amy grabbed a spatula. Jess could flip pancakes one handed right from the skillet, three feet in the air like a diner line cook. Amy never had the knack.
"Here," Jess said. Amy's hands went numb to her. "Let me show you."
Their hands ladled a saucer-sized dollop of batter into the pan. The edges turned matte and the surface bubbled. The kitchen smelled like vanilla and lemon and better mornings. Jess grabbed the handle and Amy felt her hesitate. Then she snapped their wrist and their breath caught. The pancake soared and Amy thought, this is going to end terribly. And then it flipped over and landed back in the pan with the lightest sound.
"A few more weeks and you'll have muscle memory like six years of fast food breakfast service."
Jess let go and Amy slid the pancake onto a plate and covered it with a dishtowel. "Let me try."
Her first one ended up splattered across the back burner, but Jess showed her again and the fourth pancake ended up mostly in the pan. They made enough pancakes for months of Saturday brunch, but by the time the sun came up Amy had almost learned the trick of it.
~
They cut out the small things first
. The Colombian coffee Amy liked that tasted like chocolate and cost twenty dollars a pound from the small-batch local roaster. Jess's traditional Monday night curry. Books the library didn't have. A new lightbulb for the oven. They applied for a grant from a charity that provided custom hair for those who had lost their bodies. When they were denied because the charity had run out of funding for the year, Jess found another and another.
And Amy sold her beat-up Jetta, because when she drove their heart seized in their chest and they sweat through her clothes. She ignored it for weeks until one day at a red light another car blew right on through the yellow just before she was about to put her foot on the gas. She stopped breathing. Panic that wasn't hers seized her lungs and she clawed at her chest and surely this was a heart attack, this felt like a heart attack: like an icepick between her ribs and out her back. She couldn't see. Horns blared. And she felt Jess screaming inside their head, the pressure behind her eyes like her skull was going to crack.
That night when she was sure Jess was asleep she sold the Jetta and bought a bus pass. They never spoke of it again.
~
Amy woke up sore. Her eyes felt as chapped as her lips and she had to shake out her hands because her fingers were too stiff to work. She was wearing Jess's sweatpants and her own tanktop. She'd have thought it was a hangover, but she didn't have a headache even though her head wobbled heavy on her neck.
"Sorry," Jess said. "After you went to sleep I got back up to do some work."
"It's fine." She had shin splints like when she pulled all-nighters in college. Two hours sleep, felt like.
At work she was supposed to spend the day reconciling shipping accounts but the rows on the spreadsheets swam together and by ten a.m. she'd put in eyedrops three times. The warm spring sunlight coming through the window over her cubicle made her want to put her head down on the keyboard and take a nap. She went to the breakroom and filled her mug with coffee that tasted like burnt water. Two coworkers shot her sympathy smiles when she walked in and left the room before continuing their conversation. She hadn't been forthcoming about her and Jess's situation, but she knew everyone had heard the two of them talking in her cubicle. Conversations dropped to whispers when they walked by, and the office manager kept asking her about her complications.
