by Heide Goody
Taking alternate mouthfuls of cheese and raisins, I explored the house some more. Every room was brightly decorated. There was colour on every surface, with pictures on some of the walls. The carpet in the next room was thick, with a small oblong area that was even thicker. I took a closer look. It was a small piece of extra carpet so thick and furry it looked like an animal. I ran my fingers through the fur.
“Mm.”
I took my shoes off and put my feet on it. That felt so good, it demanded more.
Without wasting another moment, I removed all my clothes and rolled on the fur. The sensation on some parts of my body made me gasp with pleasure. I rolled and scrunched myself and wriggled. I wanted the rug to touch me all over.
My body wasn’t something I had given much thought to before; not in that way. I knew I had a body and I knew what all the bits were for. Hands were for holding things, feet were for walking, knees were for bending and all that. And I had been aware – obviously – that my skin was sensitive to touch. That was only practical. Even on the less explored parts of my body, it was important to know if I was touching something hot or cold or wet or sharp. It was how the body kept itself safe.
But now…
I was beginning to comprehend the sense of touch could mean more. The fibres of the rug tickled and caressed; the touch of it on my body here and here and here was exciting. It was like I had discovered a new skin, underneath the old one. It was like I had ripped off all my clothes and rolled around for the pure pleasure of it. Which I guess I had.
I had a body. It was an obvious, even trite thought, but it was a new and exciting one.
I sat up and looked at myself. I looked at my legs and my knees and the low curve of my belly.
Suddenly, I wanted to see all of myself. I jumped up and ran in search of a mirror. Upstairs, in a bedroom, I found a full-length mirror and looked at my naked body. It was oddly fascinating to see what I looked like all over – none of the mirrors in my own apartment were that big. Now, I could see what I looked like, all of me. I studied my front and then turned and craned my neck to look at myself from behind. I liked what I saw and touched and poked every part of me. I felt a certain embarrassment. Not at my nakedness – hell, no – but at the fact that I’d been living in this body for over two decades and had never bothered to get to know the neighbours, metaphorically speaking.
“Hello, elbow,” I said. “Hello, armpit. Hello, nipples. Hello, belly button.”
On the bedroom wall, there was a picture of a woman with no clothes on. I looked at it with interest, glancing back and forth between my image in the mirror and the woman’s body in the picture. My own body wasn’t quite so full in the stomach and breasts, but then the woman in the picture was reclining. I tried lying on the bed, but found that I could no longer see myself in the mirror.
I thought of Claire’s colourful clothes and opened a cupboard. There were a great many clothes, organised by colour and shape. I decided I liked the look of a red and blue striped dress and pulled it out. I put the dress on and looked in the mirror. I grinned with delight. What an amazing difference it made from the bland tunic I wore to work.
My thoughts were interrupted by an unpleasant feeling. I rubbed my stomach as it gurgled alarmingly and I groaned a little at the strange discomfort. I let out a belch and felt better. There was a gusty cheese taste in my mouth. Bacon sandwiches, cheese and raisins – fun to eat, fun to belch.
I moved over to a table with lots of little pots and sparkling objects. I picked up a bottle at random. It was half full of amber liquid and the writing on the side said Eastern Lilies. It had a spray mechanism, and when I gave a tentative squirt, the most incredible fragrance misted out. I sniffed and sprayed again. It was as if the smell from the flowers was stored up inside. I loved the idea that you could smell flowers whenever you wanted, so I picked up the bottle to take with me. I sprayed some into my mouth to see what it tasted like.
It tasted very unpleasant. I tried it again, just to be sure.
“No, that’s just horrible.”
Why was it so bad in my mouth and so wonderful when I smelled it?
I took a deep breath, suddenly in need of unperfumed air. So many sensations vied for my attention, but I couldn’t ignore the flip-flopping of my stomach. It was as if the perfume and the sudden thought of cheese and bacon all piled up inside me was just a bit too much. I felt a heavy shift inside myself, forcing me to bend over. I steadied myself on a drawer handle, and pulled it out. Inside the drawer were undergarments. It took me a moment to recognise them as such. All of my underwear was practical and durable but these looked as delicate as insect wings. They were colourful and made from exquisite fabrics. I wanted to touch them all and rub myself with them but, I realised, that was never going to happen.
My stomach signalled its intentions with a painful heave. I vomited greasy bacon and chewed-up cheesy raisins into the drawer for long, painful moments. I closed the drawer and stood up, feeling very much better. I pictured Claire pulling open the drawer and finding the mess I’d just made and I laughed. I hadn’t been sure what I wanted to do when I came in here, but this seemed right somehow.
“Time to go,” I said, wiping a blob of sick from the corner of my mouth.
I made my way out of the house in my new dress. On the way I saw a hat on a stand, paused to try it on, and looked at my reflection in another mirror. I looked so tall and interesting. The hat had feathers and angular pieces of stiff straw pointing off in different directions. I kept the hat and let myself out the front door. I walked up the road, feeling the hat bobbing on my head, inhaling lungfuls of fresh air. I felt beautiful, elegant even.
I still had the taste of vomit in my mouth. I spat into the road. Spitting was fun too.
***
Chapter 9
Near my apartment complex I saw an Empty, sitting on the kerb.
Empties were a part of everyday life. Literally. I saw them every day and had regarded them only as an inconvenience, like litter or fallen leaves. I hadn’t properly considered what they were and my mind had just blocked them out.
The Empty was a man, but only the shell of a man.
The realisation crashed into my mind and I felt sick in a way that had nothing to do with bacon or cheese or raisins. I wasn’t yet sure quite how my brain had become more fully enabled than it was when I woke up this morning, but I understood on some level that I had been opened up, granted access to something more than was allotted to me in life.
Apart from that weird and unfathomable three percent of society, everyone had a Jaffle Port and had purchased outright or bargained away unutilised processing space for that access. I was – or had been – operating on Jaffle Standard. That was fine, normal and pretty much enough for anyone. Above there was Jaffle Enhanced and Jaffle Premium for those able to pay and reclaim that processing space for their own (and frankly selfish) use. In the other direction, below Jaffle Standard, there was Jaffle Economy and Jaffle Lite. You only ended up on those if you were stripped of more processing space to pay unsettled debts or as punishment by the courts. I hadn’t really thought about them much; I didn’t work in debt reclamation and the concepts of crime and punishment were alien to me (or had been until very recently).
But what was below Jaffle Lite? What was at the lowest end of the scale? I was looking at it. The Empty – I corrected myself: the man – sat by the side of the road in a bright pink coverall. His chin and head were covered in the same uniform stubble. He had a Jaffle Port and, I guessed, he had surrendered as much of his brain’s functionality as was possible without actually killing himself. His brain function was enough to keep essential organs ticking over, but little more.
I went to him and touched his hand, but he reacted only with a voiceless grunt. Drool trickled over his cheek and his eyes gazed into the middle distance, registering nothing. Even cars and apartments had more personal awareness.
What had he done to deserve this? I looked further along the kerb. Ther
e were more Empties – men and women, all lolling in the same lifeless way. How did they even get fed? Why had I never really looked at them before?
I tried to help him get up, but he was so far away from understanding that he couldn’t work his arms and legs. I waved my hand in front of his eyes; he saw nothing.
“How can I help you?” I said.
I shouted and wept, but nothing could get through to him. I let out a wail of despair and flung my arms around the man.
“Is assistance required with this unit?”
I recoiled. For a moment I thought he had spoken but the voice had come from a stud speaker set into his lapel.
“I’m sorry?”
“Is assistance required with this unit?” said the speaker.
I shook my head.
“Supervision is en route,” said the speaker and clicked off.
I got to my feet. The man did not react to my movement, had not reacted once. Anger seethed through me. This new sensation was the one that went with the growling and the scrunched-up face, and now I revelled in it. I had much to be angry about.
“What kind of a world is this?” I demanded of no one and everyone. “How can you treat people like this and expect life to go on as normal?”
There was a faint buzz. I looked up. A cloud of insects hovered nearby. It was a Jaffle Swarm. Bees or wasps or flying beetles, each with an implant in its brain, the cloud as a whole controlled by the borrowed processing power of humans elsewhere in the world.
“Supervision present,” said the Empty’s lapel speaker. “Is there a problem with this unit?”
Tearful, I backed away.
Anger seethed through me. This new sensation was the one that went with the growling and the scrunched-up face and now I revelled in it. I had much to be angry about. What sort of a world was I living in? How could people become like this Empty while everyone else carried on as normal? I paused at that. What was normal? Even yesterday, I had thought I had a normal life, trailing around just doing my job, at the mercy of people like Claire and Helberg. People who thought they were better than me and could make fun of me. Did they also make fun of the Empties? Did they spend their whole lives feeling superior, just because they’d been able to afford a functioning brain?
I looked up at my apartment complex. Helberg had taken all of my money on the flimsiest excuse. Was that how the world worked? The people with no standards got all the money and the people with all the money got all the privilege? It just wasn’t fair. It was so unfair that I felt more anger building in me. It roiled my stomach almost as much as the bacon and cheese, but it felt like an explosion that would come out in a very different way. I stomped into the building and headed straight for the manager’s office.
“Helberg!” I yelled, but he wasn’t there. I went in and sat at his desk. Thankfully the screen was off. I turned my attention to the other stuff that was in there. A small cupboard led off to the side. It looked like maintenance supplies. The main office held a filing cabinet and an old-fashioned desktop computer. It was already switched on and logged in so I took a look at his business files. The building I was in was one of six that Helberg managed, which surprised me. I examined the other buildings on the local cameras and saw that all of them were in a very poor state of repair. I found lots of examples of ad-hoc charges to tenants and complaints that he’d ignored. One of the other buildings had been declared unfit for habitation by an annual inspection, but this appeared to have been filed and ignored.
“Well if it isn’t one of my favourite tenants,” said Helberg from the door. He was smiling. It was the same smirk that I’d started to recognise on those privileged enough to have their brains more fully enabled. It was the smirk they used when they felt superior.
I shoved past him. I ducked into the storage cupboard and saw what I needed. I picked up a short length of thick timber and hefted it. I swung it experimentally and then brought it down fast on the old computer monitor. It smashed in a very satisfying manner. I swung it again and smashed the glass in the door. I swept everything from the shelves and then smashed the shelves in half for good measure. I kicked a waste bin across the room, scattering its contents. I kicked it again, just to make a dent in the side.
I raised the length of timber high and advanced on Helberg, delighted now to see that his smirk was gone now.
“How do you like my re-decorating?” I yelled as he whimpered slightly. “You know I’m going to charge you a lot of money for this, don’t you?”
“Alice, I feel as though you have the wrong idea about me,” he said, his arms protecting his face.
“No, I have exactly the right idea about you. You rip off tenants and let their apartments fall into ruin. You take people’s money and make them live in terrible conditions. You act as if you’re so much better than us, when all you have is money that isn’t even yours! You’re a disgrace. You’ve done so many bad things that when I take you to the police, they’ll turn you into one of those Empties. I won’t feel sorry for you, even though it’s a terrible way to treat a human, because I know that you’ve done that to other people by stealing all of their money.”
“You don’t know that—” he started. I cut him off with a swipe of the timber which didn’t quite rip his desk in two. Bot parts, electronics and unsorted filing flew everywhere.
“Am I very very angry?” I yelled.
“Er, yes,” he said.
“I don’t know how to turn it off!”
“Er, what?”
I gave a scream of fury mixed with panic, hurled the chunk of wood at the wall and ran.
***
Chapter 1
I dreamed I was in a plush flying drone, accompanied by a pair of stunningly pretty girls. Except it was also my cubicle at work and there was a kangaroo looming over me.
“Babe,” Rufus drawled. “You know your aura fascinates me so much. It's got that blossoming, burgeoning thing going on. I want to reach out and touch it.”
His hands groped across the two girls. Those hands weren't seeking an aura, they were seeking out breasts.
“Hey babes!” said Rufus. “Your auras are going wild. What say we throw caution to the wind and see whether our chakras align if we all get naked?”
The kangaroo by the cubicle wall looked powerful and fierce. It gave off an animal stink which did not disgust me, but fascinated me. It was more real than anything I had experienced in my life. Except, it wasn’t a kangaroo anymore; it was Levi from work.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
I focused on his arms, which were really quite muscular now. It was unusual for him to be without a jacket, but then I saw it hanging from the tip of his finger.
“There’s no rule against us getting naked, Alice,” he said solemnly, his gaze upon me. “Although we need to take care not to discard our clothes anywhere that might create a trip hazard.”
In my dream I was nodding. Levi carefully put his jacket over the back of my chair and reached out to me. He made a slow chopping movement with his hand. “Advanced practitioners must exercise restraint and secrecy.”
I took his hand and stood up, close to him. The women were completely identical now. Bland faces, huge breasts and pneumatic bottoms.
Rufus slipped his fingers inside their clothes. A nipple stiffened against both sets of fingers and he smiled, feeling unstoppable.
Levi’s little moustache was right in front of me and I couldn’t help wondering whether it would tickle my lips.
“We’re nearly there!” said one of the girls, excitedly.
Do yoooou liiike thaaaat? asked the blue whale.
***
“Alice! Alice!”
I woke to find Hattie shaking me by the shoulder. I grunted and tried to roll out of reach.
“Alice, you need to wake up!” Hattie insisted. “And you really need to stop making those noises.”
I couldn’t seem to surface. My head spun and I wondered if the need to vomit was as close as I suspected. I op
ened my eyes and light stabbed painfully at my delicate brain. Hattie’s face loomed over me, distorted with anxiety.
“What noises?” I muttered.
“You were moaning.”
“Moaning?”
“Like…” Hattie made a noise. It was a bit like the hoot of that irritating blue whale. It was a lot like the moans and grunts the naked people made in the videos Helberg watched.
Helberg…? Helberg loomed large in my memory but I couldn’t quite remember why.
“But you have to come quickly,” said Hattie. “There’s something very strange on top of the bean dispenser. I’m not sure if it’s alive.”
I rubbed a hand across my face as memories of the previous day paraded through my mind. The lies I’d told Paulette. My behaviour in the street. The break-in. The food. The clothes.
“Oh, no…”
What I had done to Helberg’s office.
The parade of memories stuttered and stalled and became a horrific piled up mess of recollections. A feeling burned deep inside me. It felt like I was going to be sick, but not physically. It was a horrid and unshiftable desire for things to be different from what they currently were.
And on top of that nameless sensation there were the feelings aroused within me by those peculiar dreams.
I assured Hattie I would be along in a few minutes and hauled myself out of bed. I looked around for my Jaffle tunic and realised I’d left it at Claire’s house. I held up the colourful dress to admire it once more. I would love to wear it to the office, but knew that it would be a terrible idea. I dug out a spare tunic and hung the dress at the back of the cupboard, well out of sight. I tried swishing and prancing in my tunic, but it just wasn’t the same. That gorgeous gauzy fabric felt so special against my skin, that I couldn’t wait to wear it again. Perhaps find some other clothes that made me feel that way. The colours too! I peeked another look at the dress, just to see the colours again. Could I put into words how colourful things made me feel? Excitement? Whatever it was, the apartment that Hattie and I shared was very lacking in colour. It made me a little bit sad to look around and see that everything was the same boring shade.
