By David Accampo

Today my name is Leopold Atari. My father, a bronze ambassador from Nigeria, carries the same wide cheek bones and square set jaw. My eyes will be my mother’s. She is Bao Jiaosheng, a Chinese diplomat who met my father at a political conference in Geneva. Her smooth, lighter complexion turns my skin into creamy coffee. They are strong, cultured parents. We drink tea in the balmy Paris afternoons and discuss political affairs. My father laughs and tousles my hair, the silky black mane I received from my mother.

Freeze that moment on the balcony of our apartment, caught in the dappled sunlight and the mild breeze. Ambassador Atari’s head is thrown back, wide mouth agape. Bao Jiaosheng remains calm as she lifts a porcelain cup of steaming plum tea to her lips. But there is laughter in her almond eyes as she crinkles her tiny nose at me.

This is the photograph of Leopold Atari’s life.

Staring at the string of protein sequences scrolling down the screen, I can almost see Leopold’s life unfold in the strange array of glowing letters. I can hear my father’s rich laughter, rising in his throat like a hunting lion.

Leopold, my African prince.

Leopold is happy.

Leopold is a winner, not like poor Skip Trace.

What a disappointment he turned out to be. Despite the wonderfully bushy single line of eyebrow and the aquiline nose. Skip’s eyes were beady and sunken. I lean forward on the edge of the examination bed and look at the face in staring back at me in the small circular mirror on the wall.

Coward, I say to Skip’s reflection. Loser.

How could I not have noticed that when I selected Skip’s traits? I look terrible with squinty little dots for eyes. And Skip’s alabaster skin sounded better than it looked — fluorescent lights are not complimentary.

I push my fingers up against the soft skin of my face, stretch the flesh tight across Skip’s sullen cheekbones.

“I am a Nubian god,” I tell Dr. Max while he pulls up the appropriate code sequences, “I am a bronzed warrior with the ageless fluidity of a Chinese courtesan.”

“Male or female?” asks Dr. Max as he checks off a series of codes, his perfectly tanned hands skimming across the screen. “Both?”

I flash him a sinister glare, but I’m afraid it’s lost under Skip’s squinting gaze. Oh, to be rid of these beady little things! Dr. Max simply must remember the hermaphrodite fiasco. The underwear never fit quite right, and nothing looked good in a mini-dress. The anatomy didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.

Maybe if everything had been positioned just a bit different, and I could have tucked myself into myself…but I suppose I never would have left the house that way. I stifle a giggle as Dr. Max programs the nannites with Leopold’s genetic sequence.

I lie back on the bed and relax, one last deep breath through Skip’s wonderfully angular nose. “Make me Leopold Atari,” I say, “I’ve got a party to attend.”

There is a sharp sting as the syringe breaks the skin, a chill as the cold solution enters my bloodstream and begins to change me.

Make me as I never was.

I close my eyes and focus on the picture of Leopold’s father and mother shadow-flecked in the afternoon sun. What was the joke? I wonder as my skin flushes and the tiny robots inside me begin to work. A savvy political skewering of one of my father’s rivals? How urbane, my mother seems to intonate with a soft flutter of long black lashes. The slight arch of a delicate eyebrow. The tiny machines turn off my nerve endings as skin stretches to accommodate the new bone structure. I drift off a bit, dreaming of Paris and tea and my father’s rich laughter and a joke I will never know…

+ + + + +

Leopold makes his debut at The Club. Midnight. Not too early, not too late. I slide into the club like a panther, almond eyes slipping around the room, checking out the competition.

Heavy drum and bass throbs, hammering my chiseled physique. But these are the beats of my ancestors, early African drums filtered and synthesized, just like me. Leopold Atari: African prince, Nubian god, sleek cocoa-skinned panther. I am equally at home in this club or chatting with politicos on the terrace of some grand hotel. I chuckle at my own imagined joke, a throaty growl like my imagined father, and I slowly cruise across the dance floor, eyes peeled for familiar faces that I will never recognize.

I hit the bar, head moving imperceptibly to the drums in my head and heart and signal to the bartender, a Low man sporting a soft chin and acne-scarred cheeks. He smiles at me, and I noticed he has perfect teeth; orthodontics, no doubt, or some other form of barbarism. He’ll get behind the bar, but he’s not fooling anyone.

“Nice smile,” I say. He blushes and looks down; I see the faint white scar at his hairline. A face lift? Won’t they ever learn? He probably had some exquisite jowls that would have at least been a conversation starter.

The Low Towners never get it; they imagine the body can be carved and shaped to fit some ideal standard of perfect beauty. But beauty isn’t perfect; there’s no blueprint for the ultimate form. Beauty is in the change, the evolution, the reworking of genetic codes to bring out the eyes, the lips, the shell of the ears. Beauty is about the new. The unfamiliar. I wish I could tell them, don’t get those implants, baby, or your breasts will look like that for years. And who wants that?

I am drinking vodka doused in something thick and pink with a slightly chemical aftertaste. I don’t know what it is, but I like the way the bright pink stands out against my dark skin under the dull glow of the dance floor lights. I sip the pink and scan the floor, a strobe flash of writhing bodies, perfect skeletons animated by perfect muscles. White teeth glow. Tanned skin shines. And then I see Franklin Dynamo, still wearing that colossal grotesque that was so popular last year. Is he following the trend or trying to start it again. I stifle a laugh that brings the pink back up into my throat.

You’re not fooling anyone, darling. No one has the nerve to tell you that your twisted skeletal frame is so outstyled.

His brick-like hands sweep past his thighs as his bulging arms flirt against the driving drum and bass. Anatomically proportioned bodies sweep away, keeping their distance. I had a body like Franklin’s once; I remember cruising down the Avenue, my enormous square forehead jutting out like a road sign. It was fun for a time, our foray into the grotesquerie of body attributes that had long since fallen away. I found an old digital video archive about sideshow freaks—such wonderful diversity! The bearded lady, the lobster boy, the pinheads. Such strange and marvelous bodies, twisted by nature without the luxury of body-type engineering. I longed to be a bearded woman, a pinheaded boy…I would get their attention, turn their heads…

You’ll never believe what I have become.

You’ve never seen a thing like me before.

I finally chose the body of a giant man-child, his dumb expression of wonderment was my coat of armor. I was Reinhold Denmark, Boy Giant, and for a few brief moments I was free.

And then everyone wanted to be a freak, and it just became overbearing. Yes, yes, you’re a wolf-faced albino with webbed fingers and a fin on your head. We get it. It’s so tired, baby. Be true to yourself. I now had long blonde hair and a thin, lanky body with perfect upturned breasts, and an incredible pear-shaped ass. Wanda Lithesome was born out of that grotesquerie, and she was a star.

Until that got old, too.

It becomes tiresome at times, to keep yourself fresh and new for the world. But what’s the other option? Settle down in some nice shape for the rest of your life? Just like your parents did? I wouldn’t be caught dead in the same body for more than a year. I mean you are you kidding? You’d be laughed out of The Club.

Then you’d really be alone.

Just like Franklin.

Franklin brushes by me on the way to the bar, thick wrists swaying as he ambles up to the counter. The thick muscles of his jaw stretch and contract as he speaks, that huge underbite slamming open and shut like some sort of animal trap. As he orders his drink from the bartender I begin to wonder if the body form hasn’t finally begun to warp his mind.

You hear about those things, about perceptions finally changing and other citizens leaving the club scene to live outside the City limits in small shacks made from dried mud and straw. At least that’s what I hear. We call it shifting into Low gear; it’s a simple form of regression that takes over when you can’t hack the scene anymore. It’s sad really.

I picture Franklin in the forest, huddled in the brush, snatching small birds from the air with his long fingers and tossing them into his gaping maw, blood and feathers on stuck to the tiny pearl teeth jutting from his enormous lower jaw.

The bartender slides him a tall drink that glows green, and Franklin smiles, his leathery white skin creasing at horrid angles. He rakes his fingers through the tuft of orange hair on top of his head, and the move looks suddenly familiar.

Oh my god.

I think I slept with Franklin.

Once. Before. We met at the club. I was Rita Torpedo, she of the dimpled cheeks and forty-four DD breasts. Like cannons, they were. Keeping the dance floor at bay. Torpedoes away! They even made a song about me. I had to fade away quickly after that. Rita became a character all her own. She began to slip away from me, I was shedding her like a skin. She was no longer mine.

Rita Torpedo was public domain.

And Franklin was…what was he–? A tanned blonde with razor teeth and baby smooth skin…Danny Diamond, I think he called himself. I remember that smooth stroke of the hair, hey baby, where you sleeping tonight?

That sparkling row of teeth!

No, it couldn’t be him. Couldn’t be.

Understand, I don’t like to kiss and tell. I’m a one person person, if you know what I mean. It may only be for a night or three, but when I’m yours, I am all yours…forty-four DDs and all—if those happen to come with the trait-package, that is.

Sign up now for the delicious deluxe package: Standing tall at six feet, 7 inches, the bronze warrior, Leopold Atari, will be the king of your jungle, baby. Rowrrr. I am man, hear me purr like a happy cat.

Time to move on the dance floor. Under the strobes, my sleek body begins to sway. I am a panther, a lion, a tawny jungle cat. Politician by day, animal by night. I am Leopold Atari. I invent a new dance for myself. If anyone asks, it is the dance of my native tribesmen in Nigeria. Or was it Nairobi? I wonder if they have tribes in Nairobi. It sounds more tribal. Yes. Nairobi.

I am Leopold Atari, my father is the ambassador. I was raised in a strict private school, but I used to sneak past the security and head down town to the red light districts.

Yes, I’m sure they have those. In Nairobi. Doesn’t everyone? Don’t ruin my story, honey. It’s as real as I say it is.

Anyway, young Leopold hangs out in these speakeasies in Bwanatown, a large city in Nairobi, and he listens to jazz and smokes very fine weed and drinks whiskey. He loses his virginity there, to a large woman named Marie St. Claire, who moved from the Caribbean to Africa to rediscover her roots. She began singing at one of these speakeasies. Her room is draped in red because it’s the color of love. She smells like patchouli and her pendulous breast swing hypnotically as she rides me to climax after climax. Her pubic hair is thick and kinky, forming a perfect arrow point that ends at her navel. We smoke another joint, and head back to the speakeasy, a ramshackle house made from cheap wood and corrugated iron. It leaks when it rains, and it leans sharply on one side.

Oh yeah, and there are speakeasies in Nairobi because this was when alcohol and drugs were illegal. Before Armand Disco led the revolution and made all the narcotics legal, and invented the weather modulation machines that allowed the arid plains to become rich and fertile.

Don’t ruin my story. What do you know of Nairobi? Exactly, just like this little blonde thing. I’m making eye contact now, my hips moving in circles, in time to the music…our eyes meet, and we match rhythm, moving slowly closer and closer…

Later in the bathroom, she unzips my fly, strokes my erection, and studies my skin.

“This is nice. This is nice.”

“Mmmm,” I say.

“Did you write this sequence yourself?”

“Little of this, little of that,” I say. Her small hands move softly up and down. Leopold approves. I’m about to roar like a jungle cat. I growl and bare my fangs.

“Oooh. You like that, huh?”

“What’s your name, baby?”

“Marguerita Ghostly,” she says, and then stops talking as she takes me into her mouth, softly, softly, her tongue flitting like a phantom. Marguerita. My little ghost.

My breath catches.

And I open my eyes. She is gone. Just another night at the club.

+ + + + +

I go home alone. Club music blares from the speakers; I forgot I had downlinked from the Club music database. I tell the stereo to shut the hell up and hit the bed, still drunk on pink vodka. The room spins. Chemicals burn my throat.

Maybe Leopold is not a drinker. Maybe he’s an alcoholic. The doctors aren’t supposed to do that, but mistakes happen. You hear these things. The girl who fell in love with a Low man. Her parents took her to a back alley doctor. I hear it was a rusty syringe full of outdated nannites running on an old Operating System that can’t read the fine sequence adjustments of modern Rewrite software. They fucked up her head, filled up with feelings and emotions she never knew—just to drown out the love.

They say she killed her parents by loading their drinks with an illegal nannite virus at a cocktail party. They unraveled in front of everyone. Just turned into goo. That’s what they say in the bathrooms, at the cafes, behind closed doors when you meet a partner and you need something to say.

What’s you sequence? Who’s your doctor? Did you hear about the girl with the fucked up brain patterns…?

I heard it was a boy. A lovely boy with a shock of black hair that stood up like a wire brush.

Could be. Could be. Could have been both.

These are the stories we tell.

Like the one about the detective who came to the clubs searching for clues to a murder. A Low girl killed by a Citizen. Some say he was the same Low man who loved the Girl With The Fucked-Up Brain Genes. I don’t know. Seems like a stretch to me.

Like, I said, these are stories…the things we tell each other after orgasm, before we can leave and go home again. Return to nothing.

I sit up and instantly need to vomit. I rush to the toilet and spew pink liquid into the bowl. Leopold. Maybe he’s allergic to alcohol.

Maybe I need to get rid of Leopold.

“Goodnight Leopold,” I say, and the lights fade to black. The volume on the stereo fades up some gentle, almost imperceptible jazz music. I lay back on my bed, head still wobbling slightly from the nausea and the lack of noise. I close my eyes and listen to faint whisper of the music. I can’t sleep in silence. I like to pretend that someone else is here. Maybe in the living room. Maybe it’s my mother and father, paying a brief visit on their way to the mountains for a weekend in the family cabin. My father smiles, tilts his head to listen to the sound from my room. I lay still, pretending to sleep. He glances down at my mother, who is watching a talk show hosted by a chimpanzee with a voice simulator. My mother enjoys the animal hosted shows—she thinks they are good for the animals’ esteem issues. She rests her small head across my father’s broad chest, a wave of sleek black hair fanned about her. She looks up at his dark features in the blue light of the video screens. She smiles slightly, her emotions as indiscernible as ever, and turns back to the show. My father closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose.

Eventually, I fall asleep for real.

+ + + + +

Dr. Max prepares the syringe. He taps it, an invisible swirl of tiny robots buzz around inside. The display monitor scrolls a seemingly endless series of codes, adenine, guanine, cytosine…letters and numbers that describe me and who I am, and who I will be.

“What do you want to be today?” asks Dr. Max.

“I want to be happy.”

“What will make you happy?”

“I’m hoping you can tell me, doctor.”

He rubs his squared jaw and thinks for a moment.

“Well,” says Dr. Max, fingers rifling across the keyboard and pulling up reference files. They flash onto the monitor in short bursts of pale light. “We can add some smile lines. Dimples, maybe. Widen the cheek bones. Maybe a slight overbite that allows the teeth to extrude a bit. Those are very nice teeth.”

“Thank you. You made them.”

“God made them. I just gave them to you.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re not happy.”

“Oh, theology. Please. This is tiresome, Dr. Max.”

“What would make you happy?”

“Change my mind.”

Dr. Max leans back in his chair and shifts his legs. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Haven’t you ever wondered…haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to see the world through someone else’s eyes?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t, Leopold.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay. Jonathan.”

“I don’t know a Jonathan.”

Dr. Max smiles. He chuckles to himself. “Okay,” he says, “Okay. Who are you today?”

I close my eyes, and I see….I see a man with no face at all. Smooth and perfect, a rolling contour of flesh.

“I want you to take away my face.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” says Dr. Max staring into his display screen.

“I don’t want to be anyone today.”

Dr. Max grabs my wrist. I haven’t been touched since my little ghost put me in her mouth and sucked me into her. He swings around in his chair, leaning in close to my face. “Listen,” he says, and I can smell synthetic onion spice on his breath. “I can make you anybody you want to be. You have every opportunity in the world. Who are you going to be? Who are you?”

I pull my wrist away, shocked at the Leopold’s strength. I push Dr. Max away, his chair sliding back and catching on the thick black mat by his computer. The chair falls over, and Max tumbles to the ground, hitting his head against the sequencing station.

“Hey, hey–!” shouts Dr. Max, rubbing his sandy blonde hair, just beginning to streak with a patriarchal gray.

But I’m already gone.

+ + + + +

I ride the tube for hours after that. I lean from my plush seat and look down through the clear shaft as we bullet over Low Town. The city is dark and low, like a sunken black cancer hiding from the light of the Spires. I can’t see them from up here, but I imagine the Low men huddling for warmth around trash can fires in trash strewn alleyways.

I’ve never been to Low Town, but I’ve heard stories.

You know how stories are.

I imagine them, their dirty, frozen faces, and I wonder how they can possibly come to terms with just one form. In Low Town, you are who you are from the moment you are born. Maybe it’s easier, maybe it’s better just to know.

I look down at my dark hands, the thick muscles pushing wormlike veins to the surface of my skin. Leopold is falling away from me, slipping away…

He’s just a mask.

I try to hold onto the picture of his father, head thrown back, laughing…but the picture is fading, fading slowly in the afternoon sun…I can barely see his face anymore. His skin is all but ashen now. The laughter has long since died away.

Eventually, the tube circles me back to The Spires, back to The Avenue. I exit the tube and wander the street, afraid to be noticed. Everyone saw Leopold last night. The Club was spilling over. Leopold exists; he’s somebody. At least to them. I’m trying to hide in his body and it feels large and awkward and difficult to position. This is not who I am. I hunch over and pull my coat around me.

I want to melt away.

Leopold’s legs give way underneath me and I tumble to the sidewalk.

He’s gone.

This is not my body anymore.

Cross the name from the list.

Leopold is dead.

I look at the dead hands in front of me. A gentle rain begins to fall, a preprogrammed mist designed to clean the streets. That means it’s Thursday, and I’m caught with out my umbrella. The rain hangs in the air, catching the light of the holographic signs displays, creating halos of fluorescent green, blue, and purple. Lights flicker on down the Avenue, and I watch as Citizens duck into storefronts, escaping the gentle mist. Leopold’s face is wet, rain water sliding down the firm contours of his cheeks, but I can hardly feel it.

Citizens scurry, making careful circles around my slumped body as if I am some Low Town man who made it up to the Spires.

I want to turn to dust and be carried away on the rain. Down into the gutters and the sewage ducts. Pumped down into Low Town.

A large black boot lands by my head. I strain and to look up, my vision clouded be the rain filling in the sockets of my eyes. A large shape stands over me. It bends, blocking out the sky, and I see the hideous features of Franklin Dynamo, his tiny pearl teeth jutting from the lower jaw, chewing on the upper lip. His long fingers clutch at my coat, and he pulls me up into a sitting position. He looks into my eyes and hauls me to my feet.

I can’t even keep my eyes open any longer.

Leopold.

Leopold.

Where have you gone?

Why have you forsaken me?

And everything fades to black.

+ + + + +

I wake up in a lovely forest, a gentle breeze tickling my forehead and nose. Birds twitter and chirp in the distance and bright sunlight cascades across my body, absorbing into my dark skin and warming my weary muscles.

And a thought crosses my mind. Who are you? But it drifts gently away, unanswered.

Forgotten.

I relax and stare up at the little puffs of white cloud, creeping slowly across the blue sky.

But then the ceiling flickers; I realize I’m in someone else’s loft, under a holographic nature display. The birds stop singing, and there is the mechanical hum of a door sliding back.

Franklin Dynamo steps into the field. I think of bloody feathers, but I don’t know why.

“Ah, you’re awake,” he says. “I was worried.”

And the first thing I think is: I can’t let anyone know he took me home.

I sit up, looking down at my body. Leopold. You bastard.

“I know you,” I say. “Franklin Dynamo. I’ve seen you around.”

Franklin laughs, a gruff little snort. His sunken eyes twinkle as he sets them on me.

“How are you feeling?” He asks. “Do you need a doctor?”

“I think these genes are dirty.” I wring my hands at him, these great brown paws.

“I know the feeling.”

I look at him, raise a single dark brow like my nonexistent Asian mother would have.

“That’s an…interesting form.”

“A little out of date, don’t you think?” He knows he’s being taunted. What is he after?

“I wasn’t going to say it, but…”

He raises his head and laughs, a long, rumbling laugh that makes me think of a lion hunter from Nairobi that I will never know.

“I’ve been watching you.”

I stand up, stretching out my tall frame, flexing my rippling muscles. I can feel his eyes on me.

“Oh, have you?” I don’t mean to flirt. It’s automatic. I don’t even usually do the same-sex thing. It’s a parts thing.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Just from The Club. The last few months. You haven’t changed.”

He pauses to look at his gargantuan white hands, the long fingers curling slowly like spider legs. He has six fingers on each hand. I didn’t notice that before. He looks up again, runs his eyes down my frame. “You have,” he says.

This is it, I think. He remembers Rita. He is Danny Diamond, and he’s going to remember it all…our night together.

“Do you remember me, Jonathan?” He says, cocking his head and whistling at the sky. The room hums and the forest flickers and dissolves. Soft lights flow from the screen in gentle waves as the room comes back into focus.

“Johnathan,” he repeats.

“Where did you hear that name?” I ask, sitting up.

“You told me,” he says. His eyes do not waver. He sits calmly, watching me.

Waiting.

And I can’t believe I forgot this.

This was before Leopold. Before Skip. Before Rita and Reinhold and Wanda and Courtney Delacroix.

This was lifetimes ago.

And Franklin was little red headed number named Melissa Dahl.

She loved me. What a dirty word love is. It’s the bandage over the cancer of dependency and need, of every little jealousy and betrayal. It’ just a cover up, a little foundation to smooth the skin and bring out the cheekbones. But it’s a killer, don’t ever let it fool you.

We did away with love so long ago, it’s just a fable told at the Club when the music lulls and the conversation runs out. Killing love was the best thing we ever did. Better than curing cancer, even. And not nearly as expensive. We just ignored the fucker and it went away.

What is love, anyway?

You show me the genetic sequence for love, and I’ll show you a crackpot who’s been using his own nano-tech for too long.

But there was Melissa. Sweet, fawning Melissa.

She called me Roger. Roger Orbit. Until the night I told her otherwise.

Roger was tall and lean and perfectly tanned. He had a chiseled body and piercing blue eyes. Classic good looks, nothing too fancy or exotic, just a solid frat boy cocktail. His body went well with all my clothes. A hit at The Club. Of course. It was easy to be Roger. I may have kept on being Roger if it wasn’t for Melissa.

Melissa, Melissa…let me paint the picture:

A night at the club, bebop jazz was back in style that week, so the lighting was dim, a single spotlight on the stage where a Low Towner was blowing the horn. For authenticity, you know. Those Low men know how to play the blues. The only other light was from the flicker holographic candles set atop each of the small circular tables that littered the dance floor. Occasionally, someone would walk in with disco attire and an Asian body type, stopping short when they found themselves in a dimly lit lounge. Someone who recognized them would greet them and politely whisper. The rest of us would sneer and turn back to the stage.

Asian Disco was last month.

Melissa was a kinky redhead with dark skin and green eyes. It was an interesting mix, timeless, a little of this, a little of that. But it wasn’t so much the body or the face or the hair. It was the smile. I wanted that smile. I wanted to unlock that code…was it the faint smile lines, the dimples, the perfectly white teeth? That smile dazzled me. It wasn’t any of those things, was it? I tried them all later. Nothing worked.

Melissa was happy.

I sat down at out table. I watched her quietly as she listened to the music. Occasionally, she would turn, nod ever so slightly, and then smile. I almost couldn’t stand it. I had to know.

“What’s your code, baby?” It wasn’t the best line in the world, but I had to start somewhere. Roger Orbit was just that type of guy.

She blushed, warm red spots on her soft cheeks. The smile remained but her eyes dropped. “All natural,” she said.

“Factory specs?” I said.

Her lips parted in a tiny laugh. She said something, but it was lost in the sudden applause as the trumpeter finished his improvisational solo.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, but I didn’t know what else to say. Say something, Roger. Say something.

“I’ve got to get a DNA sample.” The words slipped from me amidst the murmur of conversation around us. I tried to stop it, but Roger has already spoken. I was mortified.

Melissa laughed and ran her fingers down her long neck.

Later, in bed, I curled up against her, tracing my square fingers along the delicate curve of her spine. Her skin was soft, silky smooth. She tensed at my touch. I loved the way she moved, so comfortable in her own skin.

“Ticklish,” she murmured sleepily from beneath the tousled red flame of her hair.

Our hands met, sitting together. I looked at Roger’s hands. Something didn’t feel quite right. That was the first time I really noticed the distance. For several seconds I couldn’t move my hand. My fingers lay dead against her palm, clasping her as if rigor mortis had set in. I couldn’t feel her touch.

She opened her eyes. “Roger? You’re trembling.”

I blinked and looked at her. The sensation returned. I returned.

“Is something wrong, Roger?”

“Jonathan,” I said suddenly. I blurted it really. I couldn’t stop myself. “My name is Jonathan.”

She leaned back on her hands, the sheet sliding away from her to expose her pale chest and firm breasts, the pink nipples upturned in the carefully modulated moonlight.

“Jonathan,” she purred, her green eyes setting on mine. I couldn’t look away. “You’ll have to tell me what happened to Roger. I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been ditched.”

I laughed, but it was nervous and quick, too quick. She caught me, reached over, stroked my cheek. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Jonathan. I’m Melissa. And while Roger was pretty…satisfying, I think I might need you to…finish the job, Jonathan. If you know what I mean.”

I grinned and pulled the remaining corner of the sheet away from her. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” I said.

Oh god. I hope I have better lines than that now. That was just horrid. It must have been Roger. What a tramp he was.

Staring at Franklin Dynamo now, I can see only the faintest trace of Melissa. Even the smile is gone.

Melissa was the closest thing I ever had to that dreaded “L” word that we all try to avoid. But I couldn’t get enough of her. Usually, I get bored after a couple of nights.

At first I thought I was just jealous of her genetic code. I mean, that smile! That smile!

I wish I could say the relationship ended well, but you know how it is. The longer you stay with someone the messier it gets. That’s why we opt for furtive gropings in the dark corners of the dance floor. Much healthier. And more fun.

But we were spending so much time together. I began to get restless. I wanted to wipe that smile off her face, replace it with something else. She looked good with Roger, they complemented each other like all attractive couples, but now that I was a hairless albino named Xerxes Prime, Melissa Dahl just didn’t quite fit. Like leopard-spotted, crushed velvet bell-bottoms with a plastic tartan rain slicker. You just can’t pull that off. I kept suggesting different gene traits, you know, just to try something different. It’s still you, I would say. But variety is the spice of life. Who would wear the same pair of shoes every day of their life? Especially if they don’t match your frame size and skin color.

Baby, I’ve changed body types just to wear a killer set of neon blue stiletto heels.

Wrong complexion and the neon just wipes you out.

Now…here she is. Franklin Dynamo. A horribly twisted monster who has been out of fashion for nearly a year. I’m longing for that smile, that grade-A, one hundred percent, all-natural smile—that Melissa smile—but all I get is the twinkling pearls of teeth flashing out from that massive lower jaw. Slamming open and shut and he speaks.

And all I can do is lie.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I drop my gaze to the floor, study the dim white shimmer of the plastic tile while I listen to Franklin exhale slowly.

“Perhaps…” starts the low, growling voice, “perhaps…you had better go now.”

I look up, across the small room, into the creature’s eyes. They are moist. They shine in the soft yellow mood lighting that began when Franklin’s room sensed the change in our respiration, heart rate, and voice tone. For a moment, for a moment, I recall the night I left Melissa Dahl behind. By then I was Velvet Godsend, a latin seductress with a cascade of dark curls and a full, pear-shaped ass. Melissa had become Brentwood Harbinger, a thin blonde man with piercing blue eyes and a wide, angular face. Brentwood tried to smile, but it was never the same. It wasn’t the dimples, it wasn’t the smile lines, the straight row of square teeth.

It wasn’t anything, but it was everything.

Melissa had become Brentwood and forgotten how to smile.

It was easy to leave Brentwood. I disappeared across the dance floor, lost behind the writhing bodies of the retro pop dance scene…black light, strobe light, spotlight…gone.

I traded in the ass and the curls the next day and didn’t look back.

I am watching Franklin Dynamo, looking for some trace of that smile, but when the corners of Franklin mouth turn up, his skin creases and folds in sharp, asymmetric angles.

I can’t help thinking: I did this to you.

So, I put on my shirt and leave. No strobe, no black light, no spotlight. No music. Just slide out the door and be on your way.

“Goodbye, Jonathan,” I hear Franklin whisper as I leave. I turn back, an awkward spin on one clumsy leg (damn your lameness, Leopold Atari), but the metal door slides into place with a hiss. The elevator drops me down quickly, and as I pass the one-hundred-twelfth floor, I realize I never even saw the apartment number.

On the tube I pull my minicomputer from my pocket, place the display lens over my eye, and tap my finger to activate the virtual keyboard. I trawl webspace for new gene traits. I’ve got an image in my head; I need a new body and I need it now. I begin to assemble a new sequence. A new me. I place an order to Dr. Max and see if he can fit me in this afternoon.

+ + + + +

Dr. Max looks at me and shakes his head. My mouth is hanging open, but I don’t know if that’s Leopold or just my own astonishment.

“This body isn’t working, Dr. Max,” my voice sounds slightly shrill and it puts me out of phase with Leopold for a moment. I struggle to make my jaw work while Dr. Max stares at me.

“You see? You see? These genes are dirty.”

Dr. Max shakes his head. “Your parents have frozen your account.”

“My parents are in Geneva.” No, they aren’t.

“When was the last time you spoke with them?”

I look at Dr. Max and pretend that my mouth has stopped working again. I don’t want him to know I can’t even remember my father’s name right now. “I don’t need their permission,” I finally say.

“Actually, you do. It’s their money, Jonathan—“

“Stop calling me that! What is it with you people? You don’t know who I am! You don’t know me!”

“I think the time for games is over, son.”

There is genuine concern in Dr. Max’s clear blue eyes. Periwinkle. His eyes are periwinkle. It’s a very nice shade. Dr. Max has been the one constant in my life, as long as I can remember. Like a father.

“Maybe, maybe you can use your own DNA…write me a new code, Dr. Max. Maybe…maybe…”

He’s just shaking his head again. He reaches over, touches Leopold’s shoulder. I flinch at the contact, but Leopold doesn’t waver; he tenses.

Dr. Max says he’s sorry, says he just can’t help me anymore. These things happen sometimes, he says. I can recommend a good resequencing therapist, he adds, right before I punch him in the face.

Or, right before Leopold did. Showing his true colors at last. The bastard. For all his upbringing, for all his nobility, Leopold is just another nasty street thug.

There is blood on my dark knuckles and somewhere in my head Bao Jiaosheng bows her head in disappointment. Her black hair falls across her face as she slowly backs away from the sun-dappled terrace that has grown so faint and dim in my mind. She disappears into the shadows.

Dr. Max is unconscious, lying like a rag doll, half inside his office door. Dark red blood trickles from his nose and lips, sliding slowly down his tanned cheek. I reach down and touch the blood with my fingers. Are you in there, tiny robots? Can you make me like him? Can you make me the son of Archibald Max? That would make it all okay, wouldn’t it?

Every son hits his father, once in his life.

And suddenly, I remember this:

My father’s name is Kent. He has brown eyes and a dimple in his chin. I slapped him across the face once. When I was ten. When I was Jonathan. I don’t even remember why. I just remember the rough scratch of his salt and pepper stubble. My hand was stung with the impact. He was shocked. His brown eyes lucid and unwavering as I withdrew my hand and stared up at him. I remember bright white light and the sharp slap as his open hand smacked across my face. Who do you think you are? he said. You’re no son of mine.

I’m standing over Dr. Max with his blood on my hands.

I am not Ambassador M’butu Atari’s son.

I am not the dishonorable offspring of Bao Jiaosheng.

Archibald Max has no children.

Kent Thomas disowned his firstborn son when he was ten years old.

I have no genes to call my own. I have no body. I am nobody.

I am the bastard son of empty space. A gaping black hole.

Below me, Dr. Max begins to stir.

I am nobody, and I disappear.

+ + + + +

Low Town is dark; it crawls with shadows, hides from the glaring lights of The Spires above. The air is hot, stale; a thick haze of pollution hangs over everything, coating us all. I can hardly breathe.

This is where I belong.

I’m standing in the middle of the street, dirty black asphalt beneath my shiny silver boots. I’ve covered myself with an old blanket, but the shoes give me away. I kick them off and set them gently next to a white bearded man sleeping against a brick wall, wrapped in stained newspapers.

I’ve never been this far down before.

I’m a fallen angel.

I walk down the dimly lit street, my arms outstretched, the blanket draped across my head and shoulders. They stare at me from alleys and doorways. I can feel their eyes on me. I walk among you, I think, I have been cast from heaven. Do not worship me, for I am one of you now.

I am Saint Nobody of Nowhere.

I will lay my genetically perfect hands upon you and take away your pain.

Oh, stop with the martyr complex already, you complete ass.

The truth is, no one cares. I’m just another Citizen, slumming in Low Town.

If they only knew. If they could only see past Leopold’s perfect face. If only they could see how ugly I am on the inside. Maybe they would understand how much like them I am. I can feel it. Is this shifting into Low gear? I just want to curl up into a ball and never touch anyone again. I just want to disappear.

I guess that’s why I am here. This is oblivion. The shadow of the world.

There I go again, talking like a prophet. I’m just a poor little rich boy with no where to go. No one to be.

You know what you’re looking for, don’t you Leopold? You know what we’re after. They’ve forced us into this life, Leopold. Frozen our accounts. Taken our money. Left us alone. Disowned us. And now we’re stuck together Leopold. Stuck together like this.

“I don’t want your goddamn life anymore.”

I think I am talking out loud. Low men stare at me from the corners of their eyes, as they jostle down the street, moving into and out of storefronts and buildings.

Stay away from the madman. I look at the mottled gray sky and laugh.

A man shambles up to me, his face sallow under the burning yellow street lamps that feebly attempt fight off the darkness. His face is rough and worn. He opens his mouth, and says something to me. But I don’t hear it. I want to touch his face. Careworn, lined, dirty, pitted. This is a face that has been lived in. He has stories, this one does. His nose is bulbous and disjointed at the bridge. Was it broken as a boy? A young sailor in a drunken bar brawl? Did he steal someone’s girlfriend?

I cannot hear what he is saying, but my outstretched hand is running down his face. My fingers glide gently across the leathery skin, those lumps of flesh creased and folded. It’s lovely.

The man jerks back, his face twisting with astonishment, then rage. He pushes away, hobbles off, back into the darkness of Low Town, shouting something that makes the spittle spray from his loose, rubbery lips.

And I drift on until I find the thing I am looking for

+ + + + +

I remember one more thing:

This was After Xerxes Prime but before Velvet Godsend.

This was after Melissa Dahl but before Brentwood Harbinger and the end of it all.

This was after Melissa’s first gene alteration.

When Melissa finally agreed to try it. Something simple, I told her, just a slight alteration to the color and skin tone. Haven’t you ever wanted to be taller? You can be anyone.

Anyone? There was a certain sadness in her eyes as she spoke. I didn’t see it then, didn’t want to see it, too busy thinking what sort of pigment her irises should contain.

Anyone.

I just want to be with you, she said.

And I just grinned. How about blonde hair?

She was trying to hold on to me, trying to make herself what I wanted her to be, but all I wanted was the new.

Change yourself.

Become beautiful again.

All I did was ruin that smile.

We went to see Dr. Max together. We selected a complementary palette, skin tones, height, bone structure; we made ourselves a perfect couple. She shuddered as Dr. Max held her arm and injected the nano-tech solution into her. She grabbed my hand and looked into Xerxes Prime’s smoldering gaze.

See you on the other side, Jonathan.

I can’t wait.

We left Dr. Max’s office and returned to her apartment. The sex was great, my pale hands tracing down her caramel skin. We looked into each other’s eyes as we never had before, as my fingers studied the curve of her ribs, the way they angled more sharply now. Her breasts, high and firm as before, but slightly larger, the nipples longer and darker. We kissed and she tasted different. We both pulled back. She giggled.

It’s so different, she said. I didn’t think it would be so different.

We became Aleister Lovecraft and Coco Ramone, light and dark, dark and light. We looked good, dressed well, danced well together.

Everything was good.

For a couple of weeks, anyway.

I couldn’t tell what it was at first. I thought it was something about the flare of her nostrils, the shape of her eyes. Maybe this wasn’t the right trait-package for her. Maybe we needed to go back to Dr. Max and build another couple.

That was it. Just mix up the genes a little, get the sequence right. It’s a whole process. That’s what I was thinking, watching her carefully as she moved on the dance floor. She was beautiful, but she wasn’t finished.

She was a rough draft.

We went back to Dr. Max for a few adjustments, nothing major, just a little twist of the DNA, brought out a couple of features, lost a few others. I got a little work done myself, just to make her feel like we were doing it together.

Same as before, we left the office, took the tube back to her apartment, and had sex. But it wasn’t like that first time. It Something was wrong. She was pulling away. After we had finished, she turned away from me. Her body was closed, arms tight around her.

What’s wrong, baby? I asked, rubbing her shoulders. Her muscles tensed.

Don’t.

Why?

Not in the mood.

Is it the sequence? You don’t like it? Just give it a chance.

But she was right. I could see it too, while I was on top of her, thrusting into her (I had increased my penis size thinking she might be surprised, but she didn’t even seem to notice). I had tried to fix it, but the face was still wrong.

I closed my eyes and kept on thrusting until I came.

I leaned over and whispered in her ear. We can change the sequence, darling. We can do whatever you want. I’ll do anything you want. Is it me? Aleister?

She turned over then, shot a glare at me. Aleister? Aleister? Jonathan, it’s me. Can’t we just be, you know, us?

We’ll always be us, Coco—

Don’t.

What?

Call me that.

OK, if you want a new name, just pick one out. It’s so easy.

Can you leave, please?

What?

I want to sleep now.

I’m sorry baby, I’ll do whatever—

Just leave. Please.

So I did. I took the tube back to my apartment on Spire-27, took some sleeping pills, and didn’t go to the club for the first time in I can’t remember how long.

I had weird nightmares that night. I don’t remember what they were anymore. But I woke up feeling strange and disoriented.

I wanted to talk to Melissa. Coco. Whatever.

I called her, but she didn’t answer. Her video message service picked up the call. The recording was still Melissa. Before the alteration. She smiled and asked me to leave a message.

And I knew what was missing.

That smile.

I took the tube back to her apartment. I figured she must still be in. I needed to see her, to tell her.

The front door slid open to let me in. I called to her. I called her Melissa. She didn’t answer. I almost called her Coco, then thought better of it.

I walked through her living room, which flickered with pale blue light. The display wall was playing an old video download, something pre-digital cinema from the looks of it. The sound was down. Pale ghosts stuttered across the wall in a series of rapid-fire images. I activated the lights and shut down the media player.

Melissa was in the bedroom, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling. She was perfectly still, her arms folded across her chest. She did not answer me as I walked into the room.

She had shaved all of Coco’s blonde hair from her head. The blonde hair was fanned about her on the pillow. A dotted black line had been drawn around her forehead. It looked like it had been made with eyeliner.

You’ve cut your beautiful hair, I said.

I want you to give me a lobotomy.

Why?

Why not? It’s not my body. It’s just a pile of gray gelatin and I don’t want it there anymore.

I like your mind.

Why? It’s my most unattractive feature.

I’m taking you to see Dr. Max. You’re shifting, aren’t you? You’re shifting.

She didn’t say anything after that.

We went to Dr. Max again, and she became Brentwood Harbinger. But the smile was gone, the face was wrong, and the look in her eyes just said, you may as well have destroyed my brain. I’m just not here anymore.

She couldn’t hack the scene.

+ + + + +

I’m shifting.

I’m shifting down and it’s nothing like the stories they tell. My body is slowly becoming a useless accessory, a mismatched ensemble of leather skin, hard bone and spongy organs.

I stumble about the streets of Low Town, catching the stares of strangers in dirty, birth-locked bodies. Gene coffins. And right now I envy them. I wring my hands to keep them moving, to prove that I am in control. This is not like the stories. My own body is slipping away from me. I’m mercury, I’m quicksilver, and I’m slipping and sliding inside this shambling flesh cage.

Leopold has withdrawn himself.

Leopold is exiting the club.

Black light, strobe light, spotlight…gone.

Leopold is a fictional character brought to life; I built him and animated him like some mad scientist from the old cinema-streams.

And now he’s leaving me.

I can’t destroy him. He’s stolen my life. He’s stealing my body.

And I just don’t care anymore.

The stories we tell, some of them are true. No one really cares. What is truth, anyway? It doesn’t exist on the dance floor, at the bar, in the restrooms. But the stories are there for a reason, and sometimes when you look, you can find the truth.

For instance: The Clinic is real.

It’s a real place, and here I am. I’ve found it.

The Clinic turns out to be a small house with a dead lawn and a collapsed picket fence. There is no abandoned warehouse, like they tell you at The Club. There are no rabid dogs chained in front, wild with hunger and rage. And I haven’t seen any sign of the overgrown cemetery strewn with the blank tombstones of failed Citizens. I think I would have noticed that.

No, there is just a dirty wooden porch with shot through with strips of peeling paint that expose old, splintered wood. A broken swing that hangs on one rusty chain. Plastic letters revealing a name on the worn front door. Simms. Dr. Simms. A simple name for a simple man. I have to lean my shoulder against the wall to knock on the door. I’m trying to stand but my knees won’t lock.

Dr. Simms answers the door himself. He’s a short, sandy-haired man with stooped shoulders and a kind smile. He ushers me in with a wave of his stubby hand. Dr. Simms peers up at me behind thick eyeglasses that magnify his bloodshot pupils in ghastly proportions. The grotesquerie trend in The Spires had nothing on this. His sandy mustache twitches as he speaks. We walk past his kitchen, down the hallway, and into a small examination room with a couch and a tiled floor, harshly lit by fluorescents. It’s a dismal little box, but relatively clean by Low standards.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asks Simms, arching one enormous eyebrow.

I pull cash from the pocket of my neon blue shimmer jeans. They may have frozen my accounts, but I still have the few thousand I usually carry on me.

“Is this enough?”

“Yes.” He looks at me and purses his lips. “Are you sure?”

“Does it hurt?”

“No.”

“What will happen?”

Simms pulls up a small metal stool and sits down on it. “It’s different with everyone. We don’t know until you wake up. When we’re done here, my assistant will take you to a hotel. Do you understand? We will put you there and leave you. Sometimes you will remember, sometimes you won’t. That’s not my concern.”

“Did you ever have a patient named Melissa Dahl?”

“No.”

“Brentwood Harbinger?”

“I don’t ask for names. What does a name mean up there, anyway? It’s just costume jewelry to you kids. Right? Am I right?”

I don’t answer.

“Now, are you sure?”

“Yes, Doctor. Take away my mind.”

The doctor shuffles over to an old computer terminal on a metal table. He types for awhile, and then activates the nannite solution, which hums in its tank. He draws the syringe. It looks the same as Dr. Max’s. I don’t know what I was expecting. Rusty needles. An old buzzsaw. I don’t know. Something.

Dr. Simms holds my arm and swabs me with alcohol. Close to him like this, I can smell musty leather and tobacco. And something faintly sweet, like mint.

I don’t want Simms to be my last memory.

I close my eyes and try to imagine Ambassador Atari throwing his head back in rich, growling laughter. What was that joke? My mother touches her fingers to her lips. My father rustles his newspaper and glances at my mother. She giggles; it’s something I’ve never heard her do before.

I think they are laughing at me.

Fade out the Atari family and fade into the image of Melissa Dahl. Looking up at Melissa in the pale moonlight, her head back, eyes closed, mouth open. My mouth glides across the bare flesh of her belly; she raises her head, looks down at me and smiles. But it’s not Melissa’s smile, it’s Brentwood Harbinger’s smile, and it’s wrong. The corners, the edges, the shadows. The eyes.

Fade the image quickly. Fade to black. To nothing. To nobody.

But the black turns to blue with a dim light from the back of my brain, and I’m fading in again. Another image, another scene, another picture from somewhere in my mind.

Kent Thomas glares with fire in his brown eyes: you’re no son of mine. He turns his head and looks away from me.

The scene winds forward, and now we’re in my in my room. Later that night. He sits on my bed while I am watching videos and strokes my hair. Hey, sport, he says. I’m sorry about all that before. I’ve just…had a lot of stress at the office lately. I just—can we…just forgive and forget? I turn from my videos and look up at my father. Brown eyes. That crest of blonde hair that sweeps across his forehead. Those perfect teeth when he smiles. I hate him. Whatever. I turn back to my video and forget him altogether. He sits quietly for a minute, then stands and walks out the door.

The needle breaks my skin and the cold liquid fills my veins.

Wait. Wait. Go back.

Go back to the moment of my father sitting on the edge of my bed. He strokes my hair and I turn and he smiles. Not the perfect white teeth. Not the chiseled jaw. Not the brown eyes or the blonde hair. The crinkled skin at the edges of his eyes. The contoured shadow of his cheeks as they lift and tighten.

Freeze that moment: a young boy turning to look up at his father. A father looking down into his son’s eyes. A father reaching out to gently stroke his son’s hair. A father smiling.

I hold onto that image, that single still frame in time. That moment.

And eventually, everything goes dark.