WIP (The Five Senses)

  

Kit touching chin, Kit thinking. —“Anthos Tansoko?” Action potential, chemo-electric charge courses myelinated length of axon. Polarity reverses, gates open, calcium ions enter. Particles of neurotransmitter released into synaptic gap. Across the gap particles absorbed into dendritic catches, neighbor neuron receiving message. Take that and multiply by millions. Event horizon of a thought formulating, details branching from a factoid recalled. Anthos Tansoko. Name familiar, aural character of specific vowels and consonants in particular order. 
There. Left prefrontal cortex in conversation, a name and its branching affiliates, numbers, dates, episodic details. 
Rolz watches her, the change slight. Moment he has gotten in habit of tracking; when he challenges her with a name to see what she’ll call back from memory, lifetime of categorization and training. Usually first flush, stumped, muscles in her face stiffen tight. She’ll lower eyes. Hold herself still, waiting to receive transmission. Sometimes a hand raised as if saying “wait”. Understood he should keep quiet, no movements, don’t interrupt the process. Given seconds or at most a minute, rarity a few minutes, The Change will come over her. Dubbed it The Change because effects are many and simultaneous, cascade of relieving micro-expressions and mini-moves; everything relaxes in a snap, an ease that doubles as excitement. Could be mistaken as relief to an eye that didn’t know her; but he was the husband; he was versed in the esoteric, elaborate, varied vocabulary of her; her repertoire of gestures and unconscious disclosures. She had never not found her answer, thorough as her knowledge was. 
“Anthos Tansoko. Born 2066. Age thirty-eight, retired. Original screen name Rod Wriggles. First vid in ’84, last vid two years ago. Three hundred forty-two vids and films total.”
Rolz edged back in his chair, hands behind head, basking in data. Kit was moving again, fluid, working the air between them with active hands. This was her post-Change mien, upbeat and expressive.
“Born Cephalonia, Ionian Islands. Mother Grecian, father Japanese-Italian. Family moved to Athens in ’73. Current residence L.A., Studio City. Length full flush eight inches point-three-two centimeters. Girth full flush five inches point-three-six centimeters. Notable vids/films, order of release. Lana Cherry’s Vacation. Big Elvis. Thirty-On-Two. Russian MILFs Versus Wriggles. Most films not featured performer. More in supporting roles. One industry award in his career, second year in the profession, Best Newcomer Performance: Best C*mshot (Eight Yellow Bikinis).”
Screen was open on the countertop, angled so Rolz could scan and track for info while Kit recited errant facts about Tansoko. He’d searched under W’s, scrolled two finger-swipes and stopped randomly at Wriggles. Clicked the name and his profile opened on separate window. There were hundreds of thousands in the data log, available by search. With Raniver’s help she’d designed this, a living document. Not for public use but strictly an in-house reference tool for recruiters and production team members at EVOS. Research and Design engineers made use of it as well, when needed. It was a respected position, Content Historian, really one of a half-dozen jobs in the industry available for someone with her training. She lived by data, regarded it from a different angle than most of her cohort; the human element; the person who lived outside their films for a time so they might sign on to produce another one. 
“Halfway through his career he got a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. I remember searching through early vids, tracking when it might’ve made a first appearance. In vid number one-sixty-four, Pay The Boss (Tiala Vargas’ Revenge). Third scene he walks in, joins Frank Hardman on a cream off-white leather couch, Tiala between them. Lifts a hand to brush hair off Tiala’s forehead and there, noticeable. Had to pause to get a close look. Blue and white cross and stripes, the Grecian flag.”
This was Kit’s brain, a wetware compendium of lives. Never had she come back blank when he’d thrown a name at her. 
“Is there a skin for him?” 
Kit took her panta-bowl from the counter where it’d been cooling. Steamy spice noodles chopstick to mouth. “Of course. There’s a skin for everyone. Hadn’t been ten years ago, when he was mid-career, but industry contracts changed. Performers’ union negotiated that; caught in legal proceedings before he was even born. One of the fortunate ones; pay structure put in place while he still could command a price and get steady jobs. Got a percentage of each VR interface while he was also putting out fresh content. Percentages are small but in retirement that’s a reliable income stream.”
“Never heard of him though. How would anyone know to look for him?”
“Everyone’s got their fans. Sure his hits on the search algorithm help. ‘Greek dick’. “Japanese-Italian Grecian dick.’”
Rolz laughed into his noodles, panta-bowl lifted to catch what slipped from chewing mouth. 
“Even the little guys can make a living.” 
Kit’s turn laughing. She wasn’t above a good dick-pun; wasn’t above a half-baked one either, clearly. 
Rolz pushed the screen, angled it so both could see. Her handiwork, years in the making and continually self-replenishing with content. She and Raniver project leads. Raniver called it The Body Log, which Kit hated; told him so; stopped telling him, since the more she admonished and corrected him, more he referred to it as such. Official company term, one used in corporate documents and correspondence, The Register. But Kit knew Rolz spread his version through small-talk out of petty playful sadism. It hurt no one to call it The Body Log but offended Kit’s high-minded sex-positive fealty to people who fucked for money (Raniver’s words). 
Everyone was in The Register. No appearance too brief, no role too minor. If they’d undressed before a camera then rolled around with a few other people or pleasured themselves solo, it would be integrated into the EVOS library, material to be drawn from for interactive VR interface. Have sex with a classic, say, Linda Lovelace, Autumn Sweet, John Holmes? Search, select desired variables—Setting, Scenario, Toys, Kinks—run program. Raniver had devised the technology, Kit curated content. Initially started small, the two of them; soon whole departments grew under them. Kit was happy for that; meant less and less they had occasion to interact directly. 
Rolz didn’t mind Ran. There was a guy thing at play whenever they took a corner and talked at parties. Rolz had the luxury of not working with him, so in small doses and limited to harmless passing topics his straight-talk might scan as charming. Rolz always validated her misgivings, admitted it’d be difficult to weather such needlings on a daily basis, but she felt the validations weren’t entirely sincere. She long had suspicions Rolz actually liked him. 
“Where’s he live?” 
“What? Who.”
“Anthos Tansoko. Rod Wriggles is retired; but where’s Anthos Tansoko?”
He did this sometimes. Tested extent of Kit’s knowledge of her people post-career. 
Panta-bowl returned to countertop, chopsticks paused in finger origami. While she thought—chemo-electric charge, axon, polarity reversed, calcium ions, synaptic gap, neurotransmitters released—the chopsticks worked open-closed, open-closed, tip to tip, like a beak, unconscious hand-language of her thinking. 
There again. Called into explicit awareness from scattered reaches of white and gray matter. 
“He lives in Miami, Florida, a condo. And has a second home in Mykonos, ancestral property bought back into the fold and renovated with a mix of family inheritance and interface revenue post-career.” 
This could have been improvised fabrication but how would he know? If not true, it sounded credible. A happy ending of sorts for Anthos Tansoko if not for Rod Wriggles.
A happy ending he said, punning again.
A nod from Kit this time, laugh off elsewhere, still pending. She was in thought again, subtle moves across face told him so. Her eyes were on the screen; one click, inventory of three-hundred-something vids, complete recorded life of Anthos as Wriggles. Pensive is the mind before the product of its creations, Rolz thought. He’d said it before in her company. From the sour look she gave, knew best not to phrase it that way again. Too close to ambivalent regret to be carefree funny.
She was preoccupied, nervous. She’d been elsewhere in her worries the whole weekend. It was part of a well-established marital rhythm, Rolz taking note of Kit’s jumpiness, asking why, getting rebuffed before changing tack and pulling her into low-stakes challenges involving trivia. She’d catch on usually after she’d gained some relief from distraction. 
Next morning she was scheduled to meet with Raniver and Polk and other department leads, no explicit topic of discussion listed in the invite. It’d been four years since EVOS department leads had shared an actual room, sat across from one another; the company switched to remote meetings exclusively after Polk had moved to the New York office; the departments had grown self-sufficient as they’d expanded over time; proof of point being Raniver and Kit rarely had occasion to take in-person meetings either. The departments drew on their expertise and managerial vision but over the past few years there was the sense departments had reached a point where they could run themselves. Consider it the upside to widespread systemic automation; executives and managers could relax at a certain point and follow the lead of their creations. 
Kit didn’t care for meetings, would leave them feeling used, second-rate, not taken seriously. It wasn’t anything anyone said, not Polk or Martingdale or Vishwanathan or Solveig Leach or even Raniver; it was how conversations tended to pass over her, keep her on the furthest edges of common involvement, left her feeling diminished. An hour could pass without anyone asking her for input. Most questions involving product interface were directed at Raniver, who had the technical knowledge to speak to issues concerning interface. Something was up, Kit would complain to Rolz afterwards over dinner, if the world’s largest interactive porn distributor could hold an hourlong meeting without one mention of the performers whose likenesses it was replicating and selling. 
Rolz could see both sides but kept that to himself. She would’ve drawn and quartered him in a quick second; he learned as much from past mistakes; speaking up, modeling impartiality when what was expected of him was to simply listen. This was business; competition drove marketing and product development; they could’ve been selling dog shampoo or latex paint and the principles at play would have been the same. Remember? he’d asked her once, years ago, during one of their earliest versions of this same conversation. Remember what you said to me back when you decided to take the job? Why not? The technology would get developed with or without me. Might as well sign on and see if I can’t influence things from the inside, make sure if this kind of thing's done, it’s done right. That was before VR porn mushroomed into a multi-trillion-dollar industry, EVOS at the forefront of that growth, pushing it forward. Kit's shares alone over the past four years had secured their retirement for ten lifetimes or more. They could buy an island; moreover, could pay for retirement of all inhabitants. During one such conversation—Kit caught back-and-forth in issues of ethical self-torture, Rolz piping in with short hits of pragmatism—he’d jokingly suggested she buy an island and make it a luxury retirement community for adult entertainers past their prime. She’d paused; it wasn’t pretend pause, for effect; she was thinking, actually considering. Thereafter mention of an island was de rigeur at some point during such conversations.
“They pay you to be in the room.” This was usually something Rolz would say during such conversations, and he said it again now. Kit grabbed his empty panta-bowl from the counter and stacked it into her own, huffed as she set them in the touch-wash, closed the verti-glass case and tapped “steam”. Flash-wash, ultra-hot steam churning behind octagonal glass. Five seconds, clean. She opened the glass panel, handled the bowls barehanded, wincing; usually would wrap hand in a towel or leave the panel open until dishes cooled. Flesh in fricassee, barehanding hot bowls, Kit looked to him with firm glare. “You could say the same about people we digitally clone. Porn people in general. ‘We pay you to be in the room.’” 
“Whoa now,” Rolz said, both hands raised palms-out, as if taking hands away from touching something that might implicate him. “I’m on your side, remember.” She had her back to him, stacking bowls in automated cabinet. Bowl clicked into catch, catch retracting and filing bowl into kitchenware inventory. They were nearing the end of the usual course of such conversations; Rolz would mention possibility of leaving EVOS; they had enough money; could live comfortably until they croaked and even beyond; was it worth the ugly patches, insults to self-confidence, lack of sleep, recurrent and irresolvable frustrations? Rolz would lay out the terms of a possible future, one uncomplicated and sensible, and Kit would arrive at the same conclusion she always did; whoever they’d replace her with might not be trustworthy, invested enough in the well-being and livelihood of performers EVOS contracted for content creation. "Content Historian" might merely be a job title for them, not a position requiring a certain measure of ethical vigilance; that people be properly compensated for use of their repertoire of performances and above all for their bodies. 
Rolz brushed phantom noodle-flecks from his lap, pushed stool away and stood. He kissed his wife’s worrying cheek and said he was heading for bed. She’ll been staying up, he knew; scrolling through The Registry, “nerve-scrolling” he called it; self-distracting work-adjacent activity; each profile a reminder there was a face, a life, a person behind the body and each body in very private ways extending beyond measurable dimensions recorded in The Register, “The Body Log.” Raniver would be sitting next to her the following morning. They’d shake hands, perform civility and talk as a team; questions asked of their team would default to him for an answer. Ask them anything about anyone in the content library—actress, actor, their films, their contract history—Raniver would have to turn to her, room would tilt her direction, and confidence would lift her above them and with ease she’d begin talking. But given experience, that was not what would happen tomorrow. The usual would happen. She’d take a seat, listen to talk circulate the room for an hour or two, then stand, shake hands with everyone, then with her best professional game-face, walk length of the conference room to the door and leave.

                  *

The meeting began at nine, executive conference room on the fifth floor. Kit arrived early to visit her office; opened the door to find everything—chairs, desk, black-and-white art photos printed on canvas and hung (closeups of nudes male and female and in-between)—pristine, violently clean. The blinds weren’t drawn; wall-length window faced east, post-sunrise radiation screaming at her. She flipped her sunglasses off her forehead to spare her eyes while rifling the desk drawers for the remote control. Control found, blinds closed, blending like scales to a dark metal sheen. She tapped the desktop to manifest the holo-screen. Lime green graphics floating before her, eye identification and verbal confirmation. 
She checked her mail. Several secured messages from the AI scheduler, executive team assistants. Automatic meeting reminder included agenda items in bullet points, each info-bit whittled to suggestive minimalism. Department Restructure. Upgrades. Product Development Initiatives. Which of these involved her? When it was time to leave for upstairs, she left her valise in the chair, chair pushed under desk for safe hiding. 
The scene at the conference room was standard, table longer than necessary, wide enough to prevent lean-over handshakes. Vishwanathan sat right of Polk, Polk right of Blakely; across from them sat Martingdale and Raniver and herself and at the far end between both, Solveig Leach. First meeting after the Board appointed her CEO, Solveig had invited Kit to address her in the familiar; Kit was Kit, why should it be any different for Solveig? This was an informality not extended to other members of the executive team. Kit was unsure this spoke well to her situation. Did friendliness suggest she was harmless, expendable, a pet subordinate good for a chat and not much else? Paranoia in ascendance, Rolz would tell her; best keep that in check; ever consider she might be relieved to have another lady in the room, given the norms in the industry? Solveig Leach couldn’t have been unaware of the in-house read on her appointment, a branding hire, female face for a primarily male-centric customer base. She’d run two tech firms for fifty straight three-percent-or-plus quarterly increases; she commanded a certain consideration. The other leads in the room had hired on in the earlier stages of EVOS's formation and had gained knowledge of the company’s operations through interdepartmental and cross-departmental promotions. Some, such as Vishwanathan, had actually written code for some of the program’s earliest iterations. Raniver and Polk had been collaborating on engineering platform interface before there’d ever been a platform; every upgrade, every morphological mutation of the program over the past decade had emerged from Raniver and Polk and their (Raniver’s words) “porn drones”. Over the past eight years manual coding had been replaced by AI coding programs, but even in the early years very little manual coding was required. Raniver was big on cutting out possibility of human error. “Only fuck-ups I want in the mix are users,” he’d say, his condescension mantra. Kit, he knew, harbored feelings of abstract affinity for EVOS clientele. “Your lonely, your horny, your shut-in losers,” he’d say as she described to him the human terms of this service they offered. Raniver lived alone, she knew. He’d built a very large estate around the aloneness; but never once had she been able to check past his defenses to spy hints of actual loneliness. He lived for work, like most of them did. He was surrounded by people and for all she knew coworkers and subordinates were for him surrogate family. 
“Morning, all,” Solveig smiled, the smile slight enough it doubled as pokerface. “Thanks for indulging this little change of protocol. Things have been moving quickly of late and given the first topic on the agenda today—restructuring—I thought it best we discuss these upcoming changes in person.”
Solveig’s assistant sat in the corner to her left, initiated with finger-swipes on a lap console the conference table’s holo-screen. Three dimensional manifest of the agenda appeared two feet above center of the tabletop between them. 
“A lot to cover today, so let’s begin with the big items of business.” The biggest change, one Solveig began describing, was common knowledge about the room; but here, her describing it, working through the details, made it official. Given rapid growth over past three quarters, there was need for restructuring and expansion of the financial division; over the next few weeks Martingdale would transition into a new role as coordinator. Three assistant leads who’d worked under him previously—Caleb Gray, Robert Mesfrin, and Alex Qi—would be promoted to department heads operating under Martingdale. 
Images of Gray, Mesfrin, and Qi’s profile photos appeared on screen, three times usual scale. Kit recognized none of them. They looked like variations of the same person, middle-aged and upwardly mobile, efficient and cocksure and smiling. No, she said, not moving her head but mentally shaking it in disapproval; that move’s pure Raniver. She was bothered how easily it came to her, reducing people into caricature for purposes of dismissing them. “You can think it,” Rolz would often say, “You can think it but don’t say it.” She’d counter with the simple observation that thinking-but-not-saying was a lot of work. Besides, what was it about people, that they so often conflated judgment with discernment, herself included? Almost as if they had to dismiss someone out of hand in order to protect themselves from contamination by association. Whatever it was, here she was again, doing it. 
        When she came back into the room and conversation around her, Solveig answering questions and the rest asking, they were onto other topics, none of which even tangentially concerned her. She kept still and turned to watch the faces talking. This was something she’d become skillful at, presenting a professional manner while half-absent, agreeable human furniture. Silence she knew could often be mistaken for careful discernment. Hard to judge someone who withdraws from discussion, content to observe. 
“Raniver and Polk…” Mention of Raniver startled her, pulled attention back effortless to selective sharp focus. If there was mention of Raniver, increased chances eyes would turn her way, her manner while he spoke scrutinized for some shape of disapproval or hesitation. Polk, head of R&D, was speaking; describing the outcome of an initial meeting with Raniver regarding a new set of VR interfaces slated for development with EVOS’s fetish imprint Relish. The project’s working title would be The Five Senses and currently it was uncertain whether such a simulation platform would be possible with current interface technology. Polk said Raniver had stated in their meeting he believed, given time and resources, it was doable. All faces in the room turned from Polk to Raniver and it was as if he’d been biding time, waiting for his beat; holding one hand over the other on tabletop before him, he looked from face to face then returning to Polk said with affable resolute certainty, “It’s doable.” Two words, two the whole meeting, but more than Kit had occasion to offer. 
The details of the project, Polk said, didn’t warrant description just yet. But if the project could be seen through development and could be launched within the year or the next, it would truly break new ground for them. It might stimulate an unforeseen need in their client base, or at least that was the ambition. It would nurture novel inclinations in users and with that, establish an un-replicable niche stream of income. None of their competition—FLESHBAY, TOOBY—had anything comparable or anything even close to comparable on the horizon. 
Next step, Polk told the table, would be for Raniver and Kit Embling to get together and hash out variables, work the foundational elements. Once there was a structure to work with, content source material, Raniver and Polk could move forward, coordinate their teams to design the platform and test it. Raniver would brief Kit on the details, she’d be the first to get started.

*

It wasn’t intentional, Raniver said, wasn’t meant as a slight; this was how projects usually developed, wasn't it, since the company grew from a one-floor office to six buildings in four different countries; he hoped she didn’t attribute it to hierarchical aggression. This was Raniver, his tack and technique, presenting in the hypothetical the undermining strategies he often wove around a person, denying responsibility for the intended outcome. He’d offered to meet in her office; she’d steered them in the direction of his instead. It was closer, on the way, one floor below the conference room. Yes, she was free to talk; had a lunch appointment but would push it back a couple of hours. This wasn’t the case but she didn’t want to appear too available. Raniver was usually busy in six different directions yet never called attention to the fact. His busyness overflowed beyond the bounds of his person, filled the daytime and often evening hours of two dozen departmental staffers. The busyness of a Raniver weekend tended to spill over into the weekends of QC worker bees and go-fers. 
Raniver’s office was hyper-crisp, ostentatiously minimal. The wall opposite his desk reflected sunlight through the window, a wall-length plasma screen, old technology but one he favored when viewing test feeds of applications before signing off on them to go live. He passed desk and chair and led her to a pair of Koomi chairs by the window. He took a seat, gestured her to join him. Was this the same office he’d had before? It’d been that long since they’d met in person and longer since they’d sat together in an office, almost never his. Regimented as Raniver was in his habits, he might have moved offices a half-dozen times since their last meeting but the change wouldn't have been unnoticeable, insistent as he'd been that decor be replicated exactly, adjusted to ever larger scales. 
Over his shoulder she noted titles of books lining a levitation case along the wall. The books floated mid-air, shelved and stacked in densified transparent gravity packets. To the uninformed observer, pulling one off its shelf would be akin to selecting one of many books floating support-less above the floor. First title Kit recognized was her own book, rare vanity hard copy; her first and only, Starlets & Studs: A Complete Reference Guide to Adult Entertainment Performers. Status objects, books, and this one at least, Kit knew, had been printed and bound by special request from Raniver. Had it been placed there for intended effect? Everything included between its covers could be found in The Register, available for search and cross-reference. Raniver was no bibliophile; most likely his assistant had provided the books as decoration; something to demonstrate the novel technical features of the levitation case.
“The book? How could I not,” he said, as if he’d been waiting for her to catch sight of the title on the spine. “Curious whether you’d recognize it.” 
It had taken her a second, she admitted. She owned only one copy herself, had assumed that was the extent of its worldly existence in hard copy. 
“I had Reyna order one,” he said. Reyna his assistant; confirmation Kit’s guess was correct. “First brick laid toward the foundation of this thing, the company. Call me sentimental. ”

Kit didn’t respond to that one way or the other. Raniver was anything but. 
“We wouldn’t be sitting here if you hadn’t written it.” 
Kit smiled and lifted a hand, pushed away the compliment. The compliment didn’t return to sender, instead drifted back halfway between them and faded. 
It was true though in a way.  Years of doggerel college-carrel research had led to publication of a book and the book had gained her a reputation, and it was this reputation that brought her to the attention of Enslow and Raniver, EVOS’s two earliest hires. They’d been bothering the edges of the adult industry looking for a specialist of sorts, someone with extensive insider knowledge; there they found Kit, self-styled historian of the porn-iverse without gainful employment, esteemed by high-brow dilettantes slumming in sex work but unregarded among actual players in the industry. They took a meeting with her and described a need for her expertise. They perceived remunerable value in what she did, what she knew. Would she consider working with them? She feigned a pause of consideration before accepting the offer. Even before they'd become acquainted with her mannerisms, her reliable tells, they'd noticed her face widen, eager and flattered, knew they had a taker. That was over a dozen years ago. Everyone was rich now and short on nostalgia. The next project was always their concern.
“Apologies for the sudden invite, the surprise briefing at the meeting,” Raniver said. “Polk requested we keep preliminary discussions confidential. He’s sensitive about the chances of new projects under development after Winglay.” 
Winglay had been an application EVOS had targeted for launch the previous year. Early stages of development there’d been a leak; design specs had been sold to one of their competitors, which in turn had been leaked to the others. By the time Winglay had been launched prospective first quarter profits had been cut to a fifth their initial projection. The fact Kit was only now being briefed on the project suggested she’d been under suspicion, along with who-knows-how-many. Raniver was unbothered by corporate intrigue, Polk more proprietary about projects under development. A certain degree of thievery and bush-league product-copy was inevitable, Raniver believed, and experience had convinced Kit the same as well. 
“What’s the pitch?”
“The pitch’s simple. How to work the programming, the hard part.”
“The Five Senses.” 
“The Five Senses, right. One of Polk’s concept people came up with that. So the product concept is this. They want a VR interface with five sub-applications, each focused on modification of the user experience. Each would involve impairment of primary sensory inputs—vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. That sounds simpler than it is because they would like the program to subtly heighten functioning of other sensory inputs in conjunction with one input’s impairment. So if hearing is impaired, touch and smell are heightened.”
“That’d be hard to calibrate?”
“Very.” 
“What’s the prospective target for launch?”
“Six months. Not enough time to develop and test. They’re thinking we’ll only have five applications to design but really, given the different permutations of interplay involved, it’s much more than that.”
The last project requiring close coordination between Kit and Raniver involved adjustment programming. Kit thought maybe this would be similar? Unfortunately no, not even close, Raniver said. That involved developing users’ ability to adjust dimensions of actors and actresses bodies during interface; tap a breast, an ass, a c*ck, adjust size with light pinch-finger-swipes. For that project coding didn’t require remodeling of actual means of interface. This would be different, would pull them into an order of complexity they hadn’t tangled with before. 
That was nothing Kit needed to concern herself with though. That was Raniver’s job, to fashion the software. 
What they needed from Kit was a content model around which to build the program. Should be interesting work, something new for her. Raniver’s people had conducted a search of The Register for potential candidates to serve as reference points—performers who were sensorily impaired one way or another—but it’s not like they could merely copy and repurpose their subjective experiences through computational modeling. With most performers in their library they could data mine image and voice from their complete oeuvre of videos and set AI design programs to work creating 3-D interactive digital avatars for customer interface. They’d streamlined that process to the point where, once they had a performer’s videos on file, the AI programs pretty much created an avatar without prompting and stocked it for approval for launch. This was different, way more tricky. They would have to approximate the experience of performers with specific sensory impairments, in hundreds of different combinations of sex acts and scenarios and positions. How did, say, a blind actress with D-cup breasts experience a light fingering in a lukewarm shower? How did a deaf actor respond to the sensation of sharp slaps to c*ck and asscheek while standing freshly undressed in a Victoria-era ballroom? This would require a great deal of foundational research on Kit’s part. 
“In what way?” 
“There’s no other way around it, unless you can think of something otherwise. Interviews. Gather self-report qualitative data as basis for approximative projection of design. Subjective qualities of interface have to start from there, as I see it. So I ask you, any candidates come to mind? Anyone you think who still has their wits about them, relatively articulate? We only need five though I suppose more would do.”

Revenants (Three From Two)

“How?”—Theo didn’t look over his shoulder, knew his brother was behind him so asked without turning. He might as well have been asking the wall or the gravel parking lot beyond. Tre had been talking half an hour, telling his brother it was their duty, they had to, their mother’s body claimed by the state because once years ago she’d signed her name to paper granting permission. Didn’t they have a say? This was their mother, the body that formed them and birthed them. She deserved a place where visitors might be welcome, should they feel the need.

Theo had been as enraged as his elder brother the day they heard—she wouldn’t be coming home, there’d be no final resting place nor a service. These had been her final wishes, crafted by a lawyer but dictated by her more than ten years prior; they demanded to see the signature; the lawyer had pushed the paper across the desk, Tre taking it first then splaying it out on the dark oak desktop so his younger brother could share his disbelief, noting the wording and signature. Upon death, the body would be donated to the state, not for the harvesting of organs but for research. Her death hadn’t been unusual, breast cancer that metastasized through lymph nodes, cropping up every part of her until chemo and surgery were overwhelmed and she withered into a sickly diminished form in an oncology ward. She died in the plain style, horribly. They assumed she would prefer cremation. The lawyer called not long after to inform them their mother had requested her body be donated to the research farm in Knoxville. 

They’d both been in the room when the hospital people came to take her away. Neither brother wept, not because there wasn’t grief but because there were other eyes watching. Strangers, people new to the room, not the two shift nurses who’d tended to their mother the past three weeks. These were men, porters, and they arrived after one of the nurses left after time of death had been confirmed. The nurse must have called for them but for some reason couldn’t be present to explain what was happening, a poor oversight on her part they thought. The porters told them to take their time saying their goodbyes. After they were done, if they could knock on the door and let them know they were ready, the porters would transfer the body to a gurney for transport. Where were they taking her? They were genuinely caught off guard, not that either knew where hospital staff usually took the deceased in order to free up use of a room. “Have you talked to your mother’s executor,” one of the men asked. From the looks of him he couldn’t have been older than twenty. “Where’s Nurse Ellie,” Tre asked. “We’ve been able to go to Nurse Ellie for things about Mom’s care…I think maybe she’d know.” The baby-faced porter told him Nurse Ellie was off her shift and wouldn’t be available, and besides it wasn’t usual protocol for nurses to provide information about a family’s post-care arrangements. Theo caught himself then, almost spat on the floor. Who was this kid telling him he couldn’t talk with his mother’s caregiver, now that his mother no longer needed help living? 

It was difficult leaving the hospital. They’d had to leave the room, were asked to leave, encouraged short of being guided out the doorway, the larger of the porters helping Tre along by the elbow. There was a gurney rolled to a stop along the wall outside the door. This? Tre asked. This was what they were going to put her on? Theo had walked halfway down the hallway while Tre stood and made demands and pressed. Finally he pulled away after Theo called for him. What was the point? Fighting the hospital wasn’t going to solve matters. Better if they did as the kid suggested and contacted their mom’s lawyer. If it was the law calling these two to come and roll their mom away on a gurney, it was a lawyer they’d best talk to.

The lawyer was Robert Wicksham; morning after their mother was rolled out of her room they met on the street outside the man’s office. Neither had ever heard mention of the man; their mother had been quiet about the legal aspects of her dying; they assumed she’d made no plans, met with no one, signed no papers. Tre hadn’t spoken with her in a year and even then only by the phone the past three. This was understandable, he lived halfway across the state, Theo had less of an excuse, living in town. Their mother had sworn off all conversation with Theo for five solid years and before that sporadically at best. These were her only children, her sons, twins, so she’d taken pains to ice them evenly. The Twins were long a subject of commiseration among her friends and neighbors. People near to her were aware and made efforts to protect her. She lived alone; she had a car but it rarely left the garage; she hired the neighbor kids to handle yard work and the woman across the street Mrs. Yarborough was kind enough to come by every two weeks to take orders for groceries. She paid Mrs. Yarborough but that wasn’t the point. There were people more reliable than family and they watched out for her, protecting her if need be from family. Robert Wicksham was another example of this. 

The office was small, they entered one after the other, two large men who moved like boys. The lady at the desk eyed them neutrally; it felt like judgment. Did they have an appointment to meet with Mr. Wicksham? They didn’t. They had spoken with him on the phone the previous afternoon. He hadn’t invited them over at this time specifically but suggested it was a possibility sometime in the future. Future come to pass, here they were. He was handling their mother’s estate and there were issues. 

The secretary stood and disappeared into a hall and the twins, true to their nature, took that as an invitation to follow. From look of her face when they found her standing half-in half-out of a door, that hadn’t been the intention. She tried to talk them away from the door but it was too late, they were standing behind her in view of the man sitting at his desk inside, Mr. Wicksham. He waved them in, the secretary relieved. She did make a point to ask the man if he’d prefer the door be left open, Tre noticed. Were they viewed a threat? They were sons in grief, how did that scan as dangerous? He was making time for them so why would they have reason to cross lines? 

I’m sorry to hear about your mother, Wicksham began, the hospital had called and mentioned you had been with her the last few days, I hope you don’t mind I asked them for your number. The nurse had given him Tre’s number and he realized, from how their mother had described matters, there were complications so maybe they weren’t aware of the details of what might come after. Their mother had assigned him executor but the specifics had been outlined carefully and long in advance. There was a will. There would need to be a time scheduled to meet so they could review the terms of her decisions regarding her estate. He’d been under the impression not much discussion about this had been possible since they and their mother had not  been seeing one another the past few years, through her illness. He was sorry for that as well. These things were complex and he wanted to negotiate them with minimal amount of interference or imposition. 

The brothers took this without comment. They were listening as a way of sizing him up, this lawyer talking of family estrangement with what seemed to them rehearsed fellow-feeling and consolation. There were cool talking points somewhere in his explanations and he was hitting each and the gist of what he intended to convey was apparent. Their mother had characterized them in an unflattering manner and the actual words used would never be repeated verbatim. Here was the formal expression of it, a stranger until a day ago informing them their mother had chosen to keep them at a distance even through her dying. It was true; they’d heard of her admission to the hospital weeks after the fact; Theo’s ex-wife’s sister had mentioned it accidentally by way of condolences at a backyard party at a mutual friend’s house; even she knew before he did; he was in the process of losing a mother and didn’t know. Theo called his brother, the brother complained and commiserated. Stay put, Tre told him, I’m asking a week off, I’m driving over. He arrived the next morning, having driven through the early A.M. hours. If their mother was going to die, she was going to have to look each of them in the face and listen to them say their piece either one after the other or together. They hadn’t argued together in a room in twenty years, arguing having been before their estrangement the most dependable means of agreement. They agreed to resent each other, for reasons close to archetypal. The No-Good Sons, The Long-Suffering Mother. It was a story they’d all heard before and one the world was tired of hearing from. They could tell by the way mutual acquaintances, aunts, uncles, cousins, turned away from their complaints with pinched irritation. Nothing they claimed about their mother warranted validation. So the brothers cut the whole family from their  shared confidence as well; they weren’t to be trusted. No one felt motivated enough to undermine sympathy for their mother, calling them to let them know. She was sick, this might be it, she might die and they’d be unaware, how awful. 

The brothers took the news standing. Neither realized until after they’d left the building and stopped at the nearest restaurant for a morning shot of Knob Creek, when they’d entered the office the lawyer hadn’t offered them a seat. If he had, they would’ve chosen to stand. But lack of an offer said enough. 

Wicksham had tried to put discussion of a funeral and their mother’s remains off until a more formal occasion when he might go over the will with them. He didn’t have to, he explained, since they weren’t recognized by the document, but he wanted to. It would leave him uneasy if they weren’t allowed to hear their mother’s wishes in her own words, never mind they were written in legalese and focused on attending to certain practical concerns of the estate. There was a paragraph included in the document that explained reasons behind her decision to forgo a funeral or memorial service so her remains might be transferred directly to the university’s forensic anthropology center across the state, in Knoxville. 

No, they said, first Tre then Theo. Together as brothers, as twins, they sandwiched the man’s feeble efforts to end the conversation between two flat-toned complimentary slabs of no. These weren’t threats, they were precursors to threat. Given his profession Wicksham couldn’t have been unaware of nuances of escalation, should he press or put off a certain kind of person. They weren’t leaving until he told them, he could’ve guessed soon as they entered the office. It’d be cleaner and easier to disclose what they were asking after, then let them walk believing they’d won something. From the looks of them these were men who distrusted lawyers as a matter of course, having been many times held to account by the punitive side of the law. Lawyers were most likely not people they’d ever been able to use effectively to their advantage. So Wicksham told them what they wanted to know, direct and without garnishment by technical jargon.

It wasn’t his place to reverse the terms of the will; besides, would they want that? This was their late mother’s wish. The decision was carefully considered, she’d even driven with a friend a decade ago to visit the research center and talk with one of the directors of the program, a first for the program, a future donor visiting for an interview well before they had any reason to believe they would be dying. She wouldn’t do that, Tre had said but soon as he said it realized it sounded like denial. This had been their mother too, these plans formulated without their knowledge, and though it struck them as morose it aligned with her interests and convictions. She wasn’t a religious person, had no respect for fantasy, heavenly rewards and all that. Raised Southern Baptist, she jumped faith soon as she could, moving out of her father’s monstrous household to her first apartment at sixteen. That’s when life began for her. Religion by her lights was living death, hours and years wasted on sham storytelling. Her sons were no more holy-minded than her but kept close to more base desires, whereas she fooled around with paganism. Or at least that’s how they understood it, called it; their mom favored nature over fool’s gold, a tree in the backyard over elaborate cosmological systems. This interest developed slowly over their course of knowing her, being raised by her, crested shortly before she went silent and set a distance between herself and them. They didn’t understand it nor much respect it. What’s special about a crepe myrtle? It’d take five short minutes with a hand saw to cut one down. Tre never said as much but joked with Theo her earth-mother ways were probably compensation for the inevitable, that she’d one day be dirt like their father and her parents. 

Their father, that was a story. Aneurysm at thirty-four, who’d heard of such a thing? The boys were fourteen at the time and could remember him. He was ten percent a husband, ten percent a father, eighty percent his job working the line at a factory. Still he was a visionary of sorts and invested steadily in life insurance through their childhood; almost as if he knew he would die and leave them stranded in financial wilderness. Instead they were set for a long while; mom invested smart with a financial planner and the money lasted; they lived within their means as a family until the boys were released into chaos, moving out the house and into a shared apartment at eighteen and out of the apartment into bars and jails two full decades. Tre was the responsible one, attended to the demands of his body; an amateur MMA fighter with ambitions for a career; never mind the career would last as long as he could withstand serious injury. Theo threw freight and kept a light buzz going through the waking hours and a deep drunk while he slept. They were their mother’s children and could sense how little pride she felt having them. This was the justification presented, anyway, anytime there was an argument; it was her fault they were angry; she never made it a mystery how disappointed she was in them. There was a little violence left behind in everything they touched and she thought it shameful, beyond the pale it should be their late father’s legacy, two grown men who bore their fists before them like antennae, their primary organs for gathering information about the world through feeling. 

Did Wicksham know any of this, the brothers wondered. After their second shot they switched to the cheapest beer on menu and searched for the anthropology center’s website on Theo’s phone. There it was, basic graphics and ugly font, text embedded with YouTube videos. There was even a box to click on to formally register oneself as a potential candidate for donation. The body farm had a partnership with the FBI, used for training evidence recovery teams. The Center’s forensic specialists helped train ERT team members in proper protocol for locating unmarked gravesites and excavating them. Roughly a thousand eight-hundred skeletons in the Center’s collection, the website bragged, or at least to the brothers it felt like bragging. This was sick; this was horror-show; sanctioned body snatching. This was what their mother wanted? This was what she asked for in lieu of a funeral and burial? Lawmen and scientists picking over their mother’s bones. The photos accompanied with text describing the introduction of donors’ bodies to the elements were hideous, corpses slick with gluey decayed skin, sockets exposed and teeth tearing through mouth-hole. In a couple of weeks, a month’s time this could be their mother. Wicksham, their mother's default executor, considered himself duty-bound to make this happen. If he could make it happen, he could just as easily not, or so they thought, their thinking sliding across the unstable ground of their booziness. 

Thursday the 2nd, Wicksham told them, scheduling a date for the executorship meeting as a show of appeasement. They’d made it clear they wouldn’t leave without a definite date and one sooner than later. Wicksham cleared a two-hour slot in his schedule that afternoon; in three days’ time they’d meet. Their mother had specified they would be allowed at the meeting should they choose to be present, but it wasn’t required. There was only one party required present per request, the woman who lived across the street from their mother the past several years, a Mrs. Yarborough. The brothers had vague recollection of the woman; it’d been years since they’d seen her, a figure of granola good-vibes who waved from her front porch or driveway, younger than the twins or so superior in health she appeared so. Yarborough wasn’t family, she was a convenience in their mother’s lean years, how they saw it. Why would she be preferred over a mother’s own sons, no matter how long their estrangement? It was bewildering and offensive and they presumed some form of opportunism was at play. They had a mind to drive to the woman’s house and confront her, but having never met her, spoken with her, even to a besotted pair of brains that seemed like poor strategy. They would meet her in three days’ time, at Wicksham’s office. They would hear what this woman was to their mother, in their mother’s own words, as written.

“How?”—this was when Theo asked, back facing his brother. The brother stood in the doorway between bedroom and kitchen; first time Tre had visited Theo’s apartment. He’d been renting the place for several years, how many he’d have to pause and count on his fingers. Theo had been looking out the kitchen window, scanning the shared back yard and gravel lot where renters' trucks and cars were parked. It was dark out, the brothers were inside standing in light, but there was dark as well in each their heads and between them. Their mother; her body; those forensic vultures; the FBI training their people by picking over her bones. Obscene and felt like some obscure insult. When she lay in the hospital those two last days delirious and not cognizant enough to hold her own in an argument, much less know who exactly she might have been arguing with or why, she looked the part, a corpse reanimated for their benefit, so they could sit or stand bedside and take in the full sight of her. It’d been too long. She looked far too different from how they remembered her. Deathbed moments were supposed to be intimate but the brothers felt like visitors more than guests. There was a difference; visitors arrived of their own accord, not necessarily by invitation; guests were chosen and invited and presumably welcome. For a woman with many friends and neighborly admirers, it was curious they had their mother’s room to themselves those two days. Later they wondered whether guests had known who they were and, having noticed the two standing bedside, had elected to not bother. Or maybe they’d been warned and by their own mother; her boys wouldn’t be healthy company, should they take up space in the room, keep clear. 

Tre had been talking, the talk lit by anger and liquor. What was stopping them? He assumed the worst of the meeting. It wasn’t a stretch to assume their mother hadn’t made it essential they be present. Sure as they were standing in this apartment parsing over the matter their mother’s body was in transport across the state, exchanged like free property between strangers. By the time they sat with Wicksham she might be laid out on an examination table naked or worse carried by the Center’s staffers to some makeshift hole in the ground. He didn’t know how these things worked, was a guy of limited knowledge, but the vivid details were there to be seen, barely obscured behind the lawyer’s euphemisms. 

Was it smart to wait? Tre asked, phrasing it in such a way the question was a problem in and of itself. Here they were, waiting. No one else was, not Wicksham, not those strangers-for-hire handling their mother’s body. Wicksham had made them wait but this wasn’t what he was doing, not exactly. He was setting the law into action and the law worked its power on the little people by taking away their ability to resolve matters themselves. They should get in the car right now and drive. They could do it, race the ambulance or hearse or refrigerated truck or whatever it was to the Center. And if they were too late to stop them, could hop the fence and find her and steal her out of that place. Take to a piece of unmarked wilderness, some spot in the woods they and only they would know and hold their own private funeral, set her into the ground themselves. 

Theo stood with his back to his brother and watched the cars at the end of the lot, hoods shiny with streetlight reflection. How? is what he asked, knowing there was no soft answer. Tre would talk his way past the likely drawbacks, invoke familial honor and how could Theo argue against that. The issue may have involved family but more involved the wounded pride of two snubbed sons than any common ennobling principle such as honor. The lawyer expected them in three days; far as he knew they were resolved to wait. No one would miss them until then and maybe not even then, since it’d be unsurprising if they didn’t show, given their mother’s instructions signaling their unimportance. Drive now; find her. Why was Theo not agreeing with enthusiasm? Because he hadn’t thought of it first? 

OK, he said, then turned. Tre smiling in the doorway drunk in the eyes, arms raised overhead, hands gripping the doorframe above him. He looked about ready to improvise a chin-up. If Theo were wise or at least observant, one look at his brother would’ve told him they were doomed. 

They left much the way Tre had arrived, through early morning hours. Nashville blank and dotted with lights drifting past either side of the highway. They were the ones in motion but the city and its neighborhoods carried the effect, easing along their line of sight like scum along the surface of a river. They were eastbound and no faster than ten MPH above the limit. Theo had begun with music but Tre nixed that, insisted on random interjections from the lady robot providing play-by-play navigations through his phone’s GPS app. This was dangerous; it was stupid; it was also the first brotherly adventure they’d been on since either could remember. The distance was roughly one hundred eighty miles and outside it was July rolling over into August. 

I-40 was a ghost route, stray semis and night drivers drifting past, small towns and gas stations floating like well-lit islands along the exits. Beyond Knoxville the interstate threaded through Johnson City where they’d been born. That was officially Appalachia; neither brother tangled with mountains; there were bad associations. Their father had died there and their brother as well. Theo mentioned it while Tre tapped the wheel with an angry finger, talking through the details of their plan. Park blocks from the Center; scout the fence line, check for cameras; maybe stop by a supplies store, buy dust masks and sunglasses to disguise themselves. Funny we’re driving the same direction as our childhood, Theo said, Johnson City’s just up the road from where we’re going. Tre pressed the gas and said good then, we’re going that direction, sure, the past's ahead of us but that's not where we're headed. There were actual graves in Johnson City, ones neither took time to visit. Their brother, the youngest; youngest by twenty minutes. Born triplets but not simultaneously; there was a hierarchy even in the womb. Tre was born first then ten or so minutes later, short intermission as far as multiple births go, Theo was pulled free. Twenty minutes after that, twice as long an interval between Tre and Theo, Terry was born. Tre was born Tracy, a horrible curse to lay upon a child boy’s head. Theo was given a lesser curse, Theodore. Early on their father took pains to spare them future bullying, snipping the fancy flourishes from those mother-chosen birth names like so much foreskin. Tre he called the eldest, Theo the middle. Terry he left untouched and the difference may have marked the boy's fortunes because the youngest and smallest didn’t live past ten. There’d been an accident. The boys had been playing on a construction site in the unfinished part of the neighborhood, tossing dirt clods at freshly laid cinderblock foundations. They’d been caught many times before and chewed out by their father, forced to apologize to the crew leader Mr. Parks who lived with his wife and daughters near the entrance to the subdivision. They’d apologized with bowed heads, swept the mess with push brooms, but after a few afternoons were back at it. Someone on Mr. Parks crew had left tools behind in a half-finished house, a crowbar, some hammers, a level, a table saw, a nail gun. The nail gun made it into one of their hands and the rest was something they didn’t talk about. Was it Tre? Was it Theo? They were ten years old, should have been able to remember. But neither said they could when pressed for information. They couldn’t remember at ten and couldn’t at fourteen, much less twenty or thirty or forty. Thinking back from distance of decades there was so little feeling involved they questioned whether it’d been either of them. For the longest while they’d thought both. Both had removed their brother from himself and family and in reinforcement of this read, their joint culpability, their mother did not speak with them for a time. It felt like six months. It seemed like a year. Their father took off work when he could, shouldered the burden of keeping conversation going. She was grieving, he explained, but both knew it was something else as well. She was grieving but grieving against them.

When a triplet dies, where does that leave the others? Do they still make a set or do they suffer a downgrade? Tre and Theo began referring to themselves as twins only after they heard their mother do so. The Twins, she’d say to a friend or a teacher or their father. It was ambiguous what was being communicated but lack of acknowledgement of intention behind it was hurtful; it suggested some newly determined distance and upheld it. This all happened in Johnson City and for the first time in their adult lives the brothers were driving together toward it, never mind arrival was never the intention. Past twenty-four hours aside, Knoxville hadn’t been a city to hold much emotion for them. Now they were driving there to save their mother from a hole in the ground. 

Short of four in the morning the horizon-line took a pink glow. Signs for Knoxville exits flared and flitted past. The robot lady got chatty; two miles ahead take Route 129 south, she said then updated them on their progress every half mile. Wonder what time Wicksham wakes in the morning, Tre said. Not early enough, he added, we’re days ahead of him and there he is back in his bed or office thinking we’re in line and on his schedule. Wicksham was more an idea than a man now and Tre, Theo noticed, talked like the man was one of his old opponents in the octagon, back when he was still fit for fighting. They had known the lawyer all of thirty-six hours yet the motivation Tre milked from the acquaintance was disproportionate to the offense intended; the lawyer was just doing his job, Theo thought. Theo had drank less than his brother so had less of a distance to cover before sobering up. If he’d drank less why wasn’t he the one driving? Answer was anger; Tre was angrier; angry men crossed distances in shorter time. There was also the reason that Theo didn’t have it in him to fight his brother for the keys; Tre was bigger and was wired with killer instinct. Let him drive. 

Up came 129 South, they slowed and took the exit; the exit carried them dogleg toward a bridge and across it, shiny dark of the Tennessee River around and below. Not far past they took the first UT Medical Center exit as instructed. Tre took this even slower, edging off on speed as if to make their approach more quiet. Streetlights in abundance and University of Tennessee signage. Medical Center Way, the lady told them, turn right in five hundred feet on Cherokee Trail. The directions they followed carried them in circles around a cluster of newish-looking buildings. There were interconnected parking lots, mostly empty. There was a high chainlink fence and at the point of arrival a guard station with a boom barrier. There was a guard sitting in the boxed light of the station and scanning the layout as they passed Theo counted two cameras at least. They would have to park as planned blocks away, maybe farther, on the other side of Route 129. There were too many lights and too little cover to mix themselves with shadows. 

Tre circled the same path once more, same speed, leaning forward to scope the fence line and entrances. The complex was much as he expected; less airtight actually. No razor wire atop the fence; no university security patrol cars or police cruisers parked along the way or idling. They passed through the green of the Route 129 intersection and cut left, cut another left then a right until they found a place to park snug among a line of cars. Engine off, Tre dropped his hands off the wheel into his lap and closed his eyes. He took a long heaving breath then exhaled through nostrils across the span of what felt like minutes, something Theo had seen his brother do in locker rooms before a fight. Calming the mind to concentrate it on the future action of combat; beating and kicking and choking a man until he was past tense incarnate, unconscious or tapping out. Theo knew to wait, he’d waited like this many times before. Years before, it’d been a while, the feel of the moment instantly recognizable. An hour earlier on the highway there’d been talk of supplies, wire cutters or crowbars. This long breath signaled Tre had decided otherwise. Theo could think his way through why. They had maybe an hour, hour and a half, at most two hours before dawn. The dark would lighten a fair bit before that. 

Know what I was just thinking of, Tre said as he opened eyes and brought himself back to normal breathing. Some reason I just pictured Anderson Silva. Remember that last Silva fight against Chris Weidman? 

Soon as Tre mentioned Silva that old hideous image came back vividly like a still frame paused on T.V., paused then played forward in slow-motion. Silva’s kick caught a shin just beneath Weidman’s knee and snapped, gruesomely soft in an instant. Theo winced to picture it, remainder of the leg flopping like a banana peel. Why of all things, Theo said. Maybe because if we’re lucky, Tre told him, at best we’ll see something neither of us wants to remember. But we’re still in agreement, right, it needs doing. Yes, Theo said, there’s a lot to figure out but we’ll figure it as we go. 

Soon after they were walking, turning corners, cutting between buildings. They didn’t run; did their best to move like maintenance men or students; tracked opposite direction from where they’d driven, Cherokee Way, cut through a large parking lot scattered with cars. They walked with purpose, heads up, didn’t scan their surroundings. Act like there aren’t even cars around, Tre told Theo. Far end of the lot were trees, a fence line. Orange sign at the end of the fence along where Cherokee took a bend and continued. William M. Bass Forensic Anthropology Center, it read. So it’s there, Tre said, of course it’d be there, opposite direction of where we’d been looking when driving. Tight security was for some other complex or building, the Center was smaller, at the end of a short roundabout and tucked in a corner of university property among a clutch of trees and bushes. The parking lot was small and beyond it they could see the river. There were a few cars parked there as well but none signaling any kind of people. The building had windows and they tried scanning the insides but most of had blinds drawn. There was a main entrance, grey metal double doors; those they left untried; ducked along until the building ended and beyond it the fence line took over. This fence had coiled razor wire running along top it; why guard the woods, Tre guessed, unless this was a perimeter? They’d read on their phones, aka “researched” the research center, its history and layout, knew bodies were laid out, exposed to the elements on three acres of land back behind the building. On the drive to Knoxville Theo had attempted to snoop on Google Earth a gods-eye view of the property but his phone battery died from the strain while data roaming. The gate of the chain link fence was locked; behind the chain link was a second fence, older and wooden. It was a warm night but dry, not as humid or sticky hot as it’d been in Nashville. Theo stood lookout while Tre wriggled from his jean jacket, threw it over razor wire. He scrambled quick to top of the fence much as he’d done when younger, pumping his fist over a crowd after KO-ing an opponent. Instead of dropping to ground he unclimbed himself on the other side. Theo repeated the same but with less grace and quiet. It took a minute of tugs and thrashes to unhitch the jacket, remove evidence of covert entry. A path of packed earth waited where they turned, woody dark composed of loose underbrush and trees. A shed stood near the entrance. Theo dangled a keychain flashlight, asked should they use it. Tre shook a head no. They walked soft, heel to toe, like soldiers on point fearful of booby traps. Tre cupped hands around his phone, muffled its lit screen to check the time. It was minutes short of four-thirty. They had an hour to find her, he said. Should they split up, Theo asked, to make better time? Tre thought no, best to begin far north of the fence, view of the riverbank, then walk paces from each other east to west working their way south. Together in a grid fashion, systematic, more chance of being thorough and without redundancies. They’d have to move at brisk pace though.

There were smells; the dark fluctuated from earthy to acrid. There were insects, breezy and buzzing clouds they followed by sound. It didn’t take long to find the first body. A freshly excavated hole, marked off with stakes and string. Tre tapped his phone’s screen to direct soft light over the hole. A skeleton from what they could see, skull and ribs melded with dirt and ripped roots and tubers. Too old, Tre said, if Mom’s here we’ll be able to recognize her. Paces from the hole beneath a tree they found another wrapped in black plastic, this an actual body, dense against push of a boot-toe. There as a number printed on a laminated card stapled to plastic, 22. Tre worked the covering open, held a lit phone over it. Not Mom, he said, this one’s a guy. Birds had been chattering in the canopies above when they’d first begun walking two-by-two grid formation; Theo noticed and mentioned, they were quiet. The birds made for good cover but quiet would hint something was off, someone was below. Don’t overthink it, Tre told him. No one listens to birds like they’re neighborhood watch. They both found themselves looking up, branches inky but distinct now against a slightly brighter pinkish sky. It would continue to get lighter until the phone was unneeded; closer to dawn they got, quicker they could spot bodies and ID them, mom or not-mom. 

What if she hadn’t arrived yet? What if they were early? Theo voiced concerns but Tre agreed, true, that might very well be the case. If it were, consider this reconnaissance, gaining mapped and walking knowledge of the lay of the land. They would finish and if they didn’t find mom would pick a spot opposite the entrance to jump the fence and sneak away. They’d get a room at a motel, wait a couple days. They’d use the time to buy gear necessary for excavation and transport of a body; definitely a strong set of bolt cutters to cut the lock at the front gate. 

Theo could picture it, one of them backing a car toward the gate, popping the trunk; the two of them carrying their mom in wrapped plastic. The car would drive, headlights dark, out the parking lot then switch lights on for driving beyond campus. They’d take the on-ramp to the interstate and they’d drive south or north then east, most definitely east into the mountains. There they’d find an exit and drive through some portion of thinly populated nowhere, look for a gravel road. They’d drive through a forest that rose and fell among mountains and in dawn light would park a car where very likely there’d never once been a car. A truck maybe, but not a car. They’d bring their mom out and shovel and together dig a hole. They’d lay her down at the bottom, pull plastic away from the face so plastic framed it, them gazing down and her returning the gaze. They’d take turns saying their piece. How they felt about her, now that were wasn’t much to her anymore. For once their mom would be looking up to them and maybe they’d just stand and savor the moment. Then they’d take the shovels and help make her part of the earth, a good enough role to play, given their mom’s admiration for Mama Nature. 

         Theo could picture shoveling dirt in a mountain forest, but walking paces from Tre in the Center’s acres, trees growing lighter and taking on color, it seemed a bit unnecessary. She’d end up much the same but on their terms. That’s how they may want it but what would it change? Those two days at the hospital she was out of it and wasn’t in shape to recognize anyone. That made them angry; there were conversations they wanted to begin so they could settle a few matters between them; these were the terms of their family romance and out there peeking at forensic specimens once people they were ever further from resolving the conflict; the conflict had split in two, a twin unto itself, and was wholly unaware it’d been here before under different but still similar circumstances, many times. The brothers wanted a mother to become identical with them, an honorary triplet; it was futile and cruel in any number of directions and silly. 

        Theo stopped walking. He stood regarding the branches above, realized a few beats after he’d been looking he was scrutinizing leaves for birds on the mum, hushed but watching. Tre, he said. Tre, hold up. I think we’re done. We’re not done, Tre said, look over there, we’ve got about two or three more passes until we hit the south fence. We’re done, man, Theo said. I’m more sober than you, trust me on this, we’re done. Theo worked his way through brambles, nature’s barbed wire, to reach his brother but stopped a few paces short. Tre stood before him eyeing the ground. In the distance to the left of Tre, right of Theo, there was a tinkling sound, metal on metal, the sound of keys. They were facing each other but didn't turn and it was then--silence above, keys at the gate--Theo followed his brother's line of sight and looked down.

Fools for a King

Where is he? Point the way. There over yonder, there past the Locks and the Pits, Dungmarte and Batty Springs and Shay Longeur, old names for even older neighborhoods. His keepers hold the place, all districts surrounding. They’ve renamed neighborhoods according to the lay of his body: the Pits now Left Pointer Finger, the Locks now Left Middle, Batty Springs no longer Batty Springs but His Left Knee. The western suburb they call Left Arm, the eastern the Right…geography takes on the features of his avatar and people are made to live within it. 

         His population increases daily. Refugees, outcasts, exiles of every stripe, immigrants from the countryside no matter which country. Each arrive following the chemtrails of a rumor: the answer-man resides here, in a room somewhere in the ever-wandering perfect center of the city. Each was born into a life and they’ve brought it this far, helped it survive. They’ve dodged disease and bondage at the hands of bandits and slavers. They’ve walked the small path and seek passage into a larger one, just need directions and a reliable map to get there. The Wrinkle King, they’re told. Ask the Wrinkle King, he’ll show you, where and how. Years ago they asked where they might find such a man and a finger, different each time but always ever crooked, pointed the way. As they left, were told: no easy feat to score an audience with the man, so be ready. To gain access will have to pay with patience, teeth and blood, days and years, your soul (should you have one), and maybe a little dry paper money. 

Such is the talk that surrounds him. Talk that squanders the legend but fleshes out the man. The Wrinkle King, an old boy, a Lao Tzu of slumland.

This city, Wrinkle City. Some will tell once it was called Tollinghurst. Then the man came or was born, the man took his throne and evolved out of obscurity into royalty. After that happened they changed their tune. They spoke as if he’d always been here, had been in fact its first and only citizen. This city, thousands of years deep in the present moment, back when it was an infant only, they claim, The Wrinkle King was there to suckle it, proto-wolf to its Romulus and Remus. He was ancient even then. He lived in a hut in the bog lands waiting for people to gather and for those people to procreate and fatten a town and government. Shacks became houses; houses became office parks. Walking paths became streets. The childhood of this place might be traced across of the features of the man himself: creases and scored marks, blemishes left behind by age running riot over his face. Of course this town has no royalty and this man is hardly an oligarch, he’s but a guy who’s lived here longer than grass on the ground. Grass not for all time but just this past spring. 

Here then. Descriptions and instructions. They keep him a room, shirtless and pantless, plus-sized and breathing. A fulsome sun-damaged oracle. A door opens and his attendants lead you up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs another door. Knock, knock. Another peasant. Come on in, have a seat, what brings you? The door opens and there he is, this huge creature sitting on a cot in the corner, box spring mattress, half dozen floor fans arranged in semicircle around him, churning air his direction. It’s summer, flies sizzle about his head. A cane-back chair in the middle of the fans, waiting to creak and crinkle under weight of another visitor. You sit. You watch and wait. The great man shifts in his seat one buttcheek to the other. A long quiet. Attendants stand with backs to the wall by the door. You’ve been frisked, patted down for shivs and other such weapons. Neat, clean. Only sharp things about you might be questions you might ask, if they can manage to formulate. The great man mouthbreathes. An arm lifts, settles on a slabby thigh. Wrinkles break pattern across his body in hundreds of minuscule ways then settle into fresh relation. They remind the eye of a dried lake bottom, mud baked into spiderworks of excoriated geometry. Here he sits before you waiting.

“Name?” 

[State your name] 

“Where you hail from?” 

[Your hometown]

“That’s a far bit. Welcome then. What you want to know?” 

The rules. Before being led to this room you’ve been told rules. To these you’ve nodded head, agreed. One question. Pilgrims are granted one, therefore are encouraged to really think. The line is long. Time enough for only a few minutes. King sees a couple hundred each day, from waking to sleep. Wakes, first thing a bowl of oatmeal, cup of coffee. Then the first pilgrim is led upstairs for counsel. Goes like that six days a week. The seventh his day of rest. Years, decades he’s been doing this, offering his body as wisdom, if you have the stomach, if you can look at him. Rule #1: Rehearse your question. You’ll be granted only one sentence to phrase it with. Rule #2: After presenting your question, keep quiet. Let the man think. The room’s acoustics are part of the process. Don’t rush him. Sit back in the chair and wait. Rule #3: Watch all of him, not just the face. Prophecies or simple responses might take shape across any part of him. Could be a bicep, a pectoral, across the plump of a thigh or calf or elsewhere across his back or globulous belly. Skin does the talking, not the man’s mouth. If he does mobilize in more verbal ways, consider those mere additions, captions for whatever is expressed across the theater of his vast nudity.  Rule #4: A rune, a puzzle. A cat’s cradle of wrinkles spelling out fate in complex ideogram. Memorize the lines. Commit the characters to recall. Once you have seen and truly taken what’s shown, nod. One nod will be enough. Give assent for the erasure and reshuffling that follows. A shift in his seat and wrinkles flatten, wander, resurface into neutral position, ready for a next question. Rule #5: Stand. Thank him. Walk backwards while facing him (never, never turn your back to him), until his doormen take you by arm and lead you out, down the stairs. 

Those are the rules, simple. Break any one or take them out of order, you’ll be led out the exit never to be granted second entry. Some have tried. None have been crafty enough to fool the doormen. Some, having flubbed the rules and having failed to sweet talk their way back into favor resorted to extreme measures of self-revision, sought plastic surgery to rechristen their faces. They’d arrive with different clothes, mannerisms. They’d come with fake IDs and backstories. They’d sit for pre-interview with the Wrinkle King’s screeners and run through rehearsed details about where they’d come from, why they were seeking counsel. They’d been wandering for years. They’d come from the hinterlands hoping for clarity. They were lost. Lost much as the rest are. Might they secure an audience with His Excellency. Each screener in their turn would weather such sob stories with controlled indifference, squint, study the aspect before them, then conclude no. No, we know you. You have tried before. You’ve proven yourself unworthy. The future doesn’t wish to meet you. Off they’d go, pushed to the street, crowds of fellow pilgrims watching. 

You’ve seen those types. Strangers have called you aside, pointed them out. No shortcuts, they advise. Know the rules, memorize them. Some had rolls of cloth they’d produce by request, the rules stitched into them or written in charcoal or ink. Study the rules and practice. Notice others here and there doing that? You look around and there see people standing off to the side or squatting by the curb or face to face in an alley, one assuming an imperious posture, arms crossed, gaze lowered, the other holding a roll of cloth in hand, reciting the rules. First flush using the written copy for reference. Second try running through the rules by rote. 

Where’s the waiting room, you ask? After check-in with the screeners you’ll need to know. Easy, they say. It all is, anywhere around here. The whole neighborhood. By now probably the whole city. Pick a spot, lay out a bed roll, you’ll be in the waiting room. All of this, you ask and they nod. Tents and cardboard boxes, cairns of junk and sheets strung up with sticks and wires. To find a place in the waiting room, they tell you, all you have to do is foreswear a home, you don't even have to own one. If homeless they'll know from the look of you you’re waiting. They see everything. They keep track and tally. Don’t take numbers, though, numbers are for houses. Wrinkle King’s people only trade in names and faces.

Names and faces. So then, what’s yours? You had a face once but it left you. You had a name to go with it, where’s that now? People speak of cats and karma, past lives. People lose their names or change them. They age or gain weight or lose it, wear makeup or grimace or smile. Faces change and bring fresh acquaintances with them, someone new where they were once just themselves. 

Roll-call of alibis, disguises. Who’d you been? Who were selves that passed through you, that brought you here? Self #12: A fishmonger named Devin Greene. Scar running diagonally left to right, forehead to chin, down your face. Reminded everyone who met you of a movie star they admired but couldn’t place. Self #60: Dylanna Sparks-Evans, three miscarriages in a year she told no one about, including her husband. Self #105: An old chess master who waited alone in public squares with board and pieces prepared on cardboard box before him, two chairs. Hoping for challengers. Pigeons talked to him occasionally, bringing news of the seasons and secrets overheard from windowsills. Self #838: A blind woman who saved her money for a year to hire the services of an experienced climber to guide her to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain. Her name was Jane, you remember, Jane Bull. She spat from the side of her mouth and cracked her knuckles from time to time. 

These. These and more. Each useful for a day or an hour or week or month. Would bring you to a new self then molt off you like skin with an expiration date. Self to self you travelled from various species of nowhere until you arrived here, Wrinkle City. Who now? Wouldn’t be enough to ask just anyone. Find a store window, a parked car’s side mirror. Ask for a compact from some lady with fuchsia wig doing her lipstick. A shard of glass on the ground, lift it, hold at an angle just so. Who’s that looking back? Your most recent incarnation: a girl of twelve. How from the looks of her you know she’s twelve? It’s the feeling, how it strikes you, the rightness, the recognition, turning the glass at slight angles to examine her features. There then, that’s you now. Who knows for how long. Get on with it. 

You are Melanie Winters, the reflection says. Just by sight, wordlessly: telekinesis by reflection. You’re a runaway from Minneapolis and hate your mother. What she’s done to you you can’t remember. 

“Hey, what’s your name?”

“Melanie.” 

“You new?”

“Yeah, just got here.”

“Here to see King?”

“Yeah. Where we go to sign in?”

There, they tell you, see that line of people? It goes around one block then another. Like a traffic jam of mice in a maze. This is the middle and there’s no cutting. Follow the line zigzag, find the very end and take your place. Best to hurry, dozens get added by the minute. 

It takes two full days to get there. Over bridges, underground into subways and up again. Through the warehouse district, the garment district, flower district. Everyone facing one direction and you walking the opposite way. Note the looks, bystanders in single-file. Each cost a little, none free. To one pay a half-second of your time, to another half a half-second; in exchange you’re provided guidance: here’s a line, we’re part of it; trust it; there’s a place reserved for you at the end. 

The end is in a neighborhood once West Quay. So says the person just a minute ago standing end of the line (now you are). A business type without industry, dirty suit, disheveled. Housing projects wherever you throw a stone, he says, a park with a pond and fountain and an old armory building. A basketball court and horseshoe pits. In another life families once picnicked here. 

Tip of His Left Pinkie Toe, he explains. Long ago King’s sovereignty trumped city planning and West Quay got renamed. Everything around, everything you see belongs to him, being part of him. Us now too. We shake hands, the handshake's his. This line here's the vagus nerve, connects his many parts and runs right through him. 

        While the businessman does his business thing, mansplaining, the line lengthens. You look over shoulder and notice. A kid with brick in hand takes a spot behind you. An elderly couple shuffles behind. A woman in heels, a man in uniform, a nurse pushing a bluehair in a wheel chair. People north, south, east, northeast, west, southwest, wander over and join the line. Your fingertips are wet, you rub them together, look up. Sky’s gray, it's drizzling. 

*

“Cheers, you survived.” 

“Did I?”

“Surely.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re still honestly breathing. About half only get that far. Most of these, look close, you'll notice their chests expand but aren’t drawing air. Only faking. Somewhere along the way they died on their feet waiting. If they dropped and began to rot, they’d lose their place in line. Come this far, why concede?”

Pair of fingers to neck, check your pulse. Hold back of a hand under nose, feel air come out warm, cloven by nostrils. 

“See? The real deal.” 

Screeners lead people off the line at the check-in. Separate pilgrim cadavers from the living. Aware or not, they’re dead. Dead gets disqualified. Each taken by upper arm, walked over to a gaggle of other such detainees cordoned behind a chain-link fence. 

The check-in station. Five card tables under a tarp pavilion. Behind each sits a screener, clipboard and camera at hand. The check-in attendant leads you furthest to the right. Split second you pause to wonder, wait, he talks a good game, but is he breathing? Gone before you can lean close to gauge whether there’s pulse to his heartbeat. 

The screener sits, you stand. She lifts the camera, viewfinder stealing her eye. A Diana, you see, a Diana F+. You name it without effort. How? One of your past selves, more than likely. Which? Self #55: The kid who won the camera at a carnival. A toy. Came with two free rolls of 120 mm film. One weekend a month her mother would bring her along to the West Side Market where she’d exercise an informal sort of mortal possession, snapping photos of fruit vendors or patrons bartering for a better deal on kielbasa. That one. That self was in the know. Screener lady raised the camera to take photo for ID purposes, smile from Self #55 found her face quite naturally. Melanie Winters with Self #55’s smile of nostalgia.  

Screener hands the camera to an attendant. Attendant walks it over to a courier. Courier hustles to a door off the main street, a brownstone. Man in plastic apron and elbow-length work gloves takes it, off to the Royal Developer. Negatives grand enough for contacts straight off the sheet, no need for enlarger. Dark room, Developer works the chemicals. Your likeness emerges from the slick void of paper. The proof pinned with clothespins on a wire. It dries. Developer snatches it free, holds it to blacklight. Confirmed: this resemblance, somewhere there’s someone live behind it. Proof is sleeved in manilla envelope, in turn passed to one of many return couriers. The courier rushes it back to Screener #5, who opens envelope, slips free the official double of you who stands for comparison and scrutiny. Proof held next to your head. Look to one then the other. Two dimensional, then three. You as you, you as it. Together twins of a screener’s witness. 

Head nods (nods around this place the highest currency). Approved. Schedule them on the King’s calendar. 

Awkwardly, at loss for your role, you thank her. 

Screener hands your face back to you, keeps the envelope. Do with it whatever, she says. We’ll remember. We’re keen on who you are, or can be. 

Attendant leads you left. The outed dead, walked from the line, watch from behind the fence. They track your good fortune, access to the prime waiting area of the city-wide waiting room. 

How will they know when to call you? 

Attendant sucks his teeth, spits at your feet. Step away from the spit, admonished. Your shoes, their tips, both point toward it. Spit-checked you nod accordingly. Attendant too. Exchange rate of nods between peons and power people around the place uneven, five nickels to a penny. 

Look around, over heads of the crowd. Aluminum bleachers on sidewalk either side of the street.

Street’s name? Check the sign. 

Corpus Callosum Avenue. 

In the brain, you think. The King’s Brain, center of Wrinkle City. 

Among bleachers you choose left. Right-handed, you don’t trust yourself. Sullen hundreds crammed shoulder to shoulder, ass to ass, elbows on knees, leaning forward. Five rows up, you spot a gap. Apologizing, you climb, step past, hand on a shoulder, arm extended to manage balance. Wriggle through punters to reach row and spot. This taken? you ask sitters either side of it. Guy with Baltimore Orioles cap and Bengals jersey next to guy with black left eye and bandage over right.

Sure, one says.

Go for it, the other. 

Turn, plant ass on cold aluminum, street scene in full view before you. A bustle right out of Ellis Island. The tired, hungry and poor, children of a lesser life, supposedly. “The stadium, you should’ve seen it,” you overhear a stranger tell a stranger. “There a week ago. Up in the nosebleed section for a year. Eat, bathroom, sleep. Eat bathroom sleep. Same day, day in day out, till I realized no one was holding me. Attendant brought me so guess I assumed I should stay? Been a week here on bleachers, no one minds. Funny it’d take me so long to figure. Why?” 

Here begins the real wait. When pilgrim becomes penitent. Believe in the King, his beneficence and works, his clairvoyant thoughtfulness? Prove it. Here’s a rash, suffer the rash. Here’s gout, endure it. It rains, it snows. Suffer the elements. Fall winter spring summer, same all over again. If sunburnt, offer up the sunburn. Sunburn curdles to melanoma, offer up the cancer. Should cancer metastasize, offer it up wherever it spreads. Not mere forbearance, this. Merely your contribution to his ongoing absorption of collective misery and hardship. What you endure he endures in effigy, by proxy. The King in his room, on his mattress. Apart from the rest, gathering the sufferings of subjects unto himself by osmosis. Powered, sustained by each little pain or discomfort. This is what the waiting’s for. Your turn to begin. 

“Helps if you picture him,” they say. 

No shortage of camaraderie among sufferers. 

“His room, the wallpaper. The chair set before him.”

“Helps too sometimes to rehearse it mentally. Stepping through the doorway. Taking the seat. Consider how you’ll sit. Hands palms-down on knees? Cross your legs? If so, left ankle over right knee or right ankle over left?”

They’re in pain, they explain, offering advice sometimes provides relief. 

“Try it,” they say. “Advise us.”

“Ok. Um…”

“Take your time. Pause a while before offering a bit of advice, it increases the advice’s potency.” 

“Ok.” Count to ten. Inhale, exhale. Assume a noble posture then speak. 

“With migraines, try this little trick. Take thumb and forefinger of one hand, pinch hard the muscle between thumb and forefinger of the other. There’s a pressure point there. Apply intense pressure, it’ll relieve a migraine.” 

Fellow penitents gathered round find their pressure point, pinch it. Pause, focus. Assume a collective attitude of listening. Then come the nods. Nods all around, thanking you. "It works," they say. "Amazing!" There are doubts. You wonder. How could each have suffered a migraine that very minute? Then a warm feeling hits you and the doubts leave. Relief. Like a high. The perfect painkiller. 

You’re elsewhere, bleachers in the past. A year’s gone by. You’re sitting next to a woman in a wife beater, padlock dangling from bandana tied around her neck. The bandana’s red. Feather earrings hang from both lobes, blow and flick. You’re louche in lawn chair on a tarry rooftop, audience to this woman’s rambling. Barefoot, toenails janky yellow, so many meth teeth. This too offered up to the King. 

The King’s treasury, this lady, Charlene, tells you. All this pain and suffering, what’s it buy and what’s he spending it on? They say it powers the wrinkles. Their morph-games. Always on the move, switching places, musical chairs, but what music? Look. Look at me! (You look.) I got shit-ton of wrinkles but no one sees much in ‘em. You too, girl. Look at you. (Fishes a pair of aviators perched atop her forehead, lowers them to look through at you, doubled in their reflection). Your face. Browned, burnt. Lined haphazardly like a piece of paper crumpled, tossed to ground, walked over, picked back up, unwadded. Haggard from receiving the full voltage of direct sun. 

Charlene winces at the reaction. Snatches the glasses off. You gesture for them. This feeling is suffering too. She hands them to you, you open them, look down at yourself reflected from an even crueler angle. A wattle! You have a wattle. Skin hangs from your neck like drapings. Fingertips touch it, tug. That feeling again, heavy and real. Offer it up. Somewhere in his room King metabolizes it, turns it to predictive potential, and a ripple sweeps across an expanse of backfat. You’ve lost your youth, he’s empowered. Charlene snots on the ground. For what? she says. Done, beyond help. You pinch the meat between pointer finger and thumb, say hey, look here, this could help. A squint. Advice? she says. Haven’t you figured it yet? Advice around here is about as useful as virginity. Only idiots brag about it. 

“Roweena, honey, sorry to burst your bubble,” she says. 

Roweena. Who’s Roweena? You check your doubled reflection again in the aviators. 

From shock at sight of your leatheriness, you hadn’t noticed: you’re a different self. She’s skinny. Lean angular nose. Straight brown hair drawn back in a ponytail. Self #1,258: Roweena Sykes. Charlene continues her complaining and you try to summon knowledge of this new self’s history, where she came from, why she left, what she might ask the King in order to interpret the resulting configuration of wrinkles. Memory comes back with nothing. Blank. Maybe it’s Roweena, maybe her mind’s going. Early onset dementia. Long term memory the last to go, followed by slow decay of motor functions. 

Make a fist. Open, close. Repeat: I am Roweena Sykes, I’m talking with Charlene. Who’s Charlene though? The woman in lawn chair next to you jabbers on about the futility of advice, offering it, taking it. You think maybe this is Charlene. 

Dying. Are you dying? 

No, you’re undergoing another change, in real time. A fresh self emerges, no more Roweena. Who’s this one? Self #1,259: another old woman. You turn to Charlene but she hardly notices. Before you can check your reflection, match this new feeling with a face, another change comes over you. Self #1,260: a middle-aged broker. You last as the broker about ten seconds. Charlene’s still on a ramble about the King and his policies, misses the transformation. Maybe it’s all one self to her? Maybe they’re all rough versions of one person and sudden deviations don’t jar her? You stand. On your feet, view over rooftops, already you’re someone else. A disgraced anesthesiologist. Behind you Charlene picks another beer from a cooler, cracks it. Sips. A beer. You’d love one. You turn to ask for one but by the time the turn’s complete you’ve switched selves again, your bad luck: one recently sober. 

This self thing, you think. It’s breaking down. Degraded maybe by so much waiting. 

Edge of rooftop, sidewalk below. One step. One short step. Quick solution to the problem or was it? Suicide versus sunk-cost fallacy: you’ve lived this long, come this far, to end it now you'd lose the whole investment. Miles traveled and years spent waiting. Insult to the King too. Killing self, you’d kill the King, part of him that was you. Regicide once removed. 

“Not much of a view, is it?” Charlene says, beer to her lips. 

People on rooftops across the street wave. Tiny. Smog and distance makes them so. You have a hand too, you realize, two of them. Right raised, waves back. Which self's doing this?. All the old spent ones or none of them? Self #1,291: A man born in Iguapa who, when drunk and in company of family, can recite on request collected letters of a Polish housewife to her sister living in a village on the Bothnian coast. In exact order of their composition. Last word written? Wygnanie. “Banishment.” Eighty-third before last? Mydło. "Soap." Channeling her letters often a consolation for him, though frequently they're colored by loneliness. Family never tires hearing them. The woman's words sad on his voice but how can he say no? 

“Jump!” Charlene jokes. You look down.

Parked cars and trash and people below gawking up at you. 

*

A bald, fried little man. Sprigs of hair blowing free from a comb-over. Jeweler’s loupe to eye. Your hand palm-up before him. This is the Navigator. Caretaker and technician of the craft, interpreter of wrinkles. 

“See?” he says. “The lines, the patterns. Move your fingers, they change. Nothing static. Blueprints, maps in fluid movement. Scaled down to miniature, as a hand, but like the larger landscape always changing.”

He sniffs. Plucks the loupe from his eye. There are shelves behind the counter, ceiling-high. Maps of every kind, topographical, cadastral, hung on rollers. 

        “Whole city’s in this room,” he tells you.  A look of expectancy when said, as if he’s said it many times before. Waiting for some expression of confusion.  

“These here,” he points to the rows on his left. “Document every quirk of land the city was built on. Rivers, hills, marshes. Stretches of flat ground.”

“And these,” he says, pointing to the right. “These diagram the city's underground, the sewer system.” 

“These others,” he says, "are the majority." A sweeping gesture towards the stacks behind him. “Streets, properties, easements, buildings. Everything aboveground.”

“Lay them out in the rain, all on top one another. Let ink bleed through and blend, maybe then. Maybe then you’d have some kind of approximation. What sort of dominion we’re living in. Think of King as a big kid. A lonely kid in his room, no playmates. Daydreaming. Every one of us, every one to the last, imaginary friends who can't outgrow him."

Little of this makes sense but he’s the Navigator. His expertise and good judgment come rated highly. Bear with him.

“Five minutes. At most five,” Navigator says. 

“Picture the room. King on his mattress. Cane-back chair facing him, no other furniture. Brownish blots on the ceiling, moisture damage. See him?”

“Question is, what kind of eye will you bring to the room? Everything thought, felt, everything done to you, enacted upon others by you, witnessed firsthand or heard about, remembered or long forgotten. Sum total of your life informs what you notice. So ask yourself. ‘Is my eye keen enough? Will it be literate before the King’s wrinkles?’”

No. No is obvious. Said as much earlier that morning, all 2,054 versions of you come knocking at his door. 

Navigator’s office opens at 8 A.M. Glass double doors on third floor of the county courthouse. Navigator’s assistant comes from interior of the map room to unlock them, crowd waiting in the hallway. Pauses at the sight. Considers maybe benefits of not opening. 

“One at a time,” she states. “Who first?”

We're together, you explain. All one person.

Assistant is indifferent. “One at a time or none.”

Too many of you for one hallway. Some hunker on steps in stairwells. Others lounge on hard wooden benches. Most loiter in groups conversing in the ground floor foyer. 

“I’ll go,” elects Self # 741. “I was a law clerk once. Ordered copies of maps from county employees, who can be a tough breed. Know a bit how to ingratiate myself to them.” Selves talk among each other. Agree, give approval.

Self #741 steps in. Assistant locks door behind him. Rest of the crowd stands on other side of glass, so many aquarium-watchers. There goes their representative: florescent lights flickering on, key ring on assistant’s hip jangling. 

Navigator sits on a metal swivel chair, hands folded on countertop before him. State your purpose. Why you've come. Many a fellow pilgrim has recommended his services. Come to gain skill and knowledge of the art of wrinkle-reading. A meeting with the King scheduled. Next in line in the waiting room.  Unprepared, though, not much conversant in the King’s script and English.

“And these others," Navigator asks. Indicating crowd on the other side of the door. 

“Them? All selves that brought me here.”

“I see.”

“Once we were all of a piece, one person. It was crowded but manageable. Waiting eventually got to us, I guess. After check-in we had to wait. Didn't know it'd be this long. The longer we had to wait, the more selves came and went. Turns out there was a limit to how many we could contain. Hit a threshold, I suppose. Began splitting apart. This shared body of ours broke open. Scattered selves everywhere like milkweed.”

Navigator seems satisfied by the explanation. Nothing new? He arranges instruction tools on the countertop, begins his lesson. 

First exercise. Take a cup of pencils, throw them to the floor. Pencils of many colors roll, settle to stillness at varied angles. 

"What do you see?"

"Pencils," you say.

"Well enough. That’s literally what’s before you. But semantically?" 

"Semantically? How do you mean?"

"Imagine there's a word on a page. Say, for example, token. You pass an eye over it, you see it. Your eye perceives a string of five letters, each unlike the other--a "t", an "o", a "k", an "e", an "n". Precisely crafted flicks of ink on a page: what your eye sees literally. Very quickly your perspective shifts. Something seems to access the subtler intelligence of the eye and it begins reading. Intuitions bloom in an instant and soon they proliferate into a host of connotations, associations. Marks on a page begin to inspire all sorts of possibilities. That's the feeling of it, at least. Of perceiving a thing semantically."

"These pencils, then," he says. "You see them. But can you read them?" 

"No." 

Navigator points to pencils, their angles of arrangement on marble tile flooring. Analyzes what's there to be seen. This one, you see, in 45 degree diagonal relation to that? That one right there in 80 degree relation to this other? Wood and graphite. Sharpened tips and erasers. Compositional complexity of each against the other. One word emerges then the next. Navigator works slowly for your benefit, translating. Finishing he steps back, presents his interpretation: THURSDAY NEXT WEEK BETWEEN NOON AND THREE IT WILL RAIN FOR TWENTY-TWO MINUTES TOTAL. A prediction of weather mundane as rain or snow. This the message encoded in pencils, message non-existent before pencils were thrown to floor.

“Read it now?”

“Can’t believe it, but yes, I do.” So obvious once he points it out. Angles suggesting letters, letters assembling words. THURSDAY NEXT WEEK and IT WILL RAIN. 

After pencils you observe scribbles on a napkin. After that, Chinese takeout dumped on a counter. After that, cracks in plaster on a wall. To each the Navigator points, you squint and read, lines sometimes fine as dendrites or axons but discernible to the interpreting eye. 

  Days of this, seeing and reading, order of discernment begins to shift. Soon you’re reading the meaning of things before you see them. In the corner of a windowsill you read GIVEN A CHOICE, TURN LEFT. You blink, reorient, see there a dead housefly. Freshly diminished carcass in which the message’s written. 

“I think you have it,” Navigator decides. 

Days have passed or has it been longer? 

You touch chin, there’s a beard. Days? Beard’s long so maybe you’ve been here longer. 

“A final test,” Navigator says. He lifts a cup of pencils, chucks them to floor. They roll and scatter. 

“What do they say?” 

One by one pencils roll to rest, vanish. Pencils no longer there but letters. Assembling into a newfound phrase at your feet. MANY CAN PASS THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE, SO LONG AS THEY PASS ONE AT A TIME AND ALONE. A proverb of sorts. 

Navigator asks, “What do they say?”

You relate, he nods. 

“Congratulations. You’ve passed the test, it’s official: you can read.” He bends with cup to gather pencils. Assistant stands at hand, ready to lead you back through the stacks to the door. Lines on her forehead legible where once they were merely noticeable: THIS WAY TO THE EXIT, NO ARGUMENT. 

Double glass doors, assistant unlocks them.  

On the other side the rest, many orphan versions of you. Backs to walls sitting on hallway floor, scratching chin or yawning. Door opens, out you step. Eyes look to you, you return the look. What you see there you can’t help but read. WHO CAN SAVE US IF WE’RE HELPLESS? Uncomfortable, you look away. Looking back they're merely people again. Waiting for instructions, word of a next move. 

*

A janitor from Bogue Chitto, Louisiana. 

A cellist with four tattoos (all cellos).  

A nine-year-old named Hollis Baker. 

A middle-aged woman on disability, hands deformed clumps, severe rheumatoid arthritis, thirty-four cats for roommates. 

You and you and you. 

You’re a crowd, you’re walking west. You gauge west against the angle of the sun. This is downtown, the streets are wide, no traffic. The buildings spider-eyed with glinting lit windows. One of you steps off the sidewalk and the rest follow. Bystanders stand clear, watch them pass. Hundreds and dozens of people on the move, walking with purpose. If there were anything to protest, maybe protestors. If there were anything to find, a search party. A city without commuters, without working hours, offices with reasons to be filled. No kind of rush hour, no buses or taxis to catch, subways dormant for a century or more, if they ever ran in the first place. Built to lie dormant. Tracks laid then laid to rest. 

The pack leader cuts left, the crowd bends and follows. One block and the buildings part, pull away, hang back. A plaza with concrete benches and fountain and gaudy works of abstract public sculpture. There are skinny trees every few paces, birds flit from one to the other. The crowd gathers in the center of the plaza and there you stand, over two thousand selves freshly divided and curious for collective purpose. You turn head and from several thousand eyes gauge your surroundings. 

The crowd waits and settles, gathering the scene unto itself, waiting to gain further clarity on next steps to be taken. Advice had been given. A man, a professional navigator, had taught one and so all of you how to read the language of nature laid out in lines and creases. This was part of it but not enough. This was half of it, a third of it. What’s needed. 

The demands that lie ahead of you, two-thirds incomplete. 

Two considerable tasks before you. The crowd shuffles and listens and assembles what it knows. 

There is a city, the crowd says to itself. The King’s city. A patterned extension of his body. In one of its rooms resides that very body, but to reach it honestly, knowledgeably, one must explore every other building in the city that does not contain this room. One must venture across every inch of the city where the King is represented but not found. There are streets, but how many streets, there are alleys, but where and how many. There are hundreds of thousands of rooms if not millions, each an extension of the King, his provenance and power, none specifically the room that holds him. Each must be visited. Each must be explored, its every detail registered, scrutinized, its whole taken in fully. 

If doors are locked, locks must be picked or doors shouldered open. If there are beds, a knee must be taken and beds looked under. If there are closets, closets must be rummaged through, stood within. If there are shoeboxes lined on top shelves of closets, shoeboxes must be taken down and emptied. 

No cupboard should be left unopened. No refrigerator left un-investigated. If refrigerators are filled with jars and cartons of expired foodstuffs, these should be pushed aside so a clearer view of the interiors of refrigerators can be assessed. 

There are stairwells, there are attics, basements and crawl spaces. These should be explored and subject to thoroughgoing, disciplined inspection. Roofs should be accessed, fire escapes climbed, sheds and gardens isolated and studied. 

This the plan. One third the challenge. Traverse the city, hunt down every detail, commit every inch to memory. 

The other third yet addressed, the other challenge. 

The question. The question you plan to bring to the King. Your one chance, moment you’ve waited for, waited years for: to ask King a question of your choosing. It should be clear, pilgrims have told you. Concise, direct. Not one answered by yes or no. For your own sake, they told you, make it open. Ask him an open question. Process described to you times and times over so you can picture it. A door will open. Doormen will lead you into a room. No furnishing in the room but a mattress thrown to floor in a corner and in its middle a single chair empty and waiting. There you will sit. Made to wait. King’s massive body on mattress will rouse. King’s eyes will open. An arm or leg will shift its weight. Once settled and ready, you will be welcome to ask it anything. One question though, one only. Pronounce it slowly, clear and loud, then sit silently, wait. Changes will come over the body before you, quakes and ripples. Wrinkles surfacing to skin and traveling. An epidermal canvas on which the import of your question articulates itself and plays. Wrinkles and ripples slow, settle. And there it is: the patterns of an answer. Begin now the work of your eye, its yen for search and interrelation. Educated as eyes come, it discerns a message, teases it from wrinkles. It reads the definition of its fate. A prediction. Often accompanied by directions. Where to go, how to evade capture and detection, should you be hunted by your own body and its mortal timetables. There is a void and always it takes the shape of a maze. Wrinkles provide know-how, navigations that negotiate safe passage through the maze. 

This too you lack. A question. One that leaves out nothing and accounts for everything, in detail.

The plan then. Self to self the crowd in the plaza begins debating, comes to a decision. It will break into groups of fifty. Groups will trek to certain designated neighborhoods. From there, they’ll break into pairs. Each pair assigned a street to investigate and archive into collective memory. Together while doing so, pairs will ask each other questions. Ambitious questions. Unanswerable. The best of these, the strongest, they will write on the backs of hands or forearms with a pen. Selves with bags of gel-tip pens move among the crowd, hand one to each of you. One pen and one only. Respect it. Honor it. Don’t waste its ink scribbling out drafts of second-rate questions. 

A week’s time. Seven suns rise and fall. Come back in a week’s time is the plan. Meet here this very plaza. You will take stock, compare questions. Vote for the most worthy candidates. Hone the list after much deliberation down to one. One to memorize, practice. One to bring up the stairs, if and when you’re called, stand at the King’s throne room door, question in mind and ready to be asked, hidden where no one can see it: in your head.

The crowd splits, wanders. Gathers into wayward collectives across the plaza. Some selves walk group to group struggling to decide which feels right. Selves that belong together feel together, you tell them. Don't force it. Take your time. 

A skateboarder named Queenie turns to a fourteenth century pig farmer named Pasquier. “I would’ve never lived if I’d known,” she tells him. The pig farmer, innocent of her language, nods (nods here lingua franca). Since he doesn’t understand, no end to what she could have him agree with. This day one. Day one of seven. In a week they’ll return to this very plaza, these two and several thousand others, part student part scavenger. They will bring together everything they’ve seen and it will be a crowd again. A crowd of one mind with a learned eye. 

       "Je ne comprends pas," the pig farmer tells the girl. But she can't understand him either. 

*

Here’s the door. You stand facing it, where they’ve led you, the doormen. Fish-eye lens peephole and brass knob. No lock you can see, on other side of it maybe a deadbolt. You stand short of six foot, top of the doorway a foot higher. It’s wooden. Painted light grey, bluish. Almost baby blue, if baby blue could reach old age. Chipped. Cruddy mold softening the door frame. 

The floor at your feet, wood too. Nails in studs. Carpet maybe at one time, torn out, tossed. Carpet like flesh doesn’t age well. 

Once a number on the door, that too you note. Discoloration on the paint and wood where numbers had been. Cheap tin or brass or other some kind of metal, nailed in two places per letter, up top and below. You make out “32”. Room 32 in another life. BCE. “Before City Era.” 

Behind you two doormen, stopped at top of the stairway. Told by them: don’t look back, face the door. May take a while. 

You can feel them behind you watching. 

The way up stairs creaked. Hull-of-ship sounds. One doorman ahead of you, one behind. The hallway at the top was dark, electric lamps fixed to the walls middle of the wall every two doors. Some were out and some flickered. Old technology. Forty-watt bulbs. 

Looked like Section-8 housing or a drug hotel. Looked Skid Row but more modest in its desecrations, more abandoned. 

This is you. Only one of you. 

The rest of you gone, detained. 

Door doesn’t move, it waits without interest in you; so remember. It happened earlier the day before. You’d come walking, full group of you, down the main street to the check-in station. One of the King’s messengers had found you, relayed notice: wait’s over, report to check-in first thing next morning. Selves gathered their things and followed. Check-in beneath a large tarp tent, one card table, one attendant seated behind and one standing. Too many of you to get close enough to hear what they might say. So standing attendant lifted a bullhorn. Blared instructions. 

“King thanks you for your patience. Rules stipulate one visitor per visit. Please elect a representative. The rest please stand to the right.”

You were the one they decided on. You, self #942. 

Disagreements. Arguments. Hardly a self among you felt it shouldn’t be them. 

The deciding factor: pulses. One of you remembered what an attendant had said years before, back when you first checked into waiting room and stood in line. 

People could die. Die in line waiting and not know. Check your wrist, your neck. Press fingers to feel for pulse. This sifted wheat from chaff. Still living candidates from dead ones. 

Some couldn’t accept disqualification. Faked a pulse, said, “Not me. Over here, me, still living.” They’d raise their hand, walk to the left where candidates for King’s visitation stood. Ruse would last until attendant at screening station would check, stethoscope to chest. Many standing to the left lowered gaze when attendant first lifted stethoscope from her bag. They knew. Truth would out and they’d be sent with others past chain-link partition to the detainment area. 

It took a day. Morning, afternoon, evening. Majority of selves, it seems, put forth their best effort lying. One even patted his leg to a rhythm while stethoscope was pressed to his chest. Hoping ventriloquist concussions might pass for a heartbeat. 

No, no, no. 

No, no, no. 

None fought their verdict, out of fear it’d disqualify the lot of you. 

Many were surprised, genuinely believed they’d been alive, shocked to find they weren’t. Others blamed the screeners, as if checking a pulse had killed them. Some had to be nudged out of a daze, caught off guards they weren’t exemplary. Only one took to running; the runaway Melinda; cornered by fate, instincts took over. No one called her back nor chased her. The rest were led away by an attendant to the partition area. Still-conscious dead people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, pressed into a crowd behind a fence, watching. Who would it be? they murmured among each other. Which one of you? 

Here at the door you still wonder, “Why me?” Surely there’d been better candidates. 

A full grown healthy adult male. A child would garner more sympathy. Well-kempt, with kind face. But for those reasons maybe a bit forgettable? Robust, good genes, lucky you. Maybe you’d be regarded with less suspicion though if sickly? Your name’s Sergei. Self #942. Sergei Blankenship. A lab technician, chemist for a water company. Father of two. Married seventeen years. Here you stand, shy in your manners, be-speckled, arms awkwardly hanging at sides (no pockets per doorman’s instruction: at all times hands must be visible). Excellent knack for stats and figures. This. Maybe this the reason. If there’s a question to be recalled, recited, this self would deliver. Humdrum but reliable. Type of guy who writes out chess problems for fun or invents crosswords from scientific jargon. 

Against their will, against their better judgement, other selves died or disqualified themselves to elect this last person remaining. Sergei, husband to Miriam (how he misses her). Nerdy and meek. His habit a lifetime ago before he became part of you, each evening after tucking kids to bed: to sketch one thumbnail-sized portrait of Miri in pocket notebook kept on nightstand. A mnemonic exercise. Something a therapist had suggested. Miri the artist, but gone, swallowed whole by renal carcinoma. So to massage his grieving unconscious, drew her face from memory. Unconscious would respond and sometimes there'd she be, in dreams. But not often. Less and less so. 

       Someone with kids. A widower. This the one they chose. 

       Someone grieving with responsibilities. 

       Familiar with sickbed interpretations and long hours waiting. Daddy figure straight from sappy television drama, prime for sympathy.

       You were Sergei now and the rest were elsewhere, standing behind a fence. They’d watched you go. Attendants led you down a street then down an alley. A left turn then a right in the alley and halfway down another a loading dock. Chains rattled, bay door lifted. Attendants helped you onto platform, where doormen waited and took over. One ahead, one behind, guided you through a stockroom to a stairway. Up the stairs to other floors, other stairs. No talk. No gestures this or that direction. Soon in a hotel of sorts. A ballroom. Conference rooms. Poorly lit grubby decor. In windbreaker and jeans you followed doormen through a series of halls until halls ended and you came to a door. On the door eye-level faint remains of a number. In another life Room 32.

A sniffle. A cough behind you. 

“Soon,” one of the doormen says.

You find yourself studying the doorknob. Waiting long as you have, eyes have strayed and studied every inch of the door but here it is again, the knob. 

Dull goldish glow. As if light isn’t reflecting off the knob's metal but shines from behind it, in corona. One heavenly body occluding another, bright about the edges. Familiar. Seen before. Where? 

Some long-gone instant in Sergei Blankenship’s childhood: one July afternoon he stands on a playground, views a lunar eclipse with fellow fourth graders. Teacher Ms. Anders hands around strips of dark film. Hold to your eye, she instructs. Peer through dark to study light safely. Do otherwise you’ll burn your eye, permanently. 

You blink, there goes the sun, the moon, Ms. Anders. You’re in a hallway again and years have passed and you’re waiting. 

       There is a King, you tell yourself, on the other side of this door is a room. 

       There are selves elsewhere, you say, they’ve accompanied me here but from here I must go alone. 

       The King is large, plentiful, he sits upon his throne in his birth form, naked. He is covered in wrinkles and wrinkles move in response to certain forms of mortal questioning. His subjects wish to know the how and where and with whom of their future. His subjects who survive much privation and decades of squalor to reach him.

       These things have been made real, you say, by consensus. 

       Many have come before you and have imagined the same; have repeated among one another the legend; have handed along belief in the expressive flair of a King’s flesh, its migratory array of wrinkles. 

       These visions await consummation behind this door. You are certain, you are grateful. As sure as your name is Sergei and you have two children who rely on you, your dear wife Miriam dead but resurrected nightly by your hand sketching ink onto paper. Open, you tell yourself. Open and grant entry. You’ve come a very long way and the way has made you lonely. 

       The King, as promised, will provide insight, directions, shape lostness into something whole again. But first, the door. 

       Enough. Enough of this, you say. You raise a fist to knock. It knocks. The knob turns, the door doesn't open then opens.