When Riff exited the shuttle from her transport, into the sealed tunnel, she realized she was very, very cold. Colder than aerosol. The first man she had seen since the soldier on the raft approached her. His body mesh glimmered white under the bluish lights in the sealed tunnel and he reached out to grasp her just above the elbow. He smiled bright white through his face shield and placed his palm on the small of her back. Riff was suddenly afraid.

“Hi, Riff.” His smile broadened and he glanced at the scrolling text on his wrist. “I think you’re really going to like it here, much cleaner than your original facility.” He pulled her against his side and strode out, stroking her upper arm. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I don’t think so.” Riff huffed, trying to keep up. The gravity felt strange on her feet. Too light.

“Wait until you see our wide range of options,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her and winking one colorless eye.

A set of transparent doors slid closed behind them in the tunnel as they entered a vast, domed space. Young women milled around, leaning against the pristine white walls, twining their arms around one another, and wading in the fountain in the center of the room. Some slept in anti-grav pods inset into the walls of the dome, their hair floating around them as if suspended in clear water.

The man motioned to a woman draped in heavy orange synthetic silk. Her red hair was loosely braided and the shorter pieces stuck out wildly, haloing her head with coarse orange frizz. Her slender arms jutted from her robes, reaching for Riff’s hand, showing her milky skin through the silks.

“Riff, meet Fern. Fern, tell Riff what you think of our facilities.” He smiled. All teeth.

“Oh, hello, Riff. It’s wonderful here, as long as you pull your weight.” She drummed her fingers over her tight flat belly. “Have you ever had real dog meat? It’s better than anything, even from The Before.”

“It sounds wonderful.” Riff’s mouth oozed saliva. Her stomach growled.

“Well, let’s get Riff fed and measured,” the man said. “Her stomach is rumbling.”

“Poor lamb.” Fern reached out and stroked her straight black hair. “You are so lucky, Riff. The Southern Hemisphere look is in right now.”

Small pencil eraser scars dotted the backs of Fern’s arms and the strips of skin showing through her robes. Her skin lay firmly against her muscle. Not a touch of fat. Not an ounce of give on her. She patted her own wiry hair and waved over the man’s shoulder at a blond woman with small dark eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, we have a bridge game in a few minutes.” Fern slipped past them and tucked herself under the blond woman’s arm, threading her fingers through her hair and kissing her lightly on the lips.

The women floated by, each covered in tiny scars, dotting them like the memory of disease.

“What are those scars?”

“You haven’t heard of beauty marks?”

Riff shook her head. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She had only been this hungry in The Before.

“Here on Mars, The Corporation helps you feel and look your best, every day, free of charge!”

The man put his hand on the back of Riff’s neck and shepherded her toward the long curve of a steaming buffet. Piles of meat and real potatoes and bread and corn and fruits glistened in a long line, like a rainbow on an oil slick. The man handed her a large plasticine bowl and leaned close to her.

“You can eat anything you want, any time you want. Try the dog meat – it’s sublime, cloned right here on Mars. It’s organic.”

What is organic?

Riff scooped dog meat, succulent and fragrant with synthetic spice, into her bowl and piled on flocculent mashed potatoes, thick with white gravy. Yellow corn dotted with pats of melting Shine butter nestled in the bowl, heaped atop the potatoes.

She stared at the bowl. The man guided her to a smooth white table, where three other women draped over their food and ate like prehistoric animals, languid and pondering with each bite. He sat beside her, letting his hands rest on her thigh.

Riff ate until she felt sick, and then ran her finger along the edge of the bowl gathering the last of the white gravy in a dollop on her pointer finger. She popped her finger in her mouth and the man picked up her heavy braid and brushed her neck with his fingertips.

“That’s good, Riff.” His voice had dropped an octave. “The Corporation wants you to be happy.” He eyed the cameras and snatched his hand back as a black eye panned toward them.

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***

The exam room was painted a warm labial pink. A small fountain bubbled away in the corner and soft music drifted in through the speakers in the ceiling. Tiny camera eyes shone like flecks of quartz in stone from the wall. The exam table in the center of the room was covered in some sort of flexible fabric, and heat emanated from it to Riff’s back. There was a light rapping at the door. Before Riff could say anything, a small, slender woman slipped through the door. She was as spare as the others, pocked with diminutive scars. Her gums had a strange greenish line above her uniform teeth.

“Are you the doctor?” Riff asked.

“Cállate. The cameras don’t run until your care unit gets here, so listen.”

Riff’s heart beat in her throat.

“I just got here. Everything seems pretty good. I really don’t want…”

The woman cut her off.

“Did you get the note?” The woman asked, pressing her ear against the door.

“The weird one about the moon and stuff?”

“Yes. The weird one about the moon.” The woman twisted the front of her loose blue shirt around her pointer finger. “Well? Are ya gonna go to meet us? There is someone with us that I think you’ll really want to see.”

“Will I get in trouble?”

“Not if you follow the directions.” The woman reached into her smock and handed Riff a plasticine playing card. A jack of spades. A naked petite woman sprawled on it, her glossy black hair streaming over her taut brown arms. Her black eyes stared directly out of the card, hard and unyielding.

“Mama,” Riff said.

Those flint eyes sinking under the churn.

“I have to go. She says ‘debes saber.’ Nobody misses nothing around here.” She slipped through the sliding doors, leaving Riff alone, palms cold and heart pounding.

All of the camera eyes flashed open, blinking green like sleepy house cats, dilating and returning to pinpoints in the dim room. The door slid open once again and a being walked in, androgynous and pale. Pale like viscous protein milk, pale like the whites of eyes. The being’s eyes, indigo and immense, rested on her. It was shaped liked a human; it moved like a human, but something hitched in her chest. Its long fingers traced over a plasticine chart.

“Hello. Riff, is it? I’ll be your care unit for the duration of your stay here.”

“Unit?”

“Yes, I am Model 34 of the care units.”

“Like a supervisor?”

The being looked at her above the chart and sighed.

“I am much more complex than a supervisor. Touch my arm.” The being held out an arm, vascular with pale pink veins.

Riff ran her fingers over the skin. It was warm and smooth, not a trace of hair or freckles or scars.

“What can I call you?”

“You can call me Al.”

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

“Which do you prefer?”

“Neither, I guess. Or both. I don’t really know. Maybe a girl.”

Al’s featured softened. The purple eyes widened and blond lashes curled away toward the receding brow ridge. Long, bluish hair poured over the white shoulders. Slight breasts filled the mesh body suit. Al smiled. Her teeth were slightly crooked – an anomaly. Color flashed across her fingernails.

“There,” Al said and reached for a pair of calipers. “Now can we get on with the exam?”

“How do you do that?”

Al pinched the skin from Riff’s upper arm first and nudged the calipers across the small lump.

“Do what?”

“Change like that.”

“Oh, I have mushroom coral encoded in my DNA. I can change whenever I need to.” She nudged her thumb under Riff’s thigh and stretched the skin away like soft caramel, widening the calipers around it.

“Do you like being a boy or a girl better?”

“Both are interesting, but usually neither. Now I need you to lie back. We’re just going to take some pictures of your belly.”

Riff sank back onto the table. Her ribs jutted in front her, ripples on a sand dune.

“You poor thing. All they gave you was protein packs?” Al ran a silver egg over Riff’s belly. Over her chest. She nudged her over on her stomach on the table.

“No, we could buy things from The Commissary with our work tickets. Sometimes they even had donuts. Plus, we got these pills that kept us from being hungry, which was great, because they also gave you, like, so much energy.”

Al leaned against the table and rubbed Riff’s back in a circular motion. Warm.

“At least you will eat here.” Her brow ridge grew and her jaw thickened. Back to the virgin form. The They-form. Al clutched the silver egg and rubbed a thumb over its surface. Al was all pastels. Pale and uniform, formless color and sharp edges in that moment. Glints of black in the purplish eyes. “You will eat.”