Al, in They-form, brushed Riff’s straight black hair in long sweeps, gliding the plasticine bristles from scalp to tip in a single fluid motion. Ripples of pleasure like hail on clear water fluttered from Riff’s scalp down her back. The dim exam room pulsed with soft, earth sounds playing on the speakers: water flowing, rain falling, waves breaking, a strange high-pitched whistle sound. Al untied the back of Riff’s white cotton blend dress and laved iodine-tinted liquid onto her back.
The three weeks of dog meat and sweet round globes of icy melon and butter and real potatoes had thickened her. Her breasts filled her shirt, and her arms and hips plumped under her brassy skin. Al leaned into her back as they guided an iodine-soaked rag over her torso, leaving streaks of orange coloration. Al stroked firmly to avoiding tickling her.
“So, what am I doing today, Al?”
Al smiled and wiped their hands on a towel.
“You are providing oil for The Machination.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“The Holy Book™ says that women provide oil for The Machination, if you would read it.”
“No one reads anything anymore, Al. Besides, what about you? Why don’t you provide oil for The Machination when you’re a girl?”
“I’m an android. Androids aren’t allowed.”
“But why though?”
Al picked up her hair again and separated it into three bunches for braiding.
“You ask a lot of questions, pretty human girl,” Al said into her ear.
“Al, how come they don’t let you?” Riff pulled a thread from her bunched garment, then flopped her hands in her lap, sighing.
“Androids have DNA from all sorts of things, some of those things make us unsuitable for consumption. Do you remember what snakes were?”
“I don’t think so. They were animals? Because if they were, I only remember rats and bugs, and of course dogs.”
“Well, they were animals shaped like cable that were venomous. Some of the older models have snake DNA, probably so we’d eat less, and some have puffer fish and it’s just not suitable.” Al paused at “not suitable,” glancing down at Riff.
The camera on the wall hummed and a light flashed on Al’s embedded wrist monitor. Al whipped a band around the end of Riff’s braid and picked up her dress. They motioned to a robe in the corner of the room.
“It ties in the back. Put it on and follow the instructions on the screen. Remember, The Corporation loves you and wants you to be happy.” Al looked at the camera on the wall and squeezed Riff’s shoulder hard. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Al whisked out of the room, leaving Riff naked on the exam table.
The screens lining the wall flashed on and a one-eyed man stared at her from a solid black room. Somewhere. His right eye socket was filled with glistening gems like a geode and it pulsed glints of light across the room as he turned his head slowly slowly in a full circle. Purple flames shivered across the room, lapping against the walls, tapping against the screen. The man opened his mouth, crusted with quartz and diamonds, overflowing with black sludge, and fell backwards onto two steel beams lashed together in a cross, writhing against the flames. Three ancient robots, dimpled with rust, ticked forward on four needle-thin legs and drove a giant cotter pin through the one-eyed man’s hands and feet. A woman, heavy with luscious fat, crawled across the floor and wrapped her hands around the man’s feet and wailed, a familiar oozing from her mouth and waving its tentacles blindly.
HE DIED FOR YOU in yellow block print exploded onto the screen. DO YOUR PART FOR THE CORPORATION.
The fat on the woman’s body melted away in the heat, dripping into a graduated cylinder the size of an oil drum beneath her. Her face, now thin and radiant, beamed flecks of white light that touched the one-eyed man’s suffering face. A diamond detached from the corner of his mouth and swirled in the oily rapids of fat and sludge.
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Her body tight and young, her mouth full and alive. Hands shot from the cylinder and brushed her thighs, now lean and spare. The one-eyed man smiled at her, all teeth. Sacrifice is love.
Riff’s limbs felt sodden and her eyelids drooped. The faintest smell of something – something in the back of her mind. Something to warn them. A blue flame, her mother gripping her by her tiny wrist. “¡Está caliente, mija!”
Two androids entered the room, larger than she had ever seen, one with a faint ridge of spines over his brow, the other smelling like a warm sea. They hoisted her up, muscles bunching, onto a gurney and wheeled her out of the soft, dark, velvet room. They pushed the gurney in silence. The black domed ceiling drifted over her, separating her from the half-terraformed atmosphere outside.
Her blood felt thick in her and slugged slowly in her neck and wrists. Bright globes of light flashed over her until white light burned red through her closed eyelids. The gurney came to a stop and Riff dragged her eyelids open to see blurred beings cloaked in turquoise and white hovering above her. One of them pinched her inner thigh with gloved fingers and murmured something to another with a tablet. She counted one, two, three fingers on his hands, though it could have been a trick of the gas.
One of the beings raised a huge needle and wiped it over a piece of gauze before pressing it into her thigh. One of them shook its cloaked head and pressed a button on the side of a huge canister that rose, gleaming, to the ceiling. A heavy whir eclipsed all other sound in the room. The being with the needle pressed the tip of it into Riff’s thigh and she felt pressure and a snap of pain as the cannula glided under her skin. Yellow-white clots traveled up the clear tube into the canister, which was now churning – one chamber maroon with blood and one chamber creamy, buttery white. Riff felt cool beads of sweat gathering on her brow and she tried to cry out, to tell them of the pain in her thigh, but no words came, only small whimpers. She tried to scream, to move, to kick, but pressure sat on her throat, winding tighter and tighter until only the thinnest stream of air cooled her throat. Her lungs lightly inflating and blackness crowding her vision as the needle worked under her skin, in and out, in and out, in and out. One of the beings came to her head and forced a tube into her mouth, sucking out her spittle.
A needle slid into her arm and she was counting down, down to one as New Year Birthday Party Slam played over the speakers until there was nothing.
***
Riff rolled over onto her side. Compression bandages bundled her fluid-packed skin against her. Pain throbbed over her body and Fern sat on the edge of her bed, touching her cool hands to Riff’s jawline. Al, in He-form, mixed together powders and hunks of yellow steam fruit into a Chop Glass™, and pressed down the black ring at the top until the concoction blurred together into a yellowish sludge.
“How are you feeling, little one?” Fern asked.
A knot of nausea plugged Riff’s throat, and she dug her fingers into the sheets.
“Sick.”
“Yeah, they had to give you the shot. It makes you feel bad for a little while.”
Al stirred the drink and brought it to her. Her lips were chapped, and her throat hurt.
“What did they do?”
“They harvested from you. We get to provide so much for our fellow employees and employers.” Fern lifted up Riff’s sore arm and kissed her bare wrist. “Beauty is pain.”
The concoction Al brought was cold and sweet, and she sipped it while he checked her bandages. The pain lifted some, and Fern and Al’s fingers felt cool. A Martian storm whirred outside, whipping around the dome, piling red dust around the pastel Easter egg colonies.
***
The Holy Book™
Chapter 2 Verses 8-17
8 And there was a great wailing in the land, for the Canadian blueberries, the Peruvian quinoa, the Chinese apples the consumer had craved and eaten were given to only the righteous, whose income did exceed 80 million units.
9 And the women grumbled amongst themselves, for they and their children and their partners had empty bellies. The Corporation reminded them that breast is best, but to not be too hard on themselves for they manufactured a substitute that was perfectly suitable for human consumption. It only cost 25 units per bottle.
10 And so women did seek to undercut The Corporation by selling their bodies at discounted rates from The Corporation’s standard and were thusly punished with tasks that chipped their nails and wore their skin down to wrinkles and age spots.
11 And so the sun did rise on the beauty of the women who toiled in factories, for they were soon recognized by the CEO as a product for consumption, and it was good.
12 In those days, a woman, whose beauty eclipsed the sun, become the daughter of The Corporation. For she did endure the harvest with a smile and fell at the feet of The Most High. Her name was Frau, and her life was perfect.
13 Frau gave 1200 CCs of herself every harvest and The Corporation blessed her, for though that is a small number, it was all she had to give.
14 One day, Frau could no longer give to the harvest, for her skin dipped from the effort of it, and her figure was so trim, so pert, so thin, that the needle could not bring even one droplet of oil.
15 And so she went to the CEO, who cradled her face, and asked her “What do you require, dearest one?” and she kissed His knuckles and asked “What do YOU require?”
16 And He was so moved that He sent for her body to be used – every part, everything but the squeal. And so her eggs, her corneas, her fingernails, her bladder, her tongue – all were sectioned from her and given to the factory workers, the asteroid miners, the acid divers – all who stretched toward the sky and demanded hope of The Corporation. And so she was spread across Mars and Earth.
17 And where every droplet of her landed, credits and cakes and red-soled sneakers and porno movies bounded from the very ground, and their thirst was slaked, at least for a time.