Mirror, Mirror

Sophie was having a hard time getting out of bed. In an endless stream of blah days, she just knew this one was going to be extra blah.

“Duenna,” she said to the air, “a pick-me-up, please. I’m feeling low this morning.” Nothing seemed to happen, though she knew the appropriate meds were being released into her bloodstream from the pharma implant inside her. Had her despondency been more severe, Duenna would have administered the correctives automatically. In any case, the meds took effect and seemed to help. Enough, at any rate, to enable her to get up.

She shuffled to the wall along her bedroom. “Duenna, full length mirror,” she said. A rectangular shape appeared on the wall before her, a reflective surface.

She looked at the woman who looked morosely back. A shade under six feet tall, wavy blonde hair that welled up from the widow’s peak on her forehead and flowed all the way to the middle of her back. Green eyes; smooth, pale skin. Perfect figure; flawless face. She looked about twenty-two (or what people way back when would have judged to be twenty-two) – but then everyone in the world looked about twenty-two. And she knew her stats. Her body was so close to the norm – deviation typically ranging from 0.9 to 1.2 – that there was only one word to sum up her appearance.

Plain.

Her sleep gown dissolved and cycled into the carpet. She stood before herself naked. Her body was unembellished except for a mobile tattoo along the side of her neck: a white, downy feather whose fuzz seemed to flutter every now and then in a changeable breeze. Her single affectation.

“Perhaps you’d like to wear something different today, Sophie?” Duenna’s disembodied voice asked hopefully.

“No, Duenna.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps morphing clothes?” A shape-shifting, multi-hued body suit appeared on her reflection. “Some holographic accessories?” Abstract shapes began hovering behind her head. “Living cosmetics?” Moss blush sprung up on the side of her face.

Sophie waved them away impatiently. The accouterments vanished, revealing her nondescript self again. “Just the usual.”

Tendrils sprouted from the wall beside the mirror and waved about Sophie’s body, assembling her outfit. For a minute she seemed lost in a haze. Then the tendrils retracted into the wall, taking the haze with them, and she emerged wearing a simple black frock coat over turquoise tights. She slipped into the sandals that had been set on the floor before her.

Duenna sighed. “I understand how wearing the same thing day in and day out might have been a novelty at first, but you’re starting to worry me. There are so many things you can do to make your appearance stand out.”

“And it’ll be just plain old me under the crap. There’s no covering up the reality of my ordinariness.”

“There is so much more to you than…”

“Duenna, please. I’m invisible. Everyone in the world looks the same. All the women are my height, my body shape, my proportions. All the men are six-foot-four and chiseled. Everyone looks the same age.”

“Oh, you’re exaggerating. There’re still a lot of differences in people.”

“Sure, sure. My friend Luisa might be six-one. The woman next door might be an inch and a half shorter. You know as well as I do that the range of physical variation in people has all but vanished over the years.”

“It’s an understandable progression. It’s a convergence to the optimum. All parents want their kids to have an optimal balance of traits, including physical features.”

“It’s a convergence to banality. All parents want their kids to be like everyone else – because they’re afraid they might stand out and be outcast. So they have them engineered and modified to an ever-narrowing standard.”

Sophie continued, “I even read somewhere that given the continued mixing of the gene pool, skin tones will finally blend to the same brownish hue in a couple of generations.”

“Well, that’s certainly one way you’re different. Not very many people retain your white complexion.”

Sophie shrugged. “So my family didn’t have the openmindedness to breed outside their race. A very small distinction.”

“But that’s why people wear different things: to mark their individuality. I keep encouraging you to try on something new, maybe even consider some surgical alterations, or cybernetic augmentation…”

“I’d be just another freak in a city of freaks desperately trying to disguise their insipidness. I just get depressed when I walk down the street and see all the grotesqueries that people have on them. No, thanks.”

“Sophie, perhaps I should schedule another therapy session for you with a psychiatric AI. It seems clear your body issues are getting worse again.”

“No, Duenna. Eighteen years of therapy is quite enough for me.” She bit her lip, trying to stanch the desperate need that suddenly gushed within her. “Duenna, perhaps you could… could you show me some… some historical videos again? Maybe even just a few photographs? From, say, the early twenty-first century?”

“No, Sophie. I’m prevented by your psychiatric protocols. You know how you get when you look at those images. And you’re just confirming my concerns.” Years before, Sophie had fallen into a rather pernicious addiction, in which she spent months on end perusing images of people from the distant past, fixating on the dizzying variety of their shapes, sizes, colors, and even imperfections, blemishes, deformities. She had to undergo therapeutic intervention to be weaned away from her obsession.

Sophie knew that Duenna was adjusting her meds again, for the overwhelming desire slowly faded away. But that didn’t stop the mind from thinking.

“Duenna, what would have happened if I hadn’t been modified when I was conceived? What would I have been like?”

“Probably not much different. You weren’t modified very much. The genes in your line have been cleaned of flaws and abnormalities for generations. You had very few imperfections to adjust.”

“Enhancements were made by my parents, though. They wanted me to have a creative personality, an aesthetic sensibility, so they had the potential for those traits incorporated into my genes.”

“Among others, yes.”

Sophie wondered again if those genes hadn’t manifested themselves in her deep, lifelong yearning for authenticity and uniqueness – and if the impossibility of finding expression for those desires wasn’t the source of her doleful temperament. “What would I have looked like?”

“Oh, that would require specialized programming for genetic profiling and projection. To forecast one’s physical appearance from embryonic gene sequences requires…”

“Can you download the programming?”

“Yes.”

“Please do so. And then show me what I would have looked like.”

There was a pause as Duenna accessed the necessary capabilities. Then Duenna said, “Here’s your probable physical appearance extrapolating from your embryonic genome prior to genetic modification.”

Her living reflection was replaced by a naked, frozen image. She looked the same. She didn’t look very different at all, though Sophie imagined some subtle change in the curve of her jaw.

“What if my parents also hadn’t been modified? Can you extrapolate my physical appearance then?”

Duenna hesitated. “Yes.”

“Show me, please.”

A longer pause. Then the image cleared and reappeared, and the changes were more perceptible. Her hair was thicker and darker, her eyes set wider, her shoulders a little more rounded.

Sophie frowned. “Duenna, let’s go all the way. Assume that none of my progenitors had undergone any modifications. Pretend that genetic engineering had never been invented, and my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and so forth had produced offspring the old-fashioned way – helter-skelter, subject to the vagaries of genetic chance – and ended up with me, except a version of me that would have been completely free of all genetic alterations. What would I have looked like?”

“Sophie, that would be incredibly complex. You’re talking about going back five and six generations to find your progenitors who were first modified. The further back I go, the more uncertain the calculations become. It’s not as if gene mapping and extrapolation are perfect sciences. Mutations, environmental factors, medical interventions, any number variables make the answer indeterminate.”

“Can you make a best guess?”

“Well, yes. As long as you understand the limitations.”

“I understand.”

This time, the pause stretched to minutes. Sophie had sat down on her bed to wait and was about to inquire when Duenna finally said, “It’s ready.” Sophie stood back up to face the mirror. But only her reflection showed within it.

Sophie said, “Well?”

Duenna replied, “Sophie, I’m a little hesitant to show it to you. Would it dissuade you if I told you that without genetic modifications over generations, the chances of genetic disorders would have increased significantly? You would have had a higher susceptibility in later life for diseases called rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, breast cancer, and a neurologic condition called chronic subdural hematoma. Moreover, clearing all modifications would mean voiding all longevity and aging-cessation enhancements.”

Sophie did waver, suddenly fearful. But she finally responded, “I’d like to see anyway.”

“As you wish. What age should I make the image?”

Again, she hesitated. “My age.”

“All right.”

A person appeared in the mirror, and Sophie gasped. The woman bore a family resemblance to her, but she was half a foot shorter, and stooped. Her hair was white, her face was fleshy and mottled and lined with wrinkles; her breasts sagged. She was stocky; her arms and legs were thick and round and blue-veined.

Duenna was momentarily stymied by the wild mix of hormones that surged through Sophie; it took a while to figure out the assortment of meds it would take to pacify the flood. And so for a minute or two, Sophie was free to weep her astonishment and awe and profound, profound grief.

“Oh, oh!” she cried. “I would have been so beautiful!”

(March 2013)

Fever

I hung back behind my mother and sister as we made our way to our den in the forest clearing. I did not know why. My belly was full from the night’s foraging; we were nearly home and about to be warm and safe underground. But something hot had made its way inside my body and was coursing through my veins, making my head swim, making my pulse thrum in my ears.

My mother turned towards me and said sternly, “What are you mucking about for? You’re slowing us down.”

“I’m – I’m thirsty,” I said. “I think I’ll go to the stream and have a drink.”

My sister Iris said, “You mean go to the stream and see that buck we saw earlier.”

“No, no…” I shook my head, both to deny my sister’s accusation and to shake away the cobwebs that spun themselves inside my head.

“Are you all right?” my mother asked.

I said, “I’m just really thirsty. I’m fine.” But my body belied my words. My hind legs gave way, trembling, and my forepaws slid flat on the ground, so that my belly kissed the cold earth. I closed my eyes and tried to push away the image of the buck from my mind.

* * *

My mother, Iris, and I had been clawing through a carpet of leaves and scraping under the mud for grubs under a stand of beech trees earlier that evening, in the gathering dusk, when we became aware of something approaching through the brush. My kind can barely see; more than a few body lengths away the world is a blur. But our noses and ears are keen, and, anyway, very few creatures will bother us for fear of the noxious stream we can spurt into their eyes. Nevertheless, my mother moved at once to put herself between us and the scratching, shuffling noises from the bushes. She sniffed the air for danger and raised her tail preemptively in warning.

Long before it appeared, we knew from its scent and the sounds that it made that the stranger was one of our kind. The undergrowth parted and he emerged, wary but curious. When he was close enough, I could see he was a yearling, sleek and strong, a self-assured, even brash air about him. The strip of white fur on his back caught the meager crepuscular light from above and made the air above him seem luminous.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” my mother said brusquely. The buck pulled up short.

“My name is Basil,” he said affably. “I mean no harm. I’m just passing through.”

“Pass on, then. You’re in our feeding ground.”

“Ahhh,” he said, and looked past my mother at me – and my breath caught in my throat. I felt frozen in place, the way I had been once when I was a kitten outside the den on a dawn forage with my siblings, when a white-tailed kite had swooped down and plucked one of my brothers and flown away with him. My mother had run up to us hissing her rage and despair, her tail shimmying in the air like a branch in a harsh wind – far too late to do anything.

My mother stepped between me and the buck, stamping her front paws, covering my view of him. “No,” she said to him in a menacing tone. “There’s nothing for you here.” I craned my neck to peer over her and saw the buck staring at her, his dark eyes almost lost in the blackness of his face. He shrugged, then turned to amble away in the direction of the stream. He disappeared into the gloom under the trees, like a dream.

* * *

Through the haze in my mind, I felt my mother’s nose nuzzling my snout as I lay shivering on the ground. I opened my eyes. Our eye locked, and for several long moments, we breathed each other’s breaths. There was no hiding from her gaze. I felt myself laid bare, like a dandelion whose seed heads had blown away in a breeze. And through her eyes, I saw what she saw; I saw myself as I was.

“Lily, you’re too young. You’re not even a yearling yet,” she said, hoping to forestall the truth.

“I’m not,” I answered back hotly. “I’m old enough. I’m ready.”

She continued to stare at me. Finally, she sighed. “Perhaps you are at that.” She lowered her eyes. She whispered, almost inaudibly, “I suppose I had hoped you wouldn’t grow up quite so soon. But no mother gets to keep her children young forever.”

All at once she had turned away and was nuzzling my sister homeward. She said back to me, “Be wary of owls. And be home at the den as soon as you can.”

* * *

I headed towards the stream, pulled by an ineluctable force, following my nose to the smell of water. I felt, in waves, frantic and preternaturally calm, so that I would sprint in stretches, then slow down to a more measured stride. Soon I heard the tinkling of the stream, and could whiff, over the scent of pine and water primrose, the strong musk of a skunk buck.

Basil was waiting for me in a patch of short grass by the stream. He had heard and smelled me coming. When I got close enough, I could see his black and white fur shining lustrous under the moonlight; I could see that he was grinning. “You followed me,” he said. It was all I could do not to swoon.

“Yes,” was all that I could say.

“Was that your mother earlier?”

“Yes.” I added, scrupulous, “And my sister.”

“Your mother’s quite fierce.”

“She’s very protective. There were nine of us in her litter when she gave birth last summer, but we lost my brothers and sisters one by one. So she does her best to keep us safe, now that there’s only Iris and me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It was a terrible winter. Sometimes, we couldn’t stir outside the den for days on end. You know the stupor we fall into when it gets really cold. Five of my brothers and sisters starved to death. They just got too weak to forage outside. My mother had to drag their bodies out, to keep the den clean.” I had swung from being tongue-tied to not being able to stanch the flow of words. “We couldn’t – there wasn’t enough food.”

“That’s really unfortunate.”

“Thank God it’s finally started to get warm and there’s enough food to be found.” All at once, I felt my face flush with embarrassment. Even though I had started to gain weight since the winter, I still felt thin and bony, especially now, beside Basil’s solid bulk. I wondered if he was making do with me tonight just because I was available. I wondered how many does he had already been with, if he hadn’t already sired other litters.

“I’m – my name is Lily,” I said, in connection with nothing.

Even as I kept up the spate of words, Basil had been nuzzling my rump, my flanks, and my back, sending shivers shooting from wherever his nose got through my fur to touch my skin. My eyes began to get heavy and slowly closed shut.

Valiantly, I tried to continue. “Iris almost didn’t make it either. She was the runt of the litter, which is why she’s so much smaller than me and not as… not yet mature. It’s surprising she survived when the others didn’t. Ohhh…” He had reached the back of my head; I could feel his warm breath on my neck.

“You’re very beautiful,” he murmured into my ear.

All of a sudden, he stopped and pulled away. I opened my eyes, puzzled. He was looking carefully behind me, and when I saw what he was looking at, I understood. My tail was standing straight up – of its own accord, for I had not even known it had done so until I saw it myself.

Basil turned to look at me, to make sure the gesture was an invitation and not a warning. When he saw that my eyes were heavy-lidded and slowly blinking, he smiled again and grasped my shoulders with his forepaws, his claws like talons digging into my skin, pinioning me. He swung on top of me, and I staggered and sagged under his weight. He mounted me, entered me, and I gasped, my mind flying away, flying like my brother taken by the hawk.

* * *

After an interminable time (the space of several breaths?), the beating of my heart began to slow down, began to fall into a deep, even rhythm. I felt something like a chill breeze waft inside me, a wet coolness that slowly washed away the fever. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I shrugged Basil off me.

He squatted beside me like a large squirrel, still grinning like a fool. He said, “I could stay around for a while. We can do it as often as you like till we know you’re carrying.”

I tilted my head to one side, frowning. Everything seemed suddenly different. The forest sounds had returned, but deeper, somehow more resonant; smells were drifting in more strongly than before. The very air seemed clear and charged. I could see through it to what was to be.

I said, “No, that was enough.”

“But just to be certain…” For once his confident demeanor slipped and his voice took on a tremulous tone.

I was already turning away from him. “No, I’m sure.” And I was. Even as I walked away, I felt that my legs were carrying a different body, a heavier one, assured in its certainty. “I would suggest that you get out of our feeding range by morning,” I said to Basil over my shoulder. “Or else my mother will come after you and spray you till you’re doused in it.” Not as a threat or warning, but just as something that was true.

* * *

My mother knew that I had changed the moment I entered our den that night. She could sense it in me, smell it in the dark, hear it in my heartbeat as it echoed in the close confines of the den. She said, shaken at the abruptness of my transformation, and without much hope, “You know you can stay and raise your litter here if you like. This is still your home.”

I touched noses with her. “I know. But I think it would be best if I moved away. There would be more food for my litter if I foraged in a different part of the forest.”

After a moment’s silence, she said, “Yes, of course.” Her grief was a living weight in the darkness, as if she was crouching over another dying child. She nuzzled Iris, who was soon to be the last one left to her – and who herself would be gone before long.

But I could not dwell much on this. Already my mind was reaching for the morrow. I wondered what direction I should take to find my own den. I began scratching my claws on a stone, sharpening them, in case I could not find a burrow ready made and would have to dig one for myself. I thought of the leaves I would gather and line my nest with. I thought of my kittens-to-be mewling in the leaves, looking up at me with blind eyes.

(April 2013)