FSF, July 2008 Page 6

  Pakki-flex was composed, in part, of cells—living cells, as living cells were needed for it to work its magic. The immunocompetence of these cells, the mechanism by which they protected themselves from harm and guarded the surrounding extra-cellular environment, had been enhanced. In the parlance of the lab these were vigilante cells. Like vigilantes, they were well-armed, and like vigilantes, easily triggered. This served well for incursions of external agents and provocateurs, such as wind, rain, sleet, ice, ultraviolet radiation, rodents, bolts of lightning, and flying objects. It served less well when directed inward, and indeed, this same property made the cells susceptible to internal corruption and self-attack. Three months after moving in, on the night of a banquet to entertain their hundred closest friends and celebrate their newest acquisition, the proud owners of the Domome noticed a small bubble in the dome. Over the course of the evening the bubble grew and slowly filled with a pale yellow fluid, which, save for its size, bore a remarkable resemblance to the common blister. By the time dessert was being served (a wonderfully evoked whipped cream, meringue and rum eclair), it encompassed most of the ceiling. The gracious guests, fearful of slighting their hosts, did not begin to flee until the fluid began to drip, and most, mercifully, were well on their way when, with a groan followed by a deep, bassoon-like ripping sound, the waters of the blister burst. As one of the departing guests ruefully remarked, it was as if the house, mimicking the inaugural mood within it, were giving birth.

  In the succeeding weeks other reports trickled in. Of ceilings and roofs that puckered but also fissured, ulcerated and cracked. Of walls and siding that peeled, scaled and sloughed off in fat, translucent flakes. The “living skin” was acting, it appeared, as skin did, troubled skin that is, and the culprit, or the cause, seemed to be those residents who suffered skin conditions. Somehow they were triggering these untoward effects. And their conditions were not necessarily active ones; in certain cases, they were not even known. Some of the afflicted had problems lurking in the genome that would not appear until later in life; some had infections acquired in childhood or early adulthood that were dormant and might never appear but were present nonetheless. Others had conditions that came and went; others, conditions so benign as to go unnoticed. All in all, there were a great many occupants with the potential to interact with Pakki-flex and do it harm, and while most who could did not, there was no way of knowing ahead of time who might. At the very least, it seemed to require prolonged daily contact between man and material, which is why the effect had not been noted earlier.

  The first lawsuit was settled out of court. The remainder, lumped into a class action suit, dragged on for years and ultimately came near to bankrupting poor Robert. Far worse, though, was the damage to his reputation. In professional circles, where the only thing more enjoyable than one's own success was a rival's fall from grace, Pakki-flex became known as “Fairchild's Folly.” He lost business. He lost face. The rashes and welts that had plagued him earlier in his life recurred.

  It is a common truth that misfortune causes some to rise, others to crack. Robert experienced a slow, steady, painful decline. He tried to work but instead found himself staring at the wall or out the window of his office at the city far below, his city, bustling with the construction of new buildings, fine buildings, but none of his buildings. He stared and wondered what had happened. How had he ended up here, in this gloomy, sad, unfortunate and unproductive place? More to the point, how could he get out? The work he'd done, the joy and the pleasure of it, and the recognition he'd received, seemed of a different life and time.

  He had dreams of Claire and of Felicity, and he would wake from them feeling old and tired, like a building past its prime. But every so often he would have a different dream, with a different woman in it, nameless, faceless even, but nonetheless familiar to him, the way a certain childhood scent is familiar, deep beneath the skin familiar, rudimentary, intense, longed for yet unknown. These dreams were like whispers, flickers in the dark, and he would often wake from them with a glimmer of hope. And in time, after a number of such dreams, it occurred to him what should have been obvious before. He needed help. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he needed a woman.

  In the past it had never been hard for him to meet women, and it wasn't hard now. Women liked him, and what was not to like in a man so charming, so attractive, so victimized by circumstance and so willing—indeed so poised—to put it all behind and reestablish himself? Above all, he liked women, as opposed to disliking them, or distrusting them, or, god forbid, despising them, which for many women was a disincentive to forming a relationship with a man. Robert not only liked the idea of women, he liked the fact of them, he liked to be around and beside them and face to face with them, he liked their company, their loving nature, their adaptability, their strength, their subtlety of thought. Women were the brick and mortar, the bedrock, of his world.

  Every woman was beautiful to him, each in her own unique and special way. Throughout his life this had been a constant, a source of pleasure and comfort to him, as dependable as breathing, as thought. Or it had been. Now, strangely, this was not entirely the case. Something, it seemed, had changed. Their beauty was still there, but it was beauty in the broad sense, the general sense, the way a forest is beautiful, or a field of waving grass is beautiful, whereas any single tree or stalk, on close inspection, might be flawed. He met women and to his dismay noticed first and foremost their imperfections. This one was too loud, this one too quiet, this one too tall or too short, too bossy, too brassy, too demure. It was as if his vision had changed again, suddenly and inexplicably, so that instead of seeing with one eye, he was seeing with less than an eye. He was seeing through a veil. He was seeing wrong.

  He wondered if something had happened to them, to women. Something on a global, catastrophic scale. The idea was not so preposterous, for it was the age of such calamities, mind-numbing environmental cataclysms, often of worldwide proportion. Maybe something in the water or the air had affected women, marring their essential beauty and attractiveness, maybe something in the Earth itself, in the core, a cooling in the red-hot center, the planet's heart, and a subsequent attenuation in the surrounding magnetic fields, a weakening of the poles, a loosening of the forces of attraction. Something to explain this curious, horrific loss. And there were such reports—one could find reports of anything, and especially of disasters—but they did not explain why the birth rate continued to rise, or how men, from even his most casual observation, continued to lust after women. It seemed that he alone was afflicted.

  He searched for reasons why. He changed his diet. He started exercising more. He visited a health food store and left with a CD of excruciating postures and meditative chants, along with an armful of pills. He tried everything he could think of and looked everywhere except one place, and then one night he looked there, where a good many others had looked before him and a few had even survived. The mirror.

  What he saw was a man in his late thirties, a handsome man with a thick head of hair, strong chin, expressive lips, and a puzzled, somewhat desperate look on his face. The look was centered in the eyes, whose incongruity he had long since grown accustomed to but which now seemed new and disturbing, as though they were at odds with each other, in conflict, the one dull and imbecilic, the other bright and accusatory, although the more he looked the more it seemed to be the reverse, that the fake eye, the prosthesis, was boring into the good eye, the true one, challenging it to see clearer, to see better, to see properly.

  He thought of work, which had given him such pleasure in the past and which now was so problematic. He thought of Felicity and Claire, both of whom had left him because of his inability to find the proper balance between work and love. Or more precisely, between love of work and love of them. A fine distinction: love, he had found, did not parcel out easily. When it flowed, it had a tendency to overflow, it spilled from one cup effortlessly into another. When there was love, there was enough for all ... at least this
had been his experience. But not theirs, which made him wonder if perhaps he was confusing love with something else. Euphoria? Hunger? Self-indulgence? Perhaps he had loved, not too much, but too much on his own terms.

  It was humbling, especially because he never intended to cause hurt or suffering. But it did seem to happen, and it hurt him in return, and if he could have changed, he would have, and now, by a stroke of luck, or fate, it seemed he had. Finding fault with women was a way to keep from getting involved with them. It was a way to protect them from him, the moral equivalent of wearing a condom. A man had to feel good about wearing a condom. He had to feel good about having morals. And Robert did.

  Unfortunately, there remained the problem of not being able to work. Of lacking motivation, inspiration, and desire. And to that there seemed but one solution. For while men were the builders, women were the miracle workers. And so he pressed on.

  The weeks went by, stretched into months. He lost track of the number of ads he answered, and of the women who'd answered his, and of dates he'd been on, and of emails and phone calls. He had never met so many women in so short a time in his life—wonderful women, exceptional women, nightmares—and never felt so discouraged. It was Julian, finally, who came to his rescue. There was only so much a friend could bear before intervening.

  They met over coffee in a diner by the waterfront, where waitresses on roller skates had once served drive-in cars. Time had not been kind to the building, and in the current frenzy of urban renewal it ran the risk of getting a makeover, when what it needed was either to be razed completely or left to die a slow, dignified death of its own funky charm. Julian wore his signature black turtleneck, pleated polyester pants, and tasseled loafers. His walnut-colored hair half hid his ears, softening the boxy geekiness of his thick-framed glasses. Being a lab rat with little money to begin with, he had suffered less than Robert financially when Pakki-flex imploded. Being constitutionally optimistic (a near prerequisite in the world of science and particularly of the lab), he had suffered less emotionally as well. He had followed Robert's decline with both sympathy and chagrin, offering various well-meaning and sometimes outlandish pieces of advice culled from chat rooms, blogs, immersible realities and the like, where he got much of his information, including information about the opposite sex. Women themselves, in the flesh, were more a mystery to him. But all mysteries, sooner or later, yielded to science and technology. This he firmly believed. And science and technology were nothing if not concrete.

  "I know a guy,” he said.

  "A guy?"

  "Used to work in the lab next door to me. Now he works for himself. Bit of an oddball. But he knows what he's doing."

  "What's that?"

  "He's a parthenogeneticist."

  Good God, thought Roger. Had it come to that? The idea had crossed his mind, but it seemed too dangerous and risky. It also raised questions about his own august self. In a word, it was humiliating.

  "I don't think so, Julian."

  "Why not?"

  He listed his reasons.

  Julian suggested that he was overreacting. The process succeeded much more often than not. Though of course there were no guarantees.

  Robert was skeptical. He was also intrigued. “Does he have a catalogue?"

  "No. No catalogue."

  "But he has his own line."

  Julian shook his head. “He only does custom work. Like you. He's not into mass production."

  "Not exactly like me."

  Julian shrugged. “Build a house, build a man."

  And Robert thought, why not? He'd give it a try. He'd make a man, by which, of course, he meant a woman. What did he have to lose?

  * * * *

  The man's name was Stanovic. He worked out of his home, a loft on the second floor of a warehouse in what was once the industrial part of town. It was meant to be a live/work space for artists, but few artists could afford it. Stanovic, who worked in the medium of flesh and blood, could. He met Robert on the street, checked his ID to make sure he was who he said he was, then led him through a heavy steel door up a flight of wooden stairs that creaked beneath his weight, most of which was centered in his chest and shoulders, which were broad as barrels, and his ample belly, which strained like a racehorse against the rein of his belt. He had a pale complexion, close-cropped hair, and sunken snow blue eyes. Beefy forearms and fingers fat as sausages. Had they passed on the street, Robert would have pegged him for a wrestler, a policeman, or a bureaucrat.

  At the top of the stairs he stopped and drew a folded white handkerchief from his pocket, using it to wipe the beads of sweat on his forehead and neck that had accumulated from the climb. He then proceeded down a short hall to a door that opened into a room that had all the hallmarks of a bachelor pad. Against one wall was a seaweed green velveteen couch and beside it a faux leather recliner. Together they faced a plasma flat screen the size of a hockey rink. A low glass table littered with dog-eared magazines, stained papers, and plastic discs sat atop a shag carpet the color of mud. There were two other doors in the room, one in a long wall that did not reach the ceiling and seemed more a partition. Stanovic made his way to the other door, where he paused, then, speaking over his shoulder as though to avoid the effort or inconvenience of turning, offered Robert a beer. It was early in the day, and Robert was not an early drinker, but in the interest of bonhomie he accepted. Stanovic disappeared, and a minute later returned with two tall, frosted glasses. He handed one to Robert.

  "Talking is thirsty work,” he said, presumably a forecast, for as yet he had said scarcely anything. Lifting his glass, he took a long hard swallow. “You have the advance?"

  He spoke with an accent. German? No, warmer, more southerly. Balkan maybe. Robert, who had built a hospital in the ruins of Sarajevo, handed him an envelope, which contained a tidy sum in mostly borrowed cash, the first, if all went well, of three installments.

  "Maybe I should tell you why I'm here,” he said.

  Stanovic glanced in the envelope and at the same time raised a hand to silence him. “Please. I will speak first. Afterwards, if you have something to say, you will tell me. We will listen to you."

  Another pull on the glass, followed by a fastidious, almost dainty, patting of the lips with his handkerchief.

  "First, I know why you're here. There is only one reason why anyone is here, including myself. Second, you must prepare yourself for serious work. We do not go on picnic. No, my friend. The harder you work, the better the result, the more satisfactory. Anything less and there will be disappointment. That I promise you. One hundred percent promise, and I tell you why. It's easy to make someone from scratch. No big deal. No problem. It was easy enough the old-fashioned way, and it's easier now. The trick is to make the right someone, and the trick of that is to know what you want. And that, my friend, takes work. And why is that? I tell you. Because you may know what you want, but then you may only think you know, and on deeper inspection, deeper searching of the soul, you may discover that you don't know nearly enough. So that is what we work on, what you know and what you don't know you know and what you need to know, and what you think you know but is really mistake. And I tell you why we do this, because if we don't, we end up with a mediocre product. Something shiny maybe, but it scratches in a minute, and in a minute more it falls apart. And then who's happy? Not you. Not me. What a waste, eh? It belongs in the swimming pool.” He paused, then gave a chuckle. “You know what I mean, the swimming pool?"

  Robert shook his head.

  "You look around, you'll see. People swimming, going nowhere. Like fishes in tank. And not just these fishes, but what they swim in. It's a pool....” He hesitated, knitting his brows. “Can I say a cesspool? A cesspool of mediocre fishes."

  It was unclear to Robert what he was referring to. The world at large? The masses, disdain for which was not uncommon among professionals, especially thwarted, marginalized ones? Or did he mean his own particular world, the world of parthenogenetics, and if so, Robert w
ondered how he could say, much less know, that most creations were second-rate. Supposedly, manmade, designer humans were indistinguishable from natural born ones, but maybe they weren't. Maybe there was some telltale sign that was obvious to someone in the business, hidden to everyone else. Now that he thought about it, there were designer lines of humans, like designer shoes or designer clothes, with certain recurring and recognizable features and traits. Viewed separately, in the company of natural humans, a single such individual might not stand out, but viewed together, as in a collection, they were clearly related, variations on a theme, the theme of utility, say, athleticism, prurience, geekiness, smarts.

  "I have no interest in making automatons,” Stanovic said with contempt. “If what you want is that, someone to do what you say and nothing else, to wait your table, take off your shoes and socks and then her panties, you go to someone else. Same deal if all you want is pretty face. Anyone can make this person. It's hack work. I have better things to do with my time."

  What those things were he did not disclose, and the tenor of his voice did not invite inquiry. He finished what remained of his beer, which seemed to calm him.

  "Here you get better than that. More spirit, more roundness, more character, more unique. An original person. You know what I mean original? Someone you want to see more than once. Again and again and again you want to see this person. Maybe you can't think of anything else."

  Robert liked the idea, though it sounded a bit extreme. “I'm not sure I want to be obsessed."

  Stanovic shrugged, as though this were out of his hands.

  "I want to love her,” Robert said simply, “and I want her to love me. And inspire me. And not be hurt by me. That's key."