Near + Far (43 page)

F
loor 13: Government Offices

They were married on a Monday in the Matrimony office. A poster on the wall said, "Welcome to your new life!" Belinda signed the forms in her careful penmanship, but Bingo simply spit-signed, letting his DNA testify to his presence. There were three rooms processing couples and triads—larger family structures required even more complicated licenses than the one they had secured. This room was painted blue, and one wall was an enormous fish tank.

Three fish spoke to Belinda, but she ignored them. She wished she'd remembered to have the Insanity Chip nullified for the ceremony, but it had been a busy week. The fish pressed their mouths to the plastic separating them from her world. Word pearls rose from their lips, seeped upward, through the barrier, and whispered in the room.

After the computer had pronounced them spouses, Belinda and Bingo stood there grinning at each other while behind them silver fish swam back and forth, back and forth, as though imitating the waves they'd never known. A wall camera took their picture.

In a few moments, a wall slot spat out a plastic bag containing two chipkeys, a silver-colored frame around their wedding picture, and a checklist of Entitlements on a slip of dissolvable paper, already graying around the edges.

The clerk handed over the items. "This is where I tell you that you should treat everything as though it's new," she said. "Studies have shown that the marriages which survive the longest are the ones where the newlyweds begin to build their new life together."

"Thanks!" Bingo said with a bright smile. Belinda could tell how happy he was, like he couldn't stop grinning. He looked at her, and the fish tried even more frantically to say something, battering themselves against the plastic until they were just blood and silver scraps drifting in the water, but she ignored them and focused on Bingo and thoughts of butterflies.

Floor 22: Surrogates

"Preferences haven't changed?" the technician asked as he strapped Belinda into the configuring bed. The straps turned into flowers, tiny lilac-colored bells that smelled like uncertainty.

"No," Belinda said. The question surprised her. They had filled out the forms for marriage only two weeks ago, including the list of preferences for her latest surrogate. It was something she'd thought about for a long time. Her old surrogate had been given to her when she first started having sexual feelings, and she had put it away for good a few years ago, when she'd met Bingo.

"Do people really change their preferences at the last minute?" she asked.

"It's not that their preferences really change, so much," the tech said. "But sometimes after they've spent a little time thinking about it, they realize things that they didn't realize they wanted at first."

He checked his data pad. "Blue eyes, blonde hair, skin pigment pale brown, no scars, no disfigurements, face model Adam?"

"That's it," Belinda said. She'd picked a generic face. She didn't believe in getting attached to surrogates. Her father had chosen to keep the one she'd used all through her teenage years rather than recycle it. The choice was vaguely illegal by virtue of a Statute that was rarely enforced. A person was entitled to one surrogate, which could be replaced whenever you changed status levels, as she and Bingo had done by marrying. But her father was a sentimental sort. She wondered how he would cope now that she was out of the apartment and he was living by himself.

The flower straps tickled her wrists. Perfume netted her, dragged her into sleep, content and dreamy as the machine went about its work, measuring her and calibrating the surrogate to her dimensions.

Afterwards they looked at the visuals of their surrogates. She was surprised by Bingo's choices: he had gone into much more detail than she had, as though designing a flower or piece of jewelry. Her face model was Maria and she wore elaborate blue tattoos like webbing over her arms and spreading across her nipples, half obscured by her long red hair.

Belinda liked the simpler look of her surrogate and she liked knowing that it was specifically designed for her, that it would smell and feel right, that it was
hers
in a way nothing else would ever be.

"They'll be delivered tomorrow, after we've done the final calibration," the clerk said. They signed data pads. "Congratulations," she said in a perfunctory tone and checked to make sure their names were spelled correctly.

Floor 77: Mental Services

On Floor 77, Belinda had her Insanity Chip reset so it would factor in her marriage. The Chips were subtle, she knew. They altered your perceptions, they showed the world in the way you wanted to see it. When she'd had a fight with her best friend Angie, she'd had the chip set so she couldn't see Angie for a week, even when the other girl was standing, shouting in her face. When she'd finally relented, missing Angie, though, she'd found the other had gone, moved away.

"I don't want the Chip to change Bingo," she told the doctor. "Let him stay constant."

The doctor fiddled with the machine, her stubby fingers recalibrating the keys. "Do you want hallucinations amped up or down?"

"What I want," Belinda said, "is for everything to seem more significant somehow. Can you do that?"

"Of course," the doctor said. She pressed a few more buttons and turned into a giant jellyfish that hung in the air, glistening greasily. "How is that?" Her voice was muffled, as though coming through water.

"Perfect," Belinda said.

Bingo was in the waiting room. He had worn his best for the wedding: gleaming black pants, a silver hoop in one ear, goatee trimmed to a point. His feet were bare. He was talking to the child beside him but he broke off when Belinda came in. He smiled at her, rising.

"Ready to go home?" he asked.

Behind him the child wavered into a frog, a puddle, a big-eyed kitten.

"Perfect," Belinda said again.

Elevator 17-3

In the elevator between floors 45-75, Belinda said, "You never thought about having an Insanity Chip? Life is more interesting that way."

He kissed her despite the two other women in the elevator. "Life is already interesting."

The younger woman sniffed and stared at the wall; the older woman smiled at them before she got off on floor 82. Belinda saw stars in her eyes, promise in her smile, omens spilling out of the net bag she carried.

In the shop, they bought a new bedspread, dishes, cleaning liquids. They ordered an assortment of food and chose the color of their walls. Belinda liked a yellow and white diamond pattern because it seemed to her when she stared at it long enough, figures danced across it, harlequins in shoes with long pointed toes, kicking them up and down as they capered. She heard it in her head like a complicated marching tune.

Bingo gave her a dubious look. He liked a plain blue. But he let her pick the wall pattern and in return she let him pick a muted gray rug flecked with earth tones, like walking across fabric pebbles, a gentle hum underfoot in the key of C.

Floor 689: Green Leaf Living Quarters

Floors 650-700 were Green Leaf Living Quarters. They would live on 689, in a studio that overlooked one of the four great hollow spaces contained inside the sector.

They kissed as they entered, dropping their bags in a cloud of butterflies beside the door. The curtains matched the walls, which had been prepared in the time they'd spent travelling on the elevator. It was as far in the Building as Belinda had ever travelled in one day. Bingo had been outside it to two other Buildings, but travel like that had never interested her. From what she'd seen on the holovids, every place looked much the same. Belinda kissed the tip of Bingo's nose before she went to the window and looked out.

Portals marked the sides of the living unit walls, and zip lines led from one to another, letting people circumvent the space on hand held lines. Down below was a great green park, filled with grass carpets and plants in pots. Over it stretched the mesh that would catch those who slipped despite the safety straps, or the multitudes of young who delighted in falling, landing on the stretchy softness of the field.

Bingo started supper and she rearranged the pillows on the sofa, then unpacked her clothes into the wall drawers and shelves. Bingo came in smelling of spices and steam and kissed her again.

Bingo worked in advertising and Belinda was an assistant textile designer. That was how they had met. Belinda didn't think it very romantic, but Bingo always told the story as though he was writing an advertisement for it: I Saw her And Then Wham Be Still My Heart. It made Belinda smile when Bingo talked like that.

After dinner they fucked, and fucked again. Bingo nibbled her ears and she tickled his nipples and they gave themselves to each other and murmured sweet things until they fell asleep.

Before breakfast, they uncrated the surrogates and turned them on, flipping the knob on the back of their necks. The surrogates clicked to life, their wide eyes fastening on Bingo and Belinda's faces. After orders, both went to the kitchen and started breakfast, then Bingo's surrogate emerged and began putting their belongings away. While they ate breakfast, the surrogates worked.