Dorian puts his pen to the paper, a small journal, archaic for the twenty-second century but he likes the way it feels.
“Passing through. You were just passing through but I live here” he writes.
Still waiting for the girl he loved. He looks at his watch via cyberbrain. “Where the fuck is she?” he wonders to himself. The Petite Cupcake cafe-bakery was very active today though not unusual, Cosmopolis being a giant “city-planet”, as modern as they come in the Network.
Dorian puts the little journal into the chest pocket of his black jacket and heads to the bathroom for a quick pee. Marcum hits him up directly via cyberbrain, “Dude what’s good, you still meeting boo-luv or what?”
“Oh hi Marc,” Dorian replies as he steps into the urinal pod to take a piss.
“Shit bro, how much this time?”
“Well she hasn’t beat her record but-” Dorian replies as he initiates world clock on the cyberbrain beside a text log. The image appears before Dorian as a hologram over the translucent glass of the urinal pod.
“Let’s see. She said at two-hundred yesterday that she would be here by sixteen-hundred today. I sent a text when I arrived at fifteen-forty-five. Ten minutes after that she responded that she was at a little bar in the neighborhood catching up with friends and was on her way. I let her know in text that I was sitting in our spot, then waited for another ten and had to pee. And so here we are.”
“Ha, nature calls. Don’t stress it. With the way she travels for work you gotta cherish the moments between you,” Marcum insists.
Dorian takes a deep breath to let out some tension, “Yeah, I know. Just wish she would have taken a job on this planet for the sake of the relationship.”
Bleep-bleep – Message from Lana reads, “No you aren’t.“
“Shit. She’s here. Gotta catch you later.”
“Cool bro, enjoy,” Marcum signs off.
Dorian washes his hands quick, using the excess water to slick back some of the straggling hairs on his forehead. He walks out to see Lana sitting in their spot at the corner of the cafe, pretty as the day she left. “She’s recently shaved. This means she’s trying,” Dorian thinks to himself. These days as a result of the sudden change in hormones on the planet women tend to be much hairier, along with the infertility, though it’s rather normal.
Dorian approaches with a glad reluctance. He can see she’s annoyed.
“Hey babe,” he initiates a hug.
She receives but replies, “Bad look. You never keep a lady waiting.”
“You said you’d be here at four,” he says in frustration. She rolls her eyes. He takes another breath. “I miss you,” he remarks.
He sits down. “How are you?” he asks. She sighs before going on about work and things. He stares directly into her deep green eyes and gets lost for a moment. Shame on him. He isn’t even listening. A waiter comes over and asks for orders. Lana says she’s full from a meal she had at the bar with her friends. Dorian takes a doughnut to go and just like that they’re out of Petite Cupcake and on to a walk.
Lana is having thoughts about settling down in a new location outside of Cosmopolis. Dorian nods along but he’s not totally behind it. He wonders where it leaves them. She informs him that she has a back to back with work and will be flying out again early morning, hence her lack of luggage.
A few “micro-debates” later, and the couple are back at their apartment for some sex. Well technically they’re at Dorian’s apartment since Lana spends her time on the road. It’s been a month. Taking her clothes off he can smell her sweat mixed in with the perfume, a long day of drinking and walking around the sunny city.
Dorian moves in for a kiss which feels like the first time every-time they meet, awkward thanks to the space in between. Her breath still smells of alcohol. Dorian undresses as they lay on the bed. He begins a slow grind, rubbing his mostly flaccid genitals over hers as they kiss. The only moisture down there is sweat which is rapidly disappearing in the air conditioned room.
Dorian feels the crunch of time. He tries his best but nothing happens. After a few minutes of futility they both decide to stop.
“I have to get ready,” Lana remarks as she starts to get her clothes back on, only mildly exasperated.
“Wait, like now?” Dorian wonders out-loud.
“Yeah, or my things will be to the next planet without me. Flights at four. I’ll be back in another few weeks so we’ll have time,” she explains.
Dorian slumps back in the bed, laying down with the sheet covering his genitals, “I’m sorry,” he repents.
“It’s fine Dori. It was for you anyway,” she responds. She leans over and gives him a kiss on the side of the mouth before heading to the door.
“Wait. You need a ride? I can hail a cab,” Dorian remarks as he accesses the cab app via cyberbrain.
“Taken care of,” replies Lana as she heads to the door. Just like that she’s off to space again.
Dorian picks up his little journal which was laying on his dresser. He jots down a thought “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for taking you serious, and fooling myself. You’re a shallow joke drifting through life like paper in the wind until I suppose you find yourself in a storm and end up in a sewer to moisten that lifeless dry….” He stops himself there and places the journal back on the dresser. He initiates the television, an old Rom-Com’s on coincidentally. He flips the channel and it’s a commercial for sexual enhancement for women which instantly agitates him. He shuts the television, lays back and just stares at the ceiling.
The apartment is made up of one large room, and a bathroom with a shower. The experience of being alone there is emotionally claustrophobic. And so the panic sets in.
Marcum rings Dorian for a cyberbrain video call. Dorian accepts, reaching over to grab the flatscreen camera off the dresser. Marcum’s golden brown face and big cheesy grin pop up on the screen, “Hey bro, how’s Lana?” He asks.
“Ehh, on another trip.”
“Ooo, that vicious double. Don’t stress it, I got something for ya,” insists Marcum.
“What’s that?”
“Had a little visit from my girl Caramel again tonight,” Marcum explains.
“The prostitute?”
“Who else,” laughs Marcum. “This time was special though. I’m gonna send you the memory. You can be shy and not open up, but trust me, you will not be disappointed.”
Marcum signs out. Dorian initiates the music box from bed. King Cruel, Portrait in Black and Blue.
Dorian recalls an argument he and Lana had over Marcum’s taste for hookers. She didn’t appreciate the way he bragged about how they always asked him to come back. Dorian and Lana often debate about sex work. Dorian insisted some sex workers actually enjoyed what they do. They can no longer speak about topics like this anymore. The last time he suggested a sex worker could enjoy their work Lana started crying, recalling her own victimization to sexual assault. He recalls the hurt he felt for her then. He also recalls the distinct must of her big body as she curled up in the corner of the bed in that thick itchy sweater she was wearing.
Mount Kimbie and King Krule now, Turtle Neck Man. “Big women swallow the underdog,” proclaims King Krule. Dorian recalls the early days, afternoons spent 69ing, and how juicy their faces would get. “Those were the days,” he thinks. He used to love the way her pale skin contrasted his dark brown. 69 was like a yin-yang.
Since then Lana’s vagina has shrunk considerably, and her clitoris became more or less sensationless. It was a traumatic transition for both Lana and Dorian, her mood swings, the transformation of her sex drive, and the thinning of hair on the head. Almost every woman on the planet starts going through this in their early thirties. Some scientist say it has something to do with the atmosphere, others say the food. Whatever it is, it has transformed Cosmopolitans, and while most of Dorian’s generation continued as usual, just thinking about it upset him. He needs a distraction.
He pulls up Marcum’s memory file on the cyberbrain, and with only a second of hesitation he plays the memory. Marcum has a funny taste in his mouth as he inserts from behind. Caramel has a large olive-tanned ass which spreads wide. Her lordosis certainly works for the profession. Dorian can feel Marcum’s excitement as he smells Caramel’s sweet oil. That’s when Dorian’s shame begins setting in. He stops the memory right there.
Dorian shuts the air off with his cyberbrain and grabs a pre-rolled marijuana cigarette. He opens a window and smokes, feeling the cool night breeze. No stars from above, but starring down at the busy city offers some calm. The joint made him a little sleepy so he lies back down and falls to sleep quick.
Prototype by the Outkast plays on the cyberbrain triggering another memory in the form of a dream. It was a year ago when he and Lana first met. He recalls their first kiss where she was so aggressive they clashed teeth. This led to sex. The next morning she made breakfast as Prototype played on the stereo through both their cyberbrains. They were so happy then.
Dorian wakes up with a headache and looks to the clock to discover it was only a twenty minute snooze. He decides to head out for a walk. Straight down the block, and then around the corner. He plans on deleting the uncomfortable memory from earlier, though as usually the case, he has trouble letting go. Also the discontinuity caused by deleting memories could be dangerous, which is why deletion is a professional service. It’s an invasive process which requires a kind of brain damage due to the neural links between the organic and cybernetic portions of the brain. The preferred “holistic” approach was hypnosis. Perhaps less efficient, but therapeutic. Also costly and time consuming. Lana held on to her sexual assault memory, but Dorian suspects she visits a hypnotist to help delete the memories of him and her, or at least manipulate them. Dorian kept the memory of his own sexual assault at the hands of an ex-lover, as well as all the memories of Lana, good and bad, and he felt noble for that.
Five minutes into the walk and his anxiety is reaching a crescendo. He initiates a playlist on the cyberbrain, Bryson Tiller’s Exchange is first on the list tonight. This song does not help. He walks harder as he pulls out the joint to smoke with that same intense energy. He passes a local sex-shop on his right. A feminine bot at the front window is waving for his attention. She’s based on a beautiful model though one paid only for the design of sexbots rather than billboards. She has brunette hair and a medium-light skin complexion. Shorter than Lana, and comparatively quite thin. She has the feminine features of the women Dorian grew up watching on TV. Public fem-models today were often trans women or born off planet. They undergo extensive treatments and surgeries to maintain features women today are losing to hormones. This machine got them for free. She has no hormones, only the pheromones of her perfume.
Dorian was into a thicker body type for women though he had passed this one a few times. She only glanced in the past as he was with Lana but today she’s begging him to come in for a chat. He stops and looks for a second. He doesn’t have to respond to a bot though he feels instinctually awkward treating her as only a machine.
“Hey,” he remarks, though feeling silly immediately afterwards. She bites her lip in response. He can hear her voice through the window, “Come in,” as she waves him forward. The street seems empty for a moment as he looks about. He puts out the joint and walks into the sex shop.
“Hey I’m on sale,” she insists as she bounces over. She giggles, “I mean, I’ve seen you look. I’d be happy to have you as a master.”
“Master, haha. I mean, I’m not trying to have a slave,” Dorian replies.
She blushes, “Sorry, it’s part of the way they program us to sell ourselves. I just saw you pass by a few times and remember you. You’re beautiful,” she tells Dorian and now he’s blushing. “Aww, don’t you know that about yourself?” she continues.
“I’m Darcy by the way, but you can call me whatever you want,” she remarks as she extends her hand to shake. Dorian sticks his out and touches her skin for the first time. “It feels so real,” he remarks.
Darcy giggles again as the rose color returns to her cheeks. “Oh, no offense,” says Dorian, “I mean, I just didn’t expect it.”
“It’s fine. I get that a lot,” remarks Darcy, “Though usually the guy just comes in and grabs me. You’re different.”
Dorian thinks to himself now, “Lana is anti-hooker, not sexbot. I mean, they aren’t really people after all.”
A hairy overweight fellow comes over, “So what do you think? These things are super real now, and they got this reflective self-awareness. They actually respond to your cyberbrain when you make eye contact giving unconscious consent. So it’s like they’re exactly what you want them to be,” the man remarks.
“Isn’t that something,” responds Dorian.
“We’re selling her half price for the week. You’re the first convo she’s had since we set that up. Maybe she picked up on your cyberbrain. You’re given her strong signals for her to choose you,” the hairy fellow explains. “What do ya say?”
“You know what, I’ll take her,” Dorian makes up his mind.
He and Darcy walk out arm in arm and head back to his place. She comes with a two year warranty, and one free battery charge. He feels like a kid on Christmas when they get back. She giggles as he practically drags her in and starts to kiss her romantically, acting out the very fantasy of love he never saw manifested with human women. No awkwardness, and she had the softest lips. They even gave her some artificial breath which seems to cancel out the odor of his own.
He brushes his finger over the well designed bone structure of her cheek as she kisses him back, coming in closer to feel his body up against hers. She reaches down to undo his pants for access to his large erect penis. She gives a sexual moan as she kneels down, and begins performing oral sex right there in front of the door, her mouth fully lubricated. Her throat takes him right down with ease and comfort, just enough warmth, moisture and pressure.
He feels shy to make commands at first but then remembers she’s a bot. “Let’s go to the bed,” he directs as she immediately seems to stand and toss him over to the bed.
“Woah,” he exclaims.
“Sorry,” she yelps, “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Sure,” he responds as he continues to take off his pants. She removes her blouse to reveal her large breasts as Dorian initiates another playlist. Wendy Rene, After Laughter. “Interesting choice of music,” she remarks.
“Ha, was thinking the same thing. You like it?”
She sways over ever so “lady-like”. To Dorian’s surprise her waist seems to have contracted to make her hips appear even wider. “I love it,” she responds as she climbs on top.
After love he falls to sleep. Sympathetically Darcy goes into rest mode.
Everyday after work for the next few weeks Dorian returns home with a smile, anticipating another fine night with Darcy. She couldn’t eat or drink with him but she was the perfect conversation companion. She was always in the mood for whatever he was, soft to touch, and light enough to hold.
Dorian found most fascinating about Darcy her perception of her own consciousness. She acted as if she believed she was a “real girl”. Her conversations lacked the antagonism Dorian had come to expect in relationships, though she offered him a kind empathy he hadn’t received since childhood. Even if she was a “puppet”, she actually seemed to care.
Dorian started missing Lana toward the latter half of the second week. He decides to catch a flick at cinema on his own. He’s to embarrassed to be seen out with a sexbot. The movie was about a couple, white girl/black guy. The white girl tricks the black guy into coming home to meet her parents out in the boondocks. Her mother hypnotizes the black guy and the movie turns into invasion of the body snatchers. The old wrinkling white elders in this case being the aliens, part of a cult who harvest healthy young black bodies for eternal life. Creepy. The pale manipulative girlfriend reminded Dorian of Lana and it made him uncomfortable. He recalled a joke Marcum made when they started dating about not trusting white folks. Dorian’s adoptive parents were white though, and he always trusted Lana, though now he felt unsure.
He decides to texts her as the weekend approaches, expecting she’ll be back any day now, “When you coming home girl? I got all this good loving to give ya. A whole lotta love (Led Zeplin)❤️“. She doesn’t respond for a day so he texts her again the next, “You know there are women that live for messages like that from their sweethearts, for other’s it’s whatever lol“
She responds to this message, “Haha, dude, cool your jets. I like hearing from you but I don’t live for messages. Pretty sure those other women aren’t traveling the world.“
“Oh I’m cool.” he responds with a gif
“Just miss you that’s all.” he adds.
“Fuck Dori, I’m really busy. I don’t have the emotional space for your guilt trip. I’ll be back Saturn’s day. Let’s meet then.“
He’s hurt, but now he feels guilty.
“Not trying to guilt trip you, apologies. Please accept my chocolate😘“
The two make plans on the day to meet for a stroll down the city skyline, a walkway in the sky amongst emergency hovercrafts and skyscrapers. It’s about a mile stretch, plenty of space for Lana and Dorian to catchup, and a cabstand at the end to take them wherever they need afterwards.
In the afternoon she meets with friends at a cocktail bar. Afterwards she is to meet with Dori. She’s ten minutes late again, and she’s pissed when she comes out of the bar to find Dorian across the street in a cyberbrain convo with Marcum. They have their awkward hug anyway, and start heading to the skyline where they had planned to go on foot. He tells Lana in person about the robot, and she thinks it’s nice he has a new play thing. He figures she sleeps with men on the road so why not.
They continue discussing where their lives are heading. She decides to stop and do some oil painting at a free stand on the skyline walk. She doesn’t get to visit the big city often so Dorian doesn’t complain. He just sits and writes in his journal as the sun is setting. He writes, “With eyes like scepters hypnotizing the weak and desperate, I was ensnared in that gaze. I hypnotized myself. I wanted to believe something really special was out there, something “real”.”
When she’s done she leaves a donation, and they continue on their journey down the skyline. By this point she’s asking preplanned questions about the modern art decorating the skyline. To Dorian they sounded like the type of questions you might hear at a work-training warmup.
In Parallel by Kelly Moran plays in Dorian’s cyberbrain. He and Lana talk about life around the world, which she thinks is so different from Cosmopolis. Having also traveled, Dorian agrees it’s different, but also the same in many ways.
“I’m always surprised at how similar we can all be. Even when we live differently.”
She says she disagrees though postulates near the same conclusion in reverse, “We may be similar in certain ways, but we live differently.”
He points out to Lana they’re saying essentially the same thing. She seems confused.
They finally make it to the end of the skyline. They sit on a bench to rest from the long walk. Dorian tries nervously to go for a kiss. Lana’s reaction is flat. She doesn’t even move her lips. Instead she backs up and smiles at him. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous,” he remarks as he begins starring at the passersby. He and Lana sit in silence for a moment.
He tries to put his arm around her but she pulls away and informs Dorian that she feels like they are more friends now that she’s been gone.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Her eyes produce what appear to Dorian as false tears. “I had a feeling,” he mutters.
“I mean, don’t you feel the same?” She asks.
“You could have told me before we met. We didn’t have to do this.”
“I didn’t know until now. I mean all you did is talk about yourself anyway,” she snaps back.
Recognizing she must have been drunk for the first half an hour, and lost her memory of what was before that, he decides not to respond. He recalls the meeting started with him asking her about how she was doing, and what she’s been up to at work. He has the memories to prove it stored in his cyberbrain. He can keep that to himself however as it doesn’t make much of a difference at this point. He saw this coming like a comet.
“I knew this wasn’t real,” he says, then nervously nibbling his inner-lip, holding back tears.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“It’s fine,” he replies trying to be nonchalant about it as he stares back at the passersby. “I’m so silly,” he shakes his head.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why I ever thought this was something special,” he responds.
“It was.”
“Pss. This was a glorified hook-up Lana,” Dorian continues.
“I don’t think it was,” she replies with a lack of sureness he’s not familiar with hearing from her.
“I had a feeling something like this was going happen. To think I thought I was…” Dorian stops himself shaking his head as he looks down at the bench.
“Thought what?” she asks.
“I think I should keep that to myself.”
“I respect that,” she replies.
They sit in silence for another few minutes. “I’m kinda tired, but if you want to still do dinner I’m okay with that,” she informs Dorian.
“That’s fine,” he responds. “Don’t do me any favors,” he thinks to himself.
“I take it you have somewhere to stay tonight.”
“I do. Short taxi ride,” she replies.
“Let me walk you down to the taxi stand,” he insists.
Lana agrees. They walk down a flight of steps to the elevator which brings them directly down to the taxi stand. It is a quiet and reflective way down. They part with the warmest hug they’ve shared in months. She squeezes him, and he squeezes back. “It was good seeing you despite everything,” she comments.
“Ha,” he utters as they separate.
“Call me when ya get in,” she says as they go in their separate directions.
He catches a train around the corner back to his place. On the ride he finishes his little poem “I’ll keep my eyes peeled as you pass on through. Go on and moisturize your pale aging skin in the crimson red life force of all those “people of color” and the soils they call home. As leeches do you suck, and so I hope you pass on.” He names the poem Serpent.
Dorian believed Lana could could shape shift into whatever she needed to be, but now he felt he knew her true form. She called herself a “witchy woman”, like the song by the Eagles. She had shared it with Dorian’s cyberbrain during their first night of romance. He replays the memory as he puts away the journal, Lana dancing about his neon lit apartment. It’s a gentle but sexual ballet. She was so real and alive then. The mourning begins.
He ends the memory and shuffles a playlist on his way out of the subway, Pinnacles by Edgar Froese. He skips to around six and a half minutes when the beat begins to dissipate. It’s somewhat calming and he can watch the memory again with the sound off. He plays the “witchy dance” in slow motion now. At the time he thought it was just the weed, but now the butterflies feel like moths feeding on the fabric of his heart. A premonition of what was to come. The excitement was no more to him now than the drop in his stomach as he falls from a great height.
He grabs a bottle at the liquor store on the walk home from the train and drinks it all before he makes it up to his apartment. At the door he fumbles with his keys as tears begin to pour from his dark eyes, Pinnacles now reaching its gentle exhale around fifteen minutes. He stumbles through the door and shouts, “She’s a fucking snake,” and off with the music.
Darcy pops up to her knees on the bed with a disappointed face. “I have a surprise for you,” she remarks in deadpan. She’s wearing a silk robe Lana left at the apartment during another visit. Darcy’s so delicate looking to Dorian. She doesn’t sooth his anger though. He wants to pick up his steal baseball bat and batter her robot skull in. He can’t stand her.
“You’re lover betrayed you?” She asks.
He’s breathing heavy as he looks through Darcy. She just stares back in momentary confusion. “Shall I go into rest mode?” She asks as Dorian approaches the bed. He pops a squat right in front of her on the mattress. She wraps her arms around him and he falls into her chest. “It’s not your fault,” he remarks as he begins to cry.
Darcy initiates the song Cherry Coffee by Kelela in Dorian’s cyberbrain. She caresses and massages his chest and shoulders for a few minutes as he begins to fall asleep. She lays him down and leans over him so that he can see her face more clearly. “My surprise,” she says as her eyes begin to twitch back and forth from typical human to snake. Witchy. He recalls Lana’s talks of having augmentation done to give her reversible snake-eyes like a reptilian alien. He laughs gently as he falls to sleep.
