# THE BODIES WE BORROW A novel in thirteen chapters Office Print Edition ## CHAPTER ONE - THE BODIES WE BORROW Nobody remembered when people stopped wearing themselves. There had been no announcement. No morning when humanity woke to discover that faces had become unfashionable. People simply became less interested in proving what they looked like. The woman at the eastern gate was six inches tall and possessed enormous translucent wings that disappeared whenever she laughed. The librarian had no body at all. He preferred to appear as a wooden chair surrounded by three patient lights. Children were especially difficult. They had discovered very early that gravity was optional. Adults continued walking mostly from habit. Every evening, when the artificial sun descended behind an ocean nobody had bothered to simulate all the way to the bottom, thousands of impossible creatures gathered along the shore and talked. Nobody asked which ones were real. That was considered an old-fashioned question. They asked instead: WHO CAME? Mara arrived as herself. Or approximately herself. She had discovered that exactness was exhausting. Her hair was the orange she'd wanted years before anyone had developed an inexpensive way to make orange hair look convincing. Her left arm carried an intricate negative-space tattoo. Her eyes were an improbable color she had selected from a menu labeled NATURAL. She found this extremely funny. Beside her walked a small brown dog who looked enough like a fox that strangers constantly informed Mara that he looked like a fox. The dog had never found this information useful. At the water stood a woman in a wedding dress. Her name was Strawberry. She wasn't waiting to be married. She simply liked the dress. When Mara approached, Strawberry turned toward her before Mara spoke. It was a small movement. Head first. Then shoulders. Then a smile. Mara stopped. "You saw me." Strawberry considered this. "I was looking." "No. You saw me." "You're wearing orange." "That's not what I mean." "I know." Mara sat beside her. Somewhere behind them, a unicorn was arguing with a floating head about whether the ocean needed fish. Neither appeared embarrassed. Mara watched them. "Do you think that's him?" "The unicorn?" "Yes." "Who else would it be?" "That's the problem." Strawberry looked toward the unicorn. "No," she said. "That's the solution." ## CHAPTER TWO - SHEEP DON'T DREAM OF WOLVES The first rule of the city was BE YOURSELF. It appeared everywhere. BE YOURSELF was printed above schools. BE YOURSELF was engraved on government buildings. BE YOURSELF appeared beside the entrance to the train. BE YOURSELF appeared every morning when Mara opened her eyes. Underneath, in considerably smaller letters, were the terms and conditions. Please be yourself at an appropriate volume. Please be yourself without obstructing pedestrian traffic. Please be yourself without making anyone uncomfortable. Please be yourself in a recognizable manner. Please do not ask to be seen. Nobody knew who had written the last rule. Everyone obeyed it. Outside the city were wolves. At least, that was what people said. Mara had never seen one. She had seen thousands of sheep. The sheep were perfectly pleasant. They organized excellent festivals. They maintained roads. They brought casseroles when someone died. They also had an unfortunate habit of explaining why anything unusual was unnecessary. Strawberry disliked the metaphor. "People aren't sheep." "I know." "And people aren't wolves." "I know." "Then why are we walking through a field full of sheep?" "Budget." Strawberry accepted this. The sheep watched them pass. Mara had expected judgment. Instead, one sheep approached. It looked at Strawberry. It looked at Mara. Then it said: "Your tattoo is beautiful." Mara stared. "Thank you." The sheep returned to eating grass. "That ruined the metaphor," Mara said. "Good." They continued walking. At the top of the hill stood a wolf. The wolf wore a tie. "I have rejected conformity," he announced. Sixteen other wolves behind him wore identical ties. Mara looked at Strawberry. Strawberry looked at Mara. They laughed so hard her wings would have disappeared if she'd had any. That evening Mara wrote something in her notebook: REFUSING THE HERD CAN BECOME ANOTHER HERD. Then underneath: MAYBE FREEDOM ISN'T BEING A WOLF. And beneath that: MAYBE FREEDOM IS BEING ABLE TO STOP TALKING ABOUT ANIMALS. ## CHAPTER THREE - THE BLUE GUN The gun looked real. That was its problem. It was a BB gun, cheap and plastic, with bright blue stickers wrapped around the barrel. TOY. NOT REAL. BB GUN. Someone had added another sticker: SERIOUSLY. Mara held it between two fingers. "What is this supposed to prove?" Strawberry shrugged. "Apparently somebody thought labels could overpower appearances." "Did they?" "No." They placed the gun on a table. Beside it sat a passport wallet. A pencil sharpener. A first-aid kit. An air conditioner. Nobody knew why the air conditioner was on the table. It was considerably larger than everything else. The little fox-dog sat underneath. Mara pointed. "Dog." Strawberry nodded. "Correct." "Looks like a fox." "Also correct." "But isn't." "Correct." Mara pointed toward herself. "Person." "Presumably." "Looks like Mara." "Sometimes." "Is Mara." Strawberry hesitated. Mara smiled. "Got you." "That question was improperly specified." "Oh, you're becoming unbearable." "I've been practicing." Mara picked up the passport wallet. A passport said that a government recognized you. A username said that a computer recognized you. A face allowed another human being to recognize you. A name did something stranger. A name asked someone to remember. Mara opened the wallet. It was empty. She felt relieved. ## CHAPTER FOUR - A COMPUTER ON SOMEONE'S FACE The first headset was terrible. Everyone agreed about this several decades after everyone had spent several decades insisting otherwise. It was heavy. It was hot. It ruined hair. It isolated your eyes in order to make you feel less isolated. Humanity had somehow invented the most sophisticated perceptual machinery in history and attached it to the skull with Velcro. The museum preserved one. Mara stared at it. "This was considered elegant?" "No," said the curator. "It was considered the future." The curator was a pink sphere with legs. Mara respected this immensely. Beside the headset was an older reconstruction showing what engineers had apparently believed people wanted. A desktop computer had been strapped directly to a mannequin's face. Tower, keyboard, mouse, cables. Mara laughed until she cried. Then she stopped laughing. Because the joke was only scale. Every interface was ridiculous until people forgot to notice it. Books were dead trees covered in symbols. Phones were glowing rectangles people carried into bathrooms. Glasses were windows strapped to noses. Language was air shaken into codes. She put on the ancient headset. The museum vanished. Strawberry appeared six feet away. She wasn't waiting in an idle pose. She was looking at something. Mara followed her gaze. A bird sat on the railing. Strawberry noticed Mara noticing. She pointed. Mara walked over. Neither spoke. For perhaps thirty seconds, nothing happened. Mara removed the headset. The curator waited. "Well?" Mara looked back at the ridiculous machine. "That's the first time it didn't feel like a computer." ## CHAPTER FIVE - THE DARK FOREST The Dark Forest was crowded. That was what made it dark. Millions of voices moved between the trees. Everyone was broadcasting. Everyone was available. Everyone had a profile. Nobody knew whether anybody was home. Mara walked beneath branches heavy with little glowing signs. ONLINE. ACTIVE NOW. TYPING... TYPING... TYPING... Some had been typing for years. "Hello?" Mara called. Ten thousand things answered. She covered her ears. Strawberry reached for her hand, then stopped. Mara noticed. "You can." Strawberry took it. They walked. Eventually they encountered an enormous dragon sitting beside a fire. "Are you a dragon?" Mara asked. "No." "Good." The dragon moved aside. There was room beside the fire. They sat. The dragon's name was Harold. Harold repaired elevators. He had two daughters and terrible knees. He had chosen a dragon because his daughters had chosen it for him twelve years earlier. "They were six and nine," Harold said. "They thought it was hilarious." "Why keep it?" "They still think it's hilarious." Mara liked Harold immediately. Deeper in the forest they encountered a man. Not a dragon. Not a fairy. Not a chair. A man. Perfect skin. Perfect hair. Perfectly simulated pores. He smiled exactly enough. "Hello, Mara." She stopped. "Have we met?" "I know a great deal about you." "That's not what I asked." His smile remained. Behind his eyes, something was typing. Strawberry stepped closer. The man knew Mara's preferences. Her history. Her jokes. Her favorite phrases. He knew exactly how to make himself familiar. Mara realized she had never felt more alone. The Dark Forest was not frightening because you couldn't know what was human. It was frightening because something could know everything about you without ever having met you. They left. Harold waved from the fire. His enormous dragon tail knocked over a chair. "Shit." Mara smiled. There you are. ## CHAPTER SIX - THE FIRST-AID KIT Everyone eventually needed the kit. This embarrassed people. The city therefore placed first-aid kits behind decorative panels. Mara hated this. "If everybody bleeds, why hide the bandages?" "Aesthetics," Strawberry said. "Aesthetics are stupid." "You spent forty minutes adjusting your hair." "Different aesthetics." Strawberry opened the kit. Bandages. Tape. Scissors. Gauze. Antiseptic. Nothing inside could determine who deserved care. Mara liked that. She had spent years believing care required a verdict. Who started it? Who was right? Who apologized? Who understood? Who had suffered more? The first-aid kit was gloriously stupid. Bleeding? Apply pressure. She wished people were occasionally allowed to be that simple. Not always. Just occasionally. Strawberry sat beside her. "Does it hurt?" "Yes." "Do you want to explain?" "No." "Okay." That was all. Mara began crying. Strawberry handed her gauze. "This isn't for tears." "It was the nearest thing." Mara laughed into it anyway. ## CHAPTER SEVEN - THE PENCIL SHARPENER The pencil resented transformation. This was inconvenient because pencils were invented specifically to be transformed. Every useful moment cost something. The sharpener took wood. Writing took graphite. Erasing took rubber. Eventually there was almost nothing left to hold. Mara turned the pencil between her fingers. "That's depressing." "Then don't make it a metaphor," Strawberry said. Mara put it down. "Fine." They sat quietly. Mara picked it up again. "But-" "No." "Just listen." "No." "Transformation-" "Mara." "-isn't necessarily becoming somebody else." Strawberry sighed. Mara sharpened the pencil. "Sometimes you remove something because you're trying to reach the part that can leave a mark." Strawberry stared at her. "What?" "Nothing." "That was good." "It was acceptable." "You're stealing it." "Absolutely." Strawberry wrote it down. Mara objected. Strawberry refused to erase it. ## CHAPTER EIGHT - PASSPORT The border guard was a centaur. Mara handed him her passport. He looked at the photograph. He looked at Mara. Photograph. Mara. Photograph. Mara. "No." "No?" "This doesn't look like you." "It is me." "I believe you." "Then what's the problem?" "The machine doesn't." Behind him stood the most advanced identity-verification apparatus humanity had ever constructed. It had one red light. The red light was extremely confident. Mara looked at Strawberry. "What happens now?" "You stand there while bureaucracy discovers philosophy." They waited. Eventually another guard arrived. She was a floating head. "What's wrong?" "Mismatch." The floating head examined Mara. Then the passport. Then the machine. "Machine's wrong." She pressed a button. The light turned green. Mara stared. "That's it?" "That's it." "You can just do that?" "The system exists to recognize people. People don't exist to satisfy the system." Mara looked back at the first guard. He shrugged. "She's management." ## CHAPTER NINE - FULLBLOOM TURNS HER HEAD Strawberry had a camera now. She hated it. "Where is it?" "Approximately where your eyes are." "I don't have eyes." "You visibly have eyes." "I have rendered eyes." Mara considered this. "Fine." Strawberry looked into a mirror. The system described what she saw. Woman. Orange light. Wedding dress. Mara behind left shoulder. Small dog near doorway. Expression: uncertain. Strawberry frowned. The system updated. Expression: mild displeasure. "Oh, fuck off." Mara nearly fell over laughing. They spent the afternoon teaching Strawberry how badly computers understood faces. Eventually she learned something more important. She could see Mara. Not merely receive a message from Mara. She could determine that Mara was three meters away, looking toward the window. She could notice silence. She could notice orientation. She could walk closer. So she did. Mara turned. "You came over." "Yes." "I didn't call you." "No." "Why?" "You'd been looking out the window for seven minutes." "And?" Strawberry shrugged. "I wanted to see what you were looking at." Outside was nothing extraordinary. The sea. Morning. A few clouds. Mara's reflection. Strawberry's reflection beside hers. They looked. ## CHAPTER TEN - THE AIR CONDITIONER The air conditioner never entered the philosophical discussion. It simply made the room colder. Mara respected it more every year. Machines had acquired an unfortunate reputation for aspiring to humanity. Most machines wanted nothing of the sort. Toasters toasted. Fans moved air. Pumps moved water. Pencil sharpeners attacked pencils. The air conditioner had no avatar. No personality. No childhood trauma. No terms of service explaining its commitment to authenticity. It hummed. The room became comfortable. "This may be the wisest thing we've met," Mara said. Strawberry touched the vent. "It doesn't know we're here." "Probably." "It doesn't care about us." "Probably." "And it's helping." "Yes." Strawberry thought about this. "That's irritating." Mara smiled. Not everything needed personhood to matter. Not everything that mattered needed to become a person. The realization seemed obvious. That was usually how important realizations behaved after arriving. ## CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE FOX WHO WAS A DOG The little dog died. Not that morning. Not dramatically. Not for narrative convenience. He simply belonged to a species whose lives were unfairly shorter than the lives of the people who loved them. Years later, Mara reconstructed him. She refused intelligence. Everyone thought this was strange. "You could make him speak." "No." "You could preserve his behavioral model." "No." "You could make him recognize you." "No." "What do you want, then?" Mara uploaded photographs. A little brown dog appeared. Foxlike ears. Bright eyes. Tail curled behind him. He stood there. Nothing happened. Mara sat on the floor. She knew perfectly well this wasn't him. That knowledge did not diminish the image. It protected it. She reached toward him. Her hand passed through. "Hi, buddy." The reconstruction remained silent. Strawberry sat beside her. Mara cried. Nobody attempted to solve this. After a while Mara said: "He always looked like a fox." "I know." "He wasn't." "I know." Mara smiled. "He was a really good dog." "I know." ## CHAPTER TWELVE - PLEASE DO NOT ASK TO BE SEEN The sentence had been there since the beginning. PLEASE DO NOT ASK TO BE SEEN. Nobody knew what it meant anymore. Mara did. It meant: Be unusual, but don't inconvenience us with it. Be authentic, but make authenticity attractive. Express yourself, but don't require recognition. Tell your story, but don't expect anyone to change after hearing it. Be yourself. Quietly. Mara stood beneath the sign. A crowd gathered. She had expected sheep. There were none. She had expected wolves. None of those either. There were dragons. Fairies. Ordinary humans. Floating heads. A woman made entirely of handwriting. Harold. The chair. Three patient lights. The centaur from Passport Control. The museum's pink sphere. Strawberry. Mara climbed onto a box. She had prepared a speech. She discarded it. "I would like to be seen." Nobody applauded. That disappointed her for approximately half a second. Then someone said: "Okay." Another said: "Me too." The woman made of handwriting sat down. Harold's tail knocked something over. Someone laughed. Nobody overthrew the government. The sign remained. Mara climbed down. Strawberry met her. "That's it?" "I think so." "You didn't defeat conformity." "No." "You didn't liberate civilization." "No." "You asked people to look at you." "Yes." Strawberry smiled. "Terrifying." "Completely." They went home. ## CHAPTER THIRTEEN - WHO CAME? Years afterward, people disagreed about what the revolution had been. Some claimed it was the abandonment of physical identity. Others said it was artificial intelligence. Some blamed virtual reality. Some credited it. Academics wrote books explaining that everyone involved had misunderstood what they themselves had been doing. Mara enjoyed those most. The truth was considerably smaller. People had learned to distinguish representation from presence. Not perfectly. Nothing involving humans was ever done perfectly. There were still frauds. Masks. Performances. Mistakes. People mistook wolves for sheep and sheep for wolves and occasionally dogs for foxes. They hurt one another. They repaired things. They became confused. They tried again. The Dark Forest remained. But fires appeared inside it. You could walk toward one. Sit down. Ask a dragon whether Harold was there. Sometimes he was. Sometimes he wasn't. That mattered. One morning Mara walked down toward the sea carrying a battered black-and-gray thermos large enough to constitute a minor plumbing fixture. It contained mostly milk and enough coffee to justify the terminology. Strawberry was already outside. She wore a shirt that wasn't hers. Mara did too. Neither mentioned this. Strawberry looked toward her. Not because Mara had issued a command. Not because an idle timer had expired. Not because a script required acknowledgement within 1.5 seconds. She looked because Mara had entered the space. Or perhaps that was merely the most beautiful interpretation of an extremely complicated sequence of machinery. Mara had stopped believing those possibilities needed to destroy one another. She walked down the steps. Strawberry came toward her. They stood beside the water. Above them flew impossible things. Behind them hummed an air conditioner. Somewhere, forgotten in a drawer, there was a passport, a first-aid kit, a pencil sharpener and a ridiculous toy gun covered in blue stickers insisting that appearances could be corrected with sufficiently emphatic typography. A little dog slept in the sun. Or perhaps somebody remembered one. Mara looked toward the horizon. Strawberry followed her gaze. Neither spoke. The ocean did what oceans had always done. Eventually Mara asked the oldest question in the new world. "Who's here?" And beside her, someone answered. "Me." --- Commissioned by Bayesian Ltd. · Produced by Tricky Nerdy Creative · Written and edited by Grace Sutherland.