                            Death's Head Reunion

                           1999 by Jerry J. Davis



         A Clark Gable clone stands passive while Marilyn Monroe pulls
    at his elastic band pants ... they're gray, soft, and slips off
    easily to reveal an enhanced wang surrounded by a gnarled forest
    of curly black hair. Her velvet hand reaches out and caresses
    Clark. He's smiling, his unit erect. "I've got something for you,"
    he says.
         A man behind the camera line is holding his head in both
    hands, hiding his face. He can't watch. These are two legends,
    heroes to him --- how can these people exploit them like this?
         "Dreams are real," the announcer is saying. "You can dream.
    You can live. You can live your dream."
         Cinematia bodies. They're real. They're legal --- they're
    made from your own DNA. You can have your DNA altered, you can
    authorize your body to be grown. You can be downloaded into your
    new body, and keep your old one as a spare --- or, for a huge tax
    break, you can donate it to the organ banks for the poor.
         The poor cover the world like a blanket of dust. The poor
    cannot live their dreams. The poor have no dreams. We must help
    the poor. Three percent of the world's population controls
    ninety-seven percent of the wealth.
         It is currently vogue to feel guilty about that.
         Many donate money to organizations which feed, clothe, and
    house the poor. Others donate money and organs to the Organ Bank
    For The Poor. No one ever donates to the point that it hurts. No
    one really feels that guilty.
         The Clark Gable clone is now on top of the Marilyn Monroe
    clone. It is graphic, wet, hot sex. Both are enjoying the scene
    immensely. They enjoy being attractive, and feel no modesty. Their
    old bodies, their God-given bodies, they had big noses and fat
    thighs, poor skin, poor vision, and a general pear-shaped ugly
    quality. Now they have the bodies of Movie Star Gods. The only
    thing they retain are their fingerprints and retina scan.
         The man behind the camera line peeks through his fingers.
    Marilyn is gorgeous. This is sick! This is sick! What am I doing
    in this business?
         Because of the money, George. Because you're in that class
    that is as rare as a poor child born without cancer: you belong in
    the middle class. You are neither rich nor poor, and you strive to
    be rich. Your body resembles a potato, your head is bald and one
    of your eyes is bad so you sport a monocle. You want a woman like
    this Marilyn clone, this Bernadette Petrezov. She would never
    touch a potato-head like you, George, so you need a pot of gold to
    buy yourself a Clark Gable suit, or James Dean, or Mel Gibson. And
    this is your chance, George. This is it. And you sit there hiding
    behind your hands afraid to look at those things you are so close
    to having, so close you dare not breathe too hard for fear of
    blowing your chance away.
         It's sick, he thinks. It's inhuman. It's unfair. But the
    words bounce around in his mind like ping-pong balls, full of air.
    They lose their meaning, their potency.
         Marilyn fakes her fifteenth climax and they call it a rap.
    Into the editing chamber George goes, practicing that peculiar
    talent he ended up with, one of God's two gifts to him (God's
    other gift was a perfect set of naturally healthy teeth).
         Bernadette, the Marilyn clone, watches him shuffle off
    through the darkened backstage with his collection of golden video
    disks. She lights up a cigarette --- which is harmless to her new
    body --- and thinks about him, about his wonderful father-like
    looks, his warm, nervous smile. A real character, she thinks, a
    genuine real person. She wonders if he'd have anything to do with
    a mannequin like her.
         She pulls on impossibly tight pants and loops on a rotary
    shirt, no underwear, no bra, gives Gavin (the Clark clone) a
    friendly kiss on the cheek, and wanders out of the studio. Nobody
    pays any attention to her whatsoever. She's just a clone, a meat
    puppet.
         Outside the rain pours down in a torrent, ugly brown rain,
    rain that is muddy even before it touches the ground. After the
    rain the afternoon sky is still black. Nature is dying; only
    man-made things like Bernadette's body will survive. Bernadette's
    body and Martinelli's 9 pound apples and Chiquita's patented
    tree-less bananas and vat-grown cultured meat by Hormel, and
    "Sticky Finger Honey" produced by special bacteria, and
    programmable bionic racing horses, and cats and dogs of metal and
    plastic, and your best friend, Sexy Susan, an AI sexual surrogate
    that now outsells cars and house computers, or her alternate Macho
    Maxx, who can go all night and day 'till you beg him to stop.
         Beyond the black air, almost straight up --- 55,000 miles
    away --- a new condo is being built for Bernadette. It's all
    bought and paid for, but it's not finished. There's no air to
    breathe yet. Bernadette is only down here until it's ready. Until
    then, she takes occasional trips to New California, a mere torus
    but very pleasant, or sometimes to Heaven Orleans, the "Europe of
    space cities," and for the time being lives in a 7 bedroom
    apartment in an archology in Arizona, only 33 minutes via air-taxi
    from Hollywood.
         She doesn't go home tonight, as the thought of another lonely
    and meaningless evening in her apartment might drive her to
    suicide. She hails a SmartCab, and when it asks for a destination,
    she says, "Just go." The AI programming is prepared for that, and
    drives off in a random pattern, charging her credit account by the
    millisecond.
         At that moment Bernadette is again locked in coitus with the
    Clark clone, coming to an orgasm then freezing, un-coming for a
    moment, movements in reverse to a point and then stopping. George
    walks around the two, studying the positioning, the 360
    composition. Cutting from one angle to another is much more of an
    art in cine-holography than cinematography, since George must also
    control 360 segue and use the powerful effect of planned vertigo.
    A phone call interrupts his concentration. He is annoyed.
         "Editing room," George snaps, answering.
         "Sorry ... I hope I haven't disturbed you." Marilyn Monroe's
    face is on the phone's 2D screen. "Silly of me, really --- of
    course I've disturbed you."
         "Well," George says. His voice is weak, all harshness
    disappearing into a little hole in space. His heart rate changes
    painfully. "I'm not too busy to answer the phone."
         "I was hoping ... there might be a chance ... you would have
    dinner with me." Despite all the make up and state-of-the-art
    genetic engineering, she suddenly looks more like Norma Jean than
    Marilyn.
         "I'm probably going to be working until three or four in the
    morning." George says this regretfully --- it's hard for him to
    speak the words. "Would you still be interested tomorrow night?"
         "Yes, I would." She smiles.
         Joy. Glee. Rapture.
         Heartburn.
         Sickness.
         They say good-bye and George labors far into the wee hours of
    the morning, falling asleep with his head inside the image of
    Bernadette's heaving torso.
         The rain continues on and off the next day. Large areas of
    coastal Los Angeles have been claimed by the sea, and one seaside
    highway, on pillars, gives a great view of half-submerged
    buildings encrusted with sick yellow barnacles and gray-blue
    mussels. George is on his way to meet Bernadette, and he is
    wondering why it was happening.
         Maybe, George, it's because she likes you, and wants to get
    to know you better.
         You know that's bullshit, George. She couldn't possibly give
    a rat's ass about you. She's pulling some sort of career move
    thing, and she's going to try to talk you into working on her
    portfolio for free, "as a friend." Or maybe she's involved in one
    of those stupid cults and she's going to try and recruit you.
    She's one of the "Daughters of Orca" and she needs you as a male
    sacrifice to that big fish they're keeping in Huntington Bay.
         The restaurant, Sal's by the Water, is on the banks of the
    Los Angeles River, which is so full it's in danger of flooding the
    parking lot. Despite the run-down look this is a chic place, and
    the entrance is guarded by doormen. As the SmartCab pulls up and
    stops, two dozen heads turn to watch George get out, watching to
    see if he is somebody. Disappointed, they turn away.
         The two large male doormen have Cinematia bodies: Sylvester
    Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. While the clones are pumped up
    enough to be realistic, the psyches inhabiting them are all wrong.
    Sylvester looks far too intelligent, and Arnold looks gay.
    Sylvester confirms that George is on the list and they step aside
    and allow him to pass. The crowd's interest in George is suddenly
    renewed; obviously George is somebody, but they have no idea who.
    A few wave and call out to him, as if it would help them get
    inside.
         Inside, Marilyn greets him at the door. She's a receptionist.
    "Your name?" she asks.
         George stares at her for a moment, waiting for her to
    recognize him. Then he realizes it's not Bernadette, and he looks
    around feeling overwhelmed. The place is full of Cinematia bodies,
    and one of the most popular is Marilyn. There's at least eight of
    them. They're all throughout the restaurant, mingling in with
    James Deans, Clark Gables, Cary Grants, Burt Reynolds, John
    Waynes, Raquel Welchs, Annette Funicellos, Bridgette Bardots, and
    young Jane Fondas. Strategically placed throughout the various
    sections are old-style flat video screens showing non-stop classic
    cinema, with no sound.
         George gives the receptionist his name and asks after
    Bernadette. Bernadette has not yet arrived, so George takes a seat
    at the bar between Rock Hudson and Elvis. This perturbs Rock and
    Elvis, as they were making eyes at each other. George orders a $50
    beer and waits.
         Bernadette makes an entrance, and heads turn. George bites
    his lower lip --- she's wearing The White Dress. She smiles, looks
    around, and waves at George with white gloves almost up to her
    elbows. The other Cinematia Marilyns fade into the background like
    3rd rate mannequins. Bernadette's mannerisms, her smile, the
    twinkle in her eye --- they're genuine. They're the real thing.
    She wears the Marilyn body as well as Norma Jean herself.
         "Ooo, you're here! You showed up," she says.
         "Of course I did. How could I not?"
         "Very easily, I'm afraid."
         "Nonsense!" George's hands are shaking so that he nearly
    spills his beer. "Not a chance."
         She smiles. "You're nervous too."
         "No, uh ... well, yes. I am."
         "Feel my hands," she says, reaching out. He takes them.
    "They're sweating," she tells him.
         "I can't tell." He laughs. "Mine are sweating too, so I'd
    never know."
         "First date jitters," she says. "It's been a long time since
    I've been nervous about a first date."
         "Yes, me too." He neglects to tell her that it's been a long
    time since he's had any kind of date, period.
         "This is a date, right?" she asks, suddenly concerned.
         "Yes," George says quickly. "I mean, I consider it one."
         "Our first date." She smiles. "You make me feel like a
    teenager again."
         "The, uh ... the first of many, I hope." To George his own
    words sound clumsy and awkward, and he inwardly cringes, sure he's
    made a stupid remark.
         Bernadette moves her Marilyn lips just perfectly, an
    embarrassed smile. "I hope so, too," she says.
         They move from the bar to dinner. Dinner goes well. I can't
    believe this, George thinks. I'm sitting across the table from
    Marilyn Monroe, holding her hand, and she likes me. Me!
         Bernadette is thinking, What a wonderful person. So warm, so
    genuine. And he likes me for who I am inside, not because of the
    body I happen to be wearing. This is the kind of man which with I
    want to spend the rest of my life.
         "Would you like to go to a movie or something?" he asks.
         "I want to have your babies," she tells him.

                                     #

         For the first time ever, George finds his life doesn't suck.
    During the Calamity Awards, George wins as best editor in his
    medium. His earnings increase 10-fold overnight. Tremendous
    pressures are at work on those few who fit in the term,
    "middle-class," forces that are either trying to make them poor or
    rich. It's an inherently unstable position. Most become poor and
    commit suicide. Others, like George, join the ranks of the three
    percent that control ninety-seven percent of the money.
         Money makes money. More money makes even more money. The
    "rich" class, like the "poor" class, is a very stable position.
    While an earthquake is killing several thousand poor people on the
    Gold Coast, and a tidal wave is wiping out hundreds of thousands
    of poor people in Asia, George and Bernadette are moving into her
    new condo in space. The city is called "Eutopia." The designers
    are very proud of the name (they made it up themselves) because
    it's pronounced "Utopia" but it's spelled like "Europe" --- which
    is a very chic place, at least inside the heavily guarded walls.
         There are no heavily guarded walls in Eutopia. There are no
    locks on the doors in Eutopia. Many homes have no doors at all.
    Nobody in this place is going to steal anything from anybody, and
    even if they did, everyone is so rich that nobody would care. Even
    the servants are rich. The ones that aren't rich aren't alive ---
    they're mechanical.
         George and Bernadette are ecstatic. The trees are all real.
    The air is pure. The grass never needs to be mowed. There are no
    flies or mosquitoes. There are no cockroaches, mice, lice, gnats,
    rats, bats, ants, silverfish or moths. Everything is perfect.
    Everything, George thinks, except one thing. He still hates his
    reflection in the mirror.
         I can dream, he thinks. I can live.
         I can live my dream.
         Secretly, so as to surprise Bernadette, George calls and
    makes an appointment.
         At the offices of the local Cinematia franchise, cell samples
    are taken for which to fashion the new body. A holistic
    interactive catalog is presented, and he's encouraged to take as
    much time as needed to make sure he chooses the body he wants to
    inhabit. Not all of the DNA templates are of famous people ---
    there are literally thousands of handsome, anonymous models from
    which to choose. But George already knows. In his mind, it made
    perfect sense. Marilyn and John Kennedy had always belonged
    together. Low and behold, there was a John Kennedy template, not
    one of the most popular but in demand none-the-less. This one
    actually featured a pre-programmed Bostonian accent built-in.
         "This one," he says, speaking to the interactive catalog
    software.
         "You have 48 hours in which to change your mind. After that,
    your new body will be ready in two weeks."
         George doesn't change his mind. He also succeeds in keeping
    it a secret from Bernadette, so that it will be a wonderful
    surprise. He goes in for his second appointment two weeks and two
    days later, and is introduced to his new body. It stands naked and
    soul-less in the presentation room, ready for his inspection. He
    wonders briefly if Kennedy's wang had really been that big.
    "Perfect," he tells the Cinematia associate. "When can I move in?"
         "Right after your brain backup," she says. She's happy and
    wants George to be happy, as George has lots of money and she's
    going to get a commission. "Right this way."
         George kind of had the idea that they were going to cut his
    head open, scoop out his brain, and slop it into the head of his
    new body. It doesn't work that way. A holodata interface helmet
    with ten-billion triangulation pattern receptors systematically
    stimulates every synapse in George's brain and takes a reading.
    This information is stored in specially designed DNA sequence
    strands. Once the recording is done, an unconscious George is
    injected with an anti-freeze compound and his body is placed in
    storage at absolute zero. The DNA sequence strands are then
    decoded and the patterns are implanted into the bionic brain of
    George's new body. Then a specially trained and well-paid Catholic
    priest blesses the new body and asks God to transfer George's soul
    over. That being done, George is awakened and presented with a
    full-length mirror.
         His eyesight is better than ever, and he sucks in his stomach
    and flexes his muscles. "Look at that!" he exclaims. "Look at me!"
         He's given a complementary set of clothes and, once dressed,
    heads back home to surprise his woman. He finds Bernadette
    watching the news, wiping tears from her eyes. "Is that you?" she
    calls out as he comes in. "Those Siamese twin babies with the
    three heads just died. Isn't that sad?" She turns and looks at
    him, and exclaims, "Oh!"
         "Hi," George says.
         "I thought you were ... what are you doing in my house? Who
    are you?"
         "It's me, George! Surprise!" His built-in Bostonian accent
    sounds great.
         There's several long, alarming seconds of silence, and then
    she says, "Oh no. No. No, you didn't..." She turns away from him.
         "I ... I did it for you."
         "You didn't ... you didn't have to do anything," she says,
    sobbing. "I love you for you. Now you're not you, you're ...
    you're just another one of ... you're just like all the others."
         "But ..."
         It's no use, she's very upset. There's a lot of shattered
    silence between the two for the next few days, and then Bernadette
    gives him a surprise. He wakes up to find she's left him.
         Up in Eutopia there are windows you can look out of that view
    the Earth, the moon, and the vast universe of stars. George stands
    and stares out at the stars, feeling as empty as the vacuum
    outside the window. Down on Earth, the Chinese government is being
    accused of dropping neutron bombs on its own villages. The piles
    of bodies are as high as small hills. "We can't feed them," their
    government tells the startled world. "What's worse, a long painful
    death of starvation, or a sudden, sterile release?"
         George mopes for a week. His only conversations are with his
    agent who is negotiating new projects for George to work on.
    George is so rich now he gets to pick and choose, and in fact
    doesn't ever have to work at all. He does it for enjoyment, now,
    but there's nothing enjoyable about it. It all seems empty and
    meaningless. The color seems to have drained from his life. Food
    no longer tastes good, paintings he used to like now all seem
    ugly, and music either grates on his nerves or causes him to burst
    into tears.
         "George," his agent tells him, "go to a doctor. They have
    ways of treating depression."
         Depression? George never thought to give what he was feeling
    a name. Depression seemed too shallow and two-dimensional a word
    for what he was going through. Total-rending-heart-break seemed a
    closer description of the experience.
         Nope, the doctor tells him. It's depression. It's a very
    specific type of depression, one for which there is a very
    specific type of cure. George balks at the price, but what the
    hell, he can afford it. On Earth, a plague is killing
    tens-of-thousands of poor people in Western Australia, and there's
    a cure for that, too, but those who are sick and dying don't have
    any money to pay for it. However, George has the $120,000.00 to
    pay for the single bottle of pills that will cause him to fall out
    of love with Bernadette. Four pills a day for four days, and it
    will be all over.
         Four days later, just as the doctor had promised, it's over.
    George feels fine again, and is ready to go back to work. The
    trouble is, on the fifth day Bernadette comes back. "I'm so
    sorry," she tells him. "I feel so stupid. I was so grateful to you
    for loving me for what I am inside, and I was loving you for what
    you are inside, I failed to realize it's still you inside that new
    body, and I still love you for you." She smiles at him.
         George studies her like a bug he's found crawling on the
    carpet. She's a total stranger to him, now. She looks just like
    any other shallow Cinematia body clone bitch. But his new body's
    libido kicks in, and he takes her into his arms and kisses her,
    and they go into the bedroom and have meaningless sex. Afterwards,
    Bernadette discovers the empty pill bottle in the bathroom. She
    confronts him with it, sounding angry but actually feeling shock
    and loss. "You took these?"
         "What was I supposed to do?" he asks. "You left me."
         "You don't love me anymore?"
         "No, I don't."
         She stares at him in disbelief, her face warping into an
    expression of deep pain. Crying out, she makes a long, wailing
    sobbing sound, like a sad emergency siren, until her lungs run out
    of air and she's left with silent, vacuum-filled, body-shaking
    tears. Wow, George thinks. Wow, she's really hurting. I must have
    felt like that.
         He seems to remember feeling like that, several days ago ---
    several days that seem like several months ago. Feeling oddly
    responsible and bad, in a detached sort of way, he runs out to the
    doctor and gets another bottle of the pills. When he returns home,
    he finds Bernadette face down in bed, her face in a pillow, and
    she's still crying. "Here," he says. "Here, I got these for you."
         She looks at the pill bottle like he's offering her a big
    hairy spider. "I don't want your god damned pills!" she yells at
    him.
         He cringes. The poor girl has snot all over her face. He
    tries to point this out to her, but she doesn't seem to care, and
    buries her head back into the pillow. George places the bottle of
    pills on the night stand next to her and says, "You take these.
    I'll be back in five days, and we'll talk. We'll see what we can
    work out." She ignores him, still crying. George turns and leaves.
         He spends four days on Earth, talking about new projects in
    Hollywood, and goes out a few times with a pretty woman who's body
    was not a famous clone but was probably a clone none the less.
    They engage in meaningless sex, and while she's sleeping he
    studies her beautiful curves, her flawless skin, and wonders if
    nature actually produces anything so perfect anymore. Oddly, it
    makes him think about Bernadette, about how broken up she was when
    he'd left. He is touched that she actually cared about him so
    deeply. He wonders, Did she take the pills?
         The next day, only hours before a riot destroys the Los
    Angeles Space Port, George takes a launch back up to Eutopia to
    meet with Bernadette. They're sharing a condo, but it actually
    belongs to her. He's got to make some sort of living arrangements,
    or buy it from her, or something. She's home when he gets there,
    sitting in front of the holovision and watching the news. "You
    made it," she says. "I was worried that you got caught in the
    riot."
         "They were getting pretty ugly while we were waiting for take
    off," George tells her. "They moved the launch up, thank God."
         Bernadette points toward the images. "Look at all the fires,"
    She says, shaking her head. "Oh, by the way, thank you for the
    pills."
         "You took them?"
         "Yes. Thank you. I feel much, much better now."
         "You're not angry or anything?"
         "Angry?" She shrugs. "I was in a lot of hurt, but the pills
    made it better. Thank you for the pills."
         "You're welcome."
         "You had been in a lot of hurt, too, and that's why you took
    the pills."
         "Yes."
         "So, then, we're even."
         "Yes." He takes a few steps toward her, getting a closer
    look. She doesn't seem like such a stranger anymore. "I want to
    thank you for being so in love with me."
         "You know, I wanted to tell you the same thing. We really
    were in love with each other, weren't we?"
         "Yeah, we were. What happened?"
         "Emotions aren't perfect. Everything about us is perfect,
    except for our emotions. It's like a flaw in the brain."
         "It's nice that we can control them, now," George says.
         "Yes, isn't it?"
         They stand and stare at each other, then both break into
    spontaneous smiles. "It's like a new start, like we're starting
    over again."
         "You really want to?"
         "Yes, I do." He takes her hands. It's a familiar feeling, but
    the emotions are mixed with haunting, distant memories of
    feelings. Like memories from a past life, like actual John Kennedy
    memories released from the DNA that gave George a hint of how the
    man really felt about Marilyn Monroe. "I wonder..." he says. "I
    wonder if there's a pill we can take to fall back in love again."
         "There's no real need for such a pill," she tells him. "It
    happens all by itself, don't you think?"
         "Yes," he says. "Yes, maybe it does."
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