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 360º composition.
Cutting from one angle to another is much more of an art in cine-holography than
cinematography, since George must also control 360º 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
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20Death's%20Head%20Reunion.htm (2 of 8) [10/18/2004 3:24:45 PM]