Deeba was first to shake off their hazy elastic stupor. She went back into her film work, finally shooting her first feature. This got Trina out of her daze. She returned to painting. Eventually, her work was shown in galleries and museums around the world. And because art was no longer a commodity (nothing was), some lucky people had Trina’s paintings in their homes. Deeba started making documentaries about The Seep’s new emergent subcultures—the yellow-meeks, the decomposers/living dead, pain cults, pearl houses, that kind of thing. Trina moved into performance, both sound and video, involving her own body in the practice. She got a little bit famous and had some minor love affairs, made Deeba proud of her celebrity wife. Then she got bored of the art world; of its pageantry, its emphasis on personality. Trina went back to school and became a doctor. How proud her mother would have been! (Too bad she killed herself when the aliens came.) Trina and Deeba lived and thrived, grew and changed, amongst their constantly shifting, abundant world, for years and years. Until one day, when Deeba looked at Trina from across the breakfast nook and said she wanted to become a child again.
The night before, they had been at a full-moon party in Bernal Heights. Among the guests were their old friends Emma and Mariam; Peaton and Allie, therapists who were both heavy into Seep meditation practices; and the musician Horizon Line, a rather famous Seep artist with whom Trina used to tour during her brief stint as a rock-and-roller. Emma was showing off her newest Seep modifications, her scratchy cat tongue and retractable claws, licking the neck of anyone who volunteered. Mariam was seriously considering getting hooves, which she explained were excellent for rock climbing, making devilish jokes at sex parties, and, apparently, relieving pressure from your knees. When Deeba said casually that she might want to be parented again, Trina thought she was joking.
“I saw a video of someone turning into a baby,” Deeba said. “It was on someone’s transformations channel on the Electric Spirit. You know, there are people who are busy becoming everything, and recording it all for us to watch.”
Trina shuddered. “To think, we’ve lived long enough to be in a future where everyone is a fucking performance artist.” She drank a little off the top of her punch glass and frowned. The front taste was Cara Cara orange juice, made fizzy with carbonation, cut through with something acidic and bright like lemongrass. But the unmistakable metallic tinge of The Seep was there at the end, an oily sensation that snaked down her throat like blood. “Say what you want about the old days,” she said, pushing the glass away. “The art was better then.”
Allie looked like she was about to cry, as she had lately when anyone said anything remotely controversial. “You can’t be serious, Trina. You’re not actually one of those people who believe you need suffering to make great art!”
Trina shook her head. “I’m not, I swear. But I do think there’s a lack of rigor at the present moment. And these kids, you know, these Children of the Seep—they seem so unmotivated, so disorganized. They hardly get anything done!”
“These kids today!” joked Mariam, wagging her fingers.
Horizon, however, nodded. “Trina, I completely agree. Things were different when we all thought we were going to die, when we had no knowledge of our immortal souls, so focused on these temporary containers.” He sipped deeply from his punch. “But of course the things we made were different when we thought we were mortal. How could they not be?”
“Right, but I don’t think it’s terrible to say that a little bit of hardship, a little tension, makes for more interesting art.” Trina looked around the table. “When was the last time you saw something that really moved you?”
Peaton made a sweeping gesture with his punch glass. “I experience moving works of creation all the time!”
“But are you high on The Seep when you’re experiencing the art?”
Peaton shrugged. “Well, of course.”
Trina leaned back from the table. “My point exactly. We don’t make things that can stand on their own anymore.”
At her side, Deeba giggled. “Hey, Trina, the Compound called. They want you to interrogate your scarcity mentality.”
Trina laughed and gave her wife’s round thigh a squeeze.
“Ouch, Deeba!” said Peaton. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Allie touched Trina’s hand from across the table. “Do you want to pause and process your emotions? We can go into the other room.”
Trina resisted the urge to roll her eyes. When had everyone stopped having a sense of humor? “No, no, it’s a joke—an inside joke. We’ve been saying it for years.” She looked around at her oldest friends. Their faces suddenly seemed horribly alien with all their Seep modifications: Allie’s angel wings, Peaton’s bejeweled forehead, Emma’s cat tongue. Even Horizon, who looked exactly the same as he had when they were on tour together all those years ago, looked eerie because he had not changed at all. Not a single wrinkle around his dark eyes or crease next to his full mouth. His smooth, tan skin was flawless, unmarked by time, the face of an eternally young man. Even his hairstyle was exactly the same, the long, dark hair reaching down to his waist like a curtain.
“Hey, the Compound called,” said Deeba in a silly, high-pitched voice. She sipped more punch. “Which is funny in itself, since no one uses phones anymore!”
“The Compound called,” growled Trina like a monster. Deeba shrieked with laughter. Peaton relaxed, but Allie was still frowning, her eyes big and wet. Trina went on. “They want you to come live with them, Trina, because you’re a buzzkill, an old fuddy-duddy, a has-been. The Compound called, and they think you should just give up!”
Everyone laughed. Even Allie smiled a little. Trina stood up from the table. She went into the kitchen to find some wine. No more weird punch, thank you. She poured a glass at the counter, her bare feet sinking pleasantly into the squishy, moss-covered floor. She found most New Order–style houses a bit tacky, like something from a low-budget B movie about a pleasure planet, but Peaton and Allie had good taste. She watched bright schools of fish swim to and fro in the floor-to-ceiling aquarium wall, sizing up her own reflection in the glass. Old Levi’s, hoodie, ancient leather boots. Hey, the Compound called to say they like your outfit, Deeba liked to say, hooking her finger through a belt loop of Trina’s worn jeans. Nowadays, everyone wore gossamer hoods and collars of lace, feathers and leaves sewn into elaborate dresses. That could never be Trina’s style. What was a diesel butch to do?
She sipped her wine. The Compound called . . . she thought, and they want their phone back. When The Seep had first come, the idea of joining the Compound had been laughable to Trina. How insulting, how repugnant, that some faction had decided the status quo was worth protecting.
But maybe there was a kernel of truth buried under all of Deeba’s good-natured barbs. The Compound called . . . Lately, everything Trina could think to say was a complaint. That art wasn’t good anymore, performance or otherwise. That most new music was meant to be listened to on The Seep, which made for an amazing experience, sure, but how could you accurately judge the artistry if you were high? No one Trina asked could answer that question. Like Peaton, they didn’t seem to understand why she would ask it at all. No one read books or watched the great cinema of days gone by. Trina and Deeba had met at a Derek Jarman screening so many moons ago. Jarman would have liked the aliens. But would he have continued making films? Or would he just have enjoyed life, tended to his garden, and lived out his days happy and healthy? And if so, was that so bad? Trina didn’t make art anymore; she was a doctor. It wasn’t a betrayal of her old self to change. And yet these questions kept her up at night in her mostly happy bed with Deeba, little thorns in her side.