3.
“That’s better,” said Horizon Line. They stood in the garden and looked up at the sky. Next to the bench was a little stone sculpture of an angel covering her face. The moon was full and bright. “I fear I have lost my taste for crowds.”
“I almost forgot this was a full-moon party,” said Trina. Everything was vaguely Wiccan nowadays, lots of tracking of the moon cycles and nature worship, but without all that deity stuff. Trina liked the emphasis on ritual, and how you could approach spirituality as a choose-your-own-adventure. Religion was low-stress and low-maintenance, just like everything else. She tugged on Horizon’s glossy black hair. “Hey, thanks for saving me back there. Do you think Peaton’s going to push for an orgy?” She thought back to Deeba’s plump little feet in her lap, her smiling round face, drunk on The Seep. It wasn’t as nice as her own bed with ice cream to follow, but Trina could get in the mood to fool around a little in the company of old friends. Especially if it would stop all that circular, boring Seep talk. Conversing with high people was not how she wanted to spend a Saturday night.
Hey, Trina, the Compound called, and they want their paradigm back.
She gazed up at the bright full moon. Suddenly, the old joke stung a bit. Maybe she really was living in the past.
Horizon shook his head. “No orgy tonight, my sweet. Word on the street is that he and Allie have both taken vows of celibacy.”
Trina nearly spit out her charcoal water. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, but don’t ask them about it or they’ll never shut up. Apparently, they’re directing all of their ‘lower energies’ into their Seep meditations, having orgasms that last three hours, seeing God, that kind of stuff.”
“Huh,” said Trina. About fifteen years ago, Allie had spent a weekend tied to her and Deeba’s four-poster bed. Trina had forgotten how fun that had been. Allie used to be fun too, and sharply weird, a little neurotic in a way that felt totally rational. Now everything made her spacey and weepy. It couldn’t be good for your emotional health to have transcendental experiences every single day. No wonder Allie was coming apart at the seams. “Celibacy, eh?” Trina sighed. “The world will never stop surprising me.” She took a cigarette from Horizon and lit up. She inhaled and choked. “What is this?”
He laughed. “It’s just sage and raspberry leaf. Allie’s right, I can’t do tobacco anymore. When I’m Seeped, I can literally feel my cells dying. It sucks!”
“Well, then don’t Seep so much. Come over to my side.” She deeply wished it was a real cigarette, and that she hadn’t left her wineglass inside.
Horizon looked up at the sky, the angles of his face accented by moonlight. “I do wonder if we’re using The Seep in the best way we can.” He took a long drag. “I mean, we’ve been given this amazing gift, and we’re using it to, what, grow unicorn horns? There has to be more.”
Trina considered this. “I hear you, man, I really do. But the work we do with it at the hospital is beautiful. There’s so much happening—probably a lot of Seep tech we don’t even know about.” Just yesterday Trina had used The Seep to erase a tumor from a woman’s breast. No cutting, no incision, no radiation or chemotherapy, just the power of Seep consciousness speaking into this woman’s cells, telling them how to die gracefully, to let go and become something new. The procedure took twenty minutes, and then the woman went to a hula-hoop meet-up in Golden Gate Park. There were ways to use The Seep that were productive and healthy and didn’t make you high for hours on end. One just had to be a little thoughtful.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Horizon said. “I know The Seep improves our lives in a million big and small ways. What I mean is that we’ve gotten lazy. We’re using the things we used to care about as a rubric for success.”
Trina smiled. “Well, old friend, you could use The Seep for something other than keeping your wrinkles at bay.” She brushed his smooth cheek with her fingertip. “Or shall I call you Dorian?”
He blinked at her. Did she have to explain the reference? “Trina,” said Horizon slowly. “I’ll tell you a secret. This is something that no one else knows. But you’re my oldest and dearest friend, and I want to share this with you.” He took a big breath and smiled. “This isn’t my real face.”
“Excuse me?” Trina had only ever known Horizon looking just this way, for the past twenty years.
“This is the exact replica of my boyfriend, Tomas, who died in 1993. I modified myself to look like him as soon as I realized it was possible.” His voice carried a hint of smugness. “I think I might have been the first person to use The Seep in this way. It was rather rudimentary back then. If I were to do it again now, my merger with The Seep would be far more sophisticated. So now you know the secret. This face will never wrinkle or age, because it can’t. It’s more like a mask than anything else.”
Trina rubbed her arms. She felt suddenly cold in the night air. “You took this man’s identity? Is that what you’re telling me, Horizon?”
He tilted his head. His beautiful face, unmarked by time, now looked ghoulish in the moonlight. “Oh, I’m sure you understand,” he said.
“Understand what?”
“I know you never got any Seep mods, but you must have had something done, back in the day. Taken hormones or gotten surgery?” Trina raised her eyebrows. “Never mind, it’s none of my business.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not. And it’s not the same thing at all.” She shook her head. “Horizon—what did you look like before?”
He shrugged. “Like a million other people. You wouldn’t have noticed me at all.”
Trina’s eyes grew big. “Hold up—were you a white guy? And you took this brown kid’s face?”
Horizon raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“You didn’t! Horizon!” She looked around, almost expecting there to be hidden cameras in the bushes, as if this were all some retro prank. “You can’t—you can’t take other people’s faces, their races, and wear them like—like a suit!”
“Oh, race is a construction,” he said, waving his hand. “Everyone knows that.”
“That might be, but it’s still meaningful. Constructs mean things.”
Horizon grew impatient. “Trina, everyone who has been joined even once with The Seep knows that we’re all the same. We’re all of the same essences, all layers of identity are just that, layers, and you can play with them just as we play with our appearances—”
“Some things are too far. You can’t—”