Interlude 2

Flotsam

Interlude 2: Shroud

She awoke in the total darkness of her sleep shroud. She yawned and rubbed her naked face and the smooth expanse of her bald scalp, savoring the sensation of her uncovered skin. There was a special intimacy in these times of near total privacy, like a kind of gestation before being born into the day. But as much as she might have liked to snuggle in her womblike nest, it was her turn to perform the Morning Ritual and everyone else’s breakfast was waiting on her to complete the duty. 

Groaning the sign for frustration, she sat up and carefully exchanged her gloves and pulled on her home mask, settling it by feel to align eye holes and the opening for her mouth. She reached up and rummaged through her hanging wardrobe bags, drew out underwear and a houserobe, and then dressed in total darkness. Properly obscured, at least enough for immediate family, she untied the drawstrings of the heavily quilted canopy of her shroud and pushed it open, mindful of the weight and rigidity of the wire brocaded into the outer surface. She winced against the sudden light and swung her feet out of her shroud, slipping them into prepared slippers that were cold compared to the warmth of her nest. She grimaced, oh how she hated the Morning Ritual!

She performed a quick visual inspection of the sleeping chamber, quietly walking around the three other sleeping shrouds belonging to her mother, father, and sister. Not seeing anything amiss, she opened the wire brocaded curtain and door and slipped out into the surrounding household, a hall of open plan rooms surrounding the central sleeping chamber. She silently padded over to the ritual lockbox and began inspecting its various secret tattletales for signs of tampering, and finding none, she began the labour of opening the mechanical combination locks. From the open box she withdrew the Morning Ritual logbook and a small wire cage containing an electronic listening device and signal sweeper. She opened the cage and turned on the sweeper and bug, confirmed that the sweeper was working, and then began the Morning Ritual. Moving methodically, she walked the perimeter of the household and carefully inspected the heavily padded outer walls of their home, looking for snags or breaks or alterations in the beautifully woven patterns of bright copper wire stitched into the midnight blue quilted fabric. As she went she swept the wall with the sweeper, searching for electronic signals leaking through their wire cage or more insidious signs of active electronics planted within their home. After confirming no breaks in their outer signal barrier, she did a cursory sweep of the interior, checking for passive electronic bugs that might have been clandestinely planted. She found no signals and while she couldn’t rule out purely mechanical surveillance devices, she saw nothing amiss in their austere home. She returned the sweeper and test bug to their cage, made a coded note in the logbook in scrupulously indistinguishable handwriting, and played the daily all clear code on the ritual chimes. As her family crawled out of their shrouds and began their morning ablutions, she returned everything to the lockbox, relocked it, and began resetting the various tampering tattletales for the next Morning Ritual.

By the time she had finished resetting the Ritual her family was gathered around their meal table. She took her randomly assigned place and served herself some tea, surveying her family. She always enjoyed these moments of intimacy where she could see some of her family’s features through their homemasks: her mother’s smile wrinkles around her mouth and eyes, her fathers grim mouth and scarred chin, her sister’s playful red lip-paint which her father hated even if no one outside the house would ever see it. She wondered what they saw exposed on her face when they looked at her. They ate their breakfast of flatbreads with jam and fruit in companionable silence, their hands too occupied to sign. Meal finished, their mother cleared the table and their father, speaking in the secret family sign language, admonished his daughters to not be lax and adhere to Protocol. She nodded, outwardly obedient, while her sister rolled her eyes and smirked with her painted lips.

After relieving herself and washing in the darkness of the toilet, she returned to the dark privacy of her sleep shroud to dress in her Public Disguise. She carefully removed her houserobe, stashing it back in its bag before she slipped off her homemask and gloves, returning them to their hooks. Next she pulled on her armlength public gloves, being careful not to touch their outer surface with her bare hands. Once gloved, she quickly wiggled into her tights and high necked undershirt before enshrouding herself in the billowing tent of her public robes. Finally she donned her public mask, pulling the tight, apparently seamless fabric over her head and face. Opening the sleepshroud she stepped out and into a pair of plain but wonderfully constructed workboots her sister had made. She straightened her heavy robes, arranging the folds and pleats of the garment to disguise her figure and lifted its hood over her masked head. She walked to the vestibule exit of their home and was met by her sister, also wearing her Public Disguise. It was now their duty to inspect one another, to ensure that both were properly obscured and wearing their robes properly. Her sister’s masked face was a smooth blank surface in red cloth, a featureless oval that hid her eyes and the contours of her face. Her bright red robes draped loosely over her body, covering her from the hood on her head to her feet, the hem just brushing the ground. Her sister’s hands were clothed in tight red gloves that covered her arms until they disappeared into her robes at the elbows. A quick inspection showed any potential exposed skin was covered by her underclothes. She indicted her sister should lift her robe hem, and there on her sister’s feet were beautifully crafted stack heeled boots in black leather worked with silver filigree, a deliberate act of Individualism. She knew that such footwear could be used to identify and track her sister, but knew that her sister didn’t care about such things and that these shoes were a small act of rebellion and an advertisement for her cobbler business. Feeling complicit, she gave her sister the code gesture for all clear, granting her formal permission to exit the safety of their home. Her sister returned the gesture, guaranteeing that she was also properly disguised. They were, as Protocol dictated, anonymous figures in red cloth. 

She and her sister exited their home, a second floor apartment in a large rectangular building clad in steel and polymer, and walked down steel stairs and into the very narrow street where they joined a flow of other anonymous red robed figures also leaving during this assigned Scatter Period. They moved with the crowd and followed the narrow alley into the central square, a collection point for the entire enclave. Here all of the Robed would gather and disperse, allowing individuals to blend and mix in the crowd to make visual tracking far more difficult. At first she could track her sister, by her proximity and the loud click of her boot heels on the acrylic cobbled square, but after a few twists, turns, and diversions she lost in her in the crowd, just another red figure walking with an identical, practiced gait. She wouldn’t be able to recognize her sister again until they either returned home or gave each other a sign in their secret sibling handcode. She completed her ritual evasive maneuvers and picked a random exit from the square, mindfully choosing a new route to her destination.

This day she is to mind her sister’s shoe store while her sister visited a potential supplier for authentic animal leather, a luxury on Flotsam. Like many of the Robed her sister was an artisan of analogue items, part of their Community’s movement away from digital technology with embedded surveillance. Their devotion to handmade materials built to exacting, pre-mass production standards has given the Robed a reputation as master makers. For a time before the Purges their goods had been quite valuable on their homeworld, and they had been quite wealthy despite their ascetic lifestyle. Fortunately the demand for superb handcrafted footwear is interstellar, and her sister had been able to establish a profitable business as a cobbler following her apprenticeship here on Flotsam. While her sister still handmakes expensive boots and shoes for wealthy patrons, her designs had proven quite popular, so with special permission from the Community, she also retails cheaper printed footwear made from her designs. Which is really mostly what she does for her sister: watches the store, runs the printers and refills feedstock, and helps keep the retail business thriving however she can. She knows it isn’t her vocation, really, but she also knows it helps her sister and for now that is enough.

Although, she often wonders how much her sister takes her help for granted. Like on this particular day her sister was supposedly meeting with suppliers, trying to secure real bovine leather to make a hideously expensive pair of thigh high boots for the favored escort of a local ambassador. She suspected that her sister had already secured the leather, possibly through the ambassador himself, since he was an official from a planet rich with agribusiness, and that her sister was instead off having illicit fun. While she has never been able to prove it, she believes her sister sheds her robes, dresses in a wig and regular clothing, and spends time undisguised in the mainstream Flotsam world. Doing what, she could never be sure. Does she just walk around anonymously without the stigma of her disguise? Or does she party with her Outsider designer friends? Does her sister, perhaps, have an Outsider lover? She would have shaken her head and made the sign for incredulity if such an act wasn’t a violation of Protocol on a public street.

Her sister would not be atypical if she was shirking Protocol. Her generation of Robed seemed less interested in adhering to the strict practices of those who had fled the homeworld. For her parents, her father in particular, whose parents had been executed and who had himself been tortured in the Purges, living by Protocol was a survival mechanism and the core of their identity. They had fought, suffered, and sometimes died to preserve their precious privacy and right to anonymity. But to many Diaspora children it seemed unnecessarily fussy, a relic of living in a malignant panopticon. Without the external pressure of the State’s mutated counterinsurgency and advertising surveillance apparatus looming over them, they wanted the freedom to express themselves or mix socially with Outsiders. Her sister, she knew, found the entire act of Protocol a boring hassle. For her own part she didn’t mind the tradition and rituals, even enjoyed the freedom of anonymity that being Robed granted her. But even she would concede that Protocol, built as it was to protect against a certain collection of AI augmented optical, audio, and digital tracking was likely futile in the face of advanced surveillance by the Grey and other technophilic sapients. She glanced up and saw a melon sized silver drone, which seemed to track her for a moment, before floating on its way. She wondered just how much of her it could sense, her appearance or even thoughts. Her secrets.

Entering another narrow street, this one located in one of the other six Robed Encalves on Flotsam, she reached the shoe shop. She inspected the closed metal shutters, checking for signs of forced entry and the state of various tattletales her sister set when closing. Seeing nothing amiss she unlocked the mechanical combination locks, opened the shutter, and entered the small store. The store was considered public, but nevertheless she performed a brief Ritual of Inspection, looking for anything amiss or signs of surveillance. Finding everything in order she unloaded the freshly printed shoes and placed them in cartons for drone delivery, checked the levels of feedstock and started the next printing jobs, and then activated the shops neon signage opening the store. She then sat behind the small plastic sale counter and began to update their catalogue using the stripped down and airgapped workstation. Working with such limited technology was time consuming, but was a necessary compromise between the young entrepreneurial Robed and the more conservative members of the Community. Besides, she didn’t mind the work, finding the coding and formatting to be another calming daily ritual. 

It wasn’t long before the shop door tinkled open as a customer entered. She quickly put her workstation into privacy mode and stood, patiently waiting. The customer, she saw, was one of her sister’s regulars: a beautiful woman with six arms and six enormous, gravity defying breasts. She didn’t know the customers name, by custom the Robed never asked, but she did know the woman was an erotic dancer who stripped off her clothing in front of a crowd of horny sentients. Dressed as she was in a multi-cleavage baring frontlaced halter top and tight miniskirt, she could almost picture the woman nude. She felt her face flush inside her mask and felt a titillating shame at picturing the customer naked and revealed. Even though she had seen this customer many times, she still had trouble understanding how someone could bare themselves to strangers, to make their most private identity public, even for money. It was the ultimate taboo, completely against Protocol. But it was also powerful in a way, to take her nakedness and harness it, to reveal herself on her own terms in her own artistic way. In a deeply secret way it was also very sexy to her. She knew she could never do it, but in a way she envied the customer her freedom.

The customer was browsing the most expensive handmade shoes on display with a look akin to hunger. Her sister always said that some of their customers were shoe addicts and the dancer was, in her estimation, one of the worst cases. She herself had sold the woman dozens of shoes, usually some of the more fearless designs with heels that ranged from daring to dangerous. Indeed, the woman was wearing a pair of slingback stiletto’s with four inch heels while out shopping on the treacherous streets of Flotsam. The dancer would always browse the handmade shoes, the customs and the prototypes, before finally, with a look of defeat, settling on a pair of far more economical printed shoes. Quantity, her sister would say, herself an avid collector of footwear, has a quality of its own. She watched the woman touch and lift and almost caress the shoes with her many hands and fingers.

Eventually the Ritual of Browsing ended and the customer made her way to the counter, notably without picking out a prototype to print. She smiled a friendly smile, her entire face reconfiguring in happiness. “Like, Hi! I’m like, just, you know, like, here to pick up some shoes today? Like, custom ones!”

She did not let her surprise show, custom shoes made by her sister were very expensive and precious. Instead she made the public sign for servile agreement and went to find the custom shoes in the back room. A quick survey of the workshop revealed a pair of tangerine coloured leather shoes with sturdy soles and chunky two inch wedge heels. Strikingly the shoes had a t-shaped strap that connected from the toe of each shoe to a horizontal band at ankle height, which would secure the shoe and create two open windows showing the wearer’s feet. She thought the shoes were rather practical for a cute design but also not at all her sister’s style. She placed the shoes in a box and presented them to the customer.

The customer opened the box and squealed, obviously delighted by the shoes. “Ohmygawd they are like, totally perfect! She is like, gonna love them!” The customer was holding the shoes in two pairs of hands inspecting them, her two extra arms awkwardly in excess. “I’m so excited!”

She signed her happiness and the customer looked at her, head tilted. ‘You aren’t like, her, are you? The like, maker or whatever, I mean? You’re the other one.”

Protocol dictated that she should neither confirm nor deny, but she was curious about what had given her away. She was very strict at following the proscribed forms, as was her sister when in the shop. “How could you tell?” She signed publicly. 

The customer giggled and clapped a pair of hands, “I knew it!” She bit her lip thoughtfully, “The maker gives off this, like, totally intense vibe when I look at her shoes and like, totally preens when I like her shoes. You’re, like, quieter? More patient or whatever.” The many breasted woman winked, “I’m way more, like, observant than people give me, like, credit for.” She giggled again and went back to scrutinizing her shoes.

“These shoes my sister made,” she signed, “I have never seen any like them before.”

The customer smiled, “On Earth we call them character shoes. They are like, for dancers and actresses to like, wear on stage.” She balanced each shoe in a hand and fanned her other hands around them for display. “I bought them for my like, girlfriend? She grew up on like, spaceships and would go totally barefoot everywhere. And like, she is an acrobat? So she still likes bare feet or like, functional shoes or whatever.” The customer sighed, “When we like, go out, she always wears these totally vile rubber soled shoes with individual toes. Like totally ick!” She shook her head and giggled, “But whatcanyado? I love her, right? So I thought I would like, buy her some totally cute shoes and thought she would be able to walk in these and like, dig the whole shoes for Earthling performers thing...”

“It is a very thoughtful gift,” she signed.

The customer beamed, “Yeah! And they turned out so great! Tell the maker, like, your sister, that I totally love them!” She giggled, “my only complaint is I totally want a pair too!”

The customer brandished a very gaudy keyband and paid the store’s reader, transferring the funds to the anonymized banking system the Robed used, a liability compared to material currency, but a necessary tradeoff on Flotsam. The woman spared one last covetous look at the inventory and skipped out of the store, no doubt off to deliver her present to her lover. She watched her go, charmed and a little jealous of the customer’s freedom.

With the customer gone she finished updating the stock and then, after double checking there were no customers waiting, she carefully locked the store door and posted the sign explaining she was working in the back and could be summoned. This sign was meant for her sister when cobbling, but it also served her current purposes. She made her way into the workshop, securing that door as well, before carefully examining the door to her private room. Finding everything as she left it, she unlocked the door with a combination she alone knew and entered her secret place. The room wasn’t large, likely a closet or storeroom before her sister gave it to her. The walls were hung with ugly industrial moving blankets and lined with inexpensive metal fencing to make a signal barrier. She activated the single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and closed the door to her room, barring and locking it behind her before draping it with a wire lined blanket. As always her heart was beating in her chest. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, reminded herself that only her sister knew she had this room and that even she didn’t know what was done in it. She knew that trusting her sister was dangerous, but also understood her sister valued privacy and freedom and was delighted that she needed a secret place to do something naughty. She opened her eyes and got to work; she could only be in her room for a short time and had much she wanted to accomplish.

She went to the single object inside her room: a locked metal chest. She performed her own Ritual of Inspection and then unlocked the combination locks on the chest. Disciplining her anxious hands she reached into the chest and drew out her two ring lights, the folding metal frame of her easel, a tiny blank canvas, her paints, and her most secret object. She set her paints and palette on the closed chest, assembled her easel, and set her two lights up in their optimal positions. She put the canvas in position and mixed her paints from memory, not perfectly, but approximately what she thought she would need. Then she double checked the door was locked. The act of painting, creating a visual record of the world around herself, surveilling, was bad enough, but what she was about to do was far more shameful. 

Confident that the door was secure, she took off her boots and set them aside. Then, in a practiced motion, she wiggled out of her leggings, baring her pale legs. She looked down at her naked feet, giddy, aware that such a sight was a violation of Protocol. Then, heart racing, she drew her robes up and back, tied them behind her back like she was taught for emergencies, baring her naked body from the waist down. Then she did her secret, forbidden ritual: she slipped her verboten mirror out of its black bag and placed it on the floor and stepped over it, straddled it, so that it reflected her perfectly lit vulva. She shivered at the secret illicit thrill and just looked at herself for a time, inspecting, no surveilling, the pink blossom of her cunt, now growing moist and engorged with her excitement. Inside her mask she wet her lips. She took up her paints and on the lower right corner of her tiny canvas she wrote the numeral for 96, denoting this paintings place in her series of vaginal self portraits. And then she began to paint herself.

She worked quickly, almost mechanically, laying in the foundations of her painting, the familiar shape of her vulva, the nearly perfected base colours. As she did this part of the artwork, she mused about why she found painting her sex so artistically fulfilling. Was it just the thrill of breaking rules? To observe herself and to make a record of it, a way, perhaps, for some State Agent to follow the mole on her innermost thigh or the relative prominence of her clitoris back to her? Why not paint her face? That too would break a great many rules, and be far more dangerous. She thought maybe the sexual nature of painting her vagina was part of the frisson, the thrill of her art  But that thought was too tawdry and simple to be the whole truth. Faces were public. She had seen many faces, could identify some acquaintances and even strangers by their features. Her face, then, would be just another face among many, comparable to this customer in the nose, but more like a favored barista in the lips, or a passing stranger in the chin. It would be intellectually interesting, but it wouldn’t be uniquely hers. Her vagina though, that was truly private. Her own vagina was never meant to be seen by herself; touched certainly, but only in the darkness and total privacy of the sleep shroud. If she took a Robed lover, they would never see her vagina either, as their lovemaking would happen within a darkened shroud; a public conjugal nest if it was casual or courting, or within one of their home sleep shrouds if they were wed. Even Outsiders considered their genitals private, as all but the bravest or most perverse hid their genitals in public. These paintings of her vagina, her endless series of self portraits, were revealing her most private aspects to herself, a rebellious artistic exploration of self identity. And then she reached the finer details of her painting, the parts she still hadn’t gotten quite right, and so she lived in the moment of brushstrokes and mixing pigments.

When she stopped, her work was still unfinished, but it needed to dry and she knew she had already tarried too long. The shop was waiting, and who could say when her sister would return or another Robed might venture by? She carefully put away her materials, set the work in progress carefully atop the stack of finished paintings to dry. She checked her small room, reset and relocked everything, and prepared to return to work and Protocol.  As she composed herself she granted herself one last giddy rebellious thought: what would it be like to one day show her paintings to the world?

She swept the workshop quickly for bugs or anything amiss and then unlocked the door to the front, stepped through, and audibly gasped. Floating in the shop was a silver sphere the size of her mask. A Grey drone! Here in her sister’s shop! “Wh-what do you want?” She asks with shaking hands. 

A familiar woman appears, a ghostly projection of the dancer customer but with only two arms and breasts. “Don’t be alarmed,” she says, smiling the same friendly smile as the customer, “I’m just here to deliver an invitation.”

“What are you? Why do you look like...” she doesn’t know how to explain the customer without a name.

The holographic drone woman looks impish, “Like your last customer? Well, we’re sisters sort of. I’m her clone, or well, she’s my clone, except not really? We’re both clones of the same woman, except I’m really the artificial intelligence emulation of a dead clone and... y’know what? It’s not really important.” The projection laughs, “Let’s start over.” The hologram winks out and reappears a few steps away. “Hi, I’m HAL-E, and I’m here representing a fellow artist who wishes to introduce you to their gallery.”

“Introduce? Why me?”

“The Artist and his Curator are both fans of your paintings. Sorry, I know your art is meant to be private, but we Grey AI see a lot of everything and well... If it were up to me I would have left you to your secret enterprise, but I’m just an interlocutor here and I don’t really have a choice.” HAL-E shrugs, “For what it’s worth, I think your artwork is very brave and quite good. I can see why The Artist and Curator are interested in you. Anyway! You are hereby invited to come to the Grey Citadel and view the Gallery.”

She was shocked, “The Citadel? The Artist is a Grey?”

“Yes.”

Her hands spasmed in the sign of amazement. A Grey artist was a fan of her work!? She was awash in a confusion of emotion. She was upset that she had been spied on despite all her precautions and frightened that she had been caught so easily. But she was also elated that her artwork had been appreciated, and maybe thrilled at the transgression of being caught. And she was curious too, just who is this Grey Artist and why would such an enigmatic alien seek her out for her vaginal self portraits? She clenched and opened her hands, a sign language stutter, unsure of what exactly to say. Should she send the spy drone away, forbid it from bothering her again? Could she go to the Citadel and meet this artist? Was it safe? Could she go back to this life afterward? In the end though, she knew this might be her only chance to share her art with another sapient. “I will go,” she signed, “but I will need a moment.”

She hastily closed the shop, locking all the doors and shutters but not bothering with tattletales or signs. Then she picked out one of the largest cartons in the shop, dumped out an order of printed shoes, and brought it into her secret room. Carefully she placed all of her paintings including the 96th incomplete one into the carton. She carefully relocked her locker and the small room and returned to the holographic woman. “I am ready,” she signed.

HAL-E nodded. “Okay, now stand still. This next bit might tickle.”

The silver sphere expanded from the size of a human head to a bubble slightly larger than her body. It drifted forward and enveloped her, intangibly flowed around or maybe through her, until she was standing in the now hollow and very solid bubble. She felt the bubble, and herself, lift off the ground and move upward, like an elevator, and a tingly charge passed through her body before suddenly the drone was moving very quickly. The walls of the bubble became translucent and she could see she was flying over the city, ascending towards the summit of the Mesa. Had she just passed through the shop roof? She shivered. Startlingly quickly the drone had lifted her to the same height as the Grey Citadel, that huge perfect silver sphere, like a silver bead on a table. She hung in the air for a moment, wondered if this was a wise choice, and then the Grey drone surged forward, flinging her at a worrying speed at the mirrored silver surface of the Citadel. She could see her reflection just before impact, a red robed and masked figure clutching a large carton to herself. And then the drone flowed seamlessly into the citadel wall, depositing her gently in a smooth round tunnel. She gasped for breath and steadied herself, took a step forward...

***

...And then comes back to herself in a different place. She feels strange, disembodied, convinced time has elapsed although she has no real memories of it. How has she gotten here? She thinks hard, head fuzzy, sensing the ghost of something perhaps. Impressions? The faded marks of data saved improperly or perhaps just redacted imperfectly. A mental palimpsest. She knows she must have travelled somehow to reach this place, wherever it is. Strangely this notion doesn’t really trouble her, although she feels that it might or should. 

She takes a step forward and something feels... off... Her clothing is lighter, less cumbersome and restrictive in a way that feels important somehow. Her robes! Heart hammering she glances down at her hands and is relieved to find them gloved, albeit in a tight seamless silver fabric, like the skin of a Grey drone. She inspected herself and sees she is robed in this silvery material, great cascading waves of it, very light and slightly fluid, like she is a stone edifice in a mercury waterfall. She reaches up to touch her head and face, finds the familiar contours of a smooth mask, silver she suspects like the rest of her outfit. A part of her is offended that her clothing has been replaced without her consent or memory, but she rationalizes that the Grey could clearly see through her disguise anyway and acknowledges that her new garments are at least a gesture of respect to her cultural practices. She adjusts her new robes and takes another step forward.

She is standing at the threshold of a cavernous space, like the great courthouses of the homeworld or the cargo bay of a Diaspora freighter. The room is shrouded in shadow except for beams of light that fall atmospherically from the vaulted ceiling and the floor has a strange curvaceous shape that slowly undulates as she watches. There is a perfectly smooth path amongst the waves and she somehow knows it is where she is meant to walk. With a rustle or robes and the click of boots, she walks into this alien space.

<Welcome to our Gallery.>

She stops, startled, and looks for the source of the voice. She cannot see anyone, only shadow, and now that she thinks about it she isn’t sure what she perceived had actually been sound. Unsure of where to look she signs in the direction of the smooth path. Her hands dance, “Who’s there? What’s going on?”

<I am the Curator, and yes, I am communicating with you telepathically. Do not worry, We mean you no harm. We are aware of your artwork, and are very much enamoured with your vision. We feel that We may be, in a way, kindred spirits or perhaps fellow travellers. And so We invited you here, to share our Art with you, as your Art has been so inspirationally shared with us.> She feels a sense of soothing welcome and joy wash over her. <Do not fret for your paintings, they have been entrusted to us and will be returned to you after you view our Gallery. Please, step this way to our first Artwork.> She feels a mental tug, a newfound sense of where to go, and the smooth path grows an offshoot into a darkened alcove. She follows it because she knows she should.

She finds herself overlooking a shadowed chamber. As she watches light drifts down slowly from the cieling, like a curtain being withdrawn to reveal a pair of strange figures floating in a large pool of milk. She is suddenly bombarded by memories of twin princesses from a far off technomonarchy. She feels their anguish at being betrothed to sworn enemies and unsuitable suitors, their deep fear of being separated from one another. She experiences their desperate flight to Flotsam and the dashing of their attempts to find humble freedom. With perfect clarity she understands the bargain they made with the Artist: they would sacrifice their humanity and become artwork if only to remain together forever. Inside her mask she smiles while blinking away tears. The two sisters, now enormous breasts with human areola faces and trickling milk hair, are beautiful. They smile back at her and say something in a secret language only they understand. “It’s wonderful,” she signs after a time of thoughtful silence.

<Thank you. Please proceed to the second artwork.> 

Again she feels compelled to walk to another part of the gallery, and letting her body carry her, soon arrives at another shadowed chamber with a hidden dais at its centre. Light oozes into the room, illuminating a sleep shroud sized mass of wrinkled flesh. She frowns, uncertain at what she is looking at, until she recognizes it as something she has only seen in a textbook: an enormous scrotum. Memories wash over her, this time of two agents, trained from birth and then Shaped and reShaped into new identities and sent forth to complete dangerous covert missions. She feels one identity flash into another and another, a chain of people impersonated and a lifetime of violence. She feels the disconnection, the fraying of identity, the cost of such a vocation. And then she learns of how the agents were pitted against one another, given conflicting objectives within the mission that brought them here to Flotsam. She feels their rage at the betrayal of their psychic handler, Control, the one sapient who could surveil them through their disguise and observe their hidden selves. She empathizes with them as they choose revenge, killing Control, and irrevocably destroying their lives. She understands too the bargain they struck with the Artist for safety and the freedom to explore their newfound love and connection. Bright backlights surge and she sees the silhouettes of two people locked in coitus within the giant scrotum, two beings enclosed in a world of their making. Under her mask she smiles. “Remarkable,” she signs.

<Now please proceed to the final artwork. Myself.>

Suddenly she knows to walk to the raised platform at the heart of this great hall. Despite the surrounding lights this dais is shrouded in shadow, like a thick fog made of something intangible. As she stops at the appointed spot, the shadows dissolve, fading rather than dispersing, revealing a shining silver figure with long feminine legs and hips but a gigantic penis and scrotum for an upper body body. This creature, the Curator, starts to gracefully walk, strutting and turning her body, letting the light flash from her mirror bright skin. She studies the Currator from her elegantly arched feet, along the long sweep of her legs, to the orbit of her hips and the toned breadth of her ass. From the waist down she is a very beautiful woman. Above the hips her body blends smoothly into an enormous cock and balls, with huge testicles that hang in her lap and a long, rigid torso sized shaft culminating in a glans larger than a human head. She is a living cock fashioned from a woman. It is an incongruous sight, but still elegant if obscene. “You are beautiful,” she signs feeling herself flush under her mask. <Thank you.> unfolds in her mind mingled with the sense of a giddy blush. 

And then the memories come, the story of this Curator. She experiences life as an orphan on the nearly mythical world of Earth. She marvels at the defunct technology and senseless strife of the planet, the myopic view of a world that thinks it’s alone in the universe. She lives through the trials of the Curator’s life: the orphanage, her failures at college, the exile to the impoverished trailer park, and then suddenly, her abduction to this alien planet of Flotsam. She learns of the Curator waking to find her lover hugely altered and worse, that she herself is just a copy, a clone of the original Earthling orphan girl. She feels the anger, sadness, and confusion of this new entity with her years of subjective experience. She also feels her resolve to find the original copy, and through this, to justify her existence. She experiences the Curator’s hunt, the search throughout Flotsam looking for clues, and eventually the moment that changes everything: her invitation into the Grey Citadel to meet the Artist. She feels a kind of mirror recognition in this moment, or maybe a portent, as the memories of the Curator meeting the Artist unfold. She learns of the beginning, the difficult journey toward communication, and through it, the development of an aesthetic, an artistic vision with humanitarian goals. And then she experiences the instant of absolute truth when the Curator is remade into her phallic form, the raw power of her body, the orgasmic explosion of her first enormous male orgasm. She finds herself trembling, her pussy wet underneath her strange silver robes, the sensations of ejaculation echoing through her psyche. “Astonishing!” she manages to sign with palsied fingers. 

This whole place, the Curator especially, resonates with her, with her drive for uniqueness and with a certain kink for self expression. She finds that she understands it, is moved by it. That she wants to, perhaps needs to, partake of it. She shivers in a kind of anticipation. “I must meet the Artist,” she demands with certain hands. 

<Of course.> The thought hits her and she suddenly notices the Artist has been present the entire time, seated or perhaps welded into an ellipsoid throne. She sees he is a Grey, but one that is marked by some sort of unfathomable trauma, one eye cloudy and blind, body broken open by deep scars that glow with an unnatural aura. She can almost sense the alien’s constant pain like a miasma. Despite this strangeness she knows what she must do. She draws a deep breath and looks into the Artists one good eye and encounters....

Infinity. 

Waves of intellect crash over her, buffet her, threaten to drown her in an abyssal chasm. In the physical world her silver robes flap wildly in an unseen wind. And yet, she persists. She clings, pushes helplessly against the relentless pressure. Bends forward bodily as if bracing herself against a gale. She does not break eye contact.

The force grows, and she feels herself become hot, feverish. Her robes smoke, and begin to dribble, melting off her body. Skin is exposed that has never been bare. And still she stares into that depthless inky black eye.

Mentally she feels herself probed, invaded, read. Stripped bare. Surveilled. The antithesis of the entire Protocol. And still she stares into that infinite chasm.

Naked now, soul revealed, she persists.

She reaches deep within herself and pushes her artwork to the forefront of her mind. Her paintings of herself, her vulva. The not quite right colors, the imperfect brushstrokes, her quest to reveal something hidden about herself. She feels herself slipping, crushed, screaming. Desperately she clutches onto the truth, the reflection of her vagina, her vulva and clitoris, the picture she keeps trying to and can’t quite capture.

And then she feels it.

Infinity understands.

The Artist blinks.

She stands panting, sweating, and naked. She feels something trickle from her nose and wipes it, looks down and sees unfamiliar pale skinned hands smeared with blood. She is smiling, a nakedly visible smile. A public triumph.

<Yes.> The Curator tells her. <We will collaborate.>

She laughs out loud for the first time in her life and feels elation. 

Instructions flow into her mind and she follows them with a giddy thrill. She feels as if she should run, rush, dance to her destination, but also feels the gravity of the moment, the dignity. And so she walks, mindful of the feel of her naked body, it’s weight and tenor, savoring these final moments. Thanking her body for it’s quiet service. And then she is standing in a newly grown alcove, a space just for her, for her display. She feels giddy at that thought: herself revealed for display. It is madness! Verboten!

She stands in the center and takes a moment to mentally settle herself, draws a deep breath, savors this instant of liminality. She spares a thought for her sister and her parents, her Community, and the life she will never go back to. She mourns it, momentarily, but knows that this is what she was always meant for. She steels herself and signs that she is ready. 

Light descends from above, liquid and organic, making her bare skin tingle as it flows over her, enfolding her body like her discarded robes, like a womb.

She once again feels the probing chasm of the Artists mind, the sheer gravity of it pressing down on her. Except this time there is quicksilver too, a lens guiding and shielding. The Curator lending an interface. She knows suddenly that she is an active participant in this process, and so she gathers her idealized self-portrait again, the familiar shape of her vagina and projects it with every iota of her being, desperately hoping her intention is received. She sense something akin to recognition and then she is undone...

***

...until she is remade anew.

She stands, if that is the word for what she does, uncertainly. Her body feels... different. Heavier, maybe. She moves her head and feels unfamiliar parts of herself shift in response. She doesn’t breathe, but feels a strong pulse somewhere within herself. <What have I become?> 

<Allow me to show you> responds the Curator with a burst of pride. She senses, for she does not think it is sight, the silver phallus of the Curator standing elegantly at the threshold of her alcove gallery. The silver skin of the Curator sprouts a blister, which blebs off, becomes a fist sized bubble of quicksilver which drifts to her, expanding into a floating mirror. The mirror flies past her, too quick but for a glimpse of a red-pink reflection, and multiplies, becoming many mirrors that fan out and orbit her. She regards them with her senses and is revealed to herself in her perfect glory.

She has changed, become a perfect expression of her secret self. Her body, glimpsed from a distance, is a robed red figure with a smooth masked face, a caricature of her former self. But she does not wear clothes, for she is beautifully, blessedly naked. Instead her apparent red robes are made entirely of voluminous labia, her entire body comprised of lobes of cuntflesh which hang off her every surface and spill to the floor mimicking the garments she once wore. She does not have legs, instead her lower body forms something like a skirted snails foot, a slick lubricated pedestal on which she can glide. Her hands have become blunt and mitten-like, growths of animate vulva at the end of boneless arms that emerge from within her vulvic mantle. Her back is a smooth expanse, an unbroken muscular structure from which her ruffled, complex front can hang. She is split open along her torso from what would have been her crotch to what was once her throat forming a slit, an opening to a cavity that, despite her apparently slender body, she knows is large enough to encompass the Curators mighty phallic length, which she knows she will do, and soon. Her face is gone, replaced by a mask-like smooth expanse of a clitoris the size of her former head, erectly peaking out from a labial hood. She has become her self-portrait, her idealized vaginal painting merged with her life as a red robed woman. <I’m perfect!> she projects laden with joy.

She turns a deliberate, slow moving circuit of her alcove, regarding the orbiting mirrors, and above them, in a counter rotation, her ninety-six vaginal self-portrait paintings, permanent elements of her gallery, and feels pleased and giddy. She is on display, truly and completely naked. And she has a first viewer here to see her. To admire her. Slowly she turns to face the Curator, drawing herself up and adjusting the folds of her new vulva like a garment. <How do I look?> 

<Beautiful!> sends the Curator, her long cock body rigid, the visible blood vessels on her shaft dilated and pulsing, a dollop of precum beading at her urethral slit. 

She feels herself blush at this naked display of arousal, a strange sensation that inflames her clitoris face and vulvic body, making it grow shiny and slick with secretions. She gathers her knowledge of her inner cavity, the reality warping vagina within her, and projects it to the Curator. <Come to me. Show me how beautiful I am.>

<Oh Jesus...> moans the Curator, stepping forward on unsteady legs. 

She feels herself engorge, grow inflamed, feels herself blossom, split open, revealing her final truth. <Perfection...> She thinks.

And then they are together and the time for thought ends.

***

Chapter 17