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?”