Great oblong shapes obstruct my view of the playing fields. I can only imagine the inchworms curling into their third forms - malevolent grasshoppers on Cracker Jack box tops that sprout weeds. In this third mutation everyone but Irma and I can see the yielding to transform. Oohs and ahhs speckle then spread through the crowd. Bets have been made as to what and who will transform first, next, last.

The tiger in the pit at the starboard seems to itch at the sound of the starlight violins, and thus a cackle of overdressed plumbers begin to argue amongst themselves who’s gonna put down on the beast.

Jolly has his eye’s on a fine and firm Spider Monkey that is sure to turn into a fine and firm lady of the evening. He’s sure anyway. Simian prostitutes and derelicts have become something of a cultural obsession ever since the ministry of ethics and engineering reformed certain laws.

Irma and I just put down our normal bet on the ginger haired muskrats that stick to more or less the same third form acceleration – golden haired muskrats.

 Irma presses her thighs up against mine indicating that it is time to go, her cycles are matching mine and we must fornicate. The little beetle inserted into her innards tells her as much, buzzing with stinging ecstasy somewhere between her fallopian tubes and uterus. It is of great concern to me, and she can tell for after she is through with me, she will either kill me and harvest the good bits or shaft me off to the 47^th sector: waste management, where I will most likely - ironically - find the fetus’s of our aborted offspring, Irma having tossed them for defects such as beady eyes or outy bellybuttons.

 

We take the sixtieth parallel router home, wait the designated forty-five seconds to solidify back into the 4^th dimension and then insert the appropriate inducers to perform sexual acts.

 

The evening after she says she has a treat for me, and hands me a pill that shoots a sprawl of images into my retina and a bruise of sound into my ears. It’s a video pill of an old motion picture. How old? it is near impossible to be sure, but judging by the depth of field and color density and level of grain it has to be mid to late twentieth century when they still used a chemical based product called celluloid or film... thus this is a film.

It must be a comedy because the world depicted is one where everyone is called by a number and are highly medicated into mundane worker bee states. Robot police the white washed hallways, electrocuting those that are non-complacent. Robots… how quaint.

I ejaculate to the sex scenes, meeting my quota for the day, dialing the tubes to the lab.

 

I take a dip in the precog bath, letting the warm jelly envelope my gaunt form. My ribs poke through my skin like razor blades. All I’ve eaten for three weeks is one protein tablet every seventy-two hours. My liquid intake has been below acceptable rates. Irma just noticed this morning and warned me of the laws against prolonged suicide by starvation.

My vision for the evening is that of my failed attempt at a prolonged suicide by starvation.

Rats. I dry off, paint on a thermal layer, then shuffle off to bed.

 

In the morning a message flashes across my retina – URGENT! From F & D HQ – It requires my immediate attention in person. In person! Only important matters, very important matters are handled in person, where at least one of the official parties is actually present in full atomic form.

Could it be a promotion? A demotion? A firing… I pray to the Wire that it would be at least a demotion to get me out of this incubator hovel and away from that arachnid, Irma.

 

Three trumpets and a tuba announce my arrival to the head secretary of the secretarial floor, who will then go on to process and log my arrival and that will move onto the 3^rd and 4^th floors of junior management until I am officially identified as a sector 3 employee and not a two bit doppelganger sent from competing sectors or, perish the thought, a competing company. This process of confirmation and identification will take approximately seventeen hours and then an annual disinfectant bath will take another six. If the bath happens that means I am seeing someone above junior management, an upper class germ phoebe who sits inside airtight glass chambers and projects digital copies of themselves down three floors to a “meeting room”.

 

Casper is the man I see sitting in front of me now. So to speak.

From miles away and right here, he wipes his brow with something  he refers to as a “hankie”. A genuine fabric product from bygone times. He’s sweating profusely and says he’s detoxing from a bad acid trip.

Casper says my quotas to the lab have been lavish and spectacular and that they feel I am being wasted on low level man-eaters like Irma and how they are considering me for… a promotion!

But that is triple the responsibility, he says, literally as I’ll have three female specimens.

We feel however that you’re robust enough to handle such tasks and still fill your usual quota for the day.

Casper smiles, something I have not seen since I was a child.

I am dismissed and taken to a new incubator hovel where I impatiently await the arrival of my new mates.

This hovel is indeed a step up. Double the physical floor space, real exercise can be performed here – jogging, weight lifting, nothing artificially enhanced or accelerated. Studies have shown natural, self induced exercise, however long it takes, is always better, but even management can get impatient. They obviously believe in me. A lot. The thought of getting into prime physical shape is electrifying.

And then genuine excitement builds as one by one my new mates introduce themselves. The calculations on compatibility and performance have been dully noted and checked and double-checked but it is safety and health policy for actual physical tests to be done. I am inserted and taken for a test drive. Actual physical pleasure bubbles to the surface for both parties. The intensity of this new, yet somehow familiar feeling is almost overwhelming. The mechanical nature of the job washes away in a matter of no time.

 

The new mates have me working like a dog - damn these accelerated pregnancy pills! - they just keep popping them out and I keep pumping. My quota for the lab has been increased by 40% per quarter, which means… I don’t know what it means really, beyond more work and no increase in pay.

I consider asking for a transfer back to a man-eater like Irma. At least the pace was more relaxed and we had our fun betting at the playing fields and even once we were able to take a guided tour through the afterlife. Simulated of course, but close as close can be to the real thing. And let me tell you, it was bliss.

 

I’m called in again. This time it is Beth. She’s just discarded the Placentia and had the infant, or rather infants – quadruplets this time – sent off to processing.

It is when she says these odd words to me that I back away… Come make love to me…

Make love? That is what we’re doing? It can’t be… This term, this word love has been marked in the state issued dictionary as an out of date useless word meaning… well one of the main factors in it being terminated from active use was a real lack of a well defined meaning.

Beth calls to me again and this time it is so off putting I can’t perform for the rest of the day, causing the whole hovel to get a fine. Three strikes and you’re out!

Why have I never thought of this before?

 

The females are onto me and I am called in to speak with Casper. Well to the ghost of Casper. Seems as if he’s passed on, never quite got through that detox, so the IT guys network to the afterlife and are able to set up a conference call between Casper’s ghost, Robinson in the Female Anatomy Advocacy dept., Bob in Human Resources, Penny, another ghost, from Accounting and Silvio from… TOP TIER management. Yes, the tippity top!

All that is left is to call in the bigwigs, though I do notice Silvio has painted on a rather luxurious rug for himself. My act tough but fair hair says just like that, right to my face… It’s hard to tell who’s a digital copy and actually there with me in the conference room. I think it might just be Silvio - amazingly enough since he is TOP TIER - and me. He makes a reference to liking real human contact, which leads me to believe he is really there.

Casper after having provided everyone with a good old fashioned BOOoooooh! addresses the issue at hand - my fine - and asks if anything is up, anything bothering me that I’m not telling them about. Penny suggests I’m taking too many precog baths, citing how addicting they can be, then adding she herself was obsessed with her own death.

No, no, I tell them it is none of that. In fact I’m not taking precog baths anymore, I just don’t have the time. And that, I state, is the real problem; Time! I’m overworked, feeling stressed out, nothing that any sedatives can handle. It’s bigger than that.

This gets a big WOW from the group. I’m hesitating to suggest something to them. They know it is coming; the air crackles in the room. Those of us who still breath suck in a long stream of purified oxygen and exhale.

Well, I say, I think it’s about time I get a vacation.

The V word. They knew it.

The group begins to grumble to each other until Casper calms them down.

Hmmm, he says, well what did you have in mind?

I smile, melting all ready. I’ve won.

Well funny you ask, Casper. I’d like to take a break in the afterlife. Not die for a long time, just for a bit. Then you can revive me and I’ll be as good as new!