Expiration Day (10 page)

“I fancy a cup of tea,” he announced, and headed for the kitchen. “Anyone else?”

By the time he was back, with a gently steaming pot and three mugs, Mum had undimmed the lights, and the furniture was arranged for a cosy family chat.

“Well,” said Dad, “what brings you down from your eyrie? TeraNet outage?”

“Mike!” squeaked Mum, annoyed at his bluntness.

“Just kidding. But a dad ought to know when a daughter's got something on her mind. So come on, Tan. Out with it.”

He was right—he did always know. Ah well, dive in …

“It's a little delicate, so let me go about this in my own way. And try not to jump to conclusions.”

“Go on.”

“It's just that I don't feel I'm keeping up with the other girls in my class.…”

“But your class reports are fine, darling.…”

“It's not that, Mum.” I caught a look from Dad.
He
knew what was coming. “It's more, er, physical. I'd say I was a little slow in growing, wouldn't you?”

And then Mum got it.

“Oh, darling! You mean slow in
developing
, don't you?”

I nodded. “Yes, Mum. I feel out of place, still a little girl. My classmates are all turning into young women.”

Dad jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Are you getting bullied, Tan? Tell me who, and I'll take it up with the headmistress. If you're slow to develop, it's not for them to tease you. Let me sort it out.”

“No, Dad. I'm not being bullied. This is my own free decision.”

“Decision? What decision, darling?”

“I'm coming to that, Mum. Let me speak. You see, I want to take my next revision.”

There was a long pause. Mum was staring intently at her knees and her cheeks had gone bright pink. Dad just looked tense, his lips tightly compressed.

“Let me make sure I've understood you, Tan. You're fed up with being a little girl, and you want to become a teenager. In body. Is that it?”

“Yes, Dad. That's it.”

“But why? I mean, what difference does it make? You've said it's nothing to do with bullying. And if the other girls are still getting their revisions, that's just keeping up a pretense, surely? You don't need to go along, do you?”

“I know that, Dad. It's nothing to do with what the other girls are doing. This is something that I want to do. It's part of my … plans … for my life.”

Five years. Just five years. And we all knew it.

“I still don't understand, Tan. What plans are they? And why do you need to look like a teenager?”

So I reminded them about how we were putting a band together, me and Siân and John. And how I was going to be the bass player, and how I couldn't be a bass player if I still looked ten years old.

“No one will take us seriously, Dad.” It was almost a wail, but I just about kept my control.

“So you want to take your revision. And when you come back from Oxted, you'll be a young woman.…”

“Yes.”

“All grown up.”

“Yes.”

“Hips. Breasts.”

“Hips. Breasts. Yes.”

There was a real heaviness in his voice. His daughter, his little girl, would be gone. In her place would be a young woman, too old, too independent to want to curl up on his knee. The girl who'd listened to his bedtime stories would be a memory.

And Mum?

Mothers are different, I think. At least, my mum is. They want to see their daughters grow up. They need to see the continuity from mother to daughter.

And if I'd been a boy, perhaps it would have been the other way round, with Dad enthusiastic, and Mum left behind.

But here it was. Suddenly Mum had come alive.

“That's wonderful, darling. I think it's a lovely idea. It's time, it's certainly time. Can you choose, I wonder? Mike, do you know, can she choose what sort of body she gets?”

Dad just looked gobsmacked.

“Er, I've no idea.”

“Well, I think she ought to be able to choose. We just left it to Oxted before. They said it would be a natural progression, so you wouldn't suspect. But now you've found out, there's no reason you shouldn't have a say in the matter. Change a few things. Not everything, of course. I mean, if I were you, I'd keep your hair the color it is—it's lovely. And I think it should be long and straight, the way it's always been.”

“I like it like that, yes.”

“But after that, I think we should think hard about everything else. I mean, I've always been fairly trim, myself, around the bust. But you could afford to be a little more generous. You might want to aim to be on the tall side, to compensate.”

As I remembered Mum on platform shoes, wobbling, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be even that “generous.” But she was in full flow.

“And I don't see why you shouldn't have decent hips, darling, whatever your father says. He certainly appreciated my hips when we were courting. And my bust.”

At last, that got a faint smile out of Dad.

“I suppose I did, Nettie.”

“Well then. You shall have full hips likewise, darling. And you'll be pleased to say good-bye to those legs. I remember what it was like. All elbows and knees. You know, we should have done this a year ago. Or the summer before you started at the new school. You'd have missed the holiday, of course, but that wouldn't have been any great loss. It was just the seventies theme.”

And then I'd never have met John. No thanks.

That, though, struck a chord with Dad. A rather suspicious chord.

“These plans, Tan. You said you were starting a band. Is that all? Would you mind if I asked if there's any other reason why you need to be a young woman all of a sudden? As a father, I have to ask if there's a boy involved. And if you've been … experimenting. Or you're planning to?”

Which wasn't something I'd really thought through. I'd only thought as far as looking.

“No, Dad, it's not like that at all.”

I could only repeat my plans to become a bassist. How I just needed a bigger body, simply to play the bass properly. And to look
right
on stage, of course, rather than looking like somebody's kid sister.

I don't know what he thought deep inside. But he nodded, and let Mum wrap up.

“Well, darling. You've certainly given us something to think about. I guess we should all sleep on it, but we'll call Oxted first thing in the morning.”

Friday, February 9, 2052

Well, we didn't call Oxted the next day, or the day after that. I got cold feet the first day, and Mum did the next. It was about two weeks before we were all simultaneously ready to make the call.

Come in, they said.

So we went.

 

 

Oxted was a sprawl of buildings clustered about Banbury. An industry that had grown in five years from a single, cheap industrial unit into an international corporation largely responsible for keeping the world sane. In other countries, Oxted was more conventional, with imposing architecture in steel and glass and concrete. But here in Banbury … this was the original. It had grown too fast to be planned—buildings looked like they'd been thrown up overnight wherever there was an odd corner of unused land. Rusty Nissen huts and rickety shacks nestled next to great hangars and soaring concrete, and everywhere people scurried, antlike.

We were met in reception by a pale, pinch-faced, harassed-looking man in his forties, glasses sliding down his nose.

“The Deeley family? I'm Doctor Markov. That's cybernetics, not medicine.”

We stood up, and Dad shook his hand, then introduced us. Doctor Markov smiled warmly as he shook my hand, and I suddenly felt it was going to be all right.

“I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Deeley. This is quite unusual, you understand. Most of our young visitors are quite unconscious of their nature. It's a pleasant change to meet someone who takes such an active interest in her development.”

He led us down a succession of corridors, opening side doors in a seemingly random fashion, as he zig-zagged farther from reception. Once or twice we crossed open spaces, before diving back into a fresh portion of the maze that was Oxted.

Finally, at the end of a dingy corridor he threw open one final door, leading us into a spacious, day-lit room, comfortably appointed with sofas and low tables. He indicated a group of seats and waited patiently for us to arrange ourselves.

From nowhere, it seemed, a smartly dressed woman appeared and fetched us coffee. And biscuits.

“So, Miss Deeley. You've decided you need a revision. You're how old?”

“Thirteen,” I told him, though he must have known.

“Quite so, quite so. And you must have had your last revision about four years ago.”

I looked blank, and Dad stepped in.

“That's right. It was all handled by the local hospital, though. We dropped her off and collected her when it was all done.”

“Quite so, quite so. And of course, Miss Deeley, you remember nothing about it.”

“Nothing,” I admitted. “How is that?”

“A small device,” he explained. “It comes by post. It's uniquely keyed to your brain, and puts you into a deep sleep. I imagine your parents would have waited until you were asleep in your bedroom. They take you to the hospital. The hospital performs a routine brain transfer into your new body, and sends you back. You wake up in your own room, a day or so later, with vague, forgettable memories to account for the time you've been unconscious.”

It all sounded vaguely sinister, that I could be so easily switched off like that. He was quite right. Even knowing when it had happened, I really couldn't pin it down to a day or two. That summer holiday had been full of unmemorable days, and the place in my mind where my revision belonged was blurred and fuzzy, just like each of the weeks before and after.

“Will it be the same, this time?”

“No, Miss Deeley. You will sleep, as before, but there'll be no fakery with your mind. You'll wake, feeling as if no time had passed, but the date will be wrong.”

“And I'll be in a new body.…”

“Yes, and a considerably more mature one, according to your file, one more suited to your chronological age. It's not usual to leave it so long between revisions. May I ask why, Reverend Deeley?”

“We've always disliked the revisions, Dr. Markov. We find the sudden change upsetting. In every other part of our family life, Tania is our daughter, human in every way. In this, there's no escaping the truth.”

“But you always did revisions before, every two years or thereabouts. Why have you let them drop?”

“I suppose it all changed when Tania found out what she was.
She
didn't need the pretence of the revisions anymore, so it became less important to us, too.”

Doctor Markov scribbled a bit with his stylus, then turned back to me.

“So now it's become important to you again, Miss Deeley, that you should look your age. I find that quite interesting. Would you mind telling me why?”

So I told him about learning to play bass in a band. It turned out Doctor Markov had quite an interest in modern music, and I found myself telling him about the meeting in the café with John and Siân, and the band, and Amanda. I mentioned that John and I had always shared an interest in music, so then the conversation turned to how I'd met John in the first place.

He was really easy to talk to, and I quite forgot Mum and Dad were in the room. I suppose they were listening, too, and it was stuff I'd never really mentioned to them. But eventually I heard a yawn. Poor Mum. She apologized, saying she found traveling so tiring.

Instantly Doctor Markov turned to her and in turn apologized profusely for keeping me talking for so long. More coffee and biscuits were summoned, and Doctor Markov began to explain what would happen.

“It's straightforward enough choosing a new body. We've programs to simulate the growth of a child into her teenage years, so it's easy to project Miss Deeley's current appearance into the future. We can simulate the various effects of diet and exercise, and your parents' own physical appearance, and we can produce any number of plausible Tanias. We could even start from scratch, and give you the body of a film star, but I really wouldn't recommend it. It rarely works out happily. Besides, Mrs. Deeley is an attractive lady, speaking purely professionally, and you should be proud to derive your appearance from her.”

Mum blushed and Dad gave her shoulders a little squeeze.

“As I say, that's all pretty straightforward. It just takes an hour or two in front of the computer screen, with my colleague, Doctor Marcia Thompson, who specializes in the design of our female clients. What we then have to do is some calibration. We'll have to run a few tests on you, Miss Deeley. Nothing to worry about. No needles or anything like that. But it will involve a few questions. At the end of it, we'll know enough to make sure you're comfortable in your new body. Calibration, that's all it is.”

 

 

We were all standing in front of a huge monitor, occupying the full height of the wall, and about as wide as it was tall. On it, I floated, life-size, in front of a featureless gray blankness. I watched, fascinated, as Doctor Thompson rotated me on screen. I was grown up, thirteen or fourteen, and nude.

Dad had coughed in surprise and blushed a deep, deep red when Doctor Thompson had first displayed the image. I was surprised, and, if I'm honest, I think I was quite embarrassed, too. If I'd thought about it at all, I'd imagined a more sophisticated version of my own efforts to paste my head onto Suzi Quatro's body. It hadn't occurred to me that the only proper way to design a new body was unclothed. It was me, though, undoubtedly me, and my next thought was “Hmm, actually I look pretty good.” So I quickly stopped being embarrassed. But Dad …