Geoff Ryman - Lust

It was a single tiny room with sink and toilet crowded together. Michael locked the door.

OK, he said to the air. Come back.

Suddenly crowding against the edge of the sink, the Cherub ballooned into reality. Tony was jammed against Michael, forcing him to sit down or fall over. Michael felt the texture of the brick against his back. It seemed to push him insistently back into Tony’s arms. Go on, the wall seemed to say.

Michael reached out and prodded Tony’s collarbone. He could feel it solid under lean flesh. He could feel the green T-shirt slide away from it. The room was reflected in Tony’s eyes, perfectly, the glint from the strip light, and Michael himself. In the fine-grained skin there was one clogged pore going slightly red.

Michael prodded him again. Dammit, he was solid. Michael picked up Tony’s hand and saw ridges in the fingernails and flecks of white.

No. Hallucinations were foggy, you knew things were clouded, you felt confused. This did not feel like the product of a confused brain.

I am not making this up!

‘Come on,’ said Michael.

He took hold of Tony’s hand and felt its palm, fleshy and armoured with weightlifter calluses.

Then Michael stuck his head out into the corridor. It really would not be a good idea to be seen coming out of the toilet with a strange man.

‘OK. Come on.’

Tony followed him. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘Tony doesn’t like this.’

So, Michael thought: he thinks of himself and Tony as being different.

‘Does Tony know this is happening?’

The copy nodded. ‘He saw last night in a dream.’

Michael kept his voice low. ‘I need to know if anyone else can see you.’

They went into Ebru’s office. Her back was turned and slightly hunched as she read personal e-mail from Turkey. Michael coughed.

She turned around. ‘Sorry, Michael. My mother sends me e-mail here.’ She looked embarrassed, her smile dipping and then she looked up straight at Tony. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘This is Tony.’ Michael paused. He had not really expected Ebru to see Tony, so he had nothing ready to say. ‘He’s uh, my trainer at the gym.’

Ebru raised one eyebrow at Michael briefly, as if to say: and he’s good-looking, what’s going on here, Michael? She stood up and reached across the desk to shake Tony’s hand. The meeting of the hands was perfect, like those moments when the CGI dinosaurs actually seem to touch the ground.

‘Hello,’ said Tony, in a soft, neutral voice.

Michael explained. ‘Um. I hurt my elbow weightlifting, so Tony’s here to give me some advice about it.’

‘A handsome gym instructor who makes house calls.’ Ebru’s eyes glinted.

A certain adjustment was necessary. ‘This isn’t my house. Tony only makes office calls. We wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.’

‘Um,’ said Ebru, as if to say, OK, I’ll mind my own business.

‘I guess that’s about it,’ Michael said to Tony. In the empty corridor, he sent Tony back. To wherever it was he came from. The air closed over him like surf and he was gone.

What the fuck is going on?

Michael got out his notebook and drew a line down the middle.

On one side he wrote ‘Hallucination’ and on the other he wrote ‘Physical Presence’.

Under ‘Hallucination’ he wrote: my distressed mental state. He wrote: lack of reaction from people on platform. He wrote: guard did not remember Tony. He wrote: guard said I was drunk.

He stared at ‘Physical Presence’. The page was blank. All he could write was: Ebru shook its hand.

So what was it? Hallucination was by far the simplest explanation, except that either Ebru was hallucinating too, or Michael had made her up at least temporarily. The physical presence would have to be some kind of physical copy of a human being.

Until recently, teleportation was supposed to be impossible. Then in 1998, the mathematics of quantum theory were revised, and it became, at least in theory, possible that objects could be completely read, and thus reliably re-created somewhere else. Or rather, duplicated. Michael had been searching for information on quantum computing and had accidentally ended up deep inside the IBM website, on the page describing IBM’s teleportation project. The aim was successfully to transport an inanimate object by 2050. There was the usual team of delighted, slightly skuzzy-looking men, thrilled to be living in the dreams of their youth.

So who or what would be sending you copies of handsome young men, Michael? Who would devote the time and expense necessary? If you postulate that, you can postulate Descartes’ evil genius, but an evil genius could just as easily be beaming hallucinations as well.

What we have is an anomaly. Something that does not fit with currently accepted theory, something we cannot explain. The first task, therefore, is to describe it accurately. Order and method seemed to dissolve like Pepto Bismal, calming Michael’s stomach. He made a list of what he knew.

A physical copy

of someone I know

in train, tube and 2 x in my flat, 1 x in office

Can call up at will and banish

other people appear to interact

His behaviour, my behaviour both sexual

the real person is straight

copy says real person dreams what happens

So the next question is: what else don’t I know about this?

In effect, the next question is: what question do I ask next?

Well, so far, all he had done is call up a copy of one person.

Michael needed to limit variables. He needed to think of someone who shared as many characteristics as possible with Tony, someone known, someone whom he had seen and fancied, at least somewhat, in the gym.

The showers at Michael’s gym were full of men. It was one of the things that kept Michael motivated to work out.

There was the tiny brown Englishman with a beautiful body and a hatchet face whom Michael nicknamed the English Thai. Michael knew he had a wife from Thailand, and imagined that she had married him because he looked so much like one of her own people: small, neat and brown. The English Thai wore fawn trousers with a spandex waist instead of a belt. Michael had decided he worked in a car repair workshop, but at the front desk, greeting customers and nervously mismanaging staff. Michael could imitate the way he moved, not quite relaxed, hopping instead of stretching to reach parts on the top shelf.

That’s what Michael did now, back in the WC at the lab. Michael’s arms sketched how the English Thai moved.

OK, he said. His mouth had gone dry. He was half-hoping nothing would happen. Come on.

The English Thai arrived, naked, streaming water from the showers. He blinked and rubbed the water from his eyes.

Well there we go, thought Michael. That’s it. Reality’s got a hole in it.

The English Thai stood five-foot-four and proportioned as if he were a taller athlete, brown all over, a beautiful swelling chest, slim belly, tiny circumcised dick. He had a face like Mr Punch, with designer stubble.

Turn around, Michael thought at him. He did. Hold your cheeks open. The English Thai did, and easily and effortlessly his anus also opened, and mouthed desire like a fish.

Michael could direct him.

You like being fucked, Michael realized. The English Thai turned back around and nodded yes, mournfully. Michael could imagine him in insalubrious surroundings, with that same expression. There was something in the hurt and ugliness that created in Michael a stirring of lust.

Michael asked him, murmuring, ‘What does your wife think about this?’

‘She don’t know nothing,’ said the English Thai.