The Last Stand of the Elephant Man
by Jennifer Pelland
"Mr. Merrick, please wake up."
Joseph Merrick's eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Was this the hospital ward? Had something new happened to him?
Good God, he was lying flat on his back.
He struggled to sit upright, astounded at how effortless the action was. "What—"
The word came out clearly.
His left hand flew up to his mouth. His flat mouth. "My God," he murmured against his fingers.
And then he saw his unblemished right arm.
"Is this Heaven?" he asked the white-swathed figure at the foot of his bed.
"Almost. It's America. You're in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and you've been cured."
Joseph stared in wonder at his two perfect hands, now mirror images of each other, and flexed the fingers of his right hand for the first time since he was a child. "I have no memory of coming here."
"You fell ill before your trip. Do you remember that?"
Joseph shook his head, its weight so light that it felt like it would float away were it not for his neck.
"I'm not surprised. You were so delirious with fever that Dr. Treves nearly didn't bring you to the ship. It's a miracle you survived the Atlantic crossing at all."
Joseph brought the fingers of both hands back up to his mouth, then feathered them up his cheeks to his forehead.
Had he ever felt anything so smooth?
"This is the miracle."
"No, Mr. Merrick, this is science." The man turned to the door. "Nurse Hotchkiss, if you please?"
A woman clad in a crisp white dress stepped into the room, holding a large looking glass in her arms. She smiled sweetly at him and said, "Why, Mr. Merrick, you're even more handsome awake. See for yourself."
She turned the mirror towards him, and he stared at it, transfixed. His head was so smooth, so small, so...
So normal.
Joseph Merrick buried his perfect head in his perfect hands and wept tears of pure joy.
"You'll have your own room here for the next week or so," Doctor Pemberton said. "Once we're certain the procedure hasn't caused any unforeseen complications, we'll help you find an apartment in the city."
Joseph walked along beside him, flexing his perfect feet with every step. For the first time in memory, he was in no pain. They ascended a flight of stairs, and it was so easy, so effortless. Joseph wanted to sprint up them to the very top floor, then race headlong down to the basement. Had any man ever truly felt so much joy in such simple movement?
"I'll need to earn my keep," he said. "I don't want to be a charity case. Not anymore."
"Take your time. Your British benefactors have set you up quite comfortably."
When they reached the top floor, Dr. Pemberton guided Joseph down a clean, well-lit wing. He opened a door numbered 130 and said, "Here you are."
Joseph stepped through the doorway, marveling at the view out the large picture window. New York City was wondrously strange, with tall buildings jutting majestically into the sky as far as the eye could see. Looking down, he saw an orderly swarm of pedestrians, street cars, and horse-drawn carriages. "So many people."
"And none of them will ever stare at you again."
He pressed his now-normal right hand against the glass and stared off into the distance as a dirigible floated above the statue of Lady Liberty. "How long until I'll be able to leave the hospital?"
"Soon enough. A week, at the outside. Meanwhile Nurse Hotchkiss procured something for you that I think you might like."
Joseph tore himself away from the view, and saw Dr. Pemberton pointing to a leather dressing bag sitting on a small end table. "Is that—"
"It's not the one you had in London. Dr. Treves couldn't bear to part with it. But hopefully, this will be an acceptable substitute."
Joseph sat down at the table and opened the bag. There were the silver backed brushes, the comb, an ivory-handled razor, the toothbrush, the cigarette case, a silver shoe-horn, the hat brush. He'd known how ridiculous he'd seemed when he'd asked Dr. Treves to buy him a dressing bag for Christmas. He'd known he'd never be able to use any of the items inside. But when he'd held it in his one normal hand, he'd been able to fleetingly pretend that he was a normal human being with normal human needs.
He'd never imagined that the day would come when all of that would change.
"I'll leave you for now," Dr. Pemberton said. "Nurse Hotchkiss will be by later with your dinner. Congratulations, Mr. Merrick. Welcome to your new life." He smiled, nodded, and let himself out.
Joseph looked at the full-length mirror on the other side of his room, then stole a quick glance at the door.
Yes, it had a lock.
He bolted it securely, then pulled off his robe, his surgical gown, and his slippers, and stared at his body in amazement. In all the years he'd yearned for normalcy, he'd never once believed he'd ever achieve it. He'd learned to content himself with his unblemished left arm and genitals, and the small oasis around his left eye. Now...
He turned, staring at his smooth back and buttocks, not daring to believe that every square inch could be cured. But it was.
Joseph clasped his hands together and bowed his head in prayer. "Thank you, Lord. I am humbled."
"Joseph Carey Merrick?"
Joseph spun, covering his nakedness with his hands, and gaped at the three men and one woman standing just inside the door. "But...I locked it...I didn't hear you—" He dove for his robe, feeling his face break out into a hot flush.
"Mr. Merrick," the oldest of the men said, "I regret to inform you that you have been the victim of a hoax."
"But...how can that be?" He held out his matching hands. "See for yourself."
"What I mean is that you're not in New York, and it's not 1890."
"But..." He gestured weakly at the window.
"This is all an illusion. You're really in a virtual reality simulator in San Antonio, Texas in the year 2304."
He stared blankly at the man, then turned to the other three to see if any of them appeared to be more sensible.
"Let's just pull him out," another of the men said. "Then he'll believe us."
"Do you think that's wise?"
"We can't leave him in there forever. I don't think there's any way to ease him into this."
"You're right. Mr. Merrick, this is going to be something of a shock."
The four people disappeared, and Joseph staggered back into a chair, knocking it to the floor. "Dr. Pemberton!"
A rush of unintelligible words roared around him, and he clapped his hands over his ears to try to drown them out.
"Dr. Pemberton!"
Everything went black, and Joseph felt himself being lifted out of a thick liquid, deposited onto a flat surface, and covered with a blanket. A mask was peeled from his face, and he blinked in the bright lights as four half-naked Negroes stared down at him. One of the men said, "Joseph Merrick, pursuant to the laws of the San Antonio Protectorate, I must inform you that you have been the victim of an illegal bring-forward."
In a panic, Joseph pulled his hands from under the blanket.
Thank God, they were normal.
And...brown?
"The individual who brought you forward has exchanged bodies with you. As this was done non-consensually, you have the right to remain in the body you are currently inhabiting if you so choose."
"Exchanged—"
"Rest assured, Mm. Paredes has been charged with both crimes, and his spot in the breeding queue has been revoked pending a full investigation. If you would like your own body back—"
"I'm going mad," Joseph muttered. He clasped the blanket in his brown fingers and pulled it over his head. "I'm in the asylum. None of this is real."
A woman's voice said, "Give us a moment."
He heard footsteps, a quiet hiss.
"Let me."
Fingers pulled the blanket away from his head, and he looked up to see the young Negress smiling down at him. "I've gone mad," he whispered.
"I can see why you'd think that," she said. "I'm Naia. May I call you Joseph?"
He nodded.
"I know this is hard to believe, but you've been brought forward 400 years."
"That's not possible."
"But it's the truth. The New York you were living in was a simulation." She pointed across the room to a tall glass tank with tubes running into it. He followed her finger, then found himself staring at her bared belly out of the corner of his eye and forced himself to look away. What she was wearing wasn't decent, but it was even less decent of him to take advantage of her unladylike dress with his gaze.
"How about I prove it to you? Look at any wall."
"What—"
"Computer, display satellite image of this settlement."
As if by magic, one wall presented a picture of a large dome surrounded on all sides by white. Joseph sat up, clutching the blanket to his chest. "How is that possible?"
"It would take too long to explain. But that technology certainly didn't exist in your time, did it?"
Joseph stood, wrapping the large blanket around him like a cloak. "No, I've seen this before. You're using a Magic Lantern." He held a hand up in front of the image, looking for a hand-shaped shadow and seeing none.
"It's not a projection. The image is coming from the wall itself."
He ran his finger across the surface of the wall. It was cool, like plaster. The image was coming directly out of it? That wasn't possible. It wasn't...
But there it was. And declaring it to be impossible wouldn't make it go away. If that worked, he would have successfully wished away his deformity years ago.
So instead he focused on the image and tried to make sense of it. "What is the dome?"
"A picture of the Protectorate from space. Computer, pull back image to show all of North America."
The view expanded so fast that Joseph was struck by a sudden attack of vertigo. He blinked hard to clear his head, and opened his eyes again to see an image of the continent almost totally covered in ice. Joseph's hand shook as he pointed. "What is—? How—?"
"We're in an Ice Age, Joseph. A lot has changed since your time. One of the changes is that we're now able to bring people forward from history to try to increase the genetic diversity of our population. Unfortunately, your body was brought forward illegally for entertainment."
He turned to her, uncomprehending.
Naia winced. "I'm sorry to have to tell you that the person who's currently wearing your body is doing so for fun. But you can have it back if you want it."
"No. Never." The words came out before he even had time to consider his answer.
"I didn't think so."
Joseph gazed down at one of his new brown hands and asked, "What do I look like?"
"See for yourself. Computer, silver the wall."
The ice was replaced with a giant mirror, and Joseph stared at the image it presented. He was a Negro, just like the others, with skin the color of a Christmas chestnut. His black, wavy hair cascaded past his shoulders, and when he turned, he saw that it reached nearly all the way down his back. The body had strong shoulders, and when he peeked under the blanket, he saw that it had a ropy, lithe build. He wasn't quite as dark as the Negroes he'd met while displaying himself as an oddity. They'd also displayed themselves — in their cases, as wild men from the jungles — but became proper gentlemen again as soon as the paying crowds went away. It had been so many years since he'd last seen them...
So many, many years.
He looked into his pitch-black eyes and stood as straight as he could. "I'm tall," he said.
"Not that tall, but certainly taller than you were. You shouldn't have any trouble getting used to the body. Mm. Paredes seems to have undone all of his enhancements before making the switch."
"Enhancements?"
Naia held up her hands, showing off the five fingers and two thumbs. "Let's just say that this is considered mild body modification nowadays."
Joseph clutched his hands to his breast, his heart hammering madly beneath them. It was now painfully clear that he was no longer in the time that he had known. "At...at least the Queen's English hasn't changed," he stammered, grasping for the one familiar thing left in his life.
She tucked all four of her thumbs into her fists and said, "Actually, you're speaking Spanglish. The Anglos fled south long before the dome was built. Everyone here is of Latin American and African-American descent. That barrage of words you were hit with before we pulled you out — that was an immersion program. It works very well for languages, not so well for culture shock."
He put his fingertips over his lips and said, "I'm speaking what?"
His lips didn't match what he heard himself saying, and his hands started to shake.
"Joseph, are you all right?"
"May I... May I be alone for a moment?"
"Certainly. Just touch the glowing plate over there to slide the door open when you're ready." She demonstrated, and closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in this strange room with its strange walls in this strange future.
Ultimately, there was only one thing that mattered.
Joseph dropped the blanket and appraised every inch of his body, turning to make sure the back was as smooth and unblemished as the front. He felt behind each ear and under his scrotum, examining every surface.
No polyps. No growths. Nothing.
He might not have understood what was going on, but he understood that the body he was wearing was healthy and normal. That was more than enough.
He picked the blanket back up, wrapped it around himself, and pressed his palm against the door panel.
From the hallway, Naia looked at him expectantly.
"Please, I'd like you to explain everything again. I want very much to understand."
Naia smiled, her teeth startlingly white against her dark face, and said, "Welcome to your new life, Joseph."
She did her best, but so much of it didn't make sense.
"There's ice everywhere because it got too hot?"
"Pollution caused global warming, which shut down the North Atlantic current, which disrupted the flow of warm water to the northern hemisphere, which produced an ice age. It all happened much faster than anyone predicted."
"You've put an entire city inside a glass dome?"
"Not technically glass, but yes. After the ozone layer catastrophe, we needed a way to shield our city from the sun. Plus, we needed to seal the system so no genetically damaged people, plants, or animals could get in. The downside is that nobody can get out either. Because of that, the population is strictly controlled. No one gets to have a baby until someone else dies."
"You bring people forward from the past?"
"Yes. We use their ova and sperm to bolster our gene pool. But we only take people moments before twentieth- and early twenty-first-century disasters that history tells us they didn't survive. Dresden, Halabja, New Orleans — they've all provided us with fresh DNA. Any earlier than the twentieth century, they have too difficult a time adjusting to our present; any later, we risk letting damaged DNA into our gene pool."
"And me?"
Naia shook her head. "Your case is an example of how every system can be corrupted by the very rich. A sealed society like ours only provides so much variety. There's been a trend towards radical body sculpting among the well-off. They give themselves dorsal fins, head ridges, all sorts of things. Jean-Pierre Paredes de García has spent his life leading that trend. His father is one of the most renowned body sculptors in the Protectorate. But it looks like he decided to up the stakes. He wanted to wear an infamously grotesque body. No offense."
Joseph said nothing. How could he take offense at the truth? So he simply put his hands in his lap and once again wished that they'd been able to find longer pants for him. He felt positively indecent in this short-sleeved tunic and knee-length trousers. His surgical gown at the imaginary hospital had covered more than this.
"He created a lifeless copy of your body to leave behind, set the machine for April 11, 1890, and took you. History records that you died trying to sleep lying down."
"No. That would have been suicide. I would never have—"
"Maybe you were tired," a voice slurred.
Oh God. No.
Joseph looked up in horror at the nude monstrosity staring back at him from the door.
"Life wasn't worth living anymore," his old face said. "You just wanted to go to sleep forever."
Joseph surged from his chair and flattened himself against the back wall. He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a rattling squeak.
"Oh, that's right, you've never seen yourself from the outside before." He ran his grossly deformed right hand along the lumps and knobs of his skull. "It's magnificent. I love it." His normal left hand grabbed his unblemished genitals in a tight grip and said, "And so do all my dear friends."
Joseph felt his gorge rising and gagged into his hand. That body was a nightmare come to life, a gross parody of humanity, a perversion of nature. How could anyone have stood to look at that...that...him? It was a true horror. He'd never understood that until now. He'd been protected from the full impact inside that twisted shell.
"You can't have it back, you know."
"I don't want it back!" Joseph shrieked.
Naia advanced on the intruder and said, "Mm. Paredes, please. I don't know how you got in here, but—"
"Call me Jean-Pierre." The name came out with a spray of saliva. "Oh, how I love how this body sounds."
Naia turned to Joseph and asked, "What is he saying? Can you understand him?"
"Right now, you're the only one who can," Jean-Pierre said. "But soon enough, they all will. I'm not keeping this body to myself. I want everyone to get a chance to play with it. Let them bring on whatever punishment they will — it's worth it."
Joseph extended a shaky finger. "Make him leave."
"Stay here. I'll get help." Naia dashed into the hall.
"Ah, and now we're alone," Jean-Pierre said, his lips stretched so tightly over his twisted, jutting teeth that they looked like they would split at any second. "Come, let's have a gentleman's agreement on this. You can keep my boring old body, and I can keep this marvelous thing." He shuffled forward, holding out the grotesque mass that was his right hand.
Joseph was still screaming long after Naia and several others dragged his old body out of the room.
"You're going to have to get used to him."
Joseph sat on the floor in the corner of the room, clutching his knees tightly to his chest. He looked up at the dark-skinned man staring down at him and tried to remember if he'd seen him before.
The man squatted down next to Joseph, his four long braids each swinging like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. "He's the hottest thing around. You'll see him on all the walls. There's going to be no getting away from him."
Joseph shuddered. How could his old body be even more repellent to him now that he was no longer in it?
"We've found you a host mother. Giancarla Baratella. You'll be her ward for a full year, at which point you'll be able to apply for legal emancipation. It was tough to find someone willing to take in a bring-forward wearing a contemporary body, but thankfully, she stepped up. She's friends with Jean-Pierre, but she's agreed to keep you apart."
How could anyone consider living in his old body to be entertainment? What kind of a world had he been brought to?
"Also, we bent the rules a little bit for you. We don't normally allow bring-forwards to meet until they've had several months to acclimatize, but we're giving you one evening of overlap with Giancarla's current bring-forward. In exchange for spending a few hours with you tonight, she's getting emancipated a week early."
He was cured, in a way. He should be happy. Why wasn't he happy? All he'd ever wanted was to be normal. He ran the fingers of his left hand along his new thick lips, searching for the telltale swelling that had haunted his face all of his life and not finding it. Why wasn't he happy?
The man sat on the floor and said, "Personally, I'm against the overlap. I strongly believe that immersion is the key to a successful adjustment. But I was overruled."
Joseph looked up at him, and did a double-take. The man's face was peppered with symmetrical purple bumps that looped across his forehead, cheeks, and chin. What kind of pox--
Would they still be troubled by pox in a future where brains could be exchanged between bodies? He asked, to be sure.
"They're decorations," the man said. "I got them from a scar artist. They're a pretty mild modification. Your host mother, on the other hand..." He shook his head and grinned. "I can't wait until you see her."
Joseph let himself be led to an elevator by the man, who introduced himself as Rodrigo. He'd never been in an elevator before, and felt hardly anything as they rose to the top floor. In fact, he was just about to denounce the experience as a hoax when the doors opened, giving him a panoramic view of the bubble city of San Antonio. All around them were great white needles jutting into the sky, with scores of gondolas racing from needle to needle in a never-ending stream. Beneath the towers was a maze of blocky buildings, each with moving images on their walls. Tiny dots swarmed between the blocks, and Joseph was shocked to realize that they were people.
"The towers are living space, the bases are shopping and work space," Rodrigo said. "And if you look closer to the edges of the dome, you'll see the farms."
Joseph just nodded dumbly, entranced by the spectacle. It was an impossible city, just as impossible as the circumstances that had brought him to it.
"You've probably never been this high up," Rodrigo said.
Joseph shook his head and reached one hesitant finger out to tap the glass. "Are we safe?"
"Absolutely. You couldn't break the windows if you tried."
A flash of blue caught his eye, and he looked to his right to see a thin ribbon of water winding through the city. He'd only ever read of water so blue.
"You should take a walk around the city," Rodrigo said. "There's a couple of buildings down there that are from around your time. Earlier, even. Like the Alamo."
"The Alamo?"
Rodrigo grinned, a slight chuckle escaping from his closed lips. "Let's just say that San Antonio is a city of last stands. Mexicans, ice..." He waved a hand and trailed off.
Joseph looked back down as one of the far-below walls filled with an image of his former face, and he forced himself to look up at the sky. Just under the dome, a flock of sparrows was circling.
"Like I said, he's everywhere. Your old body's a hit. Come on. Let's get a skyslip." He touched a small glowing panel and said, "Computer, transportation for two to spire seventeen."
A small gondola pulled itself from the stream and anchored itself against the outside wall, which slid open with the barest whisper.
Joseph stepped through the doorway, tentatively putting one foot on the floor of the gondola. It was rock-steady. Rodrigo nudged him the rest of the way on, the door closed behind them, and the gondola was off.
Joseph gripped the walls, unnecessarily, as the ride was as smooth and steady as the elevator had been. "I don't understand any of this."
"You probably never will."
Joseph turned to look at him, but Rodrigo's gaze was far away.
The gondola pulled up against another spire, and they took its elevator down to floor 130. "The floors are small up here, so Giancarla has the entire one to herself. At least you won't have to remember an apartment number." Rodrigo's expression grew clouded, and he said, "Immersion is tough. The next few days will be—" He stopped, blinked, and snorted out a laugh. "I was going to say they'd be the hardest days of your life, but considering that we're talking about your life..."
"Ah," Joseph said under his breath.
"You'll be fine," Rodrigo said. "If what I've read about you is true, then you've dealt with worse. Just remember, no matter what anyone looks like, they're human, and they're healthy. Just like you."
The doors opened, and Joseph once again found himself clinging to the walls. In front of an expansive view of his old face stood what he could only assume was a woman. She spread all four of her spidery arms wide, and with a grin that literally went from ear to ear, she said, "Welcome home!"
"Good luck," Rodrigo said.
Joseph cast him a stricken look, then took a deep breath and forced himself to step off of the elevator.
The doors closed behind him, trapping him with this voluntary freak. "Ma'am, I--" He gaped at her, at his old face staring back at him from the wall, and looked down at his sandals. The world tunneled in tight around him, and he blinked hard to keep from passing out. "Please, ma'am, is...is it possible to make that image go away?"
"It's a magnificent view. You should be proud of it. But yes, if it will make you comfortable. Computer, show windows."
Joseph peeked up and was relieved to see that his face had been replaced by a series of massive picture windows. If only the woman's face were so easy to replace. A mouth that large belonged in a nightmare.
She stepped forward, the mass of snakes sprouting from her scalp writhing and hissing as she did so. "It's wonderful to meet you, Joseph." She flicked a particularly aggressive snake away from her face with her whip-thin fingers. "They're getting to be such a bother. I'm thinking of taking a cue from Jean-Pierre and replacing them with some bony protuberances. Tell me, did they hurt? It's been so long since I've experienced pain that I'm almost hoping that you say yes."
"Don't listen to her."
Joseph turned and saw a mercifully normal woman limping towards him on an artificial leg. She was wearing a dress that covered far more than any he'd seen so far, yet still seemed improperly short. The brown hair hanging in her face did little to conceal the large burn scar covering her right cheek.
"Ah, let me introduce our other bring-forward," Giancarla said. "This is María Luisa Bonilla Hidalgo. We got her from the World Trade Center, South Tower. That's the fashionable tower this season. Even better, she was undocumented, so she never showed up on the lists of the missing. Isn't that fabulous?"
María Luisa shot Giancarla an ill-concealed glare and said, "Joseph, we need to talk. We don't have much time."
"You show him his room," Giancarla said. "I'll see if I can't find a way to get the computer to spit out some authentic Victorian cuisine for dinner. Or would that be Edwardian?"
María Luisa took Joseph to another seemingly blank spot of wall and placed her hand on a glowing panel. Yet another invisible door slid open, and she ushered him through it into an empty, white room with a giant window for its outside wall. "Computer, sofa for two."
Joseph jumped back as a spot on the floor bubbled up into the shape she'd commanded. She sat, and patted the cushions next to her.
"I don't understand this," Joseph said, gingerly taking the proffered seat.
"I don't either, but you get used to it, more or less," María Luisa said. "You get used to it as much as you get used to anything around here."
"I feel like I've been dropped into a dream. None of this seems real."
"I felt the same way at first. Sometimes, I still do. Just take your time, and don't let anyone talk you into anything that doesn't feel right, especially Giancarla."
"Talk me—?"
She'll want to take you to parties, show you off, use you in any way she can to gain status. But you don't have to cooperate. Legally, she can't force you to do anything. Just be your own man."
Joseph looked down at his brown hands. He wasn't sure how to be his own man while wearing someone else's body. But nothing would get him back into his old one. Nothing.
"Giancarla only took you in to annoy Jean-Pierre's father, you know."
"I don't know anything."
"No, of course not." María Luisa folded her hands in her lap. "He's the best plastic surgeon in the Protectorate."
"Plastic--"
"They call themselves 'body sculptors.' They take healthy people and turn them into monsters. Giancarla's a plastic surgeon too — one of the best, but not the best, and it sticks in that massive craw of hers. She only took me in to try to start a fad. 'Amputee chic.' It lasted about three months. Then she tried making burns fashionable." María Luisa rearranged her hair to try to cover more of her scar. "But will she fix me? No. She claims it's bad for business."
Joseph opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say, so he closed it again.
"All you need to know is that she's going to use you. I don't know how, but she will. If you're lucky, all she'll do is pump you for information on Victorian deformities. But I doubt it'll be that easy. This isn't altruism, Joseph. Never forget that."
Joseph felt his heart sink into his stomach. "What in the name of God has happened to these people?"
A strange expression settled on María Luisa's face. "Do you believe in God, Joseph?"
"Of course. With all my heart."
María Luisa looked out the window. "It's been a long time since I've heard someone say His name. I tried praying when I first got here, but..." She shook her head. "I don't think He can hear us anymore."
Joseph grabbed her hands, shocked by his own forwardness. "I don't think I can do this alone. Please, I beg of you, don't leave tomorrow. Please stay."
She smiled sadly and pulled her hands from his grip. "They won't let me. If I'm not at the transport to the ag-op first thing tomorrow morning, they'll bring me to it by force." She rolled her eyes. "Me, a city girl, raising chickens. But at least it's as far away from these people as I can get."
"But..." He looked around the strange, bare room with its strange, extruded sofa, and his hands fell limply to his sides. "What am I supposed to do?"
María Luisa rested a soft hand on his knee and said, "Do whatever it takes to survive."
She showed him how to control the furniture and walls in his room, helped him order some appropriately modest clothes, and then left him alone.
Joseph buried his wonderfully smooth face in his wonderfully normal hands and let out a long sigh.
For the first time since he was a tiny boy, he was completely normal. Only he was living in an abnormal world. He'd gone from one world that had no place for him to one that he couldn't find a place in.
Voluntary freaks? He shuddered.
No, no, he wouldn't judge them. He couldn't. Not after all he'd been through. After all, he'd attempted to make a living by exhibiting his deformity, touring Britain with people of all shapes and sizes: bearded ladies, two-ton men, the limbless, the foreign. At least these future bodies were deliberately chosen. At least they could be easily fixed.
And this particular future body was magnificent. He wondered just what he could do in it. Did they have sports in this future? Could he go running? Play badminton? Swim?
Could he even find himself a lady friend?
He clapped his hands over his suddenly-warm cheeks, then let himself smile.
Smiling. That was also something he hadn't been able to do since he was a small boy.
He stood up and said, "Computer, silver wall."
A warm brown face smiled back at him.
He could get used to being a Negro, given a little time.
And in exchange for this body, he would get used to this future. It seemed a fair enough trade.
