Woman of Glass
by Stephen W. Cote
Well dressed, the mammoth was dark skinned - possibly Samoan, Julian thought briefly - and pushing a wheelchair out the only handicapped exit in the Pipeline, the one in the back. Julian nearly dropped his Les Paul and stumbled back. The huge man turned around and shot a scowl.
"Bashi, my blanket. It's cold out." The voice from the wheelchair sounded very young and very female, though her words were articulate and her tone was scholarly.
Bashi - the huge, dark skinned man - obliged the cripple and left the building.
Julian sank back against the wall, waiting for the rest of the band, and swore profusely. The Pipeline was an upperclass rock pit that served real beer and didn't make a fuss over synthetics. He often found himself attracted to the lush voices and perfect curves the synthetics had, though didn't think a modernized, inflata-mate would make good conversation.
"Jules!"
Julian clenched his left hand, the concealed stun gun trigger in his middle finger half cocked. He waited until the stranger walked into the light and let down his guard when he could identify him. "Carlos. What's the deal?"
Carlos, the bassist for Julian's band - Gabrielle's Trumpet - dropped his axe next to Julian's. "Garcia's crib fused a model A when you cut out."
"Christ!" Julian cussed again. Garcia's crib, a good thirty New Seattle Latinos, made themselves infamous for buying a model A synthetic with a magnetic emotional processor, and forcing it to fuse by overloading the magnetic receptor. Model A's were supposed to have brought peace between the humans and synthetics because they were designed around a sapient processor but received emotional input from people around it. An angry human with a model A made the synthetic angry. When too many people stood around it - the processor had a fatal flaw - the receptor would burn in the emotional pattern, preventing it from being erased in the future. Garcia's crib usually did this for kicks.
"Gloria got knocked around and her drums got sixed." Carlos frowned and then slapped his hands together. "Bang!" He shook his head, sitting down in the hallway with Julian. "All screwed up."
"Say man, I just saw the biggest dude. I ran right into him and he didn't give a shiver at all. Just looked at me as if I was nothing and then pushed some crip out." Julian shook his head, shaken up more by the mammoth than the news of Garcia's crib causing another riot. He could still here screams from the main room.
"Don't you know nothing?" Carlos kicked Julian's ankle. "That was the bodyguard for the chick that was in the Net News." Carlos was silent, looking to see if Gloria was out of the ruckus yet. "She lives right next to you, man. You never seen her?"
Julian shook his head. "I don't shiver easily, homes, but I don't take down my window armor unless there's a good reason. That black dude's crib moved in on my block and they don't even say nothing - at least nothing you can understand, dig it - they just start shooting."
Carlos kicked Julian again. "You high? They're no real crib. That's a gang of model A's that Garcia made but couldn't control. They're mimicking Garcia and just mess things up. Cops'll clean them up."
"Yeah, right." Julian wasn't concerned that New Seattle's law enforcement was ineffective. It simply didn't exist. Instead of hiring good boys to clean up crime that would, four out of five times, just clean up them instead, the city made people who moved in sign a release form that stated very clearly: you are entitled to call the police, but they may not be held liable for what transpires. Julian privately thought of them as a crew of trash collectors. They weren't just mean and brutal, they'd x-bomb an entire neighborhood. The odd thing was, they never killed anyone. Julian thought it strange that an x-bomb would make someone so mad they forget what they are mad about, and pretty soon, they aren't mad anymore.
Carlos snapped his fingers in front of Julian's face. "Dude, hey. You should check out that chick's nest, man. She'd prolly have some cool stuff you could use. I mean, shoot, you're neighbors and all."
Julian, already annoyed with being kicked, looked darkly at Carlos. "Are you high? You see that bodyfreak of hers? What, bake her cookies and then ask her if she happens to have a spare Fender in her pad? You're high."
Carlos shook his head. "No, I mean effects, dude. Kick this. We'd be the hippest group to hit the Pipeline."
"Yeah, sure." Julian looked down the hall then grabbed his axe. "It's Gloria, let's go. She promised me some tail tonight."
Carlos took his bass and snorted. "That tails been around too many times to be trustworthy."
Julian coughed, "when it's all you getting, you don't complain."
"You'd better wise up, Jules. Shoot, you be a little more romantic and I'd bet you'd get some high class, clean tail, and some of that intelligent conversation you keep complaining you don't have." Carlos helped Gloria with the few bits and pieces of her drum set she had managed to pack up - all of what she had thoroughly trashed - and the three left into the alley.
"Damn," Gloria said when all three had cleared the back exit. "I almost got it in there. The manager blew in with a damn x-rifle and started mopping up all the model A's and must have hit everyone else after I slipped out."
Julian lead Gloria and Carlos out of the Alley. Out on the street, they watched as a tactical squad moved in and pitched four or five x-grenades into the Pipeline. Julian cringed and turned away. Gloria started walking away with Julian following..
"That's some bad stuff they're using. I'd rather be shot dead that get hit with any of that." Carlos winced against a bright flash that bled out onto the street. The crowd had thickened around him and he had to fight through several synthetic whores to catch up to Gloria and Julian.
"Jules," Gloria said, pushing Julian's hand off her hip, "not tonight. My mood's all spoiled. Another time, okay?"
Julian shrugged and waved off Gloria and Carlos. It was later than he would have liked it to be, so hailed a mag-cab.
The mag-cab's skids screeched over a landing strip and a door slid open. Julian climbed in, put his axe on the floor, and pulled the flight harness down over his body.
"Where to?" The voice came from somewhere in the front, behind three inches of kevlar and high impact ceramic.
Julian wheezed and believed he had just hailed the dirtiest cab in the city. "Capital Hill, 12th and Madison."
The mag-cab lurched upwards and forward, drifting in and out of the sky lane. The lane was marked with a series of hovering buoys that designated flight windows. They were far enough apart to be safe for air traffic and use narrow band radio transmissions for the guidance computers, but close enough to remind anyone that someone was watching them.
When the mag-cab rocketed down to a strip near 12th and Madison, Julian slid his check card through a slot on the ceiling then entered his twelve digit personal identification number. A computerized voice bid him a nice day and a blinking red light over an x-gun pointed directly at him invited him to not cause any problems leaving the vehicle.
Julian's house, all that was left over after his parents had died, was a nice place, and in a generally decent neighborhood, had it not been for the new gang that had moved in. As he approached, he saw the mammoth wheeling the child into the house next to his. He stopped and watched curiously, wondering why, in the fourteen years he had lived there, he had never known who was living next to him. No home had windows anymore - there was no need for them with nature scene viewers - and the older homes, like his, had armored shutters that were never removed.
The mammoth turned and looked directly at him, giving off another grunt. Julian started walking briskly past when the huge man turned and started walking after him. Flooded with fear, he wondered if the x-grenade he kept in his pocket would mean anything to such a large, barbaric looking man. He hoped he didn't have to find out.
Julian stopped walking, though purposefully looked forward, holding his axe in one hand and his other hand buried in his pocket, clenching the x-grenade.
"Excuse me," Bashi said with a thick accent Julian couldn't describe.
Julian felt his blood curdle. "I don't want any trouble, dig? I wasn't looking at nothing, so no trouble."
Bashi laughed deeply and the sound rather surprised Julian. It was almost gay, lively, and above anything else, gentle. "My friend would like to know if you would play for her."
Julian turned around slowly, holding his axe closer to him, though taking his hand off the x-grenade. He started to say something, then stopped, looking past Bashi at the girl. She looked pitiful, hunched over in the blankets. Julian hadn't noticed until then how cold and dreary it was outside with a light drizzle leaving silvery lines on everything. "She looks safe enough. What about you?" He wasn't one who offered charity for anyone, though he had never had anyone ask for private performance either.
"I just make sure she feels safe from you," Bashi said with the same warm, deep tone.
Julian nodded reluctantly and decided he would do a quick song then get back home.
Bashi returned to the girl and pushed her into the house, beckoning Julian to follow. The inside of the house was warm and reminded Julian of Christmas. There wasn't an open space anywhere. Every corner had some strange object or piece of art that Julian couldn't recognize. Bashi wheeled the girl into the living room and then left her alone with Julian.
Julian felt extremely uncomfortable, though nodded to the young girl. "I'm Julian. You have a nice home." His compliment sounded empty, he realized, and without much sincerity.
"Thank you," the girl said very softly. She sounded sickly and was moderately attractive, though her head was too large for her body and her features were mousy. Her hands were folded together on her lap and her legs were strapped against the base of the wheelchair.
Julian couldn't help notice a belt across her lap and one under her shoulders, keeping her upright. "I've never been asked to do this, it's enough to make a guy shiver."
"I've never been bold enough to ask anyone, so we're even." The girl smiled. Her lips were thin, dry and a sickly gray color. "I'm Lee. Please, sit down." She pointed to a chair on the other side of the room.
Julian set his axe down near the chair and sat down, looking about the room. "You live here alone?"
"With Bashi, my husband." Her lips twitched as she spoke.
"You're married?" Julian asked in disbelief.
Lee looked down at the ring on her hand, "yes and no. It was a marriage of necessity. I needed to get out of the Mideast and Bashi wouldn't let me leave alone, but neither of us could emigrate anywhere as singles, so we married each other." Her eyes fluttered.
Julian looked around the room again. It was eery how she didn't move at all, though something in the back of his head told him that she couldn't even if she wanted to, and then screamed at him to get out of there. On the wall across from him was a sketch of a woman, possibly a synthetic, though made entirely of a liquidy substance, almost as if a statue of glass. But it wasn't a picture, more like a framed blueprint.
"You wanted to hear a song?" Julian asked, wanting the night to be over.
Lee smiled. "Honestly, I wanted the company, but a song will suffice."
Julian pulled the Les Paul out of the case and checked the tune on each string.
"Bashi told me there was trouble at the club after I left. What happened? I've been lucky enough not to get caught in the path of the police or a gang fight." Lee's eyes hunted over Julian, watching every movement.
Julian didn't reply until he had finished tuning the guitar. He then looked directly at Lee and frowned. "The same thing that happens everynight outside. Someone makes a move and someone shivers and calls the cops or uses an x-bomb. Then the whole place settles down until someone new starts the process over again." With the guitar on his knee, he found it hard to think of an appropriate song to sing. His band was really a lousy thrash band with no hits and who could barely survive more than a month at one spot before being fired.
"They say that the x-bombs - in fact, all the x-series weapons - are the only thing that keeps the peace anymore." Lee cocked her head.
Julian hit a 'C' chord and played through a few blues notes. "And dig this, nobody has any clue what they do or why they work."
Lee looked blankly at Julian, as if in shock. "The x-series weapons prevented World War III, and you don't even know what they are?"
Julian shook his head dumbly. "I'm not the only one."
Lee laughed with the resolve a mother would give to an innocent, and ignorant, child. "They are modified chemical laizing devices. They are really only a vial of xenon gas that is super cooled to form a liquid, then super heated, dispersing a low level form of radiation that burns off all your clothes, body hair, and several layers of skin. The psychological effect passes, but at the time, is quite devastating. The person just lost everything that makes them stand out from everyone else. Their brains are so deeply ingrained with those physical attributes that the person is unable to respond to other primal stimulation that would result in a violent or aggressive action."
Julian looked back down at his guitar, "if they work so well, why do people keep causing all the trouble."
Lee continued to smile, though this time, with more understanding. "Because everyone has the right to make their own decisions. If they do something wrong, and someone stops them, they should have the ability to learn that their actions were wrong. But, it seems, that lately, the learned reaction has been to accept the xenon defenses, so they only work as a deterrent."
Julian nodded, accepting that for face value without understanding most of it. "Who is that?" He pointed at the picture of the woman of glass on the wall behind him. He felt like singing a song about that.
Lee, without turning her head, said, "a silly dream I've had. I'm a synthetic scientist, you know." She watched Julian for a reaction, then went on. "It is a fiber optic driven chassis that is controlled by a remote device."
Julian nodded dumbly again. Then he looked up. "You're a scientist?"
"I'm twenty," she paused and rolled her eyes, "twenty six, and not only cursed with, well, you know, but also with an aptitude for my studies."
"A genius," Julian said softly.
"So some would say. You ready with my song?"
Julian nodded and plugged the guitar into a small amp housed in the case. He turned the distortion off and set the effects processor to a nylon resonation. He picked the strings gingerly to give make the guitar sing hollow, empty echoes of notes. When he sang, he made his voice as soft as he could.
"I'm given to dreaming you'd be there // When at most I needed someone to care // About the things I've done // All the way back to when my life begun." He let the notes slip by his fingers, slowly building in intensity. "I'm partial to thinking there's a chance // Within the hollow remains of this woman of glass // Is it only a dark and sinister fantasy // That waits for me in this reality." He allowed his voice to scale over the words with more inflections, sounding less like the original whispering and more like an opera singer, dancing from high to low notes on a whim. "My best friend is a woman of glass, and if you were me // I'd marry her for the memory of who she used to be // Now she's all empty and transparent inside, a woman of glass // Every curve is a lustrous window into her empty world, a world of glass." His voice faded away, though he kept playing the same rhythm.
Lee smiled, listening with some interest.
"You want to give it a go?"
Lee smiled and nodded, "I'll try."
When she sang, Julian was surprised at how refined her singing voice was, and she had picked up on the theme of his song very accurately and quickly.
"I'm a woman of glass, yes I know it's for real // I long for your touch, for something to feel // I didn't mean to be born this way // I've had to live with this nothing called my life from day to day to day." She closed her eyes and listened to Julian finish the song. "It's late, I should be sleeping now."
Julian nodded and put away the Les Paul. He remembered how much he wanted to leave when he saw that Bashi had been standing just inside the room. Julian glanced at Lee, then left quickly, not saying goodbye.
When Julian had left, Lee look at Bashi for a long moment. "Bashi, bring me the spine tap."
Bashi said without hesitation, "it's late, Lee. Perhaps you'd be better doing it tomorrow?"
Lee shook her head. When Bashi returned with the spine tap - a fiber optic cable leading to her laboratory in the basement, he unsnapped her from the wheelchair and took off her shirt. Three coaxial cable ports stuck out of her skin along the embossed portion of her back where her spine poked through. Bashi plugged the ends of the fiber optic cable into each port, snapped the belt around Lee again, then drew the blanket over her bare shoulders.
"When you're ready, Lee," he said softly, not sure she should be using the device when he knew she was so tired.
"I'm ready," Lee said firmly.
She waited for her world of confinement of pain drifted away into a vision of strength and crystal clarity. She felt her arms and legs, powerful extensions of her body under her complete command, surge with life.
Lee hadn't designed the glass body for any other reason than superb reflexes only fiber optics allowed, and a transparency that would make her almost invisible at night.
Julian managed to forget about the strange events that had transpired four months before in his neighbors house. Although he didn't tell Carlos or Gloria what happened, he forgot all about Bashi and Lee, about her voice, even what the x-series weapons did. He couldn't, however, get the image of the woman of glass out of his mind.
The Pipeline had picked up their contract for another month, a very pleasant surprise to the three piece band, after they introduced a new smash hit single, A Woman of Glass. When the band had finished playing that evening, they hurried off the stage before the crowd could get past the fencing, and managed to make it out the back door without incident.
"Bang!" Carlos said aloud, smiling widely. "We're it, man." He slapped Gloria's and Julian's shoulder.
"You're high, Carlos," Gloria said darkly. She showed faint signs of relief behind her sarcasm.
Julian kept quiet and started walking to the end of the alley. "Let's fly, man. Garcia's supposed to hit the Pipe sometime this week, and I don't want to get caught in it."
Carlos laughed Julian off, "man, don't you ever read the news? The synthetic whores are fighting back against Garcia and his crib. X-bombs don't do anything to them."
Julian nodded, playing along as if he knew all about it. "We're not synthetic though, Carlos."
The three made it to the end of the alley when they heard the sound of grinding metal and splintering wood. They wheeled around to see two gang members, probably from Garcia's crib, laughing and walking towards them.
"Chick, chick, chicky," the smaller one sang menacingly.
"Hey, chicken legs," the other sang along. "Come here."
Gloria tried to muscle her way past Julian and Carlos, but stumbled backwards.
"No trouble man," Carlos swore. "We're protected," he lied.
A crowd had gathered around mouth of the alley, waiting to see the crib make its kill.
Julian bit his lip and looked around. He felt for his x-grenade in his pocket and twisted the thumb catch off with his index finger.
"Ah, ah," the smaller of the crib said, raising an x-pistol at Julian.
"Just try it, I don't shiver." Julian stood his ground.
Carlos took several steps back but was then pushed back into the alley by several of Garcia's crib who stood in the crowd.
"Oh, they're gone, man," a distant voice commented.
Others made similar comments.
Someone near the front of the crowd, a rather large man, said in a deep, rich tone. "Even street scum have a guardian angel looking out for them."
Something stirred in the shadows behind the two crib boys, a silver streak in the night air. Julian couldn't believe what he was seeing. First they were leering at him and stalking them, then something picked them both up and hurled them against the wall.
"Damn synthetic," several in the crowd cursed.
Gloria screamed, "Madre de Dios, look!" She pointed at what was only a dream for Julian.
A woman of glass, transparent to the night's shadows, stood at the far end of the alley. Blades of light flashed through the body in rainbow synergy along a translucent neural network. Carlos hit Julian's shoulder, "it's from the song, dude. The song come to life."
The woman of glass turned and was immediately immersed in the shadows, disappearing.
Julian started towards her when a strong hand pulled him into the crowd. He looked back to see Bashi's face smiling calmly.
"Someone wants to see you."
Julian nodded dumbly and let Bashi guide him through the crowd, leaving Carlos and Gloria in the alley in utter stupefication. Bashi lead Julian to Freeway Park, several blocks away, and then started to walk away.
"What am I supposed to do?" Julian asked, still half paralyzed from fear and shock.
"Wait here," Bashi said, then left.
Julian sat down on one of the benches, listening to the mag-cars buzz through the air overhead. Soon after Bashi left, a hand delicately touched his shoulder from behind. He stood up and turned around, face to face with the woman of glass. "It's you. From the picture."
The woman of glass offered no sign of emotion, though the lights dancing through her body gave him an idea. "I've been watching you, Julian. You don't understand how much this freedom means to me, how much you have done for me."
Julian shook his head, taking several steps back. The synthetic advanced and placed both hands on his shoulders.
"Please, don't be afraid, Julian." The voice was melodic, but soft and articulate.
"I know you," he said, though he questioned his memory and couldn't place the voice. He only remembered seeing the picture of the woman at his neighbor's house.
The woman of glass approached Julian, the front of her luminous body touching his. "Julian, I need you."
Julian slowly shook his head, "this is grade A, first class weird. I don't do synthetics."
The light patterns inside the woman of glass became a darker color, mourning purple streaks and somber amber hues. "You don't have to do anything, Julian. But when you sang that song to me, then sang it to the world, I thought you wanted to sing to me again. It gave me hope, Julian. Hope that, somehow, you loved me."
Julian blinked and then winced. "Lee," he said darkly. "Lee," he said again. "Why are you doing this to me?"
The woman of glass touched Julian's cheek, "because in those few moments we had together, I fell in love with you. And this is the only way I can be free from the prison of my body."
Julian shook his head again, "no. What do you want?"
The woman of glass backed away from Julian. "Are you afraid of what I am back at the house? Isn't this what you always wanted? A beautiful woman with an intelligent mind? Am I not both of those now?"
Julian grimaced. "But it's not the same, Lee. I don't know you. I just can't," and he turned and ran. He passed Bashi who only looked at him with sorrow, then back at the woman of glass.
Alone in the dark back at his house, Julian found he couldn't sleep. He was haunted by the sound of Lee's voice, by the beauty of the woman of glass, and by how right she had been. The woman of glass was what he had always wanted, a perfect woman with a perfect mind who was ready to make sacrifices for him. But he realized that he wasn't able, or simply couldn't, make any sacrifices for her. She never gave him the chance to decide. But, he realized, she had asked him, and in that moment, his chance had arrived and left in the same fleeting moment.
How he wanted somebody to love that would love him back. He climbed out of bed and then outside, looking out into the dangerous night. How utterly proper, he thought, that Bashi was standing on his front walk.
Julian nodded, though said nothing.
"You crushed her tonight, Julian," Bashi said.
Julian stared slack jawed at Bashi. "I sang her a song. A damn song. And she spied on me, she followed me. For all I know, she has her fingers into every part of my life."
Bashi shrugged. "We don't have a lot of time, Julian. To Lee, that was the only way."
"A lot of time for what?" Julian leaned against the house, ignoring the bitter cold.
"It may come as no surprise to you that she is dying. She has devoted her life to inventing a way to transfer her mind into an optic network that would preserve what we could call a soul. She is close, Julian, very close. The synthetic you met tonight was her new body."
Julian took his turn to shrug. "So?"
"If she succeeds, and her mortal body dies, I will legally be forced to return to India. As a synthetic made by an Indian scientist, the synthetic would be shipped there, where synthetics are not quite as liberated as they are here."
Julian frowned slightly, "and you couldn't be with her?"
Bashi said peacefully and reverently, "I can't be with her if she dies, and I can't be with her if she succeeds in living in a synthetic body. We took our marriage vows in India. I must return there to mourn and then remarry an Indian."
"Why me, Bashi," Julian said at last. "Why'd she choose me?"
"Possibly because you didn't shiver when you met her. You stayed. You're not comfortable around her now, but you were true to yourself and to her. That platform of devotion happens only one time in a million." Bashi stood still, as if he felt neither the coldness in the air or allowed the sorrow in his heart to surface.
"But I'm not devoted to her," Julian argued. "Now you want me to marry a synthetic? That kind of thing won't just get me x-bombed, it could get me killed."
Bashi looked directly at Julian. "Humor me and stop arguing the inane. If you do not want to help her, that is all you have to say and I will leave. But before you decide, understand that young woman has never had the chance to live outside of a protected environment. She needs more than anything to have someone be there for her. She needs someone like you who can teach her about the world, and who she can in turn teach the things you may not have had the opportunity to learn."
Julian started to say something, but Bashi stopped him.
"Whatever you decide, I'd appreciate it if you told her yourself." Bashi turned and walked into the night.
Julian couldn't remember why he even listened to Bashi that night so long ago, but when he saw the woman of glass emerge from the darkness that night in the alley, he realized that in His own strange way, God was giving him a protecting angel against the cruel world. In a some respects, perhaps he too was being an angel for Lee. Lee died three weeks after that night, and strangely enough, Julian started seeing more and more of the woman of glass.
Although Gloria and Carlos would never let him live down that he married a synthetic, albeit a very advanced and beautiful one that was more human than anyone had ever known, they eventually stopped criticizing him. It took Julian a long time before he would admit to himself, or tell Lee, that he loved her, but she gave him the time and the opportunity to decide for himself. In the meantime, he discovered that the woman of glass he married had more inside of her to offer than anybody he had ever met.
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Last Updated: Feb 21, 1996