Bodies Without Borders

The woman in front of me had a name tag stuck to her bare left breast, and the adhesive was coming loose. That's the first thing I remember about Compound Life, or whatever they ended up calling it. Her name was Dana. The tag said so in blue ballpoint. She was crying without making any sound, tears cutting clean lines through the dust on her cheeks, and nobody around us seemed to think the nakedness was worth mentioning.

I was naked too. So was everyone else in the intake hall, a concrete cavern the size of a football stadium with fluorescent lights that buzzed like trapped hornets. We stood in loose rows, maybe a hundred of us in this first group, and the air smelled of bleach and something underneath it, something sweet and chemical, like the inside of a hospital.

A man in a gray jumpsuit walked down the line with a tablet. He stopped in front of me and looked at my face, then at the tablet, then back at my face.

"You're Cooper," he said. Not a question.

"I think so."

"You think so."

"I remember it. Cooper. But I don't remember much else." I touched my temple. The skin felt hot. "There's a gap."

"There's supposed to be a gap." He tapped the tablet. "You'll fill it in. Everyone does."

Dana's tag peeled off and fluttered to the floor. She didn't pick it up. I wanted to pick it up for her, but I didn't know her, and we were naked, and touching a stranger's fallen name tag felt like it might be against some rule I hadn't learned yet.

The gray-suited man, whose own tag read INSTRUCTOR VOSS, led us through a corridor wide enough to drive a truck through. The walls were unpainted concrete, smooth and cold. Every thirty feet or so, a screen was mounted at eye level, and each screen showed the same looping footage: green fields, a blue sky, children running. No sound. Just the images, repeating.

"Where's the surface?" a man behind me asked. His voice cracked on the last word.

Voss didn't turn around. "The surface is what we're preserving. You'll learn about it in orientation."

"That's not what I asked."

Voss stopped. He turned, and his face was patient in a way that made my stomach tighten. "You asked a question you already know the answer to. You know why you're here. You signed the consent forms. You took the dose. The surface isn't your concern anymore. Your concern is the community. Your concern is each other."

We filed into a room with tiered benches, like a lecture hall, except the benches were padded and the floor was carpeted in a soft gray fiber that felt good under my bare feet. I sat next to Dana because she was still crying and nobody else was sitting near her. She looked at me, startled, then grateful, then embarrassed. She crossed her arms over her chest. I kept my eyes on her face. It seemed like the decent thing.

A woman stepped onto the stage at the front. She was older, maybe sixty, with silver hair cut short and a gray jumpsuit identical to Voss's except for a red stripe down each sleeve. She didn't introduce herself. She just started talking.

"My name is Director Hale. You won't remember me tomorrow, and that's fine. What you'll remember is what I'm about to tell you, because we're going to repeat it until it's yours."

She walked to the edge of the stage and sat down, legs dangling over the side like a kid on a dock. It was disarming. I think that was the point.

"You've been given a drug that erases your episodic memory. Your skills are intact. Your language is intact. Your personality is mostly intact. What's gone is the story you told yourself about who you were. That story was the problem. That story is what brought the world to the brink."

Dana made a small sound beside me. I put my hand on the bench between us, not touching her, just there.

"Here's what we're going to build," Hale said. "A society without shame. Shame is the engine of every cruelty you can name. Shame about the body, shame about desire, shame about needing other people. We're going to take that engine out."

She gestured, and the screens along the walls flickered to a new image: a group of adults, naked, sitting in a circle on a carpeted floor, talking. They looked calm. They looked like they were at a book club.

"Nudity is the default here," Hale said. "Not because we're prudes about clothing, but because clothing creates hierarchy. It creates concealment. It creates the idea that there's something to hide. When everyone is bare, nobody has anything to be ashamed of. You'll wear jumpsuits for work and for cold, but in your living spaces, in your social spaces, you'll be as you are. You'll get used to it in a week. Everyone does."

I looked around the room. A few people were nodding. Most were staring at their hands or the ceiling. A woman two rows down had her knees pulled up to her chest, and she was shaking.

"Sex," Hale continued, and she said the word like it was any other word, "is not a transaction and it's not a secret. It's a form of communication. We don't lock it behind marriage or romance or whatever story you used to tell. If two people want each other, they can have each other. If they want to be witnessed, they can be witnessed. If they want privacy, they can have privacy, but privacy is a preference here, not a right. You'll learn to ask for what you want. You'll learn to hear no without shame and yes without guilt."

Dana's hand found mine on the bench. I didn't pull away. Her fingers were cold.

"Relationships," Hale said, "are not exclusive. Exclusivity is a scarcity model. It says love is a limited resource and you have to hoard it. We're going to teach you abundance. You can love many people. You can sleep with many people. You can build a life with many people. Jealousy is a wound, not a virtue, and we're going to heal it."

A man in the back stood up. "That's not healing. That's erasure."

Hale looked at him without anger. "What's your name?"

"Marcus."

"Marcus, you're right. It is erasure. We erased the version of you that believed possession was love. Tomorrow you'll wake up and you won't remember why you were angry. You'll just feel the anger, and you won't know where it came from, and you'll have to decide what to do with it. That's the work. That's the whole point."

Marcus sat down. His hands were fists on his thighs.

"Privacy," Hale said, "is the last thing. We don't have locks on doors here. We don't have curtains. We don't have secrets. You can go to a quiet room if you need to be alone, but anyone can join you. Anyone can watch. Anyone can ask you what you're feeling and you're expected to answer honestly. This isn't punishment. It's practice. We're practicing being known."

Dana leaned toward me. Her breath was warm on my ear. "I don't want to be known," she whispered. "I want to go home."

I didn't know where home was. I didn't know if I had one. I didn't know anything except the weight of her hand in mine and the hum of the lights and the way Hale's voice kept going, calm and certain, building a world out of words.

"We'll begin with touch," Hale said. "Partner up. Face each other. Hold hands. Look into each other's eyes for five minutes. No talking. Just looking. You'll be surprised what happens."

Around us, people started moving. Dana turned to face me. Her eyes were red and wet and scared. I turned too. I took both her hands in both of mine.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," she said.

And we looked.