I’m tired, I say to her. Speaking past her. I have an appointment with Silpa first thing. Can we continue this later? My door is always open.
Don’t be an ass.
To talk.
I’m through with talking, she says. Aren’t you? It’s time for decisions. And not waiting for a reply, or a question, she pivots and disappears.
10
On a dark screen six feet tall, a screen I could fall into, I watch life-sized, naked photographs of myself, one after another: frontal, profile, half-angles, close-ups on the chin, the nose, the eyes. It’s like a bizarre video installation, I’m thinking, a work of performance art, crossed with an initiation ritual. There are creases I never noticed under my chin, a constellation of moles beneath my left armpit. My eyes show the faint beginnings of crow’s feet. My penis is a strange dark color, sullen, almost bruised. A photograph like this, I’m thinking, is harsher than a mirror under bright light: something about its being preserved makes it harder to face.
But it won’t be preserved.
You’re making me self-conscious, I say. Maybe I should just get an ordinary facelift. A little liposuction.
Let’s get started, Silpa says, turned away from me, clicking away at the desktop monitor across the room. Begin by focusing on the face. For practical reasons, and aesthetic reasons, the principle here is to do as little as possible to achieve the desired effect. So we’re not talking a severe epicanthal single fold. Really the enlargement and adjustment of the eye socket will be quite small. The result will be like this. I’ll change the skin tone, too, to give you the full effect.
The new image spools down from the top, the same thinning hairline, the faint widow’s peak, slightly narrowed eyebrows. Only with the eyes does the face become someone else’s. I know those eyes, I’m thinking, I recognize those eyes. Someone I knew in Weiming, someone at Harvard? How many thirty-something Chinese men have I known? Stop! I say, a little louder than I intended.
What’s the problem?
That’s a photograph, right? That’s not me.
It’s not a photograph. It’s software. Didn’t I explain this? Predictive modeling. Those are your eyes, Kelly. Really, the change is very minor. It’s essentially just padding the eye socket a little around the edges. And then adding a slightly folded epicanthus. I’m surprised it startles you. To me the effect is almost not enough. I could make it much more pronounced. Should I continue?
When I don’t answer, he taps the keyboard again, and the rest of the face appears, centimeter by centimeter. A smaller nose. Slimmer lips. Narrower shoulders. He’s reducing me by ten percent. A flatter stomach, bonier hips. Even the knees are less pronounced, somehow. And the skin? Only when I look away and look back do I see it: a weakening of the light, a slightly sepia tone over my normal color.
This is crazy. What are you going to do, Silpa, shave down every part of my anatomy?
What do you mean? We’re only talking about alterations to the face. Plus skin tone, of course, which is chemical. No other surgery.
Then why do I look so different?
He laughs. It’s the eyes, he says. I see it all the time. Change the eyes, tweak the nose, and it’s a different person. Haven’t you heard the old saying about how a nose job takes off fifteen pounds?
No.
I suppose it’s a joke in the business.
Who is this man? I close my eyes and open them again, slowly, and again; I turn my face away and back; I get up from the stool, go out into the hallway, shut the door, open it, and reenter. Who are you? How are you? How did you come to be, sourceless human being, person from nowhere, person who has never existed, who should never exist? It’s a vertiginous feeling, a feeling that starts in the feet and gathers momentum in the thighs, as if I’ve leaned over a balcony railing, drawn by something I’ve seen fifteen stories down. A vertiginous feeling, that is, of having leaned against the natural settling order of one’s joints, but also a feeling that originates between the thighs. Arousal. Arousal out of something deeply wrong.
What this is, I think, without stopping to explain the thought, what this is, is a kind of incest. A violation of the natural process. A skipping ahead.
Let’s go through the next steps, Silpa says. I turn back to face him, and he folds his hands in his lap, retreating into doctor mode. First, we make up an agreement and sign it. It’s a formality, but we have to do it, because it’s a two-way financial transaction. Because by electing to pay for the operation, you become a shareholder in the company. Understood? Next, you write your RLTP plan. You’ve read Martin’s, right? In your case I think we have to forgo the actual period, because of the anatomical difficulties. But you need to have a full day of reflection before the surgery begins.
What anatomical difficulties?
Because in your case, unlike Martin, there’s no way you can pass without the operation being complete. You understand, right? There’s no halfway point here. Once you go, you go all the way.
I understand.
Immediately after that — really as soon as possible — you have to give me your passport. Altering U.S. passports is an enormous task these days. We have the best technicians working on it, but it can take more than two weeks. Because of all the new security features. What other passports are you going to want? PRC? Taiwan? Singapore?
I can choose more than one?
You can do more or less whatever you want. We’re starting from scratch, aren’t we? The only question is how much you want to spend. And of course, some things are off limits. No one can become a North Korean citizen. The CIA has been trying for sixty years. And of course, outside of the realm of the impossible, there are still time constraints. Complete U.S. or UK or German citizenships take six months. With Scandinavian countries or Canada, if you have enough money, it’s better to start elsewhere and go through immigration. By those standards the PRC is actually extremely easy, if you go through the right channels. We have an ex-PLA contact here in Bangkok who can do it in a week — passports, ID cards, all the relevant databases, everything. I think the going rate is around two hundred thousand baht. That’s about seven thousand U.S. Taiwan is a little more — maybe three hundred thousand. But, of course, as a U.S. citizen you can live in Taiwan as long as you like. It’s all a matter of where you want to feel at home.
How much does changing the U.S. passport cost?
Oh, don’t worry about that. Martin’s covering it. It’s his gift to you. I think he called it your country club initiation fee. You must know what that means better than I do. Of course, you know, U.S. citizenship can be problematic, once you get into a certain income bracket. You might take this opportunity to choose a tax haven. Those are the easiest, of course. The Cayman Islands, for example. Or Monaco. I believe Martin himself has his assets somewhere in the Caribbean. Antigua, or the Virgin Islands.
I’ll have to think about it.
Of course. And we have an accountant, too, who works with us. Kamala. A very nice Indian lady from Singapore with an MBA from the Wharton School. She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Toishan, Hindi, Malay, English of course, French, and Italian. She can talk to you about all the financial ramifications. I know that’s not your specialty. Nor mine. The most important thing, frankly, is the narrative. You have to have it down. You have to believe who you are. Or else there’s a risk of a certain schizoid feeling.