The Face Factory E-Book

Ithaka O.

• Herausgeber: Imaginarium Kim
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Arthur Schopenhauer. Frida Kahlo. Helen of Troy.

Bazz is the proud designer of the unique, noble, and memorable faces given to these icons.

Art. Craft. Life itself. That is what face design is, for Bazz.

He does whatever it takes to design faces that make a human’s life worth living: spending long shifts at his workstation at the Face Design Department, dealing with his uninspiring boss, and limiting his existential rumination to the briefest of moments so that he doesn’t think too much about the Nothing or Everything that lies beyond the Earth Life Production Center. By moons, suns, and stars, if he didn’t dedicate himself to his vision, he wouldn’t even know what to do with himself!

His existence goes on splendidly, until, all of a sudden, a formless yet formidable enemy appears:

More and more humans are populating Earth. Each of them needs a face to be born with. And nowadays, this annoying thing called the internet happens to come equipped with technology that makes the re-use of a classic face definitely tricky and potentially dangerous…

* A novel about the awakening of a man, in the process of the unfolding of life and death that crosses multiple worlds and connects countless reflections of the various selves.

Leseprobe

THE FACE FACTORY

ITHAKA O.

IMAGINARIUM KIM

© 2024 Ithaka O.

All rights reserved.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this story may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.

For my baby gladiator

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Thank you for reading

1

Schopenhauer. Not just any Schopenhauer, but the Arthur Schopenhauer, the one who wrote The World As Will and Representation and many other works that are quite entertaining—which is impressive and shocking, given that he considered himself to be of the profession that humans call “philosopher.”

That guy. You’ve probably heard about that guy before, and his many intellectual accomplishments. But what’s even more impressive about that guy is his signature hairstyle.

Bazz liked that hairstyle of Schopenhauer’s very much. Nothing conveyed determination, grumpiness, and wisdom as clearly as hair that grew parallel to the ground from both sides of one’s skull, with the middle section nearly empty. Combine this hairstyle with Schopenhauer’s tightly shut lips, plus his collared white shirt and dark coat that used to be the norm for men of the 19th century with the wherewithal to sit all day long in front of a desk and make stuff up (a.k.a. philosophers), and you got that signature Schopenhauer Look captured in his well-known portrait. It’s the one on Wikipedia. You can look it up.

Ah, how Bazz was going to miss Schopenhauer’s quarter-point face! How many times in the past forever had Bazz returned to that quarter-point face that was to grow into that beautiful portrait face or some similar version of it? How many times, when he was being harassed by the very uncreative and demeaning concept of a “quota” to meet, had he resorted to that quarter-point face yet once more, over and over again?

It was a beautiful face. In fact, Bazz would argue that at least half of Schopenhauer’s success as a philosopher resulted from this very face that Bazz had created.

Yes. Its creator. Bazz. Not Schopie’s Mama, not Schopie’s Dada, but Bazz.

He’d been the one who’d sat in front of the glowing monitor multiple shifts long, ignoring the protests of his watering eyes and his unoriginal boss. He’d been the one who’d made the place for the future wrinkle lines, decades before Arthur was old enough to contemplate death and aging as more than theoretical concepts. And he’d been the one who’d planted those strands of hair on the sides of the guy’s skull in just such a way that helped them defy gravity. It wasn’t easy to adhere to Earth’s rules of physics and still get innovative with the direction of hair growth, you see? It took a craftsperson as dedicated as Bazz to come up with a face like Arthur Schopenhauer’s: so unique, noble, and memorable.

And now they were telling Bazz to come up with a million more faces. They weren’t giving him a million shifts to do it either. Nay. They wanted a million faces in a hundred shifts or less, and it wasn’t going to end as a one-time thing. They wanted that rate consistently. Into eternity. Forever.

It was ridiculous. Didn’t they understand? There could be only so many unique noble memorable faces. That was why Bazz had returned to Schopenhauer’s face over and over again—because it’s better to re-use a classic a million times than to create a million disposable crap.

But they were telling Bazz: the rules of physics on Earth now include something called the internet.

2

Bazz appreciated the thick windows of all offices at work. He didn’t get to sit in his own personal office yet—no matter how high-quality a face he produced, he was still considered a newbie in lifer standards, and he accepted that; a true artist didn’t blame his tools—but he appreciated the thickness of the windows when he worked at his cubicle in the shared work area, as well as whenever he had the opportunity to visit one of the personal offices of the higher-ups. He appreciated them so much that even when the occasion of such a visit was an unpleasant one, he could focus on their ability to block and absorb the noise from the outside—specifically, that of Core Park.

Core Park was a circular outdoor area that was surrounded by a dozen concentric rings formed by hundreds of buildings. The bigger and taller rings consisted of the high-rise apartments where the workers lived when they weren’t working. The smaller and shorter rings consisted of the low-rise buildings assigned to various departments of production. The FDD, or the Face Design Department, where Bazz worked, was only one of thousands, and was among a handful of departments that collectively formed the Face Factory. (The other departments at the Factory included the Gene Correlation Department, the Post-Accident Adjustment Department, the Twin Relations Department, etc.) And due to the tallness of the outer rings and shortness of the inner rings, as many people as possible could behold the pleasant sight of Core Park regardless of whether they were at work or at home.

This whole production complex was called the ELPC, or the Earth Life Production Center, and formed the lifer world. Above the ELPC, moons, suns, and stars hung in perpetual lightness and darkness.

Yes, light and dark, at the same time. The celestial bodies constantly moved so that at any given moment, no matter where within the ELPC you stood, you could perceive both light and dark. Interestingly, this also meant that, occasionally, it felt like you were perceiving neither light nor dark.

That was all fine by Bazz. Of course light and dark could exist simultaneously. Moreover, the simultaneous existence of light and dark could coexist with the absence of light and dark. Such were the ways of the lifer world: all-encompassing, ubiquitous, and paradoxical.

At any given point in time, workers on breaks filled Core Park. That was inevitable, since there was no “work day” or “work night” that could be defined with clarity. Sure, such terms were thrown around because they were convenient. The connection between the human world and the lifer world made shared terms inevitable. But they weren’t correct, in the exact sense. The day didn’t end or begin. The night didn’t begin or end. Always, someone was working at work, someone else was taking a break at work, and yet another someone else was at home, beholding the beauty of Core Park from the balcony, or sleeping.

Workers on breaks could choose a feather bench under the sun or under the moon, should they visit Core Park. They could also sit on the rainbow grass by the lake, on the surface of which the reflections of the stars sparkled. Sometimes the feather benches were soft, sometimes they were hard. Sometimes the rainbow grass was colorful and sometimes they were black-and-white—and still, you could tell that they were rainbow-colored. Different shades of gray allowed for that experience. Yellow in black-and-white looked different from purple in black-and-white. This was how color-blind people could see color. They weren’t totally color-blind.

Core Park, with its many oxymoronic contradictory ironies, was huge. Thus, the rings surrounding it were also huge. Hundreds of thousands of lifers worked and lived in the ELPC. Even if only 1% of them whispered, the volume was inevitably impressive. That was why the thick windows with their sound-blocking and -absorbing capacity were so marvelous.

And Bazz appreciated them thoroughly, even though he didn’t particularly like the person sitting across the wooden desk at this very moment.

Bazz focused on the fact that, at least, he got to sit facing the windows. He crossed his legs. He intertwined his fingers and put them on one armrest of his chair, thereby sitting skewed. He knew that this type of casual attitude maddened his boss. He also knew that his boss nevertheless wasn’t the type to demand that his underlings treat him with military respect. As a matter of fact, Bazz was often confused as to what in the moons, suns, and stars his boss wanted. It seemed that not even the boss knew what the boss wanted. Perhaps that was why the boss wore such casual clothes: a sweater, jeans, and sneakers. The boss wasn’t sure if he wanted to come across as a bossy boss or simply as a boss boss.

At any rate, this was the sad tragic catastrophic day on which they—an indistinct group of people who were antagonistic toward true art and craft, epitomized by his boss—told him that the rules of physics on Earth now included something called the internet.

“I am aware of the internet,” Bazz said, “And the internet isn’t tangible. Therefore, it’s not exactly a part of the rules of physics.”

“Physics itself is expanding to include the mindscape, Bazz,” said Drax, which was what Bazz’s boss called himself. “The mindscape is also intangible.”

“Elaborate on the word ‘mindscape,’ please,” Bazz said.

Drax sighed. “Haven’t you heard of the observer effect? Depending on whether there is an observer or not, the observation results end up being different? Or some such thing? They talk about how light ends up being waves but also particles and then back to waves, and… I don’t know, Bazz, I’m not a physics expert, and I’m not here to contemplate the nature of physics with you.”

Bazz agreed completely, although he said nothing. It was a boon to all of the worlds—lifer world, human world, and whichever other worlds that existed—that Drax didn’t work at places like the Tech Calibration Department or Matter Synthesis Department. However, it was the nature of Drax to get more and more agitated as he spoke to Bazz, giving Bazz the satisfaction of comparative composure.

Why did Drax become more and more agitated, the more he spoke to Bazz? Oh, who knows. Maybe it was due to the fact that Drax created absolutely nothing while Bazz created so much. Drax called himself the head of the FDD, and yet Bazz had never seen Drax make a face of his own, in practice. Even at the theoretical level, Bazz had always gotten the impression that Drax didn’t have the aesthetic sensibilities required to create faces. In fact, sometimes, Drax seemed outright careless about faces. He often got distracted and asked people to introduce themselves by name when they greeted him, as if he were meeting them for the first time and didn’t recognize them. That was downright rude, especially coming from the head of the FDD, if you were to ask Bazz.

“Besides, the way humans use the internet, it’s very physical,” Drax said. “They get deformed from it, you know?”

“I do not know,” Bazz said. “Do you mean they get deformed like they used to do from the practices of corset-wearing and foot-binding?”

“Moons, suns, and stars—no. Nobody is forcing them to do anything anymore. They voluntarily carry around these portable devices called smartphones. From the weight of those devices, they get neck problems and headaches and even thumb problems. I heard my friend from the Gene Correlation Department say, the other day, that their DNA is being updated to reflect larger and uglier thumbs.”

“And you want me to come up with faces to impress beings that voluntarily give themselves larger and uglier thumbs?”

“Not ‘to impress.’ If we don’t generate new faces, they’ll start asking questions. Hopefully, things will never get to that point, because you, like everyone else in the FDD, will come up with a new face for every single new human who is born.”

“Do I get to design their faces in lower resolution?” Bazz asked.

“Are you kidding?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Clearly, I’m not. Why is it that I feel you’re against making our work work?”

“Oh, Drax. It is because I am for making work work that I ask these questions.”

“How do you suppose you can create a face that is lower resolution? You think the Background Update Department will magically adjust the resolution around humans with your faces only, while the rest of them run around in high-res brilliance? Everyone will notice that something is wrong.”

“Indeed. Just like when everyone will notice the mediocrity of the high-resolution faces that come out of the FDD when it only cares about quantity and not at all about quality.”

“No. Nobody will notice the mediocrity. They’re faces. Faces are just that. Faces.”

“So you say, Drax, so you say.”

Drax turned more and more red. Despite the mortification of having to spend more than a few breaths with the uninspiring boss, Bazz couldn’t help but contemplate the perfection of the color balance.

Drax’s face: increasingly red.

The outside sky: increasingly blue, due to the movements of the moons, suns, and stars. Those celestial bodies created all sorts of beautiful light shows throughout time. Silver and gold glitter clouds drifted past the wide windows that took up the entire wall behind Drax. And at this particular moment, the time of blue was approaching. Hence the magnificent color balance.

Ah, beautiful!

Ah, wonderful!

Bazz truly enjoyed working at the FDD. The actual work part, that was. He wasn’t into office politics or office socializing. Art, and only art—that was why he’d applied here. He adored faces. There was nothing more delicate and artistic than the face. Can you believe it, that the average face is attached to a head that is about the size of a watermelon, and within the small front surface area, everything happens? The eyes, the nose, and the lips? And the ears, attached to the sides. And the hairstyle, which some argue isn’t part of the face, but oh, do you realize how different a face can look, depending on the hairstyle? And if you count faces that have only one eye or one lip, two noses or three eyebrows, then the variety becomes positively astounding—although, due to the rules of physics on Earth and the preservation of the concept of a “normal face,” which is a requirement for the existence of a concept of an “abnormal face” that nevertheless deserves to exist, Bazz was happy to keep his creativity in check, on that front.

You see, Bazz was perfectly fine with most of the rules of physics on Earth. It wasn’t like he hated rules altogether. Art thrived within the frame of rules. From restrictions came innovations. But when something as ridiculous as the internet started hurting his vision? That was when he had to put his foot down, as an artist.

“For the thousandth time, Bazz,” Drax said, “we are not a haute couture fashion house that produces three dresses every year and then gives itself pat-pats on the buttocks for hard work.”

“Indeed we aren’t, Drax. We do something way more important. We create faces for humans whose lifespans are getting longer and longer. Some of the unfortunate souls who are given a crappy murky insignificant face are doomed to live with that as a visible representation of their soul for more than eight decades! No, actually, I hear all this talk about ‘The age of centenarians.’ Can you imagine? I cannot imagine. I don’t want to imagine waking up with a cataclysmic face 365 times 100 times!”

“Now you’re just insulting the people with those faces as well as your FDD coworkers who designed them.”

“The reality is that some lifers do not know where their talents lie. Therefore, they also don’t know where their talents don’t lie.”

“Bazzzzzz,” Drax hissed warningly. His face was now approaching the color of a pomegranate.

“I did Arthur Schopenhauer,” Bazz declared with great dignity spoken softly. “I did Frida Kahlo. I did Bob Marley, Abraham Lincoln, and, by moons, suns, and stars, I did Helen of Troy!”

“Yes, yes, yes, Bazz. I know, I know, I know. You did wonderful work. You did absolutely fantastic work. There was a time in the human world when your exact skill set was wonderfully suitable⁠—”

“Suitable!”

“—perfect for the needs of the FDD. However, times are changing.”

“Hasn’t the internet existed for quite some time now? Why are we talking about this now?”

“Well, more recently, other technologies have started living on top of the internet. Technologies such as face recognition. Matching identical faces from different times and places. People notice doppelgängers like never before. It’s not like the olden days, when you could have seven Schopenhauers of varying birth years running around the face of the planet without anybody noticing. This is the 21st century. This is the era of drones and cameras. Actually, we’re already too late. Humans are coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories because they’re noticing similarities, no, the exact likeness among people from the 19th century and people from the 21st century.”

“So? Let them. It’s not like any of them can prove that a bunch of lifers up in the figurative sky are creating their faces at a place called the Face Factory!”

A pause from Drax. Then, “Right. You’re absolutely right. But you know what? Fortuna has made the decision.”

“Fortuna.”

“Fortuna.”

Sometimes, Drax acted as if he thought he was actually twenty years older than Bazz, and also, as if he thought that being twenty years younger meant being twenty times more idiotic. Sure, Bazz did look like an early-thirty something and Drax looked like an early-fifty something, which, in the human world, would’ve made Drax automatically and actually twenty years older than Bazz. And some people might equate that to automatic and actual “wisdom” on Drax’s part.

But even in the human world, auto-wisdom from age was a shaky concept. And in the lifer world, the concept didn’t apply at all. A lifer wasn’t born a newborn; a lifer wasn’t born as a baby. Drax started working at the Face Factory way before Bazz did, but neither of them had an age the way humans did. Nobody in the lifer world ever remembered how much before “way before” was. There was no day and no night; time was very difficult to keep track of. Thus, it was extremely insulting of Drax to act as if Bazz were a human baby, born yesterday.

“Fortuna never messes with production,” Bazz said. For the first time during this conversation, his voice showed a hint of trembling. How dare this silly non-artist Drax utter the name of the great Fortuna in this silly conversation?

“This time, she made her desire clear,” Drax said. He seemed satisfied that finally, he got Bazz to drop his air of casual calmness.

“How could Fortuna expect this to work?” Bazz said. “It’s not possible to design unique human faces every time a new human is born. They reproduce too quickly. They talk about rabbits and fruit flies as if those things were the problem breeders. But nobody from the Animal FDD is required to put in overtime to come up with excellent faces that are unique, noble, and memorable⁠—”

“No. No, Bazz,” Drax snapped. “You know what? Fine. Let me correct myself. Let them notice the mediocrity. Make the faces mediocre.”

“Excuse me?”

The shock on Bazz’s face must have been evident enough for Drax to feel bad. Or, rather, Drax being so careless about faces, maybe he’d heard the shock in Bazz’s voice. Either way, Drax deflated a bit.

And indeed, Bazz was shocked. He also felt pathetic, now that he noticed that he hadn’t disliked Drax enough to believe that Drax could fall so low. Bazz should have disliked his boss more. Then this insult wouldn’t have been so surprising.

“Just create enough faces,” Drax said, without the snappiness. He sounded tired. “Make them bland. I don’t care what you do. Make one beautiful face that meets your standards, then create a macro for slicing up that same face into a million equally-sized pieces. And then randomly distribute them across the same area. Do whatever.”

“Do… What? What… A macro? What’s a macro? Besides, the random distribution of equally-sized sliced-up face pieces will lead to horridly deformed faces. If humans are already suffering from self-imposed smartphone deformations, I would rather not impose more suffering on those poor things.”

“Bazz. Just do it.”

“You’re asking for the impossible.”

“Make it possible. Otherwise, Fortuna won’t be pleased.”

3

Bazz headed straight to his apartment after that meeting with Drax. If Fortuna was gonna be displeased with him for loving his work, he might as well start slacking right away. What was the point of doing more excellent work?

No, he didn’t actually mean that. He could never actually mean that about Fortuna. The Fortuna. The great Fortuna!

He’d never met her in person. He doubted that Drax had met her in person either. Drax must have been informed of that ridiculous wish regarding the creation of unique-but-actually-bland faces in some way other than an in-person meeting. Perhaps Drax had been conned. Perhaps someone had pretended to be Fortuna to play a prank. He might have gotten a written memo with forged handwriting or a voice-manipulated call. Otherwise, how was this possible? How could Fortuna act as if she didn’t know the difference between surface-level unique and actually unique?

Didn’t she know that there exist people with faces so bland that, even though you’re sure you’ve never seen them before, it’s like you’ve known them all your life? At the same time, even as you look at them, it feels like you’re not seeing them. Yeah. Those were the works of some of the slackers at the FDD. They just created whatever face with mediocre features and called them “unique.”

It was important to understand that Bazz’s dedication to truly unique faces didn’t equal his advocacy for some sort of beauty standard. No. Not at all. What he meant by mediocrity or beauty didn’t depend on a particular shape or size of the nose, the eyes, or the lips. Fads came and went.

Unibrow in? Unibrow out.

Full lips in? Full lips out.

Freckles in? Freckles out.

But the care a creator puts into sculpting a face? That wasn’t a fad. How could Fortuna act as if she didn’t know this? She was an artist herself. That was what he’d always thought of her.

A golden haze started raining from the pink clouds.

“Oh, brilliant.”

Bazz wasn’t carrying a bubble. For a haze, you needed a bubble; an umbrella was no use. A haze, which was more like gas than liquid, did “rain down” but didn’t reach the ground as quickly as actual straight-forward rain. A haze soaked you from all directions, unlike liquid rain. That wasn’t ideal for his white shirt, which he liked to keep pristine at all times. As to the black suit pants and the black tie, they were going to be fine, regardless of the color of the haze. That was one of the reasons he wore them—that nothing could harm them.

From the inner rings of work buildings to the twelfth and outermost ring of apartments, he trudged on. His black loafers made annoying squishy sounds. Fortunately, there was no one but Bazz to hear them. So, that was nice.

The atmosphere wasn’t cold. Just when too many clouds blocked the warmth from the suns, the wind gently blew them away and shone balmy moonlight on him.

He arrived in his twelfth-floor unit drenched in gold. At the door, he took off the wet loafers. Then he immediately headed to the bathroom that was located between the entrance and the living room. The mirror and the gentle ceiling light showed him his state.

Pathetic.

Slowly and carefully, so as not to get the golden wetness anywhere else, he took off his clothes, including his undergarments. He put them in a neat pile and carried them to the washer, which sat on top of the dryer. They, too, like the bathroom, were located between the entrance and the living room. It was as if someone had designed this apartment with an event like this in mind. The washer and dryer were located where they minimized his movements. No other part of Bazz’s apartment had to witness the pathetic state of its owner.

Bazz pressed the ON button of the washer. That was one of only two buttons on the machine: ON and OFF. No detergent required. No special cycles for delicates versus regulars. Just ON. The washer took care of the rest. That was one more thing he liked about the ELPC, and, by extension, about Fortuna.

How could Fortuna, who was said to have birthed the ELPC and who was said to be the only entity that could kill it, want something mediocre? Fortuna, who must have put washers like these in the units of the apartments, so that people like Bazz could focus on what was really important? How could she not understand that face design was art? And the best kind of art too! The craft kind of art. The beautifully practical kind.

Bazz gazed at the washer. The round glass front showed whirls of water, mixing with golden-hazed clothes. How soothing, this reliable rhythm. And simultaneously, how frustrating, this wet dump of murkiness.

He returned to the bathroom.

There he was, again, in the mirror. Minus the golden-wet clothes. Hm. He didn’t look as pathetic as he could have looked. The gentle ceiling light flattered all faces. Another one of Fortuna’s artistic choices, these lamps? Perhaps. The entirety of the ELPC operated so smoothly and ideally, Bazz still didn’t know what else to think of Fortuna other than as a being of absolutely godly love.

But even without the gentle ceiling light, he would have loved his face. It didn’t matter how pathetic he felt, his face was his face. He fondly brushed the contour of his cheek and chin with his right hand. Hmm. Yes, definitely not chiseled. Definitely not sculpted. Not hyper-defined. Some might say that in the objective sense, this face was obscure and unmemorable.

But for him, it wasn’t so. And he recognized another face like his when he saw one. Not “like his” in the sense that it looked like it belonged to his twin, but in the sense that it was caressed by its owner, with a warm gaze in the mirror, on a regular basis. The aura of someone who adored their own face drastically differed from that of another who despised it, or worse, wasn’t interested in it. He believed that the aura of the former was what he’d gifted Arthur, Frida, Bob, Abraham, Helen, and many other humans. And that facial aura had played a not insignificant role in their iconic status…

…although, in the case of Helen, Bazz did admit: she’d been absolutely stunning in the most mundane sense. But just because she happened to have been that way didn’t mean that all iconic faces adhered to mundane beauty standards. In the grand scheme of things, physically verifiable standards mattered surprisingly little. Bring someone with a stereotypically “beautiful” nose, eyes, and lips, placed at “perfect” positions on a face, and that person won’t be as beautiful as Frida with her unibrow, which, as far as Bazz knew, was temporarily in its “out” period. But unibrows were going to make a comeback again. Bazz knew that for certain. And who knows? One day, Helen of Troy might be considered ugly. Crazier things have happened in human history.

The point was: Bazz created faces of love. He created faces that their owners loved. No one else needed to approve of one’s face, so long as one loved it oneself. Even if Helen were to find herself in a world that considered her ugly, she would love herself.

And so Bazz loved his face—his unchiseled and undefined jawline. He adored his too-big nose. He worshipped his mediocre cheekbones and not-very-hunter eyes. (Apparently, that was what they called eyes that sat really deep in the eye sockets. Ridiculous. Some of the best hunters in the history of humanity had non-hunter eyes. Only when a hunter associated their eye shape with their hunting abilities could the eye shape have an effect on their hunting abilities.)

At any rate. Someone had put much care into Bazz’s face, at some point, before he came into being. That, he was certain of. How could he not wish the same for others? He would be a fraud, if he knew exactly what made a lifer’s life worth living, and didn’t try to give the same to a human for their human life.

Despite the lack of detergents, a pleasant smell of purifying clay and charcoal reached the bathroom. Bazz had never chosen that fragrance for his laundry, but the washer seemed to know his exact preference. And he knew that soon, the soothing smell would fill the living room, and then from there, his bedroom, and then his study. When he opened the door to his balcony, all his neighbors up, down, left, and right would know, “Ah, Bazz did his laundry just now.” Until he started cooking his next meal, thereby handing over the olfactory hegemony of his apartment to a stronger aroma, the clay and charcoal smell would stay.

Little things like this mattered. They mattered so much that they weren’t little. Because the washer did its job, Bazz was free to contemplate his face and the larger world of faces. He had to give this luxury to the humans to whom he’d been assigned through fate or chance.

How could he reach Fortuna to talk her out of her decision?

The obvious answer: the box.

But using the box within the lifer world was seen as crass. It was a big no-no. To do so was like walking into another person’s house just because the front door stood open. Maybe two close friends might think it’s okay to visit each other unannounced, but Bazz definitely wasn’t on such close terms with anybody, especially not with Fortuna. She was divine. What if she immediately hated him? Nobody approached Fortuna like that. It wasn’t funny. She’d judge him. He’d judge him. Using the box was out of the question. It wasn’t the obvious answer.

He could try asking Drax about the more official and polite method of reaching Fortuna. But before doing that, he needed to collect evidence in favor of his own position. Otherwise, presenting himself in front of Fortuna might only prove to her that her wish had been correct. She might associate Bazz with whiny complaints, which, much to his chagrin, was sometimes associated with artists.

And so, again. Evidence. That was what he needed. This new internet thing that Drax had tried to explain—this face-matching thing—couldn’t possibly be as threatening as it sounded. Human fads came and went. Someone must have given Fortuna a greatly exaggerated picture of the power of face recognition technology. And Drax, the uninspiring man who didn’t know if he wanted to be a bossy boss or simply a boss boss, had interpreted her suggestion as an order.

An order! Ludicrous! Fortuna would never do that. She was no dictator. She was no unworthy proxy generator—someone who thought she created things by ordering actual creators around. She’d built the lifer world. She didn’t need to order.

She only loved. That was the image of her that Bazz had in his head, for no logical reason whatsoever.

So, as he washed his face, he vowed: tomorrow, I shall do my own research.

4

So long as quotas were met, nobody in the ELPC cared when the workers clocked in and when they clocked out. And so it was that Bazz decided he’d skip office entirely for his next shift.

Prior to sleeping, Bazz had moved the washed clothes to the dryer right under the washer. The dryer knew exactly how to dry different pieces of clothing. Its knowledge was so perfect that even with the shirt, pants, and tie thrown in there together, it dried each of them to perfection without sucking all moisture out of one garment or leaving another semi-wet.

He was pleased to find his clothes in their perfectly dried but not-too-dry states, as always when the dryer was done with its job. The pair of black loafers had dried on their own at the apartment door. Excellent.

Bazz owned no other set of outdoor clothing except his black suit and everything that went with it—tie, loafers, and white shirt. He did own two sets of undergarments, and that was because he didn’t like to walk around naked in the house while the washer and dryer cycles completed themselves. Theoretically, if he hadn’t minded solitary nakedness, he could have lived with one set of undergarments.

He felt zero sentimental attachment to his clothes beyond practical gratitude for protecting him from the cold when the office air conditioning got too extreme, or absorbing his sweat when he happened to be experiencing flow state in a particularly intense design session. Such practical gratitude was, of course, delightful. The clothes were what he was born with, in this world. They were his literal birthday suit. Imagine disliking them! It would have been like hating his own face.

What he meant by “zero sentimental attachment” was simply that he didn’t feel an attachment to his clothes due to their innovative fabric or courageous design. To him, they were just clothes. Nice clothes, no doubt, but just clothes.

Some others liked to change clothing for every shift. They also enjoyed spending hours in front of the mirror to pick the clothes to change into. The people who worked at the Fashion Trend Department came to mind.

But Bazz wasn’t one of them. He was into faces. That was why he worked at the Face Factory.

After spending a moment appreciating the perfect dryness of his clothes, he ate breakfast in his undergarments: boxers and a thin T-shirt. It amused him that a T-shirt wasn’t considered an undergarment in the human world anymore. There were even debates about whether T-shirts and undershirts were the same thing. Lengthy arguments were made about how they weren’t the same. But Bazz thought: they’re the same!

He had never thought of asking others what they thought of the undergarment status of T-shirts. And since he was one of those who considered T-shirts undergarments, it would be very strange for him to ask anyone whether they were wearing a T-shirt under their shirt or not—like asking someone if they were wearing boxers under their trousers or not.

Breakfast consisted of two fried eggs, coffee, and the view from his balcony. He had a folding chair and a table there for this specific purpose of view appreciation during breakfast consumption.

As per usual, the gradually descending slope of the concentric rings pleased him. There was a structural beauty to this design. It was the design of performance halls and ancient arenas—of amphitheaters. The core was meant to be witnessed and appreciated.

At this moment, the sky was adopting a pinkish-orange hue, like a sunset in the human world. Many people were taking a walk in Core Park. Others had brought blankets, spread them out on the rainbow lawns, and were taking naps.

Which went to show how tired those nappers were, or how greatly talented they were in napping. No specific words uttered in Core Park could be comprehended from this distance, but Bazz could tell that conversations were happening everywhere. Yet, those nappers were sleeping just fine, undisturbed. It was marvelous. Talent took on various forms.

Another peaceful day in the ELPC for Bazz—only because he’d just gotten up. For others, it might be another peaceful night. The familiar atmosphere of the ELPC, the fragrant coffee, and the hot eggs provided a welcome balance to the quiet excitement he felt regarding the adventure he was about to take in a few moments.

He planned to go down to the human world.

It should be noted that the phrase “down to the human world” wasn’t to be taken literally. The lifer world didn’t exist in the sky of the human world. Neither did it exist in the outer space of the human world. There was no cartesian connection between the human world and the lifer world. One didn’t go in a straight line up or down, forward or backward to reach the other place.

At any rate, Bazz had only ever gone down there on one other occasion, with the person who’d been present at the point of his birth. Occasions such as those were when it wasn’t crass to walk straight through open doors.

Bazz was going to take the box.