Chapter 22 - Lena The Tattoo'd Lady

You are reading "Tales of the Algorithm". A compendium of near-future sci-fi stories. Each chapter is a stand-alone adventure set a few days from now.

Everything you read is possible - there's no magic, just sufficiently advanced technology. Think of them as technological campfire horror stories.

Lena The Tattoo'd Lady

I spend my life with people ogling my barely-clothed body, but the only time I feel really exposed is when I'm in a hospital gown. If the bored young technician recognised me, he was good enough not to say anything. Signing an autograph while your butt's hanging isn't the most dignified look.

"Any piercings?" He said as he waved the wand over me.

"Nope."

"Any medical implants, pacemakers, pins, or plates?" He recited.

"Also no."

"Have you had this procedure before?"

Was he kidding me? I practically had a frequent flyer card!

"Yes, a few times."

"Please remove your gown and lay on the table."

Now this was something I could do! Being exposed in front of strangers is my day job. Before the kid had a chance to turn around I shrugged off the paper garment and hopped onto the table. It was still warm from the last person which was not overly comforting.

"Um. I'm going to strap you in now. Is that OK?"

Christ, this boy really was green. I wanted to comfort him, but my anxiety was peeking and the meds weren't even touching the sides.

"Yes," I snapped, "Just get on with it."

He tied down my arms and legs with velcro cuffs - again, still warm with the sweat of the last victim - immobilised my head with giant foam cutaways. I opened my mouth before he had a chance to ask, and he stuffed the rubber bung in. Thankfully, this was not still warm.

"And, uh, are you sure you still want to go through with this?"

I was strapped naked to a table, unable to move or speak. So I cocked an eyebrow at him, which was the sole extent of my ability to communicate. He walked out of the room and, a moment later, I heard him through the speaker. "I'm going to start the procedure now. It will take about 30 minutes. It's going to hurt. A lot. I'm sorry."

The table slid backwards carrying me into the mouth of the magnetron. The eerie silence was soon interrupted by the whine of the machine warming up. I closed my eyes and bit down on the rubber.

An instant later my skin felt like it had been set on fire.

I don't remember passing out but, nevertheless, I woke up in the recovery room. My entire body itched like I'd been bitten by a swarm of pissed off mosquitoes - but at least I wasn't in pain. I sat up, chugged the water next to my bed, and pressed the call button. A moment later, the tattooist arrived.

"Awake at last, Lena! You've been out most of the afternoon." He said with undue glee.

"Shit! I have a show this evening. Can I see?"

"Sure, let me help you up."

He tenderly slipped his arm around my waist - fuck me the skin still burned - and got me standing out of bed. With his assistance, I stood naked in front of the mirror.

When I was a little girl, my father instructed me never to get a tattoo. He told me they were cheap and tawdry. Not the sort of skin decoration for a young and respectable woman. No one will take you seriously, he warned, if they thought you were a marked lady. At this point in the speech he'd roll up his sleeve and point to the heart painted into his bicep. "What does that say, Button?" I'd make a show of peering at the faded writing and say "It says 'Betty', Daddy." He'd humph and say "And what's your mother's name?" I'd giggle and say "Andrea." After rolling down his sleeve, he'd remind me that a tattoo was permanent. Any mistakes would be permanent. They couldn't be changed later.

Daddy was wrong. The electrophoretic ink under my skin could be reconfigured any time I was bored of my tattoos. If the lead singer of my favourite band turned out to be a scumbag, I didn't have to go through life defending my decision to have his face on my back.

The process to get an editable tattoo was painful. The work was too fine to be done by humans, so an articulated robot arm did the work. It looked like an industrial ovipositor, a vast metal needle that darted around the body laying microencapsulated eggs beneath the skin. Each injection contained a dichromatic ball - half white, half black - a few millimetres in diameter. By the time the procedure was finished, the balls were a jumble and you looked like an old fashioned TV tuned to a dead channel.

If you thought the injections were bad, the "calibration" was worse. The magnetron exerted a ridiculously powerful Gaussian field over your skin causing the balls to rotate in place. Eventually, after tearing through all your tissue, they were perfectly aligned. Your new tattoo was ready! Understandably, due to the considerable expense and harrowing pain, most people opted for a small tattoo which could be updated every few years. Or when you got divorced.

I'd had my whole body done. Front and back. From the top of my face down to the tips of my toes. Every visible part of my skin was a canvas. My job meant that I was a living work of art. For a fee, you could hire me to bear your brushstrokes.

"It looks gorgeous!" I gushed. The tattooist hadn't really done much work, just taken the designs and scaled them to my figure. But it paid to keep people happy. Especially those who regularly tortured you.

"I hope the client likes it. You were screaming quite a bit in there."

The client! Double shit! I had to hightail it out of there if I wanted to be on time. I slipped on my clothes, gave the tattooist a light hug, and jumped into a taxi.

My father tried to impress on me that sex work wasn't work. That's another thing he got wrong. I worked hard - extremely hard - and was handsomely rewarded for what I put my body through. Today was no exception. On top of a raised dais in the centre of the room, I gyrated. With every crescendo of the music, I seductively peeled off another item of clothing - the hoots and cheers from the assembled business executives driving me into carefully constructed ecstasy. As the music got louder, the hollering intensified, and all the spotlights in the joint focused on me for the big reveal. My clothing was little more than a gossamer blur redacting my modesty.

The PA system blurted out my cue: "Ladies and gentlemen! I give you! After 5 years of hard work! Your! New! Corporate! Reeeeeee-branding!"

With that, I flung off the last of my clothes to reveal the new logo of some car company.

Their trademark was artfully done, I'll give them that. It snaked across my breasts and down to my navel, before becoming entwined in my thighs. My arms gave the impression of hand-stitched Corinthian leather. My legs were drawn as powerful pistons to represent their latest engine innovation. Above my buttocks was carved whatever inane slogan they'd focus-grouped to death.

The dais rotated so everyone could view the full brand experience etched across my naked body.

I spent the rest of the evening schmoozing with the executives and enjoying their canapes. I'd done enough of these corporate gigs by now to be intimately familiar with the script. The female execs would sidle up to me and declare just how empowering it was to have me here. They'd demand selfies with me - full body shots, of course - then sneak away to bitch about me with their colleagues.

The men only ever asked about one thing. The pain. They'd show me their tiny eink tats and confess how they'd passed out after the third or fourth injection. How did I do it, they wondered. When they took photos with me, I could feel their desperate and sweaty hands hovering a hair's breadth above my skin. They knew they could look, but not touch. A few would brazenly try to slip me their hotel key card to which I gave the same catty response every time, "Do you see any pockets?"

So I'd wine and dine and have my photo taken. I pulled off a variety of acrobatic poses to make sure everyone got a great view of the logo. A real splash for the company newsletter, and something to reminisce about at the disappointing Christmas party.

As the night thinned out, I noticed one woman hanging back. She had a face like a pinched weasel and wasn't wearing the normal corporate battle dress. She kept making to approach me and then backed off. Some girls were like that, in my experience, fascinated by my debauchery by repelled by my reality. I had half a caviar tartlet in my mouth when she finally plucked up the courage to come forward.

All her words came out at once, as though she'd been mulling over what to say all evening and it was finally spilling out. "You look so beautiful but I know how painful the repainting must be I had a small one done and I hated it anyway our division is working on something new that you may like we're still at early stages but it should painless but perhaps if you'd like to give it a go we could give you a free upgrade?"

I swallowed a standard month's salary worth of caviar. "Darling," I smiled, "Painless and Free are the magic words. Where do I sign up?"

Turns out, she was lying about it being painless. The first bit of the upgrade involved removing my original tattoo implants. The company sedated me using the good stuff, unlike that hack downtown who didn't believe that women felt pain in the same way as men. Even with the fancy drugs, I woke up screaming.

The second part was merely unpleasant. The new tattoo molecules were long strands of coloured carbon nanotubes. They snaked into my body and threaded themselves through my skin. Feeling them creeping through my flesh made me shudder. It was like having prickly worms slither through my veins as they permanently bonded themselves to my skin and wrapped their way around my nerves. As the company's first human triallist, I kept them appraised of just how disgusting it felt as they carved me up.

Oh, and it turns out the weasel-woman was lying about it being free. After they conducted all their tests, they wanted me to go on live TV to show off the company's marvellous new technology. My body was their billboard, I was a living advert for aesthetic body modification.

I was still a little groggy from the painkillers when I sat down on the studio. The company infused me with some synthetic compound which dulled my nerves but kept me lucid. The studio lights burned while the genial host smarmed.

As this was a family show, I was wearing a rather modest bikini. Enough to entice viewers but not enough to scandalise them. The camera focused tight on my right forearm where a tattoo'd watch was gradually changing in order to show the correct time. I could feel the system pushing within me as it rippled and changed. The individual pixels squirming and flipping like maggots burrowing through me. The host gushed about what a stunning advance in technology this was.

The camera held a long shot on my chest. Over my left breast was a gently pulsing heart and an ECG. The animation showed all my vital statistics in real time. The carbon nanotubes had fused with my nerves and were parasitically leaching the data from me. If the viewers were paying attention, they'd have noticed my heart rate quickening as the painkillers began to wear off. "Stunning!" Enthused the host, "Just stunning".

Damn but the pain was getting worse. I kept a rictus grin as I demurely turned around to show the host my back. Across my flesh was an animated scene of Washington crossing the Delaware in monochrome glory. If I concentrated hard enough, the fibrous ganglions would detect my will and transition the animation to The Wreck of The Hesprus. The TV host explained the scene for the viewers and gave a crash course in how the technology worked, all the while I held still and tried not to cry out in pain.

"How simply stunning!" The host said as I turned back. God, this guy was such a tedious bore.

"Tell us," he said, "What does that mean on your forehead? What's the significance of 'tedious bore'?"

I blushed. Oh fuck!

I heard a sudden squark from the host's earpiece.
"I'm truly sorry, viewers. I'm not sure why a swear word has appeared on the young lady's face. We'll be back after these messages."

I glanced round at the studio monitor. The cameraman held tightly on my face. Above my eyes, in a jagged simulation of my handwriting, were the letters W, T, and F. How could this be? What was happening? What had I done? My brain began racing with a million confusing thoughts. The camera slowly zoomed out and I saw everything. I watched with horror as my body slowly became mottled with question marks.

It turns out, my father was right. There are some mistakes which you can't undo.

Thanks for reading

I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.

You can read the complete set of short stories in order.