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  “His hair’s a little on the sparse side. He’s had so much work done, I wonder why he doesn’t have his hair fixed, too.”

  “He wears it super-short, so he doesn’t see it as a problem. I’m okay with it, too. I think it looks macho.” Gabe pointed to a photo of a beautiful woman with an ample bosom and curvaceous posterior. “Here’s Elektra Sparkz. Another doll who’s been on the show. Absolutely gorgeous. I gave her that Brazilian butt-lift. I’ll ask her to be on the show again, too.” He set aside the photos of Vandric and Elektra. “It’ll be good to have them on the show to catch up with them. We can discuss what they’ve had done since their previous appearances. Both of them are making remarkable progress in their lives.”

  “We have five photos left,” December said. He pointed to a photo of a slender young man with long blond hair and angelic features. “I’ve seen stories about him online. Isn’t he a human doll, too?”

  Gabe picked up the picture and looked at the name on the back. “Oh, it’s him. Abelino. He’s had so much work done, I didn’t recognize him. I wouldn’t want him on the show. He’s reckless about the work he has done. He travels all over the world, getting the latest procedures from dicey doctors. Last year, he had three procedures on his nose. Three. In Iran, Brazil and Mexico. That’s too much work in too short of a time period.” He tore the picture in half and threw it in the wastebasket. “Someday that nose of his is going to turn black and fall off.”

  After more discussion, they finally decided on three more celebrities to feature as guests. One was a talk show hostess who’d received a full-body lift after losing eighty-five pounds. Another was an actor who’d needed extensive reconstructive work after a motorcycle accident. The third one was an actress who’d once required a double-mastectomy due to breast cancer. Her breast reconstruction surgery a few years later was a complete success.

  “I feel good about the choices we’ve made today,” Gabe said. “The folks we’ve selected have great stories to share.”

  December gazed lovingly at Gabe. “Of course, if a person is going to have work done, they need to pick the right plastic surgeon – like you. When you take on a client, you always talk to them first, to make sure the procedure they want is right for them. What would you say has been the biggest challenge of your career?”

  “Honestly?” Gabe asked. The expression on his face startled December.

  “You look so serious! Yes, I honestly want to know.”

  “My biggest challenge,” Gabe said, “has been deciding whether or not to operate on you so many times. Every time you’ve asked, I’ve wanted to turn you down, because I love you just as you are. But then I’d realize, I’m the best in the business. How can I turn you down? Each operation had merit. You’ve never asked for anything frivolous. If someone else did the work, they might do a poor job. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  “Thank you,” December said. “None of the procedures were absolutely necessary, but each one was a legitimate improvement. Do you realize, I haven’t had a procedure for more than a year?”

  Gabe thought for a moment. “Yes, you are correct! It has been more than a year. Are you done now? Done with plastic surgery for good?”

  “Yes. I’ve decided to quit while I was ahead. But I haven’t mentioned it before now because I didn’t want you to think I was unhappy with your work.”

  “At some point,” Gabe said, “I want you to mention on the show that you’re done with plastic surgery. I want people to realize that at some point, every plastic surgery patient needs to stop. It can’t go on and on until the day they die.”

  December smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

  Chapter 4

  December decided he needed to visit Viveka’s studio. He’d never been to Gehenna before. When she took pictures of him for her exhibit concept, she held the photoshoot in the studio at his modeling agency.

  When he ran into Viveka at lunch, she’d mentioned that her exhibit in honor of his male beauty was turning into a multimedia exhibit. Naturally, he wanted to see how it was coming along. She’d been out of town for a week after that lunch, but finally she was back. He was flattered that she was devoted to the project, but still, he knew her work could be wild and avant garde, and he didn’t want his image used in inappropriate ways.

  Viveka’s workshop was a former brick bank, long out of business. She’d redesigned the exterior several years ago, having the bricks painted black and hiring a sign company to spell out Gehenna in red neon above the entrance. When he arrived, he walked up to the entrance and rang the doorbell six times, as she’d instructed – three rings, a pause, then three more rings.

  She unlocked the door to admit him. “Good afternoon, December! Welcome to Gehenna!” She wore a white lab coat with a black vinyl belt. Her black hair was gathered into a thick ponytail.

  Inside, Viveka’s intellectual playground was a creative marvel. In the bank’s entrance hall stood a statue, at least ten feet tall, of Viveka, crafted out of odd chunks of stainless steel welded together. Gas pipes ran through the structure so that blue flames shot from the statue’s eyes and upraised palms.

  “Just out of curiosity,” December said, “why did I have to ring six times in such a specific way?”

  “Gehenna is not a public venue,” the artist replied. “It’s private property. I don’t want total strangers strolling in. The doors are always locked and people can only enter by appointment.”

  “Then why give the place a name? Why put a neon sign over the door? With red neon over the entrance of a black building, it could be anything from a fashionable shopping center to a strip joint. When Sinthia saw it, she thought it was a dance club.”

  “She thought that?” Viveka laughed at the thought. “It’s a black building, so with a name like Gehenna, it would have to be a Goth dance club. Still, I wouldn’t want dancing drunks to stumble into my projects. They might hurt themselves. Or worse, they might hurt my projects! I do like having a brick-and-mortar location where I can meet people and also work on my own projects. Most of my projects are big, so I need a lot of space. The neon sign is for my clients and investors. They like seeing the amazing signage when they come to visit.”

  “I didn’t know you had clients and investors,” December said.

  “Of course! How do you think I pay for all this?” Viveka stretched out her arms, as though embracing her entire world of Gehenna. “For them, I work on private, often long-term projects. Lately, most of the work I’ve done for clients has been at their locations. I have a few possible projects for clients in development here, but I’m still waiting for their approval.”

  “When you see clients who are based far away, how do you travel? I can’t imagine that you’d enjoy commercial flights.”

  “Fly with the public? I’d frighten them to death! I only charter private jets. I have accounts with a couple different companies that give me special rates.”

  “Could you email me the names and contact information for those companies?” December asked. “I might like to use their services in the future.”

  “Certainly. I’ll do that later today. When you call them, be sure to tell them I sent you. I wanted to mention, I don’t want you to discuss what you see today with the outside world. I know I can trust you. I only mention it so you don’t inadvertently talk about my work on any of your TV shows.”

  “Understood. Say, did you ever get a chance to look over those pictures and resumes I dropped off a while back? Nobody was in when I stopped by, so I just slid the envelope in the mail slot. I put some notes in the envelope, too.”

  “Yes, I did get the envelope, thank you!” the artist said. “You gave me a lot of ideas, but you know me. I have to mull over a concept before I do anything with it. I put the folder in my December exhibit workspace, to remind me to get back to you about it at some point. If you never hear from me, feel free to remind me.”

  Viveka was developing many different projects, all in various stages of completion. She led Decemb
er from one work area to the next. Some areas were hidden behind tarps. She explained that those were prototypes for potential clients, and the projects were awaiting approval.

  In a long hallway, she showed him drafts of various task-related robots, from simple dishwashers and potato-peelers to a multi-purpose mechanical surgeon.

  December was astounded by the mechanical surgeon. It appeared to be an operating table, set under a complex mechanical grid, equipped with syringes, scalpels and other medical implements. The grid combined elements of modern medicine with a 3D printer, so that prosthetic devices could be created on the spot. At the head of the table, a control panel was positioned on a raised platform so a technician could monitor the machine’s progress.

  “Your mechanical surgeon is absolutely fantastic,” December said. “When do you think it will be fully functional?”

  “It is fully functional,” Viveka said. “It simply needs to be loaded with whatever medicines and materials are needed for the operation at hand. The necessary information has already been loaded into the data nexus.”

  “But how is all this possible?” December asked. “Did you do this work yourself? Did you input all the medical knowledge? I didn’t realize you were a healthcare genius.”

  “I’m not,” Viveka said. “I’m a genius, yes, but not of the healthcare variety. I specialize in project development. I call in workers and experts as I need them. No one person ever sees any of my projects being developed from start to finish. I do this to protect proprietary secrets.”

  “Could your mechanical surgeon perform an operation today, if necessary?”

  “Technically, yes. But it’s still in development. It needs more testing. Fine-tuning. Also, I need to determine how I wish to reveal it to the world. The marketing concerns alone will require at least a year of research.”

  In a large meeting room, she showed December a work-in-progress that she claimed was the world’s first living work of art. The six-foot statue, which she called The Sentinel, was set inside a huge plastic cylinder filled with pale beige fluid. The statue was basically a rectangular mass of solid pink flesh, with clear tubes carrying nutrients into it and waste material out of it.

  “This is the first draft,” Viveka said. “I’m still thinking about possible enhancements. For example, I might give it a working eye and a rudimentary brain. Wouldn’t that be interesting? A work of art that looks at you while you look at it!”

  She explained that the December exhibit was currently her top priority, but once she returned to the living artwork project, it would become the focus of her work. She’d installed a bio lab, as yet unused, on the second floor to prepare for further development of both The Sentinel and the mechanical surgeon.

  “What’s that fluid in the cylinder?” December asked.

  “I’m rather proud of that. I call it Aqua Viveka – it’s the first project component I’ve ever named after myself. It has tremendous commercial potential. Aqua Viveka serves as an oxygen-rich nutrient, preservative, and anesthetic for any living tissue submerged in it. It keeps the tissue alive for as long as it is immersed, and is formulated so that the tissue will become universal – meaning, it will not be rejected by the recipient if used in a transplant. The fluid in the cylinder needs to be replaced periodically, but that’s to be expected.”

  Fascinated, December stared into the beige fluid. “If a person was dying, could they be submerged in that juice to keep them alive?”

  “Certainly,” Viveka said. “Still, as with many of my projects, it needs more testing. I do like that you called it ‘juice.’ That’s a fun word. I might use it in future marketing, if you don’t mind.”

  “Feel free,” December said.

  At last Viveka led December down a stairway to the exhibit based on his male beauty, which was being developed in the basement-level lobby.

  Viveka’s goal was to capture the masculine beauty of December Storm as a timeless fantasy, spanning centuries – from the distant past into the far future. The thoroughness of the artist’s vision was breathtaking. He was amazed by an oil painting of himself depicted in Voctorian garb – clearly an homage to The Picture Of Dorian Gray.

  December saw a life-size statue of himself in the style of DaVinci’s David. Viveka had also created statues of him as a gladiator, a soldier, a boxer, and an astronaut. She’d even completed a statue that showed what he’d look like in his senior years – substantially different in appearance, but happily, still attractive. The final version of December was a future version in the style of a Japanese robot companion. The companion, eyes closed and slumped in a leather easy chair, looked just like the model, taking a nap.

  “It’s fantastic.” December walked up to the companion and felt its cheek. “It feels like real skin.”

  The companion suddenly sat up and opened its eyes. It looked from Viveka to December, smiled and nodded, then closed its eyes and returned to sleep mode.

  “It’s made with a new form of silicone I’ve been trying out,” Viveka said. “Very soft and fleshy. That silicone is very popular in the adult novelty industry. I also used it to make the faces of the various statues. I had to put more wrinkles in the senior version of you.”

  “I hope you aren’t going to market the companion as a sex-doll,” December said. “Though I’m sure it would be a best-seller. Does the companion have a name?”

  “Certainly.” Viveka patted the top of the companion’s head. “Your name is December, so I call it Christmas. I was tempted to name it Santa, but it’s not plump enough. I was also thinking of creating angel and demon versions of you, but I decided against them. They’d be too much of a departure from the reality of you.” She pointed to the back of the basement-level lobby. “Now come with me. I have one last project to show you.”

  Like the December exhibit, this final venture featured numerous statues. These figures depicted how the human race would evolve in eons to come. The brains and eyes grew larger, while the fingers and toes grew longer and more sinuous. The last statue – the final evolutionary stage – depicted humans as large, bat-winged brains with slender tentacles encircling their toothy mouths. Their large eyes grew on the ends of long, fleshy stalks.

  “Our fingers and toes will evolve into tentacles and membranous wings, respectively,” Viveka noted.

  “I would never have guessed. How far in the future is that?”

  “More than a million years. That’s assuming, of course, that humanity doesn’t blow up the Earth between now and then. Do we have time to get drinks today?”

  “Afraid not,” December said. “I have an appointment right after this. It’s a pity, too. I could go for a dirty martini right about now. How about tomorrow?”

  “Usually I can go for a dirty martini at any time. But, I’m leaving town tomorrow to give a lecture in Boston, so our cocktails will have to wait until I get back.” With that, she took December’s hand and walked him to the door.

  Chapter 5

  Model and actress Claudia Maresko was known for her stunning face and exquisite figure, but she wasn’t born beautiful. As a child – back when she was Karla Burnett – she wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses and rarely smiled, since she didn’t want people looking at her prominent buck teeth. She was also plump, with a round face and equally round belly, and hated it when her father called her “my little butterball.”

  In her teen years, she lost weight by jogging and running whenever possible. Braces fixed her dental issues, and contacts eliminated the need for glasses. She majored in Speech and Theater in college, and was selected as the female lead in many plays and musicals.

  Her boyfriend Thomas was usually selected as her romantic leading man, yet she’d often wonder why he didn’t seem to relish her presence in real life. After five months of dating, they had yet to sleep together. Whenever she brought up the issue, he would simply say, “Let’s just wait until the honeymoon, if we ever decide to get married.” At first that seemed like a wonderful answer, since it seemed to imply
they’d get married someday. But after a while, she came to realize that he always emphasized the ‘if’ in his reply.

  Still, she enjoyed his company, until the day she walked into his dorm room without knocking and found him having sex with his roommate. They didn’t notice her entering the room, and she was too shocked to say anything. For a full minute, she simply watched them, mesmerized by the sight of two handsome men locked in a passionate embrace. Finally she turned and left, slamming the dorm room door behind her. Later, when she told her best friend Edith what had happened, her friend said sadly, “Yeah, I kind of figured you were his beard.”

  Claudia was mystified. “His beard? What does that mean?”

  “A manly disguise,” Edith said. “No one would think he was gay if he had a pretty girlfriend.”

  “But that’s not fair to me!” Claudia wailed.

  “The other day, you said you two haven’t slept together, after dating for ... what, about half a year? Talk about a red flag!”

  From then on, Claudia automatically dumped any potential boyfriend who didn’t make a move on her within three dates. In fact, it was a huge relief if he made his move on the first date. At least she knew his libido was aimed in her direction.

  She worked for six years as a legal secretary, performing in theater productions on the side. During those years, she enhanced her beauty through liposuction, breast implants, and two nose-jobs. Eventually she signed on with a talent agent and started landing modeling gigs and small TV roles. The directors she worked with were pleased to discover she was a polished actress, skilled at singing and dancing.

  At one point, a director suggested she should invest in even larger implants. The suggestion surprised her, since it came from a female director. But it turned out to be good advice, since it resulted in even more TV work and movie parts. With time, the movie roles became larger and more consistent. Her role as co-hostess on Sinthia’s Cabaret helped to increase her visibility nationwide.