111- Don´t stop of loving me like that

"Of course it's ingenious," retorted the implanter. "I designed it myself. Sickening thing is, I can't patent it." He had Hae-Joo stand ready with a cloth; a jagged pain tore my throat. As Hae-Joo stanched the bleeding, the implanter showed me the old identity of Sonmi~451, a microchip in a pair of tweezers. He would dispose of it himself, he promised, carefully. He sprayed healant over my wound and applied a skin-tone dressing. "And now," he continued, "a crime so novel it doesn't even have a name. The Souling of a fabricant. How is my genius rewarded? A fanfare? A nobel and a university sinecure?"

"A paragraph in the history of the struggle against corpocracy," said Hae-Joo.

"Wow, thanks, brother," replied the implanter. "A whole paragraph." This surgery was swift also. The man laid my right palm on a cloth, sprayed coag and anesthetic onto my index fingerpad, made an incision less than a centimeter, inserted a Soul, and applied cutane. This time his cynicism betrayed a core of sincerity. "May your Soul bring you fortune in your promised land, Sister Yun-Ah Yoo."

I thanked him. I had all but forgotten Ma Arak Na watching from her ceiling hatch, but now she spoke. "Sister Yoo best get a new face for her new Soul, or some awkward questions'll crop up between here and the promised land."

So I suppose your next destination was the facescaper?

It was. The doorman escorted us as far as T'oegyero Street, Huamdonggil's boundary with its nearest semirespectable neighborhood. We metroed to a once fashionable galleria in Shinch'on and escalatored up thru chiming chandeliers. They took us to a warrenlike precinct on canopy level, fre- quented only by consumers quite sure of their destination. Twists and turns were lined with discreet entrances and cryptic nameplates; down a dead end, a tiger lily bloomed in a niche by a plain door. "Don't speak," Hae-Joo warned me, "this woman's prickles need cosseting." He rang the bell.

The tiger lily striped brite; it asked us what we wanted. Hae-Joo said we had an appointment with MAlessio Ovid. The flower flexed to peer at us and told us to wait.

The door slid open. "I am MAlessio Ovid," announced a bone-white pure- blood. Dewdrugs had frozen her harsh beauty in its mid-twenties, long ago; her voice was a buzz saw. "You have no appointment, whoever you are. This is an upstrata establishment. My biocosmeticians accept only recom- mendations. Try a 'maskgrafter' on one of the lower floors."

The door shut in our faces.

Hae-Joo cleared his throat and spoke into the tiger lily. "Kindly inform the estimable MAlessio Ovid that Lady Heem-Young sends her earnest, cor- dial regards."

A pause ensued. The tiger lily blushed and asked if we had traveled far.

Hae-Joo completed the code. "Travel far enough, you meet yourself."

The door opened, but MAlessio Ovid's disdain remained. "Who can argue with Lady Heem-Young?" She ordered us to follow, no dawdling. After a minute of curtained corridors tiled with lite-and-sound absorbers, a silent male assistant joined us from thin air, and a door opened into a briter stu- dio. Our voices returned. Tools of the facescaper's trade gleamed in the sterile solar. MAlessio Ovid asked me to unhood. Like MAlessio Ma Arak Na, she did not evince surprise; I doubt a lady of her stratum had ever set foot in a Papa Song dinery. MAlessio Ovid asked how long the treatment was to last. When Hae-Joo told her we had to leave in ninety minutes, our hostess lost her needle-sharp sangfroid. "Why not do the job yourself with gum and lipstick? Does Lady Heem-Young take Tiger Lily for a discount trow- eler's with before-and-after kodaks in the window?"

Hae-Joo hastened to xplain we were not xpecting the full morph, only cosmetic adapts to fool an Eye or a casual glance. He admitted ninety minutes was a ludicrously short time, hence Lady Heem-Young needed the best of the best. The proud facescaper saw his flattery but was not immune. "It is true," she boasted, "that nobody, nobody, sees the face within the face as I do." MAlessio Ovid angled my jaw, saying she could alter my skin, col- or, hair, lids, and brows. "Eyes we must dye a pureblood color." Dimples could be punched in, and my cheekbones muted. She promised to make the best of our eighty-nine precious minutes.

So what happened to MAlessio Ovid's artistry? You look like a Sonmi fresh from the wombtank.

Unanimity refaced me for my peaktime courtroom appearances. A star ac- tress must look the part. But I assure you, when I xited the Tiger Lily, buzzing with face-ache, not even Seer Rhee would have known me. My ivory irises were hazeled, my eyes lengthened, my follicles ebonized. Con- sult the kodaks taken at my arrest if you are curious.

MAlessio Ovid did not say good-bye. Outside, a golden boy with a red balloon waited by the escalator. We followed him to a busy ford park be- low the galleria. The boy had disappeared, but the balloon was strung on the wiper of a cross-country vehicle. This we drove down Thruway One for the East Gate One.

East Gate One? The Union leader – Apis – had ordered you west.

Yes, but the leader had also suffixed his orders with "reflect well upon what had been advised," meaning "invert these orders." Thus, west meant east, north meant south, "travel in a convoy" meant "travel alone."

That's a dangerously simple crypto, it seems to me.

Meticulous brains will overlook the simple. As we sped along the thruway, I asked my companion if Hae-Joo Im was a real name or false. The Un- ionman responded that no names were real for individuals of his calling. The xitway downcurved to the tollgates, and we slowed to a crawl; ahead, each driver in line reached thru the ford window to Eye his Soul. Enforcers were stopping fords for random questioning, worryingly for us. "One in thirty, approx," Hae-Joo muttered, "pretty long odds." Our turn at the scan- ner came. Hae-Joo placed his index on the Eye; a shrill alarm sounded, and the barrier shot down. Fords around us prevented any hope of escape. Hae- Joo hissed at me: "Keep smiling, act vapid!"

An enforcer strode up, jerking his thumb. "Out." Hae-Joo obeyed, grinning boyishly.

The enforcer demanded a name and destination.

"Oh, uh, Ok-Kyun Pyo." Even Hae-Joo's voice had changed. "Officer. We're, uh, driving to a motel in an outer conurb." Hae-Joo glanced around and did a hand gesture whose lewd meaning I had learned from Boom- Sook and his friends. How far was this motel, the enforcer demanded. Did- n't he know it was already past hour twenty-three?

"Motel BangBangYou'reDead, in Yōju." Hae-Joo adopted an idiotic, conspiratorial tone. "Snug place, reasonable rates, they'd probably let an enforcer sample the facilities gratis. Only thirty minutes in the fast lane, eastbound xit ten." He promised we could be there before curfew with time to spare.

"What happened to your index finger?"

"Oh, is that why the Eye blinked?" Hae-Joo did a stage groan and ram- bled; he had cut it destoning a natural avocado at his aunt's house; blood everywhere, only stoneless avocados for him from now on, nature was more trouble than it was worth.

The enforcer peered into the ford and ordered me to unhood.

I hoped my fear would come over as coyness.

He asked if my boyfriend talked this much all the time. I nodded, shyly.

Was that why I never spoke?

"Yes, sir," I said, sure he would recognize me as a Sonmi, "yes, Officer."

The enforcer told Hae-Joo girls are obedient and demure until they have you married, then they start yacking and never shut up. "Get going," he said.