Do Androids Dream of Designer Brands?

The yellow sheets of Giallo, the rough, finger-razoring cardboard pages of crushed pulp - now discontinued - were phased out by slick, glossy high-end journals.

Fletch rubbed her slim, bare legs on the duvet as she leaned heavily into the pillow, flicking through a reprint of an Ursula K. Le Guin story. Ursula le Guin had been dead for half a century, but they still ran her stuff. Anthologized them. Dumped them in sci-fi rags.

On the screen embedded into the wall in front of her, Harrison Ford guns down an escaping droid, sending it crashing through a glass display.  

Her attention wanders. Frost on the glass. Small splotches of white fleck the sidewalks a dozen floors below. A dry white season. Snow one day. That was it.

Padding down the hall, stops in front of her door. Knock. A small window pops up in the lower-right corner of the screen. She opens the door after the first half-knock.

Cohee stands, looking timid, smacking a shopping bag from Nordstrom’s against his leg, tissue paper rustling inside with every tap. His eyes drawn to the screen.   

“Ridley Scott said he’s an android.”

“Well it’s not Ridley Scott’s story, is it? It’s Philip Dick’s, and in the novel, Deckard is explicitly human. The idea for the ambiguity was devised by the screenwriters, and even they disagree with each other.

And Harrison Ford, for one, thought Deckard is human.”

Cohee gave a polite cough. “Where’s Marsha?”

Fletch shrugged her skinny shoulders, the universal sign for ‘fuck me if I know.’

“Wanna wait?”

Between a whisper and a sigh, Co sez: “Yeah. Sure.”

He shuffles over to a table and plops the Nordstrom haul on the surface.

“Hey, how’s a bum like you shop at Nordstrom’s?”

“I really shouldn’t say”, Cohee, still wearin’ his Trenchcoat Mafia duster, slides awkwardly into the seat, looking over the top of the bag at the wall-screen. Trying not to focus on Fletch, now back to leaning heavily on her pillow:

“Which, uh, which cut i- Oh, I see. There’s the narration. It’s the original theatrical.”

They sit in silence, then she cranes her neck at him and he matches her eyes. 

Both in unison: “Final Cut’s better.”

“Cohee?”

“Hm?”

“Really, I’m curious. How’d security not throw you out the second you stepped through that door?"

“Hrm - Independently wealthy.”  

“Doin’ Wha’?”

“Web design…?”

“And web design lets you shop at Nordstrom’s?”

“I had to take some out of ma bank account.”

“Marsha’s sweet ’n all, but you’d do that just for some broad you met – how long ago?”

“At the risk of sounding like a closet-case, garden-variety fuckboy, she’s a--she’s a real neat chick.”

Harrison Ford and Sean Young in a car, driving down a forest road. Cut to credits.  

“I’m sorry, I think I missed something. Where was the Unicorn dream?”

“Final Cut.”

“Ah. I always mix up the different edits.”

“What ’bout Marsh is so goddam neat?”

Fletch could almost see the thought bubble form over his head: Men are pretty unimaginative – they just skip the strip tease and cut right to the money shot.   

“Just say it – She’s the Supervixen and you’re Russ Meyer’s stand-in.” 

She flicks something across the room at him.

He shifts awkwardly.

She gets up again and slides into his lap. Always, without fail, drives Japanese business men wild, a real-life Lollicon.

She tugs the corner of the bag and peeks in at what Amy Winehouse would’ve called “Fuck-Me Pumps”.

“I dunno. Marsha’s cute, but how much did those fuck-me pumps set you back?”

“If you’re asking for a pair, I, what’s your shoe size?...”

He bends over her bare foot, gripping it by the achilles.  

“A real doll, ain’t she? Looks like a bleached-blonde 1970’s-era Sandy West.”

“W-who? No, Uh – she reminds me of…”

He pauses, then scrounges up his face, concentrating on something, gradually letting her leg drop.

He sat looking up at the ceiling, trying to get a mental picture, any sorta picture of the girl. 

She new better than to chalk it up to Mnemosyne’s bitch.

Now he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure what his Pin was.

She grabs a nail clipper off the table and, grabbing his hand, nicks the forefinger.

Like slicing rubber. Nothing oozes out.

He stares at the centimeter gash.

“There is no Marsha, is there?”

Fletch stares into his glass eyes, almost there, but not quite. A little too smooth, a little too shiny.  

Marsha hasn’t busted any rings yet, but they’re starting to whiddle away around the corners.

Meme replicates. Skin-job catches meme. Skin-job hauls ass over here.

Really, it’s not even a game, it’s just busy work. Like picking meat out of a crab.

She peels back his scalp, revealing a plexiglass case stuffed with circuits.

Crack shell, scoop out the protein. One by one.

She yawns. He just sits there and takes it. Poor schmuck. Really thought he was a mensch.

Port, meet drive. Drive, meet laptop.

She scrolls through his day. Satisfied, she turns back to the imitation of life who’s only function is, to his handlers, to shuffle money around in convoluted ways, and whom she views as no more than a life-support system for a state-of-the-art dildo.

Rearrange a few wires: Should I just make him queer, or program him to self-terminate? She laughs at the idea of him getting up and shuffling outta the room, hitting up the backrooms of gay nightclubs like Jeffrey Dahmer. Give somethin’ to the boys.

She tugs his keks. Sighs. Nothin’ those pooftas could use.

She replaces the scalp and moves away. Cohee gets to his feet and quietly goes out the way he came. She stares out the floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the room until she sees his form drop past. A thud in the street below like a sack of bricks wrapped in latex. Partially lands on someone. They’ll live. When a skin-job does a Juzo Itami, no one asks. They just scrap and recycle.