A short story I wrote yesterday.

“You can be anything you want to be in life, as long as you work towards it”, reading out once again the sentence that was lasercut on the necklace gifted by her aunt Betty, Anita slowly lowered it down onto the crystal coffee table and blew a kiss at the family photo next to it. She stood up and walked into the makeshift operating theater for the last time as her bipedal life coming to an end.

“Hey Jörg13, how are you feeling today?” She vivaciously greeted the bearded mastermind behind The Tell-Tail Heart project with a kiss on both cheeks and made some final adjustments of the monitor programme that controls the seventeen livestreaming camera positions on the interface screen.

“All good! Look, Annie honey, boost up that purple light by 3 points behind the cabinet and by 7 the one on the ceiling, will you do that for me?”

“….Done!”

“Turn Camera 13 over now.”

Jörg13 looked straight into the closest camera with a textbook standard smile of amiability and poise. He drew a deep breath in, the kind that pumped air to lift his lower abdomen instead of chest, cleared his throat and dipped his chin with affirmation, “we are ready.” It, as expected, triggered a wave of compliments and exclamations marks in Danmu, the running comments superimposed over their livestream footage. The comments were in all languages coming from the nearest and remotest human settlements on earth, and the function was closed off 3 seconds after the announcement. My “omgggggggg” conveniently diminished into the void before I sent if off.

This is such a new area, and as we say back in Brooklyn, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I was watching the duo’s experiment in the comfort of my recently transformed basement, thoroughly appreciating the delights of living vicariously. I first dugged into the ground and added a UV lit pool filled with desalinated and filtered water piped from the ocean. After clearing out the debris congesting the air ducts and rolling out some Osmunda japonica ++ along the walls, I could finally enjoy some quality air in this space whenever I want to spent longer hours in the dungeon.

I’ve been following their channel for the good part of last 5 years during the Great Isolation and witnessed Anima’s physical evolution under Jörg13’s delicate hands and increasingly audacious mind. What most their audience members do not know was that the ingenious biohacker Jörg13 was in fact the best robotic work of Anima, who is now under the innocent cover of “Anita” and their biographical data got completely erased from almost everywhere on the internet. Old farts like me who lived before the birth of Metaverse™ still “remember” the tales of Anima. Without any non-fungible evidence to back up our memory, we are deemed a bunch of tinfoil hat wearing maniacs. To be honest, I don’t really care at all.

“Now I’m lying down onto the operating table, and Jörg13 is preparing first to hook up the TransCranialBond (TCB) mesh as usual. For the newly joined members, please turn on your setting to level 2 if you’re using it for the first time. I’d also advise you not to put on the bodysuit just yet. You can replay the experience after you get used to the gloves and stockings. ”

On the screen, Anita narrated with her tender voice, just as Jörg13 carefully tucked a delicate rose gold mesh over Anita’s bald scalp with his long soft cold fingers. I remember how his fingers felt on my scalp when Anita grew antlers, however she decided that they didn’t look so good on her so she got them removed not long after the initial surgery. I didn’t join the removal session live nor replayed afterwards. Consequently I still have the phantom antlers on top of my head. It was super hard to find proper hats for a while until some Wharton undergrads created a fashion brand for us phantom modders and they marketed it through dreamscape. One night I dreamed of Kassandra singing to me, “Oh boy, oh boy! Come to my arms and lie on my bare chest”. As I followed her instruction, she caressed over my phantom anglers, and popped a perfect hat over them. I woke up and searched for the brand immediately. Kassandra, my goddess, didn’t she become an overnight sensation in the scene!

My attention drifted back to the screen and eyed a close-up slow motion footage: the tiny suction cups inside the TCB landed precisely at where the nerves converge, and on the right top corner of the screen, an hyperrealistic animated 3D simulation illustrated the neurological and anatomical inner workings of the surgery. A solemn voice announced the potential dangers of surrogate surgeries as a regular preop procedure. After that, the soothing lullaby Anita always hummed as the surgery began vibrated directly on my eardrums and put me straight into a hypnosis, with the hope to finally become a mermaid myself.

Jörg13 proceeded to draw two straight lines from Anita's abdomen along her groins all the way down to the heels. Then a glitch flashed across the screen. He was seen to turn around with his back to the camera while in light speed he swapped and reconnected TCB with the digi-neural simulation wire. Every "watch-only" viewer in front of their Tellies gasped at J's bold move. Never had they seen anything like this before. Never had they anticipated J to betray the Agreement. Never had they ever thought about what to say to Anita postop. But in that split second, the shock made them doubt whether it was just a glitch in their visual receptors. The Danmu section was closed so there were no way the viewers could talk to each other to verify the scene. The operation seemed to continue as it should. The scalpel cut along the marked lines, Jörg13 sewed up the two pieces of the skins at front and back. He painstakingly poked many pores on the new lower body of Anita's and implanted each piece of iridescent scales. It counted 213 pieces before the fin was annexed as the last step. Jörg13 then lifted up Anita's new body and lowered her into the tiny square pool at the far end of the room. She opened her eyes, still under the effect of anaesthesia. 

I came out of the hypnosis and my eyelids parted one nanometer at a time. It took forever before I could feel my body again.

“What do you want to become when you grow up?”

“A mermaid!”, I shouted.

The laughters in my 3rd grade classroom were still ringing in my ears but they finally stopped inflicting pain on my almost non-existent self-esteem. I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life – the firmness of my new phantom tail and the strong urge to flex it in the pool. I finally felt right in my own body. I became a mermaid! Trust me, phantom modding is real shit.

I peeled off the TCB bodysuit off my new hot body and leapt forward into the pool, each scale of my tail glowing in the dark.

I became a mermaid.

I am a mermaid.

I am.

I am.

I am.

A short story I wrote yesterday.

“You can be anything you want to be in life, as long as you work towards it”, reading out once again the sentence that was lasercut on the necklace gifted by her aunt Betty, Anita slowly lowered it down onto the crystal coffee table and blew a kiss at the family photo next to it. She stood up and walked into the makeshift operating theater for the last time as her bipedal life coming to an end.

“Hey Jörg13, how are you feeling today?” She vivaciously greeted the bearded mastermind behind The Tell-Tail Heart project with a kiss on both cheeks and made some final adjustments of the monitor programme that controls the seventeen livestreaming camera positions on the interface screen.

“All good! Look, Annie honey, boost up that purple light by 3 points behind the cabinet and by 7 the one on the ceiling, will you do that for me?”

“….Done!”

“Turn Camera 13 over now.”

Jörg13 looked straight into the closest camera with a textbook standard smile of amiability and poise. He drew a deep breath in, the kind that pumped air to lift his lower abdomen instead of chest, cleared his throat and dipped his chin with affirmation, “we are ready.” It, as expected, triggered a wave of compliments and exclamations marks in Danmu, the running comments superimposed over their livestream footage. The comments were in all languages coming from the nearest and remotest human settlements on earth, and the function was closed off 3 seconds after the announcement. My “omgggggggg” conveniently diminished into the void before I sent if off.

This is such a new area, and as we say back in Brooklyn, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

I was watching the duo’s experiment in the comfort of my recently transformed basement, thoroughly appreciating the delights of living vicariously. I first dugged into the ground and added a UV lit pool filled with desalinated and filtered water piped from the ocean. After clearing out the debris congesting the air ducts and rolling out some Osmunda japonica ++ along the walls, I could finally enjoy some quality air in this space whenever I want to spent longer hours in the dungeon.

I’ve been following their channel for the good part of last 5 years during the Great Isolation and witnessed Anima’s physical evolution under Jörg13’s delicate hands and increasingly audacious mind. What most their audience members do not know was that the ingenious biohacker Jörg13 was in fact the best robotic work of Anima, who is now under the innocent cover of “Anita” and their biographical data got completely erased from almost everywhere on the internet. Old farts like me who lived before the birth of Metaverse™ still “remember” the tales of Anima. Without any non-fungible evidence to back up our memory, we are deemed a bunch of tinfoil hat wearing maniacs. To be honest, I don’t really care at all.

“Now I’m lying down onto the operating table, and Jörg13 is preparing first to hook up the TransCranialBond (TCB) mesh as usual. For the newly joined members, please turn on your setting to level 2 if you’re using it for the first time. I’d also advise you not to put on the bodysuit just yet. You can replay the experience after you get used to the gloves and stockings. ”

On the screen, Anita narrated with her tender voice, just as Jörg13 carefully tucked a delicate rose gold mesh over Anita’s bald scalp with his long soft cold fingers. I remember how his fingers felt on my scalp when Anita grew antlers, however she decided that they didn’t look so good on her so she got them removed not long after the initial surgery. I didn’t join the removal session live nor replayed afterwards. Consequently I still have the phantom antlers on top of my head. It was super hard to find proper hats for a while until some Wharton undergrads created a fashion brand for us phantom modders and they marketed it through dreamscape. One night I dreamed of Kassandra singing to me, “Oh boy, oh boy! Come to my arms and lie on my bare chest”. As I followed her instruction, she caressed over my phantom anglers, and popped a perfect hat over them. I woke up and searched for the brand immediately. Kassandra, my goddess, didn’t she become an overnight sensation in the scene!

My attention drifted back to the screen and eyed a close-up slow motion footage: the tiny suction cups inside the TCB landed precisely at where the nerves converge, and on the right top corner of the screen, an hyperrealistic animated 3D simulation illustrated the neurological and anatomical inner workings of the surgery. A solemn voice announced the potential dangers of surrogate surgeries as a regular preop procedure. After that, the soothing lullaby Anita always hummed as the surgery began vibrated directly on my eardrums and put me straight into a hypnosis, with the hope to finally become a mermaid myself.

Jörg13 proceeded to draw two straight lines from Anita's abdomen along her groins all the way down to the heels. Then a glitch flashed across the screen. He was seen to turn around with his back to the camera while in light speed he swapped and reconnected TCB with the digi-neural simulation wire. Every "watch-only" viewer in front of their Tellies gasped at J's bold move. Never had they seen anything like this before. Never had they anticipated J to betray the Agreement. Never had they ever thought about what to say to Anita postop. But in that split second, the shock made them doubt whether it was just a glitch in their visual receptors. The Danmu section was closed so there were no way the viewers could talk to each other to verify the scene. The operation seemed to continue as it should. The scalpel cut along the marked lines, Jörg13 sewed up the two pieces of the skins at front and back. He painstakingly poked many pores on the new lower body of Anita's and implanted each piece of iridescent scales. It counted 213 pieces before the fin was annexed as the last step. Jörg13 then lifted up Anita's new body and lowered her into the tiny square pool at the far end of the room. She opened her eyes, still under the effect of anaesthesia. 

I came out of the hypnosis and my eyelids parted one nanometer at a time. It took forever before I could feel my body again.

“What do you want to become when you grow up?”

“A mermaid!”, I shouted.

The laughters in my 3rd grade classroom were still ringing in my ears but they finally stopped inflicting pain on my almost non-existent self-esteem. I’ve been waiting for this day my whole life – the firmness of my new phantom tail and the strong urge to flex it in the pool. I finally felt right in my own body. I became a mermaid! Trust me, phantom modding is real shit.

I peeled off the TCB bodysuit off my new hot body and leapt forward into the pool, each scale of my tail glowing in the dark.

I became a mermaid.

I am a mermaid.

I am.

I am.

I am.