It began as a bad day, and only got worse from there. I positively crawled out of bed that day, dragging my body out. Internally I was kicking myself, unsure how to work the controls well enough to inspire the machinery to work how it ought to—or at the very least, how I wanted it to. The light outside was faint, a cloudy sky letting through only the faintest awareness of a celestial parlor beyond the Earth. It was as though the entire world was caught in the gentle gloved hands of some inscrutable horror, the workings of humanity already within its aristocratic grip. Staggering off to the bathroom, I mentally steeled myself for another day of piloting a craft I hadn’t chosen and felt no connection to.

I couldn’t get quite as close a shave as I would’ve liked (and what I would’ve liked would be to never have to shave again), nicking myself on the corner of my mouth. The blood dripped slowly down my face, a single droplet finding the fluidity to fall into the sink, splattering over the already-dirty porcelain. A small tremor of a thought found its way into my mind about the true fragility of the body I inhabited. Keeping this vessel alive was taxing and unrewarding, utterly unfulfilling. I imagined that some folks must enjoy their appearances, the muscle-bound hunks and beauty queens of the world, but I didn’t care to try for an even bulkier form, and feminine beauty was of course completely unattainable for men like me. I stared down at the razor in my hand. What a joyless task it was, keeping this body habitable. I got back to shaving.

The bus took me to work that morning, far too demotivated as I was for even a half-hour walk. It made suspicious sounds every time it hit a bump, as though everything was coming apart rivet by torn rivet. I wondered at the semiotics of it, the metal vessel tearing itself to pieces, exposing the human flesh inside. What was inside me? On a physical level, of course, there was blood, but surely in a metaphysical way there was something else there. A pastor might have called it a soul, but to me that felt vague, far too vague. Some spiritualist had once said I had a dark aura, which I agreed with. I was definitely a bad person. But still, it provided no explanation as to what was beneath the layers of metal visible to the outside world.

I looked around the rest of the bus, wondering about them as well. There was a young twenty-something with a sidecut and dyed blue hair, but who were they, beneath the leather jacket and spiked collar? The harried salaryman whose eyes betrayed both a stoic determination and wearied resignation, who was he within his dark suit and red tie? An inscrutable figure sat next to me, a beige bucket hat pulled over their eyes and arms crossed over their body as their entire person slowly slid down the seat. Probably they were just getting a few moments of rest in between where they had been and where they would be.

These questions of identity had answers, I realized. Answers etched onto their faces and clothing, hair they chose to cut a certain way and expressions they set on the canvas of their skin. Perhaps not all of them were there within view, but at least an aspect of them was. I looked down at my clothing, grey baggy hoodie over employee uniform, and wondered if they could tell I was a thief. Maybe I expressed in the very minutiae of interaction just how dastardly a character I was. I bit my bottom lip, almost imperceptibly. I’d have to get better at piloting this machine. I’d have to get better at lying.

The bus let me out after some time, the pneumatic hiss and step down to concrete a smooth transition from grey interior to grey exterior. Dark clouds now loomed overhead in a manner that seemed almost ominous, as though what was behind that cover of water vapor had been deemed unsuitable for human eyes by the gods above.

Everything, it seemed, was hiding behind layers of metal today.

The supermarket I worked at was just a short walk away from the bus station, but even that much time in the early morning air was enough to make me thankful for the extra layers I always made sure to wear. Nowadays they were mostly for concealing objects within folds of clothing, but I remembered a point in time where I hadn’t needed to do that, and even then I had chosen bulky, form-concealing clothing. I wondered why.

“You’re early today,” I muttered under my breath, already anticipating the interaction I would have with my manager as I walked in through the automatic doors, bringing a frigid blast of air in with me.

“You’re early today!” my chipper-as-ever manager Jared managed. My lips curled into a smile as I adopted the demeanor that I knew I would want for this conversation, if not the next eight hours.

“Yessir, got up bright and early to start the day!” I did a cheeky military-style salute, snapping to attention and clamping my feet together.

Jared gave me a smile that appeared genuine, which of course meant his fake smiles were so well-practiced that they approached verisimilitude. “Take off those civilian clothes, private, we’ve got drills to run!”

I scrambled out of my hoodie to expose the employee uniform underneath. “Standing by for orders, sir!” I gave him a look of eager determination. It was my most well-practiced look, an etching that I had made again and again on the blank metal. It was the key to my still holding a job in the current recession, even if it was to one of the biggest zaibatsus.

Jared chuckled, waving me down. “At ease, soldier,” he replied, glancing down at his clipboard with a waning smile. “The boxes in the back need to be stacked, then the shelves from aisles five through twelve restocked. We just got our new shipment of hairbrushes—corporate says that their new cooperative measure with Jinteki Group is top priority, so make sure to display those…”

I made sure to smile and nod, letting Jared know I was listening. I was not, of course, but we both made sure not to draw attention to that. So long as I said and did the right things, where my mind was at was not his concern. My company-issued phone pinged with my list of tasks when he finished, and I set off to the back of the store for a mind-numbing morning of stacking, unpacking, or unstacking boxes.

There is a certain rhythmic euphoria in menial labor, a kind of zone where the mind is allowed to wander in search of greater glory. Or it would be, if today had not been such a bad day. Instead, I found myself fixating on the literature I had read over the years. Nowadays, besides the exciting reading material I got from manuals and instructions, I mostly stuck to the cosmic horror and cyberpunk fantasies that I’d been reading for years. There were some stories that I’d read so many times, I could recount certain passages word for word. It would be a useful skill if I ever decided to get into theater, though in a sense much of my life already was theater.

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness…

That one was Lovecraft, a classic. I could replay the story, beat by beat, in my head, and maybe a few more boxes would get sorted, opened, and placed on pallets. But I chose to keep browsing, shooting a quick reminder to my body to lift with the knees.

 It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo's, or Sad Jack's, or the Rafters…

Gibson and Shirley made great work together. This was also another short piece. I was beginning to sense a theme. I prodded my unconscious memories for longer material, asking for something deeper from my archives of the unseen.

I had managed to doze off in my sociology lecture for but a second, but that second was all it took for Professor Sappho…

What? I snapped to attention, almost dropping the cardboard box I held in my hands. What was that one from? It certainly didn’t sound like anything I was interested in now. If I had ever read it, certainly it was so far back as to be forgotten… except, clearly, I hadn’t forgotten it. Shaken, I abandoned that story in search of more texts.

Julia Mackenzie was staring at Mark again, the boy she maybe-kinda had a crush on. And Violet, of course, was staring at Julia, the girl she definitely had a crush on…

I groaned. What was this? What were these strange half-remembered notions? I certainly had never read anything like this, except… I carefully lowered the box I was holding to the ground, knowing that if I dropped it and something shattered it could very well be my job on the line. A memory floated out from the benthic depths of my mind out towards my consciousness: I was in bed, curled up beneath layers of blankets, binging through that story.

And it wasn’t just one story, was it? No… at one point, I’d been interested in entirely different genres of works. Years ago. At least a decade. Before puberty had hit me. I stared down at my hands. Lesbian romance fiction. I was into lesbian romance fiction as a child. As a boy. I winced. Why would I be into that? I searched for answers, but beyond the initial revelation they were becoming sparse. I was… jealous? Yes, I think that was it. But of whom? Nothing answered. I blinked.

I couldn’t recall my mental state at the time, but I could definitely fill in the rest of the story with what I already knew. As I grew older, I’d become fond of horror stories, finding sympathy for the monsters and outsiders, the strange and weird. So that was it, then; I’d simply outgrown the ridiculous romantic novels of my childhood. Internally nodding, I filed my new information under “vaguely interesting, nothing important” and picked up the box again.

The phone dinged, and I set down what was fast becoming my exercise weight for squats. “Suspicious character in Aisle 14, convince it to exit premises,” was the readout. I frowned. “It”? Probably a slip of the finger from Jared, either that or a raccoon got in again. I left the back room and any remaining troubled thoughts with it.

Aisle 14 was for chips, cookies, and snack foods. It bordered aisle 15, toiletries, and aisle 13, canned goods. A cautionary glance revealed a single figure in aisle 14, hunched over what appeared to be several family-size bags of tortilla chips. I dusted off my shirt and made my way over to them, then froze when they turned towards me.

It was her. The girl from the elevator. The girl I’d stolen from. She was looking right at me. Oh god. I’d met marks in person before, and had no trouble then, but something seemed different now. The only thing I could manage to notice was how unreasonably pretty she looked, her blond hair framing her face perfectly, denim cap tilted just low enough to see the flag design on it. I chose to stare at that instead, afraid that if I looked her in the eyes I might somehow lose my mental faculties, at least temporarily.

This time, she definitely took note of my staring. Her eyes followed mine upwards, and when she noticed the object of my attention she smirked. Smirked! I didn’t know why I found that so fascinating.

We spent a few too many moments in silence, just enough for the quiet to stretch into an imposition, until finally she piped up. “No, no, let me guess: you’re trying to think of reasons to get me to leave that don’t have to do with the obvious.”

I returned to my senses then, and put on a concerned frown. “Not at all, ma’am! My colleagues and I here at Weyland only wish you the most successful shopping experience! Is there anything you need help with?”

Her face worked its way through a range of emotions before settling on skepticism. “Uh, yeah, actually. I need chips for a… thing this afternoon and I’m on a budget. What’s the most amount of carbs I can buy for ten bucks?”

I gave her a plain, helpful smile and pointed at the store-brand family-size mildly salted potato chips. “That’s the best deal you’ll find in the whole city, ma’am.”

She glanced at the price labeled beneath and grabbed two bags, shooting me a look as she did so. “You can cut it with the ma’am stuff.”

“Hm?” I tilted my head in an expression of authentic confusion.

“We both know what you and your boss really want to say,” she muttered.

“Hmm?” I tilted my head further in genuine confusion.

She stared at me for a moment, then started heading to the cash register. “Forget it.”

I stayed behind, just blinking. That was certainly one of the stranger customer interactions I’d had. I wasn’t even sure if she’d recognized me. She certainly seemed put off by something; I’d have to ask Jared.

Jared only snorted. “Yeah, she—and I say she in air quotes—” he stated, demonstrating by using his fingers to make air quotes, “probably got the message halfway through. I woulda just sent her away if I had the choice, but that’s against both company policy and the law, so what’s an honest man to do, am I right?”

He jabbed me in the ribs in a show of masculine bonding. “Of course, sir,” I replied, entirely uncertain as to what he was talking about.