in the underground of North Dome

Anoka examined the reports and cross-referenced data in search of a test subject minimally compatible with Karen Goltz’s physiological and anatomical characteristics. She found no one suitable. The availability of bodies was scarce. There were fewer female test subjects than male ones, and the best had already been assigned to other lines of experimentation. In another scenario, the most prudent course would be to wait for favorable conditions to emerge, but Anoka had promised the senator that his daughter would have a new body in less than a week. Expenses were already being incurred, considering all the logistics required for the trip to such a remote location as the North Dome and the proper transportation of a frail Karen.

Moreover, Anoka did not want to lose the opportunity to take direct responsibility for this unprecedented case, which could earn her respect among her peers and career advancement. She counted on the success of the experiment and could already envision the title of a groundbreaking multidisciplinary study printed in golden letters: “The Restorative Effects of Prototype B-612 on Tetraplegic Patients: Body Transfer and Quality of Life.” Delaying the plans could provoke Peter Goltz’s resentment, cause her to lose precedence in the case, and let her chance slip through her fingers.

“I can’t give up now. I have to find a body for Karen — a reasonable body that will make her thank me for giving her a second chance at life, a body that will be seen as a gift, a blessing… and not as a curse or a bad joke,” Anoka whispered to herself, trying to cheer up with the prospect of once again scouring the databases connected directly to the panoptic system, knowing full well that she would only find the usual cursed profiles.

Who could serve as a vessel for Karen? Dayna Farrar, the twenty-six-year-old drug-addicted pregnant trafficker, seven months along? What would be the advantage of jumping from a paralyzed body into one severely debilitated by substance abuse? Dayna was skin and bones, and her withdrawal crises were constant. Despite the treatment provided by the North Dome’s clinical rehabilitation sector, the young woman remained apathetic and completely dependent on the drug to achieve any fleeting relaxation or pleasure. It made no sense for Anoka to force Karen to trade the nightmare of paralysis for the nightmare of addiction.

Would Karen inherit the afflictions of her new body? The solution is simple! Find a relatively healthy body for the young woman. There was Elza Milos, a political prisoner convicted for promoting dissent by hosting subversive meetings on her farm near the border — a woman of iron health, no doubt, who had buried three husbands and still shed tears for the lover she left behind at the moment of her arrest. The problem? Elza was a sixty-eight-year-old woman. The disparity was abysmal. Karen would lose fifty years of life and would never forgive Dr. Anoka.

What about Cindy Said? Thirty years old, with no significant medical history. An attractive, vital brunette whose dwarfism did not prevent her from exerting a certain sexual fascination among men. Unfortunately, Said belonged to a fundamentalist sect that demanded bizarre physical sacrifices from its followers. Subjugated by the terrors of orthodoxy, Said had experienced in her own flesh the piercing pain of genital mutilation. Deprived of sexual pleasure early on, she was nevertheless not free from the bonds of her sex. She fled home in a moment of desperation and boarded a clandestine ship to Kassala. Her abusive husband swore he would find her wherever she was, and since then Said had lived under constant death threats. It was no wonder she had signed the agreement that spared her from deportation at the cost of becoming a volunteer in the experiments.

None of those women would do. Anoka would have difficulties — perhaps insurmountable ones — making her thesis on “body swapping and quality of life” sound plausible. She decided to clear her head by going up to the desert surface. The pleasant temperature and gentle morning breeze would clear her thoughts. She had barely stretched and pushed her chair back when she received the audible alert. System updated! New test subjects had been registered and were already housed in the North Dome facilities. Out of due diligence, Anoka glanced at the files of the newcomers. One, in particular, caught her attention.