Beehive

The school assembly hall looked the same as he remembered. Brick for paint-peeling brick, exactly the same, from the rusted weathervane above to the cracked concrete steps below. Upon those steps, the grooves worn from the pounding feet of the thousands of students before him, and thousands more since he’d graduated — god, had it really been twenty years? It hadn’t changed. Standing before the hall, Garry Ortiz didn’t feel as though he had changed. Those twenty years might as well have been yesterday. 

“They’ll be better now,” said Christine, standing beside him. “You’ll see. They’ll be different. School reunions are where everyone makes up for the horrible kids they were.”

He gripped his wife’s hand a little too tight. With his other hand, he scratched the back of his head. “How would you know?” The question came with a nervous tinge. “You haven’t done this yet.”

She laughed. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see. We’re here together.”

Yes, he was here. Against every instinct he was here, as wrong as it was, as strange as it was. After years of seeing the assembly hall during school hours as a child, seeing it at night as an adult should have made it seem different. The table out the front with a large man he didn’t recognise from this distance — some bouncer, or security guy — that too should have been another reason to give it a different feel. But it was the same. It felt the same.

The same discomfort.

Garry had tossed the invitation into the garbage the moment he’d received it, and that should have been that. Why relive the stings of those memories? Why go back to the beehive? But the realisation soon took hold: that to not attend the Dewhurst High Class of ’99 Reunion would be to ensure everyone who was there would be united in his absence. Because that’s how it worked, wasn’t it. People would go through that old attendance roll just for a laugh, putting today’s faces to yesteryear’s names. “Where’s Garry Ortiz?” they would say. And he would not be there. And in wanting to avoid spectacle he would become the object of scrutiny, and people would talk about Garry Ortiz. 

Garry Ortiz. The new kid laden with pimples bursting with red and white and blending into freckles from forehead to chin, an arms race of spot versus spot. Garry Ortiz, clenching a mouthful of braces and rubber bands against the chance of revealing itself and battling a shock of red hair that seemed perpetually locked into some kind of bowl cut. That was the Garry Ortiz formed by that first impression of the scrawny ginger, spotty, braces-laden new kid; the Garry that was mocked and teased and who had to endure it all throughout six horrible years at Dewhurst High. That was the Garry they would talk about tonight.

Unless…

“Time for a new first impression,” he said now, evoking the same words when he’d eventually plucked the invitation from the garbage and arranged to have his suit dry-cleaned.

Christine nodded. “Exactly. And you’re not the kid you were. All grown up. Successful career. Happily married.”

“To a beautiful wife,” said Garry. And she was: Christine would regularly turn heads whenever the two of them were out. Of course Garry attributed part of it to a calculation of confusion; the braces and acne were long gone, but the freckles and the red hair still blasted at garish volume. He on the lower rung of the looks department on the arm of a woman clearly several rungs higher, the disparity was plain, the thoughts of those onlookers almost audible: Married for his money…

So let them look. 

Make them look.

He turned at his wife, her confidence feeding his. Christine had that effect. “Guess it’s time,” he said. Garry straightened his back, took a deep breath. “Ready?”

She took his hand, serving as answer enough. He felt nothing, but it meant everything. 

The path of soft gravel crunched underfoot as they approached the assembly hall, bass thuds of twenty-year-old music booming from within. Their movement triggered the attention of the large man at its doors before Garry could announce himself; that, or bail at the last minute. Too late for either — the man looked up, squinted. And his face changed in recognition. “Garry? Is that Garry Ortiz?” 

“Uh, yeah, I’m here for—”

The man grabbed his hand, pumped it with vigour. “Good to see you! Welcome! God, it’s been forever! How you doing?”

Garry had to lend himself a moment. “Robert?” 

“Just Rob. In the flesh.” He patted himself on the stomach. “I guess a little more flesh these days,” and he followed it with a laugh that rippled down his generous jowls.

I’ll say, thought Garry. The version of Rob Caulfield he knew was thin as a rake, lanky to Garry’s scrawny. Junk food was his weakness and he’d eat it all — fries, pastries, chocolate — yet never gain any of its calories. The guy’s penchant for football seemed to offset it well enough back then. Or good genes. One or the other seemed to have given way now though, with Robert — Rob — looking more than twice the man Garry remembered.

Acting like it, too. Greeting him like the old friend he never was… 

“Here’s your name tag,” said Rob, handing it over. “Most others are already here. Some of our teachers too. Anyway, we’ll catch up more inside.”

He was making a long night even longer. Garry ushered his wife in. “Great, great.”

Rob gave a wry smile “Have fun, Glory Hole.”

Followed by a wink. Another laugh.

Christine looked over her shoulder. “What’s that mean?”

“Nothing. Just go in.”

Empty night air became a din of talk and chatter, and past the threshold it seemed to hit him all at once. The music filled the hall as much as the streamers that criss-crossed the ceiling, almost as much as the memories of this place, untouched by time. The school dances he had never enjoyed, the school exams he had never failed. Scores of reprinted photos lined the walls — class photos, sporting carnivals, recitals, performances, field trips, spelling bees. In their middle, the grown-up versions of the subjects of these photos were scattered throughout the hall, about a hundred or so milling in this group or that, and offering Gary nowhere to hide.

Garry tried to distract that thought by putting names to faces. None of them seemed true. Had everyone really grown up this much? Had he? These people looked so different to his eyes that—

“Garry? Gary Ortiz! Didn’t think you’d come!”

“Hey, Garry!”

“It’s not.”

“It is!”

“Hey Garry! Come over here!”

But they were already coming to him; two men and one woman, three faces with no names, at least none that made sense. These looked like people he once knew, but distant versions; features assembled somehow wrong, identities somehow mislabeled. The woman there, that couldn’t be... it kind of looked like...

“Well look at you,” said the woman, and the regrowth of her bob haircut showed dark roots against the heavy bleach all too well. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

“I don’t think he recognises you,” said the man to her right.

“I guess we didn’t talk much back then,” she said, extending a hand laden with jewellery. “Peta Bridges, née Silvagni.”

Garry swallowed a cough. “Peta Silvagni?” Inside, the thoughts raced: My god, Peta was only the hottest girl in class, every boy wanted her. Curves well ahead of her years, holy shit. But holy shit, standing before him those curves had become lumps. Her sheer dress strained against the muffin top rolls of her hips and belly, a double chin swallowed that jawline into a neck that seemed shaped from a gulping bowling balls. And that nose. There’d been nothing wrong with it then, but chiselled to a fine plastic point there was everything wrong with it now. To say nothing of those unwieldy Botox lips, or that equally unwieldy chest...

Outside, he clenched it all. “Peta. It’s great to see you again.”

“Mike Chibbles,” said the man standing nearby. But not to Garry; to Christine beside him. “Never knew Garry had a sister. Who might you be, darlin’?”

“His wife,” said Christine, and her tone cut as loud as the plaid on the man’s tie. 

Mike’s mottled cheeks flushed just a moment, swallowing the approach with as much drained dignity he could muster. He turned to Garry, the light easily shining through the whisps of combover hair. “Twenty years, huh? Time flies. Waddaya do with yourself these days?”

“Oh, you know. Computers. Software, programming.” Garry scratched the back of his head, pulse rising. It was all moving too fast — and yet in these names, these faces, in the new people they seemed to be there was the beginning of a sense of ease here. This second first impression. How things had changed.

“I’m in the auto business myself,” said Mike. “Good deals, great prices. Just opened a second yard last week.” Again, he turned to Christine, a nothing-ventured-nothing-gained smile creasing his face. “Come to me if you ever want a better deal.”

“And what d-d-do you do?” said the man to Garry’s right. This name registered to Garry — Thomas Chu, and his complexion wore every drink the man must have had, every cigarette he’d ever smoked, every drug he’d snorted or shot or gulped, because in the place of the one-time school captain and debating champion was a wrinkled suit barely holding up a physical stuttering wreck.

His gaze, his question, both went to Christine. 

“I’m a paediatric heart surgeon,” she said, patience of a saint. Her expression remained composed, despite every reason it had not to. “And you?”

“Between,” said Thomas. “Right now, b-b-b-between. If you need someone to hand you the k-k-knives, or mop up, or-or-or...”

“I don’t think it works like that,” said Garry, and he couldn’t help but laugh. Out it came, a laugh of relief and disbelief and so much more — not at just the general lack of tact across multiple cringing fronts (he’d make it up to Christine some way or another), but at all three of them. Twenty years it may have been, but those twenty years had not been kind to Thomas, Mike or Peta. Those twenty had brought down good looks and good grades and scrubbed the classroom pecking order entirely, to a point where Garry Ortiz of all people was able to look down on them, for the first time in his life. It felt good. And so he laughed.

“Hear that?” Mike turned his grin to Thomas. “Still got that heave.”

“That shriek more like it,” said Peta. “Could hear it from the other side of the class whenever Johnny Grainger acted up.”

“Half-shriek, half-snort, that’s how I remember it.”

“I remember that time when he s-s-s-aid Largentina instead of Argentina,” said Thomas. 

“Me too!” Peta and Mike both, united in their laughter. 

“Hey Garry, maybe you can settle this,” said Mike. “Did your mother cut your hair at home with a bowl?” 

“I can’t imagine she paid money for it.”

“Cut at home b-b-blindfolded.”

Garry swallowed. “It was a barber.”

“And you kept going back there!” Peta pursed her bulbous lips in disapproval, or maybe she didn’t. “I thought you were smarter than that.”

“What was that name they used to call you?” 

“I don’t know,” said Garry. Calm down. Deep breaths.

Christine stepped in closer to her husband. “Maybe we should go and look at some of those photos.”

“You’ll find some ugly truths over there, love,” said Mike. “Not just the hair. Your guy here was a right pizza face, especially with those freckles.”

“Remember the braces?”

Calm down.

“Oh god, the braces. Tin grin supreme!”

Deep breaths.

It didn’t help. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Here they were, rising from the gutter before his eyes. He clenched a fist. They were still doing it! Despite everything! Twenty years really hadn’t changed a damn thing. He scratched the back of his head again. 

“Still haven’t got rid of that head lice?”

“It’s not head lice—”

“Scratchy Garry! That was one of them, wasn’t it! ‘Bring up your knees, here come the fleas!’ And we’d all lift our feet off the ground!”

“That was a long time ago.” His fist clenched harder, fingernails cutting into his palm.

“Still battling those spots though, hey Garry!”

“F-f-reckles are for life.”

“Glory Hole Garry! That was the other one!”

They laughed.

“Stop it.”

They laughed.

“Stop it!”

They laughed.

“Stop it!” And it happened in one swift motion: Garry reached back and pulled the neural mesh from his head, and the world around him vanished in a burst of holographic static, and silence.

In its place returned the world that was. An empty warehouse space with walls not of photographs and streamers, but computer mainframes and cables, a faint electronic hum belying their masses of processing power. Garry regarded it for a lingering moment, used it to drown out the words ringing in his head. Artificial words at their core, speech via software, but sentiment that drew deep from the memories within. Those stings felt real enough. The beehive still swarmed.

Sensation returned to him. The slight weight on his back, the electronic hardware strapped there with its thick umbilical cord running to the neural mesh cap, now limp in his hand. He’d forgotten about the glasses and he took those off too, and battled every urge to crush the things into fine dust.

Instead he looked over to Arnold at the terminal. “Make him balder,” he said.

“What?”

“Balder.” He was some distance away in the warehouse space; Garry had to raise his voice to something approaching a shout. “Mike Chibbles. Make his comb over more obvious. Like laughably bad. And make my wife something more successful. A movie star, or a politician.”

Arnold frowned — even this far away, Garry could see it cross the face of his main technician. “I don’t think the wife’s occupation is going to matter.”

“She didn’t do anything in there. Make her something more assertive. And make Rob Caulfield fatter.”

“Again? Christ Garry, he’s already fat enough.”

“I don’t care.”

“He just sits at the door. He’s already breaking clipping at a few points.”

But Garry didn’t care.

He turned to the only distinct feature on the otherwise empty floor: a free-standing pin board of printed photographs and Facebook profiles, of newspaper clippings and library records. Of every single piece of information he could find on his classmates, and he stared at it as though it could tell him anything further. As though he hadn’t already pored over every photo, every post. 

Peta Bridges. Mike Chibbles. Thomas Chu, Rob Caulfield, and all the rest. None of them were as bald or as fat or as wrecked as he was simming them — the surveillance photos alone showed at least that much — but it still helped to sim them that way. Arnold didn’t understand, probably nobody would. But it made sense to Garry. To reshape them in his mind, to undergo repeated exposure against fatter versions, uglier versions, worse versions of these people in a controlled environment… well, that would help in dealing with them when the time came for real. Like that old thing about picturing a crowd in their underwear. Simming them this way would fortify the mind against the task.

The school reunion was a week away. There was so much work to do.

“Is it done yet?”

“Give me a minute.” Arnold’s fingers clicked across the keyboard, echoing in the empty space. “She’s a senator now, for what it’s worth.”

“Good,” said Garry. And then he waited for it to follow, for Arnold to say, yet again: “She’s not going to be there, you know”, because Christine was not real, Garry had no such Christine — Arnold always said this. But not this time. And to himself, Garry said “good” again. Because, again, Arnold would not understand. Securing a Christine was the least of Garry’s concerns; these days you could pay a girl to be whoever you wanted her to be. Just as you could pay your lead technician to build your own personal simulation.

“What’s the story with that Glory Hole name?” said Arnold.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s obviously something.”

“You don’t need to know.” Just as you could pay your lawyers to prevent further digging, or corporate blackmail.

A final keystroke. “Sim’s reset,” said Arnold, and he sighed. “Ready when you are.”

Of course Garry was ready. And he returned the glasses to his eyes, reattached the neural mesh over his scalp. He tried to ignore the nub of the main cable rubbing against the back of his head — damn thing was so itchy. They’d have to fix that. But that could be later.

Because they were waiting. They would be there. And so Garry had to be there too.