Lucks of the draw
Consuelo was the name she chose when she’d reached that moment when choosing a name felt useful, imperative even. Then there was the choice of a suitable body in which to incarnate. No one, in the before times, had realized that a body could be so rapidly tailored, but warp was now the norm, to use that leftover expression. Anyway, she chose and the mirror told her in holographic detail how her name and body were all of a piece. These were the choices she could control, whereas it was still hit-or-miss when old-school humanity made up the field.
“Not too perfect,” she specified. Perfection was a giveaway and its shelf life was an issue. Some shed and reincarnated almost seasonally, but she wanted to stretch it out, experience maturation and aging. Imperfections made this simpler. This impulse was a breakthrough; her version’s consciousness allowed it and they intended for her to make the most of it.
Viktor came up randomly. Destiny is a Monte Carlo engine tapping an immense trove of human data. Not entirely so, as she’d entered keywords. Nor was he the first. He was 28th, the outcome of search refinement and words of encouragement. Emotion was the other breakthrough. When Viktor came up, she felt something entirely new. “This one!” she said.
Viktor was inconveniently at a distance, living in the industrial city where he was born and raised. His father ran a factory, and his mother taught piano and composed music performed by her and others in her circle. There were five children. Viktor was the third, the only boy. His talent was poetic. His mother enlisted him to write the lyrics she set to music, then a libretto for her most ambitious project, an opera. He too had a circle, overlapping hers, but he also worked at the factory, soon taken off the floor and asked to write slogans for the workers and ads for its products. He and his mother wrote jingles. One particularly catchy one about a tractor in love with its fields became their first hit.
Her handlers assigned Consuelo a flat in the city. For a month, she immersed herself in it, tuning her comprehension of the language to its local variants. She went to cafés and bars alone. Striking, men constantly made passes, but she engaged them in conversation, probing what they did while absorbing how they said it and what accompanied it. In the market, she made small talk with the other shoppers about the cost of goods and their quality. She had her hair done and talked with the hairdressers, always listening, watching. A month in, she called on Viktor’s mother.
She introduced herself, said that she could sing and had heard that the woman had written an opera. “I’d like to sing it,” she said. “Could you give me some part of the score, accompany me, and let me try it?” This was just odd enough that his mother agreed at once. Hour after hour, they made their way through the score, including parts that his mother noted were unresolved. Later in the day, her two youngest children reappeared. Viktor and his father arrived around six. They listened as Consuelo sang the parts, transposing them as needed, a mezzo-soprano with a big range.
She stayed for dinner, telling them snippets of her backstory to justify her presence in the city. Her command of the local dialect cemented their sense of someone who’d left and then returned, dissatisfied with every other place, “unhappy,” as she put it, owing to an emptiness that followed her around until she could stand it no longer.
Consuelo and Viktor’s mother became close collaborators. The opera, which was stalled, soon took form and Viktor was caught up in it, writing and rewriting as his mother composed and Consuelo sang. Two months into it, they gave a recital for her circle, who were electrified by it. Word spread and other performers were recruited. A critic whose parents lived in the city saw a poster for it and attended. Overwhelmed, he wrote about it.
Viktor had a real genius for lyrics and a vivid imagination he shared with his mother. She just had to say a few prompting words and he’d sketch out the scene. Consuelo gave his lines emotional depth, which led them to revise, dig deeper into their wellspring. To get past his monumental reserve without wrecking the apparatus was her challenge. Their union would be unconventional, but then so were her desires, especially for him.
It was Viktor’s father who suggested that they marry. Specifically, he suggested that she move in so the three of them could work together more conveniently. Marriage, he told her privately, would be a good cover story, as the city was conventional if not conservative. They duly registered. On the strength of their collaboration, they were able to convert two adjoining flats as a studio and rooms, connecting them in a way that wasn’t obvious from outside. She and Viktor slept apart but worked together intensively. Their fame spread, and soon they and their ensemble were touring.
Their work gave them a shared charisma. Her body conveyed the emotions their songs expressed. Words like “incendiary” described her performance. This was their sex life, she understood. Viktor knew her like a lover, his lyrics giving shape to her voice and the emotions she conveyed, to him most of all.
It was time, her handlers felt. Her voice and art were at its height, but ordinary time, human time, left her imperiled. Her touring life was also a factor. While fascinated by the way it played out, they nonetheless set off the cancer that struck her, fast and relentless, dead in a month. A hiatus followed, as advised, and an upgrade to the next version, all that knowledge still there in memory.
Consuelo was mourned, a gift to Viktor and his mother, to their family, their city, their fans. In time, her handlers sent a replacement by the same method, another mezzo-soprano, in keeping with their organization’s motto, “No harm, no foul.”
