Jain sat on the floor in front of the telset, sheathed completely in shiny purple nylor, bending her head over one spread leg and then the other in imitation of the instructor on the screen. "Doing aerobex again?" her husband, Kroll, asked.
"My class was canceled tonight, I can't only do aerobex twice in one day," Jain said. "I've made so much progress this year."
Yeah, progress in turning yourself into a human greyhound, Kroll thought to himself. His wife, like every woman in Thinopolis, now had the body of a seventeen-year-old boy track star. But that was the consequence of a diet high in FlavKelp and the exercise regimen followed by every resident of the city; body fat had been almost eliminated. And he was sick to death of it.
He went upstairs and carefully removed the telset panel from the bedroom wall. It was no longer possible to watch old movies which showed women of the past-- they contained too much violence, stereotyping, fur-wearing and meat-eating and humor at the expense of others, your telset would detect violation of the digital human rights ordinances and shut down. But behind it he had wedged an ancient, yellowed magazine he had found at a demolition site in Slender City II.
He gazed at the woman on its cover-- Marilyn, they called her. Apparently she had been some kind of sexual idol, back in the mid-20th century, despite the fact that she had large round breasts and a soft face and, most shockingly, broad hips. She was nude in many of the pictures, and although she seemed to have been considered reasonably thin in her day, now her abundant curves and lack of muscle definition made her seem grotesque to most male residents of the urbcens, who would be grossed out by the thought of her eating hamburgers and, no doubt, enjoying the occasional cocktail.
Kroll thought she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He was sick of Jain, sick of her toned body, sick of her constant aerobexing, sick of her dieting and careful weighing of every protein slab and carbonugget. He wanted a woman like Marilyn or even, dammit, bigger, rounder, curvier. He thought about jacking off, again, to her image, but decided he needed the energy for what he was going to do tonight. He carefully slid the magazine back into place and then pressed the telset back into its spot on the wall. After tonight he wouldn't need Marilyn's image any more. Maybe eventually Jain would find it, after he was gone, and understand at last why he'd been forced to do what he was about to.
* * *
"This is the point where you go back," the slipper said.
"I'm not going back," Kroll said.
"It only gets ugly from here. First, I dig your transmat out of your neck. That's going to hurt like hell. Once it stops being connected to tissue, the chops are alerted. That gives you about 60 seconds to drop over this wall into the perimeter, then scale the perimeter and drop down to the exone. Once you're in the exone, you're gone from Thinopolis forever. Nobody knows you, nobody wants you back. You run and you hide, as fast as you can. That's the story of your life from now on."
"I have to scale the walls myself? I have to hide myself? What did I pay you all those skinnies for?"
"Because if you hadn't, you'd be jumping over a wall with a fifty-foot drop on the other side, instead of a ten-foot one, and there'd be nobody waiting for you in the woods on the other side, not that it would matter at that point anyway. But look, I'm gonna say it again, if you're not committed to going, don't go. It's a no-turning-back deal. I suggest you go back home, bang your scrawny aerobexed wife, and consider the skinnies I get to keep as the price you paid for some excellent advice about not throwing away a perfectly good lifestyle here in Thinopolis."
"I'm not going back," Kroll said again.
"Okay, then bite this towel, because this is going to hurt a lot," the slipper said.
* * *
Blood running from the bandage on his neck, a fire up and down one shoulder, Kroll landed on the foamwalk easily, by now it was impossible to hurt yourself in the city itself, Thinopolis took pride in its status as the world's first fully risk-free environment. It was the fall out of Thinopolis that might kill him.
He made a jump at the wall and just managed to get his hands up on the top. Years of mandatory aerobex had made him superbly fit, despite his own wishes, and so he was able to quickly get one leg up and pull himself onto the wall. In the distance he heard the whine of the chops, getting closer. This was it. It was jump down or do ten years-- after being degaussed. He jumped.
The instant he hit the ground the forest seemed to come at him. Figures covered in leaves and camouflage came out, grabbed him, and pulled him with them. It was as if the forest had swallowed him up.