Before I could react, her face returned to its previous placid expression. She looked at me now not with fervent joy, but with practiced deference. Wordlessly, with such suddenness as to feel unreal, dozens more figures in purple togas arrived. I’d later learn to call them Tranquility Liaisons.

  A voice called out from the crowd with gentle authority.

  “Initiate Emergency Integration Procedure!”

  They swarmed me, literally picking me up and hoisting me away as they carried me off, buzzing with words of concern for my uncomely appearance. I didn’t fight them. I didn’t even think to.

  Their movements were so careful, so obviously borne from a desire to tend to me, that something in me knew it would be tremendously bad manners to stop my own kidnapping. The last thing I wanted was to cause a scene.

  I figured I’d lodge my protests as soon as we reached wherever we were going. In the meantime, I tried to enjoy the ride, gliding along as if weightless, carried by dozens of drone-like hands that somehow managed, to my alarm, to fix a variety of nagging back issues that were central to my identity as they whisked me away.

  **

  By the time we arrived at our destination, I felt ten years younger and had regressed into some of my old behaviors as a result. I apologized to some of my Liaisons for my juvenile philosophical outbursts.

  They gently placed me down, assuring me that my ideas were sound, if a bit na?ve. One helpfully suggested that I rely less on the word “metaphysical” in the future, as it was clear I didn’t know what it meant. I agreed to disagree. This place sure was metaphysical.

  Coming back to my senses, I surveyed my new surroundings. It was a gorgeous space, a bungalow overlooking the ocean. Geographically, this initially had me a bit mixed up, but those notions were put to rest when I accidentally sat on the remote control and transformed it into a lake.

  Cycling through the choices, I eventually settled on something more suited to my tastes, toggling the knobs and levers until I had summoned a bleak alleyway and concrete wall, complete with just the right amount of graffiti and the distant barking of rabid dogs. The menace was calibrated perfectly. I felt right at home.

  Calming scents of all kinds filled the air, tailored, I learned, to my individual preferences. Lavender, jasmine, the cheap cologne my grandfather wore on the seldom occasions he’d deign to leave his barstool long enough to grace us with his presence.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I might have been seduced by the immaculate specificity of the place, had my Liaisons not, in that moment, begun the process of trying to get me out of my smock and into something, as one of them put it in apparent breach of protocol, “fit for this world.”

  **

  There was much commotion as some of the room’s linens were draped over me, hastily dubbed a “purity shroud” by a quick-thinking Liaison. I was then tasked, in an unprecedented course of action, with “removing that cursed garment” from myself.

  As I did, whispers and debates filled the room about the unconventional shape and number of some of my body parts, and what protocol suggested be done about tailoring a toga to my “unique” proportions.

  I tried my best to ignore the rapidly intensifying din of side conversations as I meekly attempted to slip out of my long underwear. I’d always worn it back at MegaTech? as a precaution for the rare occasions I’d be subjected to the frozen expanses of space as a byproduct of some wager between Technicians.

  Unfortunately, far more frequently my work involved areas with temperatures more like the surface of a sun, and as a result it had the pesky habit of fusing to my body like a sweat-soaked exoskeleton.

  This was nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t solve. And luckily, I was not lacking in that department.

  The macabre nature of the entire spectacle, however, only intensified the fervor of the chatter. The room practically exploded in debate when I debuted the strange geometry of my time-honored technique.

  From what I could tell, there were two emerging camps, with little middle ground. A representative exchange, which I overheard as I greased up my left leg for one final disgusting push, went as follows:

  “His ungainly proportions are a mockery to the principle of Idealized Design. Does this read to you as a chosen form?”

  “It does not read to me at all. He disturbs me, confounds my teachings. That is why I bow to his uncanny majesty.”

  “Don’t tell me a Liaison as seasoned as yourself has fallen prey to this gossip of the last few cycles. In our time, how many false prophets have come and gone?”

  “And yet, one stands before me who defies all previous conceptions. His coarseness. His strange odors. The bleeding of his gums alone is cause enough to make mockery of my most deeply held convictions.”

  Just at that moment, as if to underscore her point, I unleashed a stream of guttural profanity I had picked up at a poker game on Pegasi B as I tried to free my swollen ankle from my tangled long johns.

  “He will appear to you speaking forbidden words from another world.”

  “You don’t seriously mean to suggest—”

  “Perhaps He has returned.”

  There was a hushed silence. The venomous thrill of blasphemy electrified the air.

  I, pants-clad ankle still akimbo, wrestled it free and stumbled back on my other leg, teetering before faceplanting—completely naked—onto the gleaming floor with a fleshy thud.

  A gasp rippled through the room. A long pause.

  And then, “He reveals himself, unadorned and undignified.”

  I sighed, careful not to accidentally coin any new scripture.

  This was going to be an issue.