THE COTO GENERATION

July 2058

The doctor’s story was revealing as much in the manner of its telling as in its content. He was clearly aware of the societal mores that colored the behavior of his client, and yet the irony that informed his telling of events revealed the pre-progressive (perhaps even re-gressive?) attitude that he brought to issues of childhood and gender. Of course, knowing his audience, Jordan McPhee, was a fellow Deranger, it was reasonable for him to assume that they held similar attitudes on such issues. But everyone in the Derangers’ generation was very careful with their words outside the milieu of their most trusted friends. In fact, the behavior observed and conversations overheard throughout society revealed little more than the Pavlovian responses of a citizenry well trained by thirty years of constant surveillance and social criticism to behave as expected. That was why people didn’t stray from their narrowly defined identity groups; it was safer there.

Thus Jordan was aware of the danger he was in by risking opening up to Alexa, and he needed time and space to work it out before seeing her again.

When she’d originally exposed her secret to him—that she was charged with transforming the Social Points system—she had no way of knowing that she was seeking assistance from the very creator of the subversive icon who regularly undermined the ideology on which the system was based … nor could she possibly have guessed that Artie’s irreverent, anarchic humor had its origins in the professorial mind of her former professor.

So far, however, their world views had not obviously clashed.

The truth was that Jordan’s response to the public policy emerging from the Overthrow had been essentially apolitical. On almost every count, he saw himself as Left, Right, and Center, so when Agenda 2060 was published, he couldn’t disagree with any of the goals outlined. They were reasonable, humane, and admirably just. He was sure that Alexa felt the same. Most likely, that would have been the consensus of his colleagues, too, if the question were put to them in those terms, but they were ultimately too busy looking into the future of technology to be sidetracked by unproductive discussions about politics.

So, how did this explain Artie Sharp and his subversive broadcasts on the underground ArteFact Channel of the dark web? The explanation, perhaps, lay in the three words that had been the pillars of Jordan’s academic life: logic, empiricism, and truth. He just couldn’t accept public statements that made no sense, were factually incorrect, or were deceitful. But Progressive Intellectual Elites, or PIEs, were so passionately convinced of the correctness of their view of the world that they were untroubled by such concerns. What mattered to them were the goals expressed in Agenda 2060. In their view, no decent human could criticize their methods for achieving those goals simply on the grounds that their messaging was sometimes absurd, contrary to fact, or downright dishonest. As much as Jordan loathed the sentiments and viciousness of the alt-right, along with the backward-looking delusional nostalgia of old-school conservatism, it was the PIEs that Jordan’s creation, Artie, trained his sights on most often, for they were the ones who controlled the public agenda.

Now he needed to decide which direction he was heading with Artie Sharp, and how this would play out now that Alexa had focused her sights on him. He needed an endgame.

These were the thoughts that played out in his mind over the ensuing days—until they were abruptly interrupted by news of another situation involving Lexie and Manaia, the outcome of which he never could have predicted.

In hindsight, it was clear that Lexie believed her access to the high-level care afforded by the prestigious Erasmus Foundation Salutogenesis Clinic was due to her position on the subcommittee of the CCCI, and her high level of Society Points. She’d never questioned it … just as it had never occurred to her to ask why she was looked after by Dr. John Erasmus himself.

When medical services had been socialized following the Overthrow, general practice and hospitals were brought under the banner of Medicare and rebranded as the Corpus Care System.  In the beginning, a flat insurance premium representing five percent of the patient’s annual Transition Benefits was charged for basic accident, emergency, and infectious disease treatment. Elective surgeries and anything deemed to be “lifestyle conditions” were not covered, unless additional premiums were selected on a sliding scale of up to twenty percent. The ever-rising costs of the healthcare industry far outstripped any inflation adjustments to Transitional Benefits. Thus, many citizens turned to self-insuring—which, at best, left them vulnerable to unplanned expenses, and at worst, resulted in having to mortgage their future Transitional Benefits, and in some cases, selling their organs forward on the Transplant Futures Market.

Lexie’s blissful ignorance of the reason for her privileged position spoke to her personality and attitude about society. She was a member of the COTO generation, the Children of the Overthrow, those of school and college age who were recruited to enforce the new social justice agendas and denounce backsliding wherever they detected it. Being just fifteen at the time of the Overthrow, Lexie was psychologically in perfect condition to accept the non-heuristic teachings necessary for instilling utter conviction in the principles espoused in Agenda 2060. COTOs assumed an unquestioning stance in the years following the Overthrow, partly because they believed the society they now lived in had been at least in part designed by them, and partly because the prevailing COTO ethos encouraged them to see themselves as some kind of revolutionaries—particularly if they had taken part in the Children’s March of October 2039, as Lexie had.

Therefore, Lexie, a COTO and a narcissist, never questioned her or Manaia’s privileged medical care—which was, in fact, Erasmus simply doing a favor for his old friend and fellow Deranger, Jordan McPhee. That privilege, however, did not extend to elective surgery—more specifically, elective cosmetic surgery—which was more the pity.

When Jordan received an urgent message from Erasmus saying that Lexie was in the Hope Clinic for Gender Correction and Cosmetic Surgery, he had just got back from a thirty-minute training run—his twelfth session in the two weeks since his excursion with Alexa to Neutrality Park.

“What the hell…?” he cried out on seeing the message. “What’s she doing to herself?”

By the time his Konektor got through to Erasmus, he had already written the script for the entire sordid tragedy in his mind, right down to the angry epistle Lexie would have written blaming the whole thing on him in case she didn’t survive her mutilation.

Erasmus rushed to reassure him. “It’s not what you think, Jordan. From what I can tell, it all comes down to that Latinx wife … partner … husband … of hers, Bammy,” he explained. “Seems she/he has been transitioning over the last year or two and is a candidate for gender correction. In the Corpus Care System, that’s the highest-priority area for medical treatment, so Lexie was able to piggyback on it and jump the queue for elective surgery.”

“What surgery? What the hell’s she doing to herself? Can we stop it?”

“Calm down. It’s done,” Erasmus said soothingly. “It was just cosmetic; she hasn’t changed sex. But there are complications.”

It seemed that Bammy, convinced by counselors that she was a male trapped in a female body, had been through breast removal and was well advanced in T-loading.

“What’s that?”

“Testosterone. Man juice.”

As she grew increasingly masculine in behavior, her attitude towards Lexie seemed to veer towards the norms associated with a cis man: possessive and aggressive, given to exercising control through the mechanisms of anger and dominance.

“All of which suggests to me,” Erasmus confided, “that the gender dysphoria we’re looking at here may be prompted by a version of gynephilia.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Bammy finds the role of the dominant male in the sexual relationship attractive and wishes to transition into that role.”

“Christ Almighty, John,” Jordan groaned, “do you have any idea of the horror you’re describing? That’s my fucking daughter we’re talking about!”

“Sorry, my friend, but that’s the world we now live in. Anyway, Bammy’s jealousy has manifested itself as an almost pathological hatred of the tattoo on Lexie’s throat.”

“You mean the one of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”

“For COTOs, she was the mid-twenty-first-century equivalent of what Che Guevara was for the mid-twentieth century.”

“Also, Latin.”

“Hmm.” Erasmus paused to assemble the scattered pieces of this surrealist picture into some form of reportage that made sense. “Fiercely attractive, apparently.” It wasn’t clear whether this was a statement or a question.

“Who?” Jordan demanded.

“The Cortez woman. Particularly to parts of the lesbian and trans communities.”

“Oh? Why? You mean her politics, or her looks?”

“Ask Lexie. You need to go and see her. She’s quite ill.”

So, it seemed that Bammy, confronted by the full lips and see-through eyes of this Latin firebrand every time his/her mouth homed in on Lexie’s upper torso, felt his/her manhood so threatened that eventually he/she exploded in rage and insisted that Lexie have the tattoo removed, booking her at the Hope Clinic for laser surgery on the premise that his/her own transition to trans male could not be successfully completed until this insurmountable psychological hurdle was overcome.

“This is where your expertise comes in, Jordan. Laser tattoo removal on such a large and sensitive area is done by an AI-directed machine, and it seems that something went badly wrong, resulting in Lexie suffering subcutaneous nerve ablations and partial facial paralysis. The computer fucked up—and nobody at the clinic knows why.”

Erasmus then arranged a meeting with the head dermatologist. Jordan, still in his tracksuit, set off immediately for the clinic, which was located next to Riverside Park in a leafy enclave of art galleries and workshops, counseling offices, and trans community safe spaces known collectively as Trans World, which had won many international design awards.

Dr. Aydin Miles-Kowalski had been forewarned that Jordan was not only kin to the patient, but was additionally a well-regarded expert consultant in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It was this aspect of the case, rather than any pastoral concern for the patient, that Miles-Kowalski was open to discussing.

  “Your identification came up on my Konektor as ‘NP,’” the doctor began suspiciously, “but Dr. Erasmus assures me you are at the top of your field, and I should be lucky to have you share your expertise.”

“That’s very flattering of Dr. Erasmus,” Jordan replied. “But I should warn you that I’m not sufficiently familiar with machine learning in the medical arena to be confident that I understand what’s been described to me.”

“Well, it’s really quite simple,” Miles-Kowalski replied bluntly. “Multi-pass tattoo removal uses picosecond laser technology that is fully computer-controlled. The program analyses pigment spectrums and depths and determines the wavelengths, diameters, timing, and frequency of the pulses needed as it tracks over the image. At the same time, the laser head stimulates the dermal macrophages to allow rapid digestion of cellular debris, continuously adjusting to the size of the ink particles broken down.”

“The laser is issuing infrared pulses, I presume.”

“Yes. There was a time when multiple treatments were required over extended periods, but now we can achieve ninety-nine percent removal in a single session, all made possible by the wave technology.”

“A single session?” Jordan repeated. “For a large tattoo, that must be pretty demanding on the patient. I thought the process was painful?”

“No, no. For accuracy, safety, and pain minimization, the patient is fully anesthetized throughout, particularly in a case like this, as the neck is a highly sensitive area.”

“So, what went wrong?” Jordan demanded.

“We don’t know. The procedure was going well, until it abruptly stopped and requested a reset. This happened three times at one particular point in the image, suggesting the wrong wavelength of light was being emitted for the pigments encountered. A safety setting in the program will not allow more than four passes over the same area at twenty-minute intervals, to ensure, among other things, that scarring and dyschromia do not occur. At that point, the machine shut down. That’s when we became aware of the problem.”

Jordan leaned forward; this was Lexie whose neck had been traversed by these laser heads. “What problem?” he insisted.

“Successful laser removal of a tattoo involves pigment fragmentation, followed by phagocytosis, which is then drained away by the lymphatic system. In this case, this process was entirely, perfectly completed for the entire image—except for the eyes. The eyes appear to be entirely untouched. It was the eyes that caused the program to shut down.”

An idea was starting to form in Jordan’s mind. “Do you have any idea why?”

“It may be a pigment wavelength issue, or a programming fault. At this stage, it’s gone back to the machine’s manufacturer for urgent analysis.”

“Presumably, a tattoo of that complexity was also applied by a machine-directed program. Do you have any idea where she acquired it?”

Dr. Miles-Kowalski opened a file on his desktop screen. “That’s one of the questions we always ask. It was done at COTO Arts.” He stood up. “You are welcome to contact the manufacturer directly, if you think you can help them. They seem perplexed by the issue, and I don’t want to do any more treatments until the problem is resolved.”

“I will,” Jordan agreed. “And meanwhile, what about Lexie?”

“We’re used to handling extremes of emotional volatility in patients at the Hope Clinic, because many of them are among the most vulnerable members of society. Lexie does not quite fall into that category—but she is understandably upset, and we have her on a combination of sedatives and oxytocin. I’ll get a nurse to take you to her.”

While he waited, Jordan discreetly sent a recording of the interview that he’d just made on his Konektor to Antonio back at the DDC. He asked him to instruct Quantum XR-9 to scan, evaluate, and hypothesize. Then, with butterflies in his stomach, he went to see his estranged daughter in her sickbed.