TRSF by Buckell Tobias & Cadigan Pat & Di Filippo Paul & Jones Gwyneth & Landis Geoffrey & Singh Vandana & Doctorow Cory & Haldeman Joe & Bear Elizabeth & Boyong Ma

Author:Buckell, Tobias & Cadigan, Pat & Di Filippo, Paul & Jones, Gwyneth & Landis, Geoffrey & Singh, Vandana & Doctorow, Cory & Haldeman, Joe & Bear, Elizabeth & Boyong, Ma [Buckell, Tobias]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Technology Review, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Paul Di Filippo began publishing science fiction in the 1970s and has written hundreds of stories since. Based in Rhode Island, Di Filippo has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction Association, and Philip K. Dick awards.

WEB

Specter-

Bombing the

Beer Goggles

BY PAUL DI FILIPPO

Firpo Manzello was looking to get lucky. He hadn’t had sex in three weeks, and was beginning to fear he never would again. Yotta-toxic, serkku!

Part of the carnal drought involved Firpo’s job. He worked for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in their Public Works Department, Sewer Division, Rogue Transgenic Squad. Firpo’s job involved descending into the subterranean labyrinth of utility tunnels with his team each morning and cleaning up whatever escaped the filters and traps of the numerous biotech plants in the city. Most days, the team’s quarry was nothing more challenging than some errant slime mold or motile vat-cortex. But from time to time, more complex organisms got loose. Firpo still bore crosshatched scars on his ankles and calves from tangling with a pride of anomalocaris. Believe me, serkku, those things could bite! What the hell had the fabbers been thinking when they endowed the monster shrimps with that pincer equipment? Lots of good eating there in the grabbers, but still—

Firpo’s job description itself wasn’t the actual problem. Some women actually found his duties sexy. Great White Hunter/Urban Superhero Guardian and all that. No, the hard nut was how Firpo smelled after a day at work. Heavy aromatics in those sewers! Even industrial-strength odor-remediation ribozymes from TraumaTech failed to eliminate every molecule of stench. Hard to get close to a babe when you reeked even faintly of seaweed-fermenting yeast strains.

But a liberal dose of Hack’s Bodyspray could generally mask Firpo’s signature smell at least long enough for him to make a love connection. The other, greater part of his problem was his erotic selectivity.

Firpo had developed a kink, hardwired now in his neurons by way, way too much gameplay in the online universe of ElfQuest. (A geezer at age twenty-eight, Firpo had preferred the old-fashioned platform over the augmented reality live-action version.) SAD, the experts called Firpo’s kink. Sympathetic Avatar Dysmorphia, brought on by excessive somatic identification with one’s virtual self and peers. Although he managed to kick his gamer addiction, now he could only get turned on by women who looked like elves. Needless to say, such real-life women were a tiny minority on the dating scene. True, there was a small community of modded and cosplay elves at MIT. But Firpo had kinda aged out of that scene, and dramatically burned some bridges too.

That left him only one choice really if he wanted to get laid.

He was going to have to download the Beer Goggles app.

The Beer Goggles app was a piece of augmented reality software that ran on your memtax. It changed the user’s visual perception of other humans, overlaying onto them whatever physical parameters the user dictated. Beer Goggles would allow Firpo to perceive every woman as an elf. Or so he had been assured by the vendor’s sales pitch.