"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Scenes from a Marriage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

09.23.02
 scenes from a marriage

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman



Bek and Mara knew how to keep the spark of romance
alive. Their marriage was the longest-running show in
entertainment history, still going strong after a millennium
on the air.

The secret was they stayed abreast of trends. When the
multiple-birth craze swept the planet, Mara and Bek had
sextuplets. That was good for twenty years of live shows,
and two of the children got spinoffs. They knew how to
attract sponsors as well. Cryodreams, Inc., paid for ten
years of frozen sleep, and the ratings soared as Mara and
Bek played out dramas from their unconscious minds.

Their marriage counselor and media consultant, always
filterfeeding on the info sea, suggested they try a surgical
mod for the next iteration of their marriage, Version 237.
They were approaching one of their scheduled separation
periods тАФ differentiation training they took every seven
years to keep their marriage fresh тАФ so there was a
built-in end to the version if they didn't like it.

Version 237 started out as a crowdpleaser, despite Bek's
diminished oncam time. Bek was surgically attached to his
wife's back, his body reduced to a brain, a face that
included eyes, ears, and nose but no mouth, a penis long,
muscular, and agile enough to pleasure them both and
excite the viewers, and four slender, supple arms with a
reach that extended all the way to Mara's toes. His new
arms were so flexible he could wrap them around her
waist twice, and tickle her with his many-jointed fingers
anywhere he liked. His digestive system hooked into hers
parasitically. She ate for two with gusto.

Mara could speak to Bek without sound; his brain
translated the movements of her lips, throat, and tongue.
Bek emitted shaped bursts of electricity that Mara's brain
decoded as language. As Version 237 progressed, their
sensitivity to each other increased.

It was the closest they had come to being one person in
their thousand years of marriage.

Bek liked it better than he had expected to. He wore a