Uglies

 

Facing the Future

"Here's option two." Tally touched her interface ring, and the wallscreen changed.

This Tally was sleek, with ultrahigh cheekbones, deep green catlike eyes, and a wide mouth that curled into a knowing smile.

"That's, uh, pretty different."

"Yeah. I doubt it's even legal." Tally tweaked the eye-shape parameters, pulling the arch of the eyebrows down almost to normal. Some cities allowed exotic operations - for new pretties only - but the authorities here were notoriously conservative. She doubted a doctor would give this morpho a second glance, but it was fun to push the software to its limits. "You think I look too scary?"

"No. You look like a real pussycat." Shay giggled. "Unfortunately, I mean that in the literal, dead-mouse-eating sense."

"Okay, moving right along."

The next Tally was a much more standard morphological model, with almond-shaped brown eyes, straight black hair with long bangs, the dark lips set to maximum fullness.

"Pretty generic, Tally."

"Oh, come on! I worked on this one for a long time. I think I'd look great this way. There's a whole Cleopatra thing going on."

"You know," Shay said, "I read that the real Cleopatra wasn't even that great-looking. She seduced everyone with how clever she was."

"Yeah, right. And you've seen a picture of her?"

"They didn't have cameras back then, Squint."

"Duh. So how do you know she was ugly?"

"Because that's what historians wrote at the time."

Tally shrugged. "She was probably a classic pretty and they didn't even know it. Back then, they had weird ideas about beauty. They didn't know about biology."

"Lucky them." Shay stared out the window.

"So, if you think all my faces are so crappy, why don't you show me some of yours?" Tally cleared the wallscreen and leaned back on the bed.

"I can't."

"You can dish it out, but you can't take it, huh?"

"No, I mean I just can't. I never made one."

Tally's jaw dropped. Everyone made morphos, even littlies, too young for their facial structure to have set. It was a great waste of a day, figuring out all the different ways you could look when you finally became pretty.

"Not even one?"

"Maybe when I was little. But my friends and I stopped doing that kind of stuff a long time ago."

"Well." Tally sat up. "We should fix that right now."

"I'd rather go hoverboarding." Shay tugged anxiously under her shirt. Tally figured that Shay slept with her belly sensor on, hoverboarding in her dreams.

"Later, Shay. I can't believe you don't have a single morph.Please ."

"It's stupid. The doctors pretty much do what they want, no matter what you tell them."

"I know, but it'sfun ."

Shay made a big point of rolling her eyes, but finally nodded. She dragged herself off the bed and plopped down in front of the wallscreen, pulling her hair back from her face.

Tally snorted. "So youhave done this before."

"Like I said, when I was a littlie."

"Sure." Tally turned her interface ring to bring up a menu on the wallscreen, and blinked her way through a set of eyemouse choices. The screen's camera flickered with laser light, and a green grid sprang up on Shay's face, a field of tiny squares imposed across the shape of her cheekbones, nose, lips, and forehead.

Seconds later, two faces appeared on the screen. Both of them were Shay, but there were obvious differences: One looked wild, slightly angry; the other had a slightly distant expression, like someone having a daydream.

"It's weird how that works, isn't it?" Tally said. "Like two different people."

Shay nodded. "Creepy."

Ugly faces were always asymmetrical; neither half looked exactly like the other. So the first thing the morpho software did was take each side of your face and double it, like holding a mirror right down the middle, creating two examples of perfect symmetry. Already, both of the symmetrical Shays looked better than the original.

"So, Shay, which do you think is your good side?"

"Why do I have to be symmetrical? I'd rather have a face with two different sides."

Tally groaned. "That's a sign of childhood stress. No one wants to look at that."

"Gee, I wouldn't want to look stressed," Shay snorted, and pointed at the wilder-looking face. "Okay, whatever. The right one's better, don't you think?"

"Ihate my right side. I always start with the left."

"Yeah, well, I happen to like my right side. Looks tougher."

"Okay. You're the boss."

Tally blinked, and the right-side face filled the screen.

"First, the basics." The software took over: The eyes gradually grew, reducing the size of the nose between them, Shay's cheekbones moved upward, and her lips became a tiny bit fuller (they were already almost pretty-sized). Every blemish disappeared, her skin turning flawlessly smooth. The skull moved subtly under the features, the angle of her forehead tilting back, her chin becoming more defined, her jaw stronger.

When it was done, Tally whistled. "Wow, that's pretty good already."

"Great," Shay groaned. "I totally look like every other new pretty in the world."

"Well, sure, we just got started. How about some hair on you?" Tally blinked through menus quickly, picking a style at random.

When the wallscreen changed, Shay fell over on the floor in a fit of giggles. The high hairdo towered over her thin face like dunce cap, the white-blond hair utterly incongruous with her olive skin.

Tally could hardly manage to speak through her own laughter. "Okay, maybe not that." She flipped through more styles, settling on basic hair, dark and short. "Let's get the face right first."

She tweaked the eyebrows, making their arch more dramatic, and added roundness to the cheeks. Shay was still too skinny, even after the morpho software had pulled her toward the average.

"And maybe a bit lighter?" Tally took the shade of the skin closer to baseline.

"Hey, Squint," Shay said. "Whose face is this, anyway?"

"Just playing," Tally said. "You want to take a shot?"

"No, I want to go hoverboarding."

"Sure, great. But first let's get this right."

"What do you mean 'get it right,' Tally? Maybe I think my face is already right!"

"Yeah, it's great." Tally rolled her eyes. "For an ugly."

Shay scowled. "What, can't you stand me? Do you need to get some picture into your head so you can imagine it instead of my face?"

"Shay! Come on. It's just for fun."

"Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun."

"Weare ugly!"

"This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves."

Tally groaned and flopped back onto her bed, glaring up at the ceiling. Shay could be so weird sometimes. She always had a chip on her shoulder about the operation, like someone wasmaking her turn sixteen. "Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Shay recited. "Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance.

People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren't quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah."

"Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color." Tally shook her head.

No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she'd never really quite believed that one. "So what if people look more alike now? It's the only way to make people equal."

"How about making them smarter?"

Tally laughed. "Fat chance. Anyway, it's just to see what you and I will look like in only...two months and fifteen days."

"Can't we just wait until then?"

Tally closed her eyes, sighing. "Sometimes I don't think I can."

"Well, tough luck." She felt Shay's weight on the bed and a light punch on her arm. "Hey, might as well make the best of it. Can we go hoverboarding now? Please?"

Tally opened her eyes and saw that her friend was smiling. "Okay: hoverboard." She sat up and glanced at the screen. Even without much work, Shay's face was already welcoming, vulnerable, healthy...pretty.

"Don't you think you're beautiful?"

Shay didn't look, just shrugged. "That's not me. It's some committee's idea of me."

Tally smiled and hugged her.

"It will be you, though.Really you. Soon."