Occasionally late at night, this one burns in my brain and I cannot get to sleep for thinking about it. This is a lil ramble about Imago by Tristan Alice Nieto, a short story from Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers, which was Topside Press's final publication and is in print from LittlePuss nowadays. I'll put a CW for discussions of death, murder and bodily decay (and also chronic pain) but I promise it's not that bad. (though it is somewhat morbid obviously)

||Imago is easily the best short story to come out of either Topside anthology collection, which is saying something given that Meanwhile, Elsewhere is actually pretty good across the board. No other short story tugs at my stupid brain the way Imago does several years after I last read it though, so I'm having to write this. I guess I'm feeling a bit corpselike lately.

The thrust of Imago is that it's a soft-scifi future where people can get their eyes swapped for stereoscopic camera sensors, and other biotech-y things. There's been a huge plague on the planet at some point, dubbed the "white plague". (lol, lmao) Since people have been dying all over the place as the world goes to shit, the development of Revivarol seems like a great idea: a shot of oxygen directly to the brain, essentially kick-starting a recently deceased person and putting the body's repair mechanisms into overdrive. The final frontier! Death defeated! Except that the kind of oxygen deprivation among other things that happen when the body dies tends to mean that Revivarol patients are cold, distant and often irritated, with badly fragmented minds not even resembling the person they were in life.

This is where we find Tabitha;

"It’s phrased as a question, but I don’t know the answer. Am I Tabitha? I think that was my name, but I don’t know if I’m still her."

She's been murdered, her eyes are missing, and a few days later the cops have shot her with Revivarol in a morgue, hoping to get answers on her murder. Brain death being what it is though, the worst parts of a Revivarol resuscitation have long since set in.

So immediately this is like, Oh, Yeah. It's hitting the general fear of death in a very specific and unique, physical way, by making decomposition a livable experience, and also it's bringing a loss of self and identity into the picture. A ragged grinding corpse, days out from death and with degrading grey matter: find out who killed you. Couldn't really tell you why this hits, but personally I guess I feel instant and all-encompassing sympathy for Tabitha, in life a sad transbian who was murdered and in death an agonised thing living within a broken body. I love how harrowing Imago is, I can never sleep after I read it. Bonus points because her family can't bear to deal with her in her revived cadaver walking around, double bonus points for when she talks about rising agony held off by diamorphine, her drugged body crumbling inside, or her wrists grinding angrily around, or the pain that shoots through her head when she turns it. Being dead leaves you stiff since decomposition has already begun, but also hey, that's just chronic pain right? I'm a decaying corpse animated by too many painkillers. Joints coming apart and body failing! I know how that one is. This shit fucking sucks.

The murder aspect makes it worse, because at least if you get Revivarol'd like 18 hours after a peaceful death, you'd come back to a pretty intact body. Being stuffed into a suitcase for three days after being killed means Tabitha is covered in slash marks, tire tracks, rope burn, bruises, her elbow is hyperextended, shit like that. Plus, there are postmortem wounds, which never clot (dead) and don't stop bleeding. Gotta drink hot tea with sugar to keep your muscles from going into rigor mortis, (again) your saliva flowing while it lasts. Total failure of the flesh automaton, neurotransmitters animating dead flesh.

Getting to watch this at a remove through the camera-eye the morgue gave her, as she examines her body at a distance in first person, adds a cool level of queasy dissociation, looking at her own corpse. It's kind of a horror story I guess, which I hadn't considered before, but it gets at the ugliest and most tangible fears about death imo. That's kind of what the whole thing is about, I guess, as much as death: the abandon of a failing body. Sure, humans shouldn't link their visual implants up to ultraviolet cameras to see, because their brains will essentially melt from getting that much visual info for more than a week, but who cares? Tabitha is already dead. Fuck it, just another bit of failing flesh. She doesn't have more than a few days anyway.

"I feel like someone pulled a bag of greasy chicken bones out of the rubbish and called it a person. Have I been in formaldehyde all this time? Was I pushed off the shelf?"

Among all this, Tabitha ends up rifling through her ruined grey matter for more on the remaining memories that stand out the strongest: her girlfriend, long deceased, who she can remember adoring but not the name attached. In with the rot and death, the thread of trying to recall her lover (clashed violently against the memory of being murdered, of her corpse failing) is what grounds the story and keeps it from being completely unrelentingly grim:

"My mind naturally floats back to the one source of emotion I have left – my nameless lover. I stare at her image, her abyssal eyes and bold, crooked smile. It has the quality of the last surviving work of some lost, forgotten master. The one thing I managed to save from my gallery of memories as it went up in flames."

I have a habit with Imago, wherein it enters my brain late at night (like 3am, 5am) and refuses to get out, so I sort of traumatise myself with it, for catharsis. I think it's good if you've been feeling low or flat, 'cause if you have any sort of opinion about being a flesh automaton animated by neurotransmitters, little sparks of electricity moving your flesh, it's probably hard not to feel things about it.

It feels weirdly healthy, I guess, the way Imago tangles so directly with the concept of death, with understanding in full the gravity of your own. It's an experience, getting to see Tabitha told by a cop that they've got her murderer once she points him out. She gets to remember a lot of what he did, she gets to know his name and face, his record. She doesn't feel much about the stabbing or the man who stabbed her, but it could be either emotional reactions dulled by Revivarol or the human brain being incapable of having an opinion on one's own murder.

"The truth is I don’t really feel anything for this man. The vague sense of pity I feel seems to stem from a deeper kernel of anger, of disappointment and betrayal. I can’t really tell what I’m angry at. Maybe it’s society, or the system that failed him, failed both of us. Or maybe I’m just disillusioned at the notion of justice – the idea that there’s anything he or Danielle or the entire police force could ever do to make this even remotely fair, let alone right. As if finding him would bring me any kind of satisfaction."

That can't be all for her, though, so after talking to her murderer a bit she sets out knowing that her eyes were stolen deliberately, to get them back. They have wireless connections and an AR uplink, so. The scene where the Revivarol is wearing off is both disgusting and fascinating, though: muscles like steel pistons, joints fully broken down. Knowing that you were killed just for your eyes must be kind of galling;

"This will be my last action on this earth, even if it ends up meaning nothing."

It's a weird, gross and honestly sad story, my kinda thing, but it ends very well which is why I like it. It's bittersweet and wonderful after all the gristle and blood and dying. When I get to feeling morbid and shitty about a body that's failing, about flesh that can't do what I need it to, Tabitha's shambling-corpse journey and subsequent final memories of her girlfriend always leave me feeling wistful but satisfied (and pretty gay) after everything. It's a good dose of death, sadness, lost love and a lil bit of trans positivity. I'm still not bored of rereading it even though it's short, and I doubt I ever will be.

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      8 months ago

      I kind of have the extreme-horror brainbug, I love morbid stuff like this =) I do have an upper limit but if a thingy is fascinating and meaningful, I will be into it almost regardless of how nauseating it is, lol

  • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Actually, I have some more thoughts on this...

    sad personal anecdote

    I played violin for 6 or 7 years until last year. I practiced for hours a day, annoying everyone around me, but I was determined to get good.

    I paid for lessons, saw multiple teachers, spent all day reading about it online, bought every book I could. I was proper Interested. I joined an amateur orchestra, and various other groups, and worked with a very skilled teacher. I practiced hours a night.

    I kept getting put up seats in the orchestra, until I made it to the first chair. The audience was going to see me, an absolute faker who could absolutely not play loud for fear of standing out, in the front row of the second violins. Everyone behind you is supposed to follow you. Everyone was counting on my to lead the row behind me, as the sections are divided into pairs and I would be playing different notes and sometimes rhythms than the principal next to me.

    Then, something happened. Suddenly, my shoulder started hurting whenever I would play. I would feel really sore, and swollen, and painful.

    I started seeing a physio, but only a few sessions were covered by insurance.

    I dropped out of the orchestra. I stopped taking lessons. I quit all the groups.

    I kept trying to get back into it, but my shoulder would hurt every time.

    My teacher emailed me at one point saying she missed me. I told her I'd start up lessons again in the new year. It's now September. I did not.

    I don't play violin anymore, except on the rare blue moon when I pull out Mozart's 3rd Violin Concerto and stubbornly try to get my bow bouncing just right to impart the joyful emotion of the piece that I've heard in so many recordings.

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 months ago

      Okay this one first, since it's short - and really pretty & sad, made me do a gay wistful sigh. I don't play any instruments but shit, I'm sorry y'know.

  • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
    ·
    2 months ago

    fuck i have to read this story, this post is incredible (yes I am responding to a six month old post NO i will not apologize), what excellent writing. thank you for summarizing the plot and explaining it too, sometimes I can "miss the point" of literature or forget details like immediately.

    this is gonna get long, i had a lot of thoughts about this.

    No other short story tugs at my stupid brain the way Imago does several years after I last read it though, so I'm having to write this. I guess I'm feeling a bit corpselike lately.

    my first thought here is that I know this feeling EXACTLY. I feel it about a video game called SOMA, which is about a guy named Simon who gets in a car accident and undergoes an experimental brain scan, then mysteriously wakes up in a dilapidated horror facility.

    spoilers for SOMA (is it supposed to be capitalized like that?)

    SO, it turns out that he's underwater. It's 200 years or something in the future. The facility is empty except for crazy monsters. But he's human. Somehow, he time travelled, right?

    All of this changes when he meets Catherine, who is, much like Firewatch (and the same voice actress lol), to be the voice in your head for the playthrough. But when he finds her body, she is ... actually a robot. To be precise, she is a former human being who has had a copy of her mind uploaded into a computer, where a chip simulates her neural activity.

    That's fucked, right? Okay, it gets even weirder: You take her with you by putting her into your future screwdriver, but the screwdriver is only powered when you plug it into things. Simon asks her at one point if it's like she's sleeping when she's not plugged in, and she responds to say that time is omitted when she is off.

    Also, Simon? Not human. Also a reanimated brain scan. You see his hands, they are your hands, and they look human, but when a room fills with water and it turns out he can totally still breathe and he passes out, suddenly they're not human hands anymore, but a diving suit.

    So you explore the bottom of the fucking ocean and YES YOU GET TO GO TO THE ABYSS i want/don't want this game in VR so bad. Oh my GOD I need to play it again please play it omg

    There's some plot shit, but there's a couple other moments that bear a striking resemblence to Imago. HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD.

    1. Basically everyone you meet is a robot, basically all of them are reanimated brain scans, and, like Simon, none of them know that they're not human. You can have conversations with some of them and they all have interesting reactions to the cognitive dissonance of you attempting to make them aware of their non-human nature.
    2. You encounter 2 living humans in the game. The first one is being kept alive against her will by the life support system of the facility, who is basically trying to duct tape everybody and everything back together because of the decay of the facility, and is turning into a monster. Since this "AI" (IIRC the game explicitly rejects the term AI for it, just calls it a system) doesn't share the definition of "alive" that humans do, people are stuck in robot bodies, or stuck to a wall with all their organs sticking out begging for death.
    3. The second human ... is ... the last living human on Earth. She is dying. This is kind of a big reveal in the game, whoopsie. The life support system can't get to her, and she says some really fucking poignant shit about what is like to be human, her dialogue is so fucking understated and her voice line delivery, and the way you meet her ughhhhhhhh and you as Simon feel human but you're not so she doesn't entirely trust you i cry literally every time, and she, of course, asks you to end her life support, and trusts you, a robot, with the Plot Device.
    4. Simon gets cloned. Simon is inhabiting the body a dead woman who has fused with a diving suit, with a robot head jammed into its neck, all just slathered together with Structure Gel(tm) to make it all work. You need to go deep into the ocean to do The Plot, and the diving suit you're wearing can't handle the pressure, so you need to get a better one. You're already wearing a suit, so you can't fit a new one on top, and you can't take off the suit because it's fused to your body. Catherine suggests downloading your brain into another corpse, and slathering it with Structure Gel. Easy peasy, just like Star Trek, right? NOPE. THE OLD SIMON IS STILL ALIVE. CATHERINE SEDATES HIM AND FUCKING TELLS YOU TO KILL HIM. And then it starts to become obvious what's really happened here. You find a voice recording of a different, the original, Simon Jarrett soon after, with the doctor who did your brain scan beating himself up because he wasn't able to fix Simon's brain bleeding. Simon is dying. The "real" Simon is dead, and we're playing as a copy. And at this point, it's a copy of a copy. Simon's understandably pissed about this. Shit, the voice acting is so good, his existential dread and her relentless pragmatism are such a good combination, holy shit.
    5. Catherine's dream. The Plot is to put a satellite into space full of human brain scans of the crew of the underwater facility so that they can live on, since the Earth is beyond fucked. Of course, knowing about point 3, you may not be surprised to know that..
    6. At the very end of the game, you are launching the satellite. It's a tense moment, the station is falling apart, Simon is starting to break down emotionally, but Catherine has promised him that he will be able to live on in the satellite. There's a countdown, and they're uploading their brains into the satellite, and it's very tense. Then, it succeeds! And, a second later, the satellite launches. And ... We are still in the chamber. What happened? Simon starts to freak out. Catherine says that they succeeded, and they're in the stars. Simon starts to shout. Why am I still here? We were supposed to get out of here? Catherine says he "lost the coin toss" (this is narrative explanation for why we've been following the living Simon all this time, as if it's 50/50, but you know as well as I do that there was no continuity of consciousness with the brain scans). He refuses to accept it. Screams at her. She gets mad. He pounds the computer console. The power is lost, and she is gone. "Catherine...?" is the last fucking line in the game, and he dies alone. Credits.
    7. Yes, there is an epilogue where everyone is happy in VR satellite world and the human race lives on, but you know the real ending is in that launch facility, with Simon dying alone.

    Fuck, this story gets me in a way nothing else does. Anyway, I hope you can see the similarities.

    "white plague"

    beautiful

    God, I want to quote every line of your post here, but I'll try and keep this brief, I'm sure bear site has a text limit, and I'm still fixated on how similar the emotions I'm getting from you are the ones I feel from SOMA.

    She's been murdered, her eyes are missing, and a few days later the cops have shot her with Revivarol in a morgue, hoping to get answers on her murder. Brain death being what it is though, the worst parts of a Revivarol resuscitation have long since set in.

    another tangent about a game

    So, this reminds me of another game too, called Ghost Trick. It's much less dark, it's actually really fucking sweet and there is an adorable pomeranian named Missile, but you play as some guy who is shot, and gets afterlife powers, while having amnesia. And you follow around a detective who is very cute and I am gay for her (but, you know, ACAB), who keeps getting fucking murdered, all through a single night, trying to find out who the heck you even are and why you were killed, and to try and save her life. It's such a heartwarming story, despite the subject matter. But the description of the amnesia from Revivarol reminded me of that.

    Bonus points because her family can't bear to deal with her in her revived cadaver walking around, double bonus points for when she talks about rising agony held off by diamorphine, her drugged body crumbling inside, or her wrists grinding angrily around, or the pain that shoots through her head when she turns it.

    DAMN yes I feel that even in your description meow-hug

    Tabitha is covered in slash marks, tire tracks, rope burn, bruises, her elbow is hyperextended, shit like that. Plus, there are postmortem wounds, which never clot (dead) and don't stop bleeding. Gotta drink hot tea with sugar to keep your muscles from going into rigor mortis, (again) your saliva flowing while it lasts. Total failure of the flesh automaton, neurotransmitters animating dead flesh.

    fuck, this hits me too. must be a trans thing? the corpse being the "natural state" of the body and needing medication to prevent it from reverting to its natural state, that's how I feel. i also have some gnarly leg scars from birth defects haha

    That's kind of what the whole thing is about, I guess, as much as death: the abandon of a failing body.

    cri i am tearing up over here yes this this tbh

    I have a habit with Imago, wherein it enters my brain late at night (like 3am, 5am) and refuses to get out, so I sort of traumatise myself with it, for catharsis.

    i feel this way about SOMA too, I think it also helps me put my whole life into perspective too, which possibly is what you're getting at in the next sentence.

    it could be either emotional reactions dulled by Revivarol or the human brain being incapable of having an opinion on one's own murder.

    oh my god, this gets to me. would i have an opinion on my own murder? you get into this later on but when i read this, i had to stop for a beat. i haven't been murdered, but i still feel this so strongly.

    oh hey i found the text limit well i'll reply to this

    • ashinadash [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 months ago

      kel-what Holy fuck, I mean you're absolutely welcome and I'm really pleased to see such a spirited reply, I was seething about this post lol. But waow, you found the text limit... and you wrote an entire summary of SOMA in there, which holy fuck that game sounds hardcore. Might be neat to play sometime though... more fiction needs to fuck around with the concepts of life and corpses.

      I'm still fixated on how similar the emotions I'm getting from you are the ones I feel from SOMA.

      "THIS IS JUST LIKE IN [my special interest]" is based and I support it, lmao. True too, I can see the similarities, although SOMA seems more about like consciousness continuity and what it means to actually be alive. Pretty cool.

      must be a trans thing? the corpse being the "natural state" of the body and needing medication to prevent it from reverting to its natural state,

      Hah, I kind of wish taking hormones didn't feel so morbid sometimes, medical dependence. I was saying to someone else here, it does seem really cruel and grim that being trans comes with a decent chance that you will be horrified by whatever hormones your body does or doesn't produce by default, requiring intervention.

      I think it also helps me put my whole life into perspective too,

      yea

      would i have an opinion on my own murder?

      Weirdly I know offhand I'd be really angry, maybe less at dying and more at someone murdering me. I'd be spiteful and furious pretty much. Why not, right?

      • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        oh, one more thing about SOMA, this was the first time I encountered the name Imogen, as the body that Simon is inhabiting's name is Imogen Reed, so I was mixing that up with Imogen Binnie.

        more fiction needs to fuck around with the concepts of life and corpses.

        yes absolutely. horror games are mostly jumpscare jumpscare monster jumpscare animatronic, and I can't handle jumpscares, so I don't play them. SOMA is the only horror game that I liked because of the existential catharsis it provides. (note: the monster evasion sections are dumb lol)

        "THIS IS JUST LIKE IN [my special interest]" is based and I support it, lmao. True too, I can see the similarities, although SOMA seems more about like consciousness continuity and what it means to actually be alive. Pretty cool.

        Totally, both alike and different in interesting ways.

        Hah, I kind of wish taking hormones didn't feel so morbid sometimes, medical dependence.

        Well put! I'm dizzy and pee all the time (I do have appt with doc to switch meds), and if I miss a day my smell changes, like I'm being removed from the formaldehyde that keeps me animated. It does feel morbid!

        Weirdly I know offhand I'd be really angry, maybe less at dying and more at someone murdering me. I'd be spiteful and furious pretty much. Why not, right?

        Totally, and I think it's worse in this case because of the reason. I'm assuming they didn't need to kill her, right? But they did, anyway.

        I think a part of me would be furious too. But another part of me would be relieved to be through with all of the pain and suffering being on this world causes me sometimes.

        • ashinadash [she/her]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 months ago

          Waow... Must have been fun reading the orange book posting, lmao.

          horror games are mostly jumpscare jumpscare monster jumpscare animatronic,

          Ugh and it's so boring any fucking way. Give me existential catharsis! I find horror novels give me the catharsis more, I'm a big fan of May Leitz novels cus I'm a loser!

          It does feel morbid!

          Wow that sounds unpleasant. See this is why taking cypro once every other day worries me, even though it's got a long half life... I find it cool that we arrive at this same feeling from very different angles though.

          I'm assuming they didn't need to kill her, right? But they did, anyway.

          Yeah I won't spoil, but the reason is almost totally pointless, it's uh not great. Also stay on this planet please.

          • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            Waow... Must have been fun reading the orange book posting, lmao.

            Lol I just couldn't really place it at first where I'd heard that name before.

            Ugh and it's so boring any fucking way. Give me existential catharsis! I find horror novels give me the catharsis more, I'm a big fan of May Leitz novels cus I'm a loser!

            I gotta get into this, I'll add the author to my Ash Recommends list :)

            Wow that sounds unpleasant. See this is why taking cypro once every other day worries me, even though it's got a long half life... I find it cool that we arrive at this same feeling from very different angles though.

            totally, I'd be terrified to be on E injections and end up like Maria, forgetting about them. It's easier to take things every morning, myself.

            Yeah I won't spoil, but the reason is almost totally pointless, it's uh not great.

            :( yeah

            Also stay on this planet please.

            I plan to, don't worry :)

            • ashinadash [she/her]
              hexagon
              ·
              2 months ago

              I gotta get into this,

              Oh god if you look into hers, check CWs please. Fluids in particular is like, gut churningly hardcore. Good book but like.....

              I'd be terrified to be on E injections

              Same same, injections ehh. I always thought pills were more convenient.

              I plan to, don't worry :)

              meow-hug

              • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
                ·
                2 months ago

                noted on the CWs!! i have it on a list haha

                yes, injections feel weird, what if i forget, also ow, also needles, pills are just easier imo

    • rtstragedy [fae/faer, she/her]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Or maybe I’m just disillusioned at the notion of justice – the idea that there’s anything he or Danielle or the entire police force could ever do to make this even remotely fair, let alone right.

      THIS QUOTE GOES SO HARD DAMN.

      The scene where the Revivarol is wearing off is both disgusting and fascinating, though: muscles like steel pistons, joints fully broken down.

      agh i don't like it that sounds horrible

      Knowing that you were killed just for your eyes must be kind of galling;

      fuck, I think about the pointless way people are killed in this world literally all the time, and I feel the feeling I'm feeling right now. People will end an entire life, an entire person's hopes and dreams, just for something petty like some cash.

      Tabitha's shambling-corpse journey and subsequent final memories of her girlfriend always leave me feeling wistful but satisfied (and pretty gay) after everything. It's a good dose of death, sadness, lost love and a lil bit of trans positivity. I'm still not bored of rereading it even though it's short, and I doubt I ever will be.

      thank you for sharing your thoughts I really appreciated this post.