The See-Through Skin Society
It's no secret what you're thinking...
I planted a second tender kiss on her swollen abdomen and gazed again in wonder at the perfect foetal form. My face was inches from them. The nascent buds of their fingers and genitals were now visible and the heart beat faster than I could count, a stream of corpuscles winning the race against those coursing through the vessels of their mother's placenta.
I looked up at her. “You're both very beautiful.”
She blushed as she smiled, the flush of blood spreading deeper and further than her translucent cheeks. “Do you think she’s ready to go outside?” she asked, already set on us having a daughter. I had disagreed, knowing time would tell.
The neighbours knew already, of course. As we knew about them. What they'd eaten, or smoked, even their bowel habits. But being transparent didn't suit everyone. Some still wore clothes, even after literally seeing through the procedure. Politicians were the worst, once they'd re-discovered that transparency didn't win votes, even with a diet which excluded opposition colours and a bladder empty of a lobbyist’s liquid lunch.
Others revelled in a new opportunity to reveal even more of themselves. Internal voyeurism now included organ tattoos and product implants – or insertions.
But everything eventually returned to spilt blood or more shit. Prejudice remained more than skin deep. There was no hiding from those so desperate to espouse and capture anatomical perfection that they shamed others to ensure a pale image of self-framed success. My wife's lens implants were barely visible over her startling vivid retinas, but they still marked her out. It was the same with my leg’s metalwork, now a silently declared weakness tagging me as defective.
It was a painful irony that believing in a truly open society had forced us into adopting a closed community. The ‘Outside’ viewed us with anathema, despite espousing what we strived for. They might use the same words, but our naivety had lured us into letting technology, unrestrained by lagging legislation, to irreversibly change our bodies, whilst retaining our unprepared, still primitive, minds.
Humans had always been obligatory liars. To capture an audience relied on deceit. To attract a partner required obfuscation, either through words, gifts or physical embellishment. We were subconsciously conditioned and knowingly acceded to it – within fragile limits. But now even disease could be revealed within us, these age-old social games had changed. Cancer couldn't be masked. A bulimia sufferer couldn’t hide their stomach. A missing organ spoke of less than perfect health. Aesthetic augmentation was so obvious as to be crass. When age could be determined from organs, a literal message from the heart was a source of absolute truth.
Brains had still tried to clutch onto their minds’ secrets, but rare was the emotion expressed without a physical correlate. Cogito, ergo sum was the necessary mantra, and almost all our doubts had to disappear under the overwhelming evidence of our unblinkered eyes. Anger, sorrow and arousal all had their counterparts in visible blood flow and treacherous secretions. Pointless shame and embarrassment were early casualties of the new cultural game we'd invented for ourselves.
Seeing was believing, and we believed in what we were doing. So, yes, we had to venture Outside. “It’s time we showed them,” I replied. We believed in a future where lies could be left untold to govern or sell, to parent or seduce. Yet it remained a human failing – often our failing – to still think them to survive, despite transparency being universally deemed the most important thing a person should show. If our social experiment instead terminated in a secretive see-through skin society then we’ve failed.
I kissed my wife’s invisible yet palpable skin again, my lips almost touching my embryonic offspring. If he was mine. Every day we spent together proved that what was inside counted most. But sometimes patience was the clearest lens to see things through.
