Work Text:
June 1984
I’m strumming along on my bass to MTV when Leona comes home. She clunks her stack of books on the dining room table, swings her purse over the knob on the one broken chair, and flops down next to me on the couch with a sigh, springs creaking under her.
“Long day?” I ask.
“Ay, Dios, wouldn’t you know it.” She leans her head on my shoulder. “Three hours of class followed by six hours in the university lab doing research. It’s brutal.”
“You’re the one who wanted to be a PhD, querida. All I can do is be your badass husband and stay-at-home father and support you.” I twist around and plant a kiss on Leona’s forehead. “I ordered pizza for dinner. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all—I could eat a whole large pepperoni by myself.” Her eyes glaze over the TV screen where Prince is lying in a pristine white bathtub. “Mm, me gusta esta canción. ¿Qué es?”’
“ ‘When Doves Cry.’ Just came out a couple days ago and I’m tryin’ to learn the bass line. And sure, you like the song, not the extremely attractive man singing it.”
“You think he’s handsome, too, don’t deny it.”
A blush crawls up the back of my neck. “Yeah, well…w-whatever, he appeals to everyone’s sexuality. The movie he’s in this summer is gonna be amazing.”
Leona nods against my shoulder and yawns. “How’s Beth?”
I glance over at the tiny alarm clock squatting on the end table next to my ashtray. Whoa, was it 7:15 already? It’s been a good two hours since I went in to check on her. Hopefully she’s still asleep. “Uh, she’s great. Had her lunch, played with her for a couple hours, put her down around 4:00 and she’s been sleeping ever since.”
“Mm. I’ll go check on her.” She pushes off the couch, springs creaking again—God we need a new couch—and walks out of the living room to our bedrooms. I finish strumming along to “When Doves Cry” just in time to hear an overwrought scream from down the hall.
“WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!”
Oh shit. I unloop the bass strap from around my neck and skid down the hall in my socks, wincing because I have a pretty good idea what Leona is yelling about. Sure enough, she’s standing just inside the doorway of Beth’s room with her hand thrust out behind her in a ‘you mind explaining to me what is wrong with this picture’ sort of pose. Because yeah, I could see where finding your toddler daughter asleep in a giant terrarium would need some kind of context.
“Well?” Leona says through gritted teeth. Her bun is falling out and strands of deep red hair are sticking out around the nape of her neck and temples, further adding to her wild woman look.
“She kept trying to crawl out of her crib when I put her down to sleep! And we keep finding her standing up in bed in the middle of the night when we get up to pee or whatever—”
“She’s standing up because she’s pulling herself up on the bars, Ricardo,” Leona sighs, rubbing her temples. “This is part of Beth learning how to eventually walk. Haven’t you been paying attention when we go to her check-ups?”
“L-look, Leona, I’m not gonna have some doctor tell me how my daughter is developing, okay? I know her, I’m with her every frickin’ day. I can see how she’s growing and change how I’m handling her—”
“And putting her in a terrarium with fake grass for a pillow is handling her?”
“The sides are glass! Her hands will slip if she tries to pull herself up, so the problem’s solved.”
“Tonto,” Leona clicks her tongue at me. She bends down and picks Beth out of the terrarium, brushes some blades of grass out of her fluffy brown hair. Beth yawns and reaches out a tiny toddler fist for her mother’s jean jacket. “At least she’s okay and not—wait a minute.” Leona’s eyes narrow as she peers around the darkened nursery. “¿Dónde está Ignacio?”
“¿Qué?”
“Where. The fuck. Is Ignacio.”
“OH SHIT!” I yell, and I mean it this time. I pivot on one heel and damn near trip over my own big feet on my mad dash to the garage. Ignacio was Leona’s baby before Beth was her baby: she caught him running around on the streets of Miami when she was in college and kept him in a cat crate, feeding him hunks of mango from the cafeteria until she figured out what else iguanas eat. If something happened to Beth, she’d probably forgive me. But if something happened to Ignacio, it’d be my ass.
Thank God he’s still sunning himself under the massive desk lamp on my workbench, eyes closed and head bobbing slightly like he’s listening to a Walkman through invisible headphones. I rip off the diodes attached to either side of his scaly head and frantically pick him up.
“You’re a real fat-ass, you know that?” I mutter to Ignacio under my breath as I haul him under my arm like a football. Iguanas are only supposed to weigh about 20 pounds max, but I swear he’s heavier than that. Or maybe it’s just his fucking smug attitude that makes him weigh a lot more. Before I walk back into the nursery, I heft him up and hold him like I hold Beth: cradle the head with one hand, support his back legs with the other. Leona would throw a fit if I held him any other way.
“Ta-da,” I say, stepping back into the now-lit nursery. Leona is now holding Beth out at arm’s length; Beth has her tiny back arched and is hissing like a pissed-off alley cat.
“What did you do to our daughter, Ricardo?” Leona asks, turning her head to look at me. “And why is Ignacio wearing a diaper?”
I glance down at the hastily-made diaper I’d crafted out of one of my old red bandanas. Ignacio takes that as a cue to start bawling uncontrollably like a baby, long scaly tail whipping against my leg. “Oh g-great, Leona, you made him self-conscious by mentioning it. Now it’s gonna take me forever to soothe him.” I start bouncing him gently in my arms, making his filthy claws dig into my favorite Queen T-shirt you reptilian piece of shit this cost me thirty bucks you will pay for this.
Leona’s eyes look like ping-pong balls darting back and forth between a hissing Beth and a sobbing Ignacio. When they finally settle on me, there’s something just short of murder flaming behind those brown irises.
“You have ten seconds to explain to me what the hell you did to my children,” she growls, “or I will not be held responsible for my actions.”
All trace of saliva in my throat has mysteriously evaporated at this moment. “Ah…well…I-I-I maybe might have sort of switched their conscious minds.”
“Say what now?”
“Well basically Beth’s mind is in Ignacio’s body and Ignacio’s mind is in Beth’s body.”
Leona cups a hand behind her thrice-pierced ear. “Perdóname, señor, but I do not hear well. Could you do me the trouble of speaking up ever so slightly?”
“I did a mind-swap experiment on them, okay?!” Leona’s giving me a blank stare, so I continue. “I know psychology and all that shit isn’t your scientific field of study, so I don’t expect you to understand all of this, but what I did was use one of my newest inventions to transfer the conscious mind of Beth into Ignacio’s body. Only I didn’t have any place to temporarily store Ignacio’s conscious mind, so I had to put it in Beth’s body, thus completing the exchange. D-d-does that answer any and all questions you have?”
“No. Why did you do it?”
Oh great. No one ever wants to really know how you did something. They always want to know the why, your motivation behind what you do. And no one accepts “because I wanted to fuck around and see what happens” a-as an explanation for anything. Everything needs to be justified, but only according to someone else’s terms. Bullshit is what it is.
“D-do you understand the consequences of this, Leona?” I say. “I-if you could transfer your consciousness from one body to another, you could effectively be immortal. Consciousness is what makes you you, so if you can preserve that, all you need is a willing body to be your v-vessel. Some powerful innovations being made right here, Leona, but no, all you care about is that our daughter couldn’t sign a consent form for the experiment or whatever other ethical quandaries you’re having in your head right now.”
“What I care about right now is whether the process is reversible.” Leona shifts her weight from one hip to another anxiously. She bites her lip and goddammit, is she trying to look adorable while also being extremely pissed off?
“Fine, I admit it. I did it as a joke.”
“¿Perdóname?”
“I know you’ve been busting your ass at school and work and b-been stressed out of your mind and whatnot, so I was gonna surprised you at the lab by telling you,” I roll my eyes and hold Ignacio out in front of me, “that you could finally call our daughter Lizzie.”
Leona stares at me incredulously. “You performed a potentially irreversible experiment—”
“—I never said it was irreversible—”
“—for a fucking lizard pun?”
I nod soberly. “I just wanted to make you laugh.” Which is true: her laugh is one of the best sounds I’ve ever heard. It starts out as a low hum in the base of her throat, like when you first turn a guitar amp on, then it rolls out of her mouth like rumbling thunder. If she thinks the joke is hilarious, her whole body gets in on the laughter. Shoulders shaking, hands uncurling from fists into soft, wide brown flowers, eyes sparking like the Fourth of July. I won’t lie and say I haven’t tried to weasel my way out of trouble before by getting Leona to laugh, but believe me, it diffuses tension so fuckin’ well. Plus comedy somehow makes her horny, so that’s all good for both of us.
Right now, the outlook is not looking so good for me. I see her frustration breaking down second by second into something like thinly-veiled amusement, but she’s still pissed as hell.
And then it starts, the hum in her throat. Leona dares to balance Beth on her hip and claps one hand over her mouth. She’s trying to stifle a mad case of the giggles but is failing miserably in the process—I can still hear her. Finally, she lets go and lets out a full-on belly laugh, long and loud. Ignacio giggles, too, which would be cute if it weren’t so damn disturbing.
“I cannot believe you, tonto,” she manages to get out through the laughs. “You would go this far for a joke?”
“What’s comedy without commitment?” I shrug.
“Yeah…Dios,” she rubs her forehead. “What did I ever do to get a husband like you?”
“If I remember right, you were completely hapless at the roller disco. F-f-falling all over yourself and clinging to the wall for dear life, so you j-just had to stumble across my long legs—”
“What kind of pendejo leans against the wall when he can clearly see someone needs the wall for support?”
“And you cussed me out in Spanish, la florecita delicada que eres.”
“Vete al cuerno!”
“Ah, see?” I cross the room and put a lanky arm around Leona’s shoulders. “That’s the foul mouth I fell in love with.”
“Don’t distract me, Ricardo.” She looks up at me, Beth squirming in her arms, and raises a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “You may have made me laugh, but you still have a daughter to make normal again. You can put her back, right?”
I press a hand to my chest in mock dismay. “A lack of faith in me as a responsible father? I can understand that. B-b-but a lack of faith in me as a scientist? That’s just downright cruel.”
XXX
Leona is the best lab assistant I could ask for. She always remembers to tie her hair back, she looks good in one of my lab coats (looks good out of one, too, but that’s beside the point), and she doesn’t ask a shitload of questions, just offers a helping pair of hands and eyes. She’s also quick to point out when I might do something potentially hazardous—I can sometimes be a bit careless with the Bunsen burner. Shocking, I know.
She raises an eyebrow at the mess of computer hardware I have rigged up around my workbench but says nothing. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates would cream themselves if they saw my setup, far more advanced and far less clunky than anything they’ve put on the market yet. Two sets of padded diodes lay splayed on the workbench; Beth quietly toys with the wires while Leona suits up. Every monitor is glowing with data from my previous experiment and humming with the sheer effort of staying turned on.
“I suppose our electric bill will be through the roof,” she finally mutters while she tucks a final stray hair back.
“Ay, don’t worry about it, mamacita. That’s what the power cells are for.” I nudge the bright red bricks sitting next to a massive beige tower with my foot. “The garage is off the grid for now.”
“Mm.” She shuffles over to the workbench and gently takes the diodes out of Beth’s sticky hands. “Blue on the left, red on the right?”
“Sí. S-siga el diagrama en esa pantalla,” I point to the biggest screen over our heads, showing a cross-section scan of Beth’s brain. “The diodes have to be placed exactly, or else.”
“No soy un aficionado. Punk.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Leona runs a finger around the four piercings in her ear protectively, then goes back to fixing the diodes onto Beth’s head. Beth hisses and peers at me through narrowed eyes, while Ignacio is happy as a clam, gurgling and trying to lick my hand as I press the other set of diodes into his scaly head. I feel a soft buzz under my fingertips when each one locks into the appropriate position. Good, everything seemed to be working smoothly so far. I grab my black lab notebook and a pen from the drawer and start scribbling.
“‘Operation Phoenix: alpha stage. Preparation for mind swap reversal successful. All systems functional. Subjects seem to be…normal.’ Well, as normal as an iguana with a two-year-old’s mentality can be,” I mumble to myself.
“She’s twenty-two months, Ricardo, not yet two,” Leona reminds me for the umpteenth time. She hates it when I round up or down on Beth’s age—she seems to think it means I don’t care about our daughter or something. “And you have a lab notebook?”
“Geez, don’t sound so surprised. It’s not s-science unless you write it down, Leona. Duh doy! I thought everyone knew that.”
Leona peers over my shoulder. “Operation Phoenix?”
“It’s what I named this project. Y’know, to evoke the image of eternal youth or whatever. Always being reborn, never dying. I was serious before, Leona. We could become immortal. A-all I’d have to do is bang out a couple clones apiece of us at different ages, and we’d just have to slip into our new bodies whenever we start feeling creaky and disgusting and old. We could cheat death a-a-and be together forever, Leona.” I drop the notebook to the floor, grab both of her hands, and look her straight in the eyes. “It’d be the two of us, Rick and Leona, a hundred years, a thousand years. I-I mean, we could go on forever this way i-if we wanted. If you wanted,” I add in, because it’s ultimately her choice. I already know what I’d choose: her.
She bites her lip for the second time tonight, and I swear to God she’s just doing it on purpose to turn my heart to mush. “Te escojo, mi tesoro,” she whispers and puts a hand on my cheek. “Siempre te escogeré. But before I agree to anything, we are fixing Beth. And Ignacio. He’s not gonna end up with super-intelligence, is he?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I just don’t want Beth to end up stupid because of this.”
I shrug that off because I honestly can’t guarantee that won’t happen. Instead, I pull away from Leona and move toward the main control panel. All brain activity looks normal in both of them, all diodes are functioning properly. Okay. Go time.
“And awaaaaaaaaaay we go!” I throw the master switch, and the electric buzz kicks up to a scream that rings through the garage. Leona cringes and plugs her ears. Beth squeezes her tiny eyes shut and cries out as Ignacio’s consciousness is torn out of her head and replaced with her own; Ignacio just blinks. I always knew that lizard was fuckin’ dumb. The monitors go absolutely apeshit with data compiling into rapidly scrolling lines only to break down again. The power cells start smoking, and I’m seriously wondering whether we should abort mission because this whole place could light up like a bonfire I mean those power cells run on stellar radiation and are not from this world—
Then everything goes quiet. Every monitor is black. Ignacio flicks his tongue. Leona pulls her fingers out of her ears and looks around, surprised that nothing more catastrophic happened.
“What…are they okay?” she asks.
“I-I dunno. Think I blew the hell out of those power cells, though.” I tiptoe over to the workbench and reach out for Beth. “Hola, Elizabeth. It’s your papá, remember? Please say you remember me. Please please please say you remem—”
“¿Papá?” Beth gurgles.
“YES!” I scoop Beth into my arms and punch my fist in the air. “Operation Phoenix alpha testing is a success, motherfucker! WHOO!”
“Ricardo!” Leona yells. “No swearing around her! We made a deal.”
“Fuck shit asshole motherfuckin’ cocksucker twat,” I say with a straight face. Beth starts giggling, and I pinch her chubby little cheek. “See? She finds it hilarious!”
“Sí, and I’m sure her kindergarten teacher will find it equally funny,” Leona rolls her eyes as she tugs the makeshift diaper off of Ignacio. “Oh, gross, he peed in it!”
“What did you expect? He had the mind of a two-year-old for a few hours.” I grab a handheld screen with a stylus attached and press the stylus to the back Beth’s head. Might as well check that the full conversion process was complete before I bust open the champagne, and also check that she didn’t suffer any brain damage. Cerebellum looks good, so does the brain stem and occipital lobe. Temporal lobe is still under development since she doesn’t talk all that much yet, so it’s hard to say for sure. Same thing with the parietal lobe. When I hit the frontal lobe, particularly on Beth’s forehead, the handheld screen starts flashing.
“Shit,” I whisper.
“What? What happened?”
“Well, according to my handheld device here, it’s predicting that Beth might experience a developmental delay in her prefrontal cortex.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, prefrontal cortex? The front part of the frontal lobe, the front-most part of the brain—”
“I know what it is, Ricardo,” Leona snaps. “I’ve taken more anatomy and physiology courses than I care to count. What I want to know is what that means for her behavior. Will she need special ed classes? Is she going to have problems with her social life and peers? Are—”
“—you gonna have to c-cut my throat in my sleep because I accidentally gave our daughter brain damage?”
“Not what I was going to ask, but it’s a fair question to contemplate.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “I’ll sleep with one eye open, then…n-no, it doesn’t mean any of that. Her personality will develop just fine, everything else will be cool. It just means her executive function might not develop fully until she’s well outta high school. Which really isn’t all that uncommon, because teenagers generally make stupid-ass decisions anyway. As long as she doesn’t, I dunno, get knocked up and marry her high school sweetheart or something like that, I think we should be fine.”
Leona heaves a sigh of relief and hoists Ignacio onto her shoulder. “Well, if that’s all it is…it’s something that we can help, right? We can guide her choices and give her a good moral foundation together. Everything will be okay.”
“Yes. Yes, it will.” I put a hand on the small of Leona’s back and push her toward the house. “Now c’mon. I bet the Pizza Hut kid left our delivery on the front step again ‘cause we didn’t answer the door.”
And so ended another typical night in the Sanchez household. At least my daughter wasn’t an iguana anymore.