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Jerome means "exalted;" Eugene means "well-born." I'm quite sure my parents knew that when they named me Jerome Eugene Morrow. It's a dreadful name by itself, without even a Junior to justify it.
My parents paid a lot of money for me to be this well-born. So much that I look very little like either of them, although I'm told there's a certain resemblance to my maternal grandfather.
I've never met him. He "died in his home" when my mother was fifteen. That's what they call suicide if you have enough money.
My parents paid even more money for me to be exalted. The best schools, the best trainers, unlimited resources when they discovered I had Olympic potential. And you know, the gold medalist and I were the same height when we stood on the podium. He was such a tiny little man; a faith birth who made headlines. I was just another perfect body standing one step down on the podium.
I stepped in front of the car shortly after I lost at the Olympics. My parents never spoke to me again. Can't blame them, really.
But enough about me. This isn't my story.
Vincent was a geek. I was not at all hopeful when first I saw him. I never thought he'd go through with it. I wasn't terribly enthused about the idea of selling my body anyway, but I had to find some way of keeping myself in clean shirts, and I couldn't do that unless I had a nice ambitious invalid wanting to borrow the ladder I couldn't use any more.
Vincent didn't look ambitious. Vincent barely looked clean. I gave him a chance anyway.
Vincent wanted to be an astronaut. He wanted to work at Gattaca. He needed better DNA to do it, since his own gave him a faulty heart.
Or rather--"Only 99%," he said. "There's a chance." God loves fools and optimists.
When he agreed to have his legs lengthened, I knew this was going to work. And I was right. He turned into Jerome before my eyes.
"Call me Eugene," I told him. I was still well-born, after all.
Now he was Jerome, standing on my shoulder and reaching for the stars.
The way he looked at me changed when he started working at Gattaca. He smiled less; he became more guarded; he was no longer the affectionate geek. I could have told him that's what being part of the ruling class was all about, but he never would have believed me.
He calls it the burden of perfection. He really has no idea.
I took him to dinner when we learned he was included on the voyage to Titan. It was imperative that we get drunk, or at least that I get drunk.
I sucked on my cigarette, leaning back in my wheelchair, looking at him, wondering when he changed. He looked down at his plate. No more glasses, no more spiky hair, no more sloppy clothes, and none of the mind inside that would want such things.
"Seriously," he asked me. "What are you going to do?" While he was gone, he meant.
I had no answer for that. I suppose I could go back to my old excesses, the boozing and whoring and drugging I used to do. I just didn't see the point.
"I'm going to drink this," I said, and picked up the wine. He watched me drink it down with distant eyes and faint repulsion.
He had never wanted to be invalid. He couldn't understand why I threw away what I had. That's the irony of our situation; that it took his invalid mind to use my perfect body, and that my perfect body housed such an imperfect mind.
Fuck his chastising eyes, I was tired with them. I finished the wine and gasped theatrically. "What's Titan like this time of year?"
He smiled a perfect, brilliant smile, and gave a brittle laugh. "What's Titan like? Titan is exactly like this."
He sucked on the cigarette, staring at me, then leaned down and softly kissed the bowl of the wine glass. Smoke flowed from his lip into the glass, rolling and fuming, swirling across the surface of the wine into the air. It was beautiful.
"All the time. It's got a cloud around it so thick nobody can tell what's underneath."
Maybe there's nothing there."
"There's something there." He drank to his own surety.
"You should be going instead of me."
"Why is that?"
"Because up there, your legs wouldn't matter."
But my mind would; and he knew that, and I knew that, and his face was blank, and he was terribly, terribly cruel.
"I'm scared of heights," I said, and poured another glass of wine. His eyes followed my hands, watching and judging.
I drank myself sick that night. For old-time's sake.
Jerome Vincent, the exalted victor. Eugene, the well-born cripple. At least I knew how things were arranged in his mind.
Cigarette smoke swirled around my head. I stared down at his perfect blond date for the evening, sitting in a sports car in the street below. She was flawless as a marble statue.
I had a lady friend like that, once upon a time. She gave me a lock of hair as a love token, I gave her one in return; she celebrated my medal and never visited me in hospital. Now my lady friends are paid with the money I make from Jerome.
Vincent.
Jerome.
Him.
The cigarette burned down, scorching my fingers. The car was gone; my memories were gone; my name was gone. All I had left was Vincent, Vincent and his dreams, so I looked up at the stars.
I was in the freezer room when I heard him walk in. He was looking at the plastic-covered tables as I opened the door, almost wistful.
He was a right mess, all unbuttoned and covered in sand, his hair rumpled and his face exhausted. He stood still, his eyes resting on me, looking dazed. I couldn't imagine what he had got up to, but I found it somehow heartening that he had. It told me that something of the star-dazzled geek remained in the shell of Jerome--and I did so love that uncertain boy.
It felt like old times again, except that this as the last time. "You're flying today, aren't you?"
He said nothing.
"Look at what a mess you're in." I grinned, turned and wheeled into the freezer room. "Come on, I have your samples ready."
He stirred. "I don't need any samples where I'm going."
"You might when you get back."
I opened the freezer and showed him all the supplies I had prepared over the last few weeks. "Everything you need to last you two lifetimes."
"Why are you doing all this?"
"So Jerome will always be here when you need him."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm travelling too," I said, and didn't tell him where.
He stared at Jerome in the freezer. "I don't know how to thank you."
And there he was again--Vincent, peeking out from the blanket of Jerome. He wasn't lost; he wasn't cruel; he was smiling at me, sweet and shy. So I told him the truth: "I got the better end of the deal. I only lent you my body. You lent me your dream."
I handed him the envelope. "Not until you're upstairs." He tucked the envelope into his pocket, next to his heart, and there was true affection in his eyes.
The envelope held a lock of my hair. A love token. Because whatever else happened between us, he did have beautiful dreams.
The incinerator stood next to the freezer. It was just large enough for a man to crouch in, or sit in, as he might.
It was time to step down, one more step; one step down so that he could take one step up. We had swung against each other for so long, weight against weight; and now I gave a short sharp tug on the strings, and watched my weight fall as his rose, exalted, to the heavens.
END.