ceiling. Some of the works of art are so faded that the images are completely unrecognizable, worthless.
Zippo finds one that is still mostly intact. A picture of two little girls gathering acorns. He pulls it off the wall and wipes a layer of dust from the surface.
“That’s not one of them,” Xiu tells him over his shoulder. “The ones we are looking for are different. Unique.”
Zippo smiles and gazes at the little girls in the picture. Xiu wraps her arm around his waist and peers longingly into the image from behind Zippo’s shoulder. They put the picture back onto the wall, then press their foreheads together as they take one last look at the girls gathering acorns.
The day Xiu, Zippo, and Vine became a unit was the day that they were married. In Mongol culture, the ceremony that brings three children together into one unit is also a bond of matrimony. Merc punk units are all threesome relationships. They share the same bed as a trio, they mate as a trio, and they raise children as a trio— until their children are old enough to join their own trio.
When the Head of a unit reaches the age of twenty-three, they can decide whether or not to take time off to breed. They have another chance at age twenty-five, and at age twenty-seven. Xiu wanted to have a child. Even though she would not be able to raise it for long, she still wanted to produce young. Zippo and Vine also wanted to have children badly, because it was what their Head wanted. So Xiu put in a request to enter a breeding period.
During a breeding period, merc punks don’t have to go on missions or do much work of any kind. They get to stay on their boat and spend their time trying to get pregnant. These are the happiest days in a merc punk’s life.
The first time Xiu’s unit made love, they were all very awkward. Because a unit is trained to think and act as one being, sex is more like masturbation.
“Ummm…” Xiu giggled as they sat naked on the bed together, in a circle. They were already completely familiar with each other’s bodies, yet intimacy on this level was new to them. It was mysterious, exciting.
Zippo was the most awkward of the three. As an Arm, he is not supposed to have desires and feelings of his own. He is supposed to put all of his attention into mimicking his Head’s feelings and desires. Arms are trained to empty their minds of their own thoughts and fill them with the thoughts of their Head. They see their bodies as puppets for their Heads, and their consciousnesses as mere spectators that view everything from above the action.
However, Zippo sometimes finds himself with desires of his own. He is in love with Xiu, more in love with her than any Arm is supposed to love their Head. Sometimes he wants to hold her in his arms, kiss her with all of his passion, but if Xiu doesn’t order him to do these things he’s not allowed to. He just has to wait for the moment to come, when she commands him to do so.
Zippo was on the bed, shaking with the thought of being able to make love to Xiu for the first time. He knew that Xiu saw it only as if she was just making love to herself, but he couldn’t stop the feelings from flooding in. He waited patiently for Xiu to order him onto her body.
Xiu smiled at her Arms and giggled. It was as if she didn’t know where to begin. They had all been waiting so long for this moment that they could hardly believe it was finally happening.
Zippo visualized strings connected to the end of Xiu’s fingers as she reeled him toward her body. She giggled as she had him lick her left breast, suck her cocoa-colored nipple into his mouth, rub his hands down her tobacco- scented chest. She leaned back and put her hands behind her short black mohawk, as her Arms followed her telepathic commands. Vine kissed the right side of her neck and ear, as Xiu’s strings pulled Zippo’s tongue further down her body, over her belly button, to her inner thighs.
Merc punk threesomes are not quite the same as a normal threesome relationship. When units have sex, it is always the two Arms having sex with the Head. The two arms never make love with each other. Some units are bisexual, but these are only in the cases where the Head and one of the Arms are of the same gender.
Xiu widened her mouth as she masturbated herself with her Arms. She gave herself oral sex with her Left Arm as she rubbed her breasts with her Right Arm. Then she laid back and brought her Left Arm’s penis inside of her.
The moment Zippo felt his Head’s warm insides, he knew that he was already going to have an orgasm. If he could only pause for a moment he wouldn’t pass the point of no return, but he couldn’t
stop unless she commanded him to. “I’m going to come,” Zippo said.
“Don’t,” Xiu ordered, moaning beneath him. “Keep going.”
Zippo tried to do as he was ordered, but it was the first time he had ever had sex. He couldn’t prevent himself from ejaculating before she ordered him to do so. When she felt his penis become soft inside of her, Xiu’s face filled with shock. Her Left Arm had disobeyed orders.
“Get off of me,” she said.
She pulled his strings and moved him to the far side of the bed, then continued masturbating herself with only her Right Arm.
It is common for a Head to prefer one Arm over the other during sexual intercourse. In bisexual units, the Head might prefer one gender over the other. Or a Head might just find one Arm more sexually attractive, or one Arm might perform better in bed.
Zippo tried not to cry as he was left out of the lovemaking. He wasn’t allowed to be sad if Xiu wasn’t sad. He wasn’t allowed to be jealous of the Right Arm. He was not allowed to look away as Xiu masturbated herself without him.
When a Head prefers one arm over the other, the unit would be considered either Right-handed or Left- handed. Zippo had always thought that Xiu’s unit was ambidextrous, until they started to make love. Then he discovered that her unit was actually Right-handed. Although he was supposed to have no feelings of his own, this hurt Zippo deeply. He loved her so much. He couldn’t bear the thought of her preferring Vine over him, even if it was just a little bit.
They come to a chained door upstairs. After searching the entire museum, this is the last door they haven’t searched. Zippo cuts the chain with his right scissor-arm, and the chains clank against the floor.
“Let’s go,” Xiu says, as Vine kicks the door open.
Inside, the room is a vast hall. It had been designed for special exhibits, and there was no exhibit more special than the works on display here.
Xiu enters first, going toward a sculpture in the center of the room.
“This is it,” she says.
The sculpture raises its head and looks at her.
“Brains…” it says.
The piece of artwork is a zombie that had been torn apart and re-assembled into a twisted abstract sculpture, with steel bars woven through its flesh. The ribcage opened like butterfly wings, a black fist in its chest in place of a heart. A living, writhing piece of art created out zombie flesh.
There are dozens of them, abstract sculptures made out of the flesh of the living dead. Along the walls, there are paintings, also composed of undead tissue. Each one still shifting and wheezing, permanently frozen inside of their frames.
“Get as many as you can carry,” Xiu says. “We need to get them to the helicopter before dark.”
Her Arms nod at her, pulling sheets and twine from their bags, to wrap up the valuable works of art.
Their client is the grandson of a man named Gunther von Hagens, the inventor of plastination. His grandfather was a controversial anatomist known for his
After Z-Day, Gunther von Hagens had found himself trapped in the United States, in the very city where this season of
