Turn 6 of 15

Look in a mirror to see if anything has changed on the outside

I turn from the pod and my eyes find a tall, narrow mirror mounted on the wall beside the door, framed in brushed chrome. My reflection stares back at me, and for a long moment I cannot identify what is wrong. My skin is the same pale, northern pallor it has always been. There is no tan, no bronze glow, no dramatic change to my face or body. I lean closer, turning my head left, then right, searching for the thick lashes, the painted-on bronze I have seen on the others. Nothing. I look exactly as I did twenty minutes ago, standing on the pavement with my coffee, watching the movers haul in their strange equipment.

The receptionist watches me from behind the desk, her smile patient and knowing. She has seen this before, I realise. The confusion, the searching. She is waiting for me to find it.

"You look wonderful," she says, her voice carrying that same warm, rehearsed cadence. "The changes are internal first. The outside follows."

I turn back to the mirror and look deeper, past the surface. My eyes are the same grey-green they have always been, but there is something behind them now, a stillness that was not there before. The anxious furrow between my brows has smoothed. My mouth, which I have always carried in a slight, worried downturn, rests in a neutral line. I look calmer. I look rested. I look like someone who has just had a very good night's sleep after a long, exhausting illness.

But the exhaustion is still there, underneath. I can feel it, a low hum beneath the new stillness, like a machine running in standby mode. The thoughts that come are clear and orderly, arranged in neat sequences, but they feel borrowed, as if someone has tidied a room I have lived in for twenty-seven years and I do not know where anything is anymore. I raise my hand to touch my face, and the gesture feels deliberate, performed, as if I am watching myself do it from a slight distance.