Dr Jew

looked to their mother, the woman passing as her, for they too detected a difference. They weren't fools, only children, more psychic than adults and capable of feeling the world out. When they ran to her and squeezed they felt the new shape of her waist and buttocks. A difference and feeling. Something gone to never return but also something new there. They would adapt and accept, work with it. They were children.
    "What 's wrong with Dad?" said Erin.
    "It 's probably just the movie," said Lise. "It's not doing as well as we'd hoped."
    "My teacher said it was o ne of the worst films she's ever seen," said Gretel. "She asked us to tell our parents not to see it."
    "That 's… nice," said Lise. Her mind or something like it was in the clouds whenever she thought of things that might disturb the harmony, like a pattern of her existence being detoured to less rocky roads and it was unnatural and she knew it, could feel the difference herself, but that its strength was so potent that there was no point resisting.
    Like when she read in the paper that Swine Trek was faring so poorly at the box office that the percentage of box office sales to be donated to charity in the battle against Swine-AIDS would only be about $400… well, she knew for an instant that she had some kind of thought or opinion on the matter, but it was as if the more she thought about unsettling things like that the less interest they possessed, until her mind tripped aside onto something else entirely and a wave of comfort not entirely dissimilar to orgasm was upon her and her thoughts flowed easily once again.
    She might have found the entire phenomenon very strange except that its structure was one such phenomenon in itself, so that pondering its significance in a way that her husband (and even her children) could do was outside the realm of possibility for her. And so it was she took on a glib quality never before found in her character, and it had less to do with the limits of the new body she found herself in, and more to do with the programming laid down upon that body by a hand she could barely remember.

XLVII.

    The next morning, t he three men in Ueda's apartment slept late. The two on the couches arose after Ueda to the sound of chewing, the sensei masticating slowly a crunchy bowl of Purpura Flakes, a popular children's cereal. Ueda had filled his pantry to the limit with Purpura Flakes when they'd been deeply discounted following news reports that the cereal was linked to the onset of early menstrual cycles in girls as young as five, and that the LCD affixed to the back of the box and showing advertisements for other varieties of Purpura Flakes (Apple Cinnamon, Gummy, "Hot," and Corn Syrup) in fact gave off radiation linked to brain tumors in rats. A few boxes also had a Gilbert Gottfried toy randomly inserted, but most boxes only included a website link and password to a "secret area" on purpuraland.com that allowed children to see how Purpura Flakes made it to their bowls and bowels, beginning in a Chicago laboratory and transmitting the recipe via email to a production facility in China where the scrumdiddlyumptious edibles were chemically constructed and laced with corn syrup, tar, nicotine, and glycerin vibraphone, along with homeopathic doses of fruits and vegetables that allowed Moxy, the corporate lion that produced Purpura Flakes, to meet its marketing claims about including "amicable doses" of all the major food groups in a single bowl, and then packed into a mylar bag and boxed in that famous purple packaging ("Purpura is the p-p-p-purplest!"), before being carted onto a large, slow boat and sent to glamorous destinations around the orb like Bombay, Cairo, Brussels, and Omaha. Until finally a father or mother – usually a mother – subjected to a relentless pounding of million-dollar marketing campaigns and post-hypnotically triggered by a child's bleating from a shopping cart – was swept under, reached out to get the purple box off the store shelf, and the process was completed – yes, some boxes had a Gilbert Gottfried (in miniature) toy but most (99/100) merely had the website link. And collectors in anticipation of demand for such a toy and unaware how dismally the film would fare (banking on Simpatico's name alone and experience with the Nice Nazis and other Anne Frank collectibles) had haunted grocery store aisles for midnight unloadings and tried to guess which boxes contained a Gottfried action figure. Moxy and