Hopscotch

As night fell, the city fractured into a kaleidoscope of lights, like neon sparklers reflecting from rain-washed facades. Unabashedly garish, Club Masquerade hosted a dazzling assembly of humanity--new people, old people, everyone wearing a different body for the evening.

Outside the entrance to the Club, lighted sidewalk panels flashed patterns, numbers inside squares illuminated by each pressing footstep. A gimmick. Split doorways led into tailored environment chambers: a British Empire Safari Club, a discotheque with mirror balls and strobe lights, a rustic Sequoia Room, an Arabian harem with colorful rugs and sweet perfumes, a domed Martian colony chamber with red rock and thermal springs.

The specialized alcoves opened into the main interior of Club Masquerade, a wild environment of lights, music, exotic food, and unusual people. ID patches worked overtime to keep track of who was who, which mind in which body. Sometimes the people had trouble sorting it all out in the morning.

A person could be anyone or anything here, for a limited time--provided the desired body type was available. Pick a physique, swap with someone, wear it for a while, see if you like it.

Garth Swan's home-body always looked the same, except when he was on the hunt for new artistic inspiration: broad shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes. Certainly nothing he'd want to change for the long term. His shirt bore paint stains, charcoal and chalk dust, a smear of still-moving glittergel. To him, the people in Club Masquerade were a catalogue of humanity. Inspiration.

He looked up at the Club's chaotic Hopscotch Board, aglow with swapportunities, people wanting to rent a muscular body for a few days of hard labor, old men and women willing to pay for a week's vacation in a young and healthy physique, the usual sex ads searching for a two-night stand, once as a male, once as a female, or a blur of alternations before, during, and after.