rani's father reads the wall street journal. on the toilet on the train, he retains all that business in his brain. currencies and stocks and thousand dollar shoes with silk lined socks.
but unlike the other wall street sluts and cocks, rani's dad gets rich when there's a decline in the value of his assets; makes his money shorting futures. maybe that's why he sews up rani's vagina when she's 12. and why he laughs at 14 when the blood seeps through her sutures.
rani doesn't understand, of course, why anyone would want her to be less. want her to wear her dead mother's dirty old dress. why her life like her hair is always a mess. but she goes on like any kid does. aware of the chaos and ignoring the buzz of the blow flies who lay maggots in her ears and in her eyes. avoiding her reflection is the only direction she knows. and so it goes.
until her sixteenth birthday when rani happens to meet her father's protégé. at a party for her there's no one rani's age except for the go-go dancer who's stripping in a cage. the protégé's name is dave. he talks to her about nanotechnology and she says "robots?" and he says "no, nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems on a molecular scale. it's where the next boom will be. where the money will be made. your father disagrees of course. so does the journal."
dave's appearance is frozen in 1991. mustard color suit, hair in a fade, but rani likes what she sees and she wants him to be pleased so she tries to understand. "tiny robots?"
"kind of," says dave.
that night in bed rani fingers her stitches as she pretends to talk to dave on the phone. hello oh hi let me suck on your bone but the dream is shortlived when her father opens the door and laughs in her face. she's been put back into her place. her mind has been raped.
still, rani's a smart girl and determined to escape. she e-mails dave and they go on a date. they kiss and their love is intense and that nanotechnology starts to make sense. in the months to come when the stitches are gone dave starts talking about a bioengineering degree at the university of bonn. dave sits on the bed and combs rani's hair. rani looks at him in the mirror. she looks at herself.
"I don't want to go," she says.
but dave sets her free.
"go and come back and you will see. you and me will always be."
so at 18 rani's bags are packed. without telling her father she sneaks out the back.
in germany everything begins to click. she re-engineers human cells and implants them in robots. she's figured a way to give an android a dick. a robot a beard and periods and hair. testosterone and estrogen. now she can rest again because this ingenious use of nanotechnology has made her rich. robots having babies. baldies getting nanobots implanted under their scalps. the practical applications are almost infinite.
finally saved, she flies back to new york and is reunited with dave. he is proud of her. "how's my father?" asks rani.
"broke," says dave. he shorted nanotech.
