"Boy and Man" by Seuzz

"Hi Dad!"

Ben Carstairs would have replied, but he had barely time to glimpse the back of his tow-headed son before Brian had vanished down the hallway and into the bedroom. He watched the boy's swirling wake with bemusement for a moment before turning again to gaze out the front door, at the blonde woman who stood by the minivan with her arms folded in a disapproving manner. He hunched as he trudged down the front walk to the street where she waited.

"I guess I'll say hello to him later," he called as he approached. "Hello to you, Cynthia."

"Hello, Ben."

Carstairs smiled thinly. "I guess we're speaking again."

"Of course we're speaking," she said, but her smile was also thin. "I don't want to give you any reason to think I'm feeling unfriendly."

"You mean aside from the restraining order? Or that letter your lawyer sent last week? Jesus, Cynthia, if you'd seen my expenses last month you wouldn't be asking for more alimony."

"I'm not asking for more, only for what you still owe. And I should be your primary expense."

"First mistakes are always the most expensive," Ben said bitterly. "Sometimes we never finish paying for them."

His ex-wife's eyes glinted coldly. "I had to come within a thousand yards so I could drop our son off at the curb. Don't say things that could be used against you in a court appearance."

Ben felt a nasty ripple up his spine, but he forced himself to smile. "Then let's both stop being unpleasant." He looked her up and down. "You're looking well."

"You're not. You've lost a lot of weight. You look haggard."

"Some people would say 'You've lost weight' and mean it as a compliment," he retorted. "But you're not like most people."

"Pretend I'm concerned. You're wasting away." She seemed to debate with herself before blurting out the sequel. "But you could disappear completely, and I wouldn't mind."

Ben felt a lop-sided smile creep onto his face. "I haven't been eating well," he admitted. "My work in the lab—and your alimony—have left me subsisting on ramen."

"Then blame yourself and not me." She paused, as though unsure how sincere he'd been in pleading poverty. "But if you need money for Brian over the summer, I can be patient a little while longer."

"I don't want your charity," Ben snapped.

"Then you won't get it. And it wouldn't be for you but for Brian. It's all he's been talking about for the last month. Coming to see you." She peered at him narrowly. "You've been promising to spoil him, haven't you?"

"The settlement says I only get him three months out of the year. Naturally, I want him to enjoy himself."

"And that's why he dashes past without speaking more than two words when he finally sees you."

"I told him in our last email that I had some new hardware for him."

"That virtual reality system that's been sucking up your life for the past five years?" Her eyebrows arched. "The one that busted up our marriage? Well, that and the abuse."

Despite himself, Ben found himself bridling. "My research may have pushed you and me apart—and yeah, it was bad for mu temper—but it's brought my son and me closer together."

"He needs sunlight, Ben. He needs fresh air, and exercise, and flesh-and-blood friends. He doesn't need to be shut up in a ... full-body glove, or whatever it is that you've designed."

"And he'll get all those good things. That's what summers are for."

She stared at him evenly. "Well, I'll just say goodbye to him, then."

She started to push past, but he blocked her. "Remember that restraining order, Cynthia," he said with a nasty grin. "You can call him tonight."

Red spots showed in her cheek. "You can be such an asshole, Ben." But she turned away without pressing the matter.

Ben Carstairs waited a few minutes after she'd driven away, and then with a quizzical smile returned to the house. Inside, he knocked quietly but firmly at the door to the spare bedroom. "Are you decent, son?" he asked. There was no answer, but he opened the door anyway.

The thin, blond, sixteen-year-old kid who had barreled past him was nowhere to be seen; only a pile of hastily discarded clothes suggested he had even been present. The room wasn't unoccupied, however. On the other side of the room, admiring himself in a full-length mirror, was a solidly built, well-tanned young man with chestnut hair. He was stark naked, and fully entranced with the biceps and pectorals that reflected back at him. For a moment he was too caught up pressing a strong palm against his chest to react to the intrusion; but he caught sight of Carstairs in the mirror, and grinned back at him. "It looks even better than in those jpegs you sent!"

"How does it feel?"

"Totally natural!" He rubbed his arm lightly. "I can't even tell I'm wearing anything."

"Anyone who caught you like this would say you weren't," Ben said wryly. He crossed to a chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of track pants, which he tossed to the seeming stranger who was actually his son. "I had to set the biochemical interface to my own signature, but I figured it would be close enough to yours. I can tweak it if there are places that are ... not quite sensitive enough." Naturally, he chose not to mention the number of times he'd taken the body suit out, to the gym, to the park, to nightclubs. To test it and refine it, he'd told himself, as though that were his primary excuse.

"I look ... older than sixteen."

"That's the least of the differences." Ben continued to be wry. "But yeah. Here's some ID for you." He tossed a thin wallet to Brian. "It says you're nineteen. I guess you could pass for twenty-one, though."

Brian blushed as he grinned. "I get it. Thanks, Dad. This is the greatest graduation present anyone ever got. Well, early graduation present, I guess."

"Keep your grades up, and you can take it to college next year."

"I wish I could go now. Junior year sucked."

"So you told me. Here," Ben said, his manner suddenly shy. "I'll take your old clothes and suitcases and put them away. Nothing you brought will fit you now, and I doubt you'll be wanting to get out of the suit any time soon." But Brian had already returned his attention to the mirror.

Ben Carstairs smiled in relief to himself as he opened the secret door at the back of his closet and deposited his son's things in the little space, behind the other flesh-colored suit, the lanky one with shaggy, light-blonde hair. It had taken a lot of exercise and starvation diet, but he could now fit inside this other suit, the one that made him into the physical duplicate of his own son.

From the way Brian was talking, he would hardly need convincing when the time came to suggest he not return home for his senior year. And then when Ben was in that other suit, and back inside his ex-wife's house, in the guise of the last person she would ever suspect meant her any harm ...

Then he would finally finish paying for that first, fatal mistake, and have the wherewithal to settle all his other financial problems.