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PART THREE
Chapter 7. | Nullification
While Ari Alterhaus recovered from top surgery—Ash del Greco spooned applesauce into their waiting mouth above the suture-smiles beneath each resettled nipple—they began, together, to research nullification. Upon hearing the theretofore unfamiliar term, Ash del Greco had asked, “Isn’t that just suicide?” but Ari Alterhaus quickly turned the tablet around and invited them to read the details of the procedure. In the case of what used to be called a “biological woman” and was now understood to be a “person assigned female at birth”—though Ash del Greco and Ari Alterhaus came more ambitiously to believe that being assigned human at birth was more burdensome to the soul, after which the addition of gender was only a comparatively minor insult—the surgeon would perform a hysterectomy, a vaginectomy, a labioplasty, and, more than likely, the shortening of the urethra. This would create a smooth, unbroken fall of flesh from navel to perineum. Ari Alterhaus showed Ash del Greco “after” pictures and then Blake’s colored engraving, Satan in His Original Glory, in which the vaguely indicated diaphanous drapery around the soon-to-be-fallen angel’s thighs concealed no genitals.
“Simon Magnus and Marco Cohen were both inspired by Blake. It was the only thing they agreed on apparently—one of the editors said that in some oral history of Overman 3000. Then I found an article on it.”
Ari Alterhaus took back the tablet, toggled open a different tab, and turned it back around to show Ash del Greco the pdf: “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: William Blake as Collaborative Intertext in Overman 3000.” Ash del Greco’s eyes widened for a moment—William Blake was intersex?—until “sex” resolved itself in their eyes back into “text.”
Ari Alterhaus said, “It’s a sign. Everything’s a sign, if you know how to read.”
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