CADENCE
 
Charlotte
Nicole Davis
 
Some voices are copyrighted. You can't be Beyoncé. But, for enough money, you can be just about anyone else.
   Cadence has been saving up for this. They have been taking extra shifts at Scoops, the soles of their shoes rip-rip-ripping across the sticky floor as they scurry around behind the counter, serving ice cream to rich suburban kids with forked tongues and slitted pupils. Cold-blooded, primeval: this is the look. Wymie Park sent his models down the runway with serpent mods last spring, and now everybody who's anybody is wearing them.
   Cadence is not anybody. Cadence is just another teenage twink-dyke tripping over the dirty gray laces of their Converse sneakers. There is a scribble where their brain should be. But they need a new speaking voice, they are confident of this much, at least. They are not chasing a trend, they are righting a wrong.
   No one seems to understand this.
 If you're going to drop all that money on a mod, at least get a good one, Cadence's older brother said. Your voice is fine. Fix your face.
   Everybody hates the sound of their own voice, honey, Cadence's mother said. You can't just mod your way out of every little insecurity. You have to learn to love yourself as
you are.
 No, Cadence's father said.
   And so Cadence made their appointment in secret and went to the mod center alone, and now here they are, preparing to listen to the voices of the dead.
   "Do you have a preference for the age, gender, or accent of your donor?" the woman in white asks. She wears a lab coat like a doctor's and holds a tablet. Her red-painted nails look as hard and shiny as the backs of beetles.
   "Um," Cadence says blankly. They have thought long and hard about all of this, of course, but now that the moment is here at last, they can barely remember their own name. It is too bright in here, and too hard, and too cold, all white glass and gleaming steel, like a hospital or an Apple Store.
   The woman, who has some kind of derma-mod that makes her white skin glitter faintly, presses on. "Some of our most popular accents for English speakers are Southern American English, Eastern New England English, and Received Pronunciation, or 'the Queen's English.' Our donors range in age from thirteen to eighty-seven years old, men and women both. Unless you want to take a look at our selection of custom voices, of course?"
   That "men and women both" does not go unnoticed, but Cadence tries to ignore it and focus on the question being asked. The custom voices are the nonhuman ones, the cyborg warbles, the reptilian rasps. But Cadence wants to sound human, and that can only be achieved by borrowing another human's voice. These are harvested from willing donors, like organs, digitally scanned and reproduced while the donor is still alive. It's only once the donor is deceased that their voice can be used--taking on the voice of another living person risks interfering with voice recognition technology and the security it provides.
   It is safe enough, though, to accept a gift from the dead.
   Cadence is tempted to use this voice to take on a new personality entirely. A slurring surfer from California, a posh British exchange student, a crabby old grandparent asking after their iced tea. But that is not the point of this. At the end of the day, Cadence just wants to sound like themself: a mild-mannered kid from Missouri.
   "If I get a teenager's voice, will I sound like a teenager forever?" Cadence asks, finally finding words. They are eighteen and almost out of these particular woods. They do not want their voice to hold them back.
   "No--without intervention, your new voice will age naturally. But we can do a follow-up in a few years to address that, if you want."
That won't be necessary. Cadence is excited for their new voice to grow and change with them, to become worn and comfortable. It is this first part they are worried about, when it will pinch like new shoes. All of high school has felt like that. Who would want that forever?
   "I want a young adult voice, then, please, with a Mid-
western accent. The gender doesn't matter," Cadence says, because it will not be a boy's or a girl's voice once it is in their mouth.
   The woman presses her thin lips together. Cadence begins to sweat, shifting uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair. They know that there are unspoken rules to body modification, that you can become a different type of boy or girl as long as you remain either a boy or a girl. Cadence has a cousin who had her skin lightened, shares a locker with a white boy weeb who gave himself anime eyes. These things are allowed. But the modification industry has been careful to distance itself from "fringe" cultures that "abuse" the technology--and in this part of the world in particular, they are more conservative still. Legally, they cannot deny Cadence gender-affirming services. But they can wrinkle their nose at the idea.
   "Right this way, then," the woman says after a moment.
   Cadence is suddenly very lonely. Their eyes burn with the threat of tears as they follow the woman to the sound booth. They wonder if they are doing the right thing. They wonder if it will hurt. But once they start listening to the voices, they begin to feel a little bit better. Excited, even. They have waited years for this. They will savor the moment.
   The first voice belongs--belonged--to a nineteen-year-old from Chicago named Marcus Tomlin. His voice is deep, deeper than Cadence's natural speaking voice, with a flat accent that's a little stronger than Cadence is looking for. "He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts," he says. This is probably not something Marcus ever said in life. It is just a sample sentence, one that shows off the capabilities of the computer-generated re-creation. He says more things, like "The jolly collie swallowed a lollipop" and "Lesser leather never weathered wetter weather better." It is a bold, brassy speaking voice. It exudes confidence, control. Cadence would like, desperately, to be that kind of person. But it would be the wrong reason to choose a voice. Confidence is not something you can just graft onto yourself; Cadence's mother was right about that much. The confidence will come from having chosen the right voice, not from the voice itself.
   They move on.
   The next voice belonged to a fifteen-year-old from Ohio named Chris Li. His voice is higher, lighter, and it has a ringing quality to it, like it's constantly on the edge of laughter. Something about this fills Cadence with an acute sadness. All the voices they will hear are from young donors, but fifteen is very young. They wonder how Chris died. They wonder if, when Chris got his parents to sign off on him being a donor, he had any idea he'd be taken so soon. And they wonder why he even became a donor in the first place. There is money in it--not much, but enough to make a difference for many people. For others, it's about immortality. But for someone as young as Chris, it was probably for the status. If you can't afford your own mods, saying you've donated one is the next best thing. Whatever the reason, Cadence cannot shake the feeling that they would be stealing something from Chris by choosing this mod--or maybe, more accurately, taking something that was stolen. And they cannot bear the weight of that.
   They move on.
   An hour passes. Two. Cadence can tell the woman in white is getting annoyed. If Cadence doesn't pick a voice soon, they will have to reschedule the whole procedure. They do not know if they will find the courage a second time.
   Maybe this is a sign. Maybe this is not meant to be.
   "This next one strays outside your preferred regional accent, but we're running out of options," the woman says, somewhat stiffly. She taps on her tablet and pulls up the next profile. This one belonged to an eighteen-year-old from Dallas named Reina Pérez. "He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghost," she says, like all the others. And the woman is right: this voice is not quite newscaster neutral. There is a taste of Texas here. But that is not what catches Cadence's ear. It is the soft lull of it, low and deep, warm and strong, like sunlight, if it had a sound. There is a natural musicality to it, too. It would have been a good singing voice. It might still be. Cadence tries to picture the person it once belonged to, but instead, they see themself.
   This is the one. Cadence knows immediately. They get the same feeling of rightness in their chest as when they changed their hair for the first time, or when they started wearing clothes from the other side of the department store. All day, they have been smiling fake smiles for others' sake and not their own, but the smile spreading across their face now is real.
   "I think that's it," they say quietly.
   The woman seems almost as relieved as Cadence to be at the end of their search. She escorts them to an operating room, though it's not actually called that--that would be too off-putting. Instead, it is a "reinvention room." There's soft music piping in and a television on mute, perhaps to distract from the fact that the countertops are covered with sharp, gleaming tools. There is a large contraption like a dentist's chair in the middle of the room, made of gray-blue leather, like the back of a whale. Much like a dental cleaning, this procedure won't take more than half an hour.
   Cadence is beginning to feel afraid again. Now they are truly alone--even the woman in white has left, on to her next client. There is no one here to hold their hand. They climb into the dentist's chair, lean back, stare up into the harsh white lights. Their throat catches when they swallow. It is such a vulnerable part of the body, they think. Cut the throat, and life pours out.
   This time, though, life will pour in. They will wake new and whole.

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Excerpted from Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions
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