CHAPTER 75 – You Can’t Always Get What You Want

LAPA.
The Dorms.

Euphemia Fontaine woke at noon, rising from the bed like Vlad Tepes from a coffin.

She subsumed what Josefina left in the fridge.
She dressed for the warming weather.
Then she went for a jog around campus.

Along the way, college kids waved to her as she passed, veering from their paths like asteroids being pulled into a gravitational orbit. Near the coffee cart, she accosted her Operations Director about her production notes. Susan Carr, more than happy to spare the time, commended Eppie on her submissions, then remarked offhandedly that she looked more amazing than usual. Eppie then bolted straight back to her Dorm and into the bathroom, stripping off her soaked workout clothes and bringing out the tape measure.

She had grown… zero inches.

She wrapped the tape around her waist, her hips, her chest, her heart pounding as she read out the numbers in the mirror.

33-25-35

5’1″

Her numbers did not go “burrrr”, as the online novels had promised. Those [Systems] were clearly superior to the one she had been saddled with.

It would take time for her “blessed” genetics to start filling out. She hoped.

Her lips trembled. Big Girls Don’t Cry. The mew she made, something between a sob and a growl, was entirely undignified. She wasn’t reborn to look good and feel vain. She was here to disseminate joy and bring happiness to the people she met. If the Pantheistic Powers that Be felt she didn’t need the height for her present assignment, then she must make do with what was given.

She leaned in closer to the mirror instead, looking for consolation prizes. To her surprise, she found it. Her hair, which was annoyingly the hue and texture of dried straw, had improved itself. It was now balayage—a warm, honeyed gold with its own gradient, the kind that cost somewhere between $400 and $500 at an upmarket salon. Her roots looked a shade or two darker; the middle was a soft sunburnt-amber that faded up into brightness the way real hair grown out over a summer would, and the tips were true blonde. It was the kind of hair that some girls dreamed about, while other girls surfed for three months and simply acquired.

Her eyebrows seemed… styled, somehow. The colour was darker, the lines more refined. Her lashes were thicker—not Elizabeth Taylor thick—but she certainly had no express need for mascara.

My improvements are hair based? Eppie questioned her [System].

Feeling hairy, she checked her legs.
She wasn’t hairless—thank god—that would just be weird —albeit her unusually fine blonde follicles were basically invisible anyway.

She slicked her fringe back with some tap water.

She looked… good. Like, really good. Her hair looked styled.

Eppie shook her head violently, then checked herself in the mirror again.

Perfect messy bed hair. If she upped her eyeshadow and the mascara, she could be on the cover of a punk-themed Teen Vogue titled “Hot Mess”.

She found some gel, then twirled her shoulder-length hair into cat ears.

“Oh my God…” Eppie took a selfie. After a moment’s indecision, she sent the selfie to Maddie. Waste not, want not.

Was this how Valorie woke up every morning?
No wonder William Chen was obsessed.

Unfortunately, her improved aesthetic was not figure-driven. Instead, it seemed her [System] had consulted a karmic focus group and decided that the correct return on her investment was adorability. Styled appropriately, Eppie felt, the response from her onlookers would be parental instinct; styled inappropriately, the reaction would probably involve immense, inconsolable guilt.

She chose a neutral outfit for her afternoon outing. Something that raised no eyebrows, nor drew attention to herself from a hundred feet out.

At the cafeteria, looking like someone’s lost daughter with her MacBook, she completed the weekend homework for her various instructors.

Then, in a self-destructive act, she devoured a pepperoni pizza and drank full-strength cola.

Her [Persona] was a karmically-fuelled philosophical zombie. She wasn’t even completely certain if she could starve to death, though she did feel intense hunger and thirst. Whether these were metaphysical constraints, or merely leftover sensations like the human tailbone, it was impossible to say—nor did she feel like putting either to the test.

Then she looked toward the middle, where Valorie usually sat and thought about Jude.

Her [Script Analysis] clearly inferred a connection between Val and the song’s original purpose. Indeed, the karmic well surrounding the song resonated well with the idea of children abandoned by their fathers. It was, after all, conjured by McCartney mid-drive, on the way to console Julian Lennon when John abandoned his family for Yoko.

A part of Eppie wondered whether she could compose the song and maybe offer it to Paul McCarron. But Lenden was gone, and Harwood had passed away as well. And—from the looks of her Google search, Hanton was the world’s most famous recluse.

Would McCarron even recognise the song when he didn’t need to console Julian? Eppie was certain he wouldn’t, because the [System] was karmically selective with its gifts.

Would Hey Jude be no.1 without its karmic well of abandonment and misery?
Her internal musiciology said no, but her [Prophet of Profits] scoffed.
Curon knew his music, and Jude was timeless. Would a man as sensitive to musical gold let a song like Jude languish? If anything, her adopted father would put his life on the line to guarantee its success.

On the other hand, Eppie was painfully aware that her [System] hadn’t handed her “Hey Jude” so she could launder it into [Causality]. It had been handed to her so that she could make it better.

Make what better? She asked herself. Valorie?

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Valorie, the beautiful.
Valorie is rich.
Valorie, who has a wonderful career ahead of her.
Valorie, who has Sir Woodhouse as a Godfather.
Valorie, who could at any time retire and help Daddy with politics.

Valorie had a life that was in the top one per cent of the top one per cent. Wasn’t that why she went psychologically pear-shaped when the child of a Nikkei refugee beat her fair and square?

Sipping from her cooling coffee, Eppie blasted “Francis Sanders” into Google, wondering just what horrors she might find.

What she found was pretty much stock-standard.

Francis Sanders grew up the son of a one-term assemblyman—old land, older money, the kind of family whose name was on a grain elevator before it showed up on a ballot. He went south for Stanford, political science, then stayed for the law degree.