Actually, what changed everything was having myself neutered; Lula was really only the catalyst for what happened afterwards.

I met her in KinderWelt after I'd hit myself in the eye with a red plastic mallet. It was my first and only visit.

Malik had been the first to suggest the idea. He did it right in the middle of an inspection, heaps of dead fish piled on Danzerlig's main dock, trawlermen brooding over us like storm clouds. "How about KinderWelt?" he'd blurted. He might as well have announced to the whole dockyard that I was depressed. At six-foot-eight, with a turban wrapped in cling film, Malik isn't too bothered about appearances. Me, I give a shit.

Sure I had the right to stay there free gratis, it was one of the perks of being emasculated: surrender the possibility of children to combat overpopulation and you got to be a kid again. It filled a strange need for some. I'd never felt the urge, personally.

Malik was right though, I was on a downer. You could maybe even call it a life crisis. Marisa had left me four years ago and I'd elected to become a Primary Citizen, a model to the community with all the attendant benefits. Seedless, self-contained.

"I'm beyond all that," I told him. But I sent for the brochure anyway. That's how I ended up at KinderWelt.

First thing you noticed were the fat rainbow balloons, corkscrew spires flowing into cones of bright lemon, the huge resin faces beaming from chalet walls. Water chutes, Ferris wheels and carousels adorned every block, while grown-ups tumbled, slid and whirled in a carnival of juvenile euphoria.

They housed us in small chalets arranged in terraces so we had neighbors on both sides. Both of mine sported evil-looking injuries.

"Krazy Karts," winked Gunther Siemaski, to my left. "Awesome, man." Turns out, he'd launched himself from one of the buggies into a giant stuffed squirrel and managed to break his nose. Wore it with pride too.

Dieter Boemer, on my right, was gamely hobbling after having swan-dived from the highest of the water-slides. He'd tumbled out after sticking his hands in the air to say, "Look at me!" The nurses had looked at him for a whole afternoon. In that year, three people had died of heart attacks and one had been felled by a stroke. Being a kid again was potentially fatal.

My stay at KinderWelt lasted two weeks. I met Lula midway through the second week, just as I was beginning to relax. She was an attendant on the Demolition Derby attraction, a cathartically destructive entertainment featuring castles built in colored plastic bricks. The idea was to destroy one's fort before the competition. I could barely concentrate.

She was wearing a short plastic skirt and ruffed tunic, like a majorette doll. Her legs could have been computer-modeled. Perfection from every angle. From good stock, I thought, or words to that effect. Certainly enough to make me jump the buzzer and deliver a premature wallop to my allocated fortress.

"You cheating bastard!" said Dietrich, competing next to me.

"Don't be childish," I told him. He had the last laugh anyway, because my mallet rebounded and smacked me in the eye.

Lula was straight on the scene. "Are you blinded?" she asked, in a musical-sort-of-way.

"It's not good," I admitted, angling for sympathy.

Up close, I could smell her perfume. It wasn't very KinderWelt. Her eyes were bright green.

"You're okay," she assured.

"Damn bricks fought back. You get this a lot, right?"

"Um. First time." The smile was Barbie-perfect.

"What time do you finish your shift?" No point wasting time.

She seemed a little embarrassed. "That's not really the done thing."

"Just a quick drink in the Milk Bar? I'll buy you a soda pop. Or an ice cream sundae. Money's no object. Really."

She glanced around, as if checking for eavesdroppers, then grinned. "Okay. I guess. I can meet you there at eight?"

God bless small red mallets.

By evening, my eye had swelled up like a prizefighter's. I waited at the bar like a teenager in heat, sundaes at the ready. She turned up bang on time and dressed to kill in baggy red sweater and jeans.

"Hi." She flashed a smile and slipped onto the stool next to me. It could have been the only thing she'd said all night and I would still have been enraptured.

"So are you enjoying your stay?" she asked, examining my bruise.

"It's a state of mind, I think. I'm getting there. Yours is the strawberry one." (Oh, to be a plastic straw.) "So what brought you here? Unusual kind of job."

"Same as anybody else. No one has to grow up here."

"You look pretty grown up to me."

"That's a body thing. I haven't made my mind up."

"About?"

"Anything. Mostly the way I look."

"Seems to me you got it right."

She stirred her drink with the straw. "No, it's not. I keep changing it. Swapping the ingredients."

"Sounds fun."

"Not really. Anyway, that's me. What do you do out there in grown-up world?"

"I'm in fish."

"Oh." She wrinkled her nose.

I walked her to her apartment under fairy lights. The moon was full and bright. If you looked up, you could mistake it for one of the giant molded faces. We were bending nature to our mood.

"Can we meet outside of KinderWelt?" I asked her the next time we met. We'd taken a pedalo out on Pirate Lake.

She frowned beneath our Jolly Roger. "I'm not sure. It's been a while."

"Here's the thing," said I, laying my cards on the table, "I'll be out of here in a week. Back with the grown-ups. And I'd like to see you again."

"Why?"

"I guess I like the ingredients."

The way she looked at me then, I could have sworn it was the start of something big. We beckoned some pirates and got ourselves captured for good karma.

I left KinderWelt exactly two weeks after arriving. Can't say it was life-expanding, but it had given me some new insights. And I'd met Lula.

"Good stay, yes?" enquired Malik when I saw him at the docks.

"It was different," I admitted.

"You seem happier anyway," he opined.

I spent the next few days wondering if Lula would show. Ricardo's had seemed like a good choice for a restaurant. Tucked away in the folds of Danzerlig's mountain roads, it was too far out of town to be busy. I didn't expect to see any trawlermen there. Best of all, there was no fish on the menu.

She was twenty minutes late on the night, but at least she turned up. I had to do a double take before I recognized her. Her hair was cherry-red, cut short. She seemed taller than before, less curvy for sure. I got a big smile when she saw me. When she drew closer, I could see her eyes had shifted color to a bright blue.

"Hi! Sorry I'm a bit late," she said.

"Great to see you. You look different."

"New ingredients." She sashayed onto her seat.

"The hair really suits you."

"Thanks. I like my legs better now." She was wearing loose trousers.

I passed her a menu. "I can definitely recommend the duck. You changed your legs?"

"Just sleeved them down a little. Stripped out some fat round the muscle. The contours are different now. From the back mostly."

"I thought they were perfect."

"They weren't me. The duck sounds fabulous." She leaned across the table. "I have a favor to ask. It's over an hour's cab ride back to KinderWelt and I'm not working tomorrow. Could I stay at your place tonight?"

"Sure. You're welcome." We ordered but I wasn't thinking about food by then.

She told me the work had been done by a clinic a few miles north of KinderWelt. The Neuleben BioDesign Centre. I'd heard of them. Advanced cosmetic surgery, synthetic body enhancements, that kind of thing. A person could have anything fixed there, new limbs, organs, skin. Everything except a life transplant. Guess that's why I'd never been interested.

We had lemon meringue pie for dessert and I walked her to the car. It was warm enough to have the roof down and we drove down the mountain with mad hair and wild music. I kept sneaking glances at her when I thought she wasn't looking. We might have been an auto commercial, plastic, unreal.

She seemed to like my house. My pink ceilings embarrassed me, but she didn't comment.

"I love that you can see the ocean from your window."

"You like the sea?" I poured us both a bourbon.

"It's the mystery of it. It changes constantly, but we never see how."

"It's full of oil and trawlers here. I know a place up the coast--my brother has a cabin there. There's a beach of white sand that stretches as far as you can see."

"It sounds wonderful."

"We can go there if you like." I topped up our glasses and turned down the lights so we could see the beacons in the harbor.

"You never wanted kids then?" she asked.

"Not in my life plan."

It should have been a big night but I got food poisoning and threw up. Goddamn Ricardo's.

Lula sympathized, patting me on the back as I hung over the sink. "Don't worry," she soothed. "Things never work out like you'd think."

I went to work the next day leaving an angel in my apartment, sound asleep.

"Bring her over, man," invited Malik, while we were waiting for a catch to be brought in. "Love to meet her."

"I dunno. She's shy. I mean really shy."

"I'll turn the lights down. We'll eat by candlelight, we'll wear masks. She'll be right at home, don't worry."

"She's leaving today."

"Tonight then. I'll buzz Mary, make sure it's okay."

Much to my surprise, Lula said yes when I called her up. I could hear how nervous she sounded.

Turned out the day's catches were good. All clean bills of health. We filled out the paperwork and got to go home early.

I found Lula in the bathroom, black dye everywhere. On the towels, the mats. The sink was covered.

She was in tears. "I'm sorry. I needed to change my hair. I spilled some. It's such a mess. I'll clean it up."

"We don't have to go," I told her. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

"I can't make my mind up," she whispered, dye marks across her cheeks.

"Black looks good," I suggested.

We cleaned up the stains and she leaned over the bathtub while I rinsed her hair for her. She showed me the small scars where her arms had been thinned, the small striations of self-destruction.

"I don't know who I am," she murmured.

"Me neither," I told her, "but I don't care." And I knew right then, at that moment, she was happy.

We were a little late to Malik's. Lula chuckled as he continually ducked under the low ceilings, his turban swerving with practiced grace amongst the hangings and lampshades, a kindly giant in a shoebox.

Mary was charming as ever, five-foot-nothing of poised elegance, swathed in purple satin. She served us a mild curry and we sat and chatted amongst bowls of incense.

"How long will you stay at KinderWelt?" Mary asked Lula.

"I've been thinking of leaving for a while now." She smiled at me.

"We're going up to Fairlight Sands," I said.

"Paradise." Malik ladled more curry into his bowl. "Near as dammit, anyhow."

"You've been?" asked Lula.

"Tested a fish from there. Best results I ever got. God's cod. Swear it."

We all laughed. I noticed Lula staring at Mary's arms.

I nudged her. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. Where's the bathroom, please?"

Straight down the hall, room at the end.

Off she went. She wasn't okay.

"She's pretty," said Mary. "Sensitive. Fragile maybe."

Malik frowned at her but she was right and we all knew it. We kept the conversation going another fifteen minutes before I had to go and seek Lula out.

"You can't come in," she wailed, when I knocked on the door. "I have to clean up."

My mouth was dry. "What have you done? Are you all right? C'mon, let me see."

She turned the handle and I pushed my way in. I remember the jolts of shock as I saw the blood trailing in small dark rivers from the basin. "It's all right," I said. "Everything's going to be fine." It was all I could think to say.

She'd stripped one of her forearms. Peeled the skin right back. I could see shiny plastic underneath.

"I've got the wrong arms," she sobbed. "They've given me the wrong arms. These aren't mine."

The skin she'd lifted was synthetic. She had vinyl in her wrists. I figured she must have accidentally hit a vein.

"Come on, let's get you fixed up."

Malik and Mary watched me carry her down the hall. She's all right, I told them. Small accident, that's all. Sorry about the bathroom.

Mary brought some lint and bandaged Lula's forearm. Lula remained mute, gazing into somewhere distant.

Malik said to call him and I promised I would. I drove Lula back to my house in near-silence.

"I should go back to work," she finally said.

"So what parts of you haven't they changed?" I asked her.

She was in tears again.

"Listen, don't go back," I urged.

"I have to."

I jammed the brakes on, slewing the car to the side of the highway. "If you do, nothing will ever change. Take some time off. Come with me to Fairlight, laze on the beach. You just need some time."

She wiped her eyes. "Why are you even trying?"

"Because you're worth it."

I found myself saying 'SShhh' because she was sniffling straight into my ear. We must have looked a strange sight out by the side of the highway at night, wild tire marks, man with a bandaged girl wrapped around him. Real rubberneck stuff.

The next day Lula called in sick to work and I buzzed my brother to ask about the cabin. No, he wasn't using it right now, and yes, it was fine to stay there. Lula seemed to brighten every time I talked about it.

I drove her out to KinderWelt to get some clothes. Those smiling faces didn't look so innocent now. Driving back, we turned up the car stereo and sang to the music, me with my life crisis, her with her identity crisis, both loud as could be.

We had two days before Fairlight and they went smoothly. Lula never even changed hair color. Better than that, she went shopping and bought some food to take away with us. It seemed like a victory of sorts.

We drove to Fairlight along the coast road and I could see the trawlers out at sea, sparkling gray under bright sunlight. It felt as though we were shifting gear into a new world, accelerating through heartache.

The beach was just as I remembered it. Lula ran straight into the waves, washing her palms through the surf. The sand was warm between our toes. Everything was how it should be. Before leaving for the cabin we stood by the shore and watched the tide roll in, slow as mercury. We saw another couple standing further down the beach, arms around each other's waists. So we did the same and it felt completely right.

The cabin was a little further up the shoreline. We arrived there after sundown and lit oil lamps so we could drink wine out on the porch, rocking peacefully in front of the fake log frontage. Lula suggested that we took a walk before bed.

"So are you enjoying your stay?" I asked.

"I'm getting there," she said. "It's just that..."

"What's wrong?"

"I'm having a wonderful time," she sighed. "And I really appreciate everything you've done for me."

Cue the coup-de-grace.

"But you're not the man I thought I'd be with. It's silly," she continued, "but..."

"No, go on."

"It's your face," she said. "It's not the face I'd imagined. Your hair too."

"Oh."

"And the shape of your chest." She seemed embarrassed.

"Anything else?"

"Your thighs and calves, I guess. They're a little skinny, maybe. Not badly, but..."

I'd been flayed and left to rot. "I see," I said, trying to sound philosophical.

She turned to me, eyes full of pity, and put her arms around me. When she murmured into my ear, it felt like somebody had kick-started the world again. "All the same," she whispered, "I think I might be falling in love with you." We melted into the woodland like two shades of green.

I'm not sure when I agreed to the 'modifications' but I think it was about two months later, when we were lying in bed together in my apartment, her head laying on my under-developed chest. When she looked at me, she had the glow of adoration in her eyes. "It won't hurt," she said. "I promise. You're just making the best of yourself, that's all."

I didn't believe her but what the hell. The world had changed and I was changing with it.

We managed to get an appointment at the Neuleben BioDesign Centre at fairly short notice. I felt a little embarrassed as I described the litany of improvements required, the map of my imperfections illuminated in harsh relief. Lula held my hand while the surgeon beatifically smiled. Don't worry, he said. One step at a time.

Lula was right, it didn't actually hurt that much. Not at first anyway. They started with my nose and chin, and fixed my cheekbones too. It all seemed so easy, and dammit, I was pleased with the results. I was being remade, fashioned into something designer-made, with nothing left to chance. It was an empowerment of sorts. The first time I looked in the mirror, with Lula standing approvingly over my shoulder, I saw myself reborn. It was a good feeling.

The next enhancements were more taxing, not least because of the volume of drugs they pumped into me. I couldn't eat solid food for three weeks, couldn't walk properly for nearly a month and damn near popped my chest while straining on the can. But Lula would come and visit me everyday, hold my hand, kiss my forehead, gush her approbation of the work done on me.

When I was finally discharged from the clinic with a polite smile and a handshake, Lula suggested we drive up to the cliffs over Danzerlig. You'll feel different now, she promised. Wait and see.

She was right. The town looked the same mound of silt but I was different. I was a newly-erected colossus over the bay, a towering monument to change. Lula had her restructured arms around my pectorally-proud chest, but I hardly noticed. I'd be back to work soon and my colleagues would all be in awe of a Nietzschean icon, a man self-evolved.

We agreed to have dinner at Ricardo's. It was like reverting to a save point in our lives. Or at least that's what we expected. I made sure I steered clear of the duck this time. Lula looked almost perfect by candlelight.

Except now I could see room for improvement. The forehead was a little too high, there were lines around her eyes that needed to be excised, a neck that had taken up too much slack from the excavation of her face.

"You look wonderful," she said. "A new man."

So busy was I admiring my reflection in a silver serving dish, I hardly noticed the eulogy.

I drove her back to KinderWelt and dropped her at her chalet. We kissed and she invited me in, but it was a moment that seemed to belong in a different life. I told her it was better that I left.

"Stay with me," she pleaded.

"Best not to," I replied, hardly knowing what to say. "Things are different now."

"But you're perfect for me," she cried, tears in her eyes. "The man I always wanted."

"But the ingredients are different now," I explained.

"Please," she begged.

But I wished her good night and drove home on my own, watching her disappear in my rear mirror like a forlorn spirit. I had willingly given up my mermaid to the waves. Without even grieving the moment.

I saw her one more time after that, when we encountered each other in the reception lobby of the Neuleben BioDesign Centre. She was in for a procedure on her hips, I for a jaw reshaping. I thought she looked truly wondrous.

"So have you found yourself yet?" I asked her.

"I think so," she said, wistfully. "Getting there, at least. You?"

"Yeah, me too," I told her.

Lula went back to KinderWelt and stayed there, as though she felt safe amongst the candy towers, buying herself more time. I never went back myself. Later I heard news of her from Gunther Siemaski, who contacted me after a third visit. She had taken an overdose in her seventh season as Senior Tour Guide and been found underneath the Princess Ferris Wheel, staring up at the clouds. I imagine her beauty must have made the angels jealous.

Malik actually wept when he heard of it, saying what a tragedy it was. 'I just don't get you, man,' he said to me. Or something like that. I don't think he ever really accepted the way I'd changed myself. After that, things gradually seemed to become awkward between us and soon we didn't bother talking much anymore during inspections. I don't begrudge him that though; not all of us are bold enough to edit the life script we're handed. Malik remains a genial somnambulant, a totem of acquiescence. I still like to think of him as a friend.

For myself, I'm still working with piles of dead fish dragged from a stinking ocean under a black sky. Except now, when I look into the water, there's a perfect new world in my reflection.

The End

Bio