by Rob Dubbin, Art by Matt Novak

I was late for our meeting, which was held in the lobby of a hotel that was once shaped like a sailboat. It has since been demolished—which I took as a sign of ecological progress—and reconceived as a hotel shaped like an artificial reef.

Luckily, she was even later. An assistant apologized and promised I would understand when she arrived. I had time to go over my notes and spar a few rounds with the hotel’s resident man-dog hybrid. They were everywhere these days, and it always made me feel good to see one gainfully employed, even as a taproom gladiator.

It was 2015. Lady Gaga had just ended her self-imposed exile to low earth orbit and was back to do some press before kicking off her 50-city, 10-arcology tour of what remained of Europe. The subject of our talk was clothing and, to a lesser extent, music.

“I love this hotel,” she said in an accent that she had definitely picked up in space, taking an effortless seat across from me. I asked if she wanted anything to drink, and she looked at me like I was crazy—I took this as a minor victory—before taking a sip from the output tube of her diamond-plated water reclamation suit.

“Tell me about what you’re wearing,” I ventured. To describe her outfit was to describe the state of the world at the time. Her armored fists glinted with the menace of the Ukrainian Chromium Flats, and you just couldn’t look at her spiked shoulder promontories without being reminded of the spectacular 2013 incident that had resulted in the Pacific Ocean’s transformation into the Pacific Petroleum Sea.

“You can’t put this in your article,” she said, “but one of the problems we ran into before I left for space is that there are so many ways you can use clothing to frame a vagina.” I nodded. It made sense.

“So what we came up with was: more vaginas.” I wanted to follow up on that, but she deflected the obvious question by changing the subject. “You know, if you cut one word out of this interview I will hunt you down and gut you like a hog.” We laughed. It had been years since there were hogs.

That was the last word she said to me. She stood up, and for the past hour of our time together the artist held down a single note on an electronic keyboard, staring into a hyper-definition camera as a phalanx of production assistants dismantled her gleaming stillsuit and its infinite refracted genitals, replacing them with one constructed outfit after another, each growing larger and more colorful until the woman inside had all but disappeared.

I was told it would be a time-lapse movie, which seemed appropriate.