AirBody by Sameem Siddiqui (Clarkesworld, April 2020)1 opens with a young man preparing for an “AirBody” job from a “Desi aunty” the next day (the client, a fifty-nine-year-old woman from Karachi called Meena, will use his body for a short period of time—like Airbnb, but using the person’s body rather than their house).
After this promising start the story pretty much goes into reverse: when Meena takes possession of his body the next morning he watches her (he is still mentally present for safety and facilitation reasons) cook dal and answers any questions she has—when he is not contending with her snarky comments about the cleanliness of his kitchen. We also get a chunk of backstory about his own family and a failed relationship with a woman called Karla.
The second part of the story (spoiler) sees him drive Meena to a house where she attempts to give another women the pot of dal: she has the door slammed in her face. Later, the woman turns up at his flat—and then she and Meena make love (apparently they used to be lovers). This scene—where the woman makes love to Meena while she inhabits someone else’s body—did not convince (and that is before you consider that the AirBody is of a different sex, and its owner could be watching you in action).
This is pretty much a mainstream story about cooking and relationships (not my favourite themes) which has some SF furniture in it. The ramifications of the technology are barely hinted at beyond the convenience of not having to travel.
* (Mediocre). 4,950 words. Story link.
1. This was the winner of the Clarkesworld Readers’ Poll for 2021.