Before and Afterlives

by Christopher Barzak

  She closes the book before her mother can get another word in, and holds it to her chest, closes her arms around it, hugging it as tight as she can. The ghost hunter appears on the steps of the farmhouse. “Sylvie!” he shouts. “What are you doing?”

  She holds the book out, dangling it over the fire, as if it’s suddenly too hot, too dangerous. Smoke poofs up in a cloud from the burn barrel, and Sylvie imagines the album landing in the flames, catching a moment later, the plastic sizzling on the pages, the cover slowly browning, crisping to a dark charcoal. She imagines a hissing sound escaping from the fire, slowly, slowly like it does when her father’s camera captures a soul and out comes the picture, developing in mere minutes. She imagines the smoke pouring forth in dark tendrils, streaking the air above. A popping, then snapping, as the fire grows. Then from the flames they will come, riding the smoke up and into the pale October sky like kites that have been let go. The dog barking, the baby crying, the little girl skipping her rope up and up and up, the mumbler mumbling, the rich old woman and Mr. Marlowe and Mrs. Boardman all quite startled, the cop wagging his finger at her as he floats up behind them. Her mother, too, looking down at her, smiling. “I love you, Sylvie,” she’ll say, blowing a kiss with one hand as she holds out the other as if she’s trying to reach her, to touch her one last time, and is gone the next instant. All of them. Gone, gone, gone.

  “Stop!” The ghost hunter shouts as he runs down the porch steps, coming toward Sylvie where she’s holding the photo album over the flames in the barrel. “You don’t know what will happen if you burn those!” he says.

  Is he right? Will what she hopes for not be the thing that happens? Will she have done the stupidest thing in the world if she drops the photos in the flames? The pictures burn, the end, finished. No smoky ghosts riding the wind to heaven. She’ll never see her mother again. And for what?

  Sylvie’s crying. She realizes this only after her father puts his hand on her shoulder when he reaches her, his face turned up to the sky where a moment ago Sylvie had been looking, imagining them soaring off and away into nothing. “Sylvie,” he says, his voice low and serious.

  She shakes her head, though. “I won’t help anymore,” she tells him. “I don’t want to be a ghost hunter’s daughter.”

  “Don’t be like that, Sylvie,” he tells her. “Remember your mother—”

  “This isn’t about Mom,” says Sylvie. “Or at least it’s notjust about her.” Sylvie puts her hand out and takes hold of his, squeezing tightly. They’re warm to the touch, both of them. She thinks she can feel his pulse beating just there, where her thumb presses against his wrist. The baby’s cries still ring in her ears. Somewhere Mary Caldwell is sitting on a bar stool, crying into a beer she’s ordered before the bar even opens, even though she usually doesn’t drink, while her husband watches a football game on the TV in the corner over the cash register. Somewhere someone is reading a magazine article about her father, about her father’s ability to rid people and places of ghosts. Somewhere a pointy bearded man wearing a black suit is stalking the leaf-strewn sidewalks of Warren, Ohio. Sylvie hopes he won’t hurt her father, now that she’s made a decision for both of them. If she stops finding ghosts, he won’t be able to capture them. She laughs and cries, happy and mad all at once. She’s not sure which to feel, or if it’s all right to feel both. But she takes the album away from the fire and holds it to her chest. “This is about us,” she says, before squeezing her father’s hand so tight no wind could ever take him from her.

  Caryatids

  I’m leaning against a wall in the Miro District when the Doctor comes by to say he wants me as a girl. I tell him there are plenty of girls, just look around, and I point to a few girls who sit in the center of the square on the edge of the stone fountain. The women gather there, safety in numbers. The Doctor says, “No, not a girl. I don’t want a girl. I wantyou as a girl.” He holds a needle up that’s filled with a green liquid. Looks like a fungus cocktail, but I know better. With the doctor it’s never so simple. It’s one ofthose jobs.

  I lift my chin and say, “What’s this one?”

  “Nanomites,” he says. The sort that will rewrite my genes and reconstruct my body. I know queens who would near die for a shot of that stuff. It’s too expensive, unless you’re someone like the doctor. Then you have all the money you want and you can wave stuff like this under our noses, make our mouths water. I’m not interested in being a woman though. I tell him, “Talk to Petra. She’s been saving for one of these modifications forever. Might as well help you and help herself at the same time.” Petra is one mean-looking queen. Doesn’t look much like a girl. Shaves her face each morning but it’s covered with a shadow come evening. Has legs with more muscle than most. She’s ripped, but she thinks she looks all sweet and dainty.

  “I don’t want Petra,” the Doctor growls. He grinds his teeth together. In the Miro District, I’m the boy voted most willing to try anything once. We’ve done business before, and the Doctor always has some fantasy to enact. Last time he grew wings out of my back. They were useless; I couldn’t fly. But they were beautiful, the way they unfurled and I could move them like arms or legs and the feathers smelled like earth mornings.

  It’s been years since I smelled earth. This place, Beroke, especially this city, Melas, it stinks like sewage. The whole planet is covered with phosphorescent fungus, except where they’ve got nanotechs terraforming. They’ve done that before, though, the terraforming. It lasts for a decade maybe, but the fungus just comes back. You can’t get rid of it. Only thing it’s good for is the juice sac inside its flesh, the main ingredient of a fungus cocktail. The Doctor is a fungus-head. He says he can understand this place when he takes it. He can hear the voice inside the planet. Each time he’s rented me, he’s ended up sprawled out on the floor unconscious or else dreaming awake, too tweaked to actually use me.

  I shake my head. “Nah, Doc, I’m not up for that, unless you have another that’ll change me back.” Like I said, I’m not interested in being a girl. It’s hard enough being a boy in this world. Why make things more difficult?

  The Doctor reaches inside his jacket and pulls out another needle.

  “This will take care of everything, Lucius,” he says, and slides both needles back into his pockets. I can’t help but feel a little resentment. Like what is ever going to satisfy him? Wings? A boy inside a girl’s body?

  But I nod anyway. He pays more than anyone. Already he’s slipping into my wrist node, smooth and sweetly. The transfer fibers stretch forward from his index finger and find their way inside me, transferring enough credit into my account to live on for two months. His hand remains on my hand afterwards. A slight electrical afterglow still lingers. The others hate it that the Doctor always comes for me. But I have a pretty face for a boy. Even after a few nasty encounters, it’s still damned pretty.

  The Doctor doesn’t waste his money this time. Soon as we walk through the city, over the stone bridge that leads to his building, we hurry into the elevator and he has my hands pinned over my head and makes these snuffling noises, like a pig searching for a truffle, licking my Adam’s apple. He likes me to act like myself, a real boy’s boy, but pliable. Before the elevator lifts us to his floor—I know,his floor, he owns a whole level—he takes out a needle and slips it under my skin. Then he pulls it out, no pain, just a pinch. A drop of blood beads up where he punctured me and inside I can’t feel the nanomites swarming, but they are doing just that already. The doctor gives me an affectionate peck on the cheek. Rubs his face against mine, the stubble on his face bristling against me. Then the elevator doors open onto marbled floors and a hall filled with pillars sculpted to look like women. Their arms hold up the ceiling. Caryatids, he calls them. They look tired, but pretty.

  “Rest now,” he says. “The process will take a while.”

  He shows me to his bedroom and I strip off my clothes and slide under his sheets. He doesn’t follow. Within a few minutes my eyelids flutter under their
own weight.

  When I wake again, it’s some other night. Who knows how much time has passed. There are four moons framed in the window.

  “Good, good,” the Doctor says. The room comes into focus. I sit up, feeling strangely out of proportion. The Doctor sits down on the edge of the bed and strokes my breasts. I look down and there they are—my breasts—and the nipples stiffening under his fingers. It all feels, well, I don’t know. Different. I’ll just commit to “different.”

  He leans in and kisses me. His tongue finds its way into my mouth quickly. The Doctor is a good looking man. He has brown hair and green eyes and his nose is sexy. Not too big and not pug or beak-like. He has full lips and his breath usually smells good, even though he takes too much fungus extract. He takes care of himself. Probably his body teems with nanomites that keep him looking young and healthy. I could do a worse trick. Sometimes I even let myself imagine he’s someone who loves me. But only for a little while. I’m not stupid.

  We lay back in bed and explore my new body. My hips are round and my skin is soft as a baby. I have this long black hair that Petra would fucking die for. Maybe I’ll cut it off and save it for her before I become a boy again. And down there—something is suspiciously absent. Or maybe not absent, but present in a way I’ve never experienced. I reach down with one finger and feel the new space inside me. Moist and warm. My body shivers. All of it.

  The Doctor shimmies out of his pants and his dick is hard already. It stands up proud like a good soldier. He doesn’t waste any time; he’s probably been hard like that for hours. He gets right on top and puts it in me. It hurts at first, but then things get smoother. His body crashes into me over and over. I think this must be what erosion feels like, a slow effacement, waves slapping against land, taking a little bit of earth with it each time it pulls away again.

  The Doctor’s face floats above me, his eyes wincing, his teeth gritted. Sweat beads on his forehead. I pull his face down and kiss him while he moves inside me. His dick throbs inside me, swelling, pushing my cunt apart as it grows even bigger, moving blindly, searching, trying to find me, the me he’s hidden. But the Doctor won’t find him under all this woman. Even though his body presses against me more desperately, even though he bites at my shoulder and squeezes my left breast hard enough to hurt, I feel protected. I’m usually the one who does the fucking. But here I am, on the bottom, raising my hips to meet his thrusting.

  In the end I even cry out, “Oh God,” as I’m coming. I haven’t said that word in years. God, I mean. And I notice now my voice has changed. I’ve heard my voice played back to me before, and it never sounded like the voice I heard inside my head, my secret voice, the one no one but I ever heard. It’s like that, but even more different. Isound like a girl, all soft and cottony.

  “Hello,” I say to the air. “Nice to meet you, dear.”

  The Doctor is asleep beside me, his chest rising and falling, his lips parted for breathing. I’m ready to go again, but he looks worn out already. I stick the tip of my index finger between his lips, just barely, and tap his two front teeth. He doesn’t wake up.

  I put my hands to my throat and—guess what—no Adam’s apple.

  We spend several days having sex and dozing. At one point I climb on top of him, knees straddling his waist, and lower myself onto him, taking him in slowly. Oh, what luck, what incredible luck this is. I put my hands on his chest and grind into him. He says, “I can see you in there, little boy blue. I know you’re in there.” He calls me little boy blue because of my eyes and the usual state of my emotions. He reaches up to clasp a hand around my mouth and chin, but I push his hand away. I ignore him. My hair falls over his face.

  I don’t even see him any longer. I’m concentrating on this body, how it feels and how it’s working. I’d grown so used to the old one, and the positions with which it was familiar. I feel like I’m alone here. The Doctor is just another piece of furniture. Or it’s more like it’s me and this body, this fabulous woman around me. The two of us are figuring things out together, laughing a little, because sex is funny when you think about it. Too many people, like the Doctor, think sex is embarrassing. They pay people like me to do the things they’re ashamed to ask of their lovers.

  I stay for a week before he grows bored with this fantasy and tells me, “All right. You can go now.” He jacks into my wrist node once more to tip me, but there aren’t any fingers lingering on mine afterwards. There isn’t any moment or shock of recognition. One week of work and I’m set for months. No worries. As he escorts me out, he gives me the other needle.

  “I suppose next time we meet, you’ll be a pretty boy again, Lucius.” He pats my back like a friend—like a father—and ushers me into the elevator. He wants me gone because he’s starting to feel guilty and he probably has a patient waiting to see him and he can’t concentrate on this patient or even himself when he’s feeling guilty. He’ll come for me again when he’s forgotten that feeling.

  Before the doors close, I take one long look at the women holding up the ceiling, their hair curling around their shoulders. Caryatids, he calls them. Tired but pretty. I don’t think I could carry all that weight by myself either.

  I walk down the avenue towards the Miro District. I’m wearing a silver evening gown that’ll make Petra salivate. High heels that match even. When I reach the square and see the girls gathered around the stone fountain, a few notice me. They look up and wave me over, so welcoming and they don’t even recognize me. I move towards them. I open my purse to make sure the needle is in there, is real and not imagined. Then I snap the purse shut and join the girls. For a while, at least. You know, safety in numbers.

  A Beginner’s Guide to Survival Before, During, and After the Apocalypse

  First, remember what it means to be human. Even when your country has turned against you, even when some other part of the world has been decimated (by bomb, by terrorist cells, by forcible entry and removal of dissidents to dark and forgotten chambers, by hurricane or tornado or tsunami), even then remember that you can retain your humanity if you continue to be humane.

  Despite that, you will have certain struggles, like finding work when you’re not the right sort (too young, too old, too female, too ethnic, too queer), or like that time you went to the grocery store and the cashier refused to touch your money because you were one of them: one of those Other People. Stay calm. If you are not a part of a normalized group, your chances of being strung up for giving the wrong look or replying with the wrong tone might be more than enough reason for a society gone wrong to cast you out even further, or perhaps kill you. Instead, say “Thank you.” Say, “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant.” Say, “You’re absolutely right, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” Say it again: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Wear the requisite uniform. Brush the dust off your shoulders and polish your shoes. Look like you mean this pose you’re taking. You love this country more than you love life itself. Practice these phrases: “I am a patriot of the first order,” and, “God has shown me the light,” and, maybe the most important one, “If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else.” This last one is most effective in proving your loyalty. Do not hesitate to degrade your fellow man if it means your life or his is at stake.

  Go to underground meetings in the back rooms of bars and coffee shops. It will not be like the 1960s. There is no free love, just fear, fear, fear. Despair reigns over these conversations, and occasionally you find yourself trying to annihilate your desperation by taking other meeting-goers to bed after too many drinks. Say, “Do you think this is it?” And when they ask, “This what?” say, “The end of the world. Do you think this is it?”

  They’ll say, “If it isn’t the end of the world, I don’t want to know what is.”

  They will cry after you make love to them. They will tell you secrets. Secrets about the child they aborted ten years ago, when that was still legal, before they began to arrest women post-facto. That was wha
t they called it in the Reformation Papers: post-facto. After the fact. Retrospective retribution. They will tell you secrets about the last lover they had, before their lover was outed during the Reclamation Period, when all of the homos and queers were given the choice: normalize or die. It was fairly simple. Most chose life. It is one of the most unfortunate aspects of being human, this drive to survive no matter what the cost. Their last lover will have been called Jason, and you’ll wonder what sort of person Jason was, what kind of lover. Do you remind this person with whom you’ve chosen to abandon reality of Jason? Do you have the same eyes? The same smile? The same voice? The same scent? Are you Jason-esque?

  Take drugs. They will keep you not-feeling. Numbness is important when the world is coming apart. Refuse the hallucinogens. Accept the dampeners. You need to see the world as it is. You cannot afford to see it as it isn’t.

  Remember. This is one of the verbs they will try to remove from your brain. Remember. If you cannot remember, they can tell you anything about the past—your own or the world’s—and you will not be able to know if they are telling the truth. Sit in the library, that most taboo of places, and read as many books as they still allow to be kept on the shelves. Download illegal information. Use false service provider addresses. Move around. If you stay still, you’re certain to be caught.

  When the first of the bombs go off, go into hiding. When you are safe, grieve. Sit in your cave, the one in the hills that used to belong to your family, and grieve the loss of so many lives. Lives you never knew personally. Imagine their faces. Imagine the faces of those you knew and loved. Imagine the mushroom clouds and the clouds of viruses. Imagine the way skin crackles and crisps, the way the body can turn against itself in mere minutes or hours when exposed to the right amount of radiation or illness.