Sensation

by Nick Mamatas

  Coincidence tends to conspire against us, though it is the nature of coincidence to be mercurial. The stop at which Raymond quickly exited was Kew Gardens, a neighborhood of the Simulacrum. There are no Starbucks in Kew Gardens, no Quiznos Subs. It’s an ethnic swim of Indians, Africans, Orthodox Jews, Latins from three continents, and those oiled and tanned airline workers who are always on their way to or from JFK or LaGuardia airports. They are us, and just one method via which we cover the world. Men and women, all of indeterminate ethnicity, all taking notice of Raymond as he wandered the streets, as he looked for another way back to Manhattan.

  Raymond was cagey by now, and in shock from the episode. He could only walk three blocks, then make a right turn, then try three more blocks, and make a left. We smiled at him as he passed, trying to be reassuring. We did not want him to open the box in which he kept the wasp nest, we did not want to hurt him anymore. Nor did we want him to be stung. The wasps in his box were a generation younger than the one that had infected Julia, and perhaps further mutated for it. What if one stung him?

  We wanted to apologize, but we did not think he could handle it.

  Plesiometa argyra is not organically a social animal, at least not according to human taxonomy. Ironically, Hymenoepimescis sp. is social, as most wasps are. Yet, our secret evolution has led to an ur-sociability; we were intelligent as a collective when men were still lemurs holding on to branches and blinking in confusion at the jungle nights. We created our first men of indeterminate ethnicity when the Cro-Magnon rose up against the Neanderthal and in the confusion of genocidal war slipped into the population.

  Hymenoepimescis sp., social in their primitive and mechanical way, never developed intelligence. And still they preyed upon us, as innumerable microorganisms prey upon you, as toxoplasma gondii and other neuromodulators push and prod you in minor ways. Hymenoepimescis sp. is rare and the mix of social conditions, individual genetics, and psychological propensity leading to the creation of disruptive elements is rarer still, but the impact on history and life itself is so profound that we cannot risk even a single exposure. We had to bring Raymond in to the Simulacrum. We needed Julia as a lure.

  Her boyfriend of indeterminate ethnicity was dispatched to her house, while a cable technician was dispatched to the telephone pole at the end of the block to end her workday and give her a reason for a picnic with a beau.

  “Kew Gardens,” she said when we arrived with a basket of food procured from a supermarket. “Isn’t that where all those people stood by and watched while someone stabbed and strangled that girl?”

  “Kitty Genovese was decades ago,” we said. “You weren’t even born then.”

  “Things change, I guess,” she said. So we went.

  Kew Gardens is still fairly green despite being packed with residents living in row houses and older apartment complexes, though the only useful place for a picnic is by the Maple Grove Cemetery, which is where we led

  Julia. For Raymond and his fatal box of Hymenoepimescis sp., his route toward us was easy enough to arrange. A bus stalled across two lanes of Metropolitan Avenue, snarling the way for taxis. A man of indeterminate ethnicity helpfully gave Raymond long and tedious directions to a subway station, which we then shut down by reactivating the old public toilets that were long ago shut down and sealed behind a wall of plaster and tile. The flooding led the MTA employee on duty—not one of us, but she may as well have been—to flip the circuit breaker that powered the MetroCard machines and close the entrance gate. Raymond encountered a subway station that only allowed for egress, and moved on.

  As we suspected he would, Raymond decided to head for high ground, a trick he learned in the field amongst the gitanos of Spain. From a high point, he might be able to see another subway station, or a taxi stand, or a bud, and even if the views were blocked by buildings and other construction (which they are in Kew Gardens these days), he might meet someone who could give him more helpful directions along the way. The hill even gave him a way to orient himself—most helpful locations would either be “up” from where he was, or “down.” We lost track of him in the streets a number of times, as the Plesiometa argyra must keep their distance.

  We sat with Julia on a strip of grass under a tree and along the iron fence of Maple Grove. The traffic that day was light—another advantage of the bus cordon we had contrived a mile down the road—and there was little in the way of either noise or exhaust to disrupt our meal of salami and tomato sandwiches, chicken with blueberry chutney, and clear sodas from a local boutique bottler (cream and orange). Raymond was walking slowly, almost at a shuffle and his shirt was stained with sweat. He held the box in front of him as if it smelled, his bare arms trembling.

  “Raymond,” said Julia blandly.

  Raymond looked over at us and then his knees buckled, his flesh suddenly white.

  “Do not drop the box!” we called out, and he stiffened again, yanking the box toward his stomach to cradle it.

  “Raymond, what’s the matter?” She turned to me. “It’s been so long, I …”

  We stood up and walked past where she was sitting. “It’s latah, a stress response. He’ll obey,” we told her. “Raymond, come here!” and Raymond walked up to us. His eyes were huge and oily. Julia was up right behind us with a bottle of water. “Put the box down gently and take the water,” we told him and he followed both commands. “Drink.” He did. “It’s a common enough phenomenon amongst you … amongst some people. In circumstances of extreme stress, people will simply comply with any shouted order.”

  “Raymond, Raymond …” Julia had never forgotten him, or her old life. They were just distant, like the names of junior high school teachers all but forgotten.

  “Don’t you want to come with us?” we said to Raymond. He stared at us for a long moment, his skin like wet ivory and his cheeks puffed as if he were going to vomit. He opened his mouth. There was a living Hymenoepimescis sp. on his tongue. Then it flew at our man.

  JULIA was not comfortable in her old apartment. She stood, hugging herself and scratching. She’d taken a bath and changed into an old robe, one she remembered loving, she told Raymond, but it did not feel like something she should be wearing.

  “I have money, you know. I secreted some away.” She looked at the box containing the Hymenoepimescis sp. nest. Next to it sat an ashtray in which she and Raymond had lit half a pack of cigarettes; the smoke they hoped would sedate the wasps. “When did you start smoking anyway?”

  “I can’t stand smoke,” Raymond said, his throat raw. “It’s from … a friend.”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “I know,” said Raymond. “Is this what life is like on the run? Every moment a white knuckle?” He glanced at the door again. “Every footfall in the hall. God, I was so nervous that my cell phone would ring when I had that wasp in my mouth. I’m sure Mister Hamm down the hall will smell all the smoke from the cigarettes and knock on the door, and if we don’t answer, call the fire department. Did you see how that guy you were with just”—he waved his arms a bit—“collapsed into webby goo?”

  “I don’t know what it’s like to be on the run.” Julia let her robe fall open a bit. “As far as I knew, I wasn’t on the run. Everything just resolved itself. I was a different person.” She scratched her shoulder. “I can’t believe I lived like this,” she said.

  “It’s paranoid-making, yeah,” said Raymond.

  “No, I mean in this apartment,” Julia said. She nodded at the top of the refrigerator, “With that selection of tea.” She tugged on the lapels of her robe. “With this type of clothing. I mean, I’m not even the slightest bit attracted to you. No attraction, no affection. You’re not even my type, Raymond. I can remember being with you, smiling when I’d wake up and you were there next to me, but I can’t feel it. It’s how they hid me. They changed every little habit and opinion I had and I just fell off the grid.” “Oh.”

  Raymond made himself some tea. “They’re not even human. They’re const
ructs. Were you having sex with that thing? Was it platonic?” he asked, mostly addressing his teakettle.

  “We were close.”

  Raymond shook his head, disgusted. “I spent a year crying over you. I was so excited when I saw you with that guy. That … whatever. I put a wasp in my mouth for you, I could barely stay conscious, but I knew what could happen.” He sat on the edge of the coffee table, his back to Julia. “What are they?”

  “Spiders. In a war against wasps,” said Julia. “They told me things.”

  “Me too. Culture and society, all of modernity is apparently an epiphenomenon of the occasional wasp who stings a person instead of a spider, in the right circumstances.”

  “And the spiders want to tamp it all down; it’s better for them if society is stagnant.”

  Raymond turned, “Stagnant or stable? Let’s not forget that you went from a good person to—”

  Julia was up, her body in Raymond’s face. He had to stare. “To what!” she said. “Nothing’s changed. I am a good person.”

  “Everything’s changed, Julia. You left me. You killed someone. I met another wax man before the one from this afternoon. That sting was an accident. He went crazy, spilled the beans about everything. Hitler was apparently a sting victim. Who knows how else?”

  “I left you, so I’m Hitler now?”

  “No, you killed someone so you’re not a good person.”

  “You killed someone too,” Julia said. “Bob.”

  “He wasn’t a person,” Raymond said, “He was a wax dummy. God knows what.”

  “He was a sentient being,” Julia said. “What’s the definition of human: ‘Not full of intelligent spiders’?”

  Raymond nodded emphatically. “Yes, well. Yeah. Pretty much by the definition of the word human, spiders in a man suit are disqualified. Christ, Julia. What the hell? What the holy blue fuck is coming out of your mouth?”

  Julia sat back down, lowered her head and started to cry. “Gawd.”

  “Maybe he’s not even dead. Bob,” Raymond said. “Bob,” he said a second time, spitting it out. “Like termites building a mound; there needs to be a critical mass of intelligence to create the mound, otherwise they have no idea what to do. I’d hug you now Julia, but I don’t think you want that.”

  “You’re right,” she said, then she sobbed again. “What do you want, Raymond?”

  Raymond sipped his tea. He blew across the surface of the cup as well, even though the tea was cool. He took another sip. “My life has been ruined in every way. My marriage. I’m probably a wanted man by now; aiding and abetting a wanted killer and fugitive. And my life’s work has gone to shit. It’s all been solved, hasn’t it? Human cultures are an artifact of parasitic neuromodulators; we have no free will, there’s no real cultural evolution that isn’t ultimately exogenous, no relevance perhaps to our material cultures. We may as well be amoebae on a slide.”

  “Are you having an existential crisis too, Raymond?” Julia asked. She wiped her eyes with the thick and floppy sleeve of her robe.

  “Yes. I may as well just erase my hard drive and stick my head in the box. I mean, I was going to try to find someone in the bio department to take a look, to try to figure out what was going on, but it hardly matters. If you have your gun hidden somewhere, just fucking shoot me.”

  “It wouldn’t help,” Julia said. “That’s why the spiders didn’t kill me. You can’t just crush the Brazilian butterfly whose flapping wings whip up the monsoons in Bangladesh.”

  “You end up melting the polar ice caps instead.”

  “Pretty much. That’s why I was, you know, removed, for lack of a better word. From the world, from the person I thought I was.”

  “Only thought you were? You mean the Julia I fell in love with or the Julia who pulled a gun on me and shot Peter Neads Fishman?”

  Julia opened her mouth to answer but stopped as there was a knock on the door. Raymond and Julia exchanged glares, but Julia just shrugged.

  “Who is it?” Raymond called out. The deadbolt answered by turning over.

  “The landlord?” Julia said.

  “Or Liz.”

  “Who?”

  Liz opened the door. “Who is it?” she said. “Some welcome.” She turned to Julia. “I seem to have won the prize.” Then she sniffed. “My cigs. Did you miss me so much, Raymond?” Back to Julia. “Close your robe, dearie. Your vagina will catch cold.”

  Julia said, “Hello.” Raymond looked at his feet and blushed, as red now as he had been white just a few hours previously.

  “We’ve been looking for you all afternoon, you know. Sans Nom. Knocking on doors all over the world.”

  “You’re in …” Raymond wiggled his hand.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “I’m not,” said Julia.

  “Nor me.”

  “Our loss, I’m sure,” said Liz. “What’s in the box?”

  “Human nature,” Raymond said.

  WE had a thought: Kill them all. Though our last act of murder led to the Great War, the stakes were high. Our careful machinations over the course of millennia were not self-interested, or not entirely self-interested. We do want to reveal ourselves, to join together with humanity, to form a society of two intelligences, two species who cooperate rather than compete for environmental niches. Unfortunately, humanity is not ready, thanks partially to Hymenoepimescis sp., partially due to your own deeply ingrained antipathy toward arachnids. Let us assure you that, until recently, the feeling was mutual. Only after thirty thousand years of living amongst you in our men and women of indeterminate identity, of living parallel to you in the Simulacrum, have we come to appreciate Homo sapiens sapiens—your tiny broods and overindulgence of your young, your diverse material constructions, and the creativity of your religions. Our prodding and pushing, our protection of the species as a whole from the worst instincts of those ethical outliers that nearly inevitably seek power, our compassion for the plight of your starving bottom billion and the personal agonies you all go through due to the wax and wane of endogenous opioids, catecholamines, and neuropeptides—the chemicals of love and madness—we are slowly making you ready. We are nearly done. Another eight thousand years, perhaps. Know that your nuclear arms do not work. Know that “peak oil” will undermine global warming. Some of your descendents will live, and will be psychologically and anthropologically adapted for the revelation of our existence.

  Like Homo sapiens sapiens, we occasionally have urges that go beyond the needs to feed. To murder rather than cull. It passed, and our singular envoy hanging from a silk on the wall of the apartment hadn’t the venom to disable all three humans. There was little the trio could do anyway, though they did try.

  18

  LIZ insisted they take the long walk uptown and then across the island to the United Nations. “It’ll give us more time to argue about how insipid this all is,” she said. “Further, they clearly have the trains if they found you on the Long Island Railroad.”

  “Yeah, we had a lot of traffic problems today in Queens too. We had to get a cab to Astoria and then come back into the city,” Julia said. “Raymond, dig out the old cooler so we can carry the box in it. It’ll be another layer of protection, and look less conspicuous.”

  Raymond obeyed without comment, but Liz had one, “So you’ll walk into the General Assembly with beer, is that it? They’ll let you right in if you’re claiming to pass out lager. Well, except for the Muslim countries, I’m sure. Clearly, nobody in history has ever been so clever.”

  Raymond came back with an empty cooler; it was blue with a white top and handles, and about three feet on its longest side.

  “We never did get to do any picnicking,” said Julia. “I went today, of course. I wonder how Bob knew.”

  Raymond sighed and looked up at the corner of the room where in the intersection of two walls and the ceiling we sat watching and listening. “Spiders. They’re everywhere. I’m tempted to open the box.” He reached for the box containing the nest
of Hymenoepimescis sp. “See, it’s scuttling away now. That’s how. They’re everywhere.”

  Liz reached from the broom behind the refrigerator and took a hearty whack at the webbing, but we had already fallen back.

  “We never got an exterminator in here either. Twenty-five hundred a month for a railroad apartment,” said Julia, “and we may as well have been living in a college dorm.”

  “Did Bob spray often?” Raymond said.

  “Of course he did.”

  “Surely given his, its, their—whatever!—issue with wasps, he would,” Liz said. “It was just a coincidence that he had the attributes of your dream beau.”

  “Should we be talking about this in the same room as a spider?”

  “You sound like a paranoid schizophrenic,” Liz said.

  “It’s been a hard day,” Raymond said.

  “I have to get dressed,” said Julia. “Are the rest of my clothes where I left them?”

  “Of course they are,” Liz said.

  Raymond busied himself with wiping the interior of the cooler with a washcloth from the kitchen sink and placing the nest of Hymenoepimescis sp. within.

  On the streets, Julia and Raymond carried the cooler between them, each holding a handle. Liz circled them as the walked, sometimes in front, walking backwards to better harangue them and other times shuffling immediately behind them, her knees knocking into the cooler.

  “I thought you were in Sans Nom,” Raymond said. “Isn’t this sort of gesture what you’re all about?”

  “No,” Liz and Julia said together.

  Liz wiggled her hand. “It’s not about getting killed. It’s about finding the flaws in the design, the weaknesses in the structure, so they might be exploited. All the wacky shenanigans are just an initial phase.”

  “It’s about pushing things forward,” said Julia. “It’s sort of inane to complain that deviance isn’t pro-social in the short term.”