Elemental

by Steven Savile

  Girl 77 denied everything.

  “I deny everything,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  She denied knowing him.

  “How can you deny knowing me?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Please leave.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  She denied even asking him to leave.

  She said, “I didn’t ask you to leave.”

  She marched into the bedroom and returned dragging a large black suitcase behind her. “This is not your suitcase. I did not pack it.”

  Jared Spoon was at a loss. This was his apartment. He asked if he should just stay a while.

  She denied she could speak any English.

  “I no speak English,” she said.

  The Sennadril plastic cigarette substitute took away the craving for a cigarette by mimicking the look and feel of a real one, thus satiating the body’s habitual need to keep placing flammable objects in the mouth.

  Herb Foresight thought he looked like he’d stuffed a pen in his mouth. He said, “You taking notes?”

  Jared Spoon set the suitcase down on the kitchen table and drummed his fingers on it.

  “What’s in the case?”

  “Girl 77 gave it to me.”

  “That’s about right. She’s got nothing but baggage and she’s always giving it to you. You need to stop.”

  Jared Spoon said, “She’s not something I can quit.”

  “You quit smoking.”

  “But not nicotine.”

  Herb Foresight scratched his chin. He understood very few things in this world. This too was not one of them. “You’re doing this out of love?”

  “I’m doing this out of desperation. I want to make her happy.”

  “By moving out?”

  “She’ll have forgotten by the morning.”

  “She threw you out on your stitched-up ear, my friend.”

  “She just needs her medication.”

  Drugs he understood. “Drugs. Jesus Christ, Jared. I can get you drugs. Anything you want, you just ask. You know that. What’s she into? Blips? I can get a good deal on Blips, Nuts, Gloob, say the word.”

  “Not drugs,” Jared Spoon corrected. “Medication. Peptoglycomol B, Frinzadrine, and Nitrinol. You think you can come up with that?”

  “I can’t even say that.”

  “She needs it for her head.”

  “So you’re doin’ this for head.”

  “For love.”

  Jared Spoon smuggled drugs for Herb Foresight once. He kept them in his safe place. He kept so many things in his safe place it became uncomfortable.

  Girl 77 said she might be crazy but you couldn’t pay her enough to put anything up her bum-bum.

  He kipped on the couch that night.

  It stank.

  It was covered in leather and polished with wax. Every time he rolled over it sounded like a fart.

  He dreamed he was lowing. Cud obsessed in a grazing field with the rest of them. Ruminating on his part in this endless piebald queue. Shuffling onwards to the place where the shotgun sounds were made.

  It was enough to make him bolt from the couch and into the darkness scream: “Moo!”

  The address on the parcel read: Jared Spoon, 40116, No. 3.

  This was not his toothbrush.

  This was wrapped in brown paper and taped at both ends.

  Jared Spoon decided that perhaps it would have been for the best if he had checked his suitcase before leaving home.

  He peeled away the layers to find a sturdy silver box and a note which read: My dearest, darling Jared. So it begins!

  Jared Spoon took umbrage. Surely this was not where it began but where it continued?

  A swift exhumation of the contents suggested it was neither. This was where it veered wildly off at a tangent and ploughed catastrophically into the ground leaving nothing but the depressing smell of singed artichokes.

  Herb Foresight said, “What’s that?”

  His homeless, ear-stitched friend prodded the vacuum-packed plastic lump with a finger. “It’s a foot in a box.”

  “A foot?”

  “In a box.”

  “What size?”

  “What?”

  “What size is it?”

  “A size eight, I think. Why?”

  “Might help track down the owner.”

  “You think its size will be the deciding factor?”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Jared Spoon said, “Well I’m buggered if I’m putting it up my bum-bum.”

  Jared Spoon sat on the toilet clutching his head.

  Nicozing chewing gum came in six incredible flavors. Spearmint, peppermint, freshmint, coolmint, aquamint, and menthol.

  All of them produced the same incredible side effects! Mouth ulcers, jaw ache, dizziness, headache, and upset stomach.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t blame his squits on the chewing gum.

  How many more pieces of this poor unfortunate footless person would be paying him a visit?

  Jared Spoon went home to discover that the answer was three and a bit.

  Herb Foresight stood in Jared Spoon’s kitchen and peered down at the deep freezer in awe.

  “Fuck me, she’s been busy.”

  “There’s nearly half a person in here.”

  “Just like your girlfriend.”

  Jared Spoon said, “That’s uncalled for.”

  He stashed the new vacuum-packed appendage in with the peas and closed the lid.

  “All week they’ve just kept coming. Yesterday it was a gall bladder with a note that read: This is how much I love you.”

  “A gall bladder is a lot of love.”

  Jared Spoon chewed on his fingernails and nervously paced the two-meter-square patch of linoleum.

  “Do you think it’s a good thing that she finally trusts me?”

  “I don’t think she even knows you moved back in, my friend. You need to talk to her. This is getting out of hand.”

  “She comes, she goes. She never says a word. Where’s she getting these things?”

  Herb Foresight had a theory. “From people,” he said. “From people.”

  This had to stop.

  So far he’d tried patches, pens, gum. Nothing had worked.

  Herb Foresight said there was this pill he could try that would make him chunder if he so much as looked at a cigarette.

  Jared Spoon said he wasn’t convinced by it. Nobody ever caught cancer of the eyeballs from looking at a cigarette.

  He contemplated abstinence instead.

  The invitation read: My dearest, darling Girl 77.

  With any luck that would get her attention.

  The invitation continued: I have received your intimates and I have kept them in a place that’s almost as safe as the other one. Why don’t you come to dinner and we can moo about them? Yours as ever, Jared Spoon.

  He was hesitant, he had to admit. Meal times were when she got feisty and he owned knives. So he lit scented candles to try to soften the mood.

  They didn’t help.

  She said, “Are you a nancy boy?”

  “What? No.”

  “It would explain a lot.”

  “I’ve done everything you asked.”

  “Well, you’re out of luck, nancy boy. I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

  “I kept your intimates safe.”

  Girl 77 seemed genuinely perplexed. She said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Jared Spoon said, “In the freezer.”

  The discussion didn’t go as planned.

  Girl 77 took one look at the collected vacuum-packed works of mystery person, eyed the burning candles arranged around the table, and screamed, “Satanist!”

  Jared Spoon stumbled to his feet. “I just wanted to make you happy.”

  “How would this make me happy, you fucking loony?”

  She bolted from the apartment. “I’
m going to tell,” she said. “I’m going to tell everyone!”

  In the event she told no one.

  She ran out into the road and was hit by a bus.

  Seven people came to the funeral.

  Originally they’d come for somebody else’s, but it started pissing down and they needed somewhere to go. They huddled inside the chapel and did their best to be moved by the eulogy.

  They wouldn’t leave after that.

  They said it was impolite not to follow through on the whole occasion. So they followed Jared Spoon all the way home.

  They stood in front of the TV and reminisced about the life of the woman in the photo frame. Jared Spoon didn’t know her either. He’d only just bought it but it seemed to make them happy.

  He found a packet of biscuits and put them on a plate.

  They remarked on what a fine spread it was. She would have loved it, they said.

  That was the day Jared Spoon started smoking again.

  The form read: Please sign and date to acknowledge receipt of your parcel.

  Jared Spoon eyed the package with dread. Another one? Perhaps this was her last gift to him. He said: “When was this posted?”

  The delivery driver checked his log. “This morning.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Getting to a Post Office I should imagine.”

  The delivery driver didn’t understand. He wasn’t paid to understand. Though that was frankly evidence of nothing, he wasn’t paid to tap dance either.

  “Look, mate,” he said. “Do you want it or not?”

  Jared Spoon thought about it before asking that one question he probably should have asked to begin with. “Who sent it?”

  The delivery driver checked his log again. “Dunno,” he said. “But there’s a return address if you want.”

  “Please.”

  “The Second Vonnegut and Fowler Institute of Cloneography.”

  “You may call me Ersatz,” said Mister Ersatz Ersatz.

  Jared Spoon sat across the office from him, his bodily collection piled up on a cart and said, “What if I don’t want to?”

  “What is it you do here?” Jared Spoon said.

  With a broad welcoming smile, Mr. Ersatz Ersatz said, “We’re like Kinko’s for people.”

  “Is it usual for someone to photocopy their arse and post it out?”

  Mr. Ersatz Ersatz seemed genuinely befuddled. “Did you receive an arse in the post?”

  “No. I got a foot, among other things.”

  “And very well it suits you too.”

  “It’s not mine. I didn’t request anything. None of these bits and pieces are my bits and pieces.”

  “Well whose bits and pieces are they?”

  Jared Spoon said the answer to that question was why he had come here.

  They took a test.

  By they, I mean neither Jared Spoon nor Mr. Ersatz Ersatz. But somebody. Probably somebody who worked for Mr. Ersatz Ersatz.

  The results led to merchandise that lived down on the sixty-fifth floor.

  Jared Spoon looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  A handicapped ghost with parts of two legs, a foot and a gall bladder missing, and dragging a life support machine around behind her on an umbilical, but a ghost nonetheless.

  He said, “My God, she looks just like Girl 77. How is this possible?”

  “She wanted to be perfect for you, Mr. Spoon. She wanted to show you how much she really loved you. She filled a capsule with the only personality she had that made the slightest bit of sense and rammed it up the tubes of this delightful little photocopy and was all ready to make the switch until we hit a snag.”

  Jared Spoon watched her lolloping form amble around the room. “She’s perfect …”

  “Perfectly penniless.”

  “This girl doesn’t belong to anybody?”

  “She belongs to us. Only she doesn’t want to. You see she loves you, Mr. Spoon, just as much as Girl 77 did. We’re very good, you see. She loves you so much she’s willing to do anything.”

  Jared Spoon finally understood. “She’s been smuggling herself out a piece at a time.”

  “Yes. And I’m afraid that puts you in a bit of a bind.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “We’re talking theft, Mr. Spoon. That’s very serious.”

  “You’re going to have her arrested?”

  “Her? We can’t very well charge our merchandise with stealing our merchandise. That would just be silly. No, we’re going to have you arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “Receiving stolen goods. You did receive goods, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “They were stolen, were they not?”

  “Not by me.”

  “But by somebody!”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so.”

  “I didn’t know they were stolen.”

  “That’s no excuse!”

  “I believed they were legitimate and accepted them in good faith.”

  “Faith has nothing to do with it! We are men of science are we not?”

  “You’re a man of science. I’m a man of no fixed employment.”

  Mr. Ersatz Ersatz pondered on this.

  Jared Spoon said, “Surely we can come to an arrangement?”

  Mr. Ersatz Ersatz grinned from ear to ear. “How’s your credit rating?”

  One day she just took a knife to him.

  She said, “I’m gonna cut that up for ya. I’m never gonna let you eat that way again.”

  He was shocked, obviously. He had a mouthful of lunch.

  “What way?”

  “Or how about I cook you some fish fingers? Yeah, some funky fish fingers. See how you like that?”

  So he wiped his mouth on the napkin. Set his sandwich down. Almost like, should he get a good meal out of this it would still be nice to get back to the sandwich.

  In the end she didn’t cut it up for him. She threw something amazing together instead.

  It was hot.

  He responded with a kind of Parkinson’s twitch.

  She didn’t have a name after that.

  He called her Jigsaw Janet.

  When they’d finished stitching her back together he took her home and they spent the most wonderful love-filled days together.

  They never argued. They never disagreed. She was perfect.

  And by Friday, he was bored out of his brains.

  She found him out on the front steps, a black suitcase by his side, puffing furiously on a long Sobranie Black Russian. Cigarettes for hard bastards who laughed at their lungs. There was nothing like the real thing.

  Jigsaw Janet sat quietly down beside him. “It’s over, isn’t it?” she said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Why? Don’t you love me?”

  “No,” said Jared Spoon. “I find you derivative.”

  The Solipsist at Dinner

  BY LARRY NIVEN

  Larry Niven has been a staple of the science fiction community since his first story, “The Coldest Place,” debuted in 1964. In 1970, Niven published the first novel in the award-winning Ringworld series (Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers, The Ringworld Throne, and Ringworld’s Children)—reputedly one of the greatest science fiction series of all time. The Ringworld titles, however, make up only a small portion of his famous Known Space world of future history, which in itself contains more than thirty short stories and novels. Niven is also the creator of the shared-world Man-Kzin War series. He most recently coauthored (with Brenda Cooper) the novel Building Harlequin’s Moon.

  In a departure from the hard-core science fiction he is best known for, Niven addresses one of writing’s biggest metaphysical questions in “The Solipsist at Dinner.” Does everything really exist, or is the world we know simply a figment of our imagination? “You might say I’ve been thinking about
this topic for forty or fifty years,” Niven says. “The storytelling generation ahead of my own all had something to say on the subject. Everybody has a solipsist lurking inside him—that level of arrogance is a normal part of humanity—but the universe keeps swatting it down.”

  Niven lives in Chatsworth, California, with his wife, Marilyn, cat, Amelia, and several fish.

  Wayne Morris had ordered a spicy tuna hand roll, extra chili. He tried a piece and managed to swallow it, but there were tears in his eyes. “Wow. That’s powerful.”

  Nero grinned at him. “You said you were getting to like it that way. Too much?”

  Wayne took another bite. His eyes were still tearing up, but he savored it. Then he said, “It’s just that the whole world seems to be getting a little blurry.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, my eyesight. Sense of taste. Hearing.”

  Nero laughed and wiggled his bushy black eyebrows. “That’s just what everyone says when he gets older! You’re near seventy.”

  “Like, I hear a ringing. It’s always there. Sometimes I don’t notice it, but if I listen—” He listened and heard the ringing, a steady bell tone.

  “It’s called tinnitus.” Nero raised his voice slightly, enunciating a little more carefully. The sushi restaurant was noisy, particularly at the counter. “Lots of people get tinnitus. You get it young if you work in a noisy environment, like if you’re an artillery officer or a movie critic.”

  “I don’t care what it’s called, it’s still distracting. I have to crank the volume up when I’m listening to TV. Sharon hates it. My sense of taste is going too. I like things spicy. As a kid I wouldn’t have touched this stuff I’m eating now. And when I’m driving at night, all the lights are colored blobs. Everything else is a little blurry too, except—”

  “That’s normal too. Except? Something isn’t blurry?”

  “Clouds, trees, they look okay. I finally figured out that anything fractal looks okay because I don’t expect sharp edges and geometric shapes. My mind extrapolates.”

  “That’s a cute notion. Might even be true. Eyes are funny.”

  “What I think is that my imagination is failing.”

  Nero shrugged his eyebrows at him. Wayne said, “There’s a philosophical position called solipsism. It means—”

  “I know what it means. There’s nothing else in the universe, there’s just you. Everything else is your imagination. Philosophical position, my ass.”