The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  My voice again from a thousand miles away. “You created a partial vacuum when you slammed the door shut. It will take a few minutes for the pressure to equalize before you can open it.”

  Andrew stops struggling with the handle. His back to me, I can see the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes. They’re deep breaths. Measured breaths. But I can’t help myself as I take a few steps forward and put the strip of tape next to the box.

  “Adhesive fails at temperatures that low,” I say. “You should always label boxes and samples directly with an indelible marker.”

  Andy spins around, his hand knocking the box and the tape off of the centrifuge. The box bursts open as it hits the ground and sends the stocks skittering across the floor. His face is red as he clenches his right hand into a fist. I anticipate the strike, but I don’t raise my hands to defend myself. My entire body feels heavy. All I can do is drop my gaze to the floor. The tape is at my feet again.

  The strike doesn’t come. Instead, a sigh.

  “Please go,” he says. There’s no anger in it, but sadness. Loss.

  I do as he says and it isn’t until I’m back in the parking lot, fumbling with my lighter in my shaking hands, trying to remember where I parked, that I realize I forgot to take the plates.

  Shit.

  Dad and I would always read The Day of the Triffids together on the anniversary of Mom’s death, so when I went away to college, he gave me a copy at the airport with a hug—the smell of sweat and ethanol embracing us both. I didn’t want to go to a college so faraway, but he had insisted, saying it was the only way I would win that Nobel Prize he always joked about.

  I called him every night to check up on him. He’d always say he was fine, then—with a chorus of clacking beer bottles in the background—ask about my classes and whether I’d met any nice girls.

  That year the anniversary came while finals were in full swing. Andy and I had become friends in the first few weeks of school after seeing each other in many of the same classes, and we were pulling an all-nighter in the library to prepare for our chemistry and calculus finals the next day. It was close to three a.m. when we took a break and I snuck off to the stairwell with my copy of the book to call.

  When he answered, his speech was thicker than usual. At the time I thought it was because he had drunk too much. He asked me to read to him, so I did. I read for an hour before I heard him snore. I kept reading until I heard the receiver hit the floor. I figured I’d let him sleep it off and call him after my finals.

  I was taking a nap between exams when my phone rang. It was my aunt. She was hysterical. She explained she had come over to check on Dad since his line was busy. Then she said she had meant to come over the day before, but didn’t get around to it and she was so sorry. So sorry. Then she said Dad…

  I want to take a minute to digress. In order for humans to move, action potentials from the nervous system result in the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which then binds to muscle fiber cells and stimulates them to release calcium. These calcium ions bind to an extracellular protein, which causes that protein to shift and expose a site where a bridge between adjacent fibers can form. This causes the muscle to contract. To relax, the calcium must be pumped back into the cells through ion channels. The action of the channels depends on another small molecule known as ATP. ATP is one of the many products of breathing oxygen.

  When you’re dead, you’re not breathing. Therefore, there’s no ATP. Without ATP, calcium leaks from your muscle cells unchecked. This causes the muscles to contract and the body to go stiff. This is known as rigor mortis and it sets in fully three hours after death. It goes away by itself as the muscle tissue begins to decompose thirty-six hours later. This is one way to determine time of death.

  Another way is algor mortis, which is a measurement of the change in body temperature. A human body will cast off heat in regular intervals following death at the rate of two degrees Celsius during the first hour, then one degree every hour after until it reaches the ambient room temperature. The coroner’s report said the time of death had been anytime in the preceding thirty-six hours due to the presence of rigor, which meant he had the heat cranked way up in the bedroom. He would do that sometimes when he was missing Mom. He said it was because she was like sleeping with a furnace.

  But I know when he died. He died at 4:28 a.m. because that’s the time my phone said I hung up. Because I wasn’t there.

  Plants already have the capacity to move towards a stimulus. For example, if you put a plant next to a window, it will bend towards the light. A plant hormone, auxin, is responsible for causing the cells on the shaded side of the stem to elongate, causing the bend. Oddly enough, it’s structurally similar to serotonin. I used to wonder if plants leaned towards the light because it made them happy. But that’s silly. Plants don’t think. They don’t move because of muscle fibers or free will. They move because of ion channels and auxin. It’s not like giving your kid a hug outside of an airport. It’s a reflex, like knocking a box of thawing stocks to the floor in a moment of anger.

  To help my triffids walk, I can exploit the same mechanisms that make the clacking structures move, just in a different area of the plant. The issue here is figuring out how to get the plants to move in a coordinated way towards a target—either other triffids or their prey. So I’ll develop a similar mechanism to chemotaxis, which is movement along a gradient towards a chemical signal.

  For this I must develop a sensory region on one side of the plant that contains a high concentration of the modified receptors that recognize volatile human compounds, as well as a fluid-filled sac to detect the vibrations in the air from other triffids. I’ll tie stimulation of this region to movement of the genetically modified feet so they move towards higher concentrations of the compounds or decibel levels of clacks. When a certain threshold is reached it will mean a human is within striking distance.

  It’s funny so many things that are misinterpreted as behavior can be boiled down to chemical reactions. I think it’s funnier still people think of their own behavior as being on a higher level. It’s not. It’s the same, whether you’re moving forward because of love or moving away because of pain. Everything does this, from bacteria to plants to animals to humans.

  But these actions aren’t without purpose. It’s all in the name of saving yourself long enough to leave a part of you behind. Something bigger than yourself, whether it’s a copy of your genes or a broken child or a triffid.

  I moved home for grad school after college. As soon as I got back, I began to collect discarded equipment and to set up my lab in my childhood bedroom. By day I played diligent graduate student, jumping through the proper administrative and academic hoops. But I lived for the nights, where I worked to make the dream that consumed me in college a reality. I would pore over literature to find the genes I needed, and scour sequence databases to determine my cloning strategies. For this to work, every step had to be planned in advance because I wouldn’t have the luxury to redo many experiments. After six years, I was ready, so I left the program, much to the consternation of Andrew, my advisor, and the department.

  Six years I’ve been waiting and now Andrew’s trying to ruin me. No. He’s my friend. He cares about me. He said so. He’s supposed to help me. He can’t leave. He can’t. So I’m here to apologize, to tell him I’ll help him with his presentation and anything else.

  I’ve been waiting by his car since the incident and it isn’t until after four a.m. that I see him coming across the lot. He doesn’t see me until he’s a few feet away. He stops and we watch each other for a moment before he digs in his pocket and unlocks his car.

  “What do you want?” he asks. He’s still mad.

  I try to look as abashed as I feel. “Working late?” I ask.

  He sighs and crosses his arms in front of him. “What do you want, Joe?”

  The words are harder to say than I thought they would be. Andrew shifts his weight and sighs again. His words
are softer this time.

  “Look,” he says, “I’m tired and I want to go home.” He moves to go around me, but I hold up my hands and the words come. My heart is pounding.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew. Please don’t go.”

  His face softens more. I’m close.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I’ll help you with your presentation and anything else you need to get this job.”

  We stand for another moment and watch each other. His shoulders slump and he sighs. He breaks My heart quits racing. It’s going to be alright.

  “I thought a lot about what you said earlier,” Andy says, “about all of the things you’ve done for me, and you’re right. If I expect to be running my own lab, I have to start relying on myself. I need to get this job because of me and not because of you. So thanks for your offer, but I’m going to do this alone.”

  No. No he can’t. He needs me.

  “And I’m not going to help you with your triffids,” he continues. “You’re a brilliant scientist, Joe. I’m never gonna be as smart as you. If you finished your degree, you could get a job anywhere.” He throws his hands in the air. “I mean, c’mon! Have you stopped to think about what you’re doing? You could win a Nobel Prize, but you just sit in your bedroom making toy monsters to mourn someone who died ten years ago.

  “I don’t mean to be mean, Joe, it’s just I love you and I’m sick of watching you throw your life away. You need to move on. Honor his memory by doing something meaningful. So I’m going to help you by not helping you. And I know you’re going to be mad at me, and that’s okay because when you come to your senses, know I’ll be here for you, same as I’ve always been.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t say anything. All I can do is stare at him—this man who is supposed to be my best friend. Andrew. Andy. I watch him as he steps around me and gets into his car and drives off. It’s only later when I get into my own car I realize I’ve been crying. I look at the clock on the dashboard. It’s 4:28 a.m.

  After Dad’s funeral, I found his copy of The Day of the Triffids between the mattresses of his bed next to an empty bottle of sleeping pills. It’s the same bed Mom died in. I remember the argument he’d had with my aunt about throwing it out. He said as long as he had it, he’d still have a piece of her. She thought he was being morbid, but she didn’t understand.

  When I was older, I read about the different poisons they used to treat her cancer. They were plant-derived alkaloids that were supposed to block the cancerous cells from dividing by inhibiting the assembly and function of structural proteins. They didn’t work, so they gave her different alkaloids, like morphine and codeine, to numb the pain right up until the end.

  I understand why my dad wanted to do the same thing. But his pain couldn’t be managed. There was no pill to stop the sadness, so in the end he went out as numb as she had. I think he just wanted to be with her again. I take care of the garden in the backyard for the same reason.

  I wonder a lot about what his last thought was before the sleeping pills carried him away. Was he happy? Relieved? Scared? Given the amount of atoms in the universe, what are the odds one of those atoms is now a part of me? Do I get better odds because I knew him? Because I loved him? What are the odds of one of them existing in one of the triffids I create and the ones that come after? Are they better? Are they statistically significant?

  My last challenge will be making my triffids venomous. Sometimes I wish I had gone further in my physics studies, since it helps one really understand the intricacies of atomic interactions. I could better appreciate the beauty behind how the toxin induces death. I like to think of physicists as the coroners of the universe in how they’re studying its perimortem state. Andy would never appreciate such a subtle description because Andy’s not a big picture kind of person.

  I am going to recreate the curare production pathway found in the bark of the Chondorodendron tomentosum plant in my triffids. When introduced into human tissue, the poison blocks the normal function of acetylcholine receptors and causes paralysis and asphyxiation as the diaphragm is unable to contract. The biosynthetic pathway has not been well studied, but I used my knowledge of organic chemistry to devise a way to synthesize it from its benzylisoquinoline precursor. This is the precursor to many alkaloid compounds, like morphine and codeine.

  By the time I get back in my car to leave campus, the sun is beginning to rise. After Andy left I used the code he’d given me to get back into the building in order to find what I needed: plastics, stocks, selection antibiotics, powder media. I only took small things from different labs. Half-full bottles. Half-empty tubes. They’ll just think other people used them. They’ll order more. And I’ll come back. If Andy doesn’t need me, I don’t need him.

  And though no one else will notice, Andy will. I made sure of that. He’ll notice when he tries to turn on his computer in the morning to find that all of his data files have been erased. That his slide deck for his presentation is gone and his external hard drive he uses to back everything up won’t turn on. He’ll notice all of his boxes in the minus-eighty have lost their little green labels covered in his neat little handwriting. He’ll notice all of his stocks are no longer viable because they’ve been thawed one too many times. And maybe he’ll think back on how much I helped him. And maybe he’ll realize how badly I can hurt him. Let’s see him try to leave now.

  I’d like to think maybe he’ll understand you can’t depend on other people. They’ll hurt and abandon you because they’re blind, like he is. Maybe he’ll learn, like I have, what’s important in all of this. Maybe he’ll finally understand I’m trying to protect what he’s trying to destroy: the power of a story.

  Take for example the bacterial stock on dry ice in my trunk that contains an enzyme I need for my research. Soon those bacteria will be making more enzyme for me. They can make it forever if I let them. They could divide endlessly, making this enzyme even after I’m dead and gone. There’s a kind of comfort in that thought.

  I like to think about the subatomic particles within the atoms within the molecules within the nucleic acids within the DNA that makes up the plasmid and the bacteria and you and me and, eventually, my triffids. These particles have been around since shortly after time began and will still be around until shortly before time ends. Everything that makes us human, everything we think and feel, is mediated through the vibrations and interactions of these particles. These interactions are what created me and my memories. They’re what created The Day of the Triffids and John Wyndham and the garden in the backyard. They’re what my parents both returned to after they died and what we’ll all return to in the end, including the little bacteria making my enzyme for me. I wonder a lot about whether or not my dad’s last breath was inhaled by one of the plants out back and turned into sugar in the leaves the plant used to grow. His breath held against the heat death of the universe. I wonder how much of my dad is still in the garden.

  Andy’s research aims to understand the physiological basis for what makes us who we are: what makes us love someone or cry when they leave us. But story exists outside of this cycle. Sure, when you listen to a story for the first time it’s just vibrations in the air triggering neural networks that cause you to associate the patterns with entrenched stimuli that trigger trained responses in the limbic system and/or cortex. Those unique patterns are made based on our experiences—on those patterns laid out by glutamate and GABA and calcium fluctuations—that matter. It’s why I felt the way I did when my dad first read me the story, even though I experienced it differently than he did. It’s why it means something different to me now. And I can use the story to make my legacy—not in concrete and glass or in a copy of my genes, but in something that could save the thing it was born from.

  To my father, The Day of the Triffids was not so much about monsters and the end of the world, but about how can be our own worst enemies. And to a certain extent I agree, not because of the horrors we commit as programmed responses to tragedy, but because
of our shortsightedness. Just like the people in the story couldn’t survive long-term on scavenged food and equipment, we can’t survive long-term on quick fixes for our pain. The only way to work through pain is to understand it, not ignore it.

  If all the Andys of the world succeed and we understand the biological basis of memory and emotion, pharmaceutical companies could develop drugs to tailor our experiences of the world—to choose not feel sadness or pain. We would be no better than my triffids: just collections of ion channels, calcium fluctuations, GABA, and glutamate.

  Ironic these will make my triffids move. Kill. Though they may not be an immediate threat, give it time. Let them wait until we’re all blind and numb. They’re patient. Until then, we can still tell one another stories that can be felt as only we can feel them because of the pain and the loss we can’t erase. We can be changed. But that’s the bigger picture. For now, I need to focus on the little things.

  Copyright (C) 2012 by Kelly Lagor

  Art copyright (C) 2012 by Wesley Allsbrook

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  The Duke of Copper Downs had stayed dead.

  So far.

  That thought prompted the Dancing Mistress to glance around her at the deserted street. Something in the corner of her eye or the lantern of her dreams was crying out a message. Just as with any of her kind, it was difficult to take her by surprise. Her sense of the world around her was very strong. Even in sleep, her folk did not become so inert and vulnerable as humans or most animals did. And her people had lived among men for generations, after all. Some instincts never passed out of worth.