She smiles. “I think I finally figured something out. Open it and we’ll see if I’m right.”
He carefully pulls the ribbon off and untapes the yellow paper, neatly removing it to reveal a white cardboard box. He opens the lid, and they both look in, seeing two painted yellow eggs nestled in cream-colored tissue paper.
He gasps. In a whisper, he asks, “How did you…?”
She leans forward and kisses him on the cheek. “Like you said, I have a good imagination. The egg—it’s rebirth, isn’t it? And if I deserve it after just one lifetime, then it’s certainly long overdue for you.”
His pale skin is nearly paper white. “I—I never thought to ask.”
She smiles. “Maybe my people aren’t the only ones lacking in imagination. Are you coming?”
His smile is sweeter than any she’s ever seen. They climb onto the bus together, sit behind the driver, and watch out the window as they pull out of the small walkway between the house and the garage.
Notes on “Last Bus”
This story is lifted directly from a dream I had while napping one hot summer day. I cleaned it up, got rid of all the Mary Sue elements, and then had a devil of a time selling it. Even though it wasn’t published until 2006, it’s the earliest-written piece in this entire book. I think it’s the most positive piece I’ve ever written. Hell, it’s actually sweet.
The Last Stand of the Elephant Man
“MR. MERRICK, PLEASE WAKE UP.”
Joseph Merrick’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Was this the hospital ward? Had something new happened to him?
Good God, he was lying flat on his back.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, astounded at how effortless the action was. “What—”
The word came out clearly.
His left hand flew up to his mouth. His flat mouth. “My God,” he murmured against his fingers.
And then he saw his unblemished right arm.
“Is this Heaven?” he asked the white-swathed figure at the foot of his bed.
“Almost. It’s America. You’re in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and you’ve been cured.”
Joseph stared in wonder at his two perfect hands, now mirror images of each other, and flexed the fingers of his right hand for the first time since he was a child. “I have no memory of coming here.”
“You fell ill before your trip. Do you remember that?”
Joseph shook his head, its weight so light that it felt like it would float away were it not for his neck.
“I’m not surprised. You were so delirious with fever that Dr. Treves nearly didn’t bring you to the ship. It’s a miracle you survived the Atlantic crossing at all.”
Joseph brought the fingers of both hands back up to his mouth, then feathered them up his cheeks to his forehead.
Had he ever felt anything so smooth?
“This is the miracle.”
“No, Mr. Merrick, this is science.” The man turned to the door. “Nurse Hotchkiss, if you please?”
A woman clad in a crisp white dress stepped into the room, holding a large looking glass in her arms. She smiled sweetly at him and said, “Why, Mr. Merrick, you’re even more handsome awake. See for yourself.”
She turned the mirror toward him, and he stared at it, transfixed. His head was so smooth, so small, so…
So normal.
Joseph Merrick buried his perfect head in his perfect hands and wept tears of pure joy.
* * * *
“You’ll have your own room here for the next week or so,” Doctor Pemberton said. “Once we’re certain the procedure hasn’t caused any unforeseen complications, we’ll help you find an apartment in the city.”
Joseph walked along beside him, flexing his perfect feet with every step. For the first time in memory, he was in no pain. They ascended a flight of stairs, and it was so easy, so effortless. Joseph wanted to sprint up them to the very top floor, then race headlong down to the basement. Had any man ever truly felt so much joy in such simple movement?
“I’ll need to earn my keep,” he said. “I don’t want to be a charity case. Not anymore.”
“Take your time. Your British benefactors have set you up quite comfortably.”
When they reached the top floor, Dr. Pemberton guided Joseph down a clean, well-lit wing. He opened a door numbered 130 and said, “Here you are.”
Joseph stepped through the doorway, marveling at the view out the large picture window. New York City was wondrously strange, with tall buildings jutting majestically into the sky as far as the eye could see. Looking down, he saw an orderly swarm of pedestrians, street cars, and horse-drawn carriages. “So many people.”
“And none of them will ever stare at you again.”
He pressed his now-normal right hand against the glass and stared off into the distance as a dirigible floated above the statue of Lady Liberty. “How long until I’ll be able to leave the hospital?”
“Soon enough. A week, at the outside. Meanwhile Nurse Hotchkiss procured something for you that I think you might like.”
Joseph tore himself away from the view, and saw Dr. Pemberton pointing to a leather dressing bag sitting on a small end table. “Is that—”
“It’s not the one you had in London. Dr. Treves couldn’t bear to part with it. But hopefully, this will be an acceptable substitute.”
Joseph sat down at the table and opened the bag. There were the silver backed brushes, the comb, an ivory-handled razor, the toothbrush, the cigarette case, a silver shoehorn, the hat brush. He’d known how ridiculous he’d seemed when he’d asked Dr. Treves to buy him a dressing bag for Christmas. He’d known he’d never be able to use any of the items inside. But when he’d held it in his one normal hand, he’d been able to fleetingly pretend that he was a normal human being with normal human needs.
He’d never imagined that the day would come when all of that would change.
“I’ll leave you for now,” Dr. Pemberton said. “Nurse Hotchkiss will be by later with your dinner. Congratulations, Mr. Merrick. Welcome to your new life.” He smiled, nodded, and let himself out.
Joseph looked at the full-length mirror on the other side of his room, then stole a quick glance at the door.
Yes, it had a lock.
He bolted it securely, then pulled off his robe, his surgical gown, and his slippers, and stared at his body in amazement. In all the years he’d yearned for normalcy, he’d never once believed he’d ever achieve it. He’d learned to content himself with his unblemished left arm and genitals, and the small oasis around his left eye. Now…
He turned, staring at his smooth back and buttocks, not daring to believe that every square inch could be cured. But it was.
Joseph clasped his hands together and bowed his head in prayer. “Thank you, Lord. I am humbled.”
“Joseph Carey Merrick?”
Joseph spun, covering his nakedness with his hands, and gaped at the three men and one woman standing just inside the door. “But…I locked it…I didn’t hear you—” He dove for his robe, feeling his face break out into a hot flush.
“Mr. Merrick,” the oldest of the men said, “I regret to inform you that you have been the victim of a hoax.”
“But…how can that be?” He held out his matching hands. “See for yourself.”
“What I mean is that you’re not in New York, and it’s not 1890.”
“But…” He gestured weakly at the window.
“This is all an illusion. You’re really in a virtual reality simulator in San Antonio, Texas in the year 2304.”
He stared blankly at the man, then turned to the other three to see if any of them appeared to be more sensible.
“Let’s just pull him out,” another of the men said. “Then he’ll believe us.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“We can’t leave him in there forever. I don’t think there’s any way to ease him into this.”
“You’re right.
Mr. Merrick, this is going to be something of a shock.”
The four people disappeared, and Joseph staggered back into a chair, knocking it to the floor. “Dr. Pemberton!”
A rush of unintelligible words roared around him, and he clapped his hands over his ears to try to drown them out.
“Dr. Pemberton!”
Everything went black, and Joseph felt himself being lifted out of a thick liquid, deposited onto a flat surface, and covered with a blanket. A mask was peeled from his face, and he blinked in the bright lights as four half-naked Negroes stared down at him. One of the men said, “Joseph Merrick, pursuant to the laws of the San Antonio Protectorate, I must inform you that you have been the victim of an illegal bring-forward.”
In a panic, Joseph pulled his hands from under the blanket.
Thank God, they were normal.
And…brown?
“The individual who brought you forward has exchanged bodies with you. As this was done non-consensually, you have the right to remain in the body you are currently inhabiting if you so choose.”
“Exchanged—”
“Rest assured, Mm. Paredes has been charged with both crimes, and his spot in the breeding queue has been revoked pending a full investigation. If you would like your own body back—”
“I’m going mad,” Joseph muttered. He clasped the blanket in his brown fingers and pulled it over his head. “I’m in the asylum. None of this is real.”
A woman’s voice said, “Give us a moment.”
He heard footsteps, a quiet hiss.
“Let me.”
Fingers pulled the blanket away from his head, and he looked up to see the young Negress smiling down at him. “I’ve gone mad,” he whispered.
“I can see why you’d think that,” she said. “I’m Naia. May I call you Joseph?”
He nodded.
“I know this is hard to believe, but you’ve been brought forward 400 years.”
“That’s not possible.”
“But it’s the truth. The New York you were living in was a simulation.” She pointed across the room to a tall glass tank with tubes running into it. He followed her finger, then found himself staring at her bared belly out of the corner of his eye and forced himself to look away. What she was wearing wasn’t decent, but it was even less decent of him to take advantage of her unladylike dress with his gaze.
“How about I prove it to you? Look at any wall.”
“What—”
“Computer, display satellite image of this settlement.”
As if by magic, one wall presented a picture of a large dome surrounded on all sides by white. Joseph sat up, clutching the blanket to his chest. “How is that possible?”
“It would take too long to explain. But that technology certainly didn’t exist in your time, did it?”
Joseph stood, wrapping the large blanket around him like a cloak. “No, I’ve seen this before. You’re using a Magic Lantern.” He held a hand up in front of the image, looking for a hand-shaped shadow and seeing none.
“It’s not a projection. The image is coming from the wall itself.”
He ran his finger across the surface of the wall. It was cool, like plaster. The image was coming directly out of it? That wasn’t possible. It wasn’t…
But there it was. And declaring it to be impossible wouldn’t make it go away. If that worked, he would have successfully wished away his deformity years ago.
So instead he focused on the image and tried to make sense of it. “What is the dome?”
“A picture of the Protectorate from space. Computer, pull back image to show all of North America.”
The view expanded so fast that Joseph was struck by a sudden attack of vertigo. He blinked hard to clear his head, and opened his eyes again to see an image of the continent almost totally covered in ice. Joseph’s hand shook as he pointed. “What is—? How—?”
“We’re in an Ice Age, Joseph. A lot has changed since your time. One of the changes is that we’re now able to bring people forward from history to try to increase the genetic diversity of our population. Unfortunately, your body was brought forward illegally for entertainment.”
He turned to her, uncomprehending.
Naia winced. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that the person who’s currently wearing your body is doing so for fun. But you can have it back if you want it.”
“No. Never.” The words came out before he even had time to consider his answer.
“I didn’t think so.”
Joseph gazed down at one of his new brown hands and asked, “What do I look like?”
“See for yourself. Computer, silver the wall.”
The ice was replaced with a giant mirror, and Joseph stared at the image it presented. He was a Negro, just like the others, with skin the color of a Christmas chestnut. His black, wavy hair cascaded past his shoulders, and when he turned, he saw that it reached nearly all the way down his back. The body had strong shoulders, and when he peeked under the blanket, he saw that it had a ropy, lithe build. He wasn’t quite as dark as the Negroes he’d met while displaying himself as an oddity. They’d also displayed themselves—in their cases, as wild men from the jungles—but became proper gentlemen again as soon as the paying crowds went away. It had been so many years since he’d last seen them…
So many, many years.
He looked into his pitch-black eyes and stood as straight as he could. “I’m tall,” he said.
“Not that tall, but certainly taller than you were. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting used to the body. Mm. Paredes seems to have undone all of his enhancements before making the switch.”
“Enhancements?”
Naia held up her hands, showing off the five fingers and two thumbs. “Let’s just say that this is considered mild body modification nowadays.”
Joseph clutched his hands to his breast, his heart hammering madly beneath them. It was now painfully clear that he was no longer in the time that he had known. “At…at least the Queen’s English hasn’t changed,” he stammered, grasping for the one familiar thing left in his life.
She tucked all four of her thumbs into her fists and said, “Actually, you’re speaking Spanglish. The Anglos fled south long before the dome was built. Everyone here is of Latin American and African-American descent. That barrage of words you were hit with before we pulled you out—that was an immersion program. It works very well for languages, not so well for culture shock.”
He put his fingertips over his lips and said, “I’m speaking what?”
His lips didn’t match what he heard himself saying, and his hands started to shake.
“Joseph, are you all right?”
“May I… May I be alone for a moment?”
“Certainly. Just touch the glowing plate over there to slide the door open when you’re ready.” She demonstrated, and closed the door behind her, leaving him alone in this strange room with its strange walls in this strange future.
Ultimately, there was only one thing that mattered.
Joseph dropped the blanket and appraised every inch of his body, turning to make sure the back was as smooth and unblemished as the front. He felt behind each ear and under his scrotum, examining every surface.
No polyps. No growths. Nothing.
He might not have understood what was going on, but he understood that the body he was wearing was healthy and normal. That was more than enough.
He picked the blanket back up, wrapped it around himself, and pressed his palm against the door panel.
From the hallway, Naia looked at him expectantly.
“Please, I’d like you to explain everything again. I want very much to understand.”
Naia smiled, her teeth startlingly white against her dark face, and said, “Welcome to your new life, Joseph.”
* * * *
She did her best, but so much of it didn’t make sense.
“There’s ice everywhere because it got too hot?”
“Pollutio
n caused global warming, which shut down the North Atlantic current, which disrupted the flow of warm water to the northern hemisphere, which produced an ice age. It all happened much faster than anyone predicted.”
“You’ve put an entire city inside a glass dome?”
“Not technically glass, but yes. After the ozone layer catastrophe, we needed a way to shield our city from the sun. Plus, we needed to seal the system so no genetically damaged people, plants, or animals could get in. The downside is that nobody can get out either. Because of that, the population is strictly controlled. No one gets to have a baby until someone else dies.”
“You bring people forward from the past?”
“Yes. We use their ova and sperm to bolster our gene pool. But we only take people moments before twentieth- and early twenty-first-century disasters that history tells us they didn’t survive. Dresden, Halabja, New Orleans—they’ve all provided us with fresh DNA. Any earlier than the twentieth century, they have too difficult a time adjusting to our present; any later, we risk letting damaged DNA into our gene pool.”
“And me?”
Naia shook her head. “Your case is an example of how every system can be corrupted by the very rich. A sealed society like ours only provides so much variety. There’s been a trend toward radical body sculpting among the well-off. They give themselves dorsal fins, head ridges, all sorts of things. Jean-Pierre Paredes de García has spent his life leading that trend. His father is one of the most renowned body sculptors in the Protectorate. But it looks like he decided to up the stakes. He wanted to wear an infamously grotesque body. No offense.”
Joseph said nothing. How could he take offense at the truth? So he simply put his hands in his lap and once again wished that they’d been able to find longer pants for him. He felt positively indecent in this short-sleeved tunic and knee-length trousers. His surgical gown at the imaginary hospital had covered more than this.
“He created a lifeless copy of your body to leave behind, set the machine for April 11, 1890, and took you. History records that you died trying to sleep lying down.”
“No. That would have been suicide. I would never have—”
Unwelcome Bodies Page 12
