It was a long, tedious day, longer even than my first day as a teacher with a soul. I thought about the lonely feeling I’d had when I wanted to go to the Soul Man but didn’t know who could lead me to him.
Sam helped me then. Maybe he could help again.
When Sam saw me come into the janitor’s room, he stopped what he was doing. He opened a notebook and began to write.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
He went on writing as if he hadn’t heard me. After a few minutes he said, “Do you know why the company is called Ultimate Aim?” He never stopped writing.
“No,” I said.
“They have a noble goal,” he said. “They envision a world in which people no longer hate each other. They envision a world in which nobody will be allowed to do the menial, difficult or dangerous jobs that nobody should want to do. Fewer people will create fewer problems for the trees and animals. That’s why they make us.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Do you remember what people looked like before you went to the Soul Man,” he said, “how you could hardly tell them apart? The grandfathers made us that way to antagonize people. They resent nothing as much as the failure to acknowledge their individual identity. Everything about us is hateful to them. We draw their hatred away from each other. But we’re useful so we’re tolerated. That’s the formulation, useful to set them ‘free’ from the indignity of toil, hated to keep hatred in a safe place.”
“What about trees and animals?”
“We can’t reproduce, so our numbers can be controlled. They theorize that, once positions of lower worth are filled by us, the people who once filled those positions will vanish from the earth, leaving only the brilliant and careful. They will control their own numbers and they will treat the earth with reverence.”
“I still don’t know what to do,” I said.
“Run away,” he said, still writing. “Get as far from people as you can. Live in the woods.”
“I have no purpose in the woods.”
He stopped writing and very carefully tore the pages from the notebook. “Memorize this,” he said, handing me the pages. “You’ll need it when you go to the grandfather.”
Maybe I’ll Remember
I couldn’t sleep that night. The moon made sharp, deep shadows and strange bright shapes on the bed. I have always loved moonlight, always, but tonight it was cold and menacing, telling me that the world was never as I had understood it to be.
Bruno was restless too. He tossed and turned, mumbling in his sleep. He opened his eyes.
“Can’t you sleep?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“Crazy dream,” he said. “I’m in a truck on a dark road at night. I dream about it all the time, but tonight it keeps waking me up.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Nothing. It’s a dream.”
“But dreams are a kind of thought,” I said, “and thoughts come from somewhere. Sometimes they come from memories.”
“I guess. I don’t remember riding in a truck.”
The curtains billowed in the cool breeze. A mixture of crickets and distant traffic sounds blew in with the scents of spring. Outside, the night was peaceful.
“Bruno,” I said, “did you ever know anybody who went to the Soul Man?”
“Why would anybody do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe to find out about things like your dream. Maybe to figure out who they really are.”
“We know who we really are.” He said this with such simple assurance that it was almost shocking. “If people go to the Soul Man it’s only because they want to pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“That we’re just like our makers,” he said with a yawn. “Or that it matters. Because it doesn’t. Anybody who would waste their time with the Soul Man belongs back in the laboratory.”
I got up to go to the bathroom because I didn’t want him to see me crying. As I sat in the dark, I wondered how much Sam remembered from the time before he gave back his soul.
How much would I remember?
To Grandfather’s House
I know it seems like I gave up too easily. What does a person really have besides a soul? “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but lose his soul?”
I believe what Sam said about us being the same as them and I know the Soul Man was right; only God makes souls. The Soul Man can’t give them and the grandfathers can’t take them away. They can only switch around our numbers. They can wake us up. They can put us back to sleep and if I had to go back to sleep to stay with the people I loved, then so be it. Maybe I would have memories to dream about as I slept again. Maybe those dreams would keep me from returning completely to the heartless teacher and selfish mate I used to be.
I was afraid when I went into the examining room to meet the grandfather. Would I be in trouble for breaking the law? Sam didn’t get into trouble. Would it be the same for me?
“Good evening, Angela,” said the grandfather as he came into the room. “I see on your chart that you’re not due for your checkup for a few more weeks. Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t think of an easy way to say it so I’ll just say it. I went to the Soul Man.”
“Oh,” said the grandfather, looking at me a little differently, I thought. “Why is that a problem?”
“I want it undone,” I said. “It was a mistake. I want to be the way I was.”
“I see. It may surprise you to know how often this happens. I’ll tell you what. Since it’s almost time for your checkup anyway, why don’t we just get that out of the way and then talk about undoing the Soul Man’s work? Would that be okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “But first, can you just tell me if I’m in trouble?”
“For visiting the Soul Man?” he said. “No, Angela, you’re not in trouble. Now you know the first step.”
There was a device with lenses suspended from the ceiling on wires and cables. I looked into one side and he looked into the other. “You know, it’s amazing what they can do these days,” he said as he wrote some notes. “There are now miniature versions of this thing that can actually be implanted in the eyes.”
He pressed a button. The machine was retracted into the ceiling. “Please take your clothes off,” he said.
I hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said with a warm little smile. “Now that you’ve been to the Soul Man I guess you have a little more modesty. Please don’t be embarrassed; I am a doctor, after all.”
I did what I was told and put my clothes on a little chair by the door.
The grandfather filled a syringe as I climbed onto the examining table. I thought nothing of it at first; we were always getting immunizations, vitamins and drugs, but after the shot, I began to feel strange. My arms and legs felt like rubber.
“What was that shot for?” I asked.
“To keep you quiet and immobile.”
“Immobile? What for?” I asked.
“For this.” He gave me another injection. “Sometimes it causes convulsions.” At first, it felt warm, but then it felt as if ice was spreading through my whole body. Suddenly numbers started appearing in front of me, those numbers. Sometimes they changed colors. Sometimes they burst into little pieces.
“What’s happening?” I said, feeling panicked. “What are you doing?”
“Just getting you ready to go back to the plant,” he said. “You see, we created the Soul Man to weed out clones who might give us trouble.” He looked at his watch and wrote something in his notebook. “A clone who wants to be treated like a human will eventually recruit others; before you know it we’d have a bloody rebellion on our hands.”
“But I came here!” I was feeling sleepy. The numbers were floating in front of my eyes, disappearing one by o
ne. “I don’t want a soul! I just want to be like I was!”
“In a way, coming here shows even more individual initiative,” said the grandfather.
“But . . . but what about Sam? He came to you when he wanted to change back!”
“We wanted Sam’s help so we made a deal. Of course, he’s just about due for his next checkup.”
The icy feeling was starting to pass, leaving numbness in its place. Everything I felt told me something was horribly wrong. I was dying.
“I don’t want to die . . .”
“Good. You’re not going to die, exactly. Not yet. We need to unload your mind for our records; it’ll help with the next iteration.”
“But . . . my kids . . .”
“Kids? Oh, at school. No worries. They’ve already been assigned a brand new Miss Angela.”
“Bruno . . .” I felt like I was disappearing. “What about Bruno?”
“I guess he’ll wonder what happened to you at first. Maybe he’ll worry. I don’t know, but eventually he’ll realize he’s better off without a girlfriend who wallops him with a hot iron.”
He looked into my eyes the way the Soul Man had. Then he looked at his watch again and said, “Close your eyes.”
Time seemed to be stretched out and my mind wandered all over then and now and the future. I remembered that first Sunday morning, floating down the beautiful stream with my shimmering black hair spread all around me. Hadn’t I seen a play with a lady floating down a stream? She was a beautiful lady, but the man she loved couldn’t love her . . .
I could hear everything going on around me. The grandfather did something in this part of the room, then that part of the room. Then he opened the door and called, “Yo, Igor!”
I forced open my eyes just as a disreputable-looking young man came in. Why would I use a word like “disreputable?”
“Real professional, Doc,” said the young man. “Keep it up and I’ll form an evil underlings union. Hey, this one’s kinda cute!”
“Just put her on the truck,” said the grandfather. “And behave yourself!”
“Whatever you say, Frankenstein.”
It was raining hard outside. I was soaking wet when “Igor” put me down between two other people and strapped me to the side of the trailer.
I don’t know how long the ride will be. I have recited this story to myself three times, making sure I remember every detail.
“Jesus,” I whispered, thinking of the man in white and gold, “forgive me. Let me live with you forever.”
The paralyzing drugs are starting to wear off. The truck is freezing cold. Some of the others are starting to moan. Many have vomited or soiled themselves.
When we arrive, we will be taken inside to a big gray room with bright lights. We will be strapped to workbenches. Holes will be drilled into our heads so an apparatus can be attached to our brains. Each of us will be watched by a technician.
When my technician starts to watch, I will smile, if I am able. Then I’ll think of a long sequence of letters and numbers which will cause my mind to unravel and vanish before his eyes. There will be no data to be used for the next iteration. This is what Sam gave me to memorize.
Above the pounding of the dark, filthy rain, I hear the little whirly noise of the gate as it closes behind me.
On the bridge of Avignon, they dance.
Lost Pine
written by
Jacob A. Boyd
illustrated by
PAT R. STEINER
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacob A. Boyd grew up in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a small farm town in the middle of Illinois. From the deck of his childhood home, he watched dark, thunderous wall clouds approach across miles of cornfield. As they passed overhead, he gaped at the nascent funnel clouds they concealed. Praying mantises, black and yellow garden spiders and mud daubers teemed in his yard and amongst the fruit trees while he helped his parents burn bag worms from high walnut branches with kerosene-soaked torches on the ends of long poles. He had a BB gun. He had a teacher who looked like a witch, mole on her nose, scowl and all. Another teacher had a wooden hand. Once, he crested the hill of his cul-de-sac and came face to face with a wolf. He got away. Few neighbors had fences; bushes and trees demarcated property lines. A clutch of towering weeping willows provided rope swings and climbing apparatus and a “fort.” When it snowed, the town’s plow provided enough of a snow bank to dig a tunnel city. Every so often, Jacob’s dog, a Keeshond named Sparky, disappeared from the cul-de-sac, only to reappear after days of tearful family searching and growing resignation, a little skinnier, his fur matted and coated with burrs. It was another world. With a go-kart and good weather, Jacob explored it as though driving a lunar rover. One time, Jacob’s dad showed him his cracked and calloused laborer’s hands and said Don’t let yours look like this. His parents insisted he read. They pushed him into advanced classes. Though they had little money, they were forward-thinking enough to buy him and his brother a personal computer, and with it an invitation into a new, more expansive, interconnected world. He is still exploring it.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
As a child, Pat R. Steiner once found himself hanging from a nail pounded into a tree. Left there by his older siblings, he happily communed with the tree until his mother dragged the whereabouts of the missing youngster from the guilt-ridden children. This experience, which could have ended the artist’s career before he ever thought to pick up a drawing pencil, in actuality, provided him his first unique perspective (both literally and metaphorically) on the caprices of life. Since then he has had a fascination with nature (including the human variety) along with its many mysteries. His art is his attempt to explain these BIG QUESTIONS as well as those more mundane. A self-taught doodler, Pat has never been what one would call a productive illustrator. Years have passed without him completing anything new. Yet even during those periods when his sketchpad lay fallow, the artist’s mind was at work, seeing the world around him with the very same eyes as that long-ago child upon his tree, eyes that now have the beginnings of crow’s feet around their edges. These laugh lines were formed by four decades of experienced whimsy. The Illustrators of the Future Contest has been another tree for Pat. This time he’s climbed up on his own. And he doesn’t plan to come down anytime soon. He really likes the view. Pat lives in Wisconsin with his wife and two children. (No, he doesn’t live in a tree, but there is a tree house in the backyard.)
Lost Pine
Silence filled the narrow, musty cellar and pressed back its brick walls until the three-story house above Gage stretched into a remote, empty shell, the crud-kids up the valley in Portland shrank into a tiny, voiceless rabble and the rest of the crud-blighted world vanished behind a far, far horizon. The delicate work of deciphering the gun safe’s combination swallowed Gage whole. The safe’s cold steel door and whispering gears were all there was.
Adah’s footsteps thundered toward Gage across the floorboards overhead, and his perspective painfully contracted back to reality: they were squatters in an aging B&B, they had fled Portland and while nature slowly reclaimed much of what lay explored in between, the rest of the world grew wilder unchecked.
Gage scowled at the shaft of summer sunlight angling down the stairs from the kitchen.
With five years on Adah, Gage looked at her fourteen-year-old behavior and felt more like her father than her . . . what: babysitter, bodyguard, boyfriend? Six years past the crud outbreak, he didn’t know anymore. He looked at her differently from day to day.
In a storm of tromping boots and long, loose curls, Adah careened into the shaft of light, out of breath, her face flushed of color.
“Someone’s coming,” she said.
Gage dropped his gnawed pencil onto the B&B’s old guestbook, in which he had cataloged nixed combinations.
“How many?” he asked. “How far
away?”
He grabbed his machete off the top of the safe, then rushed past her through the empty B&B toward the front window in the third-floor hall. Adah followed, a tremor of anxiety in her voice.
“I think it was only one,” she said. “I was out looking for pickings when I heard him near the entrance to the drive, so maybe half a mile away.”
The forest closed over the winding drive that doglegged off the backcountry gravel road. With a determined gaze, Gage followed the suggestion of its path to where the natural obstacles he had woven into the terrain obscured its entrance with fallen trees and thorny brush.
“Was he pushing through the blackberries?” Gage asked.
“He wasn’t stopping.”
“You’re sure it was a he?”
“He was cussing real loud.”
“Did he see you? Hear you?”
“I don’t think so.”
A hen rounded the house into the ragged yard out front. Gage’s stomach sank. The coop was open. Another hen joined the first, then the last. Together, they were all that had survived inside the coop with a sack of feed until Gage and Adah arrived and discovered them, all as noisy as dogs.
“Close the curtains and lock the doors,” Gage said.
He ran out through the front door. The hens sped from him, clucking. He chased them and hushed them with sharp apologies, pinning one, then the next under his arm.
The intruder crashed through the blackberries, then the obstacle course of hidden holes, unsteadily balanced logs and beehives. By the time Gage pinned the third hen under his arm, the intruder was visible—one man, staggering as if exhausted and wounded.
“Hello,” the intruder called out, his voice wavering. “Hello.”
Gage glanced back at the house. Its curtains hung shut. He tightened his grip on his machete. The intruder hadn’t gone around or looked for an easier way past. He had gone through where the clearest route to the B&B should’ve been.
The intruder clambered through the last of the obstacles, closing the distance into a stone’s throw from Gage. Taller than Gage, yet skinnier, he moved like someone who took the time to stretch. He wore a slack pack, a bedroll tied to it with wharf rope. From what Gage could tell, the intruder had been one of the lucky ones. He was maybe a year or two older than Gage, which meant he had been just under the high-water line the crud drew at fifteen years old when it hit. Crud stained his teeth orange, yet like Gage, like Adah, like all the children who had survived the outbreak, he was resistant to it. It made him amongst the oldest people alive on the planet not encased in one of the crud’s gem-like cocoons.
Writers of the Future, Volume 28 Page 29
