The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!
Page 46
As long as I didn’t touch the cube, and resisted the urge to plunge in those pillars of lucite, I could still afford to kill time on the program:
I’VE NEVER HAD THE WILL OR THE STRENGTH TO STICK WITH A DIET OR A FAST OR ANYTHING ELSE LONG ENOUGH FOR IT TO WORK...OR TO SATISFY ME. SOI CAN’T SAY WITH ANY HONESTY THAT IT WOULD SATISFY ME EVEN IF IT DID WORK. YET, TO ALSO BE HONEST, I’M AFRAID OF SUCCEEDING, FOR FEAR OF FINDING OUT THAT MY WEIGHT IS NOT REALLY MY ONLY SOURCE OF PAIN. I ALREADY KNOW THAT I WASN’T REALLY BORN DURING THE YEAR OF THE BOAR (I WAS BORN IN THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER, THE SIGN OF THOSE WHO ARE SAID TO ALWAYS FINISH GIVEN ASSIGNMENTS, AND ARE CONSCIENTIOUS, IF SHY) BUT YET SOMETIMES, I STILL WONDER IF MY MIND WAS BORN A ROOSTER, WHILE MY BODY WAS BORN AGAIN AS A PIG.
WOULD IT EVEN CHANGE ME, TO BE SUDDENLY THINNER? NOT IF BEING THIN NOW CAME WITH THE MEMORIES OF BEING FAT THEN. FOR ALWAYS WOULD I SEE THAT OTHER ME IN THE MIRROR, THE ME I’M FAR TOO USED TO SEEING. AND FEELING AROUND ME. MY BONES ARE STRANGERS TO ME, STRANGE HIDDEN THINGS WHOSE SILHOUETTE I WOULDN’T RECOGNIZE SHOULD IT COME TO pass that’my FLESH MIGHT MELT AWAY. YET, I AM ONLY TRULY ME IN MY BONES, IN THE PART OF ME SO WELL HIDDEN BY MYSELF JUST AS I AM A STRANGER TO ME: THERE IS THE ME WITHIN THAT THE I WITHOUT CONCEALS. YET THE DOUBT OVER THE SURVIVAL OF THE INNER WITHOUT THE OUTER PERSISTS, ALWAYS HOLDING ME BACK, ALWAYS FEEDING THAT RUTTING HUNGER, THAT ACHING NEED TO BUILD UP THE WALLS, THICKEN THEM OUT. PERHAPS THAT NEED HAS BECOME MY ULTIMATE CHANGE. MAYBE IT HAS INFUSED ITSELF IN ME.
“Like it or not, there it is,” I said flatly, my voice slightly slurred by the excess blood and saliva that filled my mouth. Having spoken, I waited, but for a far shorter time than I’d anticipated:
Kicking blend wasn’t a choice, wasn’t even a need for me, so I can’t say it brought me satisfaction.. .more like a dead center where the ache had mostly been. Especially since it did nothing to erase the doubt, the dissatisfaction with myself that initially led me to blend. And so, what had once been a sickness, a rot of the mind alone, now bled into the soul, where that pursuing fifth columnist of sobriety couldn’t hunt it down and “cure” it with that elixir of subliminal happy double-talk and genetic cleansing and replacing of the “bad” chemical reactions with “good” ones.. .and there is no gene yet known to the strongest, most powerful electron microscope that can reveal the formation and the sickness of a soul. Blend could ease the pain when it was in my mind, but the cure for blend addiction pushed that pain beyond the flesh-blood-neuron mass that is my brain, and into the unseen thing that is still my own soul. And if blend was an “experiment” each time I mixed up a hit, so be it. My PPH therapy was also an experiment, albeit with better measuring cups and a higher-speed blender. Only, those “hits” were shared by many at one time. Not one blend-head hovering over a glass vial of whirring release from pain. But who is to say which “hit” had the more devastating side effects?
I met many other PPH kids in the various detox centers I attended. Some were on blend, others doing the solo-poison dance. No one had really asked any of them whether or not they wanted the marrow transplants. No one had fully described the pain of the chemo treatments we’d need for the transplants and gene tweaking to “take.” Nor did any of the doctors feel it necessary to provide support groups, like they do know for cancer patients.. .although I remember Mom telling me about kids who’d run away in mid-treatment, because they were so sick, and so unable to cope.
That’s what brought about the counseling sessions, those kids running off like that. But how do you run, much less walk away, when the PPH is smothering your lungs and slowing your heart? And how far could you go if it were possible to run? Dying from PPH didn’t scare me; I know, and all of my other Chinese-born friends knew, that our living this long was something to be considered a true accomplishment. Not all that long ago, girls like us might’ve been bundled in a crib to die. Because we were simply the wrong sex. Queens born to the King-seekers. So to me, dying because of something I was born with or without was acceptable—not pleasant, not something I even wanted to happen, but something that just was. At least as far as I was concerned. But I didn’t belong wholly to myself then...
Just as the gene/marrow therapy changed my PPH-diseased body, the coma therapy changed my blend-addicted mind...and gave birth to an enemy even less wanted than the PPH had ever been. Being “clean” is meaningless when one is left with a mental surface devoid of all emotional texture.
GRID SEE TOP/BOTTOM OF CUBE. SQUARES
LEFT TO RIGHT TO BOTTOM UNTIL FLUSH WITH
SURFACE. REPEAT FOR BOTTOM OF CUBE. CUBE MUST BE
FOR IMAGE TO ONCE CUBE HAS BEEN
ALIGNED, ALL EXTRA WILL DETACH. ■
As my eyes scanned the words that formed in relentless horizontal bars across the screen, words that came almost as quickly as my brain could take them, the next screen-full of words replaced them (and much faster than I could’ve transcribed them...if I’d really wanted—or been able—to). I found myself gently caressing the sleek sides of the cube, not actually making contact with the surface, but letting my fingers hover over the plastic, as if stroking the aura of the fingertips that had fashioned it.
More instructions as to the proper manipulation of the pulled-out lucite cubes had appeared; not quite enough for me to actually get it right on the first try, but enough for a solid attempt...an attempt as well-informed and well-meaning as any of the things done to Liane during her life. Or any of the things she’d done to herself, albeit a bit more knowingly, and more daringly. And while my stomach churned not in actual hunger but in its accustomed need for constant fullness, I stared at the deliberately cryptic, teasingly imperfect lines of instructions for the grid, so much like the known/unknown of just about anything anyone sets out to do in life: we start with a game plan, a goal even, but in the seeking’of completion, things just...happen. The way I’d started out my childhood seeking a sense of fulfillment, which somehow became a literal filling until full and beyond. Was it a metabolic thing? Genetic? Neither of my parents were like me, yet wasn’t Mom emotionally needy, just as Dad was so eager to purge himself of whatever it was he was thinking to whomever was within earshot? Taking in, putting out. So much like eating, wasn’t it?
I still couldn’t get a fix on Liane’s game plan; it seemed like just being alive was initially a big part of it. Before the onus of parental expectations, illness and blend addiction overtook her. And never mind the self-loathing that might’ve been a part of her long before any of the other things kicked in. That she’d chosen to pursue the same path her mother had taken before her couldn’t have helped; despite their differing origins, the fact that she was considered to be Marian Bertrand’s child was enough to create certain expectations in the minds of others...and especially in Liane’s mind.
I couldn’t shake the mental picture of her resting on that pyre of accelerant-soaked artwork; was everything reduced to carbonaceous ash?
Without really thinking of what I was doing, I picked up the sheaf of tabloid articles and skimmed through them. Most of the later ones centered on the Bertrands’ efforts to impose tighter regulations on all web sites that had offered blend recipes, including their appearances before Congress. But another more thoughtful article dealt with the reason behind the Bertrands’ new mission: Liane’s death, and
what happened to her—not to the anti-blend cause, not to recipe-posters, not to anyone but the one person who’d been most hurt, yet ultimately least remembered in all the resulting litigation, congressional action, and ACLU countersuits.
Liane had been cremated, and her ashes scattered at sea, midway over the Pacific Ocean that had separated her from her birthplace yet touched the shores of her adopted homeland. The person who wrote the article ended it on this uncharacteristically subtle, thoughtful-for-a-tabloid note: “...perhaps this was a fitting end for one who created art from the raw materials that surround us all; in li
fe we rise from the sea of chemicals, carbon included, from which all life is formed. And so after her death, she was again consigned to that life-giving sea, a scattering of carbon and ash, once again mingled with life itself.”
I should’ve put down the pile then, after reading that, but under that article was a page of reader letters generated by various articles in the tabloid...the article about Liane’s death included. Only, the people who (I assume, given the hard copy nature of the tabloids) took the time to write down their thoughts on paper, seal them in envelopes, and post them via snail-mail didn’t have thoughts of empathy or subtlety on their minds: “—Bertrands should’ve placed the blame for their daughter’s death where it belonged—on her shoulders. Millions of kids read the web every day, and they don’t try blend— “Why blame the messenger when someone’s agreed to accept the message? Since when did
‘Just say NO’ go out of fashion?”; “—never mind fining and jailing people who post blend recipes. Fine and jail the weaklings who bother to download such junk. Or better yet—”
I didn’t want to know what such a person would consider “better yet.” Wadding the stack of articles into an asymmetrical, angular ball, I shoved it into the Tvyek envelope, then tossed the envelope against the nearest wall.
Giving the lucite grid a gentle there-there pat on one side, I leaned back in my chair and Stared at the ceiling’s random-dot tiles, too depressed to even try and count how many dots
filled each square. I’d already done it before; the number escaped me, but I knew it was too high to actually matter. After you pass the number of holes in your own age, the whole concept of number? can be overwhelming anyhow.
Without needing to look at the cube, I knew that there were (or would be, once the thing was all shoved into place) ninety-six small squares on it—over three times as many extra cubes as the number of years Liane Bertrand had actually lived. Better to stick to the concept of six large squares on the cube. She’d lived almost four times over that number...
WAS IT WORTH IT?
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE THAT THE HURT AND YOU WERE ONE?
RESPONSE REQUIRED BEFORE MENU WILL ADVANCE ■
My fingers moved purely out of instinct:
IS ANYTHING REALLY WORTH IT? WHEN YOU CAN’T CONTROL WHAT OTHERS THINK OF YOU? NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO? NO MATTER WHAT YOU TRY TO CHANGE ON THE OUTSIDE, THE ONLY PART THAT “COUNTS” TO OTHERS?
AS SOON AS I COULD THINK, AS SOON AS I COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT SCORN WAS, THE NUANCES OF RIDICULE, HOW DERISION COULD COLOR A VOICE.
I could already see that there was something wrong with Liane’s thinking by now; she’d used up all but two symbols on her icon, her virtual quisling, but there still had to be five extra numbers to eliminate on the grid, if she was doing what I thought she had to be doing—making the top grid spell “vidkun” and the bottom one “quisling.” Either that, or she’d made a mistake somewhere—
RESPONSE NOT GERMANE; INPUT AGAIN
RESPONSE NOT COMPLETE; INPUT ADDITIONAL DAT
...And sorrow, sorrow like rain.
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning...
...Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,
With Rihaku’s name forgotten,
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers?
Li Po, 8th Century
from “Lament of the Frontier Guard” ■
No, she’d taken off some more numbers, even as the icon’s uppermost symbol remained, as if whatever ability within her that had fired the creation of this combination analytical Q&A program-cum-interactive artwork had begun to falter as she approached the smallest files of the program: the solid-body doll in the matryoshki. The one that cannot be opened...
But there was still one (at least one) hollowbodied doll left:
OF COURSE IT’S WORTH IT, TO AT LEAST TRY TO CHANGE. IF ONE CAN. IF THERE’S A PROMISE OF NO MORE OUTSIDE RIDICULE.
WAS THE PAIN EVER NOT A PART OF ME? HAVEN’T I ALWAYS HURT, EITHER FROM LITERAL OR FIGURATIVE HUNGER??
Her response both didn’t surprise and surprised me; that my latest message wasn’t accepted befitted the flipness of my remarks, but the way she took away the last “^/V” in the icon did—for there wasn’t a single “V” (or “v”) anywhere in the message she revealed:
RESPONSE NOT TRUTHFUL; INPUT TRUE FACTS
RESPONSE NOT SUFFICIENT; INPUT AGAIN
There is no greater loss than death.
The white mourning headband
Takes the shape of a zero
And inside that white circle,
Inside the head of my friend
The war goes on.
Pham Tien Duat,
from “White Circle” ■
“Oh no-no-no-no,” I whispered, when I finally realized what she was inferring: the top, the “hat” of the icon, was analogous to a headband...the mourning band of death.
Clearly, the thought of suicide had been with her during the entire construction period of her symbolic lucite and carbon sarcophagus. The question of what the completed puzzle might eventually reveal was incontrovertibly linked to Liane’s extensive, long-term self-questioning process. That she’d chosen the language of Asian poetry rather than the symbolism of pure imagery to convey her pain indicated that, perhaps, even she could not conceive of an image all encompassing and universal enough to visually illustrate her inner turmoil. I did not know that the little quisling icon was merely a means to an end, nothing more than that.
Yet one more number still remained to be taken from the top grid, just as the completed set of instructions remained to be seen—
IT’S NOT AND IT WILL NEVER BE WORTH IT, NOT WHEN THE WORTH OF A HUMAN BEING IS CONSIDERED IN TERMS OF WEIGHT OR “SOBRIETY” OR ANY OTHER SUCH INTANGIBLE, UNPREDICTABLE THING. NO SUCH STRUGGLE IS WORTH IT WHEN THE END RESULT IS BASED SOLELY ON THE PERCEPTIONS AND PRECONCEPTIONS OF OTHERS. WHEN THE “GOOD” FOR ONE PERSON IS JUDGED SOLELY ON THE “GOOD” FOR SOCIETY AS A WHOLE. WHEN WHAT MIGHT BE “BAD” FOR THE MANY MIGHT BE “GOOD” FOR A FEW.
AS SOON AS I TOOK MY FIRST MOUTHFUL OF FOOD, AND FOUND THAT THE HUNGER PANGS BEING STILLED DID NOT QUIET THE ROAR WITHIN. AS SOON AS I COULD THINK ABOUT IT, AND UNDERSTAND THAT NOT TO SUCCOR THAT NEED WOULD MEAN A FORM OF DEATH UNRELATED TO THE BODY. EVEN AS I FIRST ENCOUNTERED SCORN AND MISUNDERSTANDING FOR MY PERSONAL NEED, MY INDIVIDUAL ACHE. THE HUNGER HAS SHAPED MY BODY, EVEN AS IT HAS FORMED MY MIND INTO WHAT IT WILL ALWAYS BE...SOMETHING THAT ABHORS THAT WHICH ENCLOSES IT. I AM MY OWN ADDICTION, MY OWN HUNGER.
Before I was able to add more, before my aching fingers could react, came this:
RESPONSE ACCEPTED
RESPONSE ACCEPTED
...All this is ended.
Rupert Brooke, 1914
from “The Dead”
GRID COMPLETE: SEE TOP/BOTTOM OF CUBE. DEPRESS SQUARES IN ORDER LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM UNTIL FLUSH WITH SURFACE. REPEAT FOR BOTTOM OF CUBE. CUBE MUST BE TILTED FOR IMAGE TO APPEAR. ONCE CUBE HAS BEEN CORRECTLY ALIGNED, ALL EXTRA SQUARES WILL DETACH.
NO ADDITIONAL RESPONSE REQUIRED. PROGRAM END. FILE CLOSED.
My hands fell uselessly into my lap as my mouth formed the same words again and again—the same words spoken so many times before under similar circumstances, amid the smell of gunpowder, or the watery tang of blood prematurely let from opened veins, or even the singed reek of burnt flesh and hair: “Why did you do it? Why did you—” And what hurt most of all was that she’d made me spill my guts, so to speak, yet all she’d been able to do was quote a long-dead war poet. Three of them, in fact. As if she feared the sight of her own written thoughts, her own feelings—or, perhaps, she wished to keep that fifth columnist’s words at bay?
The smallest doll in the nest was also the most impenetrable.. .but I could embellish that small, lon
ely figure—
So, after copying down her grid directions, I typed in, from memory:
Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought
A further forae of life
Developed from within,—
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.
We wondered at our blindness,—
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post,—
At our stupidity,
When, duller than our dullness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!
Emily Dickinson
I didn’t care if Liane would’ve wanted that written about her; after all that had been done to her in the name of her best interests, her very sanity, I thought that at worst she might understand, and at best approve. I’ve given her so much of myself, so much I’d not wanted to reveal to anyone, least of all myself...while she’d given me back three poems. And the solution to that ninety-six-squared riddle she’d chosen to leave behind as the sole example of her own intrinsic artistic expression...
I depressed the squares, just like she asked me to. Top, then bottom. As each one pushed in, the fluid surrounding the carbonaceous shapes within bubbled slightly, ebbing and flowing around the shifted internal components. So much like plasma, moving around blood cells. Once each square was in place, the others began to break off with the merest touch of my fingertips, as if they’d somehow been designed to detach, almost on their own. And as I tilted the finished cube against the filtered light of my drawn blinds (it was full daylight beyond, but I was loathe to see what time it really was), even before the promised image appeared, I saw how beautiful the cube was—how the narrow rays of light made the contents within sparkle like an ocean kissed by sunrise, and how the contrasting black shapes within seemed to almost float, mote-like, in that rigidly squared inner eye—