Filip: We’re not. Ha! Heh, actually, we have a solution. Ha.
McComber: I do not like the way you just laughed.
Filip: An anonymous contributor came up with this idea, since I like animals so much and don’t get bothered by these “new problems.” If we can make everyone like me, then problem solved.
McComber: Oh, no, you don’t—
Filip: Yup. We’ve isolated the features of my brain chemistry that make me especially delighted by living in close proximity with so many of our wonderful non-human fellow creatures. And we’ve engineered a cool virus that will deliver the same changes to everyone in the coming days. Everybody will share a bit of my unique snowflake, as you put it.
McComber: You goddamned hippie fruitcake—
Filip: You’ll be among the first to enjoy the new attitude, Mr. McComber. Remember how you appreciated those baby panda pictures? When I gave you a hug, I also put a patch on your neck.
McComber: [frantically rubbing the back of his neck as he stares at Filip, eyes bulging, lips moving, but nothing coming out]
Filip: Remember, Spaceship Earth has many passengers, and only some of them are human. Isn’t it better that all species now have the potential to live together?
McComber: Damn it, those manatees do look kind of cute. I’m feeling all sentimental and gooey …
Filip: Enjoy getting to know your neighbors!
THE ALCHEMIST’S CHILDREN
Nathaniel Lee
Luckily for everyone, except possibly Mom, Jen was home when the call came in. Mom was at the lab, synthesizing a new polymer. She’d left an annotated list of instructions for caring for the house in her absence, and Jen was following it to the letter.
The phone rang.
Jen consulted the list. Let all calls go to the machine. I’ll listen when I get home.
The caller ID said it was from Newt, who was away at college. Freshman year.
After pondering for two more rings, Jen answered the phone.
“You’ve got to help!” said Brandon, Newt’s roommate. When Jen had met him on Open House night, he’d had rumpled hair and smelled like three cans of body spray. “It’s Newt! He’s gone crazy!”
“Crazy how?” Jen asked. “Be specific.” That was one of Mom’s favorite phrases.
“He’s locked himself in his room with a bunch of bowls from the cafeteria and a Bunsen burner he stole from Chem Lab.” Jen could hear Brandon running his hand through his hair. It sounded like it was even more rumpled than before. “He says he’s going to isolate a particle of Truth.”
“Ah,” said Jen. “Alchemy.”
Jen and Newt’s father was an alchemist. He’d left when Jen was still a toddler. All she remembered of him was a loud booming voice and a vague impression of a beard up in the sky somewhere. He’d promised to write, Newt said.
“You’ve gotta come help,” Brandon pleaded. “There’s noises in there, and smells, and fumes coming under the door. Becky just came in looking cross-eyed and told me the date and time she’s going to break up with me.”
“My condolences,” Jen said politely.
“We’re not even dating!”
“Definitely alchemy,” Jen muttered. She tucked the phone under her chin and bent over to rummage through the bottommost junk drawer. If it was alchemy, that meant Dad was involved, but Jen didn’t know where Dad was. Mom had to have kept his address somewhere, though. Mom saved everything, and she had an endearingly naive belief that locking a drawer would keep her children out of it. “Put Newt on, would you?”
“He won’t answer the door. He just shouts at us to go away.”
“Tell him that if Mom finds out he’s meddling with the laws of causality, she’s going to be very angry.” Fishing in the forbidden drawer, Jen’s hand paused over a bundle of envelopes held together with twine. Some of the ones at the back were yellowing with age. Jen hesitated, a spring wobbling loose somewhere inside her. The top letter was addressed to her, but the upper left corner, where the return address would go, was blank.
Whatever might be inside it, whatever her mother might have known and might have kept from her, it wasn’t going to help her now. She needed a location.
After some scuffling sounds, Brandon returned to the line. “He says he doesn’t care. He said she can do what she wants and that he’ll never forgive her for ‘driving him away.’ He said all her rules were stupid and she deserves it for what she did to the tortoise. You guys have a weird family.”
“Yes,” Jen said. At the bottom of the drawer, she found a black address book with the clasp rusted away. She flipped through it until she found, on the very last page, the name she needed:
Albert Magnus Smith
Beyond the Forest Perilous
Atop Mount Dread
At the Very Ends of the Earth
Apt. 12
NT, X0E 0V0
Jen pursed her lips. “Canada,” she said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Tell Newt that Jen’s going to bring someone to help him.”
“Jenny’s bringing help. Got it.”
“No,” Jen snapped. “Not Jenny. Jen. It’s short for Hydrogen.”
She hung up on Brandon’s confusion. She knew where the spare keys to the Forester were. With any luck, she’d be back before Mom realized she was gone. With Mom’s schedule and pragmatic priorities (as sole breadwinner, she said, her work had to come first), Jen probably had a week at least; they communicated almost exclusively through Post-It notes ever since Jen got her license. She packed some supplies, made herself some peanut butter sandwiches, and locked the door carefully behind her.
IT HAD STARTED WHEN Newt made the coffee table in the living room disappear. Mom had been furious.
“It’s furniture varnish,” she’d growled, shaking the can at him. “With an ‘R’!”
Once he’d known that, of course, Newton was unable to make any other wooden furnishings invisible. That was how alchemy was: unpredictable and idiosyncratic. Idiopathic, Mom would have said. She hated the way the same formula could result in two different outcomes. According to Newt, who’d been older when Dad left, their father had tried to explain that everything was subjective, dependent on any of a thousand different whims, from the mood of the practitioner to the historical significance of a given symbol, but Mom would have none of it.
“You can only do it once,” she’d snapped.
“Yes,” he’d said. “That’s the point.”
She’d snorted and left Dad to fix the coffee table. He’d put a tablecloth over it for when company came, and otherwise they just got used to the sight of their drinks and television remotes seemingly floating in midair. Jen hadn’t realized invisible tables were anything odd until she was four or five and Mom warned her not to blab about it while on a playdate at a friend’s house.
Later, when the Diet Coke and Mentos videos went viral, Newt built a jetpack for himself. Mom had rolled her eyes and muttered something about force and gravity, but even she wasn’t able to entirely hide a smile at Newt zipping through the air above the backyard, turning somersaults and making acrobatic spirals, a wide grin plastered across his sticky, sugar-coated face. He bottled bee’s knees and the cat’s meow—he’d had to give that back after a stern lecture from Dad—and built a robot out of Legos that worked so well it went feral and attempted to overthrow humanity. It wasn’t very good at overthrowing, but every so often, they came downstairs to find the magnetic letters on the refrigerator spelling out “KILL ALL HUM4NS.” It was when Newt reconstituted the dehydrated pixies from his Pixy Sticks that the other shoe dropped.
Newt was the focus of the conflict, but in some ways, Jen had it worse. She never knew what she’d missed and had to rely on the fragmentary and hopelessly slanted perspectives of the two remaining witnesses. Newt blamed himself, but maybe it had been inevitable. Maybe there’d never been any way for things to blow but up. In the fallout, Dad was gone, Newton was broken, and Mom had become a far-off, glittering
iceberg. The reaction was complete, and all the reagents were reduced to inert mush and powder.
THE FIRST PART OF THE JOURNEY was uneventful, a series of gas stations, fast food restaurants, and the treacherous hypnosis of flickering white lines on asphalt.
Gradually, the interstate became a highway, which passed the border almost seamlessly. The highway became a road, then the road dwindled to two lanes, then one, then a gravel path through the trees, and at last two vague ruts in the grass that petered out to nothing in a small clearing. Jen climbed down, retrieved her bag of sandwiches and a warm jacket, and set off into the woods, heading north. She was surrounded by the smell of pine needles and snow. For a while, it was as peaceful as the highway had been. Jen’s family didn’t get out in the wilderness much, what with one thing and another. Mom said it was redundant, since they had everything nature could provide already, but in a refined and improved form. Jen stopped, sat on a rock, and unwrapped her first sandwich, soft and warm from her body heat.
The werewolf was extremely stealthy. Probably he would have been able to sneak up on her even if she were experienced at woodcraft. As it was, Jen had no idea he was there until he leapt out at her, slavering and snarling.
“Oh, good. A werewolf,” Jen said, recovering from her startlement.
The werewolf paused. “You’re happy to see me? That’s not what usually happens.” His voice had teeth in it.
“Probably not.” Jen offered him half of her sandwich. “But if you’re here, then that means I’m on the right track. You are the guardian of the Forest Perilous, yes?”
The werewolf circled the clearing nervously. “I am hunger and violence. I am a beast in a man’s skin. My curse separates me, isolates me. The alchemist allows me to live here in his forest, to run and hunt the deer, to live in peace, as much as a wretch like myself can. In return, yes, I watch for his enemies and lay in wait for them.”
“Well, no problems there. I’m not his enemy. I’m his daughter.” Jen waggled the sandwich invitingly. “You said you were hungry?”
“I am always hungry. The emptiness gnaws at me from inside. It is all I can do not to fall upon you and devour you where you sit. I can smell your blood.” The werewolf crouched, his half-lupine limbs folding awkwardly together. His nostrils flared. Jen caught the smell of him, musky and sour, wet dog and locker room.
“Hmm.” Jen brought her sandwich back and took another bite. “It seems like you have several co-morbid pathologies, possibly part of a unique syndrome. It’s a little beyond the current scope for me to say, but the symptoms are probably individually treatable.” Jen tapped her teeth in thought. “The hypertrichosis is the simplest. Just shaving would work, but if you want to avoid the hassle, you might consider electrolysis. Or laser hair removal. The aggressive ideation and fixation on violent imagery is a little more troubling. You might need medication, but at the least you should start seeing a therapist to try and work through those issues. I can recommend a very good one. The hunger pangs sound the most worrisome to me. Have you ever been tested for hyperthyroidism?”
The werewolf shook his head wordlessly.
Jen pulled out a notebook and scribbled down a name and phone number. “My mother knows a very talented endocrinologist. I don’t imagine you have a general practitioner to refer you, but I’m sure Mom’s recommendation will get you an appointment slot. Once you get that under control, you’ll probably find your anger issues more manageable, too.”
“You mean…you think I can be…cured?”
“Well,” Jen said, finishing her sandwich. “I couldn’t honestly say it would be a ‘cure,’ since the condition looks to be chronic and at least partially genetic, but a solid treatment plan would definitely improve your quality of life immeasurably. What’s most important is regaining your dignity as a person apart from your condition. Or conditions.” She tore the page off of her notebook and handed it over. “I’ve outlined some steps you can take in your diet to get started, but I think you should see a proper medical expert as soon as you can. Thyroid issues can lead to cancer and all sorts of complications if they’re not addressed.”
The werewolf clutched the ragged white paper in his gnarled, misshapen claws. A tear glinted in one yellow eye. “Thank you. Oh, thank you, Mistress!”
“Not at all. Happy to help. Any friend of my father’s, you know.” Jen hopped down from her rock and held out a hand. The werewolf, looming over her, dark-furred and shaggy, shook it carefully. “Good luck.”
“Yes… “ His ears flickered, and his head went up. “I must hunt, lest my hunger overcome my will. Farewell, Mistress.” He bounded into the green-tinted shadows of the forest.
“Don’t fill up on meat! Get some whole grains and vitamin B!” Jen shouted after him. She wasn’t sure he heard.
She put her plastic wrapper back in her pocket and journeyed on.
THE FOREST THINNED as she went on, and large rocks became more common as the vegetation receded. The ground sloped upward, and the air grew chill. Soon, she was walking amid thin scrub and scrambling up slopes of dirt and loose rocks, climbing ever higher. Ahead, the white-capped peak of the mountain seemed to float in the sky without drawing nearer. Jen spotted the ruins of an ancient castle clinging to an outcropping of rock, and beneath it the dark and shadowed mouth of a vast cavern, so she wasn’t entirely surprised when the ground trembled under the impact of four enormous clawed feet and a red-scaled dragon heaved into view ahead of her.
“Oh my God!” Jen shrieked.
“Yes!” boomed the dragon. “Cower before my glorious wrath, ape-creature! Bow down before me, and I will slay you quickly and without pain.”
“Let me see your wings!” Jen fairly leapt over the still-tumbling rocks and boulders that the dragon’s emergence had shaken loose.
“What? No!” The dragon took a step back from Jen’s relentless advance.
“I’ve always wanted to see a dragon’s wings. You know bumblebees?”
“Bees? I don’t…Now, see here, Missy: master’s daughter or not, I could squish you under my foot, so let’s have a little respect don’t do that!” The dragon clawed its way up the slope to avoid Jen’s hands as they tried to unfold its leathery wings from its back.
“Why not?” Jen, realizing she had been rude, put her hands behind her back and tried to look winsome.
“It tickles.” The dragon huffed. “What was that about bees, anyway?”
“Bumblebees. For a while, they thought bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly under the laws of physics and it was a real problem, but then they did some tests and studies and worked it out. I want to see a dragon fly because I think it’ll be the same sort of thing.”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “What, exactly, are you implying?”
“You shouldn’t be able to fly,” said Jen. She shrugged. “You can’t work linearly with aerodynamics. Something the size of a house would need football field-sized wings to fly, so unless you’ve got jet engines and some sort of acceleration mechanism I’m not aware of…“ She peered at the dragon’s rear end with an air of scientific curiosity.
“I don’t,” the dragon said, its words coming out short and clipped.
“Well, could you take a quick flight? Just out to the trees and back? I want to see how it works.”
“No.”
“But—“
“No!” The dragon gritted its teeth, then sighed and hung its head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“Can’t fly. None of us can. These,” the dragon said, fluttering its wings briefly, “are purely decorative these days. That’s why we spend so much time in caves and ruined castles; no one expects to see us flying if they find us underground.”
“Spandrels!”
“Come again?”
Jen waved her hands vaguely. “It’s an architecture term, originally. Something about wasted space in arches. It’s what you call traits that might have had a purpose but no longer do because of changes in the evolutionary niche.
Like hiccups for humans.”
“Ah, yes. Because you were frogs before you were monkeys.”
“Probably more of a bony fish with rudimentary lungs, but more or less.” Jen heaved a sigh and sat down on a handy rock. “I really hoped I could make an interesting new discovery in aerodynamics. I don’t suppose you actually breathe fire?”
“Caustic spittle. Sorry.”
“Hoards of gold?”
The dragon sat, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Well, we do have to consume a relatively large amount of trace metals to stay healthy. If you rendered a dragon corpse, you’d probably end up with several ounces of gold, and you might find a stray bit or two in an older den. One good-sized coin will last me for years, though, so long as it’s decently pure.”
Jen looked up. “Are you going to try and eat me now? I brought a fire extinguisher, but apparently that’s not going to help much. I should have brought an acid wash and a chemical hood, it seems.”
“No,” the dragon said, resting its head on its paws. “I’m too depressed. Spandrels! Pfaugh. What I wouldn’t give for wings that worked.”
“Well,” Jen cupped her chin in her hand and tapped her lips. “We could probably rig up a glider system. Maybe even just a rigid aluminum frame to support your wings so that you don’t have to rely on insufficient pectoral musculature.”
“Hey, now!”
“Don’t be sensitive. It’s just facts.” Jen peered over the top of her glasses. “Perhaps we can work out a deal. What’s your pH?”
“Sorry?”
“The acid, silly! Potent?”
“I don’t know the numbers, but I’ve yet to encounter anything it can’t get through eventually.”
“Excellent!” Jen clapped her hands. “Really strong acids are a pain to manufacture. Horribly toxic byproducts and so on. If we can get an ecologically friendly supplier at low cost, that could give us a real leg up in the market. Let me give you my mother’s card. You might want to start networking; you’ll need some friends if you’re going to produce industrial quantities, I imagine. And then you can buy your way to flight.”
Unidentified Funny Objects Page 10
