Monday, June 21, 2010
Summertime...
A few days ago I hailed in the start of summertime with the clanking of Popsicles. Sticky orange against yellow, for what would later represent the last sun setting upon spring and rising into the long awaited summer. Oh, summer, the love of my life. If I was who I am now but rich, I would chase summer across the globe, experiencing rain as only a novelty and sun in over-abundance. If I were a freer spirit I would follow summer without money, but I am not ready for that kind of commitment. I never get tired of summer, although by the end of it I urn to go back to school, but the sun could stay. It's weird for me to hear people who get sick of warmth; especially in Washington since it never gets unbearable, unless you're older than fifty, than you have your own troubles. I love waking up at noon after who-knows-or-cares how many days straight of partying. By the second month of summer I don't even consider anything partying, just living maybe. I call them Ra shots (inside joke). The only thing I don't like too much about summer is the unprodcutiveness, but what is productivity but the curse of the lesser seasons? I don't get writers' block per se but the summer gives me a good case of the writers food poisoning, I guess. Diarrhea flows of brilliant poetry followed by sweating followed by incoherent word vomit. Or yess, yesssssss, yessssss, noooo syndrome as they call it The New Yorker. Did I say New yorker, I meant bad sex. Well, see you guys later, don't expect much good writing out of me the next month or whatever. This is my time off. Time to bake my brain in the sun and clear my mind of all the stuff I learned last year. I'll see you next year with a fading tan and a clean slate.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The notetaker prt2
The following is the second part to "The Notetaker." Lets call it an experiment in romance/ sci-fi. I must note, the romance part is hidden from view, as no one kisses and no one falls in love and no one even touches.
And it is blatantly a sci-fi short story. Well, only because there are aliens sprinkled though out the story. But it is done so casually,so frequant and haphazardlessly (its a word now, deal with it) it could all be true and you wouldn't know it until you were the last freethinking being on the planet...if you are now.
I only sort of enjoyed writing this. Hope you enjoy it.
…ONE
Denial is just a river in Egypt.
People barely noticed as the aliens had taken over the world. The economic collapse that came six months after infection almost gave it away. People hadn’t grasped how much our economy depended on ruthless thoughtless buying. The newly practical consumer market was immune to advertising, impulse buys, and unhealthy life styles. The economy was devastated by this. In the following months, cigarette and alcohol companies collapsed, along with Hollywood, fast food, pornography, and most forms of bought entertainment.
I used to hate Bill Buckley. Maybe not hate, but violently disapproved of at best. He was the typical moderate leaning right talk-show host on primetime that people loved because he appealed to their simple ignorant ethnocentric minds. He did so proudly and more so, loudly. He was prone to having opponent’s mics shut off and “accidently” spilling hot coffee in their laps. I always thought it was obvious when someone did something on purpose when they habitually made the same mistakes time and time again. Now he was the only human on television, and for that, I would follow him to hell and back. There were only three channels and he had an hour segment a day on one of them. The parasites have no interest in shallow and pointless television shows—I assume Bill Buckley’s program survived because of their hanging curiosity about the species they had come to infest.
He was the front-runner of a pro-human group. Well, it wasn’t as much a group as a loose association of people with one thing in common. Humanity. He led a group of protesters once a week. They were a goofy bunch, with their oversized helmets or earmuffs and chastity belts. The belts were more of a statement than an actual safety measure. The goofy bunch would parade around town with signs like:
“Freedom not peace”
“Love is the question”
“No more tapeworms in the Whitehouse!”
“Save the economy, kill an alien.”
“We were here first.”
And the less catchy
“Earth first! We’ll follow the parasite scum to their next planet and kill what’s left of them later.”
As time went on his numbers shrunk. This is when I invited him to the group I had started. It’s called the Burning Embers, because it’s made up of the last burning embers of humankind. Semi corny, I know, but I did start it when I was just 13. I started the club with some kids around my neighborhood after suspected my parents of being infected (they turned out to be the first).
It was smooth sailing for a short while. That was before the parasite learned to pass woman to man and before they began maturing and crawling out of people. They would leave their eggs in a host and crawl out and nonchalantly infect people as they slept. For the first few months people were hearing things about the alien parasites. For a while, the situation never really set in. Talk-shows did interviews with the infected and it always came out a joke by the end of the day. Saturday Night Live made skits about it. Will Farrel had a skit that involved him being a parasite that didn’t fit in with parasites or people. He was always making social faux pas and the like. For some reason, being an outcast was the punch line of the joke. It was later discovered that he had been infected the whole time and was just spreading propaganda to his mind-numbed audience. After news of peace in the Congo broke out, people began to ask questions. Soon after that, armies around the world were simply refusing to fire their weapons. That’s when the news started taking it seriously. Soon after that, tape was released that showed one of the parasites crawling into someone’s head. Warnings went out telling people to weather proof their house and seal all openings at night. Anything to prevent night invasion. But it was only a month before the story got over-killed. And it wasn’t long until the news stations and their anchors themselves became infected. The hollow shells of news men and women would confirm:
The threat is over.
An elaborate hoax.
An Orson Wells-esk test of 21 century human gullibility.
The humans still following the news laughed. The infected laughed and said “gotcha”. Gorilla Theater nothing more. Aliens don’t exist. Impossible. The news excused it as a fad and later mass hysteria. How they excused it as a fad eludes me still.
The end of the human race was very anti-climatic. There were no explosions. There wasn’t a show down. If it had been a movie, it would have broken even in theatres at best. Humanity, as you know it, slowly crept out of existence, just as it had crept in.
I, Timothy Harker, am one of about forty thousand identified uninfected persons left on this planet. That’s what I hear anyways. We have no exact estimate of course, as there is no known way to test for infection without love samples or cutting open someone’s brain. Both methods happen to be too invasive for the likes of any rational person. There is no way to safely advertise our presence either, since these parasites can mimic behavior better than most people can. I have faith though, that humans shall overcome. We’ve overcome everything else we’ve been faced with. I will brush peace and equality aside, in the name of freedom.
About a decade later…
Two.
“Anger is the most raw and pure emotion and with that the simplest and most destructive.”
“Hi. My name is Jack, you all know that. I will be today’s facilitator for the 243th meeting of the Burning Embers,” Jack pounds the wooden gavel on his helmet twice, “…Sooooo. On today’s agenda: We are fucked. Why are we fighting still? Who cares? And the parasites have won. Does anyone have any pressing issues to add to today’s agenda?”
There were some inappropriate snickers.
“ Yeah, I do,” Bill speaks up, “can you please add: I am sick of healthy food and I need to get laid…Um, and what happened to cataloging seasons of nineties TV shows? One more episode of MASH and I’m going Colonial Klinger on all of you.”
“Well Bill. If you would leave me collateral, I can let you borrow some of my DVDs, but, as they are all I have left from the world, I am hesitant to lend them out. And women, well, you will have to take it up with Daisy or Sarah, but it doesn’t seem like they even take their chastity belts off to shit so GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.”
“Hey fuck you Jack! I got a fine piece of ass under this belt,” Sarah yells.
“Well, I have no way of knowing what’s under that foot of fucking metal! Jesus
Christ,”Jack buries his head in his hands, “I haven’t got my tip wet in nine fuckin’ years. I don’t even remember what pussy smells like.”
“Will you guys please stop thinking of yourselves?” I finally say. “We’re in the middle of
a war in case you all forgot. We’re all that’s left and here you guys are fighting about having sex and eating greasy food? We should be strategizing.”
“And how do you believe we should go about that Timmy boy?” asks Jack, “our great
blind visionary?”
“I agree with you Tim. I do.” Says Bill, “but they took the whole armed forces in two
months. They took most of the human race in just a few years. We’re all that’s left.”
“It looks pretty impossible Timothy,” Sarah chimes in. The opinion-less crab bag.
“I know you. I’ve known you for six years now. You are a rebel, Tim. You rebel against the majority, whether they are in the right or not, almost for the sake of being miserable all the time. If everyone was like you, you would turn into your exact opposite, because you, for some sick, twisted broken reason, love to loath life.” Daisy says.
“That’s horse shit. You know that’s horse shit. I have always fought for freedom at all costs. I just never knew it would be taken like this. I am pissed off all the time because I seem to be the only person paying attention to the situation at hand,” I yell.
“I will always stand with you, but to fight next to you would be suicide.” Daisy’s eyes are welting up.
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” I hope people think I made this quote up.
“YES BROTHER! Well said.” Bill shouts.
“That expression doesn’t even apply here! WE are free. No one has taken our freedom away. It’s everyone else who is long gone. All we can do now is live out our lives, keep our helmets on and our chastity belts tight and we will never be infected.” Daisy says.
“Yeah dude, for serious. It took them a few years to take over, and they spread easy. We have no way to kill the parasite without killing the person too; we have no way to spread. We’re really at this point of no return here.” Jack says, more politely this time.
“Okay. Okay. Okay roll with me for a second,” I pause, fill my lungs with oxygen, “Thinking is the road to change. Speaking is the vehicle. Just sitting around this table, speaking of revolution, infects the group consciousness of the whole. We are planting the seeds.”
“Not to encourage this retarded metaphor, but our car ain’t got any gas.” Jack mouths, “We all hear about the successful revolutions against oppression, but that isn’t most of ‘em. That isn’t even half of ‘em. Most revolutions end up with death and torture and alienation, when all along they could have just made the best with what they were given. Sometimes, you can only play with the cards you’ve been dealt.”
“We have all the hope and ambition we need to win this,” I say.
“We have enough ambition to coast-- to fuckin’ coast! We’re coasting on neutral and the second we hit a hill, our vehicle will back over us and all our hopes and ambitions will just be a greasy bloody stain on the contently infected asphalt.”
I take all my anger. All my hatred and annoyance. And bury it in the deepest furthest corner of my mind. I breath in deeply though my mouth, out through my nostrils.
The next day…
I’m on the subway heading towards Daisy’s place. It’s filled with parasite scum. Their logo-less clothing and bare-minimum haircuts rob the shells they ride of what made each of them unique. They all stare blankly at me because they know. They know I don’t belong. A human would know because of my helmet and my bulging pants and my emotions. They just know. I hate them with every untainted pint of blood in my body. I would like nothing more than to punt their heads off their necks like golf balls. Gold balls filled with blood and brains and parasites. My stop is soon, it seems to take forever. I wouldn’t mind burning them alive and throwing their charred remains under an approaching train. The train part would be mostly for show, as the flame would surely kill them. A pale little boy with a bowl-cut (the typical style of the age group) stares up at me. A smile stretches across his face. A mocking copied emotion. I hold back anger-inspired tears.
“Forget your bicycle back at the station, sir?” The boy asks.
I just glare. The subway screeches to a halt at my stop. I take a step forward and butt my helmet into his face with all my force. He belts forward onto his knees, clutching his face. A geyser of dark red syrup and teeth erupt from his mouth through his open hands. He sways as he recovers from the disorientation. The intercom says: “Stuart Mill Station, please exit to your right.” The door slides open and make to the door quickly. I look back and the kid is standing already, blood runs down his mouth and is drenches his t-shirt.
“Jokes on you sir, these are just my baby teeth,” the boy gums, as a toothless grin stretches across his face.
I give him the finger.
He does it back.
Everyone in the cart follows suit. Then the doors slam shut.
Motherless mother fuckers.
It’s quite dark by the time I reach Daisy’s apartment. Her place is warm and inviting, tucked away near the end of a discreet dead end street. Her lights are dim and she’s answers the door in silky white pajamas. Her straight brown hair blooms from under her helmet and falls loosely over the left side of her face. The brighter light from the hall is caught in a mad twinkling dance in her eyes. In movie’s I have seen, this environment would inevitably lead to sex. In reality, if I’m lucky it leads to her falling asleep on my lap during a movie. Often it involves brainstorming take-over techniques or running through drills covering what to do if the parasites ever make the first move.
I sit on her couch and kick off my shoes.
“How was your day Timmy?” she asks.
“Um. It was—I dunno really. It—I dunno—how was yours?” the kid’s cryptic bloody smile is still burnt in my brain.
“It was nice. I got a lot of R and R. I slept in. Took a very relaxing bath. It was pleasant.” She sits on the couch next to me, stretching out like a cat.
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Mine was kind of stressful, as usual. I’m thinkin’ we could maybe run through some scenarios on how to fend off the infected in a closed in space. They’ve been eyeing me lately. I want to be prepared in case they ever decide to make a move.”
She rolls her eyes, “Yeah. That might be fun.”
“What? Do you have something else in mind?”
“Well. I don’t know. We could try talking. We could just hang out. I can get to know the guy under that helmet,” she taps my helmet playfully, “we can do anything but talk about parasites and just get to know each other.”
“Yeah. That could be fun. I just didn’t know what you wanted to do, and you know, you can never be too prepared.”
“I just don’t want life to pass us by. We keep fighting to stay human but we aren’t really living the human experience to the fullest,” she unbuckles her helmet, and pulls it off her head. She lets it roll to the floor.
“Woah, what are you doing?”
“Relax Tim. We’ll put them back on before we go to bed. It’ll fine.” She leans in close to me; her breath smells like red wine, “come on,” she leans in closer. She unbuckles my helmet.
I back away, placing both my hands firmly on my helmet, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust me?” she tugs down her pajama bottoms to reveal thin lacey red panties, “please tell me you trust me enough to take yours off at least,” she nods.
“God. Um. I dunno Daisy. I really—I really—God I really like you… I always have,” I swallow hard, “I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timothy. Please. Do this for me. My apartment is secure. Nothing can come in. At least take the chastity belt off. You know I’m safe.”
“Yeah, I know you are.” Is she? Is she? Is she safe? How can I know?
She leans her face in close to mine, her hair tickles my nose.
I pull the key from my pocket and fumble with the keychain. I shove the key in the lock.
Her eye balls move down then up again to my eyes. She nods again.
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timmy.” She puts her hand on the key. Turns it right and my belt clicks.
I take a deep breath, and out through my nose, “ummmm,” I nod, “I dunno.”
Daisy leans forward; she presses me back against the couch. She plants her lips on mine. The belt feels tighter around my waist. She unbuttons my pants. She pulls the belt off, revealing the green crossing red plaid on my boxers. The belt clanks on the floor. She sticks her tongue back in my mouth. I don’t really know what to do back so I just hold my mouth open and dab my tongue against hers.
“Shit wait.” I hold her off me with my hand, “I’m still not sure.”
“I don’t wanna die a virgin. Come on. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Stop depriving yourself from me. True love could never be faked this well.” She leans back into me pressing her breasts against me chest. I feel the tips of her nipples press against me through our shirts. She leans her mouth to my ear, she whispers, “come on. Please Tim. Accept me. Accept us. Let this happen. You won’t regret a moment of it,” her breath is warm on the cartilage of my ear.
The phone interrupts us. God exists. “Shit,” she sighs under her breath, “I’ll grab that.”
She walks across the room and picks up the phone.
“Hello.”----“Oh hi.”----------“Yeah. I mean—no I’m fine. What’s up?”-------------------------------------“Wow.”------“Wow”---------------------------------“Cool.”—“Yeah, we can come by tomorrow.”------“Cool.”--------------------“It’ll probably just be me and Tim.”--------“He missed the last meeting.”---“Yeah it was weird. He was supposed to facilitate.”----------------“I’ll try to get him on board too.”--------“I’ll pass on the news. That’s really great to hear.”--------“yup.”—yup, we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”-----She shoves the phone down.
“Sorry. Where were we?” her hair is all over the place.
“Who was that?”
Daisy looks annoyed, “it was Dr. Lorenzo. He says he’s got good news.”
“Really? What? Has he found something?”
“He didn’t say. He wants us to come to his office tomorrow morning to tell us in person.”
Dr. Bobo Lorenzo is one of the greatest scientists of our time. By greatest of our time, I mean greatest human one living now. He’s a huge supporter of the Burning Embers but only occasional participant. The eccentric doctor would call occasionally to ask how it was going or to say he was making leeway in finding the parasites’ weakness. So far he hadn’t showed much evidence of this leeway, but desperate times call for desperate…I’m going to go with beggars can’t be choosers, actually…or you need more than one of each animal on the ark to repopulate the earth. Never mind, forget it all. These days funding is hard to come by for a conscientiously objecting formally respected human. He used to teach biochemistry and miscellaneous science classes at the University of Washington. He still works, teaching chemistry 101 to parasites at a community college. He no longer gets funding from the government, as any study in disease prevention and treatment as been made void. This means short cuts of course, and limits. Now he does research out of pocket, since he always did science out of love, not money.
Daisy and I didn’t make it off the benches that night. The risks outweighed the benefits.
Three
“It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less”
–George Bernard Shaw
We visit Dr. Bobo Lorenzo in his office atop the second largest building in town. It
towers over all the smaller buildings in the bland corporate office district of town.
It was one of those giant empty buildings that were more and more common by the day. We walk through the lobby, passing For Lease signs and a giant billboard that says “This could be your billboard! Just call the number below.”
We make it to the elevator. Daisy and I tap our toes in nervous human apprehension, our burnt out blurry faces reflecting back at us, as if to say, “what this time?”
I smile at her. She smiles back. I think she may be frustrated with me.
“What crazy plan do you think Dr. Bobo’s cooked up this time?”
“Dunno. Any plan would be awesome,” the elevator opens, “I will take anything right now…just some direction would be great,” we step in.
“He knows a lot about germs and parasites and stuff. I have faith in the guy. I think” Daisy says.
We make it to his office and knock on his door. We hear a muffled response and go in. Dr. Lorenzo is arched over a half eaten pizza on his desk, an extra-large container of ranch in hand. He tips it over one of the slices, dotted white sauce drowns the target meat lovers. He slams the ranch down on the table, picks up the slice by the crust and shoves it in his mouth before it can collapse from the weight of its condiments. He can do this horrendous task because he has a huge mouth. The man stands six foot six and is as wide as a linebacker. His grey hair recedes far on his large round forehead into grey scraggily hair tied back into a pony tail. His hips are wider than his shoulders, and when he stands, he resembles an old smelly Treadle Dee with a PhD.
“I’m so glad you kids could make it out here!” he stands and leans down to give Daisy a hug with one arm, her helmet presses awkwardly into his moist chess. He shakes my hand firmly, “how’s resistance treating you? You look like shit.”
“It isn’t easy.” I sigh.
“Naw, I couldn’t imagine it would be. Sit. Relax. Place is kind of messy I know. Make yourself comfortable, sit on anything that doesn’t look breakable. Do any of you kids want a slice of pizza? Meat-supreme.”
“No thanks, sort of trying to watch my weight.” Says Daisy.
“Nonsense. You guys should enjoy this crap while you can. I should have enjoyed it while I still could. Besides, eating poorly is we a freedom still have to enjoy, not because it makes sense but because it’s the right thing to do,” Lorenzo rants.
“So…”I start, as I make a giant stack of textbooks my chair, “what’s this news you were so excited that you could only tell us in person?”
“I could just tell you. But that would be too easy.”
“Oh my God please. Please just spit it out. The suspense is fuckin’ killing me.”
“Alright…What’s tiny and invisible and affects everyone and everything?”
“Baby evil spirits?” I joke.
“Close, but no cigar. ”
“What is bacteria, for…what’s the value of life going for these days?” Daisy chimes in.
“That’s right Daisy!” his excitement almost made it worth the wait, “I’d give you a gold star, but I am…out actually. If I wrote ‘good job’ on a piece of painters’ tape, would that suffice?”
I can never tell when he’s taking jokes too far or being dead serious.
“I thought the parasite pretty much fended off any bacteria or virus that entered their host.”
“True. Most of the time.”
“I’ve discovered a bacteria that, after infecting its host, rapidly destroys it. It infects, spreads, kills, than dies off with its host.”
“Won’t that kill the person to?”
“Eventually, yes. But, see. The bacteria spreads throughout the body, systematically killing everything. It kills off the parasite before it kills of the person. We’d have several weeks to give the antidote to people, curing them of the disease we gave them, and as they get better they come out parasite free.”
“Wow. Like this actually sounds crazy enough to work. Um—and there’s no chance this plan might backfire?”
“Not backfire…ricochet maybe. The difference between this bacteria and the parasite is it doesn’t maintain life it destroys. It doesn’t really coexist as much as it spreads and destroys. After we release the bacteria, it would be impossible to control it’s evolutionary path from there. There’s really no sure-fire way to know it won’t mutate and become immune to my antidote. And in this situation, we could kill a lot of innocent people.”
“Sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm Tim, but if we wipe out mankind we break the chicken.”
“Well why did you tell us all this then? I don’t need more people adding blood to my eventual aneurism.”
“I am not saying we shouldn’t do this. I’m simply noting that we must weigh out all the potential positive and negative outcomes before we dive into this balls first. “
“Well, doctor, how would we go about releasing this bacterium?”
Four.
“In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.” –Fydor Dostoyevsy
We arrive at Jack’s place and butterflies are smacking the roof of my stomach. The
powder from their wings is mixing with my stomach contents. We walk up the stairs to his front door. His keys hang from the key hole. A green T-Rex with a sombrero and a shirt that says Mexico clutches for dear life to Jack’s abandoned key ring. The door is slightly ajar. It’s dark. There are voices coming from inside. I don’t like this.
“Should we go in?” I ask Daisy.
“Of course.” She says, as she unlatches her gun from her chest holster.
Her bulky black helmet and cargo pants make her .22 snub-nose look as threatening as a puppy in a piranha tank.
I nudge the door open.
The voices are those of R.E.M singing “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
There was a strong odor hanging in the air. It was strong enough to put a bad taste in my mouth.
“God,” Daisy whispers, “What in god’s name is that?”
One of my butterflies escapes and I swallow him before he can give away our presence.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered crippled.
The room was cast in an eerie light from the moonlight that shown though the sky light. The dirty dishes, the trash, the clothes, the miscellaneous, they all glowed.
Uh oh overflow. Population. Common food. But it’ll do.
“Where do you think Jack is?”
Save yourself. Serve yourself.
I peer around, nostrils flaring. I step lightly towards the kitchen. “This isn’t right though.”
I look at the stove. It’s turned to bake and 400 degrees. Deep smoke seeps out the sides of the closed door. I turn it off, fanning the smoke with my hands.
“That solves mystery one.”
Daisy flicks on the light with her gun. A dark black smoke screen blocks the sky light in here. The sink is full of crusted over dishes, soaking in greasy water with islands of unidentifiable food scraps.
An empty half-gallon of Ron Rio floats half submerged in the wreckage.
The revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
Patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
Psyched
I open the fridge. There are three Coronas lying on the top shelf next to half a molding lime. I grab two and shut the fridge.
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
I pop the cap off with my chastity belt and pass it to Daisy.
“How romantic.” She smiles, tucking her gun back in its holster.
“Cheers,” I tap my bottle against hers. We leave the odor of the kitchen for the lesser odors of the living room.
Offer me alternatives and I decline.
“I wonder where Jack’s run off to.” I think out loud as I swig the Corona.
Jack’s couch is piled up with blankets and clothes, but I sit on it anyways. All of a sudden the pile groans and kicks.
I jump off. “Shit.”
Skinny legs kick off blankets and clothes. The pile’s arms shield its eyes from the light. “Oh what the fuckkk,” it groans, “just let yourselves in dick-bags?”
“Jack!”
“It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…it's time I had some
time alone,” Jack trails off with the last few lines. He sits up, rubbing his eyes.
“Damn it Jack, you scared the hell out of us! Your keys were in the door.—shit, why aren’t you wearing your helmet?” I say.
His stringy black hair sticks out both sides a black beanie. He pulls it off revealing headphones. “I got these, relax.”
“Put a helmet on. Please tell me you’re protected down there.”
He kicks off the last blanket. All he has is shorts on. The crotch of his shorts are soaking wet. “No. I pissed myself tryin’ to get ‘em off in time.—FUCK!”
“It’s okay. It happens to the best of us,” Daisy reassures.
“No. I’m sick of this. I’m done.”
“Done with what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m done with running. I don’t care anymore.”
“No. Don’t say that. The doctor has good news! We’ve got a way to kill the parasite!”
“It’s bullshhhitt. No. Like all of it. This ember—” he points both of his thumbs at his chest, “this ember is burning out. I’m done fighting.”
“No Jack. You’re drunk. You don’t know what you are saying. We really need your help.”
“Alcohol inspires truth. Pure ugly truth.”
“What would I have to do? I’m not expressing interest I’m just prodding.” Jack says, leaning back, “you know those are the last two Coronas ever produced? Did you stop to think about that before you took ‘em?”
“I’m sorry, man. There’s one left. I’ll hit you back, I swear. The doctor’s been making moonshine… Ah, anyways, Dr. Lorenzo’s discovered a bacteria that can wipe the parasites from the face of the Earth.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“YES! All we would have to do is release it into the water supply and it will spread from there. I’m not sure how we’ll get it to other parts of the world yet…but I’m sure we can have our people elsewhere contaminate their water sources too.”
“And this—this bacteria only kills the parasites?”
“Well…yes, yes of course it does.”
“You’re a shitty liar Tim,” Daisy scoots closer to Jack, “No Jack. There are risks involved. We aren’t going to whitewash the truth.”
“And those are?” Jack asks.
“There is a small—a very small—practically microscopic chance the bacteria could wipe out the human race too.”
Jack stares off for a moment. Either in deep reflection or deep recession.
“So there isn’t anything bad that could come of this?” he slurs forth.
“Well, no, that’s not really what I was implying. We could very well be killed.”
“So…either we die or everyone dies? All or nothing, right?”
“No. Either we all die or the parasites die.”
“I am so down! Count me in.”
“Really? This isn’t just the alcohol talking right?”
“Are you tryin’ to change my mind? I told you, alcohol doesn’t lie. I am down. I am here for you!” he pauses, “you may just have to remind me in the morning.”
Five
“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant” -Seneca
“Everything we do now is a cause of a cause of a cause. Nothing is done that doesn’t comply with the “will” of “god” as you may feel or not feel his presence. Nothing is done out of free will. Free will is an illusion. The only act of free will is thinking you have free will. The parasite is just a material representation of something that always was.” My father says.
“But I may choose to do otherwise. I may choose to stay human. I may fight for my humanity.”
“But that choice is still caused. It is caused by your refusal to be like everyone around you.”
“All these words I say come from me out of my own will to speak them.”
“But they are a reaction to what I am saying and what I am saying comes from your own mind which came from the me you think you are talking about.”
Shit. I must have taken a pretty good blow to my head. I wake up. It was just a dream.
As I come into the room, bright light pierces thought my eyelids and all I see is red. I try to open my eyelids. They are crusted close. I reach my hands towards my face to pry my crusted lids open and my left eye feels fabric brush it. I try to move the fingers on my left hand, nothing. Just crushing pain but no movement. They must be paralyzed. I rub the crust from my eyes with my right hand. Little dry crunchies fall down my hospital gown. So I’m in a hospital. Why?
My eyes open. The light burns. I squint. My whole face burns from the bright lights. There’s an ivy stuck in my vein.
FUCKFUCKFUCK FUCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCCCKkkkk.
I look down at my hands. My left hand is missing. Mostly. All that is left is a fingernail-less thumb and the knuckle of my pointer finger. My left hand is a thick layer of gauze held in place by strands of medical tape. Screams escape my mouth. The butterflies lay helplessly in the pit of my stomach. Their wings too burnt to fly. I scream at the top of my lungs. For god. For Daisy. For a parasite. I don’t care. I accept my fate. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Where is my belt? Where is my helmet? I am exposed. I’m just in a gown. Am I infected? I’m in their hospital. Have they gotten to me yet? I scream for help. Help from whom? Fuck. I have to get out of here. I crawl towards the floor. Something is holding me back. The ivy in my vein. The fuckin’ ivy with the alien juice. I collapse off the bed yanking the ivy from my arm. I contact the floor solidly. I brace with my left nub and it sends pain shooting up to my shoulder. My blood gushes purple-red on my hospital gown. It spurts out with the beat of my heart. The red zig-zags the gauze. I try to crawl but I only flail around helplessly.
I hear the door swoosh open. The burnt up butterflies make it to the top of my mouth and their guts pollute the bloody mess. My eyes. Get hea
“Timothy? Wake up! Timothy?” I hear Daisy’s sweet voice.
I moan still half asleep.
“Tim. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”
My eyes are still half closed but I say: “Thank god. Thank god that was all a nightmare.”
“Woa, buddy. Glad what was a nightmare?”
When I open my eyes tears start pouring down my face.
“Are you going to calm down? I had the nurse give you some morphine so you don’t start gushing blood all over the place again. Such a baby.”
“A baby? My left hand is gone!”
I look at Daisy. She isn’t protected by her helmet.
“Daisy?”
“Yes Tim.”
“Why aren’t you wearing protection?”
“Protection? Protection from what? I think your still a little delirious from your coma.”
“I was in a coma?”
“You don’t remember anything about the accident do you?”
“What accident? What are you talking about? I obviously don’t. I thought…I thought parasites were taking over the world.”
“What are you talking about? I’m sorry. Maybe all the sci-fi movies I’ve been playing while I was waiting by your side have messed with your dreams?”
“Oh my god. My hands blown off. But fuck it. At least aliens haven’t taken over the world. Oh my god. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Sorry Tim. I was just, what would you call it, fucking with you. Everyone else was telling me it would be easy to pull one on the last man on earth. I’m sorry. Not really. But that’s customary right? To say you’re sorry for jokes that go too far.”
“WHAT?”
“That was kind of in poor taste I know. It’s just—you just woke up, your woozy, there’s a lapse in your memory, it seemed easy to play a joke on you. We’ve all been infected. The Burning Embers are all infected. Most of us have been for some time. Your group got infiltrated in the first year. We finally just got stubborn old Bill Buckley and Jack kind of did himself in.”
“What? What? What the fuck? No. No.—”
“Saying things in threes is going to help you. Relax. We haven’t infected you.”
“So you guys have been just mocking me this whole time?”
“No. I mean, some of the others have been. But I come from a semi compassionate line of parasites. I’ve just been taking notes. We don’t want to just wipe every human off the planet now. It kind of just happened. We still want to observe. I want see what makes your species tick.”
“So this whole time, you’ve just been faking?”
“That depends on how you define ‘faking.’ Humans put on masks around each other all the time.”
“But. But. But I spied on you. I spied on all of you while you were all by yourself. And you still played music. You talked to yourself. Things people do when they are alone, not things parasites do by themselves.”
“While your little plan to spy on us while we were acting natural was a good idea, I guess, every time you suspected someone you tried to get everyone but the person you were spying on to go with you…which doesn’t work when we’re all in on it.”
“Wait? What about Doctor Lorenzo? Is he not really a scientist? What? I am so confused.”
“Of course he’s a scientist. He’s just infected too. We wanted to put you through this final test, to see what you would do. I was a little surprised you chose the option that had a good chance of wiping out all human kind.”
“A chance…just a chance.”
“Saying there is just a chance is just your method of coping with your poor decision. You would risk genocide of the whole human race just for the half-chance you might kill their operators? You humans have squandered this planet and here you are, one against the world, taking any opportunity to fight for the human right to do so? Even if it kills all the humans? Jesus. I can’t believe one of you used to run this country. I can’t believe you guys used to run this planet for that matter. Wow, you are lucky we landed when we did.” Daisy peers out the window, “this place is wonderful.”
“WE WERE HERE FIRST!” I yell though my teeth.
“Here first? Here first…what does that mean? There were single celled organisms, bacteria, algae, dinosaurs, mammals—all of which came before you. Strange—even with your elementary knowledge of evolutionary history, you should be able to notice humans came last.”
“We were here before you.”
“You keep saying ‘we’ which is weird because I only see one of you. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this primal ‘we were here first’ argument. Your species wiped out species that were here much longer than you, for much more selfish temporary pursuits. What, you humans wanted sports cars, lipstick, and rotating wardrobes, polished rocks..all at the cost of the crawling things that had lived sustainably for years before their homes were paved over or they were soaked in arsenic so people could adorn themselves in gold. I just—can’t even begin how many ways you fucked up.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do those things. We can clean up our act, just give us a chance.”
“You know what the number one area of job growth in this new economic era is?”
“What?” I sniff. I’m crying uncontrollably now. The pain of acceptance sets in hard.
“Restoration.”
“What?”
“Repair. We have a lot of good parasites out busting their asses trying to fix all the stuff you guys messed up. Cockroaches are better suited for this planet than you are. You guys just have those goddamn opposable thumbs and brains—always making things and breaking things.” She pauses to wriggle her thumbs in my face, “they are fun though.”
“Um,” I stop and grimace at the sight of my nub, “what’s going to happen to me?”
“Well. That’s kind of a broad question. I’m not “God’” she does air quotes, “or ‘Buddha.’ But I guess Timothy; I’ll do my best to answer that. I guess you will continue to eat. And sleep. And empty your bowels and bladder. Then you’ll grow old and die, probably a good amount of time before me…Well, I should probably get out of your hair. You probably have one handed things to do with your friends and stuff. Don’t want to get in the way of all that fun stuff. We should talk again, though. I know I come off a little hostile, but I do enjoy talking to you. You have interesting ideas about the world. Alright. I’m going to get out of here, but I’ll see you around,” She starts walking towards the door.
“Wait.” She stops.
She looks at me, “Yes?”
“I—I love you Daisy.”
She leans down and pinches my cheek. “You’re just so cute. You little jokester you.”
She leaves the room.
FIN
And it is blatantly a sci-fi short story. Well, only because there are aliens sprinkled though out the story. But it is done so casually,so frequant and haphazardlessly (its a word now, deal with it) it could all be true and you wouldn't know it until you were the last freethinking being on the planet...if you are now.
I only sort of enjoyed writing this. Hope you enjoy it.
…ONE
Denial is just a river in Egypt.
People barely noticed as the aliens had taken over the world. The economic collapse that came six months after infection almost gave it away. People hadn’t grasped how much our economy depended on ruthless thoughtless buying. The newly practical consumer market was immune to advertising, impulse buys, and unhealthy life styles. The economy was devastated by this. In the following months, cigarette and alcohol companies collapsed, along with Hollywood, fast food, pornography, and most forms of bought entertainment.
I used to hate Bill Buckley. Maybe not hate, but violently disapproved of at best. He was the typical moderate leaning right talk-show host on primetime that people loved because he appealed to their simple ignorant ethnocentric minds. He did so proudly and more so, loudly. He was prone to having opponent’s mics shut off and “accidently” spilling hot coffee in their laps. I always thought it was obvious when someone did something on purpose when they habitually made the same mistakes time and time again. Now he was the only human on television, and for that, I would follow him to hell and back. There were only three channels and he had an hour segment a day on one of them. The parasites have no interest in shallow and pointless television shows—I assume Bill Buckley’s program survived because of their hanging curiosity about the species they had come to infest.
He was the front-runner of a pro-human group. Well, it wasn’t as much a group as a loose association of people with one thing in common. Humanity. He led a group of protesters once a week. They were a goofy bunch, with their oversized helmets or earmuffs and chastity belts. The belts were more of a statement than an actual safety measure. The goofy bunch would parade around town with signs like:
“Freedom not peace”
“Love is the question”
“No more tapeworms in the Whitehouse!”
“Save the economy, kill an alien.”
“We were here first.”
And the less catchy
“Earth first! We’ll follow the parasite scum to their next planet and kill what’s left of them later.”
As time went on his numbers shrunk. This is when I invited him to the group I had started. It’s called the Burning Embers, because it’s made up of the last burning embers of humankind. Semi corny, I know, but I did start it when I was just 13. I started the club with some kids around my neighborhood after suspected my parents of being infected (they turned out to be the first).
It was smooth sailing for a short while. That was before the parasite learned to pass woman to man and before they began maturing and crawling out of people. They would leave their eggs in a host and crawl out and nonchalantly infect people as they slept. For the first few months people were hearing things about the alien parasites. For a while, the situation never really set in. Talk-shows did interviews with the infected and it always came out a joke by the end of the day. Saturday Night Live made skits about it. Will Farrel had a skit that involved him being a parasite that didn’t fit in with parasites or people. He was always making social faux pas and the like. For some reason, being an outcast was the punch line of the joke. It was later discovered that he had been infected the whole time and was just spreading propaganda to his mind-numbed audience. After news of peace in the Congo broke out, people began to ask questions. Soon after that, armies around the world were simply refusing to fire their weapons. That’s when the news started taking it seriously. Soon after that, tape was released that showed one of the parasites crawling into someone’s head. Warnings went out telling people to weather proof their house and seal all openings at night. Anything to prevent night invasion. But it was only a month before the story got over-killed. And it wasn’t long until the news stations and their anchors themselves became infected. The hollow shells of news men and women would confirm:
The threat is over.
An elaborate hoax.
An Orson Wells-esk test of 21 century human gullibility.
The humans still following the news laughed. The infected laughed and said “gotcha”. Gorilla Theater nothing more. Aliens don’t exist. Impossible. The news excused it as a fad and later mass hysteria. How they excused it as a fad eludes me still.
The end of the human race was very anti-climatic. There were no explosions. There wasn’t a show down. If it had been a movie, it would have broken even in theatres at best. Humanity, as you know it, slowly crept out of existence, just as it had crept in.
I, Timothy Harker, am one of about forty thousand identified uninfected persons left on this planet. That’s what I hear anyways. We have no exact estimate of course, as there is no known way to test for infection without love samples or cutting open someone’s brain. Both methods happen to be too invasive for the likes of any rational person. There is no way to safely advertise our presence either, since these parasites can mimic behavior better than most people can. I have faith though, that humans shall overcome. We’ve overcome everything else we’ve been faced with. I will brush peace and equality aside, in the name of freedom.
About a decade later…
Two.
“Anger is the most raw and pure emotion and with that the simplest and most destructive.”
“Hi. My name is Jack, you all know that. I will be today’s facilitator for the 243th meeting of the Burning Embers,” Jack pounds the wooden gavel on his helmet twice, “…Sooooo. On today’s agenda: We are fucked. Why are we fighting still? Who cares? And the parasites have won. Does anyone have any pressing issues to add to today’s agenda?”
There were some inappropriate snickers.
“ Yeah, I do,” Bill speaks up, “can you please add: I am sick of healthy food and I need to get laid…Um, and what happened to cataloging seasons of nineties TV shows? One more episode of MASH and I’m going Colonial Klinger on all of you.”
“Well Bill. If you would leave me collateral, I can let you borrow some of my DVDs, but, as they are all I have left from the world, I am hesitant to lend them out. And women, well, you will have to take it up with Daisy or Sarah, but it doesn’t seem like they even take their chastity belts off to shit so GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.”
“Hey fuck you Jack! I got a fine piece of ass under this belt,” Sarah yells.
“Well, I have no way of knowing what’s under that foot of fucking metal! Jesus
Christ,”Jack buries his head in his hands, “I haven’t got my tip wet in nine fuckin’ years. I don’t even remember what pussy smells like.”
“Will you guys please stop thinking of yourselves?” I finally say. “We’re in the middle of
a war in case you all forgot. We’re all that’s left and here you guys are fighting about having sex and eating greasy food? We should be strategizing.”
“And how do you believe we should go about that Timmy boy?” asks Jack, “our great
blind visionary?”
“I agree with you Tim. I do.” Says Bill, “but they took the whole armed forces in two
months. They took most of the human race in just a few years. We’re all that’s left.”
“It looks pretty impossible Timothy,” Sarah chimes in. The opinion-less crab bag.
“I know you. I’ve known you for six years now. You are a rebel, Tim. You rebel against the majority, whether they are in the right or not, almost for the sake of being miserable all the time. If everyone was like you, you would turn into your exact opposite, because you, for some sick, twisted broken reason, love to loath life.” Daisy says.
“That’s horse shit. You know that’s horse shit. I have always fought for freedom at all costs. I just never knew it would be taken like this. I am pissed off all the time because I seem to be the only person paying attention to the situation at hand,” I yell.
“I will always stand with you, but to fight next to you would be suicide.” Daisy’s eyes are welting up.
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” I hope people think I made this quote up.
“YES BROTHER! Well said.” Bill shouts.
“That expression doesn’t even apply here! WE are free. No one has taken our freedom away. It’s everyone else who is long gone. All we can do now is live out our lives, keep our helmets on and our chastity belts tight and we will never be infected.” Daisy says.
“Yeah dude, for serious. It took them a few years to take over, and they spread easy. We have no way to kill the parasite without killing the person too; we have no way to spread. We’re really at this point of no return here.” Jack says, more politely this time.
“Okay. Okay. Okay roll with me for a second,” I pause, fill my lungs with oxygen, “Thinking is the road to change. Speaking is the vehicle. Just sitting around this table, speaking of revolution, infects the group consciousness of the whole. We are planting the seeds.”
“Not to encourage this retarded metaphor, but our car ain’t got any gas.” Jack mouths, “We all hear about the successful revolutions against oppression, but that isn’t most of ‘em. That isn’t even half of ‘em. Most revolutions end up with death and torture and alienation, when all along they could have just made the best with what they were given. Sometimes, you can only play with the cards you’ve been dealt.”
“We have all the hope and ambition we need to win this,” I say.
“We have enough ambition to coast-- to fuckin’ coast! We’re coasting on neutral and the second we hit a hill, our vehicle will back over us and all our hopes and ambitions will just be a greasy bloody stain on the contently infected asphalt.”
I take all my anger. All my hatred and annoyance. And bury it in the deepest furthest corner of my mind. I breath in deeply though my mouth, out through my nostrils.
The next day…
I’m on the subway heading towards Daisy’s place. It’s filled with parasite scum. Their logo-less clothing and bare-minimum haircuts rob the shells they ride of what made each of them unique. They all stare blankly at me because they know. They know I don’t belong. A human would know because of my helmet and my bulging pants and my emotions. They just know. I hate them with every untainted pint of blood in my body. I would like nothing more than to punt their heads off their necks like golf balls. Gold balls filled with blood and brains and parasites. My stop is soon, it seems to take forever. I wouldn’t mind burning them alive and throwing their charred remains under an approaching train. The train part would be mostly for show, as the flame would surely kill them. A pale little boy with a bowl-cut (the typical style of the age group) stares up at me. A smile stretches across his face. A mocking copied emotion. I hold back anger-inspired tears.
“Forget your bicycle back at the station, sir?” The boy asks.
I just glare. The subway screeches to a halt at my stop. I take a step forward and butt my helmet into his face with all my force. He belts forward onto his knees, clutching his face. A geyser of dark red syrup and teeth erupt from his mouth through his open hands. He sways as he recovers from the disorientation. The intercom says: “Stuart Mill Station, please exit to your right.” The door slides open and make to the door quickly. I look back and the kid is standing already, blood runs down his mouth and is drenches his t-shirt.
“Jokes on you sir, these are just my baby teeth,” the boy gums, as a toothless grin stretches across his face.
I give him the finger.
He does it back.
Everyone in the cart follows suit. Then the doors slam shut.
Motherless mother fuckers.
It’s quite dark by the time I reach Daisy’s apartment. Her place is warm and inviting, tucked away near the end of a discreet dead end street. Her lights are dim and she’s answers the door in silky white pajamas. Her straight brown hair blooms from under her helmet and falls loosely over the left side of her face. The brighter light from the hall is caught in a mad twinkling dance in her eyes. In movie’s I have seen, this environment would inevitably lead to sex. In reality, if I’m lucky it leads to her falling asleep on my lap during a movie. Often it involves brainstorming take-over techniques or running through drills covering what to do if the parasites ever make the first move.
I sit on her couch and kick off my shoes.
“How was your day Timmy?” she asks.
“Um. It was—I dunno really. It—I dunno—how was yours?” the kid’s cryptic bloody smile is still burnt in my brain.
“It was nice. I got a lot of R and R. I slept in. Took a very relaxing bath. It was pleasant.” She sits on the couch next to me, stretching out like a cat.
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Mine was kind of stressful, as usual. I’m thinkin’ we could maybe run through some scenarios on how to fend off the infected in a closed in space. They’ve been eyeing me lately. I want to be prepared in case they ever decide to make a move.”
She rolls her eyes, “Yeah. That might be fun.”
“What? Do you have something else in mind?”
“Well. I don’t know. We could try talking. We could just hang out. I can get to know the guy under that helmet,” she taps my helmet playfully, “we can do anything but talk about parasites and just get to know each other.”
“Yeah. That could be fun. I just didn’t know what you wanted to do, and you know, you can never be too prepared.”
“I just don’t want life to pass us by. We keep fighting to stay human but we aren’t really living the human experience to the fullest,” she unbuckles her helmet, and pulls it off her head. She lets it roll to the floor.
“Woah, what are you doing?”
“Relax Tim. We’ll put them back on before we go to bed. It’ll fine.” She leans in close to me; her breath smells like red wine, “come on,” she leans in closer. She unbuckles my helmet.
I back away, placing both my hands firmly on my helmet, “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust me?” she tugs down her pajama bottoms to reveal thin lacey red panties, “please tell me you trust me enough to take yours off at least,” she nods.
“God. Um. I dunno Daisy. I really—I really—God I really like you… I always have,” I swallow hard, “I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timothy. Please. Do this for me. My apartment is secure. Nothing can come in. At least take the chastity belt off. You know I’m safe.”
“Yeah, I know you are.” Is she? Is she? Is she safe? How can I know?
She leans her face in close to mine, her hair tickles my nose.
I pull the key from my pocket and fumble with the keychain. I shove the key in the lock.
Her eye balls move down then up again to my eyes. She nods again.
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on Timmy.” She puts her hand on the key. Turns it right and my belt clicks.
I take a deep breath, and out through my nose, “ummmm,” I nod, “I dunno.”
Daisy leans forward; she presses me back against the couch. She plants her lips on mine. The belt feels tighter around my waist. She unbuttons my pants. She pulls the belt off, revealing the green crossing red plaid on my boxers. The belt clanks on the floor. She sticks her tongue back in my mouth. I don’t really know what to do back so I just hold my mouth open and dab my tongue against hers.
“Shit wait.” I hold her off me with my hand, “I’m still not sure.”
“I don’t wanna die a virgin. Come on. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Stop depriving yourself from me. True love could never be faked this well.” She leans back into me pressing her breasts against me chest. I feel the tips of her nipples press against me through our shirts. She leans her mouth to my ear, she whispers, “come on. Please Tim. Accept me. Accept us. Let this happen. You won’t regret a moment of it,” her breath is warm on the cartilage of my ear.
The phone interrupts us. God exists. “Shit,” she sighs under her breath, “I’ll grab that.”
She walks across the room and picks up the phone.
“Hello.”----“Oh hi.”----------“Yeah. I mean—no I’m fine. What’s up?”-------------------------------------“Wow.”------“Wow”---------------------------------“Cool.”—“Yeah, we can come by tomorrow.”------“Cool.”--------------------“It’ll probably just be me and Tim.”--------“He missed the last meeting.”---“Yeah it was weird. He was supposed to facilitate.”----------------“I’ll try to get him on board too.”--------“I’ll pass on the news. That’s really great to hear.”--------“yup.”—yup, we’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”-----She shoves the phone down.
“Sorry. Where were we?” her hair is all over the place.
“Who was that?”
Daisy looks annoyed, “it was Dr. Lorenzo. He says he’s got good news.”
“Really? What? Has he found something?”
“He didn’t say. He wants us to come to his office tomorrow morning to tell us in person.”
Dr. Bobo Lorenzo is one of the greatest scientists of our time. By greatest of our time, I mean greatest human one living now. He’s a huge supporter of the Burning Embers but only occasional participant. The eccentric doctor would call occasionally to ask how it was going or to say he was making leeway in finding the parasites’ weakness. So far he hadn’t showed much evidence of this leeway, but desperate times call for desperate…I’m going to go with beggars can’t be choosers, actually…or you need more than one of each animal on the ark to repopulate the earth. Never mind, forget it all. These days funding is hard to come by for a conscientiously objecting formally respected human. He used to teach biochemistry and miscellaneous science classes at the University of Washington. He still works, teaching chemistry 101 to parasites at a community college. He no longer gets funding from the government, as any study in disease prevention and treatment as been made void. This means short cuts of course, and limits. Now he does research out of pocket, since he always did science out of love, not money.
Daisy and I didn’t make it off the benches that night. The risks outweighed the benefits.
Three
“It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less”
–George Bernard Shaw
We visit Dr. Bobo Lorenzo in his office atop the second largest building in town. It
towers over all the smaller buildings in the bland corporate office district of town.
It was one of those giant empty buildings that were more and more common by the day. We walk through the lobby, passing For Lease signs and a giant billboard that says “This could be your billboard! Just call the number below.”
We make it to the elevator. Daisy and I tap our toes in nervous human apprehension, our burnt out blurry faces reflecting back at us, as if to say, “what this time?”
I smile at her. She smiles back. I think she may be frustrated with me.
“What crazy plan do you think Dr. Bobo’s cooked up this time?”
“Dunno. Any plan would be awesome,” the elevator opens, “I will take anything right now…just some direction would be great,” we step in.
“He knows a lot about germs and parasites and stuff. I have faith in the guy. I think” Daisy says.
We make it to his office and knock on his door. We hear a muffled response and go in. Dr. Lorenzo is arched over a half eaten pizza on his desk, an extra-large container of ranch in hand. He tips it over one of the slices, dotted white sauce drowns the target meat lovers. He slams the ranch down on the table, picks up the slice by the crust and shoves it in his mouth before it can collapse from the weight of its condiments. He can do this horrendous task because he has a huge mouth. The man stands six foot six and is as wide as a linebacker. His grey hair recedes far on his large round forehead into grey scraggily hair tied back into a pony tail. His hips are wider than his shoulders, and when he stands, he resembles an old smelly Treadle Dee with a PhD.
“I’m so glad you kids could make it out here!” he stands and leans down to give Daisy a hug with one arm, her helmet presses awkwardly into his moist chess. He shakes my hand firmly, “how’s resistance treating you? You look like shit.”
“It isn’t easy.” I sigh.
“Naw, I couldn’t imagine it would be. Sit. Relax. Place is kind of messy I know. Make yourself comfortable, sit on anything that doesn’t look breakable. Do any of you kids want a slice of pizza? Meat-supreme.”
“No thanks, sort of trying to watch my weight.” Says Daisy.
“Nonsense. You guys should enjoy this crap while you can. I should have enjoyed it while I still could. Besides, eating poorly is we a freedom still have to enjoy, not because it makes sense but because it’s the right thing to do,” Lorenzo rants.
“So…”I start, as I make a giant stack of textbooks my chair, “what’s this news you were so excited that you could only tell us in person?”
“I could just tell you. But that would be too easy.”
“Oh my God please. Please just spit it out. The suspense is fuckin’ killing me.”
“Alright…What’s tiny and invisible and affects everyone and everything?”
“Baby evil spirits?” I joke.
“Close, but no cigar. ”
“What is bacteria, for…what’s the value of life going for these days?” Daisy chimes in.
“That’s right Daisy!” his excitement almost made it worth the wait, “I’d give you a gold star, but I am…out actually. If I wrote ‘good job’ on a piece of painters’ tape, would that suffice?”
I can never tell when he’s taking jokes too far or being dead serious.
“I thought the parasite pretty much fended off any bacteria or virus that entered their host.”
“True. Most of the time.”
“I’ve discovered a bacteria that, after infecting its host, rapidly destroys it. It infects, spreads, kills, than dies off with its host.”
“Won’t that kill the person to?”
“Eventually, yes. But, see. The bacteria spreads throughout the body, systematically killing everything. It kills off the parasite before it kills of the person. We’d have several weeks to give the antidote to people, curing them of the disease we gave them, and as they get better they come out parasite free.”
“Wow. Like this actually sounds crazy enough to work. Um—and there’s no chance this plan might backfire?”
“Not backfire…ricochet maybe. The difference between this bacteria and the parasite is it doesn’t maintain life it destroys. It doesn’t really coexist as much as it spreads and destroys. After we release the bacteria, it would be impossible to control it’s evolutionary path from there. There’s really no sure-fire way to know it won’t mutate and become immune to my antidote. And in this situation, we could kill a lot of innocent people.”
“Sometimes you have to break some eggs to make an omelet.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm Tim, but if we wipe out mankind we break the chicken.”
“Well why did you tell us all this then? I don’t need more people adding blood to my eventual aneurism.”
“I am not saying we shouldn’t do this. I’m simply noting that we must weigh out all the potential positive and negative outcomes before we dive into this balls first. “
“Well, doctor, how would we go about releasing this bacterium?”
Four.
“In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.” –Fydor Dostoyevsy
We arrive at Jack’s place and butterflies are smacking the roof of my stomach. The
powder from their wings is mixing with my stomach contents. We walk up the stairs to his front door. His keys hang from the key hole. A green T-Rex with a sombrero and a shirt that says Mexico clutches for dear life to Jack’s abandoned key ring. The door is slightly ajar. It’s dark. There are voices coming from inside. I don’t like this.
“Should we go in?” I ask Daisy.
“Of course.” She says, as she unlatches her gun from her chest holster.
Her bulky black helmet and cargo pants make her .22 snub-nose look as threatening as a puppy in a piranha tank.
I nudge the door open.
The voices are those of R.E.M singing “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”
There was a strong odor hanging in the air. It was strong enough to put a bad taste in my mouth.
“God,” Daisy whispers, “What in god’s name is that?”
One of my butterflies escapes and I swallow him before he can give away our presence.
Team by team reporters baffled, trumped, tethered crippled.
The room was cast in an eerie light from the moonlight that shown though the sky light. The dirty dishes, the trash, the clothes, the miscellaneous, they all glowed.
Uh oh overflow. Population. Common food. But it’ll do.
“Where do you think Jack is?”
Save yourself. Serve yourself.
I peer around, nostrils flaring. I step lightly towards the kitchen. “This isn’t right though.”
I look at the stove. It’s turned to bake and 400 degrees. Deep smoke seeps out the sides of the closed door. I turn it off, fanning the smoke with my hands.
“That solves mystery one.”
Daisy flicks on the light with her gun. A dark black smoke screen blocks the sky light in here. The sink is full of crusted over dishes, soaking in greasy water with islands of unidentifiable food scraps.
An empty half-gallon of Ron Rio floats half submerged in the wreckage.
The revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
Patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
Psyched
I open the fridge. There are three Coronas lying on the top shelf next to half a molding lime. I grab two and shut the fridge.
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
I pop the cap off with my chastity belt and pass it to Daisy.
“How romantic.” She smiles, tucking her gun back in its holster.
“Cheers,” I tap my bottle against hers. We leave the odor of the kitchen for the lesser odors of the living room.
Offer me alternatives and I decline.
“I wonder where Jack’s run off to.” I think out loud as I swig the Corona.
Jack’s couch is piled up with blankets and clothes, but I sit on it anyways. All of a sudden the pile groans and kicks.
I jump off. “Shit.”
Skinny legs kick off blankets and clothes. The pile’s arms shield its eyes from the light. “Oh what the fuckkk,” it groans, “just let yourselves in dick-bags?”
“Jack!”
“It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine…it's time I had some
time alone,” Jack trails off with the last few lines. He sits up, rubbing his eyes.
“Damn it Jack, you scared the hell out of us! Your keys were in the door.—shit, why aren’t you wearing your helmet?” I say.
His stringy black hair sticks out both sides a black beanie. He pulls it off revealing headphones. “I got these, relax.”
“Put a helmet on. Please tell me you’re protected down there.”
He kicks off the last blanket. All he has is shorts on. The crotch of his shorts are soaking wet. “No. I pissed myself tryin’ to get ‘em off in time.—FUCK!”
“It’s okay. It happens to the best of us,” Daisy reassures.
“No. I’m sick of this. I’m done.”
“Done with what? What are you talking about?”
“I’m done with running. I don’t care anymore.”
“No. Don’t say that. The doctor has good news! We’ve got a way to kill the parasite!”
“It’s bullshhhitt. No. Like all of it. This ember—” he points both of his thumbs at his chest, “this ember is burning out. I’m done fighting.”
“No Jack. You’re drunk. You don’t know what you are saying. We really need your help.”
“Alcohol inspires truth. Pure ugly truth.”
“What would I have to do? I’m not expressing interest I’m just prodding.” Jack says, leaning back, “you know those are the last two Coronas ever produced? Did you stop to think about that before you took ‘em?”
“I’m sorry, man. There’s one left. I’ll hit you back, I swear. The doctor’s been making moonshine… Ah, anyways, Dr. Lorenzo’s discovered a bacteria that can wipe the parasites from the face of the Earth.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“YES! All we would have to do is release it into the water supply and it will spread from there. I’m not sure how we’ll get it to other parts of the world yet…but I’m sure we can have our people elsewhere contaminate their water sources too.”
“And this—this bacteria only kills the parasites?”
“Well…yes, yes of course it does.”
“You’re a shitty liar Tim,” Daisy scoots closer to Jack, “No Jack. There are risks involved. We aren’t going to whitewash the truth.”
“And those are?” Jack asks.
“There is a small—a very small—practically microscopic chance the bacteria could wipe out the human race too.”
Jack stares off for a moment. Either in deep reflection or deep recession.
“So there isn’t anything bad that could come of this?” he slurs forth.
“Well, no, that’s not really what I was implying. We could very well be killed.”
“So…either we die or everyone dies? All or nothing, right?”
“No. Either we all die or the parasites die.”
“I am so down! Count me in.”
“Really? This isn’t just the alcohol talking right?”
“Are you tryin’ to change my mind? I told you, alcohol doesn’t lie. I am down. I am here for you!” he pauses, “you may just have to remind me in the morning.”
Five
“Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant” -Seneca
“Everything we do now is a cause of a cause of a cause. Nothing is done that doesn’t comply with the “will” of “god” as you may feel or not feel his presence. Nothing is done out of free will. Free will is an illusion. The only act of free will is thinking you have free will. The parasite is just a material representation of something that always was.” My father says.
“But I may choose to do otherwise. I may choose to stay human. I may fight for my humanity.”
“But that choice is still caused. It is caused by your refusal to be like everyone around you.”
“All these words I say come from me out of my own will to speak them.”
“But they are a reaction to what I am saying and what I am saying comes from your own mind which came from the me you think you are talking about.”
Shit. I must have taken a pretty good blow to my head. I wake up. It was just a dream.
As I come into the room, bright light pierces thought my eyelids and all I see is red. I try to open my eyelids. They are crusted close. I reach my hands towards my face to pry my crusted lids open and my left eye feels fabric brush it. I try to move the fingers on my left hand, nothing. Just crushing pain but no movement. They must be paralyzed. I rub the crust from my eyes with my right hand. Little dry crunchies fall down my hospital gown. So I’m in a hospital. Why?
My eyes open. The light burns. I squint. My whole face burns from the bright lights. There’s an ivy stuck in my vein.
FUCKFUCKFUCK FUCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCCCKkkkk.
I look down at my hands. My left hand is missing. Mostly. All that is left is a fingernail-less thumb and the knuckle of my pointer finger. My left hand is a thick layer of gauze held in place by strands of medical tape. Screams escape my mouth. The butterflies lay helplessly in the pit of my stomach. Their wings too burnt to fly. I scream at the top of my lungs. For god. For Daisy. For a parasite. I don’t care. I accept my fate. I don’t care. I don’t care.
Where is my belt? Where is my helmet? I am exposed. I’m just in a gown. Am I infected? I’m in their hospital. Have they gotten to me yet? I scream for help. Help from whom? Fuck. I have to get out of here. I crawl towards the floor. Something is holding me back. The ivy in my vein. The fuckin’ ivy with the alien juice. I collapse off the bed yanking the ivy from my arm. I contact the floor solidly. I brace with my left nub and it sends pain shooting up to my shoulder. My blood gushes purple-red on my hospital gown. It spurts out with the beat of my heart. The red zig-zags the gauze. I try to crawl but I only flail around helplessly.
I hear the door swoosh open. The burnt up butterflies make it to the top of my mouth and their guts pollute the bloody mess. My eyes. Get hea
“Timothy? Wake up! Timothy?” I hear Daisy’s sweet voice.
I moan still half asleep.
“Tim. You’re having a bad dream. Wake up.”
My eyes are still half closed but I say: “Thank god. Thank god that was all a nightmare.”
“Woa, buddy. Glad what was a nightmare?”
When I open my eyes tears start pouring down my face.
“Are you going to calm down? I had the nurse give you some morphine so you don’t start gushing blood all over the place again. Such a baby.”
“A baby? My left hand is gone!”
I look at Daisy. She isn’t protected by her helmet.
“Daisy?”
“Yes Tim.”
“Why aren’t you wearing protection?”
“Protection? Protection from what? I think your still a little delirious from your coma.”
“I was in a coma?”
“You don’t remember anything about the accident do you?”
“What accident? What are you talking about? I obviously don’t. I thought…I thought parasites were taking over the world.”
“What are you talking about? I’m sorry. Maybe all the sci-fi movies I’ve been playing while I was waiting by your side have messed with your dreams?”
“Oh my god. My hands blown off. But fuck it. At least aliens haven’t taken over the world. Oh my god. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Sorry Tim. I was just, what would you call it, fucking with you. Everyone else was telling me it would be easy to pull one on the last man on earth. I’m sorry. Not really. But that’s customary right? To say you’re sorry for jokes that go too far.”
“WHAT?”
“That was kind of in poor taste I know. It’s just—you just woke up, your woozy, there’s a lapse in your memory, it seemed easy to play a joke on you. We’ve all been infected. The Burning Embers are all infected. Most of us have been for some time. Your group got infiltrated in the first year. We finally just got stubborn old Bill Buckley and Jack kind of did himself in.”
“What? What? What the fuck? No. No.—”
“Saying things in threes is going to help you. Relax. We haven’t infected you.”
“So you guys have been just mocking me this whole time?”
“No. I mean, some of the others have been. But I come from a semi compassionate line of parasites. I’ve just been taking notes. We don’t want to just wipe every human off the planet now. It kind of just happened. We still want to observe. I want see what makes your species tick.”
“So this whole time, you’ve just been faking?”
“That depends on how you define ‘faking.’ Humans put on masks around each other all the time.”
“But. But. But I spied on you. I spied on all of you while you were all by yourself. And you still played music. You talked to yourself. Things people do when they are alone, not things parasites do by themselves.”
“While your little plan to spy on us while we were acting natural was a good idea, I guess, every time you suspected someone you tried to get everyone but the person you were spying on to go with you…which doesn’t work when we’re all in on it.”
“Wait? What about Doctor Lorenzo? Is he not really a scientist? What? I am so confused.”
“Of course he’s a scientist. He’s just infected too. We wanted to put you through this final test, to see what you would do. I was a little surprised you chose the option that had a good chance of wiping out all human kind.”
“A chance…just a chance.”
“Saying there is just a chance is just your method of coping with your poor decision. You would risk genocide of the whole human race just for the half-chance you might kill their operators? You humans have squandered this planet and here you are, one against the world, taking any opportunity to fight for the human right to do so? Even if it kills all the humans? Jesus. I can’t believe one of you used to run this country. I can’t believe you guys used to run this planet for that matter. Wow, you are lucky we landed when we did.” Daisy peers out the window, “this place is wonderful.”
“WE WERE HERE FIRST!” I yell though my teeth.
“Here first? Here first…what does that mean? There were single celled organisms, bacteria, algae, dinosaurs, mammals—all of which came before you. Strange—even with your elementary knowledge of evolutionary history, you should be able to notice humans came last.”
“We were here before you.”
“You keep saying ‘we’ which is weird because I only see one of you. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove with this primal ‘we were here first’ argument. Your species wiped out species that were here much longer than you, for much more selfish temporary pursuits. What, you humans wanted sports cars, lipstick, and rotating wardrobes, polished rocks..all at the cost of the crawling things that had lived sustainably for years before their homes were paved over or they were soaked in arsenic so people could adorn themselves in gold. I just—can’t even begin how many ways you fucked up.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do those things. We can clean up our act, just give us a chance.”
“You know what the number one area of job growth in this new economic era is?”
“What?” I sniff. I’m crying uncontrollably now. The pain of acceptance sets in hard.
“Restoration.”
“What?”
“Repair. We have a lot of good parasites out busting their asses trying to fix all the stuff you guys messed up. Cockroaches are better suited for this planet than you are. You guys just have those goddamn opposable thumbs and brains—always making things and breaking things.” She pauses to wriggle her thumbs in my face, “they are fun though.”
“Um,” I stop and grimace at the sight of my nub, “what’s going to happen to me?”
“Well. That’s kind of a broad question. I’m not “God’” she does air quotes, “or ‘Buddha.’ But I guess Timothy; I’ll do my best to answer that. I guess you will continue to eat. And sleep. And empty your bowels and bladder. Then you’ll grow old and die, probably a good amount of time before me…Well, I should probably get out of your hair. You probably have one handed things to do with your friends and stuff. Don’t want to get in the way of all that fun stuff. We should talk again, though. I know I come off a little hostile, but I do enjoy talking to you. You have interesting ideas about the world. Alright. I’m going to get out of here, but I’ll see you around,” She starts walking towards the door.
“Wait.” She stops.
She looks at me, “Yes?”
“I—I love you Daisy.”
She leans down and pinches my cheek. “You’re just so cute. You little jokester you.”
She leaves the room.
FIN
Friday, May 21, 2010
"The notetaker"
The Notetaker
“I seem to be on a slipping spree, doc”
5/21/2010
D. Chasse Gunter
New Species Discovered In a golf-ball sized meteor fragment discovered in KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (AP).
BY MICHELLE KERRES, Associated Press
The skies lit up over Kinshasa on April 10, 2010 as nearly a dozen small meteors streaked across the sky around 10:30 pm. A small meteor fragment was discovered outside the city limits by a Joel Lipberg, an American college student attending The American University of Kinshasa. Lipberg wrapped the fragment in a grocery bag and brought it to the university to be studied.
“I was just so excited to actually find it [meteor]. I know the odds of discovering one are rare. I’m hoping the Smithsonian pays me a bunch of money,” an excited Lipberg told the Associated Press.
The meteor fragment was sent to the University of Colorado for further analysis.
Scientists were amazed when they found the asteroid teaming with life.
“I initially assumed the organisms entered the fragment after it landed, especially since the fragment wasn’t properly contained. Two facts make this very unlikely though. The organism was discovered in an air pocket inside the fragment, which makes it seem difficult for it to have entered after impact. Also, analysis of the organism has found that it does not match any organism known to live on Earth. Alien or not, we have discovered a brand new species!” says Mark Frost, an astronomer who specializes in asteroids.
Studies on the organism are still in the preliminary stages.
The outer membrane of the organism seems to have the ability to mimic the behavior of other cells. Several tests were performed to determine the organism’s capabilities.
When a sample was placed in a Petri dish with several different types of bacteria, it actually mimicked the appearance and behavior of the cell it was copying. The same happened when the sample was put in a Petri dish with human sperm.
“It’s absolutely remarkable! I have never seen something that could mimic our reproductive cells like this. While it is remarkable, it’s a bit frightening at the same time. These new species is the most advance life discovered with alien origin. I am really excited to what this thing has in store for us,” Dr. John Simpson said.
Day 1 of infection.
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
I had the strangest dreams last night. In the dream, I was a small worm like creature. I knew this was a little strange, but in the dream it was reality. I was outside my own home and it was night time. Everything had an eerie green glow, like I had night vision. First I inched my way under my front door. I had little suction feet, one in the front and one in the back, like an inch worm. The carpet was hard to pull myself across since traction was poor on fabric. I made it to my stairs which towered over me now. The summit was out of sight. All my largest accomplishments in life seemed dreamlike and this one simple task was all there was. It seemed to take forever but I was so determined. I worked my way over the first ledge of the first stair, and told myself it was the last. I pictured the expression: “the journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.” Meaningless to me until just now. I crawled and crawled until I finally made it over the last stair. I felt relieved that the top floor of my house had wooden floors, as the few feet of carpet on the first floor had been excruciating to squirm along. I crawled and crawled. I felt more determined than I ever have in a dream. I reached my room and inched my way under the door. I shimmied up my bed sheet. I threw my feelers in front of me and pulled my behind to catch up. I scaled a blanket mountain to discover myself tucked under the far side of it. I was staring at myself, tucked in bed, sleeping next to my wife. The patterns on my blanket seemed unfamiliar to me in the dream, but now that I write this, I know it was actually the same. I inched toward my sleeping body. I crawled across my face, not even causing me to flinch. I made my way towards my ear and started squirming into it. I felt my body shudder when this happened. It was the feeling of goose bumps crossed with the flinch your body does sometimes when you are starting to fall asleep. I began to wriggle into my ear until I met the dead end, my eardrum. My suctions dabbed the thin membrane of my eardrum, pulled back, and again. Suddenly, a razor sharp beak protruded from a flap of flesh on the front of my head and punctured it. The back of me shoots out a small puff of air that propels me effortlessly through the hole and closer to my brain. It is at this point I remember waking up, but still drowsy, I drifted back into deep sleep.
The rest of the dreams that night were a general feeling of fleeing. I didn’t really know what I was running from, just that I had to flee. Every time I would stop to rest, something would pursue me again. I ran though alley ways and forests. At times, I couldn’t even recognize where I was.
Intentions/biology.
(From the mental notes of The Notetaker)
We don’t come in peace or war. Where I come from, the idea is absent from conversation. We come to survive. Our species comes with several major evolutionary disadvantages. The major one being our inability to reproduce without a host. We all form eggs in our bodies, generally a hundred every 300 human days. Each egg holds the potential of one life. It only lacks the nutrients to grow and the home to be born. Our tiny body cannot physically hold the nutrients needed to sustain the growth of offspring inside us and our body’s are not equipped to give said birth.
Our life cycle:
We begin at our birth within a host. Our thoughtless cell (egg) may work only on instinct at this point. We replicate the host’s reproductive functions and use this passage way to pass our offspring to others (refer to picture glossary picture #1). Simply put, we are sexually transmitted. Some of us may never pass to another host. In this case, we simply live in them, maintaining survival.
As and if our egg passes to another host, this triggers us to grow into adults. When we become adults we take over the host’s cognitive functions. It is at this time when we may actively engage in repopulating our species. (refer to picture glossary picture #4)
Day 3 of infection
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
“The Fall.”
I have had dreams of falling before, but not like this one. I started up in the sky, plummeting to Earth at a very high speed. All around me there were flames. I tried to peer around but my view was completely obstructed. I could only look forward at the fast approaching ground. A long beautiful tail of bright white and reds trailed behind me. I passed through clouds. I was a pin piercing a cue-tip in the sky. I saw the green and brown puckered nose of the Puget Sound. From up hear I wouldn’t guess it was staked out with roads connecting cities connecting states connecting countries connected people. The nose grew as I fell closer. Closer to home. Closer to splat. I grew close enough to see the nose’s acne. It was swarming with square little blotches of grey cities and green, yellow, and brown squares of farmland. Eventually, I was falling toward my square. A little square filled with rows of perfect little houses. Each tinier square was its own little world, but from up hear they blurred together.
(From the mental Notes of the Notetaker)
The crumbling bits of my vessel leave a beautiful glowing tail behind as I fall. If you are to wish upon me, wish that my species doesn’t decide to repeat the past. (Refer to picture glossary, #)
My species hasn’t mastered space travel yet, but we have mapped the trajectories of most major cosmic bodies. Instead of building something to take us around the universe, we simply jump aboard something going our direction. Cosmic public transportation. Much like your public transportation it’s cheap, semi-reliable and slow. I was waiting on your galaxy’s oort cloud for a ride to Earth for some time (refer to picture glossary picture #2).
Day 6 of Infection:
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
I have been out of sorts all day at work today.
Lisa told me she had to have her cat put down and I told her to find comfort in the fact that it’s body will fertilize the ground in which we all came. Where the fuck did that come from?
I think she hates me now, although I don’t care much.
I also finished work two hours early. Teddy told me to do what I wanted and get paid for it.
“Just remember to clock out at five,” he said.
I told him I couldn’t do nothing for something and left early.
Day 10 of infection.
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Hacker)
I feel I am less me than…what else is there.
I think you know.
I feel like I’m in a constant battle with myself and I am losing.
Define losing.
The act of overcoming or the act of being overcome?
Day 11 of infection.
Today at work, I felt I was there just to observe. Not participate. I took detailed notes during lunch. The following are notes I wrote about some of my coworkers.
Linda, Kara and Morgan take advantage of Greg on a daily basis. Greg’s skin pigment resembles a bruised pear. He is also shaped like a pear (refer to picture glossary picture #5) Greg wobbles around on six hundred dollar Italian shoes, of which no one is impressed. He squints a lot. I have seen him wear glasses before, but I think he forgets them all the time. Like today. He just brought Kara lunch to her desk. It’s a turkey sandwich with lettuce sticking out the sides. I don’t know what else is on it because I cannot see through bread. Knowing Kara, it is probably mustard.
“ I—I had no money on my debit card so I had to over draft. Just get me back for the sandwich, I have the fees covered. It’s ok,” Greg shows his teeth. It only works as a cop-out smile if your mouth is shaped right. (refer to picture #6)
“Oh my God Greg thanks! I love you, you’re such a doll.” She throws out her perfected fake smile. Brilliant.
Greg still stands in the entry to her cubicle, pigeon toes facing inward. He wants to have sex with Kara. Kara wants to eat her free turkey sandwich. Greg never gets a hint. I think he was abused as a child. Or molested. Or sat on. I would put money on two of the three. He finally goes back to his desk to play Mindsweeper on his computer. The game is easy. Playing more than five times is just loner exercise.
Kara’s body shape doesn’t resemble any type of fruit I am familiar with. Her body parts stand alone though. Her butt resembles two squished together cherries, not over-squished—the perfect amount. Her breasts are two ripe honey dew, with mini-pizza pepperoni areolas whose outline is barely visible through her white cotton tang top. Her skin is a hue lighter than caramel (refer to picture #7). It will be two darker when summer sets in. Her ripe strawberry red hair is level with my forehead when she stands in front of me. If she is what she eats, she’s eating healthier than Greg is.
She is in her mid-twenties and single, like Greg but for very different reasons.
“Hey, Eugene,” she yells to me, sandwich in hand, “what do you keep writing over there?”
“Nothing…you know—just this sci-fi romance screenplay I’ve been working on. It takes place in some boring office building in Seattle.” I make up on the spot, with a smile.
“Oh really?” she takes a bite out of her sandwich, “who’s in it? Anyone I might know?”
“Probably not…there’s this girl who eats turkey sandwiches all the time who’s always googley eyeing this other guy in the office and he totally sees but she thinks he doesn’t know it. This guy is the main character and his super-powers are amazing BSing skills and superhuman peripheral vision.”
She smiles. Her smile shows a dimple on just her right cheek. This is her real smile.
We have sex in the handicap bathroom because it’s the cleanest and the only one that locks. Her voice was deeper for the two minutes following organism. Weird.
She has a brown landing strip (refer to picture #9). I didn’t know she wasn’t naturally a red head.
Day 25 of infection. Therapy Session.
(From the Notes of Eugene Harker.)
To investigate my odd thought patterns I scheduled a visit with my therapist. He lives on the corner of Reason and Aberration Ave. I had overlooked this coincidence until I just wrote it.
I sit back in the couch. It is dyed red leather. The walls are painted light purple.
The following are exerts from our conversation I felt were necessary to write in my journal.
“I have been having strange urges lately. The urges have been getting more intense by the day. It’s starting to really freak me out.”
“Yes, you sounded quite worried over the phone. You talk about “urges,” let’s delve into this a little more. What sort of urges have you been feeling lately?”
“I’ve been having very odd compulsions. They’re all very out of the blue. I’ve—I’ve been hoarding information. I have no idea why. I haven’t even heard of that being a condition. It seems like I just woke up one day with an urge to learn things and take notes about everything. I’ve checked out the maximum amount of books allowed from the library. At my lunch breaks at work I haven’t been going out with coworkers. I can’t make myself do it. I’ve been just reading stuff online. Earlier today was even crazier. I just sat in my cubicle and took notes. I wrote every conversation in the vicinity verbatim.”
“Is that why you’re taking notes right now?”
“Yes. I think it is. Why do you think I am doing this? I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. I’ve been just taking tons of notes. Some on the way people act or look. Sometimes I just write conversations or mannerisms. And I used to read a book a year, and that was if I was really ambitious. Now I’m reading a book every day almost. I’m not much of a writer either, or I wasn’t.”
“Yes that is rather odd. You mentioned there were other compulsions, do you mind sharing a few?”
“Sex.”
“Sex?”
“Yes. Sex. Jeeze. I feel embarrassed just telling you. Please, please don’t tell Lucy anything I am about to tell you.”
“Everything you tell me is confidential, you know that”
Yeah, right.
“It’s not that I’m not still attracted to my wife. I still love her. I just haven’t been able to resist having sex with every woman I can. I feel so horrible. I just literally cannot do anything to stop myself. What’s wrong with me?”
“There isn’t anything wrong with you Eugene. Many men cheat. When you have been in a marriage as long as you have, it’s easy to slip up sometimes.”
“Well, I seem to be on a slipping spree doc. I just don’t see the value in monogamy anymore.”
“Why do you say that? Do you still love your wife?”
Love?
“Of course I do. I said I do. But what happened to live for the moment? Why does this great meaning have to be tied to an act that is strictly evolutionary. What happened to orgies? What happened to key parties and wife swapping? You only live once.”
“Don’t you think there’s a chance that a bunch of meaningless sex would just leave you empty inside?”
“No.”
If anything, full to the brim.
“I respectfully disagree. I think your wife would be very sad to hear all this. You should really consider her feelings before you act. I’m not being critical of you; I’m just posing an idea.”
“How many orgies have you been to? Come on, be honest.”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“That means none…or one bad one…that’s ok. I mean, you are qualified to counsel me, but you may be a bit under qualified to give me orgy-related advice.”
“When was the last time you slept with another woman?” he asked, with a growing scowl on his face. (refer to picture #10)
I glanced away from my notes. I glanced down at the floor, away from his judging eyes.
“Um. Ahh, like forty minutes ago.”
The doctor paused, expression of disgust still frozen on his face. He peered down at his watch. “Forty minutes ago?”
I nodded.
“You were waiting for me to finish my session forty five minutes ago. You told me when you were going to be here and I heard you come in.”
His expression shifted to raised flamingo leg eyebrows and curled downward lips.
“I slept with the receptionist. I’m sorry. We had sex in her office while I was waiting for you. I’m so sorry. I could tell she was about to ovulate and my instincts took over.”
The doctor’s nose bunched up and his eyes got wide.
“What?” the doctor yelled, “You—wait, whhhat? Are you are tryin’ to get these women pregnant? You—you aren’t—are you—you’re not wearing condoms?”
“I thought it was crazy at first too. But then this thought entered my head. Intercourse is to produce offspring, that’s it. We keep putting bags over our penises to prevent life and that’s not much different than putting a plastic bag over a new born seal’s head until it suffocates.”
I decided to leave the secession early.
Day 30 of infection.
(From the notes of the Notetaker, formally known as Eugene Harker)
It’s been a month since I landed here on this planet and just a week since I’ve gained full control of my host. I’m having trouble retrieving my entire host’s memories; he must be fighting my presence. See, our species doesn’t take over in a matter of minutes or hours time, but a whole month apparently. We creep on like a lingering flu but we affect the mind. Thought patterns will change as if invaded by an outside force, and are. Words and ideas will appear as if planted, as they kind of are. We infest and multiply inside the host and ride the body until its natural end, which is often extended as we avoid harming the host in any way, save, loss of humanity, which we consider a mutual side-effect. (Like gravity and wrinkles)
I am writing in a place that doesn’t seem like a bar at all, but that’s what they call it. It just seems like a human watering-hole, where a liquid is consumed that helps adults revert back to child-like forms.
I have studied for one hundred earth years to get to where I am now. I am not like the tacky aliens on sci-fi movies who just know how to be human the second they plummet to earth. That doesn’t make sense. I am learning all the time. Studying and observing. Taking notes and reading books. Watching as many movies as I can and listening to music. Much knowledge I have absorbed directly contradicts other hard facts. It really confuses me. Humans seem to have very flexible hard facts. Science seems to be just a select group of human interpretations of everything. Knowledge seems to work in reverse here, since the more that is learned in science, the more that is wrong.
Communication is the most difficult for me to learn, as my species has no vocal cords. Our evolution favored brain development and reproduction that is it. We convey messages through subtle movements and the secretion of mild scents. Of course, we very rarely have to communicate with each other anyways. Each newly hatched child is born with all the knowledge processed by its parents, and their parents, and so on. That is why we learn so fast. Information becomes instinct.
We are fast learners but it’s hard to translate subtle squirms and wriggles into guttural sounds of a wide range and types. It is still hard for me to not replace words I can’t think of on the spot with movement which never fails to draw discerning glances. I have basic sentences figured out. I can say enough to get food, find a bathroom, get back home and get laid occasionally. All the necessary phrases for a human visiting a foreign country. There are all these words for things that don’t exist that I am still trying to wrap my head around. Like snow and love and time. These words represent nothing, yet apparently so much. Humans throw the word love around like snowballs, even though love cannot even be touched, and snow just melts in your hand.
Notes on Earth take-over strategy: The alien take-over strategy in most Hollywood movies is flawed. They always leave the chance of easy human come back. There’s the random invasion method, stupid. Why enter through the back door, infecting random people until, a group of high school kids figures it out and puts a stop to it before the take-over is complete. And there is the Independence Day style invasion. Sure, humans are the weakest in a deep state of fear, but it’s also the only time they work together. Any obvious war can be won or lost. We create the option of losing? The best way to win is to keep it a secret until it’s too late. Also, why blow up the colorless house? The colorless house is the most valuable asset to in invading species. These politicians are talking about nothing and helping no one and humans consume it. It gives them purpose. They follow it blindly, or at best, passively. It would also be a great way to have free top-or-the-line security to protect us as we take over. These Secret-service guys, I enjoy the cut of their ham hawk. The second objective will be to take control of the army, marines, National Guard, and police force. I guess a handful of churches wouldn’t hurt either. Then, if they do decide to resist, their guns will be pointed at them, and God will be on our side. Enslavement is easy in a place where it already exists. All that is needed is to be at the top of the pyramid.
“Sir, are you going to buy anything?” a female with glasses, yellow laces on her head, three cherry design and a welded round AU puncturing the middle of her nose has approached my booth.
“If it is customary, I suppose. I’ll have one of your strongest least expensive drinks please. No foam.”
Days are an Intangible and meaningless human measure of the passing of time.
(from the notes of the Notetaker)
“It’s weird to me wife. This human brain. I’m creating thoughts I had never imagined before.”
“I’m not your wife I’m your daughter. I’m you really. We’ve never thought of each other as being separate beings. I’m still kind of confused as to why we are together raising these children and eating dinner together and going to work. These kids should be out raising themselves. They should be out spreading their seed. They have a head and two arms and ten fingers and two legs with two feet and ten lower fingers; they have the same chance as us to go out there and make something for our species.”
The wife was infected some time ago by Eugene, in case you didn’t know.
Tim and Angela look awkwardly up from their plates at us. Tim’s hair is all matted. His face is turned downward and his eyes are failing to expel some foreign object from them.
“What happened to my mommy and daddy?” he whimpers, drool pouring from his eyes.
“What are you talking about sport? We are right here.” I consol. “Anyways. Don’t interrupt me Timothy. I am having a conversation with the wife.” I force a casual sigh. “Like I was saying. These human bodies are amazing. There’s this richness to it. Everything feels like something. Everything invokes something. Instead of going to work today, I took a walk to the bay to take notes. And there was this hairy brown creature jumping about catching a plastic plate that a human threw for it. It would just run and run with its tongue dangling from its mouth. The thing seemed to be having such a grand time doing this thing with no obvious purpose. I could sense the things pure contentment. Just, so in the moment. It might be fun to live in one day. Damn, I sure wish I knew what the thing was.”
“A dog?”Angela says. (refer to picture #11)
“A dog! Of course! See wife, this is why we keep our offspring around.”
(More notes)
I am taking notes at a park, as I often do, when I am approached by a man. He is tall, and his skin and hair resemble snow. His body shape resembles a pencil. His facial features sag with the effects of gravity.
I know him.
“You finally finishing up that Sci-fi erotica, my fact-gathering friend?” he asks.
He is infected, but not from me.
“I can’t believe what I am seeing? When did you guys arrive? I thought you guys were going to wait until I collected more information.”
“So you haven’t heard of Operation: Fuck Fact Finding, have you?”
“Obviously, I haven’t.”
“Your work is appreciated as usual.” I stand and we hug. An act that our species shares with humans. “I’m not talking down your Notetaking skills, but have you watched the news once since you’ve been here?”
“That poorly orchestrated melodrama? Every time I try to watch it I grow bored and just change to Friends.”
“That show isn’t fiction. It’s these humans main world communication outlet. Anyways, if you had been following the news, you would have known that we crash landed about a week after you did. We tried to land near you, but this damn planet keeps spinning. We ended up a continent away.”
“Wow, ok. What are the new plans, then?”
“Same as before. Just a bit ahead of schedule. An asteroid sent a mass load of us into the sun, so, at this point, we’re really just trying to get our numbers up. You heard about the Congo right? Oh yeah, of course not. We were trying to infect the inhabitants of the site we landed as discreetly as possible. We spread surprisingly fast and before we knew it, we had affected almost the whole country. Strange that we didn’t raise suspicion until we stopped killing each other. This species is so peculiar.”
“They know we are here?”
“They are definably catching on. The humans were making excuses for a while, but they did eventually figure out what was going on.”
Shortly after this conversation, a representative from our species was asked to come onto a talk show. Naturally, I volunteered.
The Bill Buckly Show
(exerts from the Notetaker’s notes)
“People are really curious now about this new parasite that is infecting people worldwide, especially since this resent incidence in the Congo. In case you missed it. Congo has been in midst of resource and religious civil wars for as long as it was a Michael Crichton book. The aliens crash landed outside of Kin—shhhh—shasa, I think, other’s made it around the world of course, but this is where the majority landed. And now, more than a month later, the whole county isn’t fighting. At all…our master of disaster Bill Buckly joins one of these alien-humans in the studio—one of the growing amount of people saying that this new parasite is the best thing that ever happened to them.” A female announced the beginning of the show.
“So, how is that? Having worms? Right? You guys are essentially worms?” Bill Buckly begins. What a hostile way to start a show.
“I guess, of the things on your planet, that’s what we most resemble, physically.” (refer to picture #12)
“So you guys are like the body snatchers right? You can’t really feel?”
“I feel this room. I feel this chair. I feel the air in this room—“
“There’s no need to be a smart-ass now,” Bill laughs, “you guys don’t feel happy or sad. Love or hate.”
“We feel pleasure and discomfort. Is there much difference?”
“And—”
I interrupt, “and my species has mastered mimicry. We can observe and react appropriately to any known situation. Our expressions can show sad or happy on command. We can imitate “love” as well or better than many of your own species can. See look. Happy. (refer to picture #14)”
“So, you are saying getting infected was the best thing that ever happened to you? How could you say something this ridiculous? You have lost everything that makes you human, how is that a good thing?”
“Would you surrender the feeling of love, if all hatred went with it?”
The TV host stared blankly for a moment, his mind mentally fighting the effects of being blown. “Of course not…it unthinkable. It is our flaws that make us who we are. It’s not worth the cost.”
“Cost? Don’t tell me about cost. Fewer lives are spared out of love than are killed by hatred. Surrendering one to lose the other, imagine if the whole world did that?”(refer to picture #13)
“This is ridiculous. Humans have always killed each other off. It’s a sad fact but it’s just the way it is.” (refer to picture #15)
“It’s the way it is now. It doesn’t have to be. Where I came from we never harmed each other. There was no reason to. We didn’t love or hate each other as you call it, but we certainly survived next to each other. I even came close to sacrificing myself to members of my family, as resources on my planet became scarcer. But they wouldn’t let me, since my strain goes back the furthest in my species’ ancestry.”
“Well, you guys must have messed up at some point, if you sucked your planet dry. What did you guys do than that was so much better than us?”
“You keep putting human ideas on a conversation that is only half human, and I think it really devalues the conversation we are having. Better is irrelevant and impossible to quantify. My species has made mistakes, I don’t recall saying we were perfect. We squandered what little we had. We traveled the universe and squandered what other planets had. This planet is the most abundant and supportive of life I have ever landed upon, but your species hasn’t reached the level of appreciation only reached in the final moments. I have multiple times, and I am ready to break that cycle. The only difference between my species and yours is we know we are parasites, and we are trying to make the best of it.”
“Well, all that is fuc(BEEP)g ridiculous. Today is beautiful, and none of that is going to end in my life time.”
“You are making the human race sound worst and worst. You idiots made up time so you could say, well today is nice. You separated yourselves with state line and class lines. It’s easy here, at the expense of someone somewhere else. You separate each other by generations. Its nice today, but it will be horrible for my grandchildren. I’m not saying don’t live for the moment, but don’t let it blind you from seeing the collection of moments that lie ahead. What an awful path to stroll down. My species lives for ourselves and each other. The world we live in is us because we depend on it, it doesn’t depend on us.”
“Well, that’s one opinion. Unfortunately we have to cut to commercial. Nothing is free you know.” Bill looks into the camera, “we’ll be back in two shakes of an intestinal worm.”
The talk show host rushed off stage, as soon as the commercial break begins. A member of his staff hands him a bottled water. He gulps half down in the first chug.
“Jesus Mac,” he says to a man with oversized headphones, tucked around his neck, “Mind giving me some talking points, he’s eating me alive,” he wipes his forehead with a damp handkerchief, pulled from his pocket. I am sitting on stage still, lightly conversing with a girl, and taking note of their continuing conversation.
“Hey man, I would if I could. Honestly he’s making a lot of sense,” Mac says, biting his lip softly.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Has this world gone insane? He is an invader. This is our planet! I’m not about to hand it over to someone who just comes along after we’ve already staked a claim,” he’s all red now and pouring with sweat.
“But when Europeans did it to Native Americans for purely selfish reasons, that was cool, right?”
“What an original argument MAC!” Bill yells.
“Just because it’s been said a million times that doesn’t make it any less true. This thing made the Congo stop killing each other. That place hasn’t cleaned up its act since the beginning of time.”
I am talking to a female intern during this whole conversation. She has lost hope in this dead end job and her boring life. I told her she could do anything that didn’t require help from any of these people.
“Thanks. It was really nice talking to you.” She smiles. Her plain features, a little more highlighted. She is still a background item, but she no longer thinks she is.
“You call me any time. If you want to talk or anything.”
Her eyes do the side-to-side wiggle I’ve observed in females before they agree or propose coitus. I wanted her to carry my offspring, but the commercial is going to start in
Three…………two……………
Picture glossary---missing here, but it's good stuff
“I seem to be on a slipping spree, doc”
5/21/2010
D. Chasse Gunter
New Species Discovered In a golf-ball sized meteor fragment discovered in KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (AP).
BY MICHELLE KERRES, Associated Press
The skies lit up over Kinshasa on April 10, 2010 as nearly a dozen small meteors streaked across the sky around 10:30 pm. A small meteor fragment was discovered outside the city limits by a Joel Lipberg, an American college student attending The American University of Kinshasa. Lipberg wrapped the fragment in a grocery bag and brought it to the university to be studied.
“I was just so excited to actually find it [meteor]. I know the odds of discovering one are rare. I’m hoping the Smithsonian pays me a bunch of money,” an excited Lipberg told the Associated Press.
The meteor fragment was sent to the University of Colorado for further analysis.
Scientists were amazed when they found the asteroid teaming with life.
“I initially assumed the organisms entered the fragment after it landed, especially since the fragment wasn’t properly contained. Two facts make this very unlikely though. The organism was discovered in an air pocket inside the fragment, which makes it seem difficult for it to have entered after impact. Also, analysis of the organism has found that it does not match any organism known to live on Earth. Alien or not, we have discovered a brand new species!” says Mark Frost, an astronomer who specializes in asteroids.
Studies on the organism are still in the preliminary stages.
The outer membrane of the organism seems to have the ability to mimic the behavior of other cells. Several tests were performed to determine the organism’s capabilities.
When a sample was placed in a Petri dish with several different types of bacteria, it actually mimicked the appearance and behavior of the cell it was copying. The same happened when the sample was put in a Petri dish with human sperm.
“It’s absolutely remarkable! I have never seen something that could mimic our reproductive cells like this. While it is remarkable, it’s a bit frightening at the same time. These new species is the most advance life discovered with alien origin. I am really excited to what this thing has in store for us,” Dr. John Simpson said.
Day 1 of infection.
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
I had the strangest dreams last night. In the dream, I was a small worm like creature. I knew this was a little strange, but in the dream it was reality. I was outside my own home and it was night time. Everything had an eerie green glow, like I had night vision. First I inched my way under my front door. I had little suction feet, one in the front and one in the back, like an inch worm. The carpet was hard to pull myself across since traction was poor on fabric. I made it to my stairs which towered over me now. The summit was out of sight. All my largest accomplishments in life seemed dreamlike and this one simple task was all there was. It seemed to take forever but I was so determined. I worked my way over the first ledge of the first stair, and told myself it was the last. I pictured the expression: “the journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.” Meaningless to me until just now. I crawled and crawled until I finally made it over the last stair. I felt relieved that the top floor of my house had wooden floors, as the few feet of carpet on the first floor had been excruciating to squirm along. I crawled and crawled. I felt more determined than I ever have in a dream. I reached my room and inched my way under the door. I shimmied up my bed sheet. I threw my feelers in front of me and pulled my behind to catch up. I scaled a blanket mountain to discover myself tucked under the far side of it. I was staring at myself, tucked in bed, sleeping next to my wife. The patterns on my blanket seemed unfamiliar to me in the dream, but now that I write this, I know it was actually the same. I inched toward my sleeping body. I crawled across my face, not even causing me to flinch. I made my way towards my ear and started squirming into it. I felt my body shudder when this happened. It was the feeling of goose bumps crossed with the flinch your body does sometimes when you are starting to fall asleep. I began to wriggle into my ear until I met the dead end, my eardrum. My suctions dabbed the thin membrane of my eardrum, pulled back, and again. Suddenly, a razor sharp beak protruded from a flap of flesh on the front of my head and punctured it. The back of me shoots out a small puff of air that propels me effortlessly through the hole and closer to my brain. It is at this point I remember waking up, but still drowsy, I drifted back into deep sleep.
The rest of the dreams that night were a general feeling of fleeing. I didn’t really know what I was running from, just that I had to flee. Every time I would stop to rest, something would pursue me again. I ran though alley ways and forests. At times, I couldn’t even recognize where I was.
Intentions/biology.
(From the mental notes of The Notetaker)
We don’t come in peace or war. Where I come from, the idea is absent from conversation. We come to survive. Our species comes with several major evolutionary disadvantages. The major one being our inability to reproduce without a host. We all form eggs in our bodies, generally a hundred every 300 human days. Each egg holds the potential of one life. It only lacks the nutrients to grow and the home to be born. Our tiny body cannot physically hold the nutrients needed to sustain the growth of offspring inside us and our body’s are not equipped to give said birth.
Our life cycle:
We begin at our birth within a host. Our thoughtless cell (egg) may work only on instinct at this point. We replicate the host’s reproductive functions and use this passage way to pass our offspring to others (refer to picture glossary picture #1). Simply put, we are sexually transmitted. Some of us may never pass to another host. In this case, we simply live in them, maintaining survival.
As and if our egg passes to another host, this triggers us to grow into adults. When we become adults we take over the host’s cognitive functions. It is at this time when we may actively engage in repopulating our species. (refer to picture glossary picture #4)
Day 3 of infection
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
“The Fall.”
I have had dreams of falling before, but not like this one. I started up in the sky, plummeting to Earth at a very high speed. All around me there were flames. I tried to peer around but my view was completely obstructed. I could only look forward at the fast approaching ground. A long beautiful tail of bright white and reds trailed behind me. I passed through clouds. I was a pin piercing a cue-tip in the sky. I saw the green and brown puckered nose of the Puget Sound. From up hear I wouldn’t guess it was staked out with roads connecting cities connecting states connecting countries connected people. The nose grew as I fell closer. Closer to home. Closer to splat. I grew close enough to see the nose’s acne. It was swarming with square little blotches of grey cities and green, yellow, and brown squares of farmland. Eventually, I was falling toward my square. A little square filled with rows of perfect little houses. Each tinier square was its own little world, but from up hear they blurred together.
(From the mental Notes of the Notetaker)
The crumbling bits of my vessel leave a beautiful glowing tail behind as I fall. If you are to wish upon me, wish that my species doesn’t decide to repeat the past. (Refer to picture glossary, #)
My species hasn’t mastered space travel yet, but we have mapped the trajectories of most major cosmic bodies. Instead of building something to take us around the universe, we simply jump aboard something going our direction. Cosmic public transportation. Much like your public transportation it’s cheap, semi-reliable and slow. I was waiting on your galaxy’s oort cloud for a ride to Earth for some time (refer to picture glossary picture #2).
Day 6 of Infection:
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Harker)
I have been out of sorts all day at work today.
Lisa told me she had to have her cat put down and I told her to find comfort in the fact that it’s body will fertilize the ground in which we all came. Where the fuck did that come from?
I think she hates me now, although I don’t care much.
I also finished work two hours early. Teddy told me to do what I wanted and get paid for it.
“Just remember to clock out at five,” he said.
I told him I couldn’t do nothing for something and left early.
Day 10 of infection.
(Notes from the Diary of Eugene Hacker)
I feel I am less me than…what else is there.
I think you know.
I feel like I’m in a constant battle with myself and I am losing.
Define losing.
The act of overcoming or the act of being overcome?
Day 11 of infection.
Today at work, I felt I was there just to observe. Not participate. I took detailed notes during lunch. The following are notes I wrote about some of my coworkers.
Linda, Kara and Morgan take advantage of Greg on a daily basis. Greg’s skin pigment resembles a bruised pear. He is also shaped like a pear (refer to picture glossary picture #5) Greg wobbles around on six hundred dollar Italian shoes, of which no one is impressed. He squints a lot. I have seen him wear glasses before, but I think he forgets them all the time. Like today. He just brought Kara lunch to her desk. It’s a turkey sandwich with lettuce sticking out the sides. I don’t know what else is on it because I cannot see through bread. Knowing Kara, it is probably mustard.
“ I—I had no money on my debit card so I had to over draft. Just get me back for the sandwich, I have the fees covered. It’s ok,” Greg shows his teeth. It only works as a cop-out smile if your mouth is shaped right. (refer to picture #6)
“Oh my God Greg thanks! I love you, you’re such a doll.” She throws out her perfected fake smile. Brilliant.
Greg still stands in the entry to her cubicle, pigeon toes facing inward. He wants to have sex with Kara. Kara wants to eat her free turkey sandwich. Greg never gets a hint. I think he was abused as a child. Or molested. Or sat on. I would put money on two of the three. He finally goes back to his desk to play Mindsweeper on his computer. The game is easy. Playing more than five times is just loner exercise.
Kara’s body shape doesn’t resemble any type of fruit I am familiar with. Her body parts stand alone though. Her butt resembles two squished together cherries, not over-squished—the perfect amount. Her breasts are two ripe honey dew, with mini-pizza pepperoni areolas whose outline is barely visible through her white cotton tang top. Her skin is a hue lighter than caramel (refer to picture #7). It will be two darker when summer sets in. Her ripe strawberry red hair is level with my forehead when she stands in front of me. If she is what she eats, she’s eating healthier than Greg is.
She is in her mid-twenties and single, like Greg but for very different reasons.
“Hey, Eugene,” she yells to me, sandwich in hand, “what do you keep writing over there?”
“Nothing…you know—just this sci-fi romance screenplay I’ve been working on. It takes place in some boring office building in Seattle.” I make up on the spot, with a smile.
“Oh really?” she takes a bite out of her sandwich, “who’s in it? Anyone I might know?”
“Probably not…there’s this girl who eats turkey sandwiches all the time who’s always googley eyeing this other guy in the office and he totally sees but she thinks he doesn’t know it. This guy is the main character and his super-powers are amazing BSing skills and superhuman peripheral vision.”
She smiles. Her smile shows a dimple on just her right cheek. This is her real smile.
We have sex in the handicap bathroom because it’s the cleanest and the only one that locks. Her voice was deeper for the two minutes following organism. Weird.
She has a brown landing strip (refer to picture #9). I didn’t know she wasn’t naturally a red head.
Day 25 of infection. Therapy Session.
(From the Notes of Eugene Harker.)
To investigate my odd thought patterns I scheduled a visit with my therapist. He lives on the corner of Reason and Aberration Ave. I had overlooked this coincidence until I just wrote it.
I sit back in the couch. It is dyed red leather. The walls are painted light purple.
The following are exerts from our conversation I felt were necessary to write in my journal.
“I have been having strange urges lately. The urges have been getting more intense by the day. It’s starting to really freak me out.”
“Yes, you sounded quite worried over the phone. You talk about “urges,” let’s delve into this a little more. What sort of urges have you been feeling lately?”
“I’ve been having very odd compulsions. They’re all very out of the blue. I’ve—I’ve been hoarding information. I have no idea why. I haven’t even heard of that being a condition. It seems like I just woke up one day with an urge to learn things and take notes about everything. I’ve checked out the maximum amount of books allowed from the library. At my lunch breaks at work I haven’t been going out with coworkers. I can’t make myself do it. I’ve been just reading stuff online. Earlier today was even crazier. I just sat in my cubicle and took notes. I wrote every conversation in the vicinity verbatim.”
“Is that why you’re taking notes right now?”
“Yes. I think it is. Why do you think I am doing this? I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. I’ve been just taking tons of notes. Some on the way people act or look. Sometimes I just write conversations or mannerisms. And I used to read a book a year, and that was if I was really ambitious. Now I’m reading a book every day almost. I’m not much of a writer either, or I wasn’t.”
“Yes that is rather odd. You mentioned there were other compulsions, do you mind sharing a few?”
“Sex.”
“Sex?”
“Yes. Sex. Jeeze. I feel embarrassed just telling you. Please, please don’t tell Lucy anything I am about to tell you.”
“Everything you tell me is confidential, you know that”
Yeah, right.
“It’s not that I’m not still attracted to my wife. I still love her. I just haven’t been able to resist having sex with every woman I can. I feel so horrible. I just literally cannot do anything to stop myself. What’s wrong with me?”
“There isn’t anything wrong with you Eugene. Many men cheat. When you have been in a marriage as long as you have, it’s easy to slip up sometimes.”
“Well, I seem to be on a slipping spree doc. I just don’t see the value in monogamy anymore.”
“Why do you say that? Do you still love your wife?”
Love?
“Of course I do. I said I do. But what happened to live for the moment? Why does this great meaning have to be tied to an act that is strictly evolutionary. What happened to orgies? What happened to key parties and wife swapping? You only live once.”
“Don’t you think there’s a chance that a bunch of meaningless sex would just leave you empty inside?”
“No.”
If anything, full to the brim.
“I respectfully disagree. I think your wife would be very sad to hear all this. You should really consider her feelings before you act. I’m not being critical of you; I’m just posing an idea.”
“How many orgies have you been to? Come on, be honest.”
“I’m not going to answer that.”
“That means none…or one bad one…that’s ok. I mean, you are qualified to counsel me, but you may be a bit under qualified to give me orgy-related advice.”
“When was the last time you slept with another woman?” he asked, with a growing scowl on his face. (refer to picture #10)
I glanced away from my notes. I glanced down at the floor, away from his judging eyes.
“Um. Ahh, like forty minutes ago.”
The doctor paused, expression of disgust still frozen on his face. He peered down at his watch. “Forty minutes ago?”
I nodded.
“You were waiting for me to finish my session forty five minutes ago. You told me when you were going to be here and I heard you come in.”
His expression shifted to raised flamingo leg eyebrows and curled downward lips.
“I slept with the receptionist. I’m sorry. We had sex in her office while I was waiting for you. I’m so sorry. I could tell she was about to ovulate and my instincts took over.”
The doctor’s nose bunched up and his eyes got wide.
“What?” the doctor yelled, “You—wait, whhhat? Are you are tryin’ to get these women pregnant? You—you aren’t—are you—you’re not wearing condoms?”
“I thought it was crazy at first too. But then this thought entered my head. Intercourse is to produce offspring, that’s it. We keep putting bags over our penises to prevent life and that’s not much different than putting a plastic bag over a new born seal’s head until it suffocates.”
I decided to leave the secession early.
Day 30 of infection.
(From the notes of the Notetaker, formally known as Eugene Harker)
It’s been a month since I landed here on this planet and just a week since I’ve gained full control of my host. I’m having trouble retrieving my entire host’s memories; he must be fighting my presence. See, our species doesn’t take over in a matter of minutes or hours time, but a whole month apparently. We creep on like a lingering flu but we affect the mind. Thought patterns will change as if invaded by an outside force, and are. Words and ideas will appear as if planted, as they kind of are. We infest and multiply inside the host and ride the body until its natural end, which is often extended as we avoid harming the host in any way, save, loss of humanity, which we consider a mutual side-effect. (Like gravity and wrinkles)
I am writing in a place that doesn’t seem like a bar at all, but that’s what they call it. It just seems like a human watering-hole, where a liquid is consumed that helps adults revert back to child-like forms.
I have studied for one hundred earth years to get to where I am now. I am not like the tacky aliens on sci-fi movies who just know how to be human the second they plummet to earth. That doesn’t make sense. I am learning all the time. Studying and observing. Taking notes and reading books. Watching as many movies as I can and listening to music. Much knowledge I have absorbed directly contradicts other hard facts. It really confuses me. Humans seem to have very flexible hard facts. Science seems to be just a select group of human interpretations of everything. Knowledge seems to work in reverse here, since the more that is learned in science, the more that is wrong.
Communication is the most difficult for me to learn, as my species has no vocal cords. Our evolution favored brain development and reproduction that is it. We convey messages through subtle movements and the secretion of mild scents. Of course, we very rarely have to communicate with each other anyways. Each newly hatched child is born with all the knowledge processed by its parents, and their parents, and so on. That is why we learn so fast. Information becomes instinct.
We are fast learners but it’s hard to translate subtle squirms and wriggles into guttural sounds of a wide range and types. It is still hard for me to not replace words I can’t think of on the spot with movement which never fails to draw discerning glances. I have basic sentences figured out. I can say enough to get food, find a bathroom, get back home and get laid occasionally. All the necessary phrases for a human visiting a foreign country. There are all these words for things that don’t exist that I am still trying to wrap my head around. Like snow and love and time. These words represent nothing, yet apparently so much. Humans throw the word love around like snowballs, even though love cannot even be touched, and snow just melts in your hand.
Notes on Earth take-over strategy: The alien take-over strategy in most Hollywood movies is flawed. They always leave the chance of easy human come back. There’s the random invasion method, stupid. Why enter through the back door, infecting random people until, a group of high school kids figures it out and puts a stop to it before the take-over is complete. And there is the Independence Day style invasion. Sure, humans are the weakest in a deep state of fear, but it’s also the only time they work together. Any obvious war can be won or lost. We create the option of losing? The best way to win is to keep it a secret until it’s too late. Also, why blow up the colorless house? The colorless house is the most valuable asset to in invading species. These politicians are talking about nothing and helping no one and humans consume it. It gives them purpose. They follow it blindly, or at best, passively. It would also be a great way to have free top-or-the-line security to protect us as we take over. These Secret-service guys, I enjoy the cut of their ham hawk. The second objective will be to take control of the army, marines, National Guard, and police force. I guess a handful of churches wouldn’t hurt either. Then, if they do decide to resist, their guns will be pointed at them, and God will be on our side. Enslavement is easy in a place where it already exists. All that is needed is to be at the top of the pyramid.
“Sir, are you going to buy anything?” a female with glasses, yellow laces on her head, three cherry design and a welded round AU puncturing the middle of her nose has approached my booth.
“If it is customary, I suppose. I’ll have one of your strongest least expensive drinks please. No foam.”
Days are an Intangible and meaningless human measure of the passing of time.
(from the notes of the Notetaker)
“It’s weird to me wife. This human brain. I’m creating thoughts I had never imagined before.”
“I’m not your wife I’m your daughter. I’m you really. We’ve never thought of each other as being separate beings. I’m still kind of confused as to why we are together raising these children and eating dinner together and going to work. These kids should be out raising themselves. They should be out spreading their seed. They have a head and two arms and ten fingers and two legs with two feet and ten lower fingers; they have the same chance as us to go out there and make something for our species.”
The wife was infected some time ago by Eugene, in case you didn’t know.
Tim and Angela look awkwardly up from their plates at us. Tim’s hair is all matted. His face is turned downward and his eyes are failing to expel some foreign object from them.
“What happened to my mommy and daddy?” he whimpers, drool pouring from his eyes.
“What are you talking about sport? We are right here.” I consol. “Anyways. Don’t interrupt me Timothy. I am having a conversation with the wife.” I force a casual sigh. “Like I was saying. These human bodies are amazing. There’s this richness to it. Everything feels like something. Everything invokes something. Instead of going to work today, I took a walk to the bay to take notes. And there was this hairy brown creature jumping about catching a plastic plate that a human threw for it. It would just run and run with its tongue dangling from its mouth. The thing seemed to be having such a grand time doing this thing with no obvious purpose. I could sense the things pure contentment. Just, so in the moment. It might be fun to live in one day. Damn, I sure wish I knew what the thing was.”
“A dog?”Angela says. (refer to picture #11)
“A dog! Of course! See wife, this is why we keep our offspring around.”
(More notes)
I am taking notes at a park, as I often do, when I am approached by a man. He is tall, and his skin and hair resemble snow. His body shape resembles a pencil. His facial features sag with the effects of gravity.
I know him.
“You finally finishing up that Sci-fi erotica, my fact-gathering friend?” he asks.
He is infected, but not from me.
“I can’t believe what I am seeing? When did you guys arrive? I thought you guys were going to wait until I collected more information.”
“So you haven’t heard of Operation: Fuck Fact Finding, have you?”
“Obviously, I haven’t.”
“Your work is appreciated as usual.” I stand and we hug. An act that our species shares with humans. “I’m not talking down your Notetaking skills, but have you watched the news once since you’ve been here?”
“That poorly orchestrated melodrama? Every time I try to watch it I grow bored and just change to Friends.”
“That show isn’t fiction. It’s these humans main world communication outlet. Anyways, if you had been following the news, you would have known that we crash landed about a week after you did. We tried to land near you, but this damn planet keeps spinning. We ended up a continent away.”
“Wow, ok. What are the new plans, then?”
“Same as before. Just a bit ahead of schedule. An asteroid sent a mass load of us into the sun, so, at this point, we’re really just trying to get our numbers up. You heard about the Congo right? Oh yeah, of course not. We were trying to infect the inhabitants of the site we landed as discreetly as possible. We spread surprisingly fast and before we knew it, we had affected almost the whole country. Strange that we didn’t raise suspicion until we stopped killing each other. This species is so peculiar.”
“They know we are here?”
“They are definably catching on. The humans were making excuses for a while, but they did eventually figure out what was going on.”
Shortly after this conversation, a representative from our species was asked to come onto a talk show. Naturally, I volunteered.
The Bill Buckly Show
(exerts from the Notetaker’s notes)
“People are really curious now about this new parasite that is infecting people worldwide, especially since this resent incidence in the Congo. In case you missed it. Congo has been in midst of resource and religious civil wars for as long as it was a Michael Crichton book. The aliens crash landed outside of Kin—shhhh—shasa, I think, other’s made it around the world of course, but this is where the majority landed. And now, more than a month later, the whole county isn’t fighting. At all…our master of disaster Bill Buckly joins one of these alien-humans in the studio—one of the growing amount of people saying that this new parasite is the best thing that ever happened to them.” A female announced the beginning of the show.
“So, how is that? Having worms? Right? You guys are essentially worms?” Bill Buckly begins. What a hostile way to start a show.
“I guess, of the things on your planet, that’s what we most resemble, physically.” (refer to picture #12)
“So you guys are like the body snatchers right? You can’t really feel?”
“I feel this room. I feel this chair. I feel the air in this room—“
“There’s no need to be a smart-ass now,” Bill laughs, “you guys don’t feel happy or sad. Love or hate.”
“We feel pleasure and discomfort. Is there much difference?”
“And—”
I interrupt, “and my species has mastered mimicry. We can observe and react appropriately to any known situation. Our expressions can show sad or happy on command. We can imitate “love” as well or better than many of your own species can. See look. Happy. (refer to picture #14)”
“So, you are saying getting infected was the best thing that ever happened to you? How could you say something this ridiculous? You have lost everything that makes you human, how is that a good thing?”
“Would you surrender the feeling of love, if all hatred went with it?”
The TV host stared blankly for a moment, his mind mentally fighting the effects of being blown. “Of course not…it unthinkable. It is our flaws that make us who we are. It’s not worth the cost.”
“Cost? Don’t tell me about cost. Fewer lives are spared out of love than are killed by hatred. Surrendering one to lose the other, imagine if the whole world did that?”(refer to picture #13)
“This is ridiculous. Humans have always killed each other off. It’s a sad fact but it’s just the way it is.” (refer to picture #15)
“It’s the way it is now. It doesn’t have to be. Where I came from we never harmed each other. There was no reason to. We didn’t love or hate each other as you call it, but we certainly survived next to each other. I even came close to sacrificing myself to members of my family, as resources on my planet became scarcer. But they wouldn’t let me, since my strain goes back the furthest in my species’ ancestry.”
“Well, you guys must have messed up at some point, if you sucked your planet dry. What did you guys do than that was so much better than us?”
“You keep putting human ideas on a conversation that is only half human, and I think it really devalues the conversation we are having. Better is irrelevant and impossible to quantify. My species has made mistakes, I don’t recall saying we were perfect. We squandered what little we had. We traveled the universe and squandered what other planets had. This planet is the most abundant and supportive of life I have ever landed upon, but your species hasn’t reached the level of appreciation only reached in the final moments. I have multiple times, and I am ready to break that cycle. The only difference between my species and yours is we know we are parasites, and we are trying to make the best of it.”
“Well, all that is fuc(BEEP)g ridiculous. Today is beautiful, and none of that is going to end in my life time.”
“You are making the human race sound worst and worst. You idiots made up time so you could say, well today is nice. You separated yourselves with state line and class lines. It’s easy here, at the expense of someone somewhere else. You separate each other by generations. Its nice today, but it will be horrible for my grandchildren. I’m not saying don’t live for the moment, but don’t let it blind you from seeing the collection of moments that lie ahead. What an awful path to stroll down. My species lives for ourselves and each other. The world we live in is us because we depend on it, it doesn’t depend on us.”
“Well, that’s one opinion. Unfortunately we have to cut to commercial. Nothing is free you know.” Bill looks into the camera, “we’ll be back in two shakes of an intestinal worm.”
The talk show host rushed off stage, as soon as the commercial break begins. A member of his staff hands him a bottled water. He gulps half down in the first chug.
“Jesus Mac,” he says to a man with oversized headphones, tucked around his neck, “Mind giving me some talking points, he’s eating me alive,” he wipes his forehead with a damp handkerchief, pulled from his pocket. I am sitting on stage still, lightly conversing with a girl, and taking note of their continuing conversation.
“Hey man, I would if I could. Honestly he’s making a lot of sense,” Mac says, biting his lip softly.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Has this world gone insane? He is an invader. This is our planet! I’m not about to hand it over to someone who just comes along after we’ve already staked a claim,” he’s all red now and pouring with sweat.
“But when Europeans did it to Native Americans for purely selfish reasons, that was cool, right?”
“What an original argument MAC!” Bill yells.
“Just because it’s been said a million times that doesn’t make it any less true. This thing made the Congo stop killing each other. That place hasn’t cleaned up its act since the beginning of time.”
I am talking to a female intern during this whole conversation. She has lost hope in this dead end job and her boring life. I told her she could do anything that didn’t require help from any of these people.
“Thanks. It was really nice talking to you.” She smiles. Her plain features, a little more highlighted. She is still a background item, but she no longer thinks she is.
“You call me any time. If you want to talk or anything.”
Her eyes do the side-to-side wiggle I’ve observed in females before they agree or propose coitus. I wanted her to carry my offspring, but the commercial is going to start in
Three…………two……………
Picture glossary---missing here, but it's good stuff
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Gazel poem: Confusion
I'm at an uphill intersection in what I know to be Seattle, idyling in confusion.
Suddenly we're spurting aimlessly down a dirt road in a pickup heading toward confusion.
A storm approaches fast on the horizon and I turn back to where the sun had been and only see confusion.
It's late at night, but in the street a boy rides his tricycle in circles, creeped out, I turn back in confusion.
I'm under the sea, somehow breathing, up or down? and once again, as if chose by some unseen force, confusion.
I pull a sliver of grass from the bottom of my foot through the top of my head, confusion.
On the verge of full blown pickleage my sleeping mind wakes into a state of confusion.
Suddenly we're spurting aimlessly down a dirt road in a pickup heading toward confusion.
A storm approaches fast on the horizon and I turn back to where the sun had been and only see confusion.
It's late at night, but in the street a boy rides his tricycle in circles, creeped out, I turn back in confusion.
I'm under the sea, somehow breathing, up or down? and once again, as if chose by some unseen force, confusion.
I pull a sliver of grass from the bottom of my foot through the top of my head, confusion.
On the verge of full blown pickleage my sleeping mind wakes into a state of confusion.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
rant
Have you ever fallen in love with just a smile? or one of those half smiles that just a mouth stretch smirk with dimple half-frames? or even what someone represents to you? It pains everyone in the end when the single beautiful feature of an otherwise flaw riddled human being starts to unravel on both ends. it's the worst for us half-denial narcissists who falls in love with someone for reflection of ourselves we see in the twinkle of their eyes. It's this love that makes us fall in and out of love like changing clothes (not everyday at least).
I'm done with this, its about my friend Frank by the way
I'm done with this, its about my friend Frank by the way
Up for scientific study,
I've made an apparently mundane observation that I've discussed overly in depth with some of my guy-friends (yeah that's what we call each other). Why do women get more attractive as the weather improves? It always happens, probably all around the world; fall, meh, winter--ugly, spring--better, summer--to hell with the indoors.
I proposed some theories in many a buzzed rant:
1. Its warm out, witch means more women outside in the first place and more women means more attractive ones. (aka, hibernation hypothesis.)
2. It's warm out, therefor, more men outside to notice the attractive women who were always outside and just not being seen by us.
3. Warmth equals less clothes. Many attractive women bundled up are harder to notice as layers conceal curves. (Theory dis proven, as I've seen many women in short shorts and tank tops even when it is freezing outside) (aka, Relativity theory...right)
4. The sun generally makes people more attractive on both sides. More vitamin D makes the males of the species more optimistic and less likely to think everything under an overcast light is ugly. The sun makes people look better, girls get all tan, wear less clothes, get more exercise, and all that other good stuff. Winter means fat and pale and tired looking., usually.
These are all my current working theories. I've heard all these and more from guys. What about girls? How can I say this in the most scientific way possible...What makes you girls better looking in the spring and summer?
Yeah, that'll do.Monday, April 12, 2010
the Nose Job
Orange peel face scrub
to cancel all the Taco Bell.
T-zone stained off-pink
residue from red-die number 5, yellow-3.
Spray on tan.
California in a can.
Brows inked in permanent satisfaction.
A brand new nose,
trimmed from Gimli to mini tepee,
perfect symmetrical pucker.
Million dollar beauty.
as chivalrous as a clown.
to cancel all the Taco Bell.
T-zone stained off-pink
residue from red-die number 5, yellow-3.
Spray on tan.
California in a can.
Brows inked in permanent satisfaction.
A brand new nose,
trimmed from Gimli to mini tepee,
perfect symmetrical pucker.
Million dollar beauty.
as chivalrous as a clown.
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