Other Aliens

by Bradford Morrow

  “I reject the notion that somebody can be born that way,” his father grumbled.

  She felt the mattress dip as he shifted to look at her.

  “If you’re born in a body, then you belong in a body, and that’s that,” his father said.

  When she didn’t respond he swiveled back toward the ceiling.

  “He’s just lazy. Doesn’t want to work anymore. Just wants to live for free. God knows we’ve got enough of those types in this country. Well, OK, he’s paying for it himself. So maybe he’ll be more like somebody who’s retired than like some freeloader on welfare. Fine. But you can’t turn somebody into data. They can turn his memories to data, they can turn his beliefs to data, they can turn his knowledge to data, and his particular mannerisms, and his thought patterns, and his exact vocabulary, but even if they put all of that stuff into the computer, there’s still going to be something missing. I’ll tell you this much, those things in the computers don’t have souls. Because you can’t turn that to numbers. You just can’t. And for the record, he could have at least stayed for supper,” his father exclaimed.

  And she knew he needed to rant, so she let him rant. And later, she stuck her face into her pillow and wept so violently that the bed shook, and he knew she needed to weep, so he let her weep. And then for the rest of the night she alternated between fidgeting and lying as still as possible, too upset to sleep.

  From then on, that became her norm, both at night and during the day, just constant worrying. Even when she wasn’t thinking about it she was thinking about it. No matter where she was at, no matter what she was doing, whether she was searching through the envelope of coupons in her purse to pay for tampons at the pharmacy or she was concentrating on the descriptions of the various deductions that her accountant recommended making before filing taxes, an awareness of the situation was always there in the background of her other thoughts, interrupting. I am losing my son.

  Since graduating, Mason had been renting a house with some roommates, who no doubt would claim his belongings after the operation. But there wouldn’t be much to claim. His furnishings were spare, just a bed with a sheet, stacked crates with folded clothes, a battered plastic hamper, dirty bowls on the windowsill containing flecks of dried milk and crusted cheese, a framed photo of his family on the wall, the tangled cords of his chargers on the floor, and his beanbag. She had been over there a number of times, once to bring him chicken broth when he had the flu, once to bring him emergency funds after he had been mugged. The roommates who he’d found were strange—women with glazed looks who played video games excessively, shifty men who were always busy mailing and receiving mysterious packages and constantly reeked of curry and patchouli, aggressively chatty people who believed that the moon landings had been a complete hoax and that astrological systems were indisputably factual—and she had worried about him living there. That his roommates might pressure him into doing something risky, like heroin, or orgies. Activities so pleasurable that the activities were addicting. And there had in fact appeared to be cause for concern. He had seemed unwell in recent years. Not just because of how frail he had become, but the bags that had formed in the skin beneath his eyes, and the furrow that had formed in the skin between his eyebrows. She had wondered if he was depressed.

  After confessing his plan to his family, however, Mason immediately seemed to improve. In the following weeks he occasionally drove over in the evening to hang out on the stoop with his family, sitting there in his regular chair with his usual slouch as if everything were normal. Sipping from a bottle of iced tea, his mother would study the changes in his appearance from across the stoop. The bags beneath his eyes had faded. The furrow between his eyebrows had disappeared. Some of the color had actually returned to his skin. In fact, the nearer the day of the procedure came, the healthier he seemed, and that alarmed her more than the symptoms of depression ever had, because his growing excitement seemed like proof that he genuinely believed he needed the operation.

  She set her bottle of iced tea down onto the stoop, then shifted in her chair to turn toward the street, returning a wave to a neighbor in a passing car. She had always assumed that once hormones hit he would finally become interested in the lively social network at school, but even as a teenager he had preferred digital interactions to relationships in person. His brothers had been daredevils in those years, exploring abandoned factories with friends, egging the vehicles of enemies, roaming around heckling tourists for fun, constantly coming and going from the house with every departure and arrival announced by the thwack of the screen door and stomps on the front steps, but he had been as much of a homebody as ever. He had dated a few people—the longest had been a timid mathlete with a strand of hair dyed aquamarine—and the romances had at the very least been earnest sexually. Sorting through his dirty laundry, his mother had occasionally discovered a sock stiff with dried semen; dumping the contents of his trash can into the garbage container in the garage, his mother had sometimes spotted a condom wrapper in with the mix. Yet he had never seemed truly enamored with anybody, speaking of the girls he dated with the same reluctant preference he showed for cereal and macaroni, as if sex were merely another appetite to be sated. And otherwise he hadn’t shown much interest in his schoolmates at all. For the sake of convention she had wished that he would join some extracurriculars, maybe try out for a musical or run for student council, but for selfish reasons she also had been glad that he had spent most weekends hunched over a screen in his bedroom. She had loved having him nearby, just getting to glance at him as she walked past the room to fetch a sponge from the kitchen, or getting to dust the mirror in the bathroom knowing that he occupied a room just down the hall. Stopping to visit him between chores, she would see apps flashing across his screen at an almost blurry rate as he switched between chats and forums and the comments beneath articles. She had marveled at how many conversations he could engage in simultaneously.

  “What are you talking about on there?” she had asked him once, standing over his beanbag with a vacuum cradled in her arms.

  “Everything,” Mason had said, drawing out the syllables of the word for emphasis.

  And he had in fact seemed to be interested in everything, occasionally sharing at supper what he had learned throughout the day, the topics ranging from subjects like oceanography and astrophysics to bits of gossip about mods and other friends online. Puberty had added a lump to his throat that dipped when he spoke. His scalp had shed dandruff that his mother was forever having to brush from the back of his shirt, and though she had insisted that he and his brothers be asleep by midnight during the school week, on the occasions when she had risen in the wee hours to use the bathroom and while padding down the hall had spotted the faint glow of a screen shining through the crack below his door, she had never asked him to go to bed. She had taken any chance to accommodate him, even when that had required breaking her own rules.

  Thinking of that, she actually could remember a time he had cried. A particularly catastrophic hurricane had blown through when he was a teenager, and though the house had been spared any significant damage, the power had been out for weeks afterward, with no way to get online. His brothers had always thrived during outages, enjoying the novelty of eating canned goods by the light of a gas lantern and flushing the toilet with water stored in plastic milk cartons, and had treated those weeks like an extended camping trip, lounging around the living room spooking each other with urban legends and playing board games that hadn’t been pulled from the closet in years. Mason, however, had struggled. The longest the power had ever been out before was a few days at a time, and he must have assumed that would be the case again, because he had spent the first few days after the storm sitting on the windowsill in the living room with his arms folded across his chest, watching the street with an intent expression, as if utility trucks from the electric company were due to arrive at any moment. As the outage had dragged on, his bearing had changed from impatient to agitated, with a set clench
to his jaw and his lips pursed tight, and he had become increasingly anxious, replying to questions with distracted grunts, ignoring requests to join activities, just pacing around the window in the living room, kicking at the carpet, or for hours sometimes simply slumping on his beanbag with a blank screen clutched in his hands, until finally one morning after waking up to discover that the power still hadn’t been restored, he had broken down weeping at breakfast, burying his face in his arms, with the descending knobs of his spine protruding through the stretched fabric of his shirt as he sobbed. His brothers had stared at him with mild shock.

  “The power has to come back on eventually,” his mother had said, trying to reason with him from across the table.

  But he had been inconsolable, his body trembling in frustration.

  “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Mason had cried.

  At the time she had dismissed the statement as a bout of melodrama, just another complaint from a child prone to complaining, but now she realized that he might have meant what he had said: that the worst he had ever felt was being cut off that long from the Internet.

  Her name was Emily, but she was a mother—even before giving birth to the boys, she had always felt that was what she was meant to do, her identity—and his mother especially. She loved his father, she loved his brothers, yet the family hadn’t felt complete to her until he had arrived. When she had first held him, a bleary newborn with a wisp of pale hair, she had been struck by that exact thought. This is everybody. And she still felt that way, sitting around on the stoop, like the family wasn’t complete without him. He balanced out everybody else, that gawky figure over by the railing. She loved how he would set his ball cap in his lap to fuss with the snaps on the plastic adjuster for a while absentmindedly. She loved how he would tuck his hands into the webbed cup holders attached to his chair as if the holes had been included for that exact purpose. She loved how when she accidentally bumped the bottle of iced tea by her feet while laughing at his brothers, he lunged to catch the wobbling bottle before the iced tea could spill. When she slipped indoors to blow her nose, the gentle lilt of his voice drifting in through the screen door gave her a sense of well-being. When she returned outdoors with a file for her nails, the sharp odor of the sneakers he had kicked off by the front steps made her swell with contentment. He had a presence she could feel even when she wasn’t looking. And now all of that was tinged with dread. She knew what the stoop was like when he wasn’t there, from days he was at work, or days he was home sick. On those days there was an empty space. An absence over by the railing that she was constantly aware of, no matter how hard she tried to be happy with what she had. And after the operation, that empty space would be there forever, the rest of her life.

  His family avoided talking about the operation around him without exception. His father, who had never understood him but had always made an effort to understand him anyway, had given up, maintaining a polite yet firm silence on the matter, as if acknowledging the choice might count as consent. His brothers, who had defended him from any accusations of weirdness when he was younger with a ferocity that had sent critics running, now just sat back looking embarrassed if the issue was mentioned, as if too humiliated to speak. His mother, who in truth usually couldn’t resist a topic that promised a bit of drama, was struck dumb with fear when given the opportunity to join a discussion about the decision. Even Mason himself avoided the subject. Although he may have been relieved to have confessed his plan, he was obviously still ashamed of his plan too. Whenever anybody brought up the operation, his hands would tremble and his voice would shake, the same as when he had made the initial announcement. And the operation came up often when he was on the stoop. By now word of his plan had spread through the neighborhood. He was a spectacle, like somebody out on bail for a crime that would mean life in prison, a local landmark about to vanish from the neighborhood forever in a sensational fashion. Neighbors would wander over to the stoop under the pretense of talking with his family, chatting about basketball or landscaping or potholes or the weather until enough time had passed to be able to turn to him casually to ask about the operation, as if the subject had only just then come to mind.

  In general the neighbors seemed less interested in hearing his perspective than in reporting what they personally felt was so worthwhile about having a body and then explaining that he actually liked having a body just as much as they did. He would tug uncomfortably at the collar of his tee while a neighbor expounded on the wonders of bubble baths; he would fidget uneasily with the rips in his jeans while a neighbor testified to the greatness of scented lotion. And his mother thought that he did seem to give serious consideration to what the neighbors said. Yet whatever the neighbors insisted would be worth keeping a body for, he always responded that he would still prefer to live as data. He wouldn’t miss driving with the windows down. He wouldn’t miss wearing slippers, dressing up for weddings, or changing out of wet clothing into dry pajamas. He wouldn’t miss jambalaya, peanut butter, mustard on pretzels, burritos bursting with cheese and beans and salsa bundled up in wrappers, pepperoni pizza with the crust flavored subtly like cardboard from the box, lobster so tender that the meat flaked apart, the maraschino cherry off the crest of a banana split, the extra portion of milk shake in the steel cup that always felt like a surprise bonus after you had finished the serving in the glass, pancakes drenched in maple syrup and waffles dolloped with whipped cream, bacon dripping with so much grease that the oil had soaked the paper towel underneath, popcorn coated with so much salt that a layer of crystal had formed at the bottom of the bucket, chili dogs heaped with onions and seasoned with the smell of cut grass at a ballpark, buffalo wings slathered with cayenne and seasoned with the smell of lit candles at a pub, toasted marshmallows oozing out from between slabs of chocolate and graham cracker with the scent of campfire on your fingers, toffee so buttery you had to wipe your lips afterward, fudge so rich you would feel your toes curl involuntarily, the tang of a bite of pickle with the peppery aftertaste of a pastrami sandwich still fresh on your tongue, hot fries with cold ketchup, chocolate-chip cookie dough, fried green tomatoes, pecan pie, grits, or beignets. He wouldn’t miss getting buzzed on coffee, wine, or cigarettes. He wouldn’t miss the shiver of ecstasy after scratching a mosquito bite. He wouldn’t miss roller coasters. He wouldn’t miss wave pools. He wouldn’t miss turnstile gates. He wouldn’t miss funnel cakes. He wouldn’t miss souvenir hats. He wouldn’t miss anything about amusement parks whatsoever. He wouldn’t miss the rush of adrenaline after running a stoplight, the almost giddy relief following a bout of hiccups, sucking drinks through straws, having caricatures drawn, feeling drowsy, collapsing into a mound of blankets and pillows, naps so intense you woke up drooling, the sound of rain, the smell of rain, or wind chimes.

  “It’s unnatural,” a neighbor grimaced, speaking of the operation, which was the closest that any of the neighbors ever came to condemning him in person. When he wasn’t around, his mother knew, the neighbors gossiped about him constantly. When he was around, the children on the street weren’t allowed on the property, as if the neighbors were afraid his thinking might be infectious.

  “The Internet is a beautiful place,” Mason murmured.

  He had never left Louisiana. He had lived in the same neighborhood in the same district in the same city his entire life. He had always had his family nearby to protect him. The Internet wasn’t a beautiful place. The Internet was a dangerous place. His mother stayed up late into the night, sitting alone in the kitchen with the lamp lit, searching the news for stories about postcorporeals. Earlier that month a postcorporeal from Winnetka had been infected with a virus that had damaged her programming so severely that she had crashed and hadn’t been able to be revived, effectively killing her. And only the week prior, a postcorporeal from Baltimore had been attacked by hackers, had her memory looted for credit card information and her social security number, had random sections of her data vandalized apparently
just out of spite, and been left in the digital equivalent of a coma. While the year before in a highly publicized case a company in Phoenix that hosted postcorporeals from across the country had failed to maintain its facilities properly, not out of negligence but rather in a deliberate attempt to increase profits, regularly skipping the safety inspections standard to the industry, which had come to the attention of the public only after the servers at the data center had been fried by a power surge from a lightning strike, resulting in hundreds of postcorporeals vanishing from the world in a flash, in a disaster the magnitude of a collapsed hotel or a crashed plane, an event that never would have happened had the place been up to code.

  She wouldn’t have any way to watch over him anymore.

  How long would he survive out there?

  For Mardi Gras his family had a tradition of spending the day together, which was an important event every year but this year had taken on particular significance, because the operation was scheduled to take place the following morning. She tried to suppress her sense of grief to focus on making the day as perfect as possible. That was all she wanted, a perfect day, so that after losing him she could at least always remember that her last day with him had been special. She shook her head at his father and sent him back into the bedroom to change into something nicer than the tank top and cargo shorts he had picked out. She made his brothers promise not to pick any fights with tourists. She loaded her purse with spray-on sunscreen and bottled waters.

  And the day was perfect. His family looked beautiful, proud parents and polite children dressed in fine clothing made by respected brands, and in the morning his family snagged prime spots for viewing the parades and saw floats so spectacular as to be truly among the best in living memory, and in the afternoon his family got ice-cream cones piled high with generous scoops of butter pecan and rocky road and vanilla bean and blue moon and then strolled along the riverfront cracking jokes, and in the evening his family stumbled onto a live performance put on in the park by an unassuming band and heard a zydeco concert that wowed the crowd to such an extent that afterward members of the audience formed a line to shake hands with the musicians. And then after dusk his family set up on the patio of a café, splitting a platter of nachos and sipping from pints of ale, people watching over the fence, and that was perfect too. The temperature was mild, the breeze was pleasant, and dazzling stars filled the sky above the street. The road was strewn with colorful debris. Metallic noisemakers, cracked to-go cups, a trampled bouquet, tangled strings of beads, fluorescent dildos, an acrylic bong. Revelers streamed past the patio, people grinning behind feathered masks and people primping rainbow wigs and people whose skin was painted with mesmerizing swirls and people in sequined outfits twirling bejeweled canes that glittered under the streetlights and people breathing fire to the cheers of people riding by on unicycles and people embracing strangers and people chanting nonsense with friends and people in billowing capes skipping with each other down the street, and even in the midst of all of that pleasure and joy and happiness, Mason still seemed faintly bored. Eventually he took his phone out of his jacket, hunching over the screen, responding to messages, sending new messages, ignoring the carnival completely. He had only nibbled at the nachos. He had merely nipped at the ale. And at the concert he hadn’t clapped between songs and instead of watching the performance had just fiddled with his phone, and along the riverfront he hadn’t even wanted an ice-cream cone and instead of watching the steamboats had just fiddled with his phone, and during the parades he hadn’t bothered to catch any of the throws and instead of watching the floats had just fiddled with his phone. The day had been perfect, and the day had been ruined anyway, because he had been too distracted to experience any of it. His mother leaned back in her chair with a frown. She had worried that she might get so sad tonight that she would cry, but all that worrying had been for nothing, because she wasn’t sad. She was furious. He might as well have already been gone. He couldn’t look away from that fucking screen.