Interzone #267 - November-December 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

  Her tablet shouted “Semper Fi!” It would be another video of Andre trundling along the bottom of a lake, barbels quivering with the joy of navigating a native habitat. The sound of metal scraping down a chalkboard interrupted the repeated cries of loyalty. She reattached the top of the tent over the project. It was time to put on the suit.

  The suit was like a wetsuit, only made of fabric that breathed. She slicked ointment over her skin to keep the suit from drying out her viscous layers and damaging her chemoreceptors. The trickiest part was her barbels, which tickled and tried to wriggle away from her fingers. Starting with her toes, she tugged on the summer suit she’d had done in an angry red with white polka dot hearts. The ludicrous thing included a hood and covered everything but her face, for which she had a special mask that fit over her sunglasses and barbels, but she decided to leave the mask off.

  She would have preferred to never use the eyes in her head – everything came in too bright and too colorful and she could only see what was right in front of her face. Without the suit, she could close her eyes and tell you exactly where everything was in her apartment, even if you tried to move a lamp or pen behind her. She could brew a cup of tea or whip up a gumbo that would clear your sinuses, but she couldn’t read or watch videos. The world was designed for people who mostly relied on sight, not people like her.

  Andre swore the military would help her maximize each of her senses, but she didn’t give a damn. Suit on, she packed her purse with her tablet and access cards and facemask, just in case. A StateCorp car waited outside. She shuddered to imagine what the ride would be like on a train or bus. Outside her building, she wasn’t sure which was worse, her blocked chemoreceptors or the barrage coming through her barbels: asphalt, dozens of people with their hundreds of individual chemical scents, thirteen distinct kinds of exhaust, sewer grates, food vendors, and slow-eroding paints from buildings, benches, and vehicles.

  She swayed on the sidewalk, trying to stay upright. The driver got out and opened the door for her. She put a hand on the car frame, which tasted of paint and plastic and oil. She wasn’t entirely sure how far away to put her foot or ass, so she pushed off from the sidewalk and let herself more or less fall into the backseat. Once inside, she scrambled to put the mask on, then closed her eyes. She dimly sensed the driver, his few small gene changes for better health and longevity. Pity for him, a long life of servitude.

  The driver escorted her into the hotel with a hand on her arm. She appreciated and loathed the gesture. At least he had a subtle, unperfumed taste, and at least the suit made it seem like the flavors came from across the lobby.

  Her mandatory support group was meeting in Ballroom A. A conference room would have been much more comfortable, but StateCorp wouldn’t be StateCorp if they weren’t in a constant state of showing off. She wondered what kind of appeals they would make, how they intended to trick her, and the others, into bending to their will. Cat smiled to herself behind the mask. They were fishing a dry wash. Cat no more felt like a member of the alt-race than she did the human race. She didn’t owe StateCorp or the other alts anything.

  The room was cool, but not too cool, dim, but not dim enough. A circle of folding chairs set up in the middle emphasized the size of the place, the insignificance of the circle and nearby folding table of coffee and pastries. A few people milled about while others had already chosen seats and were angrily sitting with their arms crossed or nervously glancing around with big eyes.

  Cat scented Gene by the donuts and went over to say hi. “Cat!” He looked her up and down. “It’s been a while! I’d hug you, but you know.” He shrugged inside his land suit, which was like an astronaut suit equipped with ever-circulating moist air. She wasn’t sure the exact details of his alteration. It wasn’t like she’d offered the details of hers to him. The only surviving person who really understood was Andre, and Andre was a tool. All Cat knew about Gene’s alteration was that it involved tiny suction cups over most of his epidermis, but the suction cups weren’t something he could will to activate or deactivate, and the alteration had not produced instincts for a primate body plan to cope with squid anatomy. Gene always joked that at least his alteration hadn’t been the Gecko version, and Cat always laughed, even though she didn’t have a clue what that meant.

  “Can you believe it? Shrimp and sardine donuts! What a delight!” Cat had smelled the offerings on her way over, even though all sensations felt far away and weirdly filtered, as if every taste and smell in the world was buried under a pile of bleached cotton. She shrugged, refusing to give StateCorp the satisfaction of seeing her gobble up the pastries.

  She didn’t have much to say to Gene, not when everything was certainly being recorded, so they took their seats in the circle, which had room for a lucky thirteen. Within minutes, all the seats but one were taken and a man with outdated pitbull ears – uncut, luckily for him – cleared his throat while looking at his tablet. “Thank you all for coming. On behalf of StateCorp, I’d like to welcome you to this group, which we hope will be helpful in assisting each of you to better reintegrate into society and lead more fulfilling lives.” He smiled pitbullish teeth and was met with a series of sighs, snickers, and grunts. His ears briefly lay back on his head before he caught himself and perked them up into friendly attentiveness.

  “My name is Albert Prince, but you can call me Rover if you want.” He waited for a chuckle, but got nothing. “First, I need to do a roll call to make sure everyone is present. Please just say ‘here’ or raise a limb when I call your name. Gary Finklestien?”

  Cat chortled. StateCorp came up with the dumbest names for their experiments. She glanced down to see if Mr Prince had a tail to go with the ears and teeth. He did. That was their generation for you. Too much. Every damn time. Either the scientists weren’t thinking or StateCorp wasn’t thinking or they just hadn’t had the technology yet to really pick and choose. It was surprising, when she thought about it, that Mr Prince wasn’t covered in fur. Of course, he might have had it all removed. She wondered if he had sweat glands. Gene nudged her in the side, probably at some cost to himself. She hadn’t noticed her name being called. “Amika Jackson?” Mr Prince said in a shrill voice that suggested he’d already said her name a few times.

  Cat nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. I go by ‘Cat’ these days. You know, short for ‘Catfish’.” She leveled a meaningful look his way, but he was already looking at his tablet again. He wagged his tail briefly and marked her off the list. He had regular hands with regular nails. Cat nodded at this with an unexpected satisfaction. Mr Prince was obviously a hideous sell-out, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have empathy for him.

  “Yolanda Perez?” A brown and yellow woman hunched unhappily under a heat lamp let out a hiss. She was completely unmoving and looked absolutely miserable in a silver suit that stopped at her scaled neck.

  StateCorp obviously had some weird hang-ups. They gave white alts the weirdest white names imaginable, but seemed to give alts of color “ethnic” sounding names. Cat rolled her eyes behind her mask and sunglasses, amused to imagine playing the stereotypical black woman. She could get loud and angry and wave her arms in the air and demand respect. What a joke.

  On the other side of Yolanda, a thick-furred pink-handed woman unwrapped pieces of hard candy, rotated the candy in her hands in front of her mouth, sniffing with her oversized nose, then put the candy under her seat in the middle of a pile of ripped up napkins and plastic candy wrappers. Cat watched, mesmerized, wondering what else might be hidden under the woman’s seat. She tried to smell what was there, thought there might be a few pastries, but couldn’t be sure through the suit. The woman glanced around as she unwrapped, sampled, and hid each piece of candy. Her eyes met Cat’s sunglasses and mask, which made Cat look away, barbels rigid.

  Mr Prince wagged his tail, thumping the metal tubes of his chair’s backrest. “Now that we have that out of the way, I want to welcome you again and get started. StateCorp cares about each of you and wants
you all to lead happy, fulfilling lives.”

  Yolanda Perez let out a hiss that might have been a laugh. Cat felt like laughing, but she also felt like tossing a stick into another room. She had a ball in her purse, one of those stupid light-up toys with army in multicolored letters. She wondered how many young idiot dog alts the military got to join based on their toys alone.

  “StateCorp wants you to know that it cares about each and every one of you, and it hopes these sessions will help. Which of you would like to go first?” The room stayed silent. “You know, just talk about your life and what you do and what obstacles you face.” No response. “Your hopes and dreams? What you’d make different if you could?” Mr Prince looked around desperately then retreated, head down and shoulders hunched up, like a dog who knows he’s not wanted. After a few sad-eyed seconds, he perked up his ears and peeked at his tablet. “Mr Papadopoulos? Why don’t we start with you?”

  Gene frowned at Cat, then frowned at Mr Prince, then frowned around the circle. “I’m not one much for talking about myself, sir.”

  Mr Prince nodded eagerly. “That’s quite all right, Eugene, quite all right. Just tell us what you do, how you get by, what could make your life better.” He kept nodding, like it would force the words out of Gene’s mouth.

  Gene slowly surveyed the circle again. “Well, I’m working on my PhD in marine biology and chemistry, with a focus on allosology and what this means for intraspecies and cross-species relations.”

  Most of the group had tuned out when Gene said “PhD”, but he had stopped looking at them and was now staring up at the ceiling or inside his own mind. “It’s fascinating really, how marine creatures respond to alters. Some attack, some ignore, but some are quite curious and will even attempt to mate with their altered counterparts, and which ones try that seems to have very little to do with body size or sexual dimorphism. Why just the other day, I met this delightful female squid, and she—”

  “OK!” barked Mr Prince. “Thank you, Eugene. I think we’ll hear from someone else. Anyone game now that the ice has been broken?”

  Eleven sets of eyes, plus or minus, blinked. Mr Prince went back to his tablet, empowered by his newfound authority to twist people into speaking. Cat raised a suited hand. “Excuse me, Mr Prince?”

  “Yes? Miss…Jackson? Would you like to share?”

  “Actually, I want to know why Gene’s here. He’s obviously living a full and productive life. He’s in school, after all, and he goes out in the field. And me too, I live my life the way I want, so why are we here?”

  Mr Prince seemed to consider her question. Apparently finding no answer, he started poking his tablet. “StateCorp cares about your well-being,” he muttered, looking for the correct answers on his screen. “They want to ensure each of you is living as happy and fulfilling a life as possible.”

  “But who are they to decide we’re not? Gene seems happy enough.”

  Gene nodded.

  Mr Prince studied his tablet, glanced at Cat and Gene, then went back to his tablet. He poked around desperately, then seemed to give up. “Look, all I know is that we’re supposed to have these meetings, and I’m supposed to let each of you talk, and when we’re done, you’re supposed to feel better. So if you don’t mind, we might as well get on with it.”

  “Well, I’ve got a few things to say.”

  Startled, Cat craned her neck. Hanging from a bar on the ceiling was a person she hadn’t noticed before. She tried to pull her eyes away, but couldn’t. Her brain buzzed with ideas for a new aviary project.

  Some members of the group twisted their necks to regard the person on the ceiling, others stared intently at the floor, and a few fidgeted in their seats, trying not to look anywhere, smelling of the same quiet desperation they’d had the entire time. The figure on the roof sighed. “Hold on.”

  In a strange feat, the person unfurled giant wings, did a single loop in the air and alighted on the back of the empty chair. “There, now no one has to strain just to be polite. I can’t stay down here too long, and I guess that would be my first complaint. My circulation is built in some way where I’m most comfortable upside down, unless I’m in motion. Do you know how difficult it is to stand in line if you can’t stand in line? I have to hover, which is exhausting, or find somewhere to perch, which is almost nowhere. Yeah, the birds can perch all day long, but they don’t have to worry about blood pumping up into their brains— Hold on.” Cat had no idea what gender to assign this person or if the notion of gender even applied. The figure flapped his/her big leathery wings, made a few circles around the room, then came back to the chair. Cat wondered how he/she didn’t hit one of the nearby people while alighting. “See? I was already starting to feel light-headed.” The person looked at the members of the group meaningfully.

  “I’m trapped on a farm way outside of town with a bunch of birds who wake me up with their damn singing every morning. I’m nocturnal, not that StateCorp gives a shit. I can’t move somewhere else because I’m under strict orders never to be seen in public. They crammed me into the back of a moving truck to bring me here, in the middle of my nighttime. So there, Rover, you said we’re supposed to reintegrate into society. What is StateCorp going to do for me?”

  “Well…Mr…uh…Ms…uh…Little Windsoarer. I will take it up with StateCorp during our debriefing this afternoon and report back next week.”

  Little Windsoarer made a motion with his/her left wing that Cat imagined might be something filthy, then flew up to the ceiling, disrupting a peppermint wrapper from the rodent-alt’s pile that flew into the air and disappeared in a quick pink blur into Yolanda Perez’s mouth. Ms Perez choked with a hacking wheeze, head back, eyelids fluttering up and down, revealing painfully large slitted pupils. Her long tongue protruded from her mouth with the forked tines stuck together at the end. Gene leapt from his seat, grabbed Ms Perez from behind, and methodically jerked her into the air. After a dozen rough thrusts of the Heimlich, the wrapper dislodged from Ms Perez’s throat and flew in a wet crinkled glob to the middle of the circle. Gene gently sat Yolanda under her lamp and patted her shoulder as she blinked her slitted eyes. A smattering of applause went up around the room.

  Gene tried to give one of his signature modest shrugs, but half his upper torso seemed to be stuck to itself. Face contorted in pain, he half whispered. “No big deal. Now if you’ll all excuse me for a moment. I need to visit the Gents.”

  Mr Rover whimpered, tail pulled under his body and sticking out between his legs. “I’m sorry, Mr Papadopoulos. You’ve been very heroic just now, but I’m afraid no one is allowed to leave the room until the session is finished.”

  Gene winced. Cat stood up. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? The man is in pain. He needs to go right himself.”

  Mr Rover whimpered again and turned his face away from Gene and Cat. “It’s not my call.” He whined. “I wish there was something I could do.”

  Cat nodded her head, crooning in a soothing voice. “I understand, Rover. You’re doing the right thing. It’s not your fault.” She reached into her purse. “No one said it’s your fault. You’re a very, very good boy.” She pressed the button with her thumb to turn on the lights. “Here you go!” She flung the army ball through the open doorway behind Mr Rover, who took off after it in a flurry of instinct. She hissed, “Now, Gene, go!” Gene was a rule-follower, but the discomfort of his engaged cups overrode his inclination to obey authority, so he ran in his weird, slinking way to the opposite exit.

  A few moments later, Rover returned, ball in mouth, tail wagging, before he remembered himself. He pulled the ball from his mouth, wiped the slobber off on his pant leg, and abashedly contemplated the room. Ms Perez might have been asleep or dead with her face tilted an inch away from her lamp. Most of the people present had turned away, out of boredom or respect or both. Cat stared very nonchalantly at the glistening wrapper lying on the floor, smelling the growing tension in the room, satisfied that she wasn’t the only alt who wasn’t about to
play StateCorp’s game.

  Rover seemed to decide his superiors would want recent events struck from the record. “Thank you for sharing, Muh…Windsoarer. That was very enlightening. Would someone else like to share?” He wagged his tail a little, hopefully. A man who hadn’t said anything, who looked something like a boulder with a spigot, slowly stood up on stout legs.

  “Yeah, I’ll say something. This is bullshit. All of it. I don’t give a fuck if StateCorp swoops in and locks me into one of their secret cells or kills me where I stand.”

  Cat suspected elephant-alt, but judging by his unruly moustache, it was possible he was a rhino gone wrong. Either way, a miniature version of him was going in her circus project. She strained to smell him through her suit and mask.

  “All of this? Bread and circus. And you know what? StateCorp would like to put us all in a circus. That’s why we’re here. We’re not doing what they want, and they’re trying to figure out how to make us. We all know the military is little more than a StateCorp subsidy.” A series of gasps rose around the room, including from Cat. Everyone did know that, but no one ever said it.

  “Yeah, I said it. We should all say it. Fuck StateCorp, fuck the military, fuck the AltBoard, fuck this group, and especially fuck you, Mr Rover-Whatever-Prince, you fucking sellout.”

  With that the man trudged purposefully out of the circle. “Ahmed!” Rover shouted. “Er. Mr Jamal! Wait! You don’t want to leave this room!” Mr Jamal didn’t pause his slow, stodgy stride. Rover stood up, but so did the rodent-alt, who snatched a short, but sharp-looking knife from under her chair. “Stay where you are, Mr Prince,” she squeaked.