Maxim has now resided in this apartment building for a year. When he first arrived there were no live residents. Of the 25 units, only 12 had corpses in them. The first thing he did was start to drag the bodies, one by one, outside the building to leave for scavengers. But there were 23 corpses; after the fourth one, his stamina gave out. Then he hit on the notion of throwing them off their balconies, and that went much faster. He did all this in full daylight, to minimize personal risk, as he remembered reading that most predators and scavengers hunted at dawn or twilight.
Birds and insects converged on the splattered remains immediately, but that night Maxim observed coyotes feasting. The next morning there were heavy rains; by the time the weather calmed just before sunset, there was barely a trace of gore left.
A week later, three Latinas – aged, Maxim guessed, between 20 and 50 – moved in two floors beneath him, taking over the entire level. The following day, the Chinese man appropriated a unit for himself on the third floor. No one has settled in the building since, because the man always chases anyone new away. He never interferes or interacts with either the women on the eighth floor or with Maxim.
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Maxim Fujiyama lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America, Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy. Maxim doesn’t like people to make assumptions about shared knowledge when they express themselves, either verbally or in writing. Everything should be defined and contextualized carefully, so as to make sure there can be no misunderstandings. For example, there’s another Vancouver 490 kilometres south of the one he lives in; the other Vancouver is in the state of Washington, in the United States of America. Aside from seeing it on maps, he knows nothing of that other Vancouver.
Two years ago, his hometown boasted a population of 700,000, with the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area comprised of more than 2.5 million inhabitants, the third-largest urban agglomeration in Canada. Now, without official statistics, Maxim is hesitant to make a precise guess. But, for one year now, he has been keeping tabs.
Two years ago, it would have been impossible to take note of every person encountered or observed in a single day, or even walking the length of a downtown block. There was too much activity going on at all times.
According to his observations, Maxim has identified 1,324 different people in Vancouver. At least 597 of these can be assumed to currently reside in the city, as he has recorded their presence throughout the past year at various intervals. Another 344, seen no more than three times and not more recently than 60 days ago, he lists as “transient or deceased.” Another 104 were only observed for the first time in the past eight weeks, so their status is still “indeterminate.” He counts 170 whom he observed regularly for the first few months but then disappeared; these are noted as “deceased or emigrated.” Finally, he identified 109 corpses as “newly deceased,” as he had previously counted them among the survivors spotted in Vancouver. He does not keep tabs on other corpses: those who died more than a year ago, such as those of his parents. There are too many to count, and they fall outside the scope of his survey.
He has not spoken to any of the survivors. And no one has tried to talk to him. The inhabitants of Vancouver seem content keeping to themselves, which suits Maxim. He only ventures from his base of operations to scavenge or observe and record the population of the city. There are also nonhuman animals in Vancouver; beyond the usual urban fauna of squirrels, cats, dogs, crows, pigeons, sparrows, and the like, Maxim has seen numerous foxes, rabbits, and coyotes and a handful of timber wolves, lynxes, cougars, and bears. He lacks the expertise to be able to distinguish individuals of most of these species, so he has not been keeping tabs on their population, although he does enjoy observing them.
Today, Maxim recognized four people already on his list
of permanent residents, seven people from the pool of newcomers, and two individuals he has never seen before (the two men who tried to gain entry into his building).
Precision makes knowledge and communication possible. Maxim is a precise person.
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Maxim is uneasy using the word “person.” What does it mean? Who or what is a person? Can only humans be called persons? Are dogs persons, too? Cats? Parrots? Lions? Dolphins? Elephants? Mice? Iguanas? Octopuses? Sharks? Some say that chimpanzees and gorillas are persons and should be treated as such. Who or what defines the limits of personhood? If being human equals personhood, does that mean that chimps and gorillas are in some way human? For many years, humans were thought to be Cro-Magnons. Persons were Cro-Magnons; other animals, from primates to insects, were not. Fossils from other branches of not-quite-human hominids had been found, but all of these were thought to be extinct. Later DNA analysis told us that, no, they were not truly extinct, and, yes, they were human, too. They still live among and within modern humans – or at least what remains of the human population.
When the Cro-Magnons migrated out of Africa across Europe and Asia, they encountered these other humans – the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and probably others whose DNA has yet to be located in the current human gene pool, such as the Red Deer Cave People, and others whose fossil record and DNA may as yet be undiscovered. To what degree did these different types of humans fight or cooperate? How much did they recognize each other as akin or distrust each other as alien? The details of those encounters are forever lost, but one thing is now certain: these different branches of early humans interbred. Were they all persons? Some modern humans are part Neanderthal, part Denisovan, part who-knows-what other species of early human. Are all modern humans equally persons, regardless of their genetic background?
Before, when Maxim still lived with his parents, when Vancouver was a populous metropolis, Maxim felt more alienation than kinship toward other humans, including his mother and father. He was keenly aware that humans were all different, as he felt similar to no one, not even to his parents. When he first read about the Neanderthal and Denisovan genes present in, respectively, European and Southeast Asian lineages, Maxim grew even more intensely aware of the differences that separated him genetically from everyone else.
Maxim’s mother, Giselle Beaulieu, was a Francophone from the province of Quebec, more precisely from Longueuil, a suburb on the south shore of the Island of Montreal, across the St. Lawrence River. She moved to Vancouver to teach French at the Vancouver School Board. She never mastered the different “th” sounds and never quite grasped the role of emphasis in English pronunciation, but her vocabulary in both languages was extensive. Being of Caucasian European descent, her genes included Neanderthal DNA, thus so did Maxim’s.
Tomoyuki Fujiyama, Maxim’s father, was Japanese. He had come to Canada at age 17 to study biochemistry at the University of British Columbia and ended up staying to become a professor at that same institution. He spoke perfect CBC English and only slipped into Japanese when he drank too much alcohol, which he always did at parties. Sometimes, too much drink would cause him to forget how to express himself in anything but Japanese, although he still understood if people spoke to him in English or French. Under normal circumstances, his spoken French was inconsistent but serviceable. According to the latest findings in genetic anthropology, the Japanese, and most mainland Asians, like most sub-Saharan Africans, had never bred with either Neanderthals or Denisovans, so they are thought to be fully Cro-Magnon.
Maxim, however, doubts that the whole story is quite so simple. Geneticists have been able to identify surviving Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA strains only because they had located and identified the DNA of these other primates. There were likely other species of early humans, as yet unidentified, with whom the Cro-Magnons also interbred, both in their African homeland and as they spread across the globe.
Maxim believes that every ethnic group is genetically distinctive, the result of interbreeding between different species of early humans – several more varieties than merely Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Beyond that, due to emigration patterns and fu
rther cross-breeding between racial and cultural groups, every individual possesses a unique blend of Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and other hominid DNA. Every individual human is thus differently human compared to other individuals in the population.
Not better nor worse. Not superior nor inferior. But different. Essentially: alien.
If these different species of humans could interbreed, then the line separating species is thin, if it exists at all. Then, the line separating person from nonperson must also be thin, if it exists at all.
In the playground near a side entrance to Granville Island, there’s a family of dogs who has taken up residence. The male is a brown Labrador and the female an uncut Rottweiler, with full ears and tail. They have had at least two litters. Each of their nine pups looks completely different from the other. The adult dogs guard their territory but are not overly aggressive. They allow some other animals passage through the playground and warn off others. Sometimes, they even invite humans among them, wagging their tails as the bipeds approach, and integrate them within their pack’s play. Some humans they growl at, though, baring their teeth. Maxim presumes their senses make them keen observers, and he is convinced their evaluations are not arbitrary but carefully considered, although the adult male and female do not always come to the same conclusion. Contrary to Maxim’s expectations, due to their breed and gender, the female Rottweiler tends to be more trusting and welcoming of visitors, while the male Labrador is more cautious. When Maxim first observed the pack, the female took the pups with her to scavenge for food while the male stayed behind to guard their home; after they came back, he would go scavenge on his own, leaving the rest of his pack home. Sometimes, he returned to find other animals – dogs, cats, humans, coyotes – with his family. After a few such occurrences, he switched roles with the female, rounding up the pups to go with him and growling at his mate to stay behind. Now, if he finds intruders with his mate when the pack returns from scavenging, he and his pups rush in barking and chase them away. When the female leaves to find food on her own, he corrals all the pups and makes them stay with him. He then stands guard vigilantly over his offspring and territory, not letting anyone approach, relaxing only once his mate is back with the pack.
Are these dogs not persons because they are not humans? Regardless of the answer, it would still be too logistically complicated for Maxim to include nonhumans in his survey. His criteria for inclusion and exclusion trouble him, though.
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When Maxim became sick, his parents were still healthy. Maxim dimly remembers the early days of his illness – nothing beyond vague images of his parents nursing him. He remembers, too, that three days before he was affected, all hospitals and clinics across British Columbia had been closed down “for reasons of national security and public safety.” That had been 14 April. All schools and most government services across Canada had been shut down three days earlier than that, with the same uninformative and nondescript reason given. Starting on 3 April, people had been falling sick in Vancouver – and, according to what Maxim gleaned on the Internet, around the planet; making a link between the unexplained epidemic and governments’ secretive security measures worldwide was unavoidable. Rumours flew all over the Web, but no official source gave any clear answers as to what was happening. At least, not before Maxim got sick, and there’s been no way to get news since he recovered.
Maxim has no clue how long he was ill or how long he convalesced. By the time he fully regained awareness, his parents were no longer looking after him, and he had clearly not been tended to in quite some time.
He found his mother and father in their bed, both deceased, under the sheets as if asleep. From the smell and look of them, he assumed they’d been dead for several days. Not that he’d even been around a corpse before, but he couldn’t imagine that only a few hours could result in such decomposition. Now that he was aware of it, he could no longer ignore the smell. He could not stay here.
Maxim, having been bedridden for an unspecified long time, was aware of his own filthy state. He forced himself to take a shower – a quick one; there was no hot water, and he shivered under the ice-cold blast. In the kitchen, where he hurried to pack supplies, he confirmed that there was no power. Nothing from the fridge was salvageable but there were plenty of canned goods, nuts, and crackers. Hunger assailed him suddenly, and he devoured an entire box of flaxseed crackers. He tossed the rest of what was still edible, along with several changes of clothes, into a large wheeled suitcase.
One last thing before he left the family condo behind forever: he tried turning on his tablet but it had no juice left. It was most likely a futile effort; already, Maxim suspected there would be neither Wi-Fi nor mobile connections available, but only dead air.
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The morning after the altercation with the two white men in business suits, Maxim finds the building guardian dead, sprawled on the floor inside near the main door. Maxim kneels to inspect the body. There is no blood and no obvious clue as to how the man died.
The three Latinas emerge from the stairwell and step into the lobby. Maxim hears their gasps. He turns his head toward them, his hand still resting against the old man’s chest. For the first time since his departure from his parents’ home, Maxim speaks. “I found him like this.”
Maxim’s voice breaks before he hits the end of the sentence. With no warning, he weeps – his bereavement at waking up orphaned in this fractured world finally breaking through. He tries to contain it, but he can’t. His entire body shakes and sobs. He doesn’t have the strength to get up or even to stay in kneeling position. He plops down, sitting on the floor; his will to do anything but give in to the tears flows away. The youngest of the women crouches down and hugs him to her.
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Maxim is fluent in three languages: English, French, and Japanese. He does not need to understand Spanish to grasp that the women are arguing about him and that they are all three of them scared. Probably not scared of him, though, or they wouldn’t have let the youngest one lead him into their floor of the building or leave him unsupervised as they argued among themselves.
Their living space is different from his. Maxim has not moved any of the furniture or in any way altered the neutral decor and layout. If Maxim were to vacate, he could do so immediately and there would scarcely be any evidence that he ever inhabited the condo. The women, on the other hand, have clearly made the space their own. Their place is bursting with colour and knick-knacks. No wall or surface is left blank. The effect is busy and alive but not cluttered. It feels like a home, in a way his own space does not.
The women have stopped talking, and the silence grows thicker with each passing second – until the oldest woman utters a terse sentence to the one who was kind to him, which is followed by another silence, this one volatile and pregnant with conflict. But it’s short-lived. The youngest woman says one word in response to the eldest, then turns back toward Maxim.
To sit next to him on the couch, she has to displace a handful of large, colourful cushions. Maxim is holding on to another of these cushions, clutching it to his chest. It smells like flowers, and the aroma soothes him.
She puts a hand on his forearm: “I’m sorry. I want to take you with us, but…”
“Take me where?”
Her grip on him tightens. “I… We don’t know yet, but it’s not safe here. Not anymore. Anyway, you can’t come. My aunt says family only. Will you be okay? Are you alone? Is there anyone left that you can…?”
Maxim looks at her hand on him as her words trail off. Then he looks at her carefully, and he notices that she’s younger than he’d previously believed. She’s no more than two or three years older than he is. Maxim is short at only 165 centimetres, but she’s a few centimetres shorter, with long hair that looks well maintained, despite the lack of, well, just about everything. Looking straight into her big bright eyes, Maxim says: “My name is Maxim Fujiyama.”
That makes her laugh, and Maxim kno
ws that he has never seen anything so beautiful as this girl laughing.
“My name is Perla, Maxim,” she says brightly, but then her face darkens. “You don’t have anyone left, do you?”
Maxim’s heart is beating so hard, it almost overwhelms her voice; the sound of her voice makes it beat even harder. He says, “I have you, Perla. You’re my friend.”
Perla looks away from him, takes her hand away, and wipes her face with her forearm. She turns her head back toward Maxim and shakes her head, her eyes moist. She leans in and brushes her lips against his ear as she whispers, “Yes, I am your friend, but I’m not a good friend.” She lets her lips linger on his cheek for a split second before she gets up and says, in a loud, cold voice, “You have to go. Right now.”
He then notices that the two older women are looming only a metre away, sternly glaring at him. He leaves without another word, without another glance at Perla. As he climbs the stairs up to his floor, he overhears the family of women yell at each other.
Maxim does not sleep that night. He sits on his balcony until sunrise, keeping an eye on the front door. No one comes in, but neither does he see the women leave. Have they changed their mind? No – before the dawn mist has fully lifted, just as he gets up to step inside, he spots the three of them exiting the building. Each of them is carrying a large rolling suitcase and a big handbag strapped around their shoulder. He watches them walk south; he stares at Perla, expecting her to look back at him. She never does, and soon the trio is out of his sight.
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A sharp noise in the night awakens Maxim. Alert, he listens carefully, but all seems still.
Twenty days later, and there have been no further incidents in the building. Sleep comes less easily to him now. The feeling of loneliness that welled up in him in the aftermath of finding the Chinese man’s dead body continues to overwhelm him when he lies down in bed at night, and, even once he does succeed in falling asleep, his slumber is much lighter than it was before. The slightest noise wakes him up, feeding a gnawing worry that Perla’s family was right. Is it no longer safe to stay here? Is it safe anywhere anymore?
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