Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol I

by Anthology

  Joel opened his eyes. The white light sliced across his retinas like a knife, and he squeezed his eyelids shut. Cautiously peering into the whiteness through his sparse eyelashes, Joel discerned the shapes of people around him. They were dressed in white, and blended with the white walls, the instruments in their hands the same color as the chrome fixtures. The chrome fixtures that held his mouth open, thrust into his throat far enough to scratch it and make him want to gag. Steel shafts penetrated his ears, holding his head immobile.

  This is it, Joel thought. They've found someone who wants my brain---wants me. He swiveled his eyes around, half-expecting to see the perpetrator. He imagined him reaching greedily for Joel, an unholy gleam in his eyes.

  Cassie's Dad came into Joel's field of vision, moving his face closer. "You gave us quite a scare, Joel," he said. "What were you doing, getting stuck in the gate? Did you want to get out?"

  Joel would've nodded if the mechanical gear did not prevent him.

  "Silly boy," the old man cawed. "You got quite an electric shock, you did. Now, you just relax, and we'll make sure that you did not damage anything."

  Despite his discomfort, Joel breathed easier. It wasn't the time, then. If he was lucky, the time would never come. With all his heart he hoped that the old man would find something wrong. Some imperfection that would let Joel live.

  The old man gave a signal, and his helpers, white-gowned people with their faces hidden behind white cloths, wheeled Joel's table into a large, humming tunnel. Joel closed his eyes, and in his mind repeated the words he heard Cassie whisper before going to sleep. "Please Lord, have mercy on us all." He thought a bit, and added, "Especially Joel."

  Lord did not listen---perhaps, because Joel was a pig, and not a young girl with curly hair and eyes like blackberries. After an eternity of loud humming and beams of light that shot at him from different angles, Cassie's Dad wheeled Joel out of the tunnel, and patted his snout. "Good as new. Good boy."

  Joel wept silently as the masked people unstrapped him and freed his mouth from the ravages of steel. He was too wrapped up in his misery to look around as Cassie's Dad nudged him outside of the low stone building into the yard covered in asphalt. The old man opened the door of his car, and Joel climbed onto a back seat. He looked out of the window, but nothing shook him out of the stupor---neither the flowering cherry trees, nor people milling about, nor the low wooden pens. He watched a row of pigs' faces pressed against the bars. He guessed that they housed human livers, hearts and kidneys. But not minds, Joel thought bitterly. That cross was his to bear.

  Since that day, Joel thought of ways to escape. He circled the perimeter of the yard surrounded by thin wires. But the wires gave him the same jolt as the gates. He tried to root under the fence, and made good progress, but was discovered. The old man moved Joel's bed into the shed, where he could be locked. His only solace was Cassie, who visited him occasionally. The old man tagged along on such visits, short and awkward as they were.

  "What's got into him?" the old man said, looking at Joel with consternation. He stood in the doorway, the afternoon sun creating a halo around his misshapen, hunched silhouette.

  Cassie crouched down and patted Joel's head. "Perhaps he knows." She looked up at her father, her eyes rounded with emphasis.

  "Nonsense," the old man said.

  Joel's heart leapt with hope. He grunted and rubbed against Cassie's knees, almost knocking her over.

  "Dad," she said.

  The old man sighed. "There's nothing I can do," he said. "It's not just my project. Perhaps it was a bad idea to keep him as a pet---I should've known that you'd get attached."

  Cassie stood. "What do you mean? Did you find someone?"

  The old man nodded. "Ever since it's been in the papers, we've been flooded with mail and phone calls. The Congress got involved, and the FDA is pushing for clinical trials. I think we found a recipient."

  "Who?"

  "A young man," Cassie's Dad said. "He was in a car accident some years back, suffered a loss of a large portion of the right hemisphere. Think of it, Cassie---Joel will help someone to live a normal life. Think how you would feel if you were half a person."

  Cassie heaved a sigh, and thrust her hands deep into her jeans pockets. "I guess. I would hate to lose Joel though."

  The old man smiled. "You don't have to lose him, dear. He'll retain most of his brain---more than enough for a pet."

  Joel could not sleep all night. Cassie was an ally. If only he could send her a sign, let her know somehow that he was just like her, that he could think and understand everything... A sudden thought struck him. He almost laughed in disbelief---it was so simple. Why didn't he think of it before? He picked up a twig with his mouth, and started drawing letters in the dust. Letters that he remembered since Cassie and he were both carefree and young, when she learned the symbols on the bright painted cubes. Joel was there, and he had learned too.

  It was a hard going---the letters came out shaky and clumsy, and he had to start over a few times. He wanted them to be perfect, so that no one would doubt his abilities. He labored all night, often stopping to rest. By the morning, the inscription was ready. Large, blocky letters stood out clearly against the grey dirt. "Cassie," he wrote, "I love you." She would come in the morning and see that he had both a heart and a mind.

  When the morning came, Joel circled around the cramped pen---a far cry from the luxury of the old house, where he could roam free and see Cassie whenever he wanted to. He even moved all the straw into the corner, so that nothing obscured his letter.

  He heard footsteps outside, and his heart almost stopped, and then raced, once he realized that there were several people there. All of them came in, wearing green coats, loud and laughing. Their heavy shoes trampled his message back into dust, and their hands grabbed Joel. He fought back, crying out for help, until a needle jabbed his flank.

  * * * *

  The afternoon sun flooded the porch, and Joel closed his eyes. It was a nice day, although his aching skull told him that it might rain later. Cassie shifted in her chair, and tickled Joel's chin with her bare toes. He grunted and stretched his neck. He almost dozed off when he heard crunching of the gravel of the driveway. Someone was coming.

  He opened his eyes. Cassie looked too, shielding her eyes from the glare, and put down her book. Joel glanced at the squiggly lines, and then at Cassie. For the life of him, he could not understand why she spent all day staring at the black worms that crawled on the white pages.

  "Excuse me." The visitor walked halfway up the steps that led to the porch and stopped, as if uncertain. "I was told that this is Dr. Kernicke's house."

  Cassie nodded. "He's at the Institute. It's down the road, by the farm."

  "I know," the visitor said. "I just wanted to talk in a more informal manner." His eyes met Joel's, and he whistled. "Say, is that the pig that..." He swallowed a few times but did not continue.

  Cassie looked puzzled for a moment, but then smiled. "Oh yes, this is Joel, the wonder-pig."

  Joel lifted his head at the mentioning of his name. The rest of the words escaped him somehow, no matter how hard he listened.

  "Joel," the visitor repeated. "I'm Phil Marshall."

  "Oh yes." Cassie looked at the visitor with awe. "You're the recipient."

  The word evoked a vague displeasure in Joel, but the day was too nice to get agitated over anything. He grunted and rolled to his side, trying to capture as many rays as he could before the sunset.

  "And you're Cassie," Phil said.

  "How did you know?"

  Phil frowned, shook his head, and shrugged. "I don't know. Probably heard it somewhere."

  "Probably," Cassie agreed. "Father will be home soon. You want to see the garden meanwhile?"

  Joel watched the two people walk down the steps and stroll across the green lawn. He tried to focus his thoughts, but they just stumbled about, unruly, chasing each other's tails. There was something about that man, something about the way he
looked at Joel that seemed familiar. The words 'blank slate' floated into his mind and dissipated, leaving no impression or understanding. Joel yawned. All the thinking made him tired, and he closed his eyes, savoring the warmth and the sun. No need to worry about things one could not change. And truly, Joel had no reason to complain. He was treated well, and he had anything a pig could desire. And it was getting even better---every day, he found that he had fewer things to worry about, that the concerns of yesterday made no sense today, and often left no memory. He had forgotten the smell of blood, and the searing pain, and the sickening sound of the tissue tearing like fabric. Soon, he would be truly happy.

  Hindsight, in Neon

  Jamie Todd Rubin

  1

  The last science fiction writer sits in an all-night diner beneath the sizzling haze of a neon "Live Nudes" sign. His agent, a vaporous figure of a man, sits across from him sipping at coffee, blurred by the rising steam.

  "It was sixty-nine years ago," the last SF writer says, poking at his clam chowder, "that Dying Inside first appeared; one of the true classics, a first rate effort and so forth."

  The agent mutters something incomprehensible under his breath and continues to suck at the coffee.

  "I am dying inside," says the last SF writer.

  The agent has heard this all before. "You haven't written anything worth publishing in thirty years," he says.

  "I am losing my power," the last SF writer says. He wears a faded periwinkle suit, as deformed as a crumbled manuscript page. From an inside pocket he pulls a yellowed paperback and thumbs though the pages. "David Selig---now there's a character with whom I can sympathize. There is a danger in knowing too much."

  "There is a danger giving in too easily," the agent says, in disinterested tones.

  The last SF writer sets the book down on the table. "It's out of my hands now," he says.

  "It's not really your fault," the agent says, this time with a hint of sympathy. "You have to have readers. You have to have people who can make sense of the letters and words on the page, who can be moved by the drama and imagery."

  "No one remembers," the last SF writer says, sadly.

  "You remember," the agent says.

  But the last SF writer is shaking his head, staring into the cold clam chowder, beneath the hot anachronistic neon light. "Too late," he mutters, "It's all gone."

  * * * *

  2

  The last SF writer sits in the all-night diner, fiddling with a flaking copy of an ancient science fiction magazine. The pages have been annotated in microscopic print. As a weary waitress refills his coffee cup, he says to her, "They don't make life like they used to."

  "Preachin' to the choir, sweetheart." the waitress says, and with leaden steps disappears somewhere behind the counter.

  "She has no idea what you're talking about," the agent says from behind a pair of thin-framed eyeglasses perched precariously on the bridge of his bulbous nose.

  The last SF writer waves the magazine in the air, creating a minor blizzard of decayed pulp all about the table top. "It was seventy-eight years ago when this story first appeared. It was true then, and it's true now."

  "Ironic, isn't it," the agent says dryly without looking up from the contract he's been reading.

  "You know why I come here every night?"

  "Because it's just around the corner from your apartment," the agent says.

  The last SF writer ignores him. "Because they still have menus that you can read and because flesh-and-blood waitresses still serve the food. Not like those new diners, with the voice-recognition ordering systems, computerized chefs, robotic servers..."

  "Yes," says the agent, finally looking up from his papers, "but those places have something that this place does not."

  "Such as?"

  "Patrons."

  "I can sympathize," the last SF writer says. "It is a different world now. It has evolved beyond me. Beyond this---" he shakes more flakes of paper off the ancient magazine. He glances toward the waitress standing behind the counter at the far end of the diner staring catatonically at the door. "She could be Linda Nielsen," he says.

  "And you could be Jim Mayo," the agent says.

  "And it would all end the same, regardless."

  Staring at his papers, the agent says, "They don't make life like they used to."

  * * * *

  3

  The last SF writer sits in the all-night diner with ancient newspaper clippings spread out across his table. From an inner coat pocket, he pulls out a ball-point pen and adds to the notes he has scribbled on the napkin before him. It takes him quite some time, and before he is through, he has filled both sides of its surface with tiny print.

  The waitress stops by the table with more coffee and the last SF writer says to her, "Would you be a doll and bring me some more napkins? Thank you, dear." She smiles at him vacuously and walks off.

  Then he says to his agent, "We were too smart for our own good. That was our downfall. Ahead of our time would be an understatement. We were ahead of any time. Listen to this---" he glances down at his napkin, "---'The Rocket Man', published ninety years ago; 'The Skylark of Space', one hundred and thirteen years ago; 'Requiem', one hundred and one years ago. The list goes on and on.

  "Do you know when human beings last set foot on the moon?" He does not wait for an answer. "Over sixty-eight years ago! I was virtually a newborn then. No sir, we have outsmarted ourselves. We were the leaders. We were there before the rest of them in every single case: the moon, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe. We had the vision to see what they could not see. We inspired the last great generation, I tell you. Ask any one of those twelve dead astronauts who actually stood on the moon---stood on the moon!---ask any one of them what inspired them to do something so incredibly outrageous and they will undoubtedly point to some aspect of science fiction.

  "And where are we today? We have solved the problem of literacy by eliminating it: 'Books' (if you can call them that) are sensory interactive, require no knowledge of letters, and no imagination on the part of the reader. Automobiles drive themselves---oftentimes without any passengers. Food preparation does not require human participation. Dogs can be walked by autonomous leashes. Hair can be colored by genetic pills. They have taken the ideas that we gave to them, and used them to solve every trivial problem they could think of."

  This thought has been recurring to the last SF writer with increasing frequency. He wipes sweat from his forehead allowing several large drops to fall into his napkin, smearing the blue ink in several places.

  "We are no closer to the moon," he says, scribbling madly as he speaks, "no closer to cold fusion, or curing cancer or a dozen other diseases. We have become preoccupied with a world-girdling network of electronic interaction and narcissism. The universe outside does not exist. It cannot affect us and we cannot affect it."

  Finally, he breaks down and says what he is really thinking: "It is hard to watch a species on its way to extinction." He thinks the ambiguity of this is profound, for while by "species" he means "science fiction writer," he could just as easily be referring to the human race.

  It is at this point he realizes that he has been alone in the diner the entire time. His agent is not there, and he has been talking aloud to an invisible audience. Perhaps he has not even been talking. Perhaps it has all been in his head.

  * * * *

  4

  The last SF writer sits in the all-night diner and stares at the neon "Live Nudes" sign just outside the window. It is a mark of the deterioration in this part of town that the nude dancers are, in fact, live. In most places the dancers are computer-generated simulacrums, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing---until you try and touch them.

  His agent sits across from him, sipping at his coffee and reading a newspaper, but newspapers are rare, except in museums, and in fact, the agent himself seems rarified, fading in and out, at times appearing solid, and at other times like those ghostly holographic da
ncers.

  "When was the last time you actually sold a story of mine?" the last SF writer asks.

  "When was the last time you wrote a story for me to sell.?"

  "I am no longer able to write. I've lost that power. It has withered away out of disgust."

  "There is no longer a market."

  "We are a dying breed."

  "You are a dying breed."

  The last SF writer scratches at his chin and stares into his soup bowl. "This is how Hwoogh felt."

  The agent flickers out for a moment and then reconstitutes himself. He shrugs his shoulders and says, "Survival of the fittest. Nothing personal, you understand."

  The last SF writer nods sadly. "The day is done."

  "How long?"

  "One hundred and two years."

  * * * *

  5

  The last SF writer sits in the all-night diner. He is not well. The mild aches now make him restless. The cough, which started as a tickle in his throat, has grown into some kind of infection in his lungs. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror.

  "We never really made it beyond Apollo," he says to his agent. "Do you realize that it has been sixty-nine years since human beings have set foot on the moon? Since Barry Malzberg's Beyond Apollo was first published?" In his mind, both were the same.

  "I always thought that a most depressing book," the agent says, sipping his coffee.

  "A most insightful book," the last SF writer says, and then is overcome by a siege of coughing. When he recovers, wiping bits of green sputum from the table with a greasy napkin, he says, "I can sympathize with Harry Evans. The conditions were intolerable."

  "The conditions are intolerable," the agent says. Then he changes the subject. "Have you heard that scientists at M.I.T. think they've built a time machine that will actually work?"

  "I don't listen to tabloids," the last SF writer says.

  "It was the headline of all the major news organizations this morning."

  "I no longer pay any attention to the news."

  With a hint of emotion, the agent says, "With a time machine, you could go back in time an change things---you know, so that events turn out differently."