The Curiosity: A Novel

by Stephen Kiernan

  Yet also I wonder, as I battle with heartache and fatigue and as my eagerness for freedom recovers, with what odd idea am I now pregnant? What new prospect does my existence birth upon the world?

  The answer thus far seems the rather, to lie in the opposite direction. That is to say, the world apparently wishes to birth itself upon me. I have received interview and introduction invitations by the thousands. Dr. Philo diligently screens the requests, prioritizing them, assessing their value to me and the project. Thusly did we select an unusual first foray into public life, my novitiate experience with the world of today. Remembering the social pleasures of market days in Lynn, I had professed an interest in witnessing a place of common trade. After some conversation, we settled on a location Dr. Philo said offered the likelihood of anonymity whilst providing ample opportunity to participate in contemporary commerce. She said this place was called a supermarket.

  Ha ha, the experience proved as overstimulating as a carnival. It began the moment we stepped out of the laboratory building. A crowd of people stood gathered, waving signs in a half circle around some strange devices on waist-high stilts.

  “Damn,” Dr. Philo said. “Wouldn’t you know we’d step into the middle of one of their news conferences.”

  “What is happening here?” I said.

  “They’re doing a little show for the TV cameras,” she said. “Let’s get out of here before someone—”

  “There he is,” a man shouted from the crowd. They all turned, fifty strong, as one. The cameras followed suit. A comic memory came to mind from my boyhood in Lynn, about throwing a bread end in the shallow end of a pond at one mallard, only to see dozens of ducks suddenly swimming in my direction. This crowd rushed toward me like a swarm of ducks.

  “It’s him. Wait.”

  “Damn,” Dr. Philo said again, and she pulled me by my elbow to the end of the block. The world seemed a blur of noises and smoke. Automobiles sped past, fearsome and purposeful. She held up an arm and one of the vehicles yanked to the edge of the sidewalk. “Perfect,” she said, opening the door. “Get in quickly, please.”

  I obeyed despite my apprehensions, and she tumbled in after me. Breathless, she gave the driver an address and sat back.

  “What was that?” I asked. “Who are those people?”

  Dr. Philo began to formulate a reply but I confess to missing it, because the vehicle lurched into the traffic and I tumbled against her. My hands went somewhere indistinct, my face undeniably in her breasts. Then the car swerved the opposite way, which disentangled me from the embarrassing situation but tossed me against the opposite door.

  “Ease up, will you?” Dr. Philo called forward. The driver replied in a foreign tongue. I found handles on the door and clung to them.

  We proceeded to careen through the city, my stomach pressed back when we accelerated and pulled forward when cars ahead required us to slow. I tried looking out the window, wondering if I would recognize anything while attempting to attend to Dr. Philo’s explanation of that crowd. Candidly, though, the ride was like a toboggan run down an icy hill. I concentrated primarily on holding down my breakfast, thin lab gruel that it had been.

  Eventually we reached a quiet area of the city, and the driver halted as abruptly as he apparently did everything else. He announced the price for our ride and it was a staggering sum. My Joan could have fed dinner to an army for that cost. Yet Dr. Philo paid without even haggling. I held my tongue.

  “Here we go,” Dr. Philo said. She held the door as I climbed out. We stood in a place the size of a small cornfield, but it was paved just like the roads. She held her arms out as though framing the building. “Your basic American grocery store. Taa-daa.”

  Outside the market stood racks of wheeled metal cages parked one into the other. Dr. Philo pulled on the end of a chain of them, at which one unfolded with a great clatter. I glanced around but no one remarked upon our hubbub. She piloted the cart toward the supermarket’s doors, which opened at our approach though there was no doorman in sight. I jumped back, of course, as she strolled through the door without me.

  Then Dr. Philo noticed my absence, turned, and held a hand in my direction “It’s all right,” she said. “Come on in.”

  Inside, the place was lit as brightly as a surgical theater and seemed the size of a city block. She led me down row after row of commodities, so many sizes and varieties I wondered how anyone could know enough to purchase the right thing. Three sizes of eggs, available in white or brown shells. Possibly forty forms of bread, lined up on their shelves and wrapped in a material like soft glass, transparent but somehow flexible. I imagined all the commerce of century-ago Lynn collected in one giant room, and still this store surpassed. Eventually we came to flour, which incidentally I know a little about. A baker of breads and pies, Joan often asked me to purchase flour on my way home from court. There were nine kinds in this market, available in three different sizes.

  “This will not do,” I told Dr. Philo, holding a five-pound bag in each hand.

  “No? Why not?”

  “How am I to choose which to buy when I cannot see whether it’s wormy or spoiled?”

  “Wormy?” She was smiling at me.

  “I am quite serious. Moreover, how do I know that these containers are a legitimate measure? Do you believe this is five pounds? I’ve known many a grocer with a thumb on the back of his scale.”

  She laughed; it was a fine melody, no tone of mockery but rather of delight. Then Dr. Philo embarked upon an explanation about the government enforcing food quality standards, as well as uniform weights and measures. It reminded me of my professor in law school who taught contracts, his bow-tied confidence in written documents as the reliable basis for trust in transactions. Dr. Philo similarly believed what she was saying, and evinced no foolhardiness about it. In the end I surmised that people here and now simply trust the sellers. The weight on the package will be accurate, and flour moths are a thing of the past.

  That means my skepticism as a customer must also be a thing of the past. Hm. What an odd way to conduct commerce.

  Dr. Philo saved the market’s most stunning revelation for last: the produce. I remember Christmas when I was six, and in addition to mittens my grandmother had knitted from thick lamb’s wool, and calf-high boots my father had purchased all the way down on Hanover Street, my mother gave me the unprecedented joy of an orange, an entire orange all my own.

  Here there were oranges singly and by the bag, bright and unblemished, as well as lemons, limes, grapefruits, and tangerines. I saw strawberries perfect and huge, though outside it was the budding of springtime, ripe berries ordinarily months away. There were bananas piled in sunny bunches, potatoes by the dusty sack, carrots long and orange, peppers and cucumbers, tomatoes in May, one marvel upon another. I realized, too, that I craved these foods, and wondered when the flavors of the world might be returned to me, when I would taste more than lab porridge and the memory of throat-scouring salt.

  Here stood pyramids of apples: I counted seven different varieties, glossy under the lights. The horn of plenty had arrived on this earth and it was displayed like a shrine.

  Yet inexplicably the people moved their carts dully amid all of this abundance, picking and choosing as though it were as ordinary as firewood.

  Seized by boldness, I grabbed an orange. “May I?”

  “I suppose we can risk upsetting Dr. Borden’s caloric experiments without the world coming to an end,” Dr. Philo said. “Would you like a bag of them?”

  I read the price. It was breathtaking. “Thank you, no. One is plenty.”

  She placed my orange in the cart beside the oatmeal, raisins, and soap she’d chosen earlier. I followed her to a line of people standing behind carts like ours. Most contained many more objects, with nearly all of the goods wrapped in that soft glass material. As we advanced, racks displaying small, bright packages formed us into rows like so many cattle on our way to branding. I saw money change hands, and realized: this is wh
ere we pay. Whilst we waited I scanned the people thumbing through magazines, poking away at miniature versions of the computer device Dr. Gerber had demonstrated for me, playing with their infants, or staring blankly into the air.

  Soon, though, my attention was riveted on the young woman in charge of our line. She operated a device like a cash register, though instead of ringing and showing the cost, it beeped and produced a slender sheet of printed paper. Despite a face that made no effort to conceal its thorough boredom, she worked with the speed of a dervish. A stocky fellow stood behind her, packing purchases into sacks, and he could not keep up. More than her competence, though, I was fascinated by the ring she wore in her nose as though she were some kind of pygmy. There was another hooked through the bone of her right eyebrow. Hm. I could not imagine anything more painful, but she showed no discomfort. Once our turn at her machine arrived, I saw that she had three more rings on each ear as well. When she opened her mouth to announce the total cost to Dr. Philo, I could not decide which was more flabbergasting: the price of our little sack of groceries or the fact that our cashier had somehow impaled a bar of steel into the center of her tongue. I cannot remember the last time I witnessed something so simultaneously disgusting and fascinating. When the transaction concluded and she said to us, “Have a nice day,” I heard the metal clack against her teeth.

  “You, too,” Dr. Philo said, strolling away.

  “Have a nice day,” I echoed, lingering for another look. She turned forward, bored as ever, and began tallying the next customer.

  It was all I could do to restrain myself until we were outside. Again the doors swept open ahead of us, but I was too preoccupied to recoil. As soon as they had closed I blurted, “What nation was that woman from?”

  Dr. Philo scanned the roadway for another car to hail. “What do you mean?”

  “She had more piercings than a pirate.”

  Again she gave that melodic laugh, bright teeth and not an ounce of scorn. “That’s just a thing that kids do now. You’ll see them with tattoos, too.”

  “Has America become a tribal place?”

  “Now, there’s a question.” She tucked the grocery bag under one arm, waved the other, and a car across the boulevard honked, weaving through other motor carriages toward us. “It’s complicated, Judge Rice. If we are, it’s not in the way that you mean.”

  She opened the door and motioned for me to precede her. I shook my head no, bowing, not this time, and she clambered ahead. Once we settled in and she gave the driver the address of the lab, I gripped the handles fiercely. Gradually I realized that this driver would not be tossing us hither and yon. As I released my grip, Dr. Philo smiled. “We must seem incredibly strange to you.”

  “Not strange, especially. Wealthy.”

  She turned in her seat. “Do you think so? That market was nothing fancy.”

  “Seven kinds of apples.”

  “True.” She nodded. “I am going to have to figure out how to explain all of this for you. So much has changed.”

  I contemplated that idea as we sped through town. Everything was new, of course, but everything old remained immediate in my memory, too. I would have loved to show Joan that market. The apple trees in our side yard in Lynn had produced such modest yields, she would have found the fruit of here and now to be miraculous.

  Out the car window, buildings blurred by. Lights flashed, people hurried along the sidewalks with phones to their heads. As we turned a corner a woman tugged her dog’s leash, and the animal sat obediently at her heel. It was the smallest dog I had ever seen. Something about that image, about seeing the pitiful creature held on a tether, gave me a moment’s courage. “Could you possibly accomplish something else for me first, Dr. Philo? At the lab?”

  “I can certainly try. What is it?”

  “I hesitate to ask. Frankly I flinch from making any request, given what your project has already done for me. But I am a grown man, thirty-eight years old if you don’t count the decades I was gone.”

  “What is it you need, Judge Rice?”

  “Hm. A proper bed. In a proper room, with a bit of privacy. Hm. I don’t expect anything approaching the home I once had. But perhaps a window? A chair, a lamp? Possibly some books? Just a few: Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens perhaps. I have no friends left on this earth, but still I might enjoy some modest comforts. ”

  She did not reply. Had I erred? Did I overstep entirely? Dr. Philo only kept her gaze steadfast out the window. I could see the muscles in her jaw working, but still she did not speak.

  “Never mind,” I said at last. “Forgive me, excuse my mistake. Please. It’s just that in this new world, I do not properly know my place.”

  She turned then, and shocked me: her eyes brimmed with tears. “Not the littlest bit did you make a mistake. It just shows . . .”

  I waited. She wiped a knuckle across her cheekbone but did not speak.

  “It shows . . .” I prompted.

  “It shows that goddamn Carthage has no idea what you are living through. It shows that this project has its head completely up its ass.”

  She had never spoken to me with such heat before. “I beg your—”

  “It also shows what a wimp I have been about getting you taken care of. But the answer isn’t Carthage. That guy won’t let go of a nickel till he’s squeezed six cents out of it. The answer is the world.” She nodded to herself. “Oh yes, everybody wants to be Judge Rice’s friend.”

  “I’m not certain I understand.”

  “You want a few creature comforts? They’re on their way. You want some friends? I will get you thousands.”

  When we returned to the project, the protesters were ready. They had shaped themselves into a triangle, their captain at the apex. Like a preacher, he would call and they responded in kind. To my ears the sounds collided chaotically, but Dr. Philo made sense of them.

  “Crazier every day,” she said. “This way, Judge Rice.”

  She led me unnoticed along the building’s flank, to the rear. There the feeling was less of laboratory or office and more of industry, with a place for unloading and storing goods, parking for cars, and no crowds. Dr. Philo swept a card through a device on the wall and I could hear the doors unlock.

  We had barely stepped inside when a wave of exhaustion swept over me. I slumped against the wall but Dr. Philo supported me instantly. She straightened under my arm till I stood upright, then guided me forward. Despite the grocery bag in her free hand, I felt her strength firmly against me. She whispered reassurances, to keep walking, we were almost there, and the like. I barely heard her words, instead discerning the more important element, the tone of concern and affection. As we hobbled past the guard, it dawned upon me that this was a person I could genuinely trust. And so my hand, which had hung in the air past her arm, came down to rest upon her shoulder, and drew her near.

  Dr. Philo’s only reaction was to stop speaking. The silence was not awkward, however. The rather, as we waited for the elevator, it felt as comfortable as the manner in which we held each other.

  The doors opened and there stood Dr. Gerber. His face lit at the sight of us, though Dr. Philo pulled away from me. I steadied my legs as though at sea.

  “Oh-ho. Welcome back, intrepid travelers,” he cried. “But I must give you a warning. Carthage is on the warpath. Something Billings did or didn’t do, and the boss was peacocking around shouting about it while I was trying to work. Anyway that was my cue to go for an evening stroll, and I encourage you two to keep a low profile, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  We moved past him, Dr. Philo pressing the button to send us upward. Before the doors touched, Dr. Gerber caught one with his hand. “Remember, kids: don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Give it a rest, Gerber,” Dr. Philo said. Then the doors came together.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “He’s teasing me,” she replied. “It’s complicated.”

  Upstairs I found the energy to reach
the chamber on my own powers. On the way in I noticed a counter of some kind, numbers in bright red: 21:07:41. There was one by the chamber, one in the control room, and now that I recollected, one in the glass foyer downstairs.

  “What is that device counting?”

  “That’s the number of days since you were reanimated,” she said.

  “Is it significant in some way?”

  Dr. Philo pressed a combination of buttons to open the chamber door. “Not that anyone has told me.”

  I went straight to the bed, but remembered my manners and leaned on it rather than lying prone immediately, as I was inclined to do. First I thanked Dr. Philo for the supermarket trip, which I said felt like a trial expedition to the here and now. “Also I am grateful for your speed at catching me each time that my energy collapses. I appreciate the trusting manner in which we walk together.”

  She pursed her lips at that, not speaking, and again I wondered if I had erred in some way. Dr. Philo shook her head as though a fly were buzzing nearby, then dug into the grocery bag and placed my orange on the table.

  “I’ll check back after Hurricane Carthage has passed,” she said, punching the security numbers again. “Have a good rest.”

  And she was gone. The room immediately felt mechanical and gray. There was naught else for me to do but hoist my weary bones upright, cross the room, and pick up that singular orange. It was brighter colored than any I’d seen in my prior time. The smell was wonderfully familiar, calling forth associations that ranged from that childhood Christmas gift to Joan’s recipe for fruited ham. The peel was thicker, so my thumb could dig it open and away easily. The meat within was unmarred. I spread the wedges—and mystery of mysteries, there were no seeds. How could that be possible? How could a fruit persist in this world without means of reproduction?

  I pulled one section free. My mouth watered at the prospect; this was a perfect orange, the Platonic ideal. I paused, aware of how desire can be its own reward, and recalled what eating one felt like, how refreshing, quenching, and tart. I brought that wedge up to my nose. The scent was fine, milder than I recalled but my desire not one whit reduced.