Forever, in Pieces

by Fawver, Kurt

  “Yes, most people have difficulty making sense of it.”

  A sinewy voice had issued from just over James’ shoulder. Its owner stepped from the shadows and extended his hand. He was short and portly, with a dark beard and poorly combed hair. He wore a white coat and white button-down shirt. James had been expecting someone imposing, someone with the cadence of a god. This man was laughably average. Slabs of fear began to crumble and fall away from James’ chest. Maybe there was a simple misunderstanding. Maybe there was a rational explanation.

  “Dr. Grant?” James asked.

  The man nodded and lowered his hand, realizing that James had still not shaken it.

  “Yes. What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice a smoothly swirling oil slick in James’ ear. No expression had yet crossed his face. He didn’t seem to blink, either.

  “I’m . . . I’m missing my daughter. She’s supposed to be here, right here,” James lifted the empty blanket higher so the doctor could see, “but she’s not. Everyone else seems to think she is, though. Everyone else sees her. But I don’t. There’s nothing here.”

  The doctor motioned to a wall from which jutted a thing that resembled the offspring of a pyramid and a honeycomb.

  “What do you see there?” he asked.

  James shrugged.

  “A weird shape.”

  “Nothing more?” the doctor asked.

  James shook his head no.

  The doctor pointed at another figure rising out of the floor—an inverted trapezoidal-starlike configuration.

  “And there?”

  “Pretty much the same. What does this have to do with my daughter?”

  James’ extremities were beginning to ache from the room’s temperature.

  “Don’t you see the beauty? What are these things? What are these shapes? Impossibilities. They are nothing. They are created, but they are ultimately nothing. You could no more describe this place than you could the idea of zero or infinity. And we are all children here. You, your wife, myself. Your daughter.”

  James was losing his patience quickly. He was freezing to death while the doctor provided nothing but quasi-mystical babble.

  “I don’t understand. Where is my daughter? Where is she?”

  The doctor pointed at the blanket then spread his hands wide, in a gesture of expansiveness.

  “Right there. Nowhere. Everywhere,” he said. “Let me show you something that will help clear up this matter entirely.”

  The doctor raised his hand to his own face and dug his nails into the flesh of his cheek. James watched, dumbstruck and disturbingly fascinated. His stomach flipped end over end.

  As the doctor pressed harder and his fingers sank into the fatty tissues, blood began to flow down his jawline and drip onto his coat. At no time did he wince or make even the slightest sound. He simply plunged his fingers deeper within his face, into layers of muscle and bone. Balling up his hand and yanking backward quickly, the doctor suddenly tore one side of his face away. From eye socket to mouth, only wet, glistening skull was left.

  James doubled over and vomited. When he glanced up between heaves, he realized that the doctor wasn’t finished.

  “What the hell?” James muttered. “What the hell?”

  The doctor was tearing the rest of his face off with one hand while the other was battering his skull with already ragged knuckles.

  As James clamored for air, he heard a series of cracks.

  “No, no, no, no,” he stammered. He lifted his gaze and lost all sense of reality. There, standing no more than four feet away, was the doctor, fully erect, arms crossed, with a deep, placid, penetrating blackness in place of his upper head. It was stark absence. The doctor moved toward James and his tongue dropped away, hitting the floor with a heavy splosh. Only his lower jaw, still covered in skin and beard, remained above his neck as a human reminder.

  James straightened and backed away. This could not be real. This had to be a psychotic episode.

  “You see now?” the doctor’s voice undulated through the air, “You see the truth? What are you?”

  The doctor reached out to touch James’ shoulder, but James managed to slink backward, closer to the door.

  “What are you?”

  James turned and bolted for the exit but it was, as he already subconsciously knew, a false hope. He tried the knob, but it was locked from the outside.

  The doctor, the thing—whatever he or it was—casually strode up behind James. He could feel the pulsing chill of it on his back. The doctor leaned in and spoke to James’ neck. It was too close. It was too dense, too massive. James’ sinuses started to throb. His sense of balance was also fading.

  “What are you?” the doctor asked again.

  James twisted around and met the abyss. The darkness enveloped him, probing his nostrils and mouth. The pressure behind his eyes was building ever greater. This couldn’t be real. It simply couldn’t. It made no sense.

  “What are you?”

  The darkness pounded inside James’ being.

  “What are you?” James screamed.

  “What are you?” The question more insistent, heavier than before.

  “James Dodd,” he answered through the intense pain rising in his head. He felt disconnected, as if he might pass out.

  “What are you?” The doctor’s voice reached into James’ brain and squeezed. A thin trickle of blood ran out his nose.

  “An accountant! A father!” James cried out. “Human! What do you want me to say?”

  “What are you? What were your parents? What is your daughter? What will her daughter be? What are you? What are they? What is the nature of everything and everyone that ever has been or ever will be?”

  The emptiness crushed James’ life under the weight of its insistence. He felt something burst in the back of his head, a searing coldness. In one fractional instant, he understood.

  “Nothing,” he answered, and fell to the floor in a heap of ruptured belief.

  Twenty minutes later, James, tightly gripping the empty blanket to his chest, wandered back into Dawn’s room. His stride was less hesitant, less haphazard than when he had left. He moved forward in a straight line to Dawn. His eyes were frozen forward, unblinking and unrolling, as if encased in the head of a wax figurine.

  “Where have you been?” Dawn asked. Both anger and relief snaked around her question.

  James didn’t respond. He simply rocked the balled up blanket in his arms and laughed—an echoing, cracked sound without blood or sunshine coursing beneath its pitch.

  “James, where have you been?” Dawn asked again, impatience creeping in. “What were you doing with Samantha?”

  “She’s so beautiful,” he answered. “I was out with my little girl. We went for a walk.”

  The reply was not a defense for his absence or an incitement to verbal combat; it was a statement of fact: pure, simple, and even. Any subtext had been purged from James’ voice.

  “Where did you go?”

  James stared at Dawn, his mouth slack.

  He couldn’t remember.

  Only vague outlines of images floated through his head. The events surrounding his visit to Dr. Grant were little more than an unconnected series of dots that took no recognizable shape.

  “Just . . . out. I talked to the nurse. I walked around for a while. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m here now and I’m fine and Samantha’s here and she’s perfect and healthy and . . . look . . . isn’t she beautiful, hon? Look at that chin! It’s exactly like your mom’s.”

  He swiveled the swaddled bundle toward Dawn and crouched so that it was level with her vision, then carefully slid it into her arms. Concentrated joy washed over Dawn’s face. She fingered the blanket edges back to reveal more emptiness.

  “It is like mom’s,” she said, tears welling up in her words.

  “My princess,” James murmured. “My world.”

  “What do you think she’ll be when she’s grown? What will she be like?” Dawn
asked quietly, stroking space.

  “Everything,” James replied, beaming. “Anything.”

  The couple sat in quiet contemplation.

  A woman in a room nearby screamed, cracking the pristine silence. Neither James nor Dawn looked up.

  After a few more minutes passed, James began to softly sing a lullaby to the nothingness. Dawn smiled. James couldn’t wait to take his daughter home.

  [back to Table of Contents]

  Critical Theory

  She closed the book, placed it on the table, and, finally, decided to walk through the door. Though her back now slouched, her knees now cracked, and her hands trembled with the palsy of anxious decades, she felt, if for only a precious moment, as though she were that hopeful seven-year-old girl who had been brought here by the men in red suits so long ago.

  When they’d come, her parents had cried and her older brother had screamed “Monsters!” over and over again. But she hadn’t seen monsters; she’d only seen very normal men in strange, shiny crimson suits. They made her father sign papers—which he did with shaking hand—then carried her to a gleaming white van and fed her a tiny pink candy that caused her to fall asleep. She awoke in the white-walled room, the only room she’d know for eternities, with a book and a table and a bed and a chair. One of the men in the red suits stood inside the room with her; in a ghostly, hollow voice, he told her that she must stay in the room and read the book until instructed otherwise. He said that if she tried to leave through the door—a door that, he claimed, would always remain standing open—her parents and her brother would all die painful, gruesome deaths. He said her brother would be burned alive inside a car and her father would commit suicide by drinking bleach and her mother would be crushed beneath the wheels of a bus. He said that the only way to prevent these terrors, these horrors, was to remain in the room and read the book; if the girl could figure out what the book meant, he said, then maybe, just maybe, she could leave the room and her family could live.

  So, the girl had stayed. And the girl had read.

  The book was long—thousands of pages long—and written in a language the girl understood but that seemed to be used in some ephemeral, ambiguous way. Words she knew didn’t mean what they normally meant and phrases she had heard her parents use were used in entirely different contexts. Her mind ached every day, every night; she tried to glean meaning from the pages, tried to save her loved ones, but understanding was slow in coming.

  And all the while, she grew. She became a woman in silence, in thought.

  Years passed and still the men in the red suits continued to bring her food and water whenever she spoke to the walls and asked for them; they continued to tend to her excretory needs and her grooming. And, each day, one of them would ask her if she understood the book yet, and she would hazard half-guesses and grasping interpretations to which the men would simply reply “Keep going.”

  And so, thinking always of her family, always of their safety, always of their forevers, on she read and on she puzzled with only the encouragement of “Keep going,” until finally, one day, no one came when she asked for sustenance. As she grew parched and starved, she cried out and screamed at the walls, but the men in the red suits did not come. The woman continued reading, continued unraveling mysteries, but rescue did not arrive.

  Dying, she knew, fate against fates, that she must walk through the door. She stood on its threshold, nervous, excited, terrified, sorrowful, guilty, and joyous.

  “It means . . .” she whispered, “it means everything.”

  And she stepped through.

  [back to Table of Contents]

  Four is Enough

  I have no more unessential parts to sell. I type with one hand. I read with one eye. I speak with half a tongue. I no longer have legs to walk upon. My abdomen has been carved time and again, muscle and fat shorn like bacon. I really can’t spare my remaining lung, but who knows? That might have to go, too, eventually. There is almost nothing left for anyone to eat. And yet the tuition bills pile ever higher and the rent is paid ever later.

  That’s why, today, I’m here to sell a finger. Just one. Four is still enough. With four, I can still model universes and mash keyboards. I can probably even handle the electron collider controls. It won’t be so bad. I’ve certainly had worse extractions. Besides, that one finger should provide the means to live another month. I have to give it up. Only one more. I can make due with four.

  Sitting here, in the repository waiting room, is always the worst part of the process. You have three options while you’re here. One, you can stare at the other supps. Two, if you’re a suppi-vore, you can go into the storefront and browse the newest products. Give a little, take a little, I guess. Three, you can stare at the slip of paper they give you—your listing. Mine reads:

  Base modifier—COGNITIVE, subheading KNOWLEDGE/INTELLECT, subheading PHYSICS, subheading SCIENCE, subheading STUDENT

  $3,500/oz.

  Cut—finger (pinky)

  Individual—university student in theoretical physics, male, aged 22, multiple academic awards

  Mental illnesses—none known

  Genetic diseases—none known

  Threat of prion contamination—very low

  Benefits—increased analytical capability and perception, potential expansion of physics, astronomy, and mathematics knowledge

  Side effects—potentially lowered self esteem, lethargy, indecisiveness, development of interested in classical philosophy, development of interest in science-fiction literature and movies, development of interest in robotics/artificial intelligence

  Grade—B+

  This is a normal listing for me. It’ll eventually end up affixed to a little shrink-wrapped package with morsels of myself inside.

  Most vores will only purchase supplements if they’re Grade C or better. Below C, you might as well not even try to sell. No profit. I’ve heard of supps losing entire organs for less than one hundred dollars. I’m lucky to be graded B+. I get a decent return.

  A friend once told me that, back when biologists first discovered that information was stored in subatomic particles and could be passed on through physical ingestion, anyone graded below A-level wasn’t even allowed to sell. Now, thrifty vores and info addicts can easily pick up cheap F-level and D-level supplements at discount repositories. They get what they pay for. Sometimes their brains disintegrate. Tarsen’s Disease. Sometimes their organs erupt in spontaneous bleeding. MORS. Multiple Organ Rejection Syndrome. Sometimes they even end up less mentally or physically gifted than before. It’s possible. Rare, but possible.

  I quickly grow bored with reading my listing. I can only scan the same words so many times before they lose all meaning. So I watch the other supps.

  Across the room I see a woman who’s almost entirely gone. A blind stump. No nose or ears, either. Her listing is taped to her chest. I wonder how she gets here. Maybe she’s indebted to a vore who carries her in. Creditors sometimes do that if they’re particularly generous.

  The hammer of a muted bell thuds off the walls and falls flat to the floor. Next supp.

  “Pollard. Pollard, frontal lobe, second deposit.”

  A bald man with recent cranial supplication staggers to his feet. His mouth practically hangs off his face. His eyes are muddy. The nurse leads him away, to the extraction room. I feel nothing for that man. I feel nothing for myself. Sometimes I wonder if emotion doesn’t regenerate the way they say it does.

  I keep my vision well away from my hand. Never stare at what you’re about to deposit. You’ll think about how much of you is actually in that piece of yourself. You’ll question whether that thing is you or if you are it. You’ll start questioning where the “you” of you is located. Your body will either become a devil or a messiah. It’s not healthy. Better to look at those things you’re certain aren’t you. Of course, who can really be sure of what that even is anymore? Right now, dozens of vores, maybe hundreds, are walking the streets with my knowledge spinning inside th
em, with my fondnesses and hatreds bubbling somewhere under the surface. In a sense, I am them. I look at them and I see myself. I look at myself and I see otherness. Strange ontologies, I suppose.

  My point is that you want to avoid what the docs call personal separation anxiety. Psychical fragmentation, essentially.

  Another bell thuds.

  “Scrimshaw. Scrimshaw, left forearm.”

  A bedraggled but attractive blonde woman stands. She’s missing one arm and one foot but, surprisingly, still retains a pair of large breasts and firm, high buttocks. Since she’s a supp, there’s no reason to keep those rich mounds of fat and muscle. Antiquated attachments to long-dead ideals of the feminine form don’t provide sustenance or shelter. Of course, archaic conceptions of masculine beauty are equally meaningless; gonad supplication funded my third semester, bicep supplication paid for last year’s rail pass, and pectoral supplication is still helping keep me in electricity for eight hours every day.

  Someone clears his or her throat. There’s a shuffling of papers and a shuffling of feet.

  My mind wanders to my project.

  I’m in my last year of study. My thesis: The Manifestation of Dark Matter as Zero-Point Energy and Quantum Constant. I’ve got it all mapped. The force that propels the expansion of the universe is the same that holds matter together at a quantum level. It’s unobservable, but it’s reality. A dualistic force that simultaneously tears apart macrocosmically and compresses microcosmically. I have the equations to prove it. My idea is going to win the Nobel Prize. Youngest recipient in its long history. I’m sure of it. If only I can finish. But first I have to deal with my tuition. Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars this year. A deficit that’s led me to the dusky downtown repository yet again.

  A woman sits down next to me. About my age. Brunette. One leg. Both arms, but missing several fingers. Might have had some muscle layers stripped from the remaining leg. It seems shrunken. One crackling green eye.