Age of Blight

by Kristine Ong Muslim

  The Ghost of Laika Encounters a Satellite

  I, Alpha Space Dog and only passenger of Sputnik 2, am trained to keep my head, paws, and tail inside the spacecraft at all times. I am the first animal launched into orbit and the first animal to be deliberately killed in space—or that was the plan at least.

  My real name is Kudryavka, Russian for “little curly,” before they changed it to Laika. I was a stray, and I thought God-Dog had finally beamed Its mercy-paw on me when somebody took me from the streets of Moscow, scrubbed me clean, and fed me the tastiest, juiciest meat I ever had in my life.

  There were three of us at first, three not-so-lonely but starving strays. They made us do a battery of buoyancy exercices, tabletop jogging, spin routines, the whole nine yards. At the end of the training period, it was none other than the chief scientist, Dr. Gazenko, who picked me to board the great rocket. He said I was in tiptop shape. I was also described as quiet, charming, not quarrelsome with the other dogs.

  On November 3, 1957, they put me in the capsule. What was on my mind at the time? The juicy steak, of course. The one they always gave me each time I successfully completed a task. The technician kissed my nose. Another hugged me tightly before strapping me into my harness. That hug should have alerted me to what they had in store for me. Then they locked me inside, and maybe for the first time I felt lonely. I was shot into space.

  There’s no pleasant way to state what happened next, so I’ll just say it. The core sustainer failed to automatically disengage from the payload, and I died by extreme overheating a few hours after launch.

  In 1957, the Soviet PR machine put out all the stops and told people that I was euthanized when the oxygen ran out on day six. I would have loved it had they given me a time-release lethal dose of poison. That meant I could’ve expire painlessly, while they still got their readouts—temperature, radiation levels, etc. That would have been a gentler, friendlier way to die. What really happened eventually came out in 2002: excruciating death by boiling of internal organs, which was, unfortunately for me, not instantaneous.

  Have you seen my collectible stamp? (I had my face on a postage stamp.) I am gazing in the direction of the person who was coaxing me to mug for the camera because I was going to get a steak later. I was looking toward the direction of men. I was looking toward the direction of hope. In one corner, Dr. Gazenko seemed pleased and happy.

  I thought I got the window seat, which was exciting. But when they sealed the hatch, I could not see anything anymore. There were tiny lights before me. All the lights were strange and red and ominous during liftoff. In an hour or two, the heat became unbearable. The thermal insulation was coming off. And there I was inside a space capsule without a window, orbiting the earth, slowly cooking.

  You should know that there are no speed bumps in zero gravity. Freefall is a wonderful experience, but only if you are still alive to enjoy it. Oh, speed bumps would have been most welcome.

  I remember being in the backseat of a car once. There is a child beside me, and he is giggling. The child’s mother is in the front seat, the back of her head refuses to look at us, but I am happy because the child is happy. That’s as far back as I can remember before I ended up prowling the farmers markets of Moscow. Speed bumps would have been nice, would have jolted me back to where I could be sitting right beside you—you could be that child or his mother. Inside the car, I remember the woman’s voice intoning: I know, I know. All you do is watch, hide, watch, hide. See that? Is she talking about the anger of the discarded, as it is the only thing in the world that is instantly recognizable? No one can look away from it without first being challenged. And that’s my kind of anger, the one felt by the discarded, the type of anger that most people are compelled, for purposes of survival, to ignore. When you look at me long enough, you might catch a glimpse of it. Do you feel challenged? It’s true that we always grow back into our triumphant stable shapes, where we pose as if to contain something, something with a purpose, something with a will to entertain, to love, to hope.

  In my memory of being in the backseat of a car with people who appear to be my keepers, the woman in the front seat and the small child giggling beside me, something must have happened. I just cannot remember what it is. But I know it is important. One of the child’s fingers is crusty with peanut butter. That stained little finger points out to something outside the car. Outside the moving car, there is so much to see. But there is no one out there to follow or to beckon with an arm that’s not yet fully formed. The child’s mother says: I told you not to touch, I told you not to touch.

  She may have been talking to me or to the child with the peanut-butter-coated finger. Outside the car, I think I see you. You are body. You are highway. You are bridge. You are water. You are mountain. You are space. You, who summons and aches to refill what has been lost, open your solar-paneled eyes. Look at me.

  II. CHILDREN

  No Little Bobos

  Conducted in 1961 and 1963, the famous Bobo doll experiments of Albert Bandura were able to shed light on the nature of human aggression. The Bobo doll experiments showed that children readily “learn” aggression by imitating the aggressive behavior of others. First, the Bobo doll, a plastic clown, was violently attacked by an adult “model.” A film of the aggressive behavior was then shown to each child in the test group. When the children were afterwards placed in a room filled with attractive toys, they exhibited only mild interest in the toys. But when they were led inside a room that contained toys which resembled the Bobo dolls, they then imitated the violent behavior they saw on the film. Divided into a test group and a control group, there were thirty-six children in all, ages three to six years. All of them were from the Stanford Nursery School. Around 88 percent of the children in the test group copied the aggressive behavior towards the Bobo doll. After eight months, approximately 40 percent of the same group of children were observed to have retained the same violent behavior towards the Bobo doll. The experiment remains controversial to this day. In 2008, a study conducted by Vanderbilt University’s Craig Kennedy and Maria Couppis showed that the brain treats aggression as a form of reward, thus shedding light on the human predilection towards violent sports. Ninety-two years later, in the centennial year 2100, there was this case concerning Chelsea Benderfield of Brooklyn, New York.

  Little redheaded Chelsea Benderfield, ten years old, hurt the Bobo doll so badly its innards spilled forth and did not grow into new Bobo dolls.

  Dr. Russland and her six assistants were aghast. Aghast and triumphant. They barely contained their excitement. The non-PhD’d personnel cheered. It was the first time they had encountered a true aggressive.

  The less aggressive kids were not able to replicate the kind of focused anger and strength which Chelsea Benderfield exhibited that day. When they participated in the “killing act,” or the disassembly of the plastic doll, their heart wasn’t really into the act; they were simply trying to please their handlers in order to get an imagined reward. They were then deemed unfit, shipped back to their parents with a red label indicating their ineptness.

  Dr. Russland gave Chelsea a glowing star and a two-day break to visit a marine conservatory and a bonsai emporium. She claimed to be very interested in bonsai cultivation, babbled about bonsai wire-training practices that resulted in beautifully stunted branching in miniature trees. She said suffering could breed grace, could lead to discipline. She was chaperoned by two attendants who reported no untoward incidents.

  A few days later, the battery of tests commenced.

  “How angry are you feeling right now, Chelsea,” the experimenter asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, brushing a strand of her hair off her face. “I’m not angry. I just want to hurt it.” She referred to the Bobo doll that was now reduced to shreds—the shreds rendered sufficiently inert and unable to propagate new Bobo dolls.

  The experimenter did not react.

  “I’m supposed to hurt it, right? Like on the video?” Chelsea pers
isted. Her tone said that she already knew that it was the case. “Hurt it so that it won’t grow back. Hurt it so it won’t replicate. Hurt it so we remain safe. Like how we treat our enemies, correct?”

  “But were you angry while you were hurting it?”

  “I suppose I am now. I don’t know why. I just want to get my star.”

  Dr. Russland’s glowing star was famous in North America. It was the stuff that fulfilled every child’s dreams. The questioning was stopped after exactly twenty minutes, the maximum time allotted in the manual for interrogating a child.

  Little redheaded Chelsea Benderfield, ten years old, was given a glass of real milk between questioning. Real milk was pricey and could be considered an unnecessary expense, but the lab would naturally splurge to provide for a child who would soon become the president. She slurped the expensive white stuff sourced from real cows in Outerbridge, the only remaining farmland in America where plants were still grown in soil.

  Ignoring the cameras in the room, she concentrated on the milk. She found it incredibly delicious and unlike any other milk she had tasted before.

  The recording of Chelsea Benderfield’s eighteenth and last interrogation that week started at 0100 hours.

  Subject description: Subject is dressed in a plain white dress and patent leather shoes. She appears alert and well-rested. With Dr. Russland’s approval, she was given a meal of hypoallergenic protein mix and cereal, artificial celery, and an organic apple thirty minutes before she entered the interrogation room.

  Interrogator is Anne Fender (designated as AF in the following transcript), accorded secondary status by Dr. Russland.

  AF: Hello, Chelsea. How are you feeling today?

  CB: Fine.

  AF: Glad to hear that. So, what are your thoughts about the unstable man, the smiling Bobo?

  CB: Haven’t thought of him at all. But I know that he’s the enemy. Anyone who does not look and talk like us is the enemy. They gave me milk last night, and I want more. Can I have some?

  AF: True. Anyone who wobbles and anyone who hesitates can and will infect us. We have to hurt them enough so that they won’t grow back into little Bobos.

  CB: I promise I will hurt them as best as I can. Can I have some milk?

  AF: You’ll get one in a few minutes. Now, when we hurt them, we also need to put our hearts and minds into hurting them. It is very important that you feel anger towards them.

  CB: Why?

  AF: So they won’t come back. So we remain safe forever. Remember, anger is what you should feel. Now—

  CB: I promise. I’ll be good at getting angry. Can I have milk now?

  AF: Of course. In a few minutes, you can have all the milk that you want.

  CB: What do we do now? I mean, I know I’m supposed to be angry. And I can be angry at will. You’ll see. No little Bobos will ever come back after I’m through hurting them.

  AF: I believe you. Soon. For now, we just wait.

  CB: I want my milk. I really want it now.

  END OF TRANSCRIPT

  The Playground

  No one goes there anymore, except for the curious out-of-town folks who overhear the stories and read the back pages of tabloids where the articles about fertility beads, UFO sightings, weeping Virgin Marys, and the latest cures for cancer are splayed. They come in groups—families mostly, with screaming babies, toothless grandfathers, pimply teenagers, grim-faced parents bored with the usual vacation trips to Jamaica and Cancun. Rarely does anyone come alone. During summertime when activity in the playground is at its peak, an occasional group of well-dressed university people and self-proclaimed experts gawk in small groups from a respectful distance.

  The moment they arrive at that sinkhole of a town in eastern Utah, they rush out of their idling cars and nervously point fingers to the playground for their companions’ benefit. They call attention to the lonely wire-enclosed playground as if the obvious movement on swings is somehow too obvious to notice. Enthralled, they watch how the swings creak and arch up in the absence of wind. The chains rattle the only sound.

  “Is this for real?” one asks.

  “No special effects or nothing?” another adds, laughing uneasily.

  “Shit, will you look at that!”

  “Mommy, why can’t we get inside and play?”

  “Not here, baby, we can’t get inside. We are only supposed to look.”

  “Look at what? I wanna go home.”

  This is what they say.

  Always with worried glances from behind the barbed wire enclosures that line the isolated playground, they wonder at how the candy bar wrappers, the leftover chocolate still fresh on the edges of the licked foil, collect on the uncut grass. They notice the slides which remain shiny as if recently used. Years from now, none of them will ever forget the yellow-painted seesaws that bob on their own. And when they return to their cars, they will never know what gets into the car with them until they get home.

  Sometimes, an unseen tiny hand switches the television to the cartoon channel.

  Sometimes, cold maternal lips kiss the forehead of the toddler who is throwing a fit on the high chair.

  An invisible weight jumps up and down on the white couch. The bouncing sound never fails to make them scream or resort to futile measures like calling a priest or the psychic hotline. But what is there to say, really?

  Someone rides the long-forgotten horse rocker stashed in the attic.

  Someone steps on the loose floorboard.

  The clatter of scurrying little feet trying on plastic funny shoes echoes across the empty hallway.

  Something cold snuggles under the covers with them after they turn off the bedside lamp.

  Happens all the time.

  Those Almost Perfect Hands

  The last time Martin Strang checked his hands, they were twitching on his lap. His mother was boiling rice in the kitchen, and every time she banged something in there, Martin jumped up with the noise. Then immediately, as if by impulse, he would look down at his hands to see if they were, once again, acting up.

  Two days ago, Martin’s Grampa Des was buried in his best suit and a blue silk tie with the paisley print, the same delicate pattern on the vintage wallpaper of the plantation houses in the country’s colonized northern region where landowners, resplendent in their very brown skin and jet black hair, cultivated European affectations. Good old Desmond Strang, who died of a heart attack in the middle of lighting a cigarette in front of his television, had managed to plant the seed of doubt in Martin’s nine-year-old brain: “…but the moment you finally discover a way to part from your hands, they will crack their knuckles, pick up the scent of your trail, and find you!”

  It had upset Martin ever since. One night, long before Gramps died, he woke up screaming with his right hand curled tightly around the neck of Chief, his favorite toy. It was a plastic shaman, with headdress included. It looked as if his hands were trying to choke Chief, and he would never ever do that in a million years.

  “You must have put your fingers there by mistake, Marty,” his father said. He had risen from bed quickly, expecting a burglar. “And why in God’s name should your hands have a life of their own?” He tucked Martin back to bed and told him that his Grandpa Des was only joking. His father’s face was serious, though, and Martin cursed himself for not keeping his mouth shut and getting Gramps into trouble.

  His guilt was overwhelmed with fear, then anger, the kind of boyish anger that sometimes resurfaced in the later years. He could never forget how Gramps smiled as if to taunt him forever: Once you recognize what your hands can do, boy, you will never be left alone. Your hands will know what you know, and they will try to outsmart you. Until you can’t take it anymore and you do things you’re not supposed to do.

  Don’t tell anyone, boy. Don’t you dare.

  After hiding Chief under his pillow, Martin drifted to sleep and dreamed of running down a well-lit corridor. The floor was lined with clear plastic to keep it from getting wet. From wha
t, he did not know then. Only he was sure that the plastic outer surface that crackled while he stepped on it was supposed to protect the floor from getting soaked. At the end of the corridor was the majestic sight of the mountain turned upside down, its cross-section exposed. It looked like a page from a geology book that Grampa Des had shown him once. He could make out the stratigraphic layers: a section for conglomerate rocks, a dull metamorphic layer, a layer of greenish mass that was supposed to be decomposed trees turning into peat, and impossibly, a layer of solid gold. Not in its ore form, the gold shone. He did not know what to make of the dream when he woke up, and he did not try hard to make up meanings for it. But then, like clockwork, a dream became its own interpretation.

  The next morning, he overhead his mother talking to Grampa Des downstairs in the breakfast table. Although he could not hear the words, Martin knew that his mother was angry. She talked slowly and emphasized every word when she was upset. “If my husband sees you in here, he’ll kill you,” she said. “Don’t you ever think of coming back here. But just tell me, you piece of shit, because I can’t wrap my head around what you supposedly did. Tell me the truth, okay. What did you do?”

  They stopped talking when he entered the kitchen. Martin’s left hand trembled slightly. He did not notice it in his haste to conceal how much he understood what they were arguing about. That was the last time he saw Gramps.

  Sitting on the high chair, even his two-year-old sister, Lauren, stared at him before she playfully stuck out her tongue and hollered, “Maaaty, Maaaty, Maaaty.” Morsels of food flew out of her tiny mouth, and his father, now ten minutes late for work, did his best to clean up the pieces of food and kissed her goodbye. Fascinated by the shiny cloth, Lauren grabbed his father’s tie and managed to soil it with her yolk-stained hand.