Think of it, she conversed in great gasps with herself, leaping over a crevasse where a southbound lane had split off from the main runway. Think of it, she insisted, scarcely having breath left but unable to control her mind, which was galloping faster than her weary legs.
I’m only thirty, I’m unique, there’s no one in this world, this universe, who is me, with my memories:
The initial scanning would have seemed slow progress to an outside observer, for the Boiler makes for hot work, and we are already in the desert, and we must take breaks every twenty minutes to allow the device to cool down. It is, as you know, far too expensive to replace! (When the stage arrives next week, I will be sure to request more and larger crates of ice—if any are to be had; and if Eccleston has not outbid us.) Such patience is surely worth it. For whatever progress Eccleston makes with his battering and cutting, he cannot have found what I have: I call it Anomalocusta, for it resembles no lobster science has ever seen. And best of all: it is intact.
It remains in the rock, of course, and removing it thence will be the Lithotome’s job. But for now I can see the entire fossil through the Lens and here is my first attempt at a description: it is a long jointed-plate arthropod rather like a lobster or a shrimp, but larger than either, exceeding three feet from head to tail, making it far and away the largest Cambrian creature ever recorded by science. Unlike a lobster, it has no claws or other limbs. In its body shape it resembles a large trilobite whose segments have been flattened and stretched and transformed into underwater wings. Its head is the most disturbing feature, for it has a demonic shape, and possesses—I should say possessed—two large hooklike fangs over six inches long, which look capable of cracking open shells and armor, and it boasts two large compound eyes on stalks—but unlike the tiny beady eyes of the lobster, these are large and pale and eerie, resembling searching headlamps. Finally, and most disconcertingly, it has a thin, needle-like proboscis that extends from between the fangs. This proboscis looks long, soft, and prehensile—an odd thing indeed to see coming from such a stiff armored creature. The Anomalocusta must have undulated through the primoridal seas with great speed and indifferent grace, like some mechanical insectlike manta ray—but what could it have fed upon? I would send my rough drawings of the Anomalocusta, but I do not want to risk the mail being waylaid by Eccleston’s agents. I will send them when I judge myself to be in a more secure locality.
In case you are wondering why I have not appended a species name to this creature’s taxonomy yet, it is just this: after years of sending you dozens of new fossils, which you have been only too happy to classify and take credit for, I feel I have earned the right to some modicum of recognition for my tireless work. I know that I am but a modestly educated woman, and no proper scientist as the Geological Society recognizes such. Yet from my childhood by the shore I have shown, have I not, for over two decades that I understand the care of fossils, the reconstruction of organisms, the importance of a subtle eye and a care for stinting detail. And I have reliably sent you all my latest finds for a dozen years when your rivals have offered me bribes and other inducements to send them elsewhere or to lose them entirely. I have resisted, not only because of the esteem in which I hold your work, but out of loyalty to you, for first recognizing that I was more than some mere girl playing at the beach.
This new fossil will be studied for a millennium, and if I am ever to achieve even the merest hat-tip from the academic community, it would be an honor to have it attached to this discovery. I hope you will consider naming it Anomalocusta cardanelli—or, if you should choose to name it after yourself, that you would allow me at least the honor of publishing the paper, so that my name, too, will appear with it always: “Anomalocusta grandhaveni (Cardanell 1888).” Does that not look elegant, both our names in equal balance for the first time?
I hope that you will give my request all due and serious consideration.
The first chemical rains fell in carpet-thick sheets a million different colors.
They fell over the Equator, over the Tropic of Cancer, moving and swelling and moving and swelling as they contracted farther north. Across the Western Hemisphere sacks of sludge dropped like bombs, potent enough in their acidity to dissolve the top floors of brick buildings. In Brazil a little boy felt his mother’s flesh run over him like sour molasses as the woman curled herself around her son, pressing the boy protectively against the womb that could no longer keep him safe. At a cliff’s edge on an island south of Tierra del Fuego, two lovers clutched each other as their flesh dissolved around their embrace.
In dozens of countries the young and the old died. The rest who were caught out in the rain watched their skin bubble and then shed itself in foaming, necrotic strips. They transformed into raw, red creatures with bared teeth.
Soon they were stacking oxygen tanks high and tight and renting them at monthly rates. Soon there were warehouse farms seeded with row upon row of plastic bubble tents. Soon the sidewalks and parks were filled with mummies wrapped in manuka-honeyed anti-burn bandages. Soon the chemically flayed outnumbered the smooth and unspoiled two-to-one.
It was an accident. Just an accident, the spokesman for Nevaeh-Vas Eco Technologies claimed at the first of many press conferences. Nevaeh-Vas, the corporation contracted to repair Earth’s depleted ozone layer. Nevaeh-Vas, who stabbed the heavens with God’s own syringe and injected a chemical curse that rotted the clouds.
Nevaeh-Vas, who murdered an industry and ecology with one mortal stroke and gave rise to what would replace both.
“The main adage of therapy is that the patient must want to change, but we all know change isn’t easy. How far would you go to make the change that you want?”
‘I’m going. Thank you for trying as hard as you could, all the same.’ Dr. Adler looked at John’s hand, and something flashed in his eyes.
‘Just a minute! Just a moment! Let me get something for you.’ John watched the doctor stand up and run to his office closet. After digging for a moment, he came back with a DVD in a cardboard sleeve and a slick, black case.
‘These go together. I’ve heard good things, and when I got one in the mail as a sample I knew I had to save it for someone special. I think you’re that person, John.’ Dr. Adler handed John the items. The solid-looking case weighed very little, surprising John.
‘”The Face-Changing System for Success in Life and Business,”‘ read John aloud. He cocked an eyebrow at Adler.
‘I know how it sounds. Most of these systems are a bunch of malarkey, but I really have heard good things from colleagues. It’s not for everyone, but I think you’re just the man for it.’ John tried to hand it back, but Adler refused.
‘Try it out. If you don’t like it, bring it back to me, or give it to a friend. Good luck, John.’
If you were to stop and think about it, you wouldn’t really be able to say why it is you watch these films; though, as a child, you enjoyed being frightened, and some of the movies did that; and as a teenager you enjoyed being shocked (and perhaps a little revolted) and the “splatter” films fit that bill nicely. But now, at an ancient and creaking twenty-seven years of age, the movies – horror, splatter, or otherwise – no longer seem to have any effect on you. Nil.
But still you watch them.
And think about it is something you never do anyway, so, tonight, you merely chew stale popcorn and gawk at the silver screen where the lead zombie (nicknamed Harley) effortlessly tears a young woman’s head from her quivering white shoulders, delicately tongues one of her eyeballs, sucks it from its socket. Harley chews it, apparently savoring the taste, and the only discomfort you feel is the rock-hard lump against the small of your back, a special feature of all the seats in the Chief Theater. No point in moving. So you don’t.
Until it’s over (completely over; every last credit read and recorded in your junkshop mind), at which time you stand and brush salt and popcorn bits from your jeans.
‘Well, that was fun,’ you say to no one as you step into the aisle and make for the glowing green EXIT.
Growth SpurtDay 1 – UPS delivered them today in an envelope and inside that was a pouch like Pop Rocks. I closed the blinds and the curtains and it was real dark and I couldn’t hardly read the instructions. I tore open the pouch and poured this stuff like sand into the tank. I’d made a cool cover for it taking the box it came in and cutting off the top and painting inside it like black. It’s cool. They said to just put them in the dark but if you have a cover that’s better. I fed them with one of the freeze dried blood caps that was included but I think I added too much water. I hate it that I screwed stuff up right at the beginning. I’ll know by tomorrow night I guess.
Mom and Dad are yelling at each other. They think I can’t hear them.
Day 2 – I guess I didn’t add too much water after all. There are only seven caps included in the kit. After a week I start them on real food. Grace’s hamster is preggers. Good snacks for my guys coming soon.
I got made fun of for writing everything down. Grace and Mom ganged up on me. And they laughed when I told them every scientist writes stuff down. Then Grace said I wasn’t a scientist. Then Dad came home and everyone stopped laughing.
I want my guys to grow already. Under “Gestation Period” it says you should see results in about two weeks. Two weeks is waaayyyyyy too long!
There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore — they’re your next-door neighbors after the streetlights go dim and the world has gone to sleep.
Alone in the quiet hours between two and four, the receiving operators doze over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down almost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger.
Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You’ve heard of some one you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe they’ve been promoted, but more probably they’ve been murdered or drowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre way out. Made it interesting enough to get in the news.
But that doesn’t happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze and tap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed.
Sometimes, though, queer things happen. One did the other night, and I haven’t got over it yet. I wish I could. (Continue Reading…)
Gus accidentally crushed his wife’s cochlea during breakfast.
The spiraling piece of inner ear was almost the exact same shade of beige as the tablecloth his Great Aunt had given them at their wedding; Gwen couldn’t have expected him to spot it when he set down the jar of marmalade. She should have left the cochlea in her earhole where it belonged, but she had taken to removing it while she slept and only jamming it back into the side of her skull again moments before stumbling out the door on her way to the unemployment office.
The dislocated eardrum emitted the strangest sound as it was flattened, like the squeaking of fingertips against dry teeth.
The naked bones of Gwen’s knuckles clicked when she lifted the jar. Although neither of her eyesockets — one an echoing black hole, the other occupied by a myopic, amber-irised eyeball — were framed by brows or lids, and although she could not afford a crinkled forehead, Gus could read the expression on her skull as easily as he could any face with a complete set of features. Had her tear glands not been on layaway, she might have wept. Had her nose been more than a few strips of cartilage, she may have sniffled.