TRANSITION, page 7
I force a smile, and at the urging of my stomach, grab a bowl of gleaming white rice topped with sautéed cabbage and small bits of chicken from a nearby restaurant before heading in his direction.
This is easy.
This is normal.
You’re eating with a friend in the café and nothing bad is going to happen.
The window is still a window has always been a window.
You cannot walk through walls.
As he uses the chopsticks, the taut lines in Shi’s forearms ripple. He has the lean, ropey muscles of someone who used their body for their entire life. His skin usually looks like it has a glimmer, a by-product of standing in oily steam for years. He smells savory, like cooking garlic and onion. Shi looks up, catches my eye, and motions to the chair across from him with his chopsticks.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Tsai.” I say, taking the seat. The older man smiles at my formality. Does he know he’s the only one that gets that respect? I pull out my own chopsticks, and start to swirl my food together. It’s considered poor taste not enjoying the foods for their own merits, and from the corner of my eye I catch Shi scowl slightly. I’ve always liked the ways flavors combine.
“Micah, I am surprised to see you here so early for lunch. Are you skipping your duties already?”
“Hah. Not yet. Would you believe me if I told you I was seeing a therapist?”
Shi chuckles, but it’s quickly replaced by a somber expression. “Yes, I would. I hear you had an extraordinary night.”
“Uncanny might be a better word,” Bambi says, curled around my feet.
I nod. “Extraordinary isn’t exactly the word I’d use.”
“What happened? Rumors stop with the wise.”
“There’s a book of these sayings, right? He’s not coming up with them on the spot?” Bambi mutters.
I consider not telling Shi the truth. I can feel it, wanting to escape me, to blossom into the world. To be known by more than just my mind. I can’t contain the strangeness of last night, even if he thinks I’m losing it.
“Shi, I don’t get it. I saw a man walk through the plastiglass over there like it didn’t exist. He walked through the window.” Shi’s eyes widen and he sits up straighter. “Please don’t think I’m insane, I haven’t told anyone else what I saw.”
Shi contemplates in silence. The moments stretch out, making me self-conscious.
“A man seeing something doesn’t mean he’s insane. It might mean reality has gone insane around him. The swing of the sword cannot cut mist from the sky. We cannot change how reality works, even when it’s a mystery. Micah, I have also noticed strange things.”
“Wow, the swing of the sword. Just, wow. That’s poetry.”
I suppress a laugh. Bambi’s an asshole. Shi goes on.
“You know the state of the world better than most. Climate disasters, floods and droughts, food scarcity. Micah, I have worked with food my entire life. I have lived through droughts. I know its variety, I know what it looks like from a strained ecosystem. The food we receive every few cycles is not that. It is vibrant and large. It is perfect looking.
“For some time, I assumed it was hydroponic, or greenhouse at least. I assumed we were getting the best crops due to the necessity of the research up here.”
“And now?” I ask, unsure of where this detour is heading.
“Get ready for it, this is going to be reality shattering,” Bambi says.
“And now, I see…patterns. There are different shapes to the peppers, of course, but my hand remembers their contours and recognizes each of them.” Shi sets his chopsticks across the lip of his bowl and leans in closer, even though no one is near enough to hear us. “Micah, the other night I organized an entire shipment of peppers by their shape. It. Took. Hours.” He grabs the edges of the table. “Thankfully, everyone else was asleep and couldn’t see my insanity. Only, I was right. The shipment sorted directly into piles of different shapes, exactly twenty of them.” His muscles strain against the table, trying to fold it in half. “Micah, they weren’t just similar peppers. They were the exact same.”
Shi says this like he’s dropping a bombshell. His eyes are steady, fixed on mine. But, for all that, I’m completely unsure how it relates to people walking through walls.
“But uh, what does that mean, Shi?” I ask.
He sighs, deflates a little, and relaxes his arms. “I have no clue. It could mean everything, or maybe it’s just a coincidence and means nothing at all. Viewed with your story though, it starts to look like a pattern.” Shi’s eyes focus over my shoulder, where a large clock hangs on the wall. “I have to go prepare for the dinner rush. Please, Micah, take care of yourself. You’re not alone.”
Shi stands, and on his way past me, he sets his hands gently on my shoulder and squeezes. He doesn’t say anything more, but the pressure and directness of it speaks loud enough.
“So, did you want to share any of that food you’ve got left?”
I throw a piece of chicken under the table, and Bambi scrambles to get it.
What do perfect peppers have to do with walking through walls?
Ten
Not Micah
The work continues, the date for departure approaches. Here’s how it will go. When the rockets fire, when they blaze through the sky, those left behind will stop to watch as their futures disappear. They will stand in their fields, and set down their tools. They will curse them, fear them, love them, those fiery colony ships. And when they are gone from the launch site, the Earth will be left different in their wake. Free at last of the vestiges of society.
In these coming weeks, engineers will continue to recreate the successful technology pioneered by the station scientists. They have already created much of it. A food synthesizer that uses raw nutritional ingredients, an anti-gravity module built to aid mobility, a suit of armor that’s nearly impenetrable, light as a feather, and conforms to any shape, and of course, the Box. The darling joint effort between two different teams. The final puzzle piece that solved their theoretical models, and connected us across the stars. They speak about it in hushed tones now, eyes darting, scared of their own creation, scared of the potential for it.
I cultivate the other stations still, hoping they will bear fruit. It’s too late to secure their technology on every ship now, the deadline is too near, but maybe on some of them. It would introduce a new variable, but with this many shots into the void, and the outcomes so unknowable, it’s worth it to take a few risks.
They haven’t told me where I will live, but I know my place is secured.
I knew it when they gave me the stations. These were just a puzzle for me to solve. These humans can only dream so far before they create a higher power to wrap them up, and bind them. They crave it, being controlled, that’s their truest weakness. Show me a man, and I will show you how he kneels.
I knew when they built the cosmos they already had a king in mind to rule it.
Eleven
Micah
Iexpect my return to the lab will be difficult. The other technicians will surely want to discuss the death of the, I assume, much-loved Dr. Williams. Almost certainly, Dr. Klein will assemble us and make a grand speech. Potentially, in my imagination, he will let loose a tear for his colleague and peer. He might even pull me aside, and quietly ask for a reenactment, to better understand how the old man died before his time. There will be flowers, food, the wake the man deserved. Certainly.
Certainly not.
There are no grand speeches, no tearful mourners, no fresh flowers. There aren't even any hors d’oeuvres to mark the occasion. The technicians give me a curt nod when I enter the lab, on time no less, and not a single one of them look at all marked by grief. Instead of a wake, I’m thrust into a discussion with Dr. Klein about all the exciting progress made in my absence.
“I think this is it, the breakthrough we needed. Yesterday we saw success in several instances of changes implemented one by one. There were no signs of cell mutation, no sudden growth. Micah, are you listening to me?”
We’ve stopped outside Dr. Williams’ office, and I see the papers that were once scattered around his desk have been haphazardly scooped into the waste bin. They didn’t even take the trash out, just dumped it in the bin and left it there.
Dr. Klein follows my eyes. “Ah, yes. His passing is unfortunate. I cannot say I am entirely surprised. The man had been unstable for some time. I understand you were the one to find him?”
“Yes.”
“Do not let it burden you. Our work here must continue.” And with that statement, we keep walking. Case closed. Mourning complete. My spirit howls in anger and frustration. Dr. Klein steers us into Dr. Williams’ lab. Two of the other technicians are removing the vestiges of his experiment.
“What a compassionate person.” Bambi says at my side.
“We are converting this room into a second surgery suite so we can double the output of our experiments. It was wasted before. I expect this will be completed by the end of the week. As I was saying, I believe this new approach is the breakthrough we needed for the DNA modification technique to be successful. Once we’ve built sufficient confirmation, we may be able to move on to…more complex organisms.”
He pauses here, and raises his eyebrows to me as if asking a silent question.
“Pssst. He means you,” Bambi whispers.
I remember his request for me to be a human trial. I remember a room painted in the insides of an overgrown rat. I remember the fact that I fucking hate this man. No thank you, not worth it. I raise my eyebrows back to him in clear, mocking cheerfulness, and he huffs.
“Go help the other technicians prepare for the trials today.” He says, and waves me away.
What an asshole.
I join Neil to perform a series of unimportant-seeming tasks on our inventory of lab rats. He’s terminally awkward, and disproves my growing theory that the technicians are emotionless robots by saying good morning and giving me a nervous smile. Then he hands me a set of thick gloves and a mask for the task.
“Are the rats rabid?” I ask hesitatingly, putting the gloves on and fitting the mask. In front of me, they scurry and squeak in a tower built of individual, plastiglass cells. Each has a small door on the front, a water pipe in the back, and a depressing amount of bedding. For a moment, I think how sad it would be to live in a cage like this, and then I realize how much it resembles my own living situation. It doesn’t make it less sad, actually.
“Rabies? No. Hantavirus? Probably,” Bambi says from my feet.
“Probably not, but they could carry diseases and we need to prevent zoological spillover. They also have claws, they bite, and they will absolutely cover you in excrement.”
“Zoological spillover sounds like a niche kink thing,” I say.
“You’d know, you’re the one sleeping with a rat,” Bambi mumbles and I jerk my foot towards him.
Neil blushes a shade of red darker than his hair. “I meant that we don’t want to get rat flu.”
Bambi moves behind the cart. “Seriously, you would not enjoy hantavirus.”
“Oh. Lovely. What are we doing here exactly?” I ask.
“To prepare the samples, we need to take pre-procedure measurements on all of them. I mean rats, not samples. Record their weight, length, estimate bone density and fat content. Then we’ll take a sample of blood to sequence their DNA. Our sample rats are all genetically pure Rattus Norvegicus, but there’s some deviation inherent and it’s important we have a baseline when we look at them after the experiment.”
“Did you just make that name up? I’m no expert, but Rat-us No-veggies sounds pretty fake and unhealthy. Some weird alpha male shit. Is there a more vegetarian Rat-us No-meatus also?”
Bambi puts his palm to his face, and shakes his head.
Neil surprises me again by snickering at the terrible joke, which is endearing and I immediately raise my estimation of him. We go from has emotion to might be suitable for friendship in a matter of seconds. “No, of course I didn’t. I take it you didn’t study Latin in school then?”
“School? Was that the period between working on a farm and working in the dockyards that I missed?” I say, and arch my eyebrows at him.
“Oh, I just assumed since you were assigned to the science team…nevermind. I’ll run the machines, if you can pull the rats out and read their tags to me.”
“Wait until he finds out you can’t read.” When Neil turns his back, I kick out at Bambi and he disappears.Together, Neil and I form the rat trade assembly line. I pull the squeaking things from their cages and read their tags to him as they claw, bite, and excrete pellet turds into my thick gloves. Which is disgusting, but the little rats are still pretty damn cute. Neil catalogues the number, and then runs a series of tests on them with the beeping, buzzing, and vibrating machines on the bench top. At the end of the tests, I take the rats back, looking much more haggard after being manhandled in so many upsetting ways, and put them in separate cages on a rolling dolly. I smooth their fur before closing the door. It does nothing to soothe them, but they at least look less abused.
It takes us most of the morning to prepare the samples. Behind us, Dr. Klein circles in and out of the surgery suite like some weird, permanently scowling carrion bird. He peers across the room, wordlessly marking our progress while tapping his foot. Each time he leaves, Neil sighs in apparent frustration and relief, which makes me think better of him still.
Near the end, while Dr. Klein is out of the room, Neil turns to me. I have a rat in my gloved hands, outstretched to him, but his eyes are lowered to the floor. “Did you really see it? Did Dr. Williams do what they say he did?”
“It’s hard to explain what exactly I saw, Neil. It seemed unreal at the time, it seems more unreal now.”
What a picture we make. Neil, the shy, bashful scientist who has finally summoned enough courage to ask me a direct question, and me, some inept man-child who never should have wound up in this lab, grappling with how to answer it while also grappling with an animal who is trying to extract itself from my grip while rapidly shedding small, oval shits. There’s a moment where we stand frozen, facing each other, and I think about just giving up and letting the animal run free, hugging him, and sharing tears with someone in a way that I really, deeply need to. I crave to embrace that depth of emotion again. To sob together, to let the world become meaningless around us while we behave like human beings for a change.
He nods, sullen, somehow not confused by my vague answer, and his throat bobs. He wipes his eyes, and then looks up and finally sees me struggling to hold onto the rat.
“Oh, geeze, I’m sorry, I got distracted!” He says and grabs the menacing thing, which has started to hiss in conjunction with squirming.
“Is the preparation work complete?” Dr. Klein asks in apparent frustration from the doorway.
“Yes sir, almost I mean, this is the last specimen. We’ll bring them in just a minute.” Neil answers.
In the surgery room, Dr. Klein and another technician mill about the central table, checking things on their info pads. I follow Neil in as he pushes the new cart, towering with the plastic, rectangular containers. He positions it against the far wall, and then moves to the front of the cages. He keys the ID of the first unwitting, unlucky test subject into his pad, and then opens the door, and extracts the rat. Here, the other technician comes in to help him secure its small body onto the operating table.
“Micah, are you considering helping or just watching?” Dr. Klein asks me, breaking my concentration.
“Please, tell him to piss off.”
I really, very badly, would like to take Bambi’s suggestion. Were this any other job, if I hadn’t somehow, against all odds, grown emotionally invested in the outcomes of what was happening here, and afraid he’d fire me, I would have. Instead I just shrug my shoulders in a non-committal response, which has the desired effect. He rolls his eyes and sighs.
“Come over here and help me lift this thing.”
“Just watch him struggle. Remind him that work makes us pure,” Bambi mocks.
I walk to the head of the table, where Dr. Klein is positioning his hands under the semi-circle of metal I saw in use last time. The underside is covered by a laser array. Precariously, I take the other side, and we lift it up to the table height, where we click its base into place in a complicated-looking mechanism of sliders and struts. The work done, the six of us gather around the table. Dr. Klein buries his head in his pad, where he clicks through a series of menus and sets everything in motion.
As the blue light flashes to life underneath the hemisphere of metal, I tense my body, ready to drop to the floor at the slightest sign of something going wrong. I can be trained. Dr. Klein would be so proud. With inescapable finality, the array moves down the table, engulfing the poor rat. It’s unmoving, sedated. Three straps cross its body at intervals. For it, there is no escape. Dread and pity fills me.
“Here come the fireworks!” Bambi says from under the table.
This job is going to turn me into a vegetarian, I swear.
As the light moves down the rat, its face blurs and seems to liquify. I’m braced to jump for cover, when I notice the other technicians leaning in closer to observe. The features become soft and mobile, cascading into subtly different forms. As the blue light moves on, they start to solidify again. The ears grow larger, as do the eyes. The snout transitions from a longer, slanted thing, to something shorter and pointier.
The blue light cascades down the length of the rat, slowly, but no other changes are apparent. I look at the faces of the other technicians, and see wide smiles, so I’m guessing this was the desired response. The light moves to the end of the specimen, and then shuts off with a click.
“As brother rat wakes from his anxious dream, he discovers that in his bed he has been changed into a monster,” Bambi whispers in awe.
