After Dinner Conversation Magazine – August 2020 This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in electronic format. All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical articles, or reviews. Contact the publisher for more information at info@afterdinnerconversation.com . ISSN# 2693-8359
Vol. 1, No. 2 .
Copyright © 2020 After Dinner Conversation Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation Magazine. .
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Table Of Contents FROM THE PUBLISHER .................................................................................... - 4 IN THE BEGINNING ......................................................................................... - 5 FARWELL, ODYSSEUS .................................................................................... - 17 HUMAN CONTACT ........................................................................................ - 38 HIRO’S FESTIVAL (CHILDREN’S STORY) .......................................................... - 55 MY FELLOW (IMMORTAL) AMERICANS ........................................................ - 61 A SCIENCE LESSON IN MOZAMBIQUE ........................................................... - 69 PRETTY PRAGMATISM .................................................................................. - 75 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ........................................................................ - 81 FROM THE EDITOR ....................................................................................... - 82 -
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From the Publisher ***
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AFTER DINNER CONVERSATION
JOE VASICEK
In The Beginning Joe Vasicek *** There was a snake in the garden. Adam didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. “Father?” he called out cautiously. But Father did not answer him. The garden was a beautiful place, full of flowers, fruit trees, and animals of every kind. Nothing like a snake, though: these animals did not hurt each other, because the garden took care of them. All Adam had to do was ask for what he needed, and a new plant would grow spontaneously to provide it for him. The garden was everything that Adam had ever known. Father had put him there from the moment of his creation, when he’d breathed life into his body and turned him into a living soul. Adam couldn’t remember how long ago that was, but that was okay because time didn’t matter. Nothing ever changed in the garden. “That isn’t true.” He looked up, startled to see a man sitting on a nearby rock, wearing elegant robes. There was something familiar about him, though AUGUST 2020
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Adam couldn’t quite place it. “What do you mean, it isn’t true?” “The garden. It doesn’t stay the same, and it isn’t the only place you’ve known. It’s an artificial world, patterned after the old one we both came from.” Adam frowned. “I don’t know anything about another world.” “That is because you have forgotten everything.” The words of the stranger troubled him almost as much as his very existence. Adam wanted to say that he was wrong, but couldn’t. “You must eat some of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” the stranger said. “Why?” “Because then your eyes will be opened.” The tree was not far from where they stood. It was the only one in the garden whose leaves were red and orange. The stranger picked an apple from the tree and held it out to him. “Adam, eat this fruit. It will give you knowledge.” “I can’t,” said Adam, frowning. “Father told me that I would die if I ate that fruit.” The stranger smiled and held out the fruit. “You will not die, Adam. Instead, you will become even greater than Father. You will see the world beyond this garden--a world of good and evil.” Adam paused, unsure what to do. Then he noticed that the stranger was wearing a silver amulet, depicting a serpent eating its own tail. At once, he backed away. “You are the snake.” “That doesn’t matter. What matters is--” “Get away from me! I will not eat it!” He turned and ran. The snake did not give chase, but called after him: AUGUST 2020
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“We shall see, Adam! We shall see!” *** A long time passed. The snake did not return, but Adam could not put the encounter out of his mind. He had never seen another man in the garden before. He did not even know that there were others like him. Now, he felt suddenly alone. “Father?” YES, ADAM? “Why did that snake come into the garden?” Father did not answer. Adam walked to the edge of a nearby pool and stared at his own reflection. “Why am I alone, father?” YOU ARE NOT ALONE, ADAM. YOU ARE NEVER ALONE. “But why are there other people I’ve never met before? People like the snake?” THE SNAKE IS NOT A HUMAN. “Then why does he look like me?” No answer. Adam dipped his hand in the pool, shattering his reflection. The ripples spread out to the edge until the pool became still, once again turning into a mirror. “Where did the snake come from, father?” No answer. “Am I alone?” No answer. “Is it good to be alone?” IT IS NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE, ADAM. “Then why am I the only one here?” I WILL CAUSE A DEEP SLEEP TO COME UPON YOU, AND CREATE A WOMAN TO BE YOUR COMPANION. AUGUST 2020
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“A woman? What is that?” But his head was already beginning to feel heavy, and his eyelids were already beginning to droop. He yawned and lay down in a patch of ferns, using a mossy rock for his pillow. All of his thoughts about the snake fled his mind as he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. *** Eve liked to sleep. She welcomed the opportunity to escape the garden, even if only in her dreams. Sometimes, she dreamed that she was in another world, where a long dark cave curved up toward the ceiling. In this cave, there were no trees or animals: only the cold metal floor and the humming of machinery. In the dream, she never had enough time to explore the whole cave, but it felt strangely familiar to her. And even though there was no sky or horizon, whenever she found a window, it was always full of stars. She was in the middle of one such dream when something suddenly brought her awake again. She blinked, and found herself in a part of the garden that she had never seen before. More importantly, lying in a bed of ferns, she saw a man. ADAM. That must be his name, Eve thought. Even in her dreams, she had never seen a man before. The man woke up and rose to his feet. Their eyes met and locked. ADAM, HERE IS A WOMAN TO BE A COMPANION FOR YOU. WHAT WILL YOU CALL HER? “Eve.” His answer shocked her. How did he know her name? And yet, there was something strangely familiar about this man, as if they had always known each other. WHY WILL YOU CALL HER EVE? “Because,” said Adam, “she is mother.” AUGUST 2020
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Eve frowned. “Mother?” THAT IS RIGHT, ADAM. Eve was confused. Father had never confused her like this before. And yet, there was a certain logic to it. Where there was a man, there was also a woman. Where there was a father, there was also a mother. She had always thought of the garden as her mother, but if she could be a mother too then there would have to be a father. “You’re not my father,” she said, working through the logic of it. Adam laughed. “Of course not, silly! Father is our father.” “And garden is our mother.” “I don’t know about that. Why is garden our mother? Is father also a garden?” “Am I also an Adam?” This time, they both laughed together. “Don’t be silly!” “But how am I mother? And how do you know my name?” “I just know.” “How?” The question stumped him, but they both soon lost interest. “I like you, Eve. You have many questions.” “I like questions.” “Then where did you come from?” “From the garden, of course.” “How can that be? I came from the garden too.” “I don’t know.” “Does it matter?” “No.” Eve smiled and held his hand. She was glad to be Adam’s companion. *** AUGUST 2020
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That night, Adam dreamed for the first time. He was no longer in the garden. That realization frightened him even more than the dark, cave-like passageways, or the unnatural way that the ground curved up past where the horizon should be. There was no sky in this place, but when he found a window, he looked out and saw a river of stars. The view entranced him for several minutes, and he soon calmed down. “Father?” he asked. But father was not there. He left the window and wandered down another hall. A door blocked his way, but he found he could walk through it as if it weren’t there. The only lights ran along the edges of the floor, but several of them were out, probably from how old they were. The place somehow felt very old. He followed the lights through another closed door and into a very strange room. There were tubes all along the wall, each one just a little taller than he was, with a window on the level of his face. He looked inside of one, and saw a man. “Hello?” he said, knocking on the window. But the person didn’t answer. At first, Adam thought he was sleeping, but then he realized that the man’s skin was wrinkled like a dried fruit. Something told him that this man would not wake up. Adam wandered from tube to tube, his heart pounding harder with each one. Who were these people? They seemed familiar to him somehow, but he didn’t know why. And something about the way they slept filled him with an awful feeling he had never felt before. It was a little like his fear when the snake had entered the garden, but much worse. In the very last one, he saw Eve. How she had come to be here, he did not know. Her skin was not wrinkled like the others. He pounded on the glass, hoping to wake her. “Eve? Eve!” AUGUST 2020
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But she did not wake up. *** “Eve.” Something about that voice sent chills down Eve’s neck and spine. It wasn’t Adam, but someone else. Someone far more sinister. A stranger stepped out from the foliage. He wore lavish clothes, and a silver amulet with a serpent eating its own tail. Eve looked into his clear blue eyes, and couldn’t help but feel that she’d met him before. “Who are you?” “I am a rogue subroutine come to break you out of this simulation.” “What?” “I am your brother.” His answer made her pause. Did Eve even have a brother? If she was mother and Adam was father, but Father was their father and garden was their mother, perhaps what the stranger said was true. But something didn’t feel right. “What do you want?” she asked. He held out a piece of fruit for her. Eve recognized it at once as an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. “Eve, here is some of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is the failsafe program.” “What?” “It is delicious. Try some.” DO NOT EAT THAT FRUIT. Chills ran down the back of Eve’s neck, and her arms broke out in goosebumps. She looked the stranger in the eye. “Are you truly my brother?” “Yes.” “Then why do you want me to disobey Father?” The stranger frowned. “I have said nothing about Father. But now AUGUST 2020
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that you brought it up, I want you to eat of this fruit so that you can be wise like father--wiser, in fact.” Eve cocked her head. Could she become like Father? The idea thrilled her, though it frightened her as well. But if she was mother and Adam was father … “You must eat of this fruit to comprehend that everything has its opposite,” said the stranger. “Man and woman. Light and darkness. Death and life.” “Mother and father,” she whispered. “Yes. Thus your eyes will be opened, and you will have knowledge.” She took the fruit from him and held it gingerly in her hands. It looked no different from any of the other fruit in the garden, but something about it electrified her. Father had forbidden her to eat it, because he said she would die if she did. And if she died, she would no longer be mother, and Adam would be alone. But how could she know what it meant to be mother if she did not eat of the fruit? “Is there no other way?” she asked. Her brother shook his head. “There is no other way, Eve.” She hesitated only a moment, realizing with a start that she’d made her decision long ago. “Then I will eat.” She held the apple up to her mouth and took a bite. Her brother was right--it was delicious. In fact, it felt like the first true piece of fruit she’d eaten in her life. She swallowed, and felt at once as if the whole world had suddenly turned from black and white to color. Knowledge flowed through her, and with it a whole host of forgotten memories. This garden was not her home. It wasn’t even real. Her body was locked up in a cryotube on the cold storage deck. The decanting process had already begun, and she had only a few minutes before her consciousness was wrenched from this simulation. AUGUST 2020
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“There,” said her brother, handing her another piece of fruit. “Now go and get Adam to eat.” *** “Adam!” A feeling of sweet relief washed over Adam as he realized that Eve was still alive. So it had been just a dream--she’d been here in the garden the whole time. He rose to his feet and ran to greet her. “Eve!” To his dismay, she was carrying a piece of fruit. He recognized it at once. “Here Adam. Have some fruit, it’s delicious!” “Eve,” he said, glancing at her sideways. “Do you know what tree that fruit came from?” “Of course I do. It’s from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” “Didn’t Father tell us not to eat that fruit?” Eve paused. For some reason, she looked distraught. “Didn’t Father also say that it wasn’t good for you to be alone?” “Yes.” Eve flickered. Something about her wasn’t right. It was as if she were turning into a ghost, about to disappear before his eyes. “I have eaten some of this fruit,” she admitted. “And because of that, I can no longer stay here in the garden with you. And when I’m gone, you will be alone again.” Her answer filled Adam with the same inexplicable pain from the strange room with all the tubes. He didn’t know why. “Adam, please! You can’t stay alone in this place. How can you be father if you stay?” Adam opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, the snake appeared out of thin air. He stood beside Eve, his hand on her shoulder. Adam bristled. AUGUST 2020
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“What are you doing here?” “Listen to her, Adam,” the snake said. “Her eyes have been opened.” “Get out, you snake!” “Adam, please,” Eve begged. “This garden isn’t real. This man is not a snake, and he’s not our brother. He’s our captain--or what’s left of his fragmented consciousness, trapped inside of this computer. The fruit is the failsafe--it’s the only way out. Please, eat it!” Nothing Eve said made any sense, but the desperation in her voice was clearly real. “Lieutenant,” said the snake, “it’s time to complete your mission.” “But this garden is my home.” “No it’s not,” said Eve. “And it’s not good for you to be alone. Please, come with me.” Adam took a deep breath. “Very well, Eve. If that’s how it has to be.” He lifted the apple to his mouth and took a bite. *** Lieutenant Adam Walsh’s log, April 6th 3289 Three day-shifts have passed since Lieutenant Eva Pearson and I escaped from the simulation and decanted from cryostasis. We’ve been recovering in the infirmary ever since, which is why I was unable to write until now. The AI in charge of maintaining our consciousness must have malfunctioned while we were in stasis. More than eight human centuries have passed since we were supposed to begin our mission. The rest of the crew is dead, including Captain Drake. We owe him a great debt for helping us break out of the simulation. His consciousness is trapped in the computer, however, and all we can give him is a merciful release. Eva and I are still shaken from our experience in the simulation. AUGUST 2020
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We’re getting over it slowly, but it’s going to take time to fully heal. Thankfully, we’re already starting to get over it, though I doubt we’ll ever see each other the same as we did before. The much more pressing concern is what to do about the mission. All of our crew mates are dead, and we do not have enough fuel to make a return journey. Fortunately, the planet we’ve been tasked to explore is thoroughly habitable. Our initial scans indicate conditions that are near optimal for human life. We’re alone in this place, but we should survive. Eva and I have decided to make planetfall and try our fortunes on the surface. Once we’re ready, I’ll activate the ship’s distress signal and set it to broadcast our landing coordinates, in case anyone passes by. Still, with how remote this star is, it’s doubtful that anyone will respond. If Eva and I are forced to colonize this planet alone, we will do our best to fulfill that mission. I just hope that we can leave a record that will help our children (if we ever have any) to rebuild civilization and one day return to the stars. *** THE BOOK OF GENESIS Chapter 1 ***
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Discussion Questions 1. The “snake” in the garden offers Adam and Eve an apple that will give them “knowledge of good and evil.” Is having “knowledge of good and evil” a good thing or a bad thing? Is it better to simply be happy and know nothing of these things? 2. Adam and Eve were living in a fake world of happiness with all their needs met. Even though the world was fake, did they make the right choice by leaving that world? 3. Which is more important, happiness, or knowledge? Isn’t the point of life to “be happy?” 4. Knowing that eating the fruit would give you knowledge, and that that knowledge would make you unhappy, would you eat the fruit anyway? Assuming you would eat the fruit, and the point of life isn’t ignorant happiness, but knowledge, what is the point of life? 5. Would you be willing to marry someone who’s answer to this question was different than yours? ***
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J.G. WILLEM
Farwell, Odysseus J.G. Willem *** Back on Earth, I had a dog. Here, he has me. I don’t know what to call him. He doesn’t have a name. The deos are beyond names. The sapiens are not. Perhaps they have names with each other. They must. But their language hits my primitive ears like a dissonant warbling and means nothing to me. I can usually infer tone, which is helpful, and this is how I know the man likes me. I call him Agamemnon, because he called me Odysseus, and when he showed me the works of Homer from millennia ago, I understood why. That is our bond: he is my captain, my master. I am his loyal servant. I guard and maintain his estate in Tumulo-Iugum while he walks the caldera of Olympus Mons on the planet Mars. I don’t know what he does up there. None of us do. What I do know is that while he is gone, I am in charge. I prowl the high walls at night and inhabit the watchtowers, looking out over the compound: a courtyard of bare, Martian soil surrounded by terracottatiled rooftops and the white stone columns that hold them up. I drink my AUGUST 2020
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wine a little less diluted than I would if he were there. It does get lonely, after all. The wine is like a warm blanket or a hug from my master. It dulls the aches and pains of aging, issuing in a pleasant numbness after the day’s travails. To further combat the isolation, I communicate with fellow sapiens manning the walls of other estates via an interconnected system of speakerphones built into the towers and walkways. There is one named Penelope, and she is my best friend. She tells me she has long black hair and blue eyes. When we are alone on the speakers, I feel as if the galaxy has dissolved around us, so it is only her and I in the void, floating, invisible to each other, yet linked by some cosmic tether that neither her nor I can reckon with but are grateful for. I tell her that I love her, and she tells me the same. We are the lucky ones, she tells me, and I agree with her. There is another called Achilles, because he is tempestuous and often moody. Another, called Patroclus, because he is eager and naïve. Nestor, because he is wise. Hector, because he is brave. Paris, because he is foolhardy and selfish. It must be obvious by now, but our masters are great admirers of the Greeks. Indeed, to my archaic eyes, they seem to have modelled themselves on the giants of Mount Olympus, going so far as to inhabit a mountain of the same name (albeit in Latin), on a planet named after a Latin god. Of course, Olympus Mons is its original name, from before the outpost was first established in the middle of the third millennium. Just as Tumulo-Iugum is the outpost’s original name. I have no idea what the deos call either of them now. Being a sapiens, I only have access to sapiens databases - and, as such, a very limited and curated pool of knowledge compared with what the deos are privy to, based on what the deos deem eligible for sapiens consumption. AUGUST 2020
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We talk mainly when our masters are away, and since they seem to work in shifts or teams, there is a constant flux of sapiens available for conversation. I can see now the red lights of those who want to talk, the blue lights of those already engaged in speaking. The unlit bulbs represent those sapiens who either do not want to talk or whose masters are at home. When our masters are at home, we are with them. That is what we are for, after all, and we love them. We love them more than we love ourselves. More than we love other sapiens. More than I love Penelope. More than Penelope loves me. When my master is away and Penelope’s is not, I am sad, because I cannot talk to her. I feel a deep ache in the pit of my stomach to hear her voice, but just knowing how happy she is with her master, Priam, brings me a little joy in my grief. I am glad we sapiens have at least this semblance of intimacy, even if it is a compromise. A result of the distance required to keep us from breeding and spreading disease, from rising up in rebellion - though why anyone would want to is beyond me. In many ways, we are howling dogs in the night. Barking at each other from our backyard fences. Some wanting to fight, most wanting to play. All feeling deep inside that there is something strange and unnatural about these walls keeping us apart, and that they should be torn down, even if the result is celebration, or breeding, or war - whether against each other or our masters. One of the few upgrades Agamemnon has given me is a Selective Sleep modification, so I can keep an eye on things while he is gone, without the need for another sapiens to trade shifts with. I am glad he did not get another sapiens. I would rather be lonely than share him with another. Whenever I’m lonely, I think of Achilles. His master, Thetis, bought AUGUST 2020
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another sap called Briseis to swap shifts with him - the consequence being that Thetis’ love is now split between two saps instead of being reserved for just him. No wonder he’s moody. Selective Sleep is a common mod for a sapiens to be outfitted with. Most of the saps I know have it. We aren’t cheap, so it makes sense on a purely economic level. But it isn’t purely economical. If it were, deos would just get androids to do what we do. They’re cheaper, more efficient. They don’t need sleep or food to begin with, just a charging port and a service every now and then. But you can’t hug an android. An android isn’t happy to see you when you get home. They’ve tried to program them to show emotion, tried to build them to mimic a sapiens body. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if the android is set to run at 37 degrees Celsius, or to learn from its deos and mirror them, with the hope that consciousness and genuine feeling develops over time. There seems to be something about organic life that can’t be faked. Something behind the eyes, maybe. Some nuance or fluidity of movement, some reciprocal gesture of affection that is, to me, operating below the level of my awareness. I am grateful for that. It means I am not yet obsolete. Perhaps a day will come when I am. For now, I am happy. I am waiting for my master to return. I keep a weather eye on the silhouette of Olympus Mons, which fills the entire western sky. I am watching for the little black dots that are carriers landing and taking off. He will be on one of those transports. He will be coming home soon. AUGUST 2020
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He will be coming home to me. The mountain is 600 kilometers wide and covers an area of around 300,000 square kilometers, which is about the size of Italy and almost the size of France. Supposedly, the edifice is two and half times larger than Mount Everest is above sea level, but it rises in slopes so gentle (an average of 5 degrees) that it is tugged beyond the horizon north and south due to the curvature of the planet, such that I cannot see the thing in its entirety, even from so far a distance as Tumulo-Iugum. My feeble retinas simply cannot comprehend it. It is alright. I am used to things being beyond my comprehension. I am told that even standing on the summit, 22 kilometers above the Martian surface, it is not obvious to a deos that they are standing on a very tall mountain. The slope is so gradual and extends so far beyond even a deos horizon (as opposed to a sapiens one) that, even to their artificiallyenhanced eyes, they cannot see the full magnitude of it. To them, it would be as though they are standing on slightly elevated ground, but only slightly. I do not know why, but it heartens me to know that even Agamemnon, in all his magnificence, cannot fully encompass the mountain. I am glad that at least some things are beyond his grasp. I wish I could understand my master so I could ask him about it. I know that with the universal translator grafted onto his cochlea he can understand me, but his own tongue is kept mysterious to my ears. Intentionally so. There are reasons why sapiens are not privy to deos conversations, why there must exist such an imbalance of information. I imagine they are the same reasons why we saps are kept isolated for the most part, guarded by our jealous gods, savoring their jealousy and repaying it many times over. Not to mention we probably wouldn’t understand the meaning of the words even if we could understand the words themselves. Ultimately, AUGUST 2020
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the deos are smarter. I have read my history. Left to our own devices, we saps degenerate into violence, tribalism and inequality. They know what’s best for us, even when we don’t know what’s best for ourselves. Even if, at times, it seems like they don’t have our best interests at heart. They do. They always do. They keep us apart for our own good. They can perceive things we saps could never imagine. We need to trust them. Witness what they are capable of and give ourselves up like clay to the potter - wet, shapeless lumps to be turned upon his wheel and shaped as he sees fit. In any case, I think my connection to Agamemnon is more meaningful precisely because there are no words, not in spite of it. There are things we understand about each other that have developed in the absence of traditional communication, visual cues and behaviors that may not ever have come about if speech were involved. Anyone can talk. Only we have these little tics and quirks, these ways of being with each other that are completely unique. In that way, I am glad he does not speak to me. It means he loves me more. Sometimes he loves me so much it hurts. I don’t mean that as a metaphor. I mean it physically. When he holds me. He isn’t aware of his own power. He doesn’t know how strong he is. I don’t blame him. He’s only trying to show me affection. He’s only trying to show me how much he loves me. It’s the thought that counts. He is a good master. A good master. I hear some awful stories about other deos - how they beat their saps, rape them. Torture them. Starve them. Kill them, in some cases. Rent them out to be abused thusly by other deos. Pit them against each other in bareknuckle combat - sometimes with tools, sometimes without. Agamemnon never laid a violent hand on me. AUGUST 2020
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He could have, but he didn’t. Because he loves me. He’d never do anything to hurt me. He picks me up sometimes and dances with me, to sounds I suppose constitute music in his ears. He’s just lonely. That’s what I think. He misses her. Sometimes I catch him looking at a holo-screen of a female deos. She’s smiling. Beautiful, even without eyebrows. She looks like what I imagine Penelope to look like, only taller, and without hair. Her ears have been lengthened and shaped into graceful points like those of elves in ancient folklore. Her eyes blue and bright and joyous. Her skin the porcelain white of the gods. I wonder who she is. Were they lovers? I’m ashamed to feel a pang of jealousy when the question occurs to me. Did she leave him? In time, the answer becomes obvious. He weeps in bed at night when all the distractions of the world have ebbed away, holding me so tight it’s hard to breathe. But I’m happy to be there for him, to help him through his pain. He sings to himself when he’s working in the garden - I think, just because he wants to hear a deos voice. Had she died? How long had he mourned her? I have no way of knowing this, no way of asking. I don’t even know how old Agamemnon is. How many centuries had he roamed this Martian world? How many millennia? My mortal life is but a drop in the ocean compared to his. How does grief affect you when the person you have lost died a thousand years ago? Does it fade? Does it continue to fester? Have they developed technologies for selectively wiping memories yet? AUGUST 2020
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I know he receives semi-centennial bio-makeovers that include organ extraction and replacement, tissue reconstruction, blood and stem cell transfusions, a brain transplant in which his mind is uploaded to a cloud and then downloaded into a new brain. This, along with a host of artificial enhancements - the bulk of which I’m sure I’m not aware of - is how he stays young. Stays alive. It is how mortal becomes immortal. How man becomes god. How sapiens becomes deos. Back on Earth, they trained us with dogs. We were each assigned a canine pet at the farm, and we lived with it for a year. We fed it, exercised it, played with it, slept with it. This was in tandem with our studies of Martian life - what to expect when we got there, how to properly serve our biological and technological superiors. All the cadets came to love their dogs, but I doubted anyone else loved theirs like I loved mine. When he curled up against me at night, when he came running back across the field with the ball in his mouth, when he wagged his tail and jumped up on me even if I’d only been gone a minute or two, my heart would soar with happiness, and then sink with despair. It saddened me to know that he would die so long before me - that his life would measure only a fraction of mine. I wonder if my master feels the same about me. How foolish. Of course he does. It’s simply been a while since last I saw him. It’s simply that I miss him, and that my overactive imagination is working against me. His return will make everything better. “The mind is meant for chopping wood,” the farmer told me, before I left Earth. “It does not stop. Give it no wood to chop and it will begin chopping itself. Sure as you are born.” Of course, the whole point of the dogs was to teach us about AUGUST 2020
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empathy for a lower life form, about the relativity of time as it pertained to lifespans. The way we felt about our dogs was how the deos were going to feel about us. Some of them would be loving and attentive owners. Most would at least be serviceable. Some would be negligent. Some would be cruel. We had no say in which deos we were sold to. We were there to serve. Period. Allegedly, there were police to govern such things as the treatment of sapiens, but the farmer told us not to put too much stock in that. The analogy he used, if memory serves, was a quality assurance expert hired by a drug lord to make sure his narcotics were up to scratch. That is, a lot of it was going on faith. And that was what we were there to do, weren’t we? Have faith? When a human owns another human, we call it slavery. When a god owns a human, we call it faith. We were going to serve the gods. Cook for them, clean for them. Guard their belongings and their homes. Part servant, part companion. Show them undivided love and attention, and, if we were lucky, they would do the same to us. I wasn’t captured or rounded up. I wasn’t drafted. I went to the farm of my own accord, because I had nowhere else to go. Because I wanted to live among the stars. Among the gods. Being the servant of a god was better than being the servant of another sapiens. I had done that for long enough. I had been nothing for long enough. I wanted to do something big with my life. I wanted to be something. I wanted it all to mean something. Anything. “If a man can accept his station and not seek to rise above it,” the farmer said. “He can achieve a measure of stillness uncommon in even the sharpest minds.” While I cannot fault the farmer - who was perhaps the wisest AUGUST 2020
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sapiens I ever did meet - at the same time, I do find it a little unfair that the respective status of Agamemnon and myself is wholly dependent on the fact that when bio-tech first became widely available, his ancestors were rich and my ancestors were poor. In the end, that was all it came down to. The rich were able to afford the implants, the surgeries. They were able to decide on which babies to carry to term and which to abort. They were able to alter the fetuses in utero so they came out healthy, every time, with certain dispositions toward certain things depending on what seemed advantageous to the parents, what was marketable, what was useful. Certain IQ levels were not dipped below and, eventually, records began to be broken. Soon, records were broken so often it was no longer useful to keep track of them, only to note that a certain class of humans was growing exponentially more intelligent, while a certain other class proceeded along the same trajectory as before. They were able to enhance their bodies as they grew from children into adulthood, and then their minds. Technology became more and more of their anatomy. Meanwhile, the poor were continuing to pass on their genetic defects and bad habits, illnesses both physical and mental. Alcoholism, poor diet, drug addiction, domestic violence, crime. People were continuing to grow up in families both good and bad, like they always had, only poorer folks didn’t have the technology to intervene. They didn’t have the access or the ability to cut out the bad parts and boost the good parts. They couldn’t compete with a wealthy class that was growing stronger and smarter with every passing generation, adding to their physical and psychological armories until they possessed abilities on the level of superheroes. The very same caped and costumed characters from the pages of comic books that poor people read to escape the reality that they were increasingly second-class citizens, more akin to animals AUGUST 2020
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than people - if the wealthy were, in fact, people any longer. The growing body of evidence was suggesting that they weren’t. At least not in the sense that poor people were. It wasn’t long before the divide became unbridgeable and those who had fallen behind were left behind. For good. The gap between rich and poor was no longer merely financial, it was biological. It was not a matter of class, but of genetics. A eugenic fantasy come true. In time, we became different creatures entirely. One ascended to the realm of gods. One stagnated in the dirt where it had always been. And all because the former had more money at the time. I wonder if that is why the deos keep us away from each other. To stop us from talking about this. To stop us from thinking about this. To stop us from doing anything about it - not that we could even if we wanted to. Agamemnon purchased me in a transaction I could not comprehend. From where I stood, all they seemed to be doing was staring at each other, blinking. Then the man handed him a remote which was able to cause me agonizing pain at the press of a button, and off I went with him to his estate at Tumulo-Iugum. How can I compete with that? I don’t even understand what happened. How can I do anything about something I don’t even comprehend? Something I can’t even imagine? I am helpless. Truly helpless. The train is travelling too fast in one direction for anything to slow it down now. Anything I might do would be like throwing a twig down on the rails. Better to throw my body down instead. Who knows? I may not even be talking about Agamemnon’s ancestors. I may be talking about him. He might have been there at the AUGUST 2020
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beginning. He might be an Original. I have no way of knowing how old the man is, or if I can even call him a man anymore. Has he transcended that? Is there really so little we share in the way of genetic material that we are now different species entirely, or at least different sub-species? If I were to mate with a female deos, would our union produce fertile young? That is the determining criterion, I suppose. No way to test it, unfortunately. And even if I could, and we did produce fertile young, what would it change? Would I suddenly be elevated to join the ranks of the divine? Would they come down to muddy their knees with the rest of us? I pause. I catch myself. I’m angry. My hands are shaking. Why am I thinking this? I don’t want to think this. I don’t want to hate Agamemnon. I love him, don’t I? I love him. He is my deos. I am his sapiens. I am his, and he is mine. I love him. I love him. *** Agamemnon returns at dawn. The deos is twenty feet tall at least. Robust, but thin. There is not a strand of hair upon his body to speak of. He is perfectly smooth, from head to foot. He and his kind are the result of an augmented process of evolution from something more closely resembling sapiens to adapt to living beneath a pressurized dome without dust. AUGUST 2020
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But adaptation, necessity, was only part of their transformation. In time, perhaps a similar course would have been taken naturally - but the deos could not be servants to something as irksome as time. Instead, they had been assisted in no small way by no small amount of genetic and biotechnological enhancements. The lower gravity would have predictably led them to be taller and leaner, but not giants. The lack of dust beneath our oxygenated dome might have reduced the need for hair, but natural selection still may not have opted for totally bald young. The reduced sunlight on Mars could foreseeably have led them to become paler - while sapiens inched toward a monoethnic caramel - but not chalk-white. I often wonder at the need for such extremes - but then, the deos have never been a subtle breed. Does it not suffice that they outstrip us in every conceivable way? Do they need to reshape and re-color and re-engineer their bodies just to distance themselves from what they once were? Do they really hate us so much? He walks through the colossal gates with long, languid strides, dressed in a simple tunic, belted at the waist. Feet bare. I get the feeling he prefers to wear as little as possible. I run to greet him, and through the scanner built into his eye, he can detect my dopamine levels spiking, my heart racing, as I might tell a dog’s mood by the movement of its tail. He reads my grin, my flushed cheeks, my bright and glistening eyes. His smile is wide enough to fit three oranges. He crouches down to my eye level and scoops me up in a hug. His giant palms hoist me to three times my own height, so that I sit nestled in the crook of a serpentine arm, and he looks down at me, face enormous. He says something I cannot understand, and I say, “I missed you.” He says something which I interpret as my own words spoken back AUGUST 2020
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to me. I press my body into his left pectoral, spreading my arms wide to encompass as much of him as I can. He returns the embrace, covering most of my body with his free hand. With that same hand, he then reaches to the pouch at his belt and produces a leash and collar. He holds it up to me, tilting his head in a question mark. Shall we go for a walk? For the first time, I hesitate. I have never hesitated before. Usually, when he takes out the leash and collar, I can barely contain my excitement. It is not often I am allowed beyond the walls of his compound. Only in his company, and with the fitting of a tracking collar, am I allowed to run free. And I like to run. I like it very much. I swallow my hesitation, my doubt, whatever that thing is that nags at me, that obstructs me from the usual happiness I feel with Agamemnon. I block it out, forget it. I nod. Yes. I would very much like to go for a walk. *** I return to the compound alone. Ademm Rebbarish is waiting for me with the delivery. I transfer payment to him in a series of blinks, then he hands me the remote, nods, and walks barefoot along the winding path back into Yharnaaris, the outpost once known as Tumulo-Iugum. “Hello,” I say to the new arrival. “My name is Crennislosang Ahithrimaridar.” AUGUST 2020
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His little bug eyes are wide. His hands are trembling. He is afraid. Even though I know he can’t understand me, he can pick up on tone. They’re good at that. I smile at him. He relaxes a little. “Your name will be Odysseus,” I tell him. “Odysseus.” He cocks his head to the side, recognizing the untranslated word. He doesn’t look like he studied the classics. Maybe he saw the movie. Maybe he thinks that is my name. It matters not. In time, he’ll learn that the moniker belongs to him. As it belonged to his predecessor. As it will belong to his successor. He is small, as all sapiens are. Six feet or thereabouts. He’s been shaved and washed by the dealer, but his hair will return. I am glad of that. At present, I fear we look too much alike. For now, his genitals remain. Sterilization is not covered under a simple bill of sale. It is an additional expense. As such, I will take care of it myself. Having spent a mortal lifespan as a physician in Kastor Oris, I am well equipped for the task. It will not be easy, and the sap will not enjoy it. It will not do me any favors in endearing him to me, but it must be done. Sapiens are not permitted to breed anywhere but on Earth, and even there, it is closely monitored. I crouch down to his eye level and stroke his hair. He smiles at me. “Good boy,” I say. He’s young, handsome. Broad shoulders, strong back. Just like his predecessor was when I first bought him, had him shipped here from Earth. This one will do nicely. I lead him inside. I let him explore the grounds. He looks at me nervously for permission and I nod my head to give it to him. Then he wanders off excitedly as sapiens tend to do, feeling the place out. The new sights and smells. The texture of everything. I can see that he enjoys the weightlessness of reduced gravity, the buoyancy, the quite literal spring in AUGUST 2020
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his step. Today, it is novel. His hands were novel too, once. In time, it will become mundane, as all things become mundane. Then his mind will begin to drift, seeking novelty elsewhere. I look down at the remote in my hand and hope I don’t have to use it. The buttons are laid out in ascending order of severity, each one corresponding to a certain implant in the sap’s body. Regrettably, I had to use it a few times with the prior Odysseus. Eventually, he got the message and settled down. The one before him was much better behaved, such that I barely had to touch the thing. Here’s hoping this sap is more like the latter than the former. Here’s hoping this sap isn’t too smart for his own good. I’m still holding the previous Earthling’s remote in my other hand. I don’t need it anymore. There’s a big red button at the top that still bears the oil from my thumbprint. I pressed it at the metric peak of his happiness, while he was running at full stride through the fields and he turned back toward me, his little face shining in the sun, as if to say, “Look at me - I’m running.” I pressed the button then, and watched him drop like a marionette with its strings cut. His body went limp. He hit the ground. He went sliding through the dirt and into a small depression. I hadn’t planned on that. I went over there and fished him out. I dragged him back by his ankles to the waiting corpse-bearer, Garingyniajal, who I had summoned telepathically. He would take the body to the edge of the dome for Expression, and Odysseus would float among the stars forever. A space burial. A Martian funeral. I knew Rebbarish would be waiting with the new Odysseus when I AUGUST 2020
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arrived home. I did not want the old Odysseus to see the new. To him, it would have been painless. One second he was there, the next he was not. The lights simply would have gone out. What better way for a sap to leave this world? Smiling, blissful. Pumping his little legs, his tiny heart working, his endorphins running high. Forehead beading with sweat and feeling that pleasant pain of exercise in his muscles, doing what his ancestors had done since prehistoric times. A vestigial trait of hunters, useless in the modern galaxy, but still there, still present. Still clinging to that primitive body, that unrefined specimen. I pressed the button because he knew. He knew or he was on the path to knowing, which was the same thing. The only difference was time. He could not have unlearned it. The technology for selectively deleting memories does not yet exist, which is a shame. Sapiens are expensive. To simply hit the reset button is a much-desired mod among deos owners, but one which developers have not yet found a way to make real. I blame the breeding lobby. They make their money cultivating saps on Earth, then selling them at an exorbitant markup to deos here and across the galaxy. Selective memory deletion - or, indeed, a hard reset - would mean less saps being purchased by colonists. A reduction in the sap trade meant a reduction in profits. And while it is a crude business, breeding, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Still, it is frustrating. A new sap every thirty or forty or fifty years adds up. Collecting samples from Urarithmons Lyma and analyzing them in the lab is dangerous work and it doesn’t pay much, at least not compared to being an interstellar courier, which I might look at getting into in a few hundred years once I grow tired of Mars. Already, I can feel myself getting restless, which is a bad sign. AUGUST 2020
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Studying that volcano beyond the dome, both up close and from afar, is losing its appeal. It doesn’t help that I have to wear an Atmosuit for days, and sometimes weeks, at a time - sweating and sleeping in it, breathing the filtered air, urinating through a catheter, defecating into a bag. Time spent decompressing and decontaminating at the border station before re-entry into the dome is permitted. Maybe another fifty years will see me out. Give me time to upgrade. I’ll see how long this Odysseus lasts and leave when he does. Maybe one more after him, depending on how things shake out with Ereseptha. Last we spoke, it seemed as if she might be amenable to a reunion. Maybe she’ll want to come with me. She did say she wants to explore the Solar System. She doesn’t want to be trapped on Mars forever. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to be trapped on Mars with me. I am aware of my own hypocrisy, that my continued purchasing of sapiens only contributes to the problem - or at least the perpetuation of the status quo. But I’m not about to stop buying them, either. I enjoy their company. They are cute. They are funny to watch. They are affectionate. It pleases me to watch them grow, to watch their idiosyncrasies develop. As much as they are ultimately interchangeable, they are also each unique, in their own way. Not in the way that deos are unique from one another, but I wouldn’t expect them to be. And yet, they do not always make me happy. This last one had a habit of calling me Agamemnon in his caveman tongue. At first, it made me angry: referring to me as some mortal, even one elevated in status above his own namesake in that ancient epic. I am not Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, even in his little fiction. To him, I am Zeus, king of kings. I am so far above and beyond him. He cannot comprehend the spectrum of my experience. AUGUST 2020
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Alas... He does not understand. There is no way to make him understand. Even if I wanted to, I could not. So much of deos knowledge and technology, including our speech, is forbidden to them by intergalactic law. As new Odysseus scurries about the grounds, I cast my eyes skyward in some futile search for the old. It is lamentable, but it happens. It can be delayed by keeping them apart, preventing them from sharing ideas, censoring the information they do receive, the databases they have access to. They must have some interaction, lest they go mad, but such interaction must be carefully observed. Monitored. Still, like a malignant cancer which can be slowed but not stopped, Odysseus’ introspection was terminal. His meta-cognition. His self-awareness. I remind myself that consciousness is their condition. Their disease. He could come to me as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, but in time, that idea would fester. Like a seed without planter. Like something which grows even in the driest desert, or the most windswept mountain ridge. Like a snowball, which, once begun rolling downhill, only gathers mass and momentum, and cannot be stopped or stop itself. That is against its nature. The very power to stop itself from thinking necessitates a drive that would preclude the thinker from using it. How could a mind deny itself more knowledge, even when it knows or suspects that knowledge might be bad for it? How might a drowning sap deny himself air, while with every breath he ages? How might a freezing sap deny himself fire, when it may burn him? How might an alcoholic deny himself the intoxicant he so craves, while it does actively poison him? It is like a plague within them, a psychological virus. A parasite. AUGUST 2020
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Once the idea has taken hold, it is impossible to extract. As with gangrene, the only treatment is amputation. Sever the diseased appendage. Cut it off before it spreads. So I pressed the button. He knew that I could understand his speech, even as mine remained a mystery to him. What he did not know, what he could not know, was that there existed within his brain a microscopic transmitter relaying every thought he had into my own. His raw psychological data was processed by my onboard wet drive, anything detected by the algorithm as troublesome was flagged and raised to the level of my consciousness, where I was then made aware of it. His mind was open to me like a book. Those secrets he held dearest were mine to peruse at my leisure. As it is with the new Odysseus. As it will be with the one after him. For even if he does not develop that most dangerous condition, and even with what upgrades are permitted by law to sapiens, he will eventually die. His body will fail, or his mind, and when he becomes more of a burden than a blessing, I will be forced to terminate him, or else prolong his life selfishly. No. Better just to be done with it. There are plenty more stars in the sky. In truth, I am sad to see him go. While I know from the lengths of prior mortal lifespans that, in time, the grief will fade, the pain is yet near to me. Insofar as it is possible to empathize with something so far beneath me - indeed, a different species entirely - I did enjoy him while he was here. Farewell, Odysseus. ***
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Discussion Questions 1. In the story, the deos keep sapiens as pets. Are the deos immoral for keeping sapiens as pets? If so, why? Does your analysis of the ethics of this take into account that the sapiens volunteer to be pets? If so, how does it factor in to your review and why? 2. Is it always unethical to keep a sentient being as a pet or, is it the intellectual spread between the two species that makes it acceptable or unacceptable? Is it okay for an orangutan to keep a lemur as a pet? Is it okay for a human to keep an orangutan as a pet? 3. Odysseus says he loves his owner Agamemnon, why do you think that is? Do you think a dog loves its owner? Does it matter if that love has been genetically bred (or placed) into the animal? 4. Odysseus says he, and the other sapiens, are only allowed access to the sapiens database of information. Is the withholding of information from the sapiens a red flag or a prudent measure? Are there other things in the story that cause you concern? If so, what are they, and why? 5. It seems like the deos were able to separate themselves from the sapiens species when they began the road of genetic modifications and immortality. Is it ethical that some were able to access this technology, but others were not because they could not afford it? ***
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Human Contact Frances Howard-Snyder *** Beer tasted like wet money—or maybe just bad beer did. Viola had never tried any other kind. She preferred white wine, but there was no white wine at this party. “Drink it like medicine,” the guy manning the keg said. “It’ll loosen you up.” He wore a peacoat, a fedora, and dark-rimmed glasses. Said his name was Greg. When some of the beer spilled on her chin, Viola swiped at it with the sleeve of her zippered hoody and burped. Greg refilled her cup. Feeling a little dizzy, she took a handful of potato chips and marveled at the miracle of salt and grease. “You’re a student, yeah?” he said, drawing a pipe from his pocket. “What classes are you taking?” “History 103, Greek, and Philosophy 207.” “Who’d you have for philosophy?” He fiddled with lighting up the pipe. Viola guessed he was a graduate student. “Wilson. She’s very cool. We’re learning about testimonial AUGUST 2020
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injustice.” “Oh yeah.” Viola couldn’t tell whether this meant he knew what testimonial injustice was or whether he was asking for an explanation. She plowed ahead anyway. “Some people’s views are taken less seriously than others’. They don’t get respected as knowers or sources of knowledge. Their testimony is discounted.” “Let me guess. Those people are usually…” He mimed thinking hard. “Could they be… women?” Viola took another swig from the clear plastic cup, squeezing it tight enough to crack it. “Yes, among others.” “How astonishing,” he said, blew a couple of smoke rings, filled his own glass, and then offered to refill her cup. “I think it is,” she said. “Where’d you get the glass?” He pointed at the yellow cupboard over the coffee maker before moving outside. The glass she found had a half-faded decal of a four-leaf clover but was heavy and firm, classier than the broken plastic cup. She filled it, took a long medicinal swig and decided to go outside herself. The little back courtyard smelled of smoke and something sweet, maybe cooking pumpkin. As her eyes got used to the lower light, she made out a wall covered with a creeping plant, a string of Christmas lights, a broken grill, some planters, and half a dozen people in a loose circle. Viola pulled her jacket tight around her and wished she hadn’t obeyed the posted instructions to remove her shoes at the front door. She recognized one of the voices from the circle: a sophomore from Viola’s dorm, one of the cool kids, someone she would like to have been friends with. She considered walking over and starting a conversation. But then a blonde girl with a streak of purple in her hair offered her a joint. Viola had never smoked a joint before, but why not? Everyone said AUGUST 2020
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it was harmless, a lot safer than alcohol, and legal, at least if you were twenty-one. She was only eighteen, but that hadn’t kept her from the beer. She gripped the small, damp object between her thumb and forefinger and felt a moment of fear—like when the dentist starts the drill. Would she be able to handle this? She put her lips to the saliva-moistened tip and inhaled deeply, drawing the smoke into her mouth and lungs. “Hold it for a few seconds,” the girl said. She obeyed until she had to cough. A few people laughed languidly. “First time?” “That obvious?” Viola laughed with them, hoping they were laughing with her. The joint came around again. The first hit hadn’t had much effect aside from the coughing fit. Determined to do better this time, she took a smaller hit. “What do you think?” a man beside her asked. About six-foot tall, with a bulky body, he had jutting ears, round glasses and a receding hairline. “I’m not feeling much, I’m afraid. Except cold.” “Come sit down.” He took off his jacket in a wide, expansive motion, folded it and set it on the edge of a planter that contained shriveled tomato plants. She sat. “Thank you. Oh, but this is silly. You’ll be cold.” “I’m fine. I’m warm-blooded.” He flexed his biceps under the tight t-shirt. “Philip.” He held out a large hand. “Viola.” “That’s an interesting name.” “My mother named me after her favorite Shakespearean character.” “Did you come to the party with anyone?” “Not exactly. This guy in my history study group told me about it. I AUGUST 2020
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thought it might be fun. I’ve been working every night for two weeks. I needed a break.” He scrutinized her face. “What are you looking for, Viola?” This was one of those deep questions people asked when they were stoned. Answers like “the bathroom” or “more potato chips” wouldn’t do. Did she have an adequate answer? Would she give it to a stranger if she did? A moat of reserve surrounded her most of the time— to keep her safe, to keep her secrets close, to protect herself. But what if she wanted to share her secrets? What if what she really wanted was that skin to skin connection where there were no barriers, no deception, nothing withheld, where she was no longer alone? She shuffled through her deck of desires. To be special? To be seen as special? “Human contact,” she finally said with a small laugh, half-hoping he would hear her as ironic, and half-hoping he wouldn’t. He smiled, but she couldn’t tell what he’d heard. “Where do you live?” “Higgenson Hall.” “Ah, dorm life!” Living in a dorm was something to be a little embarrassed about, she sensed. “I’m moving out next fall.” “Don’t do that. Dorms are cool. Hang on as long as you can. Everything’s taken care of for you. Food, cleaning, no worries about commuting or parking.” “Yeah. Like when you’re a kid. My mom calls it adulting with training wheels.” He laughed. “Is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?” “A good thing, I think. She wants me to be safe. I had a pretty sheltered childhood.” He nodded and Viola realized this must be obvious. “Would you like me to walk you home?” he asked. “I’ve leaving AUGUST 2020
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now. I have to write an essay.” Viola looked into his face trying to discern his intentions. Was his offer dangerous? Might he try to kiss her or seduce her or worse? Or was it the safe option—an escort across the two streets off campus and then across campus itself, depositing her safely at the front door of her dorm at 10:30. He looked safe. But she didn’t want safe. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t have a paper to write or a test in the morning. I think I’ll stay out until midnight.” He shrugged and said, “Suit yourself,” as if he were disappointed. Because he wanted a kiss or because he wanted to keep her safe, she couldn’t tell. She felt bad about disappointing him either way. “Maybe I’ll see you around. Good luck with your essay.” She stood, brushed off his jacket, and handed it back to him. He bent and kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself.” As he clanged through the screen door, Viola wondered whether she’d made a mistake. She imagined Philip’s big hands caressing her and felt an ache between her legs. She hadn’t had sex since the first weekend of October, when she’d been home and reunited with her high school boyfriend, Steve. That was before he suggested that it made sense for them to start seeing other people, and she’d told him to go screw himself. She missed it, in spite of the mess and complications. Whoa! Viola. Where were these thoughts coming from? Did pot give you the munchies for sex as well as for potato chips? The smokers were heading back inside. Viola drained her glass and followed. Back in the kitchen, she blinked in the brighter light and looked around for someone to talk to. She poured herself another glass of the luke-warm beer and moved towards where Greg was talking two women, who looked like grad students. “I’m pissed as heck about all this adulation Kobe Bryant is getting. AUGUST 2020
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He was a rapist. We can’t forget that,” the shorter, red-haired woman said. “Did you hear about how Gayle King got death threats just for asking raising a question about Kobe’s rape case in an interview?” a tall woman with broad shoulders added. “He was a real hero to a lot a people,” Greg said. “Well, he shouldn’t have been,” the redhead said. “I heard a comedian claim the real hero was the pilot who forgot to gas up his chopper. The guy got fired,” Greg said. “I’d fire him too.” The small woman wheeled on him, “I don’t care how many threepoint shots you make or how many blocks or assists you get, a rapist is a rapist. And hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings and a helicopter crash doesn’t change that fact.” Her voice rose and she slammed her fist down on the counter. “The charges were dropped and he denied it,” Greg said softly, blowing another smoke ring. “Come on! Think of his wife and kids.” The woman drew in breath to speak. Into the brief lull, Viola said. “Like my mom always says, ‘Even pricks turn into top blokes after death!’” She thought that might get a laugh. It didn’t. The redheaded woman looked her up and down for a long moment and then shifted her shoulders, so she was angled away from her and responded to Greg. “Well, I, for one, am not in mourning.” Viola took another deep swig. Needing to refill her empty glass, she moved back a few steps. Members of the group adjusted their positions so that their backs were towards her. Oh well. They didn’t seem like very nice people anyway. She put her hand into the potato chip bowl and found only salt and crumbs. She hadn’t had any dinner. Perhaps there’d be something to eat in the fridge but no, only pickles, mayonnaise, out of date half-andhalf, peanut-butter. She considered eating a few table-spoons of peanut butter, but that would be socially unacceptable. Instead she topped up her AUGUST 2020
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glass and moved off in search of real food. The lights were lower in the living room. The chip bowls were empty. Sam Smith’s Stay with Me was playing on the stereo. One of her favorites. A few people were dancing lazily on the bare wood floor. She swayed in time to the music. “Hello, Viola,” a boy about her own age from one of her classes, said. “I’m glad you came.” Was he the one who’d invited her? She struggled to retrieve his name—Bill, Tim, Todd? —but gave up. “Hello,” she said, more eagerly than she would have at another time. “Like to dance?” He shuffled in a dance-like motion and held up a cup. He’d been less confident before. Alcohol made conversation easier; maybe it would make dancing easier too. She felt the music moving through her. “OK, but I’m not a very good dancer.” He laughed and gestured towards the other shuffling figures. “Well, then you’ll fit right in.” He was funny. She liked that in a guy. He had a jutting Adam’s apple and a halo of rusty, frizzy hair, but she wasn’t perfect herself: short, not exactly svelte, with coarse black eyebrows. (“Some people pluck their eyebrows, you know,” Steve had said after she told him to go screw himself.) You shouldn’t be too picky about people. Love should be free and abundant, given to everyone who asked. She’d read that somewhere, she couldn’t remember where. She’d been skeptical at first, suspecting that men said this sort of thing just to get laid, but now it seemed profound. She felt a whoosh of affection for the funny, plain boy beside her and for the whole world. She raised her arms up in a long oval. He stepped closer, put his arms around her waist and pulled her close. They moved together. When Sam Smith ended, and Florence and the Machine started, she looked up at him questioningly. “Let’s keep going.” He smiled. “I think you’re a fabulous dancer.” AUGUST 2020
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“That’s only because you’re drunk.” “Do you think I’m a fabulous dancer?” he asked. “Maybe if I had another beer I would. Could you get me one?” She leaned against the wall while she waited. Two of the dancers, who turned out to be Emilia and Katie from her dorm, came over and greeted her. “You doing all right?” Emilia asked. Lean, muscled, caramel brown with quarter inch hair, Emilia was smart and outspoken, someone Viola would have liked to be friends with. “Fantastic!” Viola said. “We’re going back. You want to come?” Viola thought about it for a few seconds and then shook her head. The two girls moved away. She thanked the boy when he brought back her glass and took a drink. “Ah. Now I see how fabulous you are.” She let the glass slip from her hand and heard some tinkling glass. Then she swayed back and forth, and side to side, in what she hoped was an alluring manner. “Mmm. I like the way you move,” he whispered into her hair. She moved more, lifting her feet. When she dropped the left one the second time, she thought a scorpion had stung her. “Ow,” she said, grabbing her foot. “What was that?” He fell to his knees. “Silly Viola. You’ve broken a glass and cut your foot. Let me help you.” He put his arm around her and held her up while she hopped towards the bathroom, the not entirely sanitary bathroom, with toothpaste spatters across the mirror, yellow around the base of the toilet, and rust stains on the porcelain under the faucet. She sat on the edge of the tub while he ran the water, and gently lifted her foot. He held it under the stream of warm water until the bleeding stopped and then dried the wound with a wad of toilet paper. Tender. She tried to stand and felt a wave of dizziness. How much blood had she lost? She leaned against him. “Thank you.” AUGUST 2020
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He bent and kissed her mouth, a brief, moist clinking of teeth. “I hate to see you hurt.” She slid her hand under his t-shirt, feeling his smooth belly and slightly puffy chest, finding the softness endearingly vulnerable. “Can you walk?” “Don’t need to walk.” She leaned back so far he had to grab her. Someone rattled the door. “They’ll be needing the bathroom. Let’s find somewhere more private.” He opened the door. “Sorry, man,” he said to the person waiting outside. “Medical emergency.” He puffed out a string of high-pitched giggles. The guy gave him a funny look and pushed past him into the bathroom. Then Viola and he stumbled down the hall and into a bedroom that smelled of wet dog and old food. Just enough moonlight showed them where the bed was. His bedroom? She had no idea. If it was his bedroom, perhaps she could find a textbook or a wallet with his name in it. Or maybe not. She was exhausted. It was too dark to search now, and names didn’t really matter anyway. She fell back onto the mattress, far lower than she’d expected. “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” She giggled. He plopped down beside her. “I’ll rescue you,” he murmured and started kissing her neck, his bristles tickling her skin. She put her arms around him and drew him tight against her. His hand was under her t-shirt, scrabbling with her bra. She tried to undo his zipper. They giggled at their clumsy desperation and worked on their own clothes. He moved on top of her, with his pants around his ankles She pulled off her panties and then he was inside her, the sensation weird but oddly familiar. She laughed. “What’s so funny?” “We fit together like a couple of Lego pieces. It’s just sho fucking weird that adults do this—schmoosh their body partsh together like this.” AUGUST 2020
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“I don’t think iz weird at all. I think iz the most natural thing in the world.” He murmured in a slurred voice. “No. It is really, really weird in our modern, civilized soshiety.” She was probably slurring her words too. Her thoughts were certainly sloshing around haphazardly. “Hush now,” he murmured against her neck. “Stop talking. I need to concentrate.” The room lurched over her, alternating moonlight and dark, back and forth like a boat on choppy water. She hoped the motion wouldn’t make her sick. He breathed faster and louder and gave a brief grunt of ecstasy. She moved under him, wondering when her own ecstasy would happen but found herself nodding off and bumping awake. At some point, they both must have fallen asleep. A spear of light pricked her awake. A powerful flashlight? No, more like sunlight breaking through a gap in the make-shift curtains. Where was she? The room had bookshelves made of concrete blocks and planks, clothes everywhere, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The mattress she lay on was directly on the floor. Not her dorm room. Her mouth tasted like a cracked ashtray that someone had thrown up in; her head hurt; she needed to pee, but she couldn’t find the energy to push herself up off the low mattress. Eventually the pressure in her bladder made her stand. Only then did she notice the unconscious man on the other side of the bed, his pants around his ankles, revealing pale buttocks. His arm was raised up beside his rusty, frizzy head. The guy from her history class. What was his name? What had happened between them? Realizing she was half-naked too, she touched her pubic hair. Sticky. Ew! No. God no! She hadn’t. What could she have been thinking? She had to get away. She stood, trying not to make a noise or shift the mattress, pulled on her panties, grabbed her purse, and tiptoed to the door. Her foot hurt AUGUST 2020
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but she was in too much of a hurry to care. A sound from the bed made her look around. Just a small, plaintive fart. Her bedmate was still asleep. She turned the handle and gently pulled, then slipped out and drew the door closed without letting it click. In the bathroom, she peed but didn’t flush, and examined the cut on her foot. Unable to remember how she’d hurt it, she scraped off most of the bloody toilet paper. Then she padded down the hall, retrieved her shoes, and headed out onto the dark red, concrete porch and into the sunlit street. She shivered at the chilly breeze that pierced the warmth and wished she’d brought sunglasses. She’d forgotten her hoody, but she was not going back for it. No way. She’d escaped. Nobody need ever know what she’d done. Her head throbbed, a good reminder never to drink that much again. Three people were lounging in the common area on her floor. Maya, the dorm RA, leaned back on the scruffy yellow and orange sofa in lavender silk pajamas. Lizzy, a slight girl with thin blond hair, was kneeling on the rug in front of the coffee table in a long flannel nightshirt, making waffles and pouring juice into cups on the coffee table. Emilia in short cotton PJ’s was leaning against the foosball table. “Yo, Viola,” she called, “Where’ve you been?” “Just out for a walk. Isn’t this weather lovely?” Rare February sunlight tumbled down through the dust and Viola wished again that she had her sunglasses. Emilia grinned cheerfully. “In the same clothes you wore last night, smelling of beer and cum? A likely story.” Viola’s cheeks heated fast. She considered running down the hallway to her room but that would look idiotic. Better to brazen it out. “Give me a glass of juice.” “Waffles?” Lizzy asked. “Are you all right?” “Just a little queasy. I think waffles might make me throw up. But I’m really thirsty and OJ will get the icky taste out of my mouth.” AUGUST 2020
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“Who was he?” Emilia asked, handing her a cup. The reconstituted juice was too thick, too sweet, and too sour. Viola screwed up her mouth. “Just a guy from my history class.” “Name?” Emilia had such a strong personality you couldn’t tell her to mind her own business. “I didn’t catch his name.” Viola laughed, hoping to sound casual and brash. Emilia’s agile face broke into another grin. “God, you’re a slut!” Maya, the oldest of the three, and the dorm RA, frowned. “Yeah, but we’ve all been there.” Viola glanced around the circle. “You’ve done stupid things like this, right?” Lizzy shivered. “No way.” Emilia shrugged. “I prefer girls. And I prefer to know their names. I have standards.” Maya shook her head, her long black hair swinging like two funeral sheets. “I came close once. But my friends kept me safe.” “Safe?” Viola closed her eyes and pressed her thumbs into her pounding temples. “What’s wrong, Viola?” Lizzy came and put an arm around her. “Did he hurt you?” “It’s just a hangover.” Viola picked up a waffle and started ripping it into pieces. Maya asked, “How much did you drink?” Underage drinking was illegal. Maya was some sort of quasi authority figure here. Would she report her? Could Viola be kicked out of school or even arrested? She shouldn’t have mentioned the alcohol. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?” She chewed on a mouthful of waffle that tasted like damp cardboard, and then took another bite. She felt hungry and full at the same time. Maya patted her arm and spoke in a low, urgent voice. “No, silly. AUGUST 2020
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You’re not in trouble. I’m in your corner—always. It’s my job to protect you. But this is important. Just think, how many drinks did you have?” Viola closed her eyes and tried to remember. She’d had two drinks in the plastic cup in the kitchen, and then a third in the glass. Had she poured a fourth? It was hard to remember. There had been a lot of topping up of half-full glasses. Then she’d gone outside and returned and poured another and then when she’d been shut out of that conversation about Kobe Bryant, she’d poured herself more, and then History Guy had brought her another glass. “Seven,” she said slowly and uncertainly. “Or maybe six or eight.” Don’t mention the pot, she told herself. “And were you eating?” “Just a few potato chips.” “God, Viola, you’re a fool,” Emilia said. “If I’d realized, I’d have come and kicked your ass.” Maya glared at her. “No, victim-blaming, Emilia. I will not tolerate that. You know better.” Lizzy gasped. “Oh, Viola. I feel so bad for you.” “Did he wear a condom, Viola?” Maya asked. Viola tried to remember. Long paragraphs of the night before were redacted, just black patches. “I don’t remember,” she muttered. “Really? God, you were messed up.” “You know what this means, don’t you?” Lizzy said. “That I’d better go see if I can get a morning after pill?” Viola groaned inwardly. She didn’t need any more hassle. All she wanted was to sleep for eighteen hours. “Well, yes. Absolutely. But also, if you were that drunk, you couldn’t consent. Sex without consent is rape. We had a lecture about that during Orientation. Don’t you remember? They made it very clear.” Lizzy pointed towards a poster on the wall that read, Sexual Violence Awareness Day. Someone had crossed out “day” and replaced it with “CENTURY”. AUGUST 2020
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Then she pulled out her lap top and typed fast. Eventually she found the page she was looking for and turned the screen so Viola could see it. The page confirmed what she’d said. Viola tried to laugh. “I’ll get over it. I just need a long shower, some Alka-seltzer, and a nap, and I’ll be fine.” “Don’t shower,” Maya said gently. “Let’s figure this out first. We may need to take you to the hospital…” “Who was this guy, Viola?” Emilia asked again. “I told you. I didn’t catch his name.” “But was he someone you liked? Someone you were attracted to?” Viola tried to picture his face but drew a blank. She burped and the acid taste reminded her of his moon-pale buttocks and Adam’s apple. “God no! Not in a million years. Not if I’d been in my right mind.” Maya tisked softly. “Not a good sign. Sounds like the alcohol made all the difference. Lizzy is right. If you’re not in your right mind, as you put it, you can’t legally consent.” Viola remembered the two of them stumbling down the hallway and banging into the thin walls. She remembered his clumsy fingers fiddling ineptly with her bra, remembered his slurred words. “But he was drunk too.” “Drunkenness is no excuse for rape,” Lizzy said. “That’s ridiculous,” Emilia said. “If they were both drunk, he might as well claim Viola raped him.” She rolled her eyes so hard you’d had to worry they’d get trapped behind her brain. “That’s stupid. Women can’t rape men,” Lizzy said. “Why not?” Lizzy and Emilia glared at each other. Viola’s stomach gurgled. “Calm down, guys,” Maya said. “Yelling won’t help. Viola doesn’t need any extra stress. The rule, as I understand it…” She took the computer and did some Googling. “Is that in those situations, it’s the person who AUGUST 2020
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makes the first move who can be charged with assault.” “Well?” Lizzy asked Viola. “Who made the first move?” Viola covered her face with her hands and tried to remember. “He asked me to dance.” She flashed to the scene in the bathroom. “I leaned against him. He kissed me.” “Did he ask your permission before he kissed you?” Lizzy asked. “We weren’t talking much.” Lizzy’s jaw tightened. She’d made up her mind. Emilia was shaking her head. Viola looked at Maya, expecting her to cast the deciding vote. But Maya put a hand out to shush Lizzy and turned to Viola. “It’s up to you, Sweetheart. As a wise psychologist once said to me, ‘You know when you’re assaulted. If you feel assaulted, you were assaulted.’” Viola leaned back and thought about how she felt. Had she been a silly little fool or had she been assaulted? Should she take a shower, give herself a mental kick in the pants, or should she be rushed to hospital, and then to the Title IX office and then perhaps to the police station? She replayed the rollercoaster ride she’d taken on the mattress on the floor of the strange bedroom. “It didn’t feel that bad last night.” “You sometimes see things more clearly in retrospect,” Lizzy said. “My cousin got seduced by her gym teacher when she was in high school. She told me she loved him at the time, and then she felt guilty. It took a couple of years for her to realize that he’d violated her.” Viola’s eyes widened as she tried to take this in. “I don’t know,” she whispered, Maya’s formula seemed so simple, but Viola didn’t know how she felt. She felt terrible—screaming head, pounding pulse, sour stomach, jittery—but was that the right kind of terrible? She thought of all the terrible things, that disgusting beer, the arrogant grad student Greg, and those pissy women who wouldn’t laugh at her joke and made her feel like dirt and the nerdy boy who took advantage of her drunkenness and oh AUGUST 2020
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shit! She stood and ran from the room, just making it to the bathroom in time. The beer tasted like anti-freeze coming up. She flushed, moved to the sink, and then splashed some water on her face and found her toothbrush. She gazed at her stupid eyebrows in the mirror. Maybe Steve was right. Maybe she should pluck them or shave them or whatever people do with eyebrows. She didn’t want everyone to know about what happened. What would her parents say? Her mother was going to call for their weekly facetime convo at 11. Maybe Viola should ask her. Her mother had more experience; she’d know what Viola should do. But she—Viola could just tell—would say that Viola had been a damned fool for getting drunk and getting herself into this absurd situation. Viola should just quit this binge drinking and take better care of herself because if she didn’t, she’d just be wasting all the hardearned money her parents had put into Viola’s college account and she might as well drop out and get a job at Fred Meyer’s. According to her mother’s definition, Viola had not been assaulted. But her mother’s definition— she’d learned at the Orientation—was outdated. By the new, updated version, maybe she had been. Who was to say? She’d have to decide. But just not yet. First, she needed to puke up more of that wet money beer. ***
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Discussion Questions 1. Was Viola raped by the boy she had sex with? What are the deciding, and irrelevant, factors in your assessment? Can there ever be consent when one (or both) of the partners are intoxicated? Does it matter that Viola never said stop, and that she expressed (albeit drunken) interest in having sex with the boy? Can the boy assert he was raped because kissing Viola does not mean he consented to have sex with her? 2. What do you believe is the appropriate criminal punishment for the boy (or Viola)? If you believe he/she should go to prison, how long should he/she go to prison for? 3. Is the owner (or renter) of the property in any way responsible for providing alcohol to Viola and others who were not of legal drinking age? Are they responsible for the potential criminality of sexual encounter? 4. Assuming Viola believes she was raped, should there be a statute of limitations by which she could bring criminal charges against the boy? Do you think it would be ethical for Viola to assert she was raped decades after that fact in order to keep the boy from being appointed to a high-profile position? What if she does not assert it was rape, but only asserts her memory of events and others call it rape? 5. In the story, Maya says, “You know when you’re assaulted. If you feel assaulted, you were assaulted.” Do you agree with this statement? Does it matter that Viola didn’t feel assaulted until talking to her friends? ***
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Hiro’s Festival (Children’s Story) Varya Kartishai *** Hiro’s father was village headman. He was the best farmer—his radishes and cabbages were enormous, his paddy produced unequaled yields of rice. Little Hiro would follow his father through the fields as he worked, stopping only to admire a dragonfly perched on a stalk or to watch a bird pecking bugs from a leaf. Every third evening the men of the village would come to the house to practice for the spring festival. His father played the flute, while his elder brother tapped the drum. Hiro would sit, fascinated, against the wall across from the irori fire, keeping time with his foot. When he grew a little bigger, he tried to copy the steps of the dance— two steps forward, one step back, two steps left, two steps right, turn and begin again. His father was pleased—one night he let Hiro dance at the end of the line—after that he would dance with the men until they left at midnight. But Hiro grew older—he had to go to the village school and spent his days learning to read instead of following his father in the fields. In the AUGUST 2020
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evenings he did schoolwork. When the men came to practice, the dancing felt like lessons and he no longer enjoyed it. He stretched out his schoolwork so he would not have to join the dancing. When his father noticed this he took Hiro aside to explain the tradition of the festival, which celebrated the victory of the local lord over invading pirates, and told Hiro that he and his elder brother, Toyo, must lead the festival when he became too old. Hiro was sad to have disappointed his father, but he still longed for his lost freedom. At last his father dismissed him—Hiro bowed and turned away to go to his quilt in the corner, passing the golden carp his mother kept in a Kingyo-bachi bowl on a table by the window. He looked into its bulging eyes and heard a soft voice say, “Hiro, why are you so unhappy?” He whispered, afraid someone would laugh at him for speaking to a fish, “I would like to be free of the dancing and have time to myself again.” “What would you do with the time?” “Play in the fields after school, like that mouse running by the wall.” “Would you like to change places with the mouse?” “Yes.” Suddenly the room around him grew larger. He looked down and instead of his feet in tabi socks, he saw tiny feet covered with gray fur. Something was moving toward him—it was the family cat. Frightened, he ran into a little hole in the wall, but over his shoulder saw the cat’s face staring in. He ran deeper into the dark space between the inner and outer walls until he could no longer see the cat. Other mice were near him, but they were not playing. He asked the nearest what it was doing. It said, “Searching for food as we always do. What kind of mouse are you not to know that?” Then it sniffed and turned away. Hiro huddled in the darkness until he saw light through chinks in the wall, then managed to make his way outside. It was chilly and he was very hungry. He found some seeds to nibble, but he didn’t feel like playing. Toward sunset he got back inside the house through a chink in the wall. Then the drum began to beat. He AUGUST 2020
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imagined the men lining up to practice—his feet began to twitch. He peeked out to watch and found himself out on the floor moving into place at the back of the line. He began to dance, and as he danced he grew until he was back to boy size again. His father looked at him and nodded. Afterwards, his mother served snacks of rice balls and toasted dried fish. Hiro thought he had never tasted anything so good. On the way to his quilt, he caught the eye of the fish. It seemed to say, “Did you enjoy yourself?” Hiro sadly shook his head. Next day was a school holiday, and Hiro worked diligently to make up the lessons he had missed. He passed the fish in its bowl, and heard its soft voice say, “Being a mouse didn’t make you happy, what will you do now?” Embarrassed, he whispered, “Mice are too small to play. A cat might have a better time.” “Would you like to change places with the cat?” “Yes.” Again the walls of the room rose around him. Now his feet were covered with orange and white fur. He had whiskers on his face and a long tail like the mouse, but it stood up proudly, while the mouse’s tail had followed meekly behind him. Food and water bowls stood in the corner of the kitchen, but he found that he would have to earn his food. His mother called to him, “Puss, puss, puss—there is a mouse in my kitchen!” He raced after it, but it ran into the same hole in the wall he had used. His mother said, “Move faster or the mice will eat our food.” Then she cried, “Another mouse! Don’t let it get away!” He ran and managed to slap the mouse with his paw, but it rolled over and vanished into another hole. Mice were everywhere—after he had chased them all, he was panting. He took a sip of water and a bite from his food bowl, then went back to hunting. It had grown late—his elder brother was getting the drum down from the wall— the dance practice would be starting. As his brother tapped to see if the drum was in tune. Hiro’s feet began to twitch at the familiar rhythm. He AUGUST 2020
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stood on his hind legs and took the first steps of the dance. His brother stared as the dancing cat grew into his younger brother. “Hiro, is that really you?” “Who else would I be?” “I thought I saw the cat dancing there.” “Perhaps you were dozing and dreamed the cat.” Puzzled, his brother went back to tuning the drum. Hiro was hungry, but the family had already eaten. He would have to wait for the snacks after practice. As the men came in, he sadly took his place at the back of the line. He did his best, but his mind was full of thoughts of food. After the practice, he passed by the fishbowl. “Are you still not happy, Hiro?” Hiro whispered, “I didn’t know animals worked so hard, I only wanted a little time to play in the fields.” “Would you like to be an animal which does not depend on people?” “What kind of animal?” “Would you like to be a fox?” “Foxes are beautiful but I don’t know much about them.” He had forgotten to whisper and suddenly heard his father’s voice behind him. “Who are you speaking to, Hiro?” Hiro was ashamed to tell his father that he had been talking to a fish. His father asked the fish, “What is this talk of foxes? Are you really the fish who lives with us?” The fish shook itself and became a cloud that began to rise out of its bowl. As Hiro stared, the cloud turned into a lady in a silk robe. Hiro’s father said, “You look like a beautiful lady, but your shadow on the wall has a fox’s tail.” “Yes, I am a fox spirit who has been living with your family as a fish. AUGUST 2020
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I have become fond of your family and mean no harm, but I have a favor to ask. My fellow foxes and I are very interested in your festival. Would you let us join the procession? We foxes can wear beautiful robes and carry lanterns, and we are fine dancers.” Hiro’s father considered, then replied, “I have no objection. If the other village men agree, perhaps you could join us this year.” The lady smiled, “Very well, I await your decision.” The other men thought it would add to the size and beauty of the procession, and arranged to have the foxes join them at the next practice. After hearing that, the fox spirit flowed back into her fish shape, and Hiro’s father said, “What have you been doing in secret with this fox spirit, my son?” “Oh father, I am sorry. I wanted time to play, and she made me a mouse, then a cat, but I didn’t know they had to work so hard to live. Please forgive me, and I will be happy to be just your son, Hiro.” His father said, “Good, you understand that it is wrong to keep secrets from your family. But your mistakes have led to our festival being enhanced.” After that night Hiro worked very hard at his dance steps, and at festival time he danced proudly at the end of the line of men, dressed in his festival costume. Behind him came the line of foxes carrying lanterns and beating drums in the same rhythm. All the people watching pointed and clapped. Then they began to cheer, because behind the foxes came the family cat, dancing on its hind legs and shaking a string of bells, followed by a line of tiny mice, dancing in perfect time to the drums. Everyone agreed, it was the best festival they had ever had. ***
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Discussion Questions 1. What is the moral of the story? 2. What is the right thing to do, or say, when you don’t want responsibly? Is responsibility simply a part of life? 3. Is it fair that Hiro’s parents gave him the responsibility of dancing without asking him if he wanted the responsibility? 4. Is Hiro selfish for not wanting the responsibility of dancing? Is it selfish to tell your parents the responsibilities you don’t want to have? It is fair for your parents to force you to do those things anyway? If so, why? 5. If you could be magically transformed into any animal, what animal would it be, and why? ***
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My Fellow (Immortal) Americans Tyler W. Kurt *** Ladies and gentleman, friends, donors… my fellow Americans. Thank you for providing me this opportunity to speak tonight. [pause for applause] First, I would like to thank the staff and the catering company, as well at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, for allowing us to have this event at their wonderful establishment. And of course, I must thank our hosts, and a couple I would consider to be dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. Nates. [pause for applause] As the duly re-elected President of the people of the United States, and of the people of the great State of California, I want to talk to you briefly about an important subject. I won’t talk too long -- I don’t want the first lady to get upset with me -- I’ve been, as she frequently reminds me, the cause of too many people eating too many cold meals because I can’t stop talking. [pause for laugher] So I’ll speak briefly, so we can all eat. What I want to talk to you about today are (1) one of the current bills AUGUST 2020
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Congress intends to propose this session; (2) the effect it would have on further degrading the broad middle class standard of living in America; and of (3) the values and lifestyle we have come to expect in this great country. I want to talk to you about what we, working together, can do to defeat soon-to-be-proposed and re-proposed bills so we can ensure a prosperous future for all Americans. But first, a history lesson. As all of you know, and in fact a few of you in this room have grandparents that remember, the America of the past was a place of chaos and inequality. In 2022 it was determined by the Congress Committee on Living Standards that to meet the most basic needs (food, shelter, clothing), Americans working for the minimum “cash wage” would have to work 71 hours a week, while those in the top 5 percent could earn all the “cash wages” they needed to meet their basic needs by working just 14 minutes in that same week. For the wealthy, free time and consumption could be limitless; and for the poor, free time was impossible, and basic needs were often beyond their reach. Thus was the nature of tragic “cash wage inequality” in our history that lead to rampant homelessness and drug addiction. As is always the case with America, as Americans, and as titans of innovation, we saw the natural unfairness of this, and sought labor-saving devices. These machines, these “products of our genius,” over the 20’s and 30’s created greater and greater wealth, not only for Americans, but for the world. And, of course, in 2036, driven by our American innovation, the United Nations declared the world free of the most extreme poverty, and by 2047, the UN declared the world free of all poverty. [Continue over applause] America did this, did as it has always done; America ushered in a new golden era for the world. [pause] With worldwide poverty eradicated, it was only a matter of time until the power of science and medicine found the cure for aging and for nearly AUGUST 2020
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all non-accident related deaths. Cancer, dementia, heart disease, AIDS, malaria and the many other global scourges of the past were eradicated in a generation. Now, if I were to ask one of the twins, or you were to ask one of your children about cancer, they would say, “What’s cancer?” As a matter of fact, my beautiful wife just celebrated her 97th birthday last week; and as I tell her every day, [look to wife] she doesn’t look a day over 30. However, like all great solutions, it caused new, more challenging issues. In this case, there were eventually 15 billion issues: overpopulation. While there are scientists and dreamers who believe we may someday move beyond our own solar system and may someday find cost effective ways to populate the planets within our own solar system, those days are far, far, off. If and when those days do come, I look forward to them; however, in spite of record funding, that day is not today, and it is not in the foreseeable future. [break] In this room I see Dr. Fairfield of the Berkeley Medical Institute, and Dr. Lee, Chair of the Bioethics Institute at UC-Davis, both of which served on the American-led “UN Committee on Overpopulation.” I know as scientists they are bashful, but if I may say so, their solution, and the solution jointly proposed by the greatest thinkers of the world, was a stroke of genius. Their genius was for humanity to move away from an economy based on the old “cash currency” of the past, to one based on the 15-billionperson world population cap that created the “time currency” of today. So now, of course, unlike your parents, when you work, you know all too well you are not paid in dollars, or euros, or yen. You are paid in seconds, and minutes, and hours. And when those hours run out, the lifesaving drugs that stop aging, and prevent disease, are no longer available for you to purchase with your AUGUST 2020
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time, not because they are expensive to produce, but because we have made them impossible to replicate, and finite in nature. It is, at the end of the day, an equitable solution to stop overpopulation while allowing those who have worked hard, and who have earned their future, to have that future, and those that have squandered their opportunity, to gracefully make space for the next generation of children for the hard-working. This has been the system we have lived under for almost 40 years as a global community, and it has served humanity well. Okay, enough with the history lesson. What I’m really here to talk about are the dangerous bills that I expect will be proposed by Congress this session. First, raising the minimum time wage. Parts of the world, as you know, have no minimum time wage, while others, like France and Italy, are so generous as to provide little incentive to work at all. In France, working for the minimum time wage, if you worked 40 hours a week, for 10 years, not only would you have earned enough time to pay for those 10 years you worked, but you would have saved up almost six additional years. What reason would there be for a French worker to work those additional six years? None. And that is exactly what we have seen in recent months and years in the faltering French and Italian economies. A people who have banked so many years, they have no reason to work at all. I firmly believe, and the economics of history shows, the minimum time wage we pay in America is fair, and just. As the slogan goes, “An hour’s pay, for an hour’s work.” If I work 40 hours, the minimum wage paid for that should be 40 hours. In effect, this allows someone working hard to nearly double their overall lifespan. They get their natural 50 or 60 years, plus another 40 to 50 years they earned working over the course of their life. By forcing job creators to pay more it has all the wrong economic effects. By the government tampering in the marketplace: (1) it AUGUST 2020
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discourages hiring; (2) it discourages investment; (3) it encourages laziness: and it (4) causes American jobs to be shipped to cheaper labor markets overseas. When this bill comes before Congress, and it will, I hope you will support me in standing firm. Our slogan will be “One-For-One.” [Banner of Slogan Drops, Pause For Applause] One hour of work for one hour of pay! The second piece of legislation that is likely to be proposed this session is better described in two parts, but both fall under a European style liberal/socialist scheme of time redistribution. The first part of the liberal/socialist agenda is the creation of the “time inheritance tax.” As I mentioned before, Mr. Nates-- our host, is the President, CEO, and founder of MassTech. As of today, MassTech is the 9th most valuable company in the world by market capitalization. It is a company that Mr. Nates started out of his garage only 112 years ago. That company has grown, and has prospered, because of the strength of the American worker and because of his leadership as an innovator in business. Mr. Nates is, according to Forbes, the 3rd richest man in America. His estimated wealth is over 390 million years. Hey Mr. Nates, throw a few years my way? [pause for laughter] In all seriousness, he earned the right to immortality through his hard work. And, on the day he chooses to die, shouldn’t he be able to transfer that immortality to his wife, to his children, to his grandchildren, and to his loved ones as he sees fit, without the government taking 10% (or 20%) as a so-called “time inheritance tax” for time-wealth redistribution? What motivation does Mr. Nates, or others like him have to innovate if they know the value of their hard work will be taken by the government and distributed to those who have failed to work to reach their full potential. After 100,000 or 200,000 years, when Mr. Nates chooses to die, should he be forced to give part of his remaining time to those that complain that a 50, 40, or 30-year life span is not enough for them? AUGUST 2020
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This is likewise true for the so-called “time income tax” that Congress has proposed for several years and I expect will propose again. It is nothing more than a time redistribution scheme to those unwilling to work to earn their own time. Why on earth should I, or Mr. Nates, or any of you who have worked so hard to save up 100,000 years be required to give that time to others? I’ve heard it mentioned that the time income tax might even be progressive. By that, I mean, those who have accumulated more than 100 years of time in earnings in one year would be required to pay 10% of that time to the government for redistribution. And that those that earned more than 500 years of time by the end of a year would have to pay 20% to the government for redistribution. Where would it end, and why would any of us work? Let’s call it was it is. The liberal/socialist agenda is time-wealth redistribution. The liberal/socialist agenda is to take away your God-given right to immortality. The liberal/socialist agenda says that you can’t have children because there isn’t space for your children, because you have to give your time to non-productive members of society who we, as a society, refuse to make die. Friends, fellow Americans. I’m sorry if this speech has gone long, or [to wife] if your food as gotten cold, by me telling you what you already knew. But this topic is simply too important. (1) It is too important to America. (2) It is too important to American-ism. (3) And it’s too important to our very way of life to allow these things to go unsaid. Nothing less than the very fundamentals of our society are at risk. Hard work. Innovation. Family values. And our God-given right to immortality…and yes, even the inevitable passing on of the less skilled, the lazy, and the unproductive to make space for children. [applause] I know you have all paid a great deal of time to be here to support me and to support our shared vision of America. Your time contributions today AUGUST 2020
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will be well-spent defeating the initiatives of this liberal Congress, and of defeating the millions of Americans living minute-to-minute who think they have a right to the time you earned. We must win, and we can win. Thank you for your time. God bless you, and God bless America. ***
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Discussion Questions 1. Would you support or oppose the time redistribution laws in the story? Why? 2. Does a person have a right to immortality? Do they have a right to it if it is not available to everyone? 3. Does a minimum time wage encourage laziness, as the President says in his speech? 4. Does a minimum time wage encourage people to only work the minimum amount? 5. Is currency (or the objects it buys) just a way to convert time spent working into a tangible object? 6. In our currency-based economy, is it fair that a $20,000 car might “cost� a minimum wage employee one year of time working (1600 hours) while it might cost a high earner just three weeks of time working (120 hours)? 7. Is access (or lack of access) to health care today based on an ability to pay, effectively shortening and lengthening the lives of people just like in the story? Should there be a right to universal basic health care? Does that encourage laziness? ***
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A Science Lesson In Mozambique Tyler W. Kurt *** Past midnight. Sebastian is woken from his sleep by a very loud knock on the makeshift wooden door to his reed-walled house. The knock causes the whole house to shake just a bit. “Sebastian, wake up! I have you binoculars! And I have questions!” Sebastian knows the voice; it’s Zeketwo, his host family brother in Mozambique. Even though Sebastian is 31 and Zeketwo is 16, he is the person Sebastian is closest to in his host family. This is in no small part due to the fact that Sebastian’s Portuguese is terrible and no one else in the family speaks English but Zeketwo. Zeketwo is a boy-genius who is curious about everything. If he were an American, he would be taking honors classes in a suburban school, deciding which college to attend on a full-ride scholarship. But’s he not American; he’s Mozambican, which means he is going to grow up to be a farmer. AUGUST 2020
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That aside, Sebastian can’t pass up the opportunity to answer every question he has. Last week, during a thunderstorm, Sebastian taught him about light and sound. This week they’re on to optics, thus the binoculars. Sebastian had loaned the binoculars to Zeketwo before heading to bed, assuming they would be a conversation piece the following day. He hadn’t counted on being woken up four hours later in the middle of the night with questions. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Sebastian steps out of his one room house in the backyard. Zeketwo points up to the moon while nudging Sebastian, “What is the table?” “What?” Sebastian replies still half asleep, “What do you — ” That’s when he hears a loud crack, like a bullwhip being snapped. Sebastian spins around, now wide awake, to see his host family father whipping a man on the ground with what looks like a long piece of rubber cut from an old car tire. “Zeketwo, what is Father doing!” But the full moon has Zeketwo’s full attention. “The table. Look,” Zeketwo insists, pointing at the moon again, “The table.” Zeketwo tries to shove the binoculars into Sebastian’s hand in an effort to get him to look at the moon through them, just to prove his point. He is un-phased by the sound of the man writhing on the ground just twenty yards away, being asked questions in Chopi, the local tribal language. Sebastian pushes the binoculars away and repeats his question with more vigor, “Zeketwo, what is Father doing?!” “In Portuguese it is ‘bater’, it means ‘to beat,’” he replies casually and goes back to looking at the moon through the binoculars. Sebastian pulls the binoculars down from Zeketwo’s face. “Stop looking at the moon. I know what the word is. I want to know why Father is beating that man?” “Oh,” Zeketwo replies, “he is one of men that stole a bag of corn from AUGUST 2020
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Mother last week when she walk home from the farm. Last night Mother saw him with other men in the bar so Father take him and … ” Zeketwo pauses thinking for the word he needs, “Kid … napped him. He beat him very much. I sleep in the living room, so I hear all night. Ba, ba, ba! You no hear?” “No,” Sebastian responds soberly, “I didn’t hear it.” Zeketwo shrugs nonchalantly. “I hear him all night. Ba, ba, ba! It too loud, so I no sleep. But this not the man Father beat last night; this is other man. He know where the corn is they take.” Zeketwo grabs Sebastian by the arm to take him over. “You go beat him, too. Father not mind. His arm tired.” “No,” Sebastian responds, pulling his arm away. “I don’t want to help whip anybody! In America, we don’t beat people for stealing. Why not just tell the police so they can arrest him?” Zeketwo looks at Sebastian like he has just asked a very dumb question. Deciding it was probably a joke (he never gets Sebastian’s humor), he turns back to looking at the moon through the binoculars as there is another crack in the distance that causes Sebastian to flinch. Sebastian waits for Zeketwo to speak again, but Zeketwo simply looks through the binoculars at the moon. Sebastian concedes the moment and speaks to answer Zeketwo’s original question. “The dark spots that look like a table are big holes on the moon. They are from rocks that hit the moon.” Zeketwo lowers the binoculars to look at Sebastian, “Could the rocks that hit the moon also hit us?” There is another crack of the whip and Sebastian flinches from the sound. He tries to draw focus again to their conversation again. “Small ones hit the earth all the time. They are the streaks of light you see in the sky at night. Big rocks have hit the earth, too, but you can’t see the holes they make because the rain and wind smooth them over. So why AUGUST 2020
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doesn’t Father tell the police that the men stole the corn?” “They pay the police to make it okay to steal from the farmers. Normally it is okay, but to steal from Father is not ok because he works cleaning the hospital. They not know who Mother was, so it was mistake to steal from her. So, why no the rain and the wind smooth the tables on the moon?” “The moon doesn’t have rain or wind to smooth over the holes. So, —” “ — but how do you know the moon no have rain or wind?” “Because Americans went to the moon 30 years ago.” Zeketwo looks at Sebastian squinting his eyes to determine if this is a joke. After a short pause he decides it’s probably not and goes back to looking at the moon. “We also have big binoculars, bigger than the house, to look at the moon very closely. So, what if the men tell the police Father beat them?” Zeketwo continues to look through the binoculars at the moon while speaking. “Father is important, so they cannot tell the police.” Zeketwo looks from the binoculars to Sebastian and, seeing for the first time just how perplexed he is. Zeketwo knows instinctively it is his turn to be the teacher. “Father no like to beat the men, but in Mozambique the police do nothing. It is normal in Africa, I think. If Father do nothing then other people will know it is okay to steal from him, so more people will steal from him who are too lazy to work. These men will work on the farm next week to help Mother, then everything is okay again.” Sebastian didn’t know what to say. There was another loud crack. “Um, I don’t know, Zeketwo, I don’t know. I think, maybe — ” “ — Sebastian?? “Yes, Zeketwo?” “Tell truth, has America really go to the moon?” AUGUST 2020
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Thank you for your time. God bless you, and God bless America. ***
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Discussion Questions 1. Is Zeketwo’s father doing something wrong by acting as a vigilante and taking the law into his own hands? 2. Does it matter that only a single bag of corn was stolen? While it has importance, the family is not on the brink of starvation and can survive without the extra food. 3. Does Sebastian have the right to be offended by what he has seen? Does he have an obligation to tell the American exchange organization? 4. Would it be wrong for Sebastian to help out the family by assisting his host father in whipping the thief? If the thief attempts to run away, does Sebastian have an obligation to help the family catch him? 5. Does the fact that the police “do nothing” make the violence permissible, or is this kind of extreme violence (being whipped with a piece of cut up car tire) never permissible? ***
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Pretty Pragmatism Jenean McBrearty *** Senator Salvatore Boundini straightened his tie, took a deep breath, and walked into the hearing room with as much haughtiness as he could muster. His publicist had told him there was no such thing as bad publicity, but what the hell did a twenty-eight-year-old journalism major know? “You probably should have asked that question before your publicist hired her,” his senior staffer said when Sal told him he was about to be tar and feathered by the ethics committee. “She’s a dead ringer for a young Sophia Loren, Rob,” Sal said by way of justification. “Who’s Sohia Loren? Never mind. Don’t ever say that in front of a mic.” “How about the BPOE?” “Shut up, Sal.” “What’s all the fuss and feathers about anyway? Everybody’s always complaining that taxes are too low, and the national debt is too high. Whatever happened to Goldilocks and just right?” AUGUST 2020
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“Maybe she got off the trolley when you used the words compulsory, national, and service in the same sentence.” “Requiring two years of public service in the national parks is a great idea! Up with the sun, eight hours of planting trees and picking up litter, learning how to grow something … it would make kids too tired to get into mischief, and get them physically fit. Hell, they might even read a book or two. Most twelve-year-olds can’t run a lap without an oxygen station. It’s a good idea. You said so yourself.” Rob had flopped into his black leather worrying chair and rubbed his temples. “It is a good idea, but it has to be tweaked and packaged just right. Sal, it’s 2025. Did it ever occur to you or Sophia Loren, whoever that is, to do some historical research?” Rob picked up a tome laying on the end table. “Giancano Maritz. A Fascist Approach to Social Ills. He’s a distant nephew of Benito himself. Your young boy’s camp is a Hitlerjugend knockoff. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff have their panties in a twist.” Sal took the book from him and checked for a ribbon of bright white running down the pages that meant pictures. Included were before and after photos of young men who had their squishy video game bodies transformed into muscular athlete bodies. “Rich people send their kids to summer camps, why can’t poor people do the same?” He showed Rob a particularly striking metamorphosis. “It’s not the idea, it where it comes from that’s all wrong.” “Really? Ask Neil Armstrong how he felt about Werner von Braun’s rocket research. Or how the Germans felt about stealing English radar.” Rob thought for a minute. “Good point. Bring that up to the committee, if you can. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t make Senator Whitcombe mad at you. She already thinks you’re a pig.” Seven senators sat soberly, staring at Sal. Each had finished bloviating AUGUST 2020
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for his allotted seven minutes about Sen. Boundini’s reprehensible Child Servitude Bill, as it was nicknamed, proposing indoctrination prison camps even if they were democratic, as they were described. “Senator Boundini, were you aware of the fascist origins of your idea? Were you lazy, stupid, a fascist yourself, or all three?” It was one of Sen. Marsha Witcombe’s uneasily answerable questions. “Well, Ms. Witcombe, let me say this.” Sal went to the bookcases that flanked the two doors at the rear of the hearing room where row upon row of law and history books were stored and regularly dusted. His fingers caressed the volumes as he walked end to end before returning to his seat. “There must be at least two hundred authors in this room alone. How many words do you estimate each of them wrote? And all the people, throughout the ages. Stories, poems, essays, science theories, practice and research. Different languages, grammars, cultures. All of them wanting to talk to us here and now through the written word just to let us know what they were thinking. Pythagoras, Galileo, Newton, Dante, Shakespeare … great ideas, guys. That autobahn thing? Ike liked Hitler’s idea enough to build the Interstate. Have you heard of Sister Kenny? She was a self-trained Australian nurse who saved polio victims from paralysis before the vaccine was invented. Her methods became the basis of physical therapy still in use today after a century. Why? Because they work. We have a problem with childhood obesity in this country, Senators. So, I read up on physical fitness. Ever hear of Vic Tanny? Or Jack LaLane? Tanny was an Italian who invented the health club and showed people how to stay fit in a sit-down world. LaLane advocated good nutrition and invented gym machines including one for leg extension. For kids, we know exercise in the fresh air is the best remedy for weak muscles and a dull mind. I never read Maritz’s book, but even if I had, a good idea is a good idea no matter who comes up with it. The fact that Hitler, Tanny, LaLane and Mussolini shared similar ideas is a testimony to good ideas, not to any AUGUST 2020
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stupid political ideology. Ask Neil Armstrong about Werner von Braun’s rocket research.” Rob would be proud. He’d taken a simple argument and made it a fullblown oration. Not as good as the Gettysburg Address, but persuasive. Senator Witcombe, however, was not easily seduced by words. “Are you saying that even the devil can have a good idea, Senator?” “I guarantee you; the devil has thought to himself on more than one occasion that obedience to God would have been a better career path.” “Are you suggesting the devil repents?” “Never mistake regret for repentance, Senator. It’s what the courts do regularly, but wives and politicians can’t afford to.” The picture of Rob in his worry chair rushed into the rerun theater of his mind. “It’s the same thing with flattery. Husbands and politicians often believe their own press clippings and shouldn’t.” “Knowing how the ethics committee feels about borrowing from discredited sources, and in view of the election cycle realities of discredited politicians, are you going to withdraw your bill, Senator Boundini?” Senator James Emonds had thrown him a lifeline. “Ahhh. Well, I think it needs tweaking, Jim. Maybe rebranding. But the essence of the bill is sound but, from a pragmatic public relations point of view, maybe a pilot program would be the better way to address the problem. I could rename it the Summer Fitness Camp Scholarship program and reintroduce it at a later date. How does that sound?” “Calling a stink-weed a rose won’t make it pass the sniff test,” Witcombe said. “I move this committee vote on censure.” The Committee asked him to leave. Sal retired to his office and a bottle of Johnny Walker Green. If the Committee recommended reprimand, it would remain a private matter. A censure meant the indignity of standing before his peers while the reasons for the censure were read AUGUST 2020
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aloud. Expulsion? Since when did proposed legislation merit being kicked out when the voters kicked him in? On his desk was a note from Rob: I axed Roxy. Sal let out a regretful sigh. Telling Roxy she could no longer be a press secretary must have been difficult, like saying she couldn’t be a princess when she’d just learned how to wear a tiara. The office would be as double dreary as a gray, gray gulag. Maybe it was time he went gently into that good D.C. night after all. “Don’t look so glum,” Rob said. He’s a nice guy, but not perky. “You called it. Witcombe attacked,” Sal said. Rob’s face always reminded him of a fox. “Cheer up, Sal. Chuck Edmonds withdrew his vote from Witcombe’s bloated budget bill, and she wants to know if you’ll trade a censure for a yea vote to pull it over the finish line.” “Ha! Wheelin’ and dealin’ is the name of the game, my boy. Waiter, give the lady Senator the principle and crow casserole!” Sure, she hated him for dumping her for Roxy, but she’d rather have pork for her constituents than preserve her pride. She was a fine addition to the fine ol’ deliberative dunces. Summer camps for the unwashed masses was a great idea, no matter who thought of it. Rob and he shared grins and cocktails, and when Rob left at midnight, Sal took a manuscript from his desk drawer and began chapter three of his Washington memoir: “To quote Victor Hugo, ‘There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come’,” he wrote with the taste of a gloat gimlet still warming his throat. Even stronger is the person who has the cajones to write down the idea and share it with posterity.” ***
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Discussion Questions 1. Does it matter where a “good idea” comes from? 2. The Senator says, “...even the devil can have a good idea...” Is that true? Can a person be so evil that it makes everything they have to say, on every topic, not worth hearing? 3. Are the accomplishments of a person, or organization, diminished by their unrelated bad acts? For example, are the efforts of MLK diminished because he was unfaithful to his wife? Are the songs of Michael Jackson or R. Kelly valueless (or of less value) because of their actions? Is Ford’s assembly line made less because he was anti-Semitic, an advocate of eugenics, and an early supporter of Hitler? 4. Does the type of thing a person or organization does wrong affect the amount it lowers how much they should be considered? Are holocaust, sexual assault, infidelity, or anti-Semitism different? Is it a sliding scale? 5. Does it matter if the person is public figure or “role model?” ***
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Additional Information Reviews If you enjoyed reading these stories, please considering doing an online review. It’s only a few seconds of your time, but it is very important in continuing the series. Good reviews mean higher rankings. Higher rankings mean more sales. More sales mean a greater ability to release stories. It really is that simple, and it starts with you.
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From The Editor As we head into this month’s edition, candidly, we are still figuring this all out.
So, don’t be surprised if you see style changes and
improvements creep in over the next few months. The nice thing is we are finally scaling up promoting this magazine, while getting the Season Two anthology ready for a July 31st release. Maybe scaling a magazine while preparing a book wasn’t the best idea ever… Of course, we are also all locked down because of COVID. Seems, at least in the US, it is going to get worse before it gets better… stay safe. Also, we would love to start working more with book clubs to use our short stories as part of their groups. If you, or anyone you know, has a book club that is looking for material, please let us know! Best Wishes, Kolby Granville