After Dinner Conversation: Philosophy | Ethics Short Story Magazine

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After Dinner Conversation Magazine – July 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. 1 .

Copyright © 2020 After Dinner Conversation Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation Magazine. .

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

Table Of Contents FROM THE PUBLISHER .................................................................................... - 4 ON GOOD AUTHORITY ................................................................................... - 5 ALL MY TOMORROWS .................................................................................. - 29 MAYONNAISE ............................................................................................... - 41 THE ONE THAT DAMNED ME ........................................................................ - 59 PATCHOULI LOST .......................................................................................... - 68 THIS I DO FOR YOU ....................................................................................... - 79 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ........................................................................ - 89 FROM THE EDITOR ....................................................................................... - 90 -

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From the Publisher ***

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth.

Philosophical truth is discovered through

intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories, audio and video podcast discussions, across genres, as accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students. *** Enjoy these short stories?

Purchase our print anthologies, After Dinner

Conversation “Season One” or “Season Two.” They are both collections of our best short stories published in the After Dinner Conversation series complete with discussion questions. *** Subscribe to this monthly magazine for $1.95/month or $19.95/year and receive it every month!

AFTER DINNER CONVERSATION

PERI DWYER WORRELL

On Good Authority Peri Dwyer Worrell *** Eufala, Alabama 02/19/2053 “Dr. Totter, may I speak with you about the security measures for your trip?” Zane, bearded, muscular, was poised and looming over her, and she fought the urge to take a step backwards.

Vivian Totter looked over her shoulder at the lookout tower’s viewing window. “So, you tracked me down!” She turned from the view of the no-man’s land between the concertina-wire fences to face him. She’d always loved taking a birds-eye view this way. “I was just taking a few minutes’ alone time. So much has happened since the vaccine tested out.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Zane drawled courteously. He shook her soft doctor’s hand with his hard warrior’s one. “It’s a great thing you did. Wiping out the zombie virus for good!” He grinned, quirked smile blooming through his blonde beard like a wild spring crocus, appealing in such a seeming brute of a man.

Vivian’s chest swelled with pride, restrained in favor of humility.

There were still so many possible slip-ups! But if they could get enough JULY 2020

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people vaccinated to build herd immunity, there would come a day, in her lifetime, when no one would ever have to watch a loved one turn into a flesh-eating zombie again.

“We’ve got a long way to go before that happens,” Vivian said, “As the transmission chain’s broken, there’ll still be a lot of infected subjects to hunt down.” She tilted her chin at the wall of hirsute human muscle standing before her. “There’ll be work for people like you for a long time to come.”

Zane preened ever so slightly under her glance and she found herself swallowing hard. His searching awareness demanded she lock gazes with his blue eyes.

He blinked, moment over, smiled deferentially. “Have you traveled in the armored units before?”

“Short distances.”

Zane briefed her in his tranquil drawl: “They’re not too comfortable, for sure. But they are safe. As for the threats we’ll be facing: It’s important that we all stay alert. Even though, with the vaccine, almost no new ones are converting, they still live three years.” He tensed and added, “--As I’m sure you know!”

“That’s right. Three years, more or less.” She nodded.

He relaxed back into his authority. “And everyone within about sixty miles of here has been vaccinated, so there’ve been no new infections. It’s a beautiful thing, Dr. Totter,” he said. “They’re fading away, slowly but surely.” His voice jittered with barely contained excitement.

“But, as we get outside that sixty-mile radius we’ll start running into deaders again...thick. We’ll be four cars,” he continued, “first and last car, armed security, the second you and your grandmother. Umm, Doctor Totter, are you sure you want her to come with? It’s not gonna be easy.

The roads are damn rough and we may have to go a while between food and, er, bathroom breaks. There could be some engagements with JULY 2020

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zombies. It could be really unpleasant.”

Vivian chuckled. “I won’t tell her she can’t go, and I’m willing to bet you don’t want to, either! Grandma’s pretty spry for 75. We’ll cushion her seat real well, and she’s already rigged up a diaper for herself. She eats like a bird. As for ‘unpleasant,’ Grandma got me and my ma out of Huntsville and into this compound safely when the shit hit the fan back in ‘23. I’m willing to bet she could tell some stories might scare even you!”

He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, just making sure.

Anyway, it’ll take about four hours to reach our first waypoint.”

Zane opened the door and stood back to let her descend the watchtower steps. She didn’t look to see if he was watching her body from behind--too disappointing if he wasn’t. Ever since the vaccine had passed its quick-and-dirty clinical trial (n = everyone in Eufala), people had begun to defer to her authority, and she wasn’t used to it. She was barely used to being in charge of the medical team at the compound since Ralph retired: two other doctors, six nurses, and herself. The only one of the lot who’d been to actual medical school was Ralph, now approaching 80; he’d trained both her and her colleague Dillon. That was the norm nowadays; the population centers that supported big universities and teaching hospitals just didn’t exist any longer. Which made it even more critical that Viv’s new vaccine could be synthesized easily in a minimal micro lab, which most of the enclaves had.

The two of them emerged together from the darkness of the tower, blinking in the sunlight. “Jed and Cindy,” he nodded at an athletic young couple nearby, “will be riding with you. Jeff and me, we’ll be in the third car with the mayor’s aide and her wife. Samuel and Dan will be taking point and Tom and Tyler will bring up the rear.” He pointed out four wellarmed, sturdy, young men loitering about near the watchtower.

“Sounds good. I’m packing a small bag,” she chopped one foot by two in the air in front of her, “and so is Grandma. Will that be a problem?”

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“No. In fact, we have room for more if you need to bring it. You should see what that aide is bringing!” He rolled his eyes and winked. They both laughed.

That night, Vivian dreamed about Zane’s azure eyes. *** The next morning, Vivian and Grandma were standing in the central square of the compound in the pre-dawn twilight. Grandma pulled her sweater snug in the cool morning air of northern-Alabama winter.

Vivian caught her profile and was startled anew at her hunched posture, fragile hands, thin hair (once black, now fully white), and the way the sweater hung deflated on her. There was no denying that the hardships since the Outbreak had taken their toll on Grandma Emma. For a moment, she wondered if the trip was a good idea, if it might be too hard on her.

But then Emma Totter turned her brown eyes in Vivian’s direction, and the flash in them reminded Vivian that her fire, though banked, still burned bright.

“Let’s get this show on the road!” Grandma demanded impatiently.

“Soon, Grandma,” soothed Vivian. “Getting a group of sixteen people all going the same way at once is like herding cats.”

The sun had just cleared the horizon when they finally climbed into their vehicle and settled in. Cindy was at the wheel. Vivian had seen her about the compound but never knew her by name. Her hair poofed under a bandanna and her open smile contrasted with the taut, ready muscle of her brown arms. She wore a revolver as a sidearm and had her rifle slung over the back of her seat.

Zane leaned into the rear of the vehicle and handed Grandma and Vivian each a shotgun. Vivian took hers, checked the load, “Buckshot.” She set it diagonally across her lap pointed up and out; Grandma did the same.

Zane nodded approval and moved on to arming and checking the rest of JULY 2020

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the convoy. Jed settled in, riding shotgun with one shotgun, a full- auto rifle, and two semiautomatic pistols with extended magazines. The four cars all checked in on the radio.

Jed said, “Our average speed on these roads is about twenty-five miles an hour. Cullman’s expecting us, and we’ll radio them so they can let us through their gates. We stop overnight there.”

“Cullman? That’s where Grandma’s from!” She smiled at the old woman, who nodded. Her hearing was excellent for a woman her age, and one who’d been exposed to more than a little gunfire, at that.

“Hmm. It’s also the only enclave between here and Huntsville.”

The taciturn Jed spoke tersely into the radio, “Let’s do it!” And the convoy rolled.

But first, the compound’s crew went through the gate-opening protocol: two people on foot into no-mans-land, inner gates closed. Rattle gates, fire two shots, wait five minutes. One zombie came out of the woods and lurched towards them. Garcia stage 4, Vivian automatically assessed: hairless, monocular, integument and underlying fascia macerated, sex indeterminate, missing appendage (foot). The two crewmen waited patiently for it to lurch to the fence. A patrol stepped up and leveled his shotgun. The blast sprayed the creature’s blackened tissue into the air, morbid confetti that rattled as it hit the ground. No other zombies showed, so they opened the inner gates, the convoy drove into the no-mans-land, forming up between the fences. They closed the inner gates and opened the outer ones.

“Only one deader. That’s phenomenal!” crowed Zane over the radio. “A year ago there would have been at least eight or ten. At least!”

Cindy spared a moment from scanning their surroundings to glance back at Vivian. “That’s down to you, Dr. Totter. You’re gonna save the world!”

Vivian waved the praise away. “If it hadn’t been me it would have JULY 2020

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been someone else.”

“But it wasn’t someone else, was it?” said Cindy, “it was you!

Eufala’s very own. And we get to drive you to Huntsville to get an award!”

Cindy had to concentrate on driving. Zane had said the roads were rough, but that was an understatement. The past three decades, anyone who’d ventured outside the fences for highway maintenance took his life in his hands. They’d done the bare minimum and sometimes not even that, so the roads had deteriorated— asphalt slowly crumbled, then gravel washed away. In some places the roads were no more than dirt tracks; in other places the dirt-track detours were more passable than the gullied roadbed. The summer was wet, so they had to watch for mire that could trap the trucks. Cindy eventually stopped apologizing to Grandma, enthroned on her feather pillows, for every bump.

Once the convoy reached the rise overlooking Cullman, they examined the survivor’s compound. It had once been a monastery of nuns, but the grounds were now surrounded by a buffer of concentric chain-link and concertina-wire fences, just like home. Inside the fence was a jumble of huts, motorhomes, tents, shanties and lean-tos, lining the barrier and extending all the way up to the monastery’s august rock cathedrals, halls, and dormitories.

The vaccine hadn’t yet begun to transform life in this community, and they had a precious crate of vials earmarked for Cullman. As they approached the settlement in the hollow, there was an especially bad stretch of road, where they were forced to slow to a crawl to avoid breaking an axle or ending up in a ditch. The cars slowly rocked and bumped their way along, Emma jostled and shaken, uncomplaining but plainly uncomfortable. The truck chassis clunked and the transmissions groaned. Predictably, zombies emerged from the underbrush, drawn by the noise. Thorny vines clawed shreds of skin from them as readily as clothing as they lumbered out, indifferent to the losses. Several blocked JULY 2020

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the lead vehicle, and two clawed at Vivian’s side window.

Vivian gazed at them dispassionately: one was freshly metamorphosed, she assessed, within the past 48-72 hours. Judging by skin tone and resiliency, Garcia 1. It slapped its palms to the window, showing intact distal extremities. It clawed ineffectually with fingernails that still bore traces of polish. It also had still relatively undamaged hair and clothing. In dim light, it could have passed for a human, a ponytailed blonde. The other was skeletal, its lips and eyelids desiccated and fallen away to reveal a staring rictus, its hair a patchy, matted broom. It swung its ropy, fractured arms like slings to strike the window. It was missing all but two fingers on one hand and missing the other hand from the forearm down. Garcia 3+/4-.

“Defensive action,” hissed Zane over the radio.

“Copy that,” Jed responded, unlocking his passenger door by hand, jumping out, and landing in a semi-squat, swinging his shotgun to bear.

Cindy thumbed the door lock closed before Zane hit the ground. Jeff, Zane, and Dan (or was it Samuel?) were outside their vehicles. Tom and Tyler, in the unmolested back car, didn’t even bother. Vivian and Emma clutched their shotguns, but the fighters outside seemed bored, all in a days’ work, as they blew the infected away like kids plinking bottles in the woods.

The caravan rolled into Cullman right on schedule. Just like home: decayed zombie bones hung from the concertina wire and littered the ground outside. A few, freshly snagged, twitched or writhed on the razorsharp spines.

As the convoy approached the gate, they stopped about 100 yards back and radioed their presence. Four security men once again jumped out, one from each vehicle, holding rifles this time. A squad of fighters from the enclave, toting shotguns, piled out of the inner gate, which closed behind them. The convoy’s fighters dropped back, and the compound’s guards fired a series of blasts in an overlapping fan pattern to both sides, well clear JULY 2020

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of the convoy. These shots took out a few zombies at close range, but there was one, Garcia 1, a teenager with intact skin, cornrows, and barely soiled clothing, that caught only the edge of the spray of shot and kept coming towards the convoy; Zane took aim with his rifle and made an easy head shot.

The outer gates swung open and the convoy crept through, rifle shooters backing up at the rear, staying at ready until the outer gates closed. Only then did the inner gates swing open.

Vivian emerged from the vehicle, stretching and swinging her arms before turning to help Grandma out. As they straightened, an elderly nun in antiquated floor-length black habit and white wimple stepped up.

“Dr. Totter?” she said, “I’m Sister Elaine. Welcome back to Sacred Heart.” Her blue eyes peered out of furrowed cheeks at Vivian’s face, seeking recognition.

“Welcome back?” Asked Vivian.

Sister Elaine flinched as though someone had elbowed her. “Oh, of course you don’t remember! You were just a child! It was your mother...”

Sister Elaine caught sight of something urgent she had to do in the next room and abruptly scurried through the door, calling behind her, “Sister Veronica will be with you in a moment.”

Sister Veronica, young and painfully effervescent, stepped up almost at once and introduced herself first to Grandma, then to Vivian.

Grandma set out on her own before the introduction was finished, as if she already knew this Benedictine abbey.

Sister Veronica trotted to overtake her and steered Grandma and Vivian to their austere guest-of-honor quarters, a bedroom with two single beds with patchwork quilts, two wooden desks with wooden chairs, and a small chifforobe. “Please join us for dinner in the dining hall. Turn right here, up one floor, across the corridor, and downstairs past the library. The bell rings at 6 and dinner is at 6:15.” Vivian looked at her vintage selfJULY 2020

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winding watch: 3:05. She spent the next half hour getting Grandma and herself settled in. Grandma wanted to nap, but Vivian felt hungry and restless, so she went out to explore the grounds. Maybe she’d run into Zane.

A roughly circular walk divided the refugee city and the monastery.

A gazebo was centrally located among the ramshackle dwellings, low zigzag crowd-control fences leading up to it. A table and supplies suggested that it was used as a daily soup kitchen. The families she saw were diverse and mingled freely, but loose districts of blacks, Hispanics, and whites formed a crazy quilt of permanent encampments.

As she wandered around the big circle and passed a man with a white beard and mustache pushing a wheelbarrow of tree limbs and yard trash. He stopped, perhaps ten feet away, and said, “Carrie!” His tone and expression were broadly cheerful, as if addressing a pet or small child. Then he shook his head, muttering “No! Can’t be. Are you Carrie’s daughter?”

“Yes, that’s me! Vivian.”

Before she could step forward to shake hands, he shook his head and growled, “Should have slit her throat. Saved us all the trouble.” Vivian faltered, speechless, bewildered. He shuffled his wheelbarrow past.

She had no luck bumping into Zane, so she made her way to the monastery dining hall per Sister Veronica’s instructions. The plain room, large and low-ceilinged, held eight- foot communal tables and folding chairs. At the end of the room, she saw the bustle of people fixing to serve the evening meal via the kitchen pass-through. She helped Grandma into a chair and wandered over to offer help with dinner.

She waited at the counter, watching the women inside run mixers, ladle grits, scrape griddles, and lift huge steaming trays out of industrialsized ovens. A sixtyish woman approached, rolling a cart of plates and cutlery. The woman startled.

“Oh! Oh, it’s you. I mean, you look just like your mother. Oh, dear, JULY 2020

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I... I’m so sorry.” The woman blushed, then scurried away. Hmm. No one seemed to need help, so Vivian took her place across from Grandma.

Grandma looked at Vivian over her book. She peered closely at her face. Grandma sighed and set the book down. “What have they said to you?” she asked. So, there was something going on. Grandma would come clean. The old lady was forthright as a shovel to the back of the head and mean as a rattlesnake when she needed to be.

“Said? Nothing! But that’s the third person who’s mentioned my mother and then spooked and run away.”

Grandma patted her own chin with a wilted hand. “I should have told you sooner. What do you remember about your mother?”

“Not much,” Vivian answered slowly. “I know she died when I was almost four. I remember sitting on her lap, her rocking me. Holding me and rocking and humming.” Vivian closed her eyes. She treasured that one memory of her mother, would reach for it when sleep eluded her, could hum the simple melody, one bar over and over, until her breath evened out and she drifted into an ocean of moonlight and soft currents of breeze.

Just thinking of it now, the anxiety of this conversation seemed a little less urgent.

“Do you know how she died?”

“From what everyone said, I assumed a zombie got her. Young as she was, that’s how most people go.”

“That’s right, child. That’s right.” Grandma hesitated. A long time.

Her brown eyes seemed fixed on something far away. Vivian leaned forward, and that made up Grandma’s mind to speak.

“Vivian, your mother was not right.”

“What do you mean, ‘not right?’” Asked Vivian.

“I mean, simple. What we used to call retarded. Later they called it mentally challenged. Developmentally disabled. Whatever you want to call it.

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“I was only nineteen and in college when she was born. I had no idea I was pregnant, almost until the very end. I drank like a politician. I wore loose sweatpants and baggy shirts in dorm and showered when no one else was awake. When I went into labor, I told myself I’d eaten something spoilt.

“There was so much blood! I finally called 911—” Vivian tipped her head questioningly.

“That’s the number we used to call when — oh, never mind! — I called for help. It took them four hours to find me on campus. By that time, your mother Carrie was in deep trouble.”

“I see,” said Vivian, and she did. She knew what anoxia from hemorrhage could do to an infant during delivery. Vivian didn’t remember her mother ever walking with her, talking to her, and suddenly it all made sense. “My mother was brain damaged at delivery. But, how did she die then?”

“Just as you thought: A deader got her. She was 13. She was scheduled for a hisstersalpothingy...”

“Hysterosalpingectomy?” Suggested Vivian. “Exactly.”

“You were going to sterilize her?”

“It was what was done. There were too many people, not like now, my dear. It was all perfectly legal. We had a court order and I’d signed off as her guardian. But then the zombies started coming and things got bad.

I got us out of Birmingham and came here.”

A few early arrivals had drifted into the dining hall. The bell rang: 6:00. The cutlery and dishes were set on the counter in the window and platters and trays of steaming food were set out, but Vivian’s hunger had vanished. She spotted Zane sitting down at a table with the rest of the security crew, but that hunger seemed to have receded as well.

“So,” she asked, “who was my dad?”

“We don’t know for sure,” said Grandma. “But we think it was a JULY 2020

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boy who looked after her in the afternoons when I was at work. You look exactly like her — exactly. Except her hair was curly and yours is straight.

Like his. He knew she was getting the operation. We think he took advantage.” Her wizened lips pressed themselves.

Vivian recoiled in disgust, then moments later was absolutely gobsmacked by the knowledge that, without that rape, she wouldn’t exist.

She looked at Grandma, who was studying her from under hooded lids.

Grandma knew what was going on in Vivian’s mind. At the very moment Vivian worked it out, Grandma continued.

“You were born here. You spent the first four years of your life here at Sacred Heart. Sister Elaine was your first babysitter. I had been an oblate here...”

“Oblate?”

“Kind of a try-out status to becoming a nun. It was years earlier. I decided it wasn’t for me and left for college instead. But the nuns treated me as one of their own all the same, when we came with the other the refugees. We lived here in the dormitory, you, me and Carrie, and about forty other women.

“The fences weren’t double back then. A big storm came, washed out a gully, and a zombie managed to squirm through the gully and right up to the chair where your mother was sitting in the sun. Before anyone knew it, it had taken a big bite out of her.”

Vivian closed her eyes, dazed, queasy.

“Emma!” Exclaimed Sister Elaine, coming up at that moment with her food tray and sitting next to Grandma. “Let’s catch up! But first let’s get you something to eat. You must try the cornbread. It’s Sister Gertrude’s specialty.”

She took Grandma’s arm and the two older women headed for the line at the window. Vivian’s appetite had sagged, but now it surged, a fullbody hunger that had nothing to do with pleasure, and she followed, JULY 2020

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served herself. She ate reflexively, hardly tasting, speaking in monosyllables. Grandma excused her to the others as fatigued, both from her journey and from working around-the-clock on the vaccine.

Vivian went to bed early, and dreamed of an infected subject squatting on the ground and giving birth to another infected subject who immediately squatted down and gave birth to another, ad infinitum. *** She woke with her teeth fitted together like the jaws of a trap, her tongue imprinted on the insides of her molars and jammed against the roof of her mouth. She sat up into a headache at the base of her skull. The sun was up; she’d overslept. She grimly threw her kit together and met the crew downstairs, said little at breakfast, and wedged herself next to Grandma and her pile of pillows once again. Grandma seemed extra spunky, giving the bodyguards hell for rushing her, then giving them hell for the late start they were making.

The road through the hills from Cullman to Huntsville was so degraded that they crept along at a snail’s pace. They got lost once, and had to back precariously down a switchback dirt road that had disappeared at the crest of a ridgeline. An infected subject crept after them on limb stumps, and each vehicle backed, crunching, over it. But otherwise, they made it all the way to Huntsville without incident.

They approached the gate late in the afternoon.

Vivian looked on in awe. This compound had the same double fences she was used to, but they stretched out of sight in both directions.

The town itself was nothing but squat cement-block buildings surrounded by refugee camps, but the camps went on for miles, semi- cylindrical metal buildings that grandma called quonsets. Narrow roads defined the rows, corn and vegetable patches the columns.

Inside, Vivian supervised the hand-off of crates of precious vaccine to the town’s chief doctor, Michael Franklin, who they called their “medical JULY 2020

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officer.”

Afterwards, Vivian, Michael, and Grandma sat on wood folding chairs on the edge of the clinic’s loading dock with a panoramic view of the grounds. They sipped lemonade spiked with fruit wine as afternoon grayed to evening. The whole polity was regimented. A horn blew for mealtimes, bath time, and bedtime. People used the facilities in shifts, and everyone knew their time to eat and bathe in the communal dining and bath halls.

“It’s because it was a military base,” Grandma explained. Seeing her granddaughter’s quizzical expression, “The military was the way people massed together to kill people from other countries.”

“I know that. That’s something from before, that never made sense to me. Why did they want to kill other normal humans, when they all had plenty for everyone to live on?”

“Well, they didn’t want to, not really. But someone could always convince them that different people were trying to hurt them, take their land, or ruin their way of life, so they had to hurt the others first.”

“Sounds like mass insanity to me.”

A hint of a smile. “Maybe it was, Vivian. Maybe it was. Certainly, the folks who couldn’t drop their grudges, didn’t survive very long when the real trouble hit.”

Michael, a taciturn, angular man, had loosened up with the alcohol. He spoke up, “‘Plenty’ is a subjective term. It may seem to you that people before the Outbreak were rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, but humans tend to only see what others have that they don’t. Have you noticed the way the quonsets are divided up?”

“What do you mean?”

“This nearest one,” he nodded, “is all Spanish-speaking.”

“I noticed them talking as they walked by a little while ago.”

“And that one,” he lifted a finger, “is all male homosexuals.”

Vivian smiled. “I did think it was odd that they were all men, and JULY 2020

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most of them so neatly groomed.”

“The one beyond is all Christian fundamentalists. Pentecostalists, mostly.”

“What’s a Pentecostalist?”

“It’s a religion that believes the Holy Spirit descends on the heads of true believers in tongues of fire. They shake and speak in tongues.

Sometimes they fall down.” Grandma interrupted.

“We didn’t have any Pentecostalist churches around Eufala. There were some Holy Rollers at Cullman, you just didn’t see them. They keep to themselves. The women cover themselves, keep their eyes down, don’t cut their hair, don’t wear makeup.”

Michael snorted.

“Religious fanatics. Anyway, the

base

commander found it simplest to put different groups in different housing assignments to cut down on conflict among them. But also, the people seem to prefer it because they can negotiate with the operations and logistics supervisors more easily for their group’s specific needs.”

The party was escorted to the main building and shown to spartan bedrooms. Vivian again shared a room with Grandma.

She was glad when they were finally alone, because it gave her a chance to fire off the questions only Grandma could answer: Could Carrie talk at all? (No). Did she know she’d given birth to Vivian? (She cared for her instinctively, like a cat with a kitten). What was she like? (She liked music, even sang a little. She had a beautiful laugh which would peal out, sometimes, for no reason. She slapped her forehead when excited, and Grandma mimicked her, slapping her forehead and trailing the palm of her hand down her face, over and over).

Vivian’s dream that night was one of those rare, powerfully numinous dreams. The dream started as she drifted off to sleep, secure in her tableau of memory of her mother’s gentle lullaby, and then segued backwards in time, in the crazy logic of dreams, into her mother’s escape, JULY 2020

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Vivian now still inside her, a secret growing amidst the chaotic landscape of global catastrophe.

Dream time continued in reverse, and baby Vivian shrunk smaller and smaller until she vanished. Freed from embodiment, her perspective in the dream ascended to a historical sweep: The past glorious era of human ascendancy (which she might, no, which she would restore).

Amongst that abundance, brutality: living, breathing humans taking each others’ lives. And what’s more, wrenching the gift of giving life from their own bodies and those of others.

She was breathless with the beauty of the technology and the burgeoning populace sparkling over the entire world, crowding out the plants and the beasts and the elegant, intricate, oblivious scheme of the ecology.

Abruptly, the dream time began to run forward again, but she remained in her god’s- eye view: the darkness of the virus exploding across the panorama of humanity. Following behind its engulfing wave, the birds and fish and bugs and flowers and mosses and trees crowding in, reclaiming their lost domains. It was almost like the world breathing, this explosion and contraction of human life, a garish glitter on the face of the world which would in time, with the vaccine, reassert itself as inevitably as a dropped glass will hit the floor. *** Vivian woke with quiet joy, sunlight still faintly pink with dawn streaming in the window of her private room in the base’s main building.

Today was the award ceremony.

She bathed and dressed in her finest dress, white cotton with lacy hand embroidery. The dream’s impression lingered, pervading her mood and awareness with brightness.

An adjutant brought her and Grandma Emma a tray of breakfast, but they both ate sparingly.

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He then escorted them outside, where she met her crew from Eufala, all spiffed up just like she was. They all fell in behind her, standing straight and proud as they entered the huge central parade ground and approached the stage.

A crowd was already assembling, funneled into the square using barricades, and down one side a long line of people stretched. A few relaxed MPs policed the line, keeping it moving smoothly. At the front were three tables. Each held a stack of vaccine ampules, a nurse at each one, administering shot after shot. Vivian beamed.

Just as the group reached the steps at the foot of the dais, a disturbance broke out at one of the tables. A woman with the long hair and skirts of a Pentecostalist, with eight children whizzing like electrons, she their nucleus, was raising a fuss.

“My brother and sister both died after having vaccines! They turned blue and foamed at the mouth and couldn’t breathe. My mom said it was horrible the way they died! Horrible! I’m not vaccinated and none of my kids will be vaccinated either!” The children now clustered together, stairsteps, each a year or two apart in age from the next eldest.

The nurse tried to calm the distraught woman. “Maybe they had some other disease? A lot of the time completely different illnesses happen at the same time by coincidence and they get blamed on the vaccine.”

“I’m not taking that chance! These kids are my life!”

Another mom nearby spoke up, “Everyone has to be vaccinated to produce herd immunity. I don’t want your kids spreading disease to mine!”

The woman waxed aggressive and irrational. As she got louder and louder, the police who were maintaining order all migrated to the head of the line and to her table. She whipped her head around, frantic, when they surrounded her and separated her from the kids. Vivian could see their aggression was misplaced—someone had to defuse the situation “Stay here, Gramma,” she told Emma. She slipped out of her JULY 2020

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protective formation (to her escorts’ dismay) and wedged herself into the fracas.

As Vivian moved in, she assessed the family. She noted that the woman’s oldest child was girl, a teenager. She moved a certain way so her belly strained against the long, loose dress she wore, and Vivian saw the girl was pregnant: perhaps six or seven months along. There were no men with the family group, and the youngest sibling was about four. The screaming woman was a widow, perhaps, or a single mother. And about to be a grandmother at about forty, not much older than Vivian herself.

Vivian slid past the last MP, putting a gentle hand on the woman’s arm. The mother rounded on her, face crazed, aware of nothing, an animal defending her family. Vivian felt a jolt of raw panic at her snarl, and the nails that rose towards her face like daggers.

Before she could react, a pair of tanned, tattooed hands seized the mother’s wrists. Following the hands to wrists, arms, shoulders, and a bearded face, familiar and protective, Viv recognized Zane, and her heart pounded its gratitude. His steady grip was strong enough to immobilize the attacking hands without hurting the mother.

Thus restrained, the mother paused, her chest still heaving with the residue of rage, long enough to take in Vivian’s face and garb. She eased her struggling. The rest of Vivian’s honor guard came bulling through the crowd, trailing the surprisingly agile Zane. They stopped short when they saw the situation under control. The mother fell silent, star-struck, her habitual meekness re-asserting itself. She twisted to look submissively at Zane, and he cautiously released her wrists, eyes locked with hers, ready to grab her again if necessary.

“What’s your name?” asked Vivian softly. She turned from Zane to Vivian, the soul of gentleness now.

“Martha.”

“Martha, do you know who I am?”

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“Yes. You’re the lady doctor who made the vaccine to stop the zombie sickness.” “That’s right. I made it so that you, your children, and your grandchildren-to-be,” she cut her eyes towards the pregnant teen, “will be safe from the disease which has been killing us all for the last thirtythree years. I’ve taken it, my grandmother’s taken it, and all the people near my home have taken it. Eufala now has half the—” use relatable vocabulary, “deaders we had a few months ago, and the few that’re left are falling apart on their feet. People get bitten and don’t convert.

“Martha, I can’t tell you how important it is that this vaccine works!

But: it can only work if everyone takes it. Listen: now isn’t the time to be timid, Martha.” Trying to build rapport with her patient, she let her voice echo the rhythmic cadence of a charismatic preacher. “Now is not the time to listen to some scary story your parents told you to frighten you when as a child. You need to do what’s right as a mother, and give yourself and your family the best chance to survive and be safe, and keep everyone else safe, too.” She swept her hand in a stately gesture at the circle of spectators, including the cops (who’d stepped back a crucial half-pace, Vivian was grateful to see).

Vivian placed her hand on her own heart, dropped her voice to almost a whisper. “I swear to you, this vaccine is perfectly safe.”

Martha searched Vivian’s eyes. Vivian saw hope in Martha’s.

After a few timeless moments, Martha turned to the nurse. She gave one short nod. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, we’ll do it.”

The nurse didn’t have to be told twice. Before the words were out of Martha’s mouth, a syringe full of clear liquid jabbed her arm. The other two nurses stepped up to help, and all eight of the children got their shots as well, followed by a cheerful, tiny bandage. Martha smiled and picked up the youngest, a towheaded girl, still bawling from the needle stick. She stroked her blond curls. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?” The girl quieted to an intermittent, tragic sniffle, inspecting her bandage.

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Martha grinned shyly at Vivian. “That truly wasn’t so bad! I don’t know what I was so worried about!”

Vivian nodded warmly, patted Martha’s (unbruised, Zane was so gentle) forearm, and made her way back to the stage. She found her seat behind the podium.

She scanned the crowd and found Martha and her brood, who had filed in to fill the fourth row. Knowing those sweet children would never be infected, never turn into zombies, gave her a warm glow inside. This is what makes being a doctor so rewarding. The one-on- one with patients, a firm hand and reassurance, when superstition and misinformation has made them afraid.

She tried to catch Martha’s eye, but Martha was wiping the baby’s nose. No, the baby was falling asleep and she was trying to wake her up.

No, the baby was unconscious! The pregnant teenager was at the other end of the row, and she leaned precariously forward trying to see what was wrong. Then she tipped forward off her chair onto her knees, grabbing the back of the folding chair in front of her. The person in that chair turned in annoyance, and for a flashing moment, Vivian saw the pregnant teenager’s face, turning a mottled purple. The other children went down like a row of dominos. The dark-haired boy, nine or ten, was having a classic gran mal seizure, flailing arms and legs, kicking and writhing as those around him tried to hold him still or tried to get away, everyone entangled with the folding chairs.

Vivian stood up, intending to descend the steps and administer first aid to the family, but her guardians blocked her. “Too dangerous,” Zane said. She abided, impotent, confused, torn. The ethereal sensation of the dream had turned grim, and Vivian felt frustrated in her physician’s need: to act, in order to push away the horror of the moment.

A vehicle with a red cross pulled up and four strong medics forced their way through the crowd to carry the family off.

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Vivian found her voice. She insisted Zane escort her to the infirmary, ignoring the disruption of the planned ceremony. She found herself clinging to his arm all the way there, desperate as a drowning woman clinging to a life ring.

Every physician makes mistakes, and sometimes things go wrong with patients for no reason at all. Ralph had taught her that and she’d learned to accept it years ago, learned to release guilt and what-ifs and remain dispassionate, move ahead.

Once they reached the clinic building, Zane hesitated. Vivian dropped his arm and walked alone through the ambulance-bay doors. The scene was bedlam. Every medical person on the base must have been at the parade grounds and instantly mobilized for this emergency. This tiny ER was used to treating zombie bites (amputation, or quarantine until euthanasia), but was taxed by dealing with seven children, of different ages, all at once. The medical team, stressed, were used to working together and it didn’t even register with them that Vivian was a doctor.

The curly-headed toddler was sitting on mom’s lap, an oxygen mask on her face, but awake, thank heaven! The boy with the seizure groaned, lolling on his side by a streak of his own vomit, batting away someone trying to shine a light in his eyes.

Vivian spotted the pregnant teenager on a gurney, half-in and halfout of a curtained bay, surrounded by scrub-clothed personnel, all scrambling to revive her.

“Blood pressure, 45/15.”

“Pulse, flat.”

“Anaphylaxis.”

Someone tried futilely to start an IV in collapsed blood vessels.

Someone

was

injecting epinephrine.

More

epinephrine.

More!

Vivian had come to help, but there was nothing for her to do without stepping on someone’s toes or getting in the way of the team trying to JULY 2020

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resuscitate the girl.

Light took on a brilliant clarity and every object was outlined vividly. She saw tiny details of every needle, wire, and connector. She saw the patient as the center of a sunburst of arms reaching towards her. She knew how the drama would end: life had left the girl for good.

Unaccustomed to standing still in a medical emergency, still processing the trauma of learning about her mother, she dissociated: she saw the whole scene as though from a birds- eye view. She was aware of the neat, precise lanes around it and the central square, where some still waited for the event, while others were leaving. She envisioned the entire compound, safe inside its protective fence. Outside, she saw the monsters, human bodies denied a clean death, changed into unwitting servants of the virus that had come so close to annihilating humanity.

Her vision telescoped back inwards: compound, hospital, room, girl. She knew what was going on inside the girl. Her doctor’s mind envisioned the histamines flooding the patient’s system, saw them trigger the cells of her throat to close, the muscles of her bronchioles to constrict, her blood vessels flaccidly lose their tone. She thought also of the tiny homunculus in her womb, thrashing quickly at first, and then more and more slowly, plummeting into dreamless sleep forever without ever being wholly awake.

Her perspective snapped back and forth, smaller and greater, faster and faster, until it became a vibration. The dead girl before her, her mother, her unborn child, strobed back and forth with the darkness of the virus battling the frenzied light of humanity across the face of the land, until the two images fused with her dream, and she saw it all.

Did Martha really choose? Did Carrie? Did anyone choose between humanity and nature? *** The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough JULY 2020

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to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough. —Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes II, Buck v. Bell, 1927 ***

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Discussion Questions 1. What do you think should happen with the new vaccine after the death of the family? What research, if any, should happen before the vaccine is used? What information would you want to know before releasing it?

2. Given that becoming a zombie is a pretty big deal, is there a % of acceptable vaccine deaths that would allow the vaccine to be released?

1% die? 5% die? 20% die? Does the severity of the sickness effect the acceptable death rate of the vaccine?

3. The story seems to argue against mandating vaccines as well as mandating sterilization. Is there a difference, if so, what is it? Would you be okay with mandatory sterilization for those who carry a gene that made getting the zombie virus more likely?

Is there any

acceptable scenario for mandatory vaccination or mandatory sterilization?

4. Is the ability to regulate what medicine you take (or if you have children) a “natural right?�

5. Is there an argument to be made that zombies are simply a new form of life, and (like a lion) have a right to feed and exist just like any other species? ***

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All My Tomorrows J. Grace Pennington *** It was Misha’s first day minding the shop, and already she’d broken the fifth rule. Always lock the door immediately. When you had the most valuable merchandise in the universe, you had to take the utmost precautions.

She hadn’t meant to disobey. It was just that when she had walked in she forgot everything and stood for a full five minutes just inside the door, feeling the lights and colors reflected in the expression she felt on her face. She knew it by heart, but never had it been hers, to care for and manage and watch over.

A jolt shook the entire shop, causing her to stumble and clutch at one of the file cabinets for support. It seemed to jolt her memory as well, and she jumped as though she’d been slapped, and double bolted the rusty metal door shut.

The rumble subsided, and quiet settled upon the shop again.

Turning back around, she saw that the drawer she’d gripped to stay upright had come open slightly, and she pushed it closed and latched it. It was one of the older drawers, and the latch was brown and gritty feeling, and when JULY 2020

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she pulled her hand away, there was a film of orange rust on her fingers.

She started to wipe it down the front of her dress, then stopped herself and just rubbed her fingers together to brush it off.

“That one must be almost gone,” she murmured, and then listened to the very faint echo of her words. She’d never been alone here before.

Turning her head, she surveyed the long rows and columns of drawers, reaching far into the darkness, everywhere except where the thick aluminum silicate glass window spanned several feet of one wall, looking out into space. Drawers everywhere, each barely bigger than her hand, reaching so far and so high that she had no hope of ever seeing the end of them. Some of the cabinets were so rusty they were crumbling, and some were still the dull but polished maroon that was standard for the GCC. On each drawer was a name, burned into it by the computer system, and the words “Galactic Cabinet Company” with a phone number. Her gaze followed the sturdy black cables that connected every single drawer to the processor far above her on the ceiling. She couldn’t see where they were plugged in, it was so high up that the darkness hid it, but tiny lights from the computer sparkled like stars.

Once as a child, she’d tried to describe the shop to a friend, and the friend had commented, “It sounds terribly dull.” Then, she knew she’d never try to describe it again.

No matter how tight the GCC made the cabinets, they couldn’t keep the colors, the light, the darkness, the smells, the temperatures, the tastes, the emotions, and the sounds from escaping through the cracks.

There was no greater thrill than walking by a drawer and feeling a sliver of anger escape, along with a slight scent of roast beef and a dash of warmth.

Sometimes she’d catch a snippet of wonder and beauty, tinted with purple and flavored with mint. Other times, a shiver would shake her, and she’d find that she was cold, and would look to see a dark mist seeping from one of the drawers, along with a stench that tasted somehow hollow. Better JULY 2020

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yet was when a sudden burst of every color would flow freely and sparkle up to the ceiling, accompanied with every feeling that existed all rolled into one. Those moments were always Misha’s favorites, because they were so beautiful. Then her father had explained that that meant someone was dying, and it made her sad, too, but still happy, because it was the best thing in the universe.

And then it would be time to replace that drawer. New people were always being born, and an old rusty drawer would be shipped out, and a new maroon one would come in, ready to be burned with a new name, and filled with new files. Except sometimes, a maroon drawer would go out, and that made Misha sad, because somewhere, somehow, someone had lost their child.

Slowly, she unwound her scarf, keeping her eyes on the cabinets.

Wisps of color escaped and floated up to the ceiling, and she caught sight of a hint of green. Tossing scarf and cap on the floor behind her, she darted forward. Green was her favorite. Green was fresh and clean and open and rested, and it usually meant peace. Dodging the other colors, she reached it just in time to let it brush the tips of her fingers. She grinned. This one was a childhood memory, she knew it was. She smelled wet grass, and felt a burst of contentment.

She sighed as it floated away. That was a good one to have caught.

She was glad for whoever was remembering it right now. Her father had told her that when bits showed, it was because someone was remembering. Looking at the name on the drawer, she read “John Fillmore Tucker III.” It was still red, with only patches here and there that were just showing rust. John Fillmore Tucker III was a middle-aged man, by the look of it.

She touched the latch, and it slipped out easily. Driven by curiosity, she pulled the drawer open with one finger, just a crack. Green spilled out into the air, and she felt a full blast of the day. It was dew, and a shirt not JULY 2020

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buttoned straight, and sharp, crisp, open air, and not thinking about anything, and all the smells and sounds of morning. She was there, she could see the overcast sun and feel the childlike dreams and plans and lack of fear.

Closing her eyes, she slammed the drawer shut and replaced the latch. The click echoed in the room, and she felt shame burn her cheeks.

Rule number four broken. You weren’t supposed to open the drawers unless there was a technical difficulty. Otherwise, the computer handled all the files itself.

She scurried to the window and settled herself into the swivel chair at the terminal. The terminal, because even though there were others they were rusted over and no longer functioned. Only one had been kept working, because these days only one was needed. In the old days, the shop had been kept busy from morning until night, but now it had been relegated to the stuff of legend, until only a determined few ever came to the out-of-the-way asteroid asking for an exchange of days. Misha remembered when there had been two terminals open, and her father and grandfather would work them, but she had been only seven then. Now things were quiet, Father was getting older, and all her brothers and sisters were grown and had left the asteroid and the shop. Things were so quiet that Father deemed an only-just-sixteen-year-old girl qualified to run the shop now, while he helped her brother move to a planet.

Leaning back in the chair, she looked out the clouded glass at the stars and other asteroids. A piece of rock hurtled towards her and struck at the base of the shop, causing another jolt to rifle through the asteroid. She clutched the arms of the chair to steady herself, feeling the cracked leather pinch her fingers, until the quivers passed.

It wasn’t nearly as interesting over by the terminals. There was nothing to look at except space, and glass, and cobwebs, and the old, brittle copies of the manual for the computer system. She didn’t dare touch the JULY 2020

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books, for fear they would crumble at a single nudge. And there were no smells except rust and musky leather, and there were no sounds except when a rock hit, or the creaking of the chair if she moved even a centimeter. And there was rarely any emotion to experience except boredom.

She had no way of knowing how much time passed as she sat there. The system would shut itself down when work hours were over, and then she would go home. Until then, she was just to sit there in her best dress and wait, maybe for nothing. She peered back over her shoulder at the colors escaping from the drawers. No one was coming. She’d heard her father say that they only had customers once a week these days, sometimes less. What would it hurt to explore, just a little?

The shop shook again, and she gripped the arms, waiting for the world to stop shaking. But this time, it didn’t keep on trembling. It gave a tiny heave, then paused, then seemed to rest. She knew that feeling, and she felt another grin shape her lips as she turned to the window, straightened her collar, leaned her elbows on the desk, and looked as professional as sixteen can.

At the end of the long dock that stretched out before her was a speeder. It wasn’t one of the rusty old buckets that usually stopped there, it was--the only word that flashed into her head was fiery. It was yellow, with streaks of red licking towards the shiny cockpit. She sat up even straighter and watched, trying to keep her mouth set in a firm, businesslike line.

The door of the speeder opened upwards, and a man stepped out.

It was too far away for her to tell more than his gender and the color of his clothes, which were also red and yellow. He closed the door, pushing it closed instead of slamming it. Then he straightened up, and walked up the long dock and towards the shop.

Misha’s mouth kept threatening to grin, and she pinched the back JULY 2020

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of her hand to force herself to remain serious as he approached her terminal, every step measured and firm. Her first customer! A real customer, coming to buy a day from her!

As he came to the glass, he reached out and polished a bit of it with the back of his sleeve. She watched as the thin layer of dust peeled away to reveal his features one by one, the brown hair falling over his forehead, the handsome, middle-aged face, the tired, blue eyes. The eyes looked right at her as he tapped on the window with his knuckles, and she gave a polite smile, and spoke into the intercom.

“Hello, and welcome to the Shop of Yesterdays. How may I help you?”

For a moment he just looked at her, his listless eyes seeming to bore through her and ask her a question that she did not understand. His clothes seemed much too young for him, she noted then, as if he were playing dress-up as a twenty-five-year-old when he was really forty. And his eyes looked more than tired, but she didn’t understand it. It was something she’d felt sometimes, from the drawers, but she didn’t know the word for it, and she had an impression somehow that it was a word she wasn’t old enough to know.

“It’s real then,” he said.

“The shop? Yes sir, quite real indeed.”

He rolled up his sleeve, and she flipped the identification switch in front of her.

“Press your wrist to the red light so the system can read you, please,” she instructed, and he obeyed, laying the front of his wrist against the light that blinked on the glass. Old tattoos traced up his forearm and into his sleeve, and she wondered how far they went, and then felt her cheeks grow pink. She looked away.

The red light flashed twice, then vanished, and the computer whirred as it identified him. It only took three seconds for the name to flash JULY 2020

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on the desk before her, “John Fillmore Tucker III.” She jerked her head up to his face, allowing her surprise to show for a moment. Then she looked over her shoulder at the drawers. The one she’d looked into earlier was illuminated with the white light of the computer.

She looked at him again, lost in her own thoughts for a moment.

This wasn’t the kind of man she’d imagined. Somehow what was in his eyes didn’t match the morning she’d felt in his files. Then she blushed yet again.

You were never supposed to go silent when dealing with a customer. You were just supposed to serve them efficiently.

“What can I get you today, sir?” she asked into the intercom.

Again, he was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, she felt surprised by the fact that he had. “How much does one yesterday cost?”

This she also knew by heart. “One year, sir.”

His expression didn’t change. She was used to eyebrows raising. It did seem a steep price, three hundred and sixty-five tomorrows for a single yesterday. But that was only if you didn’t understand how priceless yesterdays were. They weren’t like a can of beans or a new pair of trousers.

A yesterday was time, and memory, and life, and senses, and heart, and knowledge, and ideas all rolled up into one. They were expensive to catalogue and keep and transfer, and Misha’s family were the only ones in the entire universe who knew how.

But he didn’t widen his eyes, or even move a facial muscle. He only said, “I see. I only have two hundred.”

Without another word, but still looking her straight in the eyes, he rolled down his sleeve. Then he turned around and took a step.

She remembered the dew, and the green, and the fresh smell of morning, and called out, “Sir?” He turned around, looking exactly the same as he had before.

Don’t engage the customers in personal conversation. Rule three.

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“I... I’m curious.” She stammered. It wasn’t professional to stammer. “What is important about this day?”

He stepped back towards the window again, and studied her face for a moment. Then he said, “You’re too young to understand.”

“Try me.”

A beat of silence drove the nervousness further into her, and then he relaxed his posture, and allowed one corner of his lips to turn up softly.

“It was the last good day.”

“Why?” “Because the day after that, I learned something I wasn’t ready for.”

Misha recalled the empty child-mind, and how relaxed and trusting it had felt when she’d sensed it for a moment. “What happened?”

“Learning wasn’t enough. I went looking for more, and nobody knew about it except me.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes. But then, looking once wasn’t enough.” He stopped, closing his mouth firmly as if to keep any more from escaping. But when she prompted “What then?” he continued.

“Then, I met the woman I wanted to spend my life with. I didn’t tell her about the things, thinking they would go away, when I had her to fill me. For awhile they did. But then they returned, and I couldn’t hide from her forever.”

As he spoke, Misha glanced down at his left hand, and detected a band of slightly paler skin around the base of the third finger.

“She told me to leave, so I got on my ship and never came back.”

She looked back at his face. It was a strong, right face, except for the dull eyes... “Why do you only have two hundred left?”

This time he hesitated. He focused behind her, at the drawers, expression not changing, and then ran the tip of his tongue between his JULY 2020

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lips and took a breath. “It dragged me further down, and moved from my mind into my body, until I’d lost count of the people who had shared it, and it drove me further and further into the pit until it claimed my health. And that, child, is why I have only two hundred tomorrows, and it is also why I’d trade every last one of them for a single day of how things used to be.”

Misha knew that he didn’t expect her to understand, but she’d been around every yesterday in the universe too long not to grasp what the loss of innocence and the spiral into darkness felt like.

Rule number two was never to negotiate price with customers.

“I’ll take two hundred.”

“You don’t even know what day it is...” he protested. As if any day could be worth such a small price.

“I think I do.”

She reached forward and pressed the transaction button, and a message flashed in red on the desk. “Error. Insufficient tomorrows remaining.”

Rule number one was to never override the system.

Without so much as a shudder, she pressed the override button, stood up, and turned towards the only illuminated drawer in the room. It was oozing green now, refracting off the air like light through the surface of the water. She unlatched it, opened it, and closed her eyes for a moment as the freshly cut grass and the pure contentment flooded into her. Then she opened her eyes just a crack.

The array of colors felt as though it would blind her, and the incense of darkness, despair, hope, falling, flying, pleasure, pain, guilt, and loss slapped her. She was afraid, she felt dirty, everything was confusion and needing to find someone to share her, and feeling empty and dark.

Forcing herself to weather the storm, she scanned the files for the brightest and last spot of green in the horde of days, and reached in to grasp it. It burned her hand, and she screamed, then she managed to yank it out, and JULY 2020

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slam the drawer shut before collapsing to her knees, panting.

She breathed as her head cleared, hardly feeling the spot of light in her clenched fist. She was herself. Misha. She was home, she was in the shop. She was only-just-sixteen, she loved colors, she was young, she was happy, and she was safe.

The buzzing in her ears cleared, and she heard a faint pounding nearby. Over and over. Then a voice, a man’s voice. “Little girl! Little girl, are you alright?”

She stood up, her legs wobbling like the preserves that mother made. The day burned in her hand, but it didn’t hurt anymore. Looking down, she saw that green was shining between her tightly-clenched fingers.

The man stopped pounding his fists on the glass as she stood, and wobbled towards him. Still keeping her hand closed, she eased into her chair, still panting. “I’m fine,” she answered, realizing only then that she hadn’t responded to his question. She managed a smile. “I have what you wanted.”

She took another deep breath, and this one finally filled her lungs, making her feel strong again. “Put your right forefinger in the hole, please.”

He stuck the indicated finger into the tiny gray hole in the glass.

She brought her fist close to the capsule on her side, and uncurled her fingers to reveal the day, a small, green particle, in the center of her palm.

She picked it up with her other hand, and slipped it securely into the capsule, glad she’d watched her grandfather do manual transfers many years before.

Taking another deep breath, she pressed the send button, and watched his face wince as the day pricked into the tip of his finger. “It will activate at midnight, and last twenty-four hours,” she said, forcing her voice to be steady. “I hope it’s all you wanted.”

Those eyes bored into hers again, but all he said was “It will be.”

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“Goodbye.�

He turned without another word, and strode back towards his speeder. He pulled open the door, slipped in, and flew off, giving the asteroid another jerk as he disconnected.

Misha watched as he disappeared into the stars. The shop was silent again. The colors went on dancing out of the drawers, and she sat in her chair until the lights flickered off. She got up, felt her way to her scarf and cap, and put them both on. Then she unlocked the door, opened it, and gave the shop one last look.

Then she closed the door and locked it. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. In the story, the exchange is one year to get to relive one day. Is that a fair price? What price, if any, would you pay, to get to re-experience a day?

2. What would be the benefits or detriments to a person by being able to relive a day (good or bad) in their past? Does your opinion change if you were able to make different choices (that didn’t affect the present) rather than simply watch the day unfold?

3. Is it a cruelness or a kindness to have a service that allows someone to relieve a past day?

4. What would be your criteria for judging the day you would want to reexperience? Would it be a special occasion, a particularly happy day, a “first” [blank] day, a sad day, a day you made a critical mistake, or something else? What day (if any) would you like to re-experience and why?

5. By trading a year for a day, aren’t you assuming that none of the 365 days you are trading in will live up to the day you are trading it for. Is that fair to those future days? Or those future people that you would have experienced the day with? ***

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Mayonnaise Viggy Parr Hampton *** You know what they say: when life gives you ASS, you make mayonnaise with it. That’s exactly what Dr. Loriah Harp and the good folks at Natural Light Foods did. And they didn’t hide the ASS at the bottom of a label, either—their entire marketing campaign championed its use. Natural Light Mayonnaise: The Condiment with sASS! Or, on some posters in gentrifying or otherwise chi-chi neighborhoods: The Condiment with clASS! Commercials trumpeted the unmatched greatness of Natural Light Mayonnaise with loud colors and even louder shouts of “Zero percent fat!

Zero percent calories! One hundred percent flavor!”

And…the public bought it, wholeheartedly. I’m sure you bought it, too. They bought into the marketing, they bought into the promises, and, most importantly, they bought the product. They smothered their turkey sandwiches with Natural Light Mayo, they drowned their potato salads, they scrambled it into their eggs, they even baked it into their cakes and cookies. Restaurants advertised it proudly on their menus: “We only use JULY 2020

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Natural Light Mayonnaise!”

Natural Light Mayo had the Midas touch: everything it smothered, covered, or stuffed turned into a health food in the eyes of the customers who bought it by the barrel. And Dr. Loriah Harp and Natural Light Foods made, in short, a shit ton of money over the next six months. *** Loriah, an employee at Natural Light Foods, and the inventor of acetylsterolstearate (ASS), which made Natural Light Mayonnaise possible, was nothing if not anti-hypocritical. That is to say, she practiced what she preached. She drank the Natural Light Mayo Kool-Aid (not a real product yet but hey, it was only a matter of time) and made sure to keep her own fridge stocked. Then there was the true test of her loyalty: she fed Natural Light Mayo to her family. Liberally.

“Mom, what’s for dinner tonight?”

Loriah paused, realizing that she was about to lift a spoonful of Natural Light Mayo straight from the jar to her lips, completely missing the upturned slice of bread on the counter. She laughed, embarrassed, and spooned the mayo onto the bread. She turned to face Alex and smiled.

“Tonight’s menu features turkey and cheese sandwiches and baked french fries with a side of the amazing, the delicious, the healthy…Natural Light Mayo!” Perhaps Loriah was a bit of a showman as well.

Alex grinned. “You know, even though we’ve had mayo at pretty much every meal, I’m still not tired of it.”

“Me neither, sweetie. It really is a miracle product.”

Clint walked into the kitchen and kissed Loriah on the cheek. “I hope we’re getting more of that delicious mayo tonight!” His new Gucci slippers squeaked on the wood floor. He checked his new Rolex and announced, “It’s nearly time for Family Game Night!”

“After a healthy dinner, of course!” Loriah said.

“Of course,” Clint answered, beaming.

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“I’ll go set everything up,” Alex said, walking off into the dining room. *** You’re probably thinking this family portrait is a dead ringer for Norman Rockwell, huh? *** Alex collapsed halfway through their second game of Trouble.

First, his eyelids started to twitch and flutter, then a thin river of blood trickled from one nostril, followed by a loud sneeze that sprayed blood all over the table and the pallid faces of his horrified parents. His head slammed down onto the game board, sending yellow, blue, and red peg pieces flying like shrapnel through the air.

He convulsed a few times, his forehead pressing the plastic bubble once, twice, three times, the die inside popping wildly like popcorn. Finally, his exhausted body stilled, and the blood from his nose pooled and congealed on the game board.

Loriah looked at Clint and Clint looked at Loriah, both too astonished to speak. After what felt like an interminable silence, Loriah coughed and said, “Clint. I think we need to take Alex to the emergency room.” *** Loriah watched her son with cautious optimism as he spooned hospital potato salad (made with Natural Light Mayo, of course) into his mouth. He paused to slurp orange juice through a silly straw, the sucking noise sounding like a grenade blast in the quiet room.

After his ‘episode,’ as she had begun euphemistically calling Alex’s seizure, Loriah and Clint had raced their son to the nearest hospital. Alex had been unconscious the entire time, reviving only after twelve hours in the hospital’s ICU. A barrage of doctors, residents, and various nurses and assistants had smothered, covered, and stuffed him with medications, IVs, JULY 2020

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tubes, and needles.

When Alex opened his eyes yesterday morning, they were peachcolored and filmy.

Test after test after test failed to pinpoint the cause of Alex’s sudden illness. One doctor had been especially enthusiastic about the idea of organic phosphate poisoning, while another had been confident that it was as-yet undiagnosed epilepsy. Yet another offered a zebra of a diagnosis: hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, a bleeding disorder that can appear at any age.

They were all wrong, but Loriah wasn’t as scared as she’d been yesterday. Alex was awake, he was eating, and he seemed normal.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” The sound of her son’s voice, still raspy from the tube the doctors had shoved down his throat while he was unconscious, jolted Loriah out of her reverie.

“What do you mean, honey?”

“You just had this weird look on your face.”

“Oh.” Loriah couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Alex smiled. “I’m going to be okay, Mom. Really. I feel fine now.”

Loriah let out a shaky breath. “I know, honey.” But she didn’t, not really—Alex’s eyes still looked like sharp little kumquats and she hoped against hope that the slight redness she noticed around his neck wasn’t the start of some sort of rash.

“Do you think I can go home today?” Alex spooned more gleaming potato salad into his mouth.

“I’m not sure sweetie—we’ll have to ask Dr. Briggs when she comes back.”

Alex shrugged. “Eh, no worries. It’s not too bad here. Especially since they have my favorite food.” Alex grinned and gestured toward Loriah with a potato salad-filled spoon. “I still can’t believe MY mom made this and now everybody is eating it!”

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Loriah waved a hand in a show of humility. “Oh, honey—it wasn’t just me. I have a really good team at Natural Light.”

Alex beamed. He really was a very good boy. “Well, I’m really proud of you, Mom.” She glanced down to hide her tear-filled eyes from her son. “Thank you, honey. Your father and I love you very much.”

She glanced back up.

That was definitely a rash on Alex’s neck.

And his lips were turning blue.

And he was gasping for air.

Loriah screamed. *** Another twelve hours had passed since Alex’s second ‘episode.’

Hearing her scream, doctors and nurses had flooded into the room, initiating lifesaving protocols, clearing his airway again, and rushing him away for more tests as soon as they felt he was stable.

Loriah waited like a sentinel in Alex’s room, staring at his empty bed. She called Clint at work, told him what had happened. He offered to meet her at the hospital and relieve her for awhile so she could get some sleep, but she refused. She wouldn’t leave Alex for a single minute.

But, she was going to go insane if she had to keep staring at those stale, rumpled bed sheets—wondering if, sometime soon, all the rooms of her heart would contain permanently empty beds, the Alex-shaped dent fading more each day. So, she distracted herself with work.

She pulled up her work email on her phone and started sorting: quick deletions for spam and unnecessary forwards or chain emails, flags for things she would look at later, and quick responses to simple questions.

She almost started humming as she worked, nearly forgetting where she was. Until she came to an email from her colleague Steve marked Urgent.

The subject line: READ THIS NOW. JULY 2020

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Her fingers shook slightly as she opened Steve’s email. The body of the message read: Dr. Harp, I’m contacting you immediately regarding troubling results with the lab mice. As we discussed, I’ve been following an acetylsterolstearate murine feeding protocol to study the effects of different doses of the chemical.

The experimental groups receiving the three highest dosage levels of acetylsterolstearate have started exhibiting symptoms consistent with allergy or poisoning. So far, I’ve catalogued bleeding from facial orifices, weight loss, mild hair loss, and mild difficulty breathing. One mouse in the highest dosage group has died. In contrast, all of the control group mice are healthy and exhibit normal functioning.

I’m especially troubled because, as we calculated, the three highest dosage levels are well within range of what we estimated the average American is consuming now.

Please call me as soon as you receive this.

Steve

Now Loriah was the one with difficulty breathing. The murine symptoms sounded sickeningly similar to her son’s…and if ASS was causing this, and one mouse had even died already…combined with the fact that Alex had been drowning all his food in Natural Light Mayo for the past six months…

Loriah turned her head and promptly vomited into a pink plastic trashcan.

How could she save him? Was there even a way? And if she did JULY 2020

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succeed, how could she warn the others? The millions of Americans shoveling down Natural Light every day… *** Jeff Richardson, Natural Light Foods’ CEO, laughed. Directly in Loriah’s face.

“Dr. Harp. Please. Speak reasonably, now.”

“Jeff—“ “No, no. There’s no way we’re pulling our number one seller, which, might I remind you, has made the company and YOU PERSONALLY millions of dollars, from the shelves just because one sick mouse died and a few others have a little rash. Are you crazy?”

Steve piped up from his seat next to Loriah. “Mr. Richardson, it’s true that only one mouse died, but the others don’t have just a little rash.

They’re all bleeding from the nose, eyes, mouth, anus—“ Jeff waved a hand dismissively. “So, we got a bad batch of mice.”

Steve’s faced darkened. “The experimental mice were from the same breeder as the control mice, and that group is entirely healthy.”

“So? Even if that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, then that doesn’t mean humans will be affected just because mice are. As you both well know, humans and mice are very different.”

Loriah cringed at Jeff’s patronizing tone. “Jeff. It isn’t just the mice.

You know very well that my son has been hospitalized for over a week now with the same symptoms as the mice.”

Jeff’s face softened—but only slightly. His tone was gentler as he said, “Loriah. You know I’m very sorry about your son. But the boy may just have an allergy! Who knows what we put into our bodies these days?”

Loriah exploded. “WE do. WE are the ones who know what we put into our bodies! WE fucking make the shit! My son, just like so many other people, has been eating Natural Light Mayo like it’s water and he’s dying of thirst. That’s not a fucking coincidence.”

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“Loriah,” Jeff growled, all gentleness evaporated. “Watch your language. There is nothing wrong with our mayonnaise.”

“Mr. Richardson, have you not searched the web recently?” Steve asked. “There are more and more chat forums and articles talking about the ‘mysterious allergy’ popping up all over the country. People are starting to make the connection. They’re starting to ask questions.”

“I don’t fucking care!” Jeff roared. “Maybe they should think about making better choices and losing weight if they really care about their health!”

“Jeff. You have kids. Think about the parents feeding this to their families!” Loriah said.

Jeff laughed again, the sound fierce like a gunshot. “Are you serious, Loriah? I would never eat this myself, much less feed this shit to my kids.”

“JEFF. I feed this to MY family. How can you sell a product you won’t eat yourself?”

“I can do it because it makes a shit ton of money! Wake up, Loriah!

This is the real fucking world. Let’s look at the facts. We’re not getting any shit from the FDA. There aren’t any Wall Street Journal or New York Fucking Times articles calling us out. No inspectors or reporters or even Susie fucking Homemakers are sniffing around, so who cares if a few internet trolls are whining from their mom’s basements? All of this means: we’re AOKAY.” “But this poison mayo could be killing children.” Loriah’s voice sliced through the air.

Jeff leaned forward, stood up, and placed both greasy hands on the smooth glass of the conference table. His dark eyes smoldered. “Dr. Harp.

Dr. Billings. Let me make this very clear. There is nothing wrong with our product. And unless somebody spontaneously combusts after eating our mayo, I’m. Not. Pulling it.”

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Jeff raked a hand through his slicked-back hair and marched from the room. *** “Mom?” Loriah awoke with a start, her eyes fuzzy with dream after-images of Alex’s corpse, laid out in a coffin. A tear spilled down her cheek, mixing with the nightmare sweat trickling from her brow. “Alex?”

“Mom, I’m thirsty,” Alex croaked.

Loriah handed him a large pink plastic thermos of water with a hospital-issue bendy straw. He slurped weakly, his eyes wandering to look out the window. A light rain had begun to fall.

After he’d had his second episode, the doctors ran every reasonable test; they even ran a few of them twice. When those all came back negative or otherwise inconclusive, they started running the unreasonable tests. They were still awaiting results from the latest round of tests, and for the past week, Alex had hovered in a semi-conscious state.

Loriah had barely left his bedside, and Clint joined her in the evenings when he finished work.

“How are you feeling today, honey?”

Alex slurped some more, coughed. “I’m okay. Not great, but not terrible, either.”

“Is there anything I can get for you? Games? Food? One of your books from home?” Loriah’s eyes were desperate; she felt so helpless in the presence of her son’s illness. In the dark center of her heart, that helplessness mingled with guilt; she was now sure that her mayonnaise was doing this to her only child. And she had even smiled as she squirted it onto his plate.

But she wasn’t blind anymore. No mayonnaise had touched Alex’s lips since she had opened that email about the mouse results from Steve.

“Nah, it’s okay, Mom. The only thing I would really want is some JULY 2020

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more mayo. They stopped putting it on my tray.”

Loriah’s lips trembled. “I’m sorry honey, but I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

Alex looked up, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Why not?”

“You know, with your condition and all…we need you to heal.”

“But I thought the mayo was healthy?”

Loriah paused. “Um—“ “You wouldn’t let me eat something that wasn’t good for me, right, Mom?” Alex’s tone conveyed a youthful hopefulness and the confidence of somebody asking a question they already knew the answer to.

A flicker of anguish twisted across Loriah’s pale face. Quietly, she said: “Not if I knew it.” *** A blank legal pad stared up at Loriah, its yellowness mirroring the sallow shade her skin had developed after a week at her son’s bedside. Alex was having more tests done, and the nurses had urged Loriah to go home, take a shower, and get some sleep.

She’d done two of those things. She was home, at her desk, and her hair was clean for the first time in a week. But sleep eluded her, and a swirl of angry, terrified thoughts corkscrewed like a tornado in her mind.

Jeff would never voluntarily pull the mayo. And if she pushed him any harder, she’d only succeed in getting herself fired and losing any power she might have to keep people safe from the demon she’d midwifed onto their dinner plates.

She needed to brainstorm ideas—thus, the mocking legal pad. She sighed, and her fingers gripped tight on the pen, as though trying to squeeze ideas out of it through brute force. Exhaustion pounded in her eyeballs, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest.

Pen in hand, she began by numbering a list down the page. The pad looked a little friendlier now, and Loriah’s shoulders relaxed a fraction JULY 2020

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of an inch. She wrote: 1. Ignore everything going on with the mayo and just never feed it to my family again.

2. Somehow pretend to be Jeff and give the recall order myself.

3. Tip off the FDA. 4. ‘Borrow’ the mouse lab results—and give them to the press.

Number one was never really an option—after the agony she endured while Alex was sick, she couldn’t imagine leaving other parents to that fate. Number two would have serious, possibly criminal, consequences. Plus, she wasn’t sure how she could actually impersonate Jeff. Number three was not a horrible option, but Loriah knew from experience that the FDA was slow-moving and didn’t have very sharp teeth.

That left…number four. Jeff himself had said that no major news outlets were calling them out, which meant everything was fine. If Loriah were to change that…Jeff wouldn’t have much of a choice. Pro: poison mayo would be removed from the shelves, potentially saving countless lives. Con: Loriah would definitely be fired.

She set down the pen and legal pad and dressed smartly, as if she were headed to the office. This might be the last time she’d be allowed there, so why not leave a good impression?

After all, she’d rather be fired a hundred times over than have another child’s blood on her hands. *** This wasn’t a movie, so there were no close calls or avoidable mishaps. No nosy coworkers or overzealous security guards. She simply JULY 2020

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walked into the office, accessed the mouse lab results on her work computer, copied them to a flash drive, and put the flash drive in her purse.

Then she walked out, waving to Steve as she went. *** With the flash drive in her purse, Loriah drove back to the hospital.

The nurse had called—apparently Alex’s new tests found something more conclusive.

She really didn’t want to blow up her career so spectacularly. She didn’t want to be a sneaky whistleblower—but what else was left when she eliminated the impossible options? Everything narrowed down to a single question: would she let people die, or not?

And when it all came down to that, it wasn’t much of a choice at all.

Alex’s final lab tests gave her more surety than anything else could.

“We’ve found something,” the pleasant, plump nurse in pink scrubs said. Her ID badge read ‘Elena.’

Loriah crossed her legs in her chair, looked at her son lying placidly in the bed. “Alright,” she said, trying to still the shake in her voice. “What is it?”

“Our last round of tests with Alex were a specific subset of allergy tests. We had him write down all of the foods he eats on a regular basis, and we based the testing agents off of that list.” Elena paused.

“Okay,” Loriah said. She could sense that the nurse was dreading this conversation. “Then what happened?”

The pink scrubs rumpled on the hunched shoulders of their nervous owner. “The only food agent that provoked a reaction—and this was a very strong reaction—was—“ Elena paused again, her eyes terrified.

Loriah grew impatient. “Well, for God’s sake, what is making my son so sick?”

The nurse took a deep breath, her face resigned. With a shrug, she JULY 2020

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said, “Mayonnaise.” *** There was no point in trying to be covert about it—Jeff would find her out in zero seconds flat. Then he would sue the shit out of her for violating her NDA. But, with the money all that mayo made her, she could afford a good lawyer. That seemed fitting, somehow.

Because she was reasonably attractive and was comfortable speaking to other humans instead of just lab equipment, Loriah had been consulted throughout the years by various media outlets to comment on food-related policies and procedures. She hadn’t done much of that in a couple of years, but she knew for a fact that one of her old contacts, a reporter for the New York Times named Fiona White, was still around.

She’d read Fiona’s recent articles on the E. coli outbreak in romaine and had been enchanted by the woman’s ability to make something unsettling but drily scientific sound so compelling. Fiona was the right choice for this story.

Fiona’s office number was still in Loriah’s phone, and she called it immediately after excusing herself from the room still holding Elena and her son. In the hospital hallway, she made the most self-destructive but necessary call of her life.

Fiona answered after the first ring. “Dr. Harp! Is that you?”

Loriah’s voice trembled. “Hi, Fiona! Yes, it’s me.”

“Wow, it’s been awhile, huh?” Fiona’s voice was congenial.

“It has, it has.” Loriah paused to collect herself—tears scratched at the back of her eyeballs.

When she didn’t go on, Fiona prodded, “So, what do you have for me, Dr. Harp?”

“Please, Fiona—call me Loriah.”

“Alright, what have you got for me, Loriah?”

Loriah swallowed past a large, persistent lump in her throat. No JULY 2020

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point beating around the bush now. “Our mayonnaise is poison,” she said flatly.

There was silence on the end of the line.

“Fiona? Hello?”

Loriah heard a cough. Then, Fiona’s startled voice: “What?”

“You know, Natural Light Foods mayonnaise? Well, there’s a food additive in it—we’ve been marketing it pretty heavily. It’s called acetylsterolstearate…You probably know it as ASS.” “Right, right,” Fiona whispered.

“Well. A recent batch of mouse experiments have shown that high levels of ASS consumption can be poisonous. Even fatal.”

Fiona gasped so forcefully that Loriah was sure she’d punctured a lung.

“And there’s more,” Loriah said.

“Oh dear God.” “My son. He’s been in the hospital for over a week now, after he had a seizure and collapsed on our dining table. Then he started bleeding and having trouble breathing.”

“Oh my God, Loriah—I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay now. The doctors ran a last batch of tests. Allergy tests.

Want to guess what he’s reacting so violently to?” The sarcasm in Loriah’s voice was tinged with an iron-bitter anger.

“Mayonnaise,” Fiona breathed.

“Bingo.”

There was a brief silence on the line. Loriah could hear the wheels in Fiona’s brain turning, ramping up for what could be the story of her career.

How ironic, Loriah thought. What makes her career will end mine.

“How much information can you give me?” Fiona asked.

“I have the mouse lab results on a flash drive and I’ll disclose my JULY 2020

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son’s allergy test results as long as you leave his name, and mine, completely out of this.”

“Done and done. Can you overnight the flash drive?”

“I’m on my way to FedEx right now.”

“That’s perfect. Thank you, Loriah. I’m sure this was a difficult decision.”

Loriah sighed, overcome with weariness now that her role in this clusterfuck was nearing its end. “It wasn’t, though. When I saw my son lying in that bed, threaded through with tubes, I knew I couldn’t do that to another person’s child.” Loriah sighed again. “Oh, and Fiona?”

“Yes?” “Throw out all your mayo.”

“Dumping it into the trash as we speak.” *** Alex got better. Now that they knew what they were dealing with, the doctors gave him a new type of antihistamine that calmed his violent allergy symptoms. And, of course—they cut all mayo from his diet. They hadn’t cut it from all hospital dining options—but Loriah knew that they would, as soon as Fiona’s article was published.

And when that article did come out, three days later (wow, Fiona sure put the rush on that one, God bless her), it might as well have been a harbinger of the apocalypse given the public outcry.

As you can imagine, Loriah was fired. Jeff had a security guard present during that meeting, not so much for legal reasons as for the simple fact that Jeff knew that being in a room alone with her was dangerous—his hands were making involuntarily gripping gestures that would fit nicely around Loriah’s whistleblowing throat.

And then there was the flurry of lawsuits. Jeff/Natural Light Foods sued Loriah, Steve sued Jeff, and millions of consumers—every John, Jane, and Joe who had been feeling a bit under the weather lately—sued Natural JULY 2020

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Light. The FDA came down hard on the company, and the board fired Jeff.

And then the board had to basically go fuck off because between the lawsuits, the settlements, the public relations nightmare, the FDA investigation, and the loss of billions of dollars worth of product, Natural Light had to declare bankruptcy.

ASS mayonnaise didn’t get to poison anybody else. *** You’re probably thinking: but what happened next? Did Loriah get out of Jeff’s lawsuit unscathed? Did Alex really stay better? What about Fiona, or Steve?

Well, I can’t answer all of your questions, but I’ll try. Loriah did indeed hire a damn good lawyer, who argued that Loriah had been acting in favor of the public good when she gave the mouse results to a reporter.

Luckily for Loriah (and for Steve’s pending lawsuit against Jeff), Steve had recorded their earlier meeting with the prickly CEO. They had proof that Jeff knew ASS was bad but shoved it into consumers’ mouths anyway.

But, of course, Loriah did steal company property and publish it.

She did violate her NDA. But the judge was sympathetic—her own daughter had developed a rash after eating two helpings of creamy potato salad. In the end, Loriah had to pay a small pittance to Jeff and to the (nearly extinct) Natural Light Foods. With the rest of her mayo money she paid her lawyer and then set up a non-profit public interest group with the express purpose of monitoring and publicizing, when necessary, the dangers of food additives.

Steve won his lawsuit, and was awarded $5 million. He contributed half to Loriah’s non-profit.

Alex really did stay better. He never touched mayo again, even regular, non-Natural Light mayo. The bleeding stopped, his breathing returned to normal, and he didn’t have another seizure. He played soccer in the fall and broke all sorts of school records.

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Fiona parlayed her blockbuster article into a book deal. Her book, Mayonnaise, won a Pulitzer and topped the New York Times Bestseller list for twenty-two weeks in a row. She donated a large portion of her profits to Loriah’s organization.

Mayonnaise is now being made into a movie, which is probably why you were curious about how this all happened in real life. I should let you know that some of the actors aren’t actors at all—Loriah is playing herself, as are Steve and Fiona. Alex has gotten older, and can’t really pass for a kid anymore, but he’s on set every day during his summer break from college to support his mom.

Oh, and the craft table doesn’t have a single drop of mayonnaise. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Why do people buy “light” or “zero calorie” food and drinks? Is it really as simple as, “they want more, but don’t want to be overweight” or is there something else individually, or culturally, going on?

2. Before being released to the public, should a new product (food additive, car, soft drink, cell phone, etc) have to prove it is safe, or should it be released until it is proven it is dangerous? What is our current system?

3. What do you think Loriah’s response to the email would have been if she had read it, but no one she knew had personally gotten sick? It Loriah a “good person” or just a person with a personal story?

4. Given that companies (as an entity) can never have a “personal story” with a product the way Loriah did, can a company ever be expected to respond the way Loriah did?

5. Does the fact that the company lost billions of dollars, declared bankruptcy, and likely had to lay off 1000’s of employees matter at all in determining the best course? Does it matter that many naturally occurring foods you can buy in the store, when eaten in sufficient amounts (or in certain ways), can also kill you? ***

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The One That Damned Me DL Shirey *** “Sent u email about Jesmyn. Please read.� S The text from the Ex was short and sweet, like Susan used to be.

The message nearly sobered me up. I was suddenly warmer, caused by the friction of memories rushing back from five years ago. The flip phone in my hand felt twice as hot, so I dropped it in the sand as if scalded. I stared at the message until the screen blanked black. Like my life after Jesmyn.

I don't know how Susan found me. I go by Neil Daniels now.

Anyone who remembers the Old Me was in Olathe, Kansas. My neighbors changed my name before I did, a convenient transposing of letters from Nate Draper to Date Raper.

Even in Jesmyn's version of the story no intercourse occurred. But according to Kansas law, sexual misconduct with a minor, any act at all, is charged as statutory rape. And that awful nickname followed me through hearings and firings, trial dates and death threats. Even after my innocence JULY 2020

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was established, in the eyes of Olathe, I was never not guilty. By the end it was easier to change my name. To change the circumstance I would have had to see it coming.

Jesmyn always got by. Smart girl, a solid B-average, without even trying. That was the trouble, nothing was ever hard for her, except maybe her upbringing. She was always delivered to me for counseling after one mishap or another. She never asked for my advice, but I gave it anyway; standard language from the Counselor's Handbook: concentrate on school, up your GPA, get involved in extracurriculars, volunteer in the community.

She wasn't interested in my opinion about what good colleges required.

She wanted to go, all right, but the only two requisites I ever heard her mention were 'is it far away?' and 'do rich boys go there?'

I knew her family enough to recognize a low-rent life on the wrong end of town. I asked Jesmyn how they were going to afford a scholarship if it didn't pay a full ride? She didn't answer. Jesmyn had this way of crooking one eyebrow, as if to say the rumors were true: the same way she got her new clothes or would get the car she wanted. Daddies were easy to find, even at 17. *** I live cheap in Baja. My old teaching certificate gets me jobs: ESL for those looking to do business north of the border; a seasonal cruise ship gig teaching Spanish phrases to fat touristas who want to barter at the shops in port; tutoring local high-schoolers who aspire to college in the States. Some things never change.

My ex-wife used to say I gave too much time to everybody else's kids and none to my own. Her sarcasm was code for disappointment that we never had children. For Susan, there was no affording a family without her high-paying job. She said she would have gladly resigned her paycheck to have babies, if there was more than my teacher's salary coming in. Not like I didn't try. I got my Masters at night and pushed for promotion to JULY 2020

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school counselor, with an eye on vice principal. But a family for us didn't happen. While my career rose like a low hill-climb on a treadmill, hers spiked the mountaintops. My wife set all thoughts of motherhood on the back burner after her promotion, just as the rumblings about Jesmyn and me heated up. When the whispers grew louder, Susan was staying late in Kansas City to work. And when the accusations surfaced, Susan didn't come home at all. She never believed my pleas of innocence, not when she saw the infidelity with her own eyes. Our family of two ended then and there.

Now, about the other two: Jesmyn and Melissa called themselves unidentical twins and were inseparable, even before high school. From the back, Melissa looked like a guy. She was skinny-straight from shoulder to hips, blunt haircut, baggy jeans and t-shirts. Jesmyn was all curves, clothes too tight to pack them all in, and chestnut hair billowing down her back.

They'd walk hip to hip, each with one hand shoved in the other's back pocket, their tanned arms forming an X. And they laughed exactly the same: over-the-top, with the first ha extending long and shrill, sputtering away to a cackle. You could hear it all over school, like the mating calls of birds; first one would start and the other would rise up in tandem. In public, they were never apart. In private, word had it that they teamed-up on boys.

I imagined the crook in Jesmyn's eyebrow when asked if it was true.

They were certainly together that day in the girls' locker room when caught snorting coke. Coach Mercanti's camera phone snapped proof: Jesmyn face down next to a sink, Melissa with her head tossed back, a rolled-up dollar between her fingers. Coach sent me the picture after she delivered Jesmyn to my office. It's one of two pictures I've kept from 2009.

As self-torture, I guess, I also kept the one that damned me. *** WiFi is spotty here in Rosarito. I fancy myself a better class of beach bum when I sit beneath a palapa with a laptop next to my shot glass and bottle. A computer and cell phone are needed to exist on the margins. Little JULY 2020

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else. I can count down the past few years in diminishing returns and abandoned possessions: a storage locker left behind, a car donated to charity, my old name replaced. Nate Draper still exists online in links to old news headlines and a deserted Facebook page. One of the last things I did before leaving the States was to get his legal docs digitized and stored in the cloud. But there's never been a need to download the divorce decree or birth certificate or social security card. Neil Daniels has a driver's license, passport and Gmail. It's all I need to get by.

Right now I'm too lazy and too drunk to make an effort to find a better wireless spot. A warm summer shower drips off the dead fronds that roof this picnic table. The storm is stalled out at sea. It roils the waves, but there's only an edge of clouds above this beach, enough to rain. Enough to keep me working the bottle and retrying the Internet connection from here. No matter how many times I check, the signal is too weak. When I drink like this, all I want to do is access Flickr and look at photos from my old life; to remember Nate before Jesmyn, when happy times meant vacations with Susan, weekends with friends, potlucks at work, and dogs playing fetch. I always get caught up in relived memories and forget to stop scrolling, only to see the two pictures that end Nate's archive.

Ironic that the photo of Jesmyn and Melissa snorting coke never found its way to Facebook. Coach Mercanti sent it to the school counselors when she delivered the girls for discipline. They were put in separate offices, Melissa in Ms. Slater's and Jesmyn in mine. Television cop shows did it all the time, divide up the suspects to see if their stories jibed. Unlike TV, our offices had tall glass windows between them. All Jesmyn and Melissa did was make faces at one another and laugh like birds. Things only got serious when I lowered the blinds between the offices and shut my door.

Ms. Slater later testified to what transpired in her office. When the blinds came down, she said, it was like a circuit broke between the two JULY 2020

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girls. Melissa suddenly found herself alone, not able to make eye contact with her friend. No matter what questions were asked, Melissa did not answer, would only look sideways at the blinded window with panic in her eyes. Perhaps it was the drugs, Ms. Slater said, but something fed Melissa's agitation. When asked what was wrong, Melissa demanded to know what Jesmyn was doing alone with Mr. Draper and why wasn't anyone checking on them. Melissa's anxiety became a restless fidget, then she urgently rifled through her purse to retrieve her phone. To call the police, Ms. Slater said.

Ms. Slater was confused about what happened next. She saw the girl poke 911 on the phone, but reflecting on it later, had second thoughts whether the phone was on or not. Ms. Slater's main concern at the time was to avoid the added complexity of police involvement, so she tried to grab the phone from Melissa. A brief tug-of-war ended in Ms. Slater losing her balance and Melissa screeching, I'm leaving now, as she bolted from the office.

I heard the ruckus next door and figured Melissa was being as obstinate as Jesmyn was distracted. Rather than listening to me, Jesmyn seemed more interested in the noises behind the window blinds. When she heard Melissa's exiting words, Jesmyn stood up. I thought she was going to leave, instead she came around my desk. As I swiveled to face her, Jesmyn dropped to her knees.

Melissa shouted Hey! an instant before she pushed open my office door. In reflex I looked up into a flash from her camera. I contend my expression was the surprise from Melissa's sudden entry, everyone else saw open-mouthed exaltation. Jesmyn had thrown her face into my lap just before the camera clicked. *** When the rain stopped, chicas exited the beach bars and walked the sand, open for business. I call them Foreign Exchange Students, JULY 2020

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exchanging their bodies for foreigners' money. It's sad that it's a good way to make a living in Rosarito, even sadder that there are always more customers than young women.

I'd be lying if I said the chicas got tired of me turning them down and I never went. Every so often I'd succumb to a long day's lazy heat and the fog of tequila, especially when a new face appeared without the dead eyes of those more experienced. I'd go with her, not to forget my past, but to cement it into my brain, using muscle memory to bring back my old life.

I'd close my eyes to the fine brown skin beneath me, trying to resurrect those carefree days and reimagine the woman I wanted most.

But today I'd not need the chicas. Susan's text had taken my mind back to Kansas.

After the storm cleared, the sun harshed the sand in retribution for morning rain. With the heat came the WiFi signal and an enthusiasm that cleared the effects of drink from my head. It had been so long since I'd heard from Susan and I'd hoped for a long email catching me up on her life, filled with words of nostalgia or regret. Yet she wrote only three words, you were right, typed above a pair of links.

The first link sent me to The New York Times and the announced engagement between a Dartmouth College undergrad and a young heir to a tobacco fortune. In an accompanying photo, the man was seated, his shoulders draped by Jesmyn, posed in radiance. She hadn't changed. The only difference I could see was the look in her eyes; the unabashed fire that I remembered had been replaced by a contented twinkle from the photographer's studio light.

Dartmouth News, the second link, broke the story of a scandal with an unnamed coed and a married professor. He was forced to resign in shame. It was a hauntingly familiar account without an accompanying photo, yet I could still see the crook of Jesmyn's raised eyebrow. The same look she gave me after her testimony to the Olathe School Board. That was JULY 2020

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the last time I saw her, just before I went in to tell my version of the incident. My word against allegations in a photograph.

A full year went by between the school board hearing and the trial date. My career, my marriage and a meager bank account didn't survive the interval. Pariah is the fancy term to describe what my standing had become in the community; as if my neighbors needed reminding, the upcoming trial reentered the headlines. Then, two days before the court date, Melissa recanted her story, admitting to the "joke" they played on Mr. Draper. Whatever denouement befell the other players, I don't know.

Done in Olathe, I couldn't leave Kansas fast enough.

I pulled the flip phone from my pocket, set it on the picnic table without opening it. I wanted to talk to Susan, ask her why she waited so long to contact me in the aftermath of Jesmyn's lies. The longer I thought about it, the more I wanted a drink. The tequila sloshed from the bottle, overfilling the shot glass and pooled on the scarred weathered table top.

Instead of cracking the phone I commanded the computer to find Flickr. I started with the image that ended Nate Draper's life, one well-lived by the documentary evidence of all the photos above it. That man is a stranger now, in both circumstance and appearance. His dark hair is gone, the cultivated stubble-trimmed beard has become a dry patch of weeds.

That pale man, once fully fed, is now crisp-skinned and thin, with squint lines caused by Mexican sun and the effort it takes to look back on the past.

I scroll the pictures on Flickr from bottom to top, viewing another man's life in reverse: his promotion from teacher to counselor, playing fetch with Jasper in a park, summer booze cruise with Susan. As the photos fade back in time, the man's face blurs, but Susan's doesn't. It grows less careworn, happier, unwrinkled by events not yet transpired, when a future with a loving husband was all she could see. This is the face in my fantasies, the one that makes me feel young, that moves me to find a brown-skinned girl and inhabit Nate Draper's world once more. If only for a short time.

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I scan the beach, squinting at the brightness of sand. There are no chicas in sight. The pound of surf is interrupted by a chirp from my flip phone. Another text from Susan: “Second thoughts. Don't read email. Some things r better left 2 the past.” S ***

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Discussion Questions 1. In the 3rd paragraph in the story, the narrator says, “Even after my innocence was established, in the eyes of Olathe, I was never not guilty.” After reading that in the story did you think the narrator had, or had not, committed “statutory rape?” Did being found “not guilty” by a court effect your opinion of him at all? Why, or why not does it change your opinion?

2. Because of the false allegations, the narrator, (1) lost his wife, (2) lost is house, (3) received death threats, (4) changed his name, and (5) left the country. What, if any, punishment should his false accuser have received that would be equitable?

3. Given that the ongoing (worldwide) lifetime damage to the narrator is employers (and people) who google search his name and find the newspaper articles, should he be allowed to have the false allegations in news articles be removed from online websites?

4. Even though the narrator was innocent, if you are being 100% honest, would you personally feel comfortable with him around your own child in a school environment?

5. Given how quickly, and easily, this happened to the narrator, is it correct to say that any man, at any time, could have his life ruined?

What protections, if any, would you put in place to prevent this from happening to others in society, or to you personally? ***

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TYLER W. KURT

Patchouli Lost Tyler W. Kurt ***

Part I I don’t get to say her name; that’s the rule, right? You don’t get to use real names. So, let’s call her “Patchouli.” Not that she smells like patchouli, she doesn’t, and frankly she doesn’t have dreadlocks or wear tie-dyes, but when I talk to her it reminds me of the way the smell of patchouli makes me feel. I know to most people patchouli smells like dirty hippy, but for me it’s a comfort smell. Like bare feet on cool tile, white bed sheets on a windy line, and early Beatles. She’s that feeling. She’s Patchouli.

I pick up the phone, kick my feet up on my desk, and call her.

“What’cha up to? Want to go for coffee?”

“Ah … you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Are you watching a bear ride a tricycle, because that always amazes me. How do they get their little paws on those peddles?” I lean the phone on my shoulder and move my hands in circles. I hear a faint laugh on the JULY 2020

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other end of the phone and imagine the half-smile that goes with it. It’s interrupted by a BANGING in the background. “What’s that?”

“Yeah … um, that would be my ex-boyfriend.” I wait for her to explain.

Her tone goes casual, as if to imply she’s told this story before. “He had a job interview. He asked me to come with him to the mall to go shopping for interview clothes. He showed me a shirt, I told him I didn’t think he needed to buy it; that he had nicer shirts at home. That somehow got interpreted to mean I thought he had bad taste in clothes, which … sort of set him off.”

“What do you mean by ‘set him off?’”

“You know, ‘set him off.’ Like the typical, abusive, girl … hitting …thing … archetype.”

I pull my feet off the desk and sit up in my chair. “Heroes and villains are archetypes, guys who hit girls are demoted to being cliché.” I lean down to put on my shoes.

She continues, “Yeah, well, at any rate, so now I’m in the bathroom.”

“T-Mobile?”

“Verizon.”

“Wow, my cell phone hardly ever works in the house, much less in the bathroom. So, did you check the cell phone coverage in the bathroom in anticipation of this moment, or was it serendipity?” There’s another loud BANG in the distance as I lace up my shoes.

Momentarily distracted, she pulls focus back to our conversation.

“Yeah, so he’s been banging for over an hour.”

I grab my keys and head out. “I’m on my way-” “-No, don’t do that! He’s not … good.”

The engine hums and I start driving. “How old is this guy?”

“Nineteen.”

“White?”

“Yes.” JULY 2020

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“Does his Dad make over or under $100,000 a year?”

“Over, way over.”

“And is his car worth over or under $30,000?”

“Over.” I turn left out of my complex.

“So, let me get this straight. You want me to be worried about a rich white kid, nineteen years old, whose daddy bought him his car, who hits 110-pound girls and refuses to take his medication.”

“How’d you know he doesn’t take his medication?”

Stuck at a red light, I’m better able to give the conversation my attention.

“Because there is always some medication some rich suburban white kid refuses to take. Because he’s not a person, because he’s a cliché.

Archetypes I steer clear of, but I’ll kick a cliché’s ass all day long. Pack a bag, I’m on my way.” The light turns green.

When I get to Patchouli’s apartment complex my heart beats fast. My eyes dart across the area faster than they should. It’s the rush before a fight. I turn the corner to see her apartment, but he’s not there. Gone fishing maybe. Up the stairs I knock on her door, glancing around all the time. The peephole goes dark for a moment, then unlocks and opens. The smell of home billows out and hits me. Then I see her, backpack in hand, silver bracelets on her wrist, just as I remember. Worried, she looks past me to the surrounding area. After a scan of the area she focuses on me.

“He quit banging a few minutes ago. I don’t know where he went.”

“Do you want me to stay here, or do you want to come with me?”

“I want to go.”

Part II We pull into a Cold Stone Creamery. “What are we doing?” she asks.

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I turn the car off, turn, and face her.

“Well,” I say in exaggerated words, “In my family, we have very few hard and fast rules, but one of them is this: ‘When you call a friend, only to find that friend has locked herself in her bathroom to hide from her abusive ex-boyfriend, and you come over to get her from her apartment, afterwards, you must go for ice cream.’”

Patchouli gives the smile I imagined on the other side of the phone.

She tilts her head down, and then turns one of the silver bracelets on her wrist in habit. She looks back up to me, glean in her eye. “That’s the rule, is it?”

“It’s a seldom used rule, practically forgotten. I wouldn’t be surprised if your family had the same rule.” I reach for the keys and threaten to start the car. “Now if you want somebody else to come and pick you up from your apartment, I’m happy to take you back and you can call someone else.

But if I’m the one picking you up, you’ve got to follow my family rules.” A wide smile gives way as a tear forms at the corner of her eye. She quickly wipes it away.

“Then I guess I’ll have to eat ice cream.”

Ice cream in hand, sitting outside, the conversation continues. A cool breeze blows the shade umbrellas and they rattle around the center hole in the table.

“So,” I say, purposefully talking with too much ice cream in my mouth for comic effect, “I have questions.” Patchouli turns her spoon upside down, licks the ice cream off it, and tilts her head.

“Questions?”

“Yes. You see, you’re the first person I’ve ever known in an abusive relationship that I know well enough to ask questions to. So, it’s not that I want to pry, but I’m wildly curious to learn about something I totally don’t understand.”

She points her spoon at me in better spirits, “So I’m a science JULY 2020

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experiment?”

“No, you’re not a science experiment, you’re source material to a slice of America I never get to interact with, like people without a college diploma, or everyone I walk by at the State Fair with bad teeth.”

“I’m flattered.” She takes another bite of ice cream. “Okay, shoot.”

“How’d you meet Cliché?”

“Mutual friend at a party.”

“And did he seem aggressive, or mean, or off-center when you met him? Did something seem not quite right or did he seem totally normal?”

“Totally normal.”

“Do you know if his dad ever hit his mom?

“He never said, but I get the impression yes.”

“And how long until you two slept together?”

She takes the ice cream out of her mouth in mock offense, “None of your business!”

“Okay, well tell me this. When you all were intimate, was he aggressive, deviant, passive, or well-balanced? Was he into chocking or sodomy or anything that would generally be considered inappropriate sexual behavior in Iowa?” A family at the next table glances at us, then gets up and leaves. Patchouli sets down her ice cream, gives an idle turn on a bracelet, and looks away.

“He was … yeah … um, he liked it when I … um, went down on him.

Wanted that all the time. I mean all the time, but refused to return the favor, so to speak. As for if he was into anything Iowa would disapprove of … I wouldn’t really know as he’s the only guy I’ve ever been with, so I don’t really know what ‘normal’ is.”

“Whoa, he was your first?”

She looks back to me, “And only.”

I hold up my hands in mock surprise. “Okay, for future reference, that’s the leadoff to the answer, not the addendum. You lead with he was JULY 2020

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my first, then you go into his love of oral sex.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for future reference.”

“And so, what was the triggering event for you leaving him, because these things never just happen on some random Thursday. Did you get sent to the hospital, an epiphany when you were in church, another guy that boosted your self-esteem, a teacher, a hallmark card, did he kick the family dog … dear lord tell me it had something to do with a bear on a tricycle…”

“What is it with you and bears on tricycles?”

“They impress me! How do you train a bear to get on a tricycle? To think this is normal bear behavior? That’s what I want to know. Who is the person that first explains to the bear, ‘No, no, no, this, this is how bear life is really supposed to be. This is normal. And quit dodging the question, what made you dump him?”

A long pause, her hand goes back to her silver bracelets, and she looks away. The air seems to go stale. “Actually, he broke up with me…”

“Oh.”

Part III We spend the next two days together; doing nothing really. We talk about Cliché when she feels like talking, but mostly we goof off. Watch a movie. Have lunch. Take a walk in the garden at a friend’s house. Feed their chickens and play with a rabbit. Walk in a park and eat pizza. It’s amazing how easily two days of nothing can pass.

Through all this the phone calls and text messages from Cliché keep coming. Six before she wakes up. Another fifteen before lunch. And so it goes. She lets me listen to them sometimes; she calls it my “State Fair Research Project.” The mood swings are the most interesting part. In the span of an hour the messages go from “I hate you, you vile whore!” to “I miss you, I love you, why won’t you talk to me?” My personal favorite is JULY 2020

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“Call me, I’m worried. I just want to know you’re safe.” And then, after two days, the calls stop. Later that night we go back to her apartment.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep on the couch?”

“No, go home, you’ve done too much already!”

“I’m happy to stay until morning. I can just as easily do homework here as I can at home.”

“Go home!” she yells, as she leans her shoulder and it’s accompanying 110 pounds on me in an effort to push me to the door.

I keep talking, pretending not to notice the feather weight. “Okay, I’m going home. My cell phone will be by my bed. Call me if you need me to come back.” I stop at the door and turn around to face her. Standing at the door, everything again goes still.

“Thank you,” Patchouli says.

“Nah, think nothing of it.”

She leans in. I lean in in response and our foreheads touch. “No,” she repeats, “Thank you.” We rub noses, then slowly separate.

“Are you kidding me? All day, every day, I make choices and I don’t know if they’re the right ones and I don’t know if they’re the wrong ones.

It’s all perspective; it’s all shades of gray. Rarely, practically never, do I get the opportunity to do the right thing. Hell, I hardly know what the right thing to do even is. Genocide. Stop genocide. That’s it. That’s pretty much the only thing I know for sure is the right thing to do. But really, when am I ever going to get the chance to stop genocide? Practically never. Thursday, maybe, Thursday.” She smiles and I continue.

“This is probably the only time in the last few years where I’ve had the clear opportunity to do something right. And you gave me that opportunity. And for that, frankly, I’m grateful. There will always be more homework to do, but there are few chances to do the right thing. I do, however, have a request. Consider it payment for services rendered.”

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“Oh God, what’s that!?”

“I want you to block his cell phone number.” “… okay.”

“You don’t need the stress of hearing his mood swings. If he wants to be crazy and abusive, let him be crazy and abusive via e-mail. Promise me you’ll block his cell phone number.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me again.”

“I promise again. I will block his cell phone number tomorrow.”

“Promise me a third time; this is important.”

“I promise you a third time.” I take a long moment to look her in the eyes.

“Okay, then we’re even.”

11pm and out the door I go, but not home. I cross the apartment complex to some stairs with a vantage point of her front door, just in case Cliché decides to turn up. I must have fallen asleep on the stairs around 1am. At 4am the cold wakes me up. Sore back, I grab my bag and drive home.

Part IV The following afternoon I pick up the phone and call. Patchouli answers.

“Hello.”

“Just calling to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“Did you call the cell phone company to block his number?” There is a long pause and my patience suddenly goes short.

“Yeah, about that—” “You didn’t block his cell phone number?”

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“He e-mailed me this morning and he’s a lot calmer now.”

“You e-mailed him back?!”

“Only to keep him from killing himself. He said he was going to kill himself.”

“I’m going to go with, ‘No great loss.’ And so now you aren’t going to block his number?” Another long pause.

“No.” “You know you promised, right? You know this is the only thing I asked of you, right?”

“I know. And I know from your perspective you think blocking his number is the right thing to do, but I’m not going to cut someone out of your life just because they are sick. I’m not going to get back together with him and I’m not going to talk to him. But it’s not right to abandon someone.

It’s not right from my perspective to do that to a person.”

My face goes flush. A long time passes where I don’t know what to say. Finally, I mutter something and hang up the phone.

Part V Days pass. Having had time to “process,” I call again. She picks up the phone. I start the conversation right where it left off.

“Here’s the thing. You promised. You gave me your word. It wasn’t an idle promise. It wasn’t a ‘I promise to bring back some milk’ promise. It was an important promise, a promise you made three times, and you broke it.”

“I know, but I can’t keep it.”

“Then you shouldn’t have promised! Okay, let’s backtrack.

Realistically, there is only one reason to take phone calls from someone who hits you. You take their calls because you are hoping they’ll stop hitting you so you can get back together with them. That’s it, that’s the only reason, regardless of what you say. But guys who hit girls always hit JULY 2020

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girls. It’s like when someone stops smoking. You’re always a smoker, you just didn’t smoke today.” She starts to respond, but I interrupt her.

“However, although I don’t agree with your choice, I can understand it.

Paradigm shifts are hard to do. I get that.”

“But,” I continue, “the breakdown in my head is this, if a girl who goes back to her abusive ex-boyfriend is an acquaintance, and they keep going back to their abusive ex-boyfriend, then you cut them loose so they don’t bring your own life down. But if they’re a friend, an actual real friend, you support them, time and time again, even when you know they’re making the wrong choices. Because that’s what friends do.”

“But, and here’s my problem, friends keep their word. And if they don’t keep their word, then they’re not a friend. So, this is what I’m stumbling with. By not blocking his number, you, in one action, went from being a friend to being an acquaintance because you broke a promise, and from being a person who was getting over an abusive ex-boyfriend to a person who is going to have continued abuse that I have to cut loose. So, you’ve managed to two things in one action and that’s … that’s hard for me to take in.” There is a long silence before I continue.

“And … I just want to be sure … I want you to be sure, this is really what you want to do. And that you are … aware, of what you are doing?”

Another long pause before she quietly answers.

“I can’t block his number.” I nod my head in acceptance.

“Okay, fair enough,” and I hang up the phone.

The following day a silver bracelet shows up on my front door. I e-mail to say thank you but get no response. I e-mail a few more times over the next few months in a vague effort to be social for some purpose I don’t truly understand. I’ve never gotten a response. Fair enough bear … fair enough. *** JULY 2020

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Discussion Questions 1.

The narrator in the story says with true friends, “For the big things, they keep their word.” Is that true? Can you be a true friend to someone and break your word to them?

2.

Is the narrator being ethical by totally cutting off all communication with Patchouli? Is he is doing it to help her, or to help himself?

3.

If Patchouli came back to the narrator after another round of abuse, do you think the narrator would again support her? Do you think he should?

4.

Is Patchouli in any way responsible if she stops talking to Cliché and Cliché follows through on his threat and kills himself? Does she have an obligation to tell someone about his threat to hurt himself?

5.

Does the narrator have an ethical obligation to call the police and report what has happened?

6.

Is the narrator a good person? ***

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MARGARET KARMAZIN

This I Do For You Margaret Karmazin *** Everyone made it clear that I was special. Of course when very young, I took this for granted but later on questioned it. And much later on I hated it.

“Dear Ah-Deet,” some old female would mutter as she stepped into our loogan, which, due to the constant attentions of my mother, was exceptionally comfortable, even luxurious. “I have come to see the SavingOf-Life and to bring him a little pleasure.” And she would bend down to stuff into my mouth some treat she’d concocted from hamata mixed with nectar or some other sweet and perhaps nut paste for extra flavor. By the time she had gone, I would have devoured the entire bag full. Already, though only five years old, I was almost twice the size of other children my age.

The cries of the other children playing could be heard through our high up windows, but I couldn’t see what they were doing. Our loogans are constructed of processed stone and mostly underground with just the top sticking up over. The round structures are finished off nicely inside with JULY 2020

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thick plaster, polished wood and pewter or brass trim, then decorated with colorful woven carpets and pottery. As I saw on the picture-viewer, artistic people painted their walls with fabulous designs, though in our house no one was a painter and my mother did not deem this frill necessary.

Mother did not go out to work and I once asked Aunt Reeni, one of my mother’s sisters, “Where does Mother get our money?”

Reeni just smiled. “You are taken care of, Sweetness. Never worry about that.” And she would feed me more delicacies.

But I continued to wonder. They told me that Father had died right after my and my siblings’ eggs hatched. For some odd reason my brothers and sister had been sent to live with the aunts. Supposedly Father suffered an accident while working on a bridge over the Kuli River. He was an engineer. Later on I would question this, whether it was accidental. If he had lived, would he have allowed what happened to happen?

They tell me that he (and I have seen pictures), was unusually tall and strong. His four legs were, they describe, thicker than the norm and capable of pushing him five times his height into the air should he choose to jump. His thorax was wide and muscular, tapering to a slim waist that, according to reports, fascinated the females, as did his scent.

“Only your father could have produced someone like you,” Mother remarked once and when I asked her what she meant, she changed the subject. She never, as far as I know, had another mate. She did not seem to mind that her sisters raised my siblings.

“Why don’t Teti, Voon and Meela live with us? Why is our family different?”

“It just gives me more time to take care of you,” she said, which was odd since other mothers in other loogans took care of their many children.

But then other children did not look like me.

“Why can’t I go too?” I blurted out to Mother and Aunt Reeni when she came to accompany my mother to a village meeting.

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“Children do not go to meetings,” Mother replied.

“Teti told me they do,” I countered. By now, Teti and I were nine years old. I envied him as he was slender and strong, his antennae were finely feathered at the ends and like our father, he could jump very high.

Mother looked angry. “Teti will stop feeding you false information or he will not be welcome to visit again.”

“My own brother?” I said, shocked.

She said nothing but looped her bag around her neck and ascended the steps to leave the loogan. She had forgotten to turn on the pictureviewer for me and left me in the silence. With great effort, I pulled myself up from the pile of cushions I lived on and slowly crossed the room to turn it on myself. Though by now I was only nine, my muscles had atrophied and my weight increased greatly. While other Tratians my age could scramble up tree trunks and hang from branches or run up hills while carrying heavy objects, I was weak and as trembly as an old person. Yet everyone behaved as if this were normal.

The viewer entertained me less and less. The same old thing day after day. It depressed me to see people out in the world going to school, attending coming of age ceremonies, learning skilled trades, becoming scientists or artists or mechanics or … well, everything.

“I want to see Teti!” I demanded one morning. He had not been to our loogan for a long time. My sister Meela visited relatively often but though I loved her, she bored me. My other brother Voon had apprenticed to a mechanical engineer some distance from here and now rarely appeared. He was given room and board there.

“I am sorry,” said Mother, “but Teti is very busy with his own apprenticeship. He has very little time outside of his studies.”

I felt a large lump arise in my throat. I cannot fully describe the depths of my despair.

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“Why do I have to live like this?” I cried, but she did not answer.

Mother went outside to hang our washing to dry. She had changed the covers on all of my cushions. I rarely got up at all anymore and she or the servant, Gret, who now lived with us, took care of my excretions and general hygiene. My exoskeleton had grown, it was true, but in some places there were gaps and tender, unprotected flesh open to injury. Of course there was little chance of injury as long as I hardly moved.

“Mother,” I asked again one evening, “why do I live like this? Why is my life so different from the others?”

She did not glance my way, but continued to look at what she was doing, which was repairing a portion of the windowsill. She had to stand on a bench to reach it. “Why, Mother?” I shouted. My arms were so weak by then that I could barely raise myself up, even to communicate.

“You are chosen,” she said. But when I demanded an explanation, she would not answer.

I am fifteen and beginning to notice stirrings of trouble. Most evenings now, I hear raised voices in the street outside. “What is going on?” I ask Mother and she mumbles, “Oh, you know how things are. People are always worked up about something or other.”

“But what are they worked up over now?”

“Just about the crop, that is all,” she says. “Now you eat your meal; I have to go out. Gret will keep you company after he sees to your needs.”

Gret is somewhat of a mystery. He never talks about himself and though he has been with us several years, we do not know if he has a mate or children or even where he is from. Apparently not from our village since none of my aunts seemed to know him when he first arrived here. But then what would I really know since my life is limited to whoever comes to visit and that is only family or workers should something need repaired beyond Mother’s capabilities.

Gret brings me a generous serving of pickled hamata and settles down JULY 2020

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next to me to enjoy a small bowl of his own. He gets back up to turn on the viewer, then makes himself comfortable once more. The hamata is not up to usual standards.

“Why are we having pickled hamata?” I ask irritably. Since my only real pleasure anymore is eating, I don’t understand why Mother would serve that instead of fresher stuff.

“New hamata is in short supply,” says Gret.

I have never heard of such a thing. “What do you mean?”

Gret’s large black eyes do an odd slide toward the door then back to me. “Um, the shortage,” he mumbles.

“What shortage?”

He sets down his bowl. “The climate and all. You know, the trouble with the crop this year.”

“I don’t know anything about any trouble with the crop,” I say. “Why is there trouble?”

Gret looks around as if he is up to something he shouldn’t be. “The dryness. Because of the dryness.”

“No one tells me anything.”

For a moment, he seems to have trouble making eye contact. “Well,” he says, “you know how hamata is, being that it is half fungus and half chlorophyllic. The fungal half cannot flourish without the heavy summer rains. Come the change of the seasons then, there will not be enough to feed us.”

He looks at me long and hard after he says this and I experience a funny sensation.

“For your sake, we all need to pray for rain.”

“For my sake?” I repeat. “What do you mean?”

But he has finished his food and risen and gone to get me another bowl.

“No, take it for yourself,” I say when he returns. “I already had a big JULY 2020

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bowl and beside, I don’t really like it pickled.”

“Your mother would want you to eat it,” he says, his face closed and cryptic. He is being evasive and I understand that he feels he has said too much but I don’t comprehend why.

There seems to be more traffic outside – was there another meeting?

Mother comes in later than usual and looks disheveled and agitated.

“Your brother is coming to visit tomorrow,” she says.

“Which brother?” I ask, hoping it is Teti.

“Teti. His partner, Chana, has hatched her eggs. Of the four, only one survived, but Teti wants you to see the infant.”

I would much prefer going to see Teti and his new life but there is no hope for that now. I can barely move at all, so immense have I become.

“All right,” I say and close my eyes for sleep. There is nothing to look at anyway.

Teti arrives with his new son. He holds the infant in a sling around his neck and feeds it liquid hamata from a small bag with a tube.

“Let me see,” I say, though I cannot raise myself up, so Teti moves close and holds the child out for me. He is still the greenish color of infants and will not turn tan or brown for a while yet.

“He is cute,” I say. “I am sorry for your loss of the others.”

Teti looks downcast for a moment but soon recovers. “We will try again next year but considering how things are going right now, it might be best that we only have the one.”

“Why? How are things going? I don’t understand.”

Teti has the shocked expression on his face of someone who has made a blunder. “Oh, I mean…no one has told you?”

I quickly dart my eyes to see where Mother is then remember she has gone out to the cooling shed to get us something to drink. “No, no one has told me.”

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Long hesitation while my brother obviously tries to collect himself. “Um, the famine, Ah-Deet. We are having a terrible famine.”

“Because of the dryness?” I say, wondering if Gret is listening, wherever he is.

“Yes. It covers our entire district and several more to the east. We will have only half a crop of Hamata if we are lucky. In our tribe alone, we have over seven hundred people, many of them children.”

“What will we do?” I ask innocently, oh how innocently.

The infant has fallen asleep and Teti sits down on one of the many cushions. He looks stricken. I feel a stab of sudden, inexplicable fear. I realize that I have been feeling fear for a long time but it was covered up by my…despair?

“Oh, Ah-Deet,” he says.

“Tell me. TELL ME!” I yell, which exhausts me.

Mother has come back inside and she walks to the door between the rooms. Teti holds up a hand to stop her from entering. Obediently, she backs up and disappears. I feel hatred towards her, my own mother.

“You must,” says Teti, “have thought about your situation. You are fifteen, an adult. You must wonder why you are not out in the world as are others. You must have asked people the reason.”

If only I could sit up. I try to raise my head and Teti, instantly understanding, slips another cushion under it. “I have asked many times, brother, but no one will answer me! Do you not think that I hate my life here, hate what Mother and the others have done to me?”

“Your name alone, Ah-Deet, the Saving-of-Life, surely you knew.”

“How would I know anything? All I see are who chooses to come here and there are very few and none of them offer me any information. You are the first of my siblings I have seen in years! I am a prisoner and no one tells me why!”

He sighs and moves to hold my fat hand. “When you were hatched, JULY 2020

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you were chosen,” he says. “They choose the largest infants. Somehow our father escaped this – perhaps at the time of his hatching, there were many large infants.”

“What was I chosen for?” I whisper.

Teti holds my hand tighter. I can hear his joints click, as if he too is as dry as the landscape apparently is. His infant stirs but does not awaken.

“Ah-Deet, they have fed you to your enormous size in order to turn your body into a form of food in the event of famine.”

I cannot speak.

“Our bodies, if force fed over years, can be ground up into a fine paste that has twenty times the nourishment of Hamata and if made into pellets can sustain a good part of the tribal populace for a while. This is not to say the people will not be hungry, but they can survive. There are four others like you in their loogans now, waiting to be needed.”

I feel as if my head might explode. How could I have been so stupid for this long? Why didn’t I run away when I was small? If I had tried hard enough, I might have made it to another district where either such practices do not exist or they never have to worry about the hamata crop.

Even if I had been captured and used as a slave, it would have been better than this.

I know, I simply know, that my father would never have allowed this.

Teti stands up and his infant makes tiny clicking noises. I can see his little mouth moving. It comes to me that I will not see him grow up, nor any other children Teti might produce. All this time I had thought I was a Tratian like everyone else around me when in fact I am nothing but a giant bowl of hamata.

“Teti, you have always been my favorite sibling,” I tell him.

He gives me a long look with his glittering eyes. “Brother, I am working everyday to end this sort of thing. You know that I apprenticed with Seedah Wi’s farm, the largest in the district. He chose me to train as an agricultural JULY 2020

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scientist and I work with twenty-four others everyday to find a better solution to this problem.”

But we both understand that should he find it, it will be too late for me.

The Governor of the District arrives shortly. Mother enters the room behind him, not making eye contact with me. I have a sensation of wanting to murder her, though of course I cannot murder anyone, being as I am, totally helpless.

“Ah-Deet,” says the Governor, “you are a true hero, an honored being.

Your name will be carved into the wall at Government House. Your Mother and siblings will be honored for years to come. No one will surpass you in being revered.”

I want to spit at him, but something stops me.

The priest, whom I haven’t seen since a child, enters while holding the hands of two children, one female and one male. “Ah-Deet,” he says, “it is these you will be helping to save. These children who are our future will carry you within them. Our race will survive due only to you and the other Chosen ones.”

I have little choice but to accept my fate. How will they do it? Poison is not an option since that might contaminate the source of their nourishment. Will it be painful? I feel terror, though by now my mind is swimming as if I have swallowed some medicinal herb. Everyone leaves the room or I think they do. Is that someone moving behind me? Where is Gret?

I feel something shoot into the back of my neck. ***

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Discussion Questions 1. Is the main character, Ah-Deet, a hero for helping save the community?

2. Assuming there was no other way to store extra food, except in the bodies of others, is the community right in doing what it has done?

Does the individual outweigh the collective?

3. Who is the worst person in the story? The mother, the community as a whole, the person who Ah-Deet, or someone else?

4. Does a person have a duty to take actions for self-preservation? Does Ah-Deet apathy create culpability?

5. If you were living in this community, on the brink of starvation, would you take eat the remains of those that have been sacrificed to save others? Would you be willing to starve instead?

6. Is it fair to impose outside cultural norms about goodness and morality on another culture? Can we judge “right” and “wrong” for cultures not our own? Does the amount another culture goes against our values matter in calling their action permissible? (Murder vs. stealing vs. swearing.) ***

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