Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 (22 page)

The cargo cultists built mock runways, to lure the gods to bring them the gifts the Americans pretended they made themselves.

"We're that fragile?"

She shrugged. "We only intervene with a species on the eve of its suicide. We do the best we can, which, as it turns out, isn't all that good. We've tried to desensitize cultures through a series of manifestations, but that may not be working. Some models suggest it's part of the problem."

She took my hand and squeezed it. "I'm sorry, I'm speaking in the wrong timescale. You'll be fine, personally; your city, your commonwealth, your generation. Longer term, we're hopeful some of the cuttings will survive."

"The gardening metaphor," I said. "Ah."

"You'll be spread over a hundred worlds," she said. "Cultures are sensitive to initial conditions. You won't necessarily repeat yourselves, historically. At least we hope you won't... "

She trailed off, her expression sad. "You're not going."

"This is my planet." What was I
saying?
I closed my eyes. I couldn't look at her and say what I had to say. "These are my people. I can't." I felt a shiver ride up my spine. As if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. A weight I'd never known I carried. The madhouse door had swung open. But I wasn't leaving the asylum.

"I figured you'd say no."

"Then why ask?"

"I'm wrong a lot. And I like you."

"Then stick around and help us rebuild the culture. After you wreck it."

"That's not my job," she said.

"Your job won't get done, if you don't do it?"

She laughed. "No, they'd find someone else. But let's talk about you. What are you going to do for the rest of your life? Play your music?"

A half block away, a car alarm went off and the sound cut through my head like a heated wire through styrofoam. I fumbled for my ear protectors, as the throbbing headache struck. Waves of nausea, the taste of bile. I closed my eyes, and focused on my breathing, letting the moment pass.

"Oh," she said.

We walked home slowly. I was thinking about an experimental surgery for hyperacusis, one with a thirty percent success rate. A third of the time, the operation did nothing, and a third of the time, it made the condition worse. Suicide rates in the final third were high. Still, I could sign up to be a test subject, hope I made it into the trial.

"You know, there's no proof," I said. "Until the colonists leave. I have no way of knowing if anything you told me is true."

"Funny how that works, huh?" she said.

"I can't even be sure you're an alien."

"I could peel my skin off, if you want," Zena said. "Eat a gerbil?"

"Salt water!" I said. "Salt water will melt you!"

We both laughed about that. Salt water.

"You want a miracle?" She asked quietly.

I thought about it. One thing that seemed certain was that we, humans, had developed the ability to implant memories sometime over the last decade or so. The drug treatments developed for PTSD had had many unexpected applications. Computer graphics could create any kind of imagery imaginable. These images could be converted into memories with a combination of drugs and hypnosis. Even if she gave me a miracle now, tomorrow morning, I'd have no way of knowing if it was real, or a movie I'd watched.

"I still wouldn't know for sure."

She nodded. "It's hard to know the important things for sure."

I thought about Amy.

"We aren't allowed to do miracles anyway."

"Of course not."

"Last chance on the colonization thing."

"No, thank you. But, I'm glad you're doing it, transplanting us. Thank you. We deserve another chance."

We looked into each other's eyes.

"Okay, maybe not really, but I mean, if there's room, why not?"

"That's how we think about it."

She reached out and touched the side of my face, her fingertips cool, my skin tingling at the point of contact. I wanted to kiss her, and I knew she didn't want to. Yet. So I didn't.

"So, does a saucer pick you up?" I asked. "Do you teleport away?"

"I'm going to walk back to the subway," she said.

"That works too. Look, Zena, could I see you again, sometime?" My mouth was dry, and the words came out oddly. The first girl I'd asked out in a year was an alien. Probably. You have to start somewhere. "I enjoyed this visitation thing. Even though, you know, there was no probing."

Zena made the bad smell face. An awkward silence descended.

"Hah, hah," I added.

"Mail the Terran Embassy," she said. "Use the name Zena, next time your band plays out. I want to hear that music of yours that's so hard to describe."

Ouch.

I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. I opened my mouth to explain, and then thought, no, it didn't matter. I closed my mouth. She was an alien. I'd thought she understood about the hyperacusis. How I couldn't do the thing I most wanted to do any-more.

But I didn't want to talk about it.

We said goodbye. I closed the door on her feeling suddenly spent. I didn't feel like doing laundry, so I stacked it up and got it out of the way. I wandered around the apartment, looking at stuff. I'd purged the photos, the mementos, all the Amy stuff, but for the first time, somehow, she felt gone. That part of my life was over. Really over.

Instead I picked up my guitar. With the protectors, I could usually manage a song, or most of a song, before the hyperacusis got too bad to play. Tuning the guitar was also an unpleasant experience, but strangely, I'd done that yesterday, taking breaks between each string. It had taken hours. I found the guitar pick, a chip of plastic clipped from a recycled credit card, on the mantelpiece.

On impulse, I plugged into my Marshall, an ancient thing, with 3D-printed vacuum tubes. I turned a dusty knob up to a setting I hadn't used in a decade. My amp goes to eleven. I removed the ear protectors from around my neck, and threw them on the couch. I had a half bottle of oxy from a broken elbow I could use to glue my head back together before work tomorrow. You only live once.

I struck a chord, and the sound exploded from the amp, flooding the room, filling the spaces, my ears, my brain, with sweet fizzing electrical joy. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I shivered.

There was no pain.

I laughed so hard I cried. I lay on the carpet, with the guitar on my stomach, staring at the ceiling.

Maybe I had a shot at Zena.

Maybe we all had a shot.

The author tells us, "I want to dedicate this story to my grandfather George Phetteplace (1939-2012). He worked as a copy-editor and typesetter. He loved music, typography, basketball, and history. He was a Buddhist who believed he would be reincarnated. He was my first reader and biggest fan. This piece, my first since he passed, is meant to reflect my hope that there is a life beyond this one, a higher consciousness or another world, perhaps."

One side effect of the pills is that they make me dream. I dream about mice and secret societies.

I didn't used to, but now my brain is like everybody else's and I dream and talk in complete sentences and use big words. I write notes to my friends. Some of my friends write back.

I don't remember how I was before, just that I was something different. I don't remember how I used to act, but I do remember the things I used to love. My best human friend is Mikey and Shepherd is my German Shepherd and best dog friend. There is my teacher Miss Mary and my Momma who is now an angel because she died. I still love those things.

Dr. Steven says it is like I am being born. I would have picked a different time. The planet is sick with drought. Hot, sick, and dry. And there are other things, too. There are things in the sky that cast big shadows and even Mike notices but he doesn't know how to say it right.

Ooh eff oh, he goes.

But I know what they are really called because I have all my words now. Unidentif ied Flying Object. I say it because it is fun to say. It is funner to say than to look at. They are boring in the sky, so many of them casting round shadows on the side-walk. They are silver and pill shaped and huge and they never move, just sit there. That doesn't stop people from staring. Some people will stare all day.

I see these people when I take Shepherd out for walks. He used to be my service animal but now he is my pet. The strangers I pass are always looking up. And I try to be helpful when I say, "There's nothing to see up there," but people either ignore me or nod politely, which is another way of ignoring me.

People think there are aliens inside. I don't care until I meet one. He is in the park wearing sunglasses. He says, "Hey little girl, come here," except he says it all telepathic from across the lawn. So I walk across the lawn to tell him I'm not a little girl; I am fifteen years old.

When I get up close, I see that he looks like me.

"Hey, do you have Down syndrome?" I ask.

"Why yes I do," he says. But again, he says it without saying it, which is how I know that he comes from the sky. A mouse skitters past my feet and into the bushes. I think she is trying to eavesdrop.

The alien hands me a seed packet. "Grow some flowers." I examine the bag. The seeds are star shaped.

And we just stand there because I can't think of what to say. I am not good at talking to strangers. So I leave.

I will think of what to say and I will say it next time. And I know I will see him again, because I have seen him before, now that I think about it. Now that I am on pills, my memory keeps getting better and better, which is how I know I have seen him before.

When Dr. Steven asks me how my day was I leave out the part about the alien. I say my day went great and then I do his puzzles. I want the trial to be over so Mikey can have my medicine, too.

Alzheimer's. That is one of my new words. Dr. Steven's mice used to have it and then they didn't. Alzheimer's is what Mikey will get unless he gets my medicine. And I would have gotten it too. Everybody with Down's gets it if they live long enough. I have seen it happen to people who live at my house. Time goes out of order and your friends begin to swap bodies.

But my doctor says the pills are not ready for other people. They are for me only until the trial is over. He wants to be sure I am safe. Not like his mice.

Dr. Steven thinks I don't know about his mice. But I do know. He had a bunch of mice and they all had Down syndrome like me. He made his mice do puzzles, just like me. He gave them pills, same as mine. And then one morning, he came to work and all his mice were dead, and he still hasn't figured out what killed them. He doesn't know I know this. I have his passwords, I read his reports. He writes in his journal that it is okay to experiment on animals. I bet he hopes the aliens don't feel the same way about us.

I am smarter than my doctor, but I do not let on. When he gives me a puzzle, I take my time. When he asks me to write something, I mispell wurds on purpos.

After my meeting with Dr. Steven, I go to my room. There is a note under my bed. I get at least one note a day from my friends. I am never lonely.

PLANT THOSE SEEDS IN THE GARDEN, it says in messy bird scratchings. My friends have bad handwriting and good ideas.

Each of us at St. Anthony's Residential Community has a plot in the garden even though not each of us likes to garden. For instance, my plot is dirt and weeds. Mikey's plot is pretty with daisies and caterpillars. I dig a hole in my plot and pour all of my seeds in there. I empty out the whole watering can of water on top of my seeds. We are rich; we can waste water if we want to.

Then I go inside to watch the TV. I used to watch cartoons. Now only the news is on.

Drought. Aliens. Drought. Aliens.

I wish the Olympics were on.

Drought. Aliens. And some people say these are related phenomena. But not the scientists.

I leave the TV room and head to the library. Every day I read one short story or one kids' book. It depends on my mood.

In the evening, after dinner, I walk out to the garden to see if flowers have grown yet. And yes, but there is only one. It is four feet tall with purple-blue petals. And now it is trying to talk to me. It wants to know about Rin Carnation. I am going to have to look it up.

I write a note, WHO IS RIN CARNATION? And leave it under my bed. The note I get back says I probably want to know about
re
incarnation and there is a diagram attached with lots of circles. Also, a Wikipedia printout. Of course I could have just gone to Wikipedia myself. I am allowed to use the internet without supervision now, but it is funner to ask my friends, and anyway my friends know more than the internet.

The next day, when I see the alien in the park, I tell him that he either needs to fix the drought or leave.

He says: "We would like to take you with us when we go."

I say: "Can you try to move your mouth when you talk like a normal person?"

"I will try." His jaw moves up and down out of rhythm with his words. I do not like this so I leave.

I decide that it is mean to ignore my flower like I have been, so I spend some time with her when I get home. It turns out her name is Flora and she is not lonely because she has the other plants in the garden to talk to. She teaches me how to say "hi" to the other plants.

And then the other plants all shout "hi" at me. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.

And now that we have said "hi" we can understand each other. So we chatter all at once.

"One at a time," I finally say.

But instead of going one at a time they all go in unison. They say they have solved the riddle of reincarnation.

I tell them that I have reincarnated. I know what the word means now. I say I used to have a swollen brain full of proteins that made me dumb and now my brain is clean. I say I am ashamed of who I used to be, when I look at my dumb drawings and the dumb things I used to write when I couldn't even hardly spell my own name. And now I am cured and I can spell all the words. But I am still dumb because there are still so many things I just don't understand.