The n-Body Problem (9 page)

Y must have met with Dixon while I was out in the shed. They planned this. Apparently you can choose your parents.

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Dixon likes themes. I hate them.

“Let me go, Dix. I’ll leave you alone.”

It’s not like me to beg, and in another time I might have told him to do me in. But it’s a bad idea to die right here, right now. The woman is pinning my wrists with plastic cuffs.

“This is Doctor Anne.”

I am led into the community centre. I’m trying to figure out how not to die. I’ve come close before. It’s a terrible feeling. How dead are the dead? Doctor Anne sits me on a wooden chair in the middle of a stage at the front of the hall. The curtains are drawn. Dixon leans down close to my face. He looks like a bird of prey. His large eyes set deeply back under his white brow. I can’t see Y. I wonder if he can even look at me.

“Remempher us?”

Dixon isn’t forming sounds correctly. I stare into his mouth. The bottom lip is slack.

“Not nice to stare. I can’t make phlosive sounds. Not a phig deal. My liphs. My tongue.”

You have a stroke too, Dix? Or did your mouth just get sick of you?

“Anyway, I don’t talk aphout it. I have accepted it.”

I can hear chairs being dragged across the floor beyond the curtain.

“I have things I want to say to you. I missed you.”

Y and the doctor are not here. They are out in the hall moving chairs. Gonna be a show, I guess.

“Remempher when we killed those North Korean diphlomats in Indonesia? Then that other team in China, by the phorder?”

We were trying to start two regional wars. Not us exactly. Pender Mines.

“And we sat in that hotel. Got drunk. Watched TV with a couphle whores. Waited for one of our wars to start uph?”

One did. Pretty disappointing at the time. A border skirmish between North and South Korea. Not even the fight we were fixing.

“Too many variaphals. They should have just cleared territory on their own. They had the phower to do stuff like that.”

His impediment is making my stomach roll.

“Let me go, Dix. I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna go.”

Dixon laughs.

“These are great times to live. You’re right about that. I don’t kill these pheophle, man. They kill themselves. They wanna die! And when they do, I have a little going away pharty.”

Dixon believes he’s the last man on earth. I can see it in his eyes. He’s desperate to tell someone—me—what he’s discovered.

“I have put a man’s severed phenis in my rectum and you know what it did?”

I smell fried skin again.

“It swam uph my intestines like a fuckin’ fish. I could see it moving uph.”

I have seen what you do, Dix. I close my eyes.

“Don’t close your fuckin’ eyes, man!”

I feel his sharp fingertips push into my shoulders.

“I make wonders! I am dream! I am everything arriving and leaving at once!”

I let my head flop back. I don’t care. I just don’t want to die.

“I have a question. Do you think a dick is alive? Is it a snake? A worm? No. Dicks are much phigger than life. Life is infinitesimally small. Each spheck of ash out there. Each half molecule of dust is shaking with life. Every goddam atom.”

I picture Petra and Paula mixed in with the wet charred soup.

“So I am showing the atoms a great fuckin’ time.”

Dixon lifts his orange t-shirt. His gut moves. Bulges and rolling skin twist and coil in continuous motion.

“I have over a dozen pheckers in there. Sometimes they poph uph into my stomach. Only a matter of time before one sliphs up into my throat.”

“Don’t kill me, Dix. I work for people. I don’t give a fuck what you do.”

Dixon drops his shirt and lifts his prickled brow.

“You do? That’s what we need. We need jobs. I got a job. I work for somephody.”

Dixon stands and lays his long hands across his lower stomach.

“Curtains!”

Dixon steps aside, presenting me to an audience with his open hand.

“Phresenting, the man who would not die!”

The seats are full. All of Avening is here. Young and old. All the mothers and all the fathers and all the little children. And their bones are gnashing. Their faces have slipped. Their heads bob on strings. A man, whose naked body is entirely blackened, falls forward in the front row. A lump on his side breaks off. Y runs forward and props him back up. He places the shapeless mass, a baby, on his lap.

A banner across the back wall: “WASTECORP—Things are looking up!”

I can hear clanging sounds to my right. Metal in pans. A beep counting.

“That’s right, man! Old Dix is a government dick!”

Dixon steps out centre stage and faces his audience.

“Welcome, everyone! Soon you’re all going on a trip but first we have a show. Something nice to send you off with!”

Dixon turns to me. He has put lipstick on. It’s blood. His lame lower lip drools.

“We get phaid pher body, phal. You folks just don’t die fast enough.”

“Don’t kill me, Dixon. I’ll do anything you want. Make me suffer. I don’t give a shit. I don’t want to die.”

Dixon stands erect and turns on his toe.

“Folks, we have to move things along here. Phe-nder Mines should be moving in in a few hours. We gotta get you up above the clouds!”

Someone is pulling me up. Doctor Anne. I don’t resist. I don’t want to be killed suddenly. Pender Mines. That’s ridiculous. Dixon can say whatever he wants. Do whatever he wants. You don’t need to makes sense to me, Dix. Don’t even try.

“What you are aphout to witness, my friends, is a new innovation from the great minds at WasteCorph R and D. With the assistance of the lovely Doctor Anne, I intend to take you on a journey. Something for you to think about while the stars break your eyes and the sun dries your eyes.”

I am guided to a gurney. Two tables are wheeled to my sides.

“Today, we change what it means to be human!”

There are silver spider nests on the tables. Complicated medical instruments. My arms are strapped in. I look up. Y is tightening. This would be the time to say something. To break through to him. To squeeze an emotion.

Y is smiling. Y is happy. Y is old.

I feel a tear leave my lower lid. Not because I have been betrayed by the boy I saved. Not because I love him. Not because I love anyone at all. Not because I am going to suffer now. Probably unimaginable torture. But because I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.

Doctor Anne wipes the crook of my arm. Clinical habit. She inserts a needle. Something to keep me alive through this. Keep me alive. I look up into Doctor Anne’s face. She glances at me. Not a bad person. Not cruel. She listens to desperate pleas. I know she does. I know it.

I plead.

I have been unconscious. I can feel it. My hands and feet are prickling back to life. My eyes are stuck shut. I try to open them, but they won’t. I believe my eyes have been sewn shut. Maybe they have crusted shut? I even out my breathing. My heart is banging through my body. I will calmly take measure of this. I will find out more.

I am alive.

I can also feel movement. A light pull in my chest. A force. Gravity behind me. There is warmth on my face. I am being moved quickly. The sun above, the earth below.

I am dead.

I try to pull my lids apart. My hands are not moving. They hang beside me, they float. My legs move in fits. Did we know this? Did we know that we don’t die up here? That we feel it? That we know it? I am miles above the earth with billions of people. I need to stay calm. I need to not go mad. I breathe again. Easy, long breath. My heart begins to slow. I need to contain this. Contain myself. Take stock.

I have minimal sensation. Some of it, like breathing, might be memory, phantom breath. I have to retreat from my body. Leave my limbs. I have to change my thinking. I have to change what it means to be here. I am thought now. This relaxes me further. I am not going to die. I am not going to live. I am going to picture being here. My eyes are sealed shut. I start to think about whether this is an advantage, then I abandon the thought. I have no advantage. I have no disadvantage. When I relax, my eyes open. The light ravishes me. Sun fills my face and erases me. I feel like I am soaring. I have been distilled down to a tiny intense thrill. Soon, the whiteness separates into shapes. A circle. The moon. This light is the moon. Another circle. I feel myself bounce. I am happy. Nothing can hurt me. Nothing can stop this. I am laughing.

I am in a car. Y is driving. Dixon in the passenger seat. Ahead, a narrow hilly road. I bounce again. I turn and there is Doctor Anne’s face. She says something to Dixon. I can’t hear a thing. I can’t feel a thing. A reflection of the road flashes across me. I am behind glass. I am in a glass case in the back seat of a car hurtling down a country road. I’ll smash the glass. I push both my fists out but they don’t move. I try to kick.

My body has been wrapped. I am bound in tightly pulled linen. In a glass case. I thrash and try to roll against the glass. Doctor Anne says something again. I try to figure out if my arms are behind me or bound to my chest. I can’t find them. I am much smaller. I am in a cocoon the size of log. I stop moving. They have removed my arms and legs and encased me.

I am alive.