Strange Mammals (7 page)
Authors: Jason Erik Lundberg
“Well, you did, and now I’m saying it back to you, because you need to hear it.”
“But, but what she did—”
“I know, Dad. I was there, remember? But I also remember that you never caught her with Darwin. You never stumbled in on them together. She told you the truth once the guilt had eaten at her enough to want to reveal it. You’ve confused things in your mind, conjured up this false composite memory from decades past. But it didn’t happen like that, Dad, and you forgave Mom long ago. You even walked her down the aisle at her and Darwin’s wedding, and I was so proud of you for that.”
“I—” Moss tried to swallow around the baseball that had just seemed to lodge itself in his trachea. “I need help, Alex. Please.”
“I know, Dad. I’m here. I don’t know if the knowledge will stick this time, but even if the Alzheimer’s steals this conversation away too, I’ll be here for you.”
Moss reached up to touch the perfect face of his perfect son, overwhelmed by the waves of love and patience that emanated from him. But at the same time, Moss’s stomach dropped at the thought that he wouldn’t recall this exchange, that he would continue tormenting his son with imaginary attacks on his ex-wife, that Alex would soon come to resent the constant search and rescue, that he would find Moss a burden no longer to be borne but instead dumped into uncaring institutional hands. How fragile and tenuous this connection with his only child, so easily frayed by his own stubborn resistance to time’s unceasing river.
As if reading his self-damning thoughts, Alex reached up and took Moss’s hand in his. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Moss, uncertain of the type or tenor of the inanities that threatened to spill out of his mouth, clamped tight his lips, nodded once, and followed his beautiful son back into the world.
Bodhisattva at the Heat Death of the Universe
Zha materialized in my front yard, having finally found me after an interval of roughly five million years, give or take a few millennia. He was human again, and male, wearing those ragged worn-out monk’s robes he seemed to cherish so much; they rippled and fluttered in the breeze, even though my little asteroid hosted no atmosphere and, therefore, no wind. Above us, the twin red supergiants of this system—which I’d long ago named Mother and Father, so much bigger and older than when I had first settled in this place—rotated in their dance of peanut-shaped illumination.
“Hello, Zha,” I said, continuing to rake pebbles into the form of a gigantic asterisk, the image reaching halfway round the asteroid’s face, taking patience and artistry and determination; he and I both knew what the message meant, and I suppose I’d done so in order to call him here. Despite millions of years of solitude, I supposed I still wanted the occasional contact.
Yha.
My name was projected, sent directly into my mind. I preferred the physical act of talking, of sending air up my esophagus to vibrate my vocal cords and produce sounds. The fact that no air could be found in the immediate vicinity was irrelevant, and both Zha and I were past such trivialities.
Have you finally decided to forgo this existence and travel with me into the Pure Land?
“Can’t a person call her former lover for a chat without leaping into the subject of existence-transcending? Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten how to engage in small talk?”
Zha’s expression remained neutral, but a dozen microscopic gestures flitted across his face. I smiled at the thought that I still knew how to irritate him.
What would be the point, Yha? We have had every conversation that it is possible to have, in so many incarnations and iterations that I have lost count. Even after achieving enlightenment, I remained in cyclic existence in order to guide every last sentient being to Nirvana, including you, who are now the last. I am tired, and the stars are tired. It is time to end this foolish game of yours.
“Game? You think I’ve been playing a game all this time?” I threw my rake down onto the carbonaceous chondrite and began kicking at the pebbles of my asterisk, scattering the image into unrecognizability. It seemed that my message had been both prescient and affirmative: Zha was still an unbelievable asshole. “You still don’t understand me, you arrogant bastard. Not during the many incarnations in which we were married, not when I was your daughter, or mother or father or brother or sister, and certainly not now. You want games? I’ll give you games.”
I dematerialized, leaving behind my corporeal form, my latest home, and the plants and pets I had conjured up from the asteroid’s physical material and manipulated for my amusement and companionship; I left it all to crumble and became pure consciousness, leaping light years with but a thought, pushing myself beyond the bounds of the Milky Way, skipping from one star system to another as easily as I once had skipped over the paving stones on a pond filled with artificially-enlarged koi, the pond where we had first met, all those endless lives ago. After I’d slipped from a wet stone and splashed into the shallow pond, Zha, crouching on the bank, had laughed, not maliciously, but with a wisdom that already understood futility and acceptance; I had taken his hand then, and laughed too at my sorry state, and our karmas become forever intertwined, like a carefully sculpted bamboo.
I felt Zha’s presence dozens of light years behind me but closing the gap quickly. My path led directly through the hearts of moribund blue supergiants, immersed me in the violent radiation of hypernovae, and skirted the infinitesimally-detectable event horizons of supermassive black holes. I felt the urge to clutch every passing star to me and fling them back at Zha as casually as a clod of dirt, but incorporeal as we both were, the effect would have been negligible.
I ran, Zha chased, and billions of years flowed by. It gave me time to think, and to reflect on the gradual darkening of the space around us. The galaxies were burning themselves out, what had seemed like endless fuel and energy proving its finitude before my vision. Would it be possible to exist once the universe had expired? And, as Zha had so frustratingly pointed out, what would be the point? Damn him.
I became somatic once more and reposed onto the shifting plasma surface of a white dwarf on the outer edge of the known universe, warming myself with the dying star’s heat. The crackling and hissing of its radiation
in extremis
tickled my auditory senses. Why was I still clinging to this existence? Was I really so afraid of death? It was unclear how long I sat there contemplating my stubbornness and fear, but at some point Zha arrived, as I’d known he would. He didn’t say or think a word, and instead just rested next to me, still infinitely patient despite everything I’d ever said and done to him. Calm and resignation settled over me like a blanket as the white dwarf’s energy cooled.
“I’m ready,” I told him, and his response was not condescension or arrogance, but relief. He took my hand and vocalized the mantras he’d so long ago devoted himself to learning and tried to teach me. The ancient words flowed around us as a palpable living river, and I repeated them in sync with Zha’s utterances. All around us the stars winked out, but the chanted syllables took their place, filling every occupiable space in the now-cold universe with
Om
, our white dwarf the last to burn out, but deplete itself it did, bleeding its energy into us, into the words, lending us strength, and as its temperature reached absolute zero and its atoms ceased movement, a doorway of blissful orange light opened in my mind.
Zha turned to me, his smile both beautiful and beatific, his essence the very apotheosis of empathy and love, and held out his hand. I took it and followed him through.
How To Make Chalk
You need chalk.
Everyone needs chalk.
There’s never enough chalk.
It astounded you that first day, walking into the classroom, your first teaching gig out of graduate school, fresh with idealism and optimism, nervous at instructing a group of students not that much younger than you, who looked so confident and cocksure, who challenged you with their eyes, who dared you to challenge
them
, it astounded you that one of the simple tools of teaching was in such rare supply. You told them all your name, little bits about yourself, the most popular parts of the bio you regularly send to journal editors, and you reached toward the metal shelf below the chalkboard in order to display the vital facts white on black, full name, email address, office hours, phone number, but the shelf contained only a yellowish dust, the castoffs of some lucky predecessor.
You thought that maybe you could wet your finger and dip it into the dust, but after coating every finger on your right hand, because you didn’t want to repeat a digit, because that would mean licking off the dust already there, you had only gotten through the first three letters of your first name. You spelled out the remainder aurally, but none of your students wrote it down. They said they would remember, but you knew they wouldn’t.
Later that day, you complained to your division head, that this simply wouldn’t do, you must have chalk to do your job. But he just shook his head and laughed miserably, and talked about the financial situation of the college, and how there was not even enough money in the budget for basic supplies, that the school newspaper had to be disbanded, that the three broken computers in the journalism editing suite could not be fixed, that the library had to sell their entire selection of literature, that the faculty had to endure pay cut after pay cut, that he wasn’t sure if there would even
be
a college by the end of the semester.
And so, after careful consideration, you drove to the supply store that evening. You patiently explained to the manager what you wanted, and that, yes, you realized how rare and scarce and precious the item was, that you knew about the shortage, about the terrorist tactics of skin whitening, and yes, you would submit to a background check. After the computer confirmed that your worst offense had been a traffic ticket seven years ago, the manager led you to the rear of the store, to a door protected by lasers, barbed wire, electrified fencing and stainless steel security bars. He breathed over a sensor on the wall, the countermeasures retracted, and the door swung open. From the varied selection, you chose three sticks of the purest white chalk, knowing that you would have to forgo dinner that evening, that your meager salary would result in gastric problems for who knows how long, but proud of the sacrifice you were making for your students, though they might not ever appreciate it.
You progressed through each stick of precious calcite during the semester. The first broke in half at the start of the second month, the errant demi-stick tumbling end over end to the floor, and then, upon impact, exploding in a ferocious pale cloud, causing an evacuation of the room for several hours. The second stick was stolen from your bag while you were in the faculty toilet, a disembodied hand reaching under the stall and swiping the chalk in a fluid motion so fast that you could only react once it was all over. The third stick was worn down to the nub and beyond, as you tried to stretch your resource to its limit, pressing the small white dot into the blackboard until, magically, it vanished into your written words.
And so, with three weeks and your lesson on dangling modifiers left to go, you are once again left chalkless. You try to explain in pure verbals, but the students just stare back, vapid, helpless without the written cues, unable to discern the important parts of the lecture without being told what to write down. You fear for their final grades and their later stations in life.
After class, as you sit at your desk in your miniscule windowless office, contemplating whether you can afford another trip to the supply store, you hear a low rasping cough from down the hall. It is that seasoned professor, that Gibraltar of the English department, the one who has been at the college longer than anyone, his lessons on post-colonial literature a legend throughout the school, and as you walk the corridor to his office, a crowd of fellow teachers has gathered outside, watching. You peek between the heads of your colleagues to see the professor curled up on the floor, the coughs deep and chasmic now, and little puffs of yellowish dust escape his lips with each forced exhale, and you realize what has caused his condition.
You watch with your colleagues, not rushing in, not helping this distinguished gentleman, not pounding him on the back in an effort to dislodge a tracheal invader, not bringing a glass of water, not asking if he is okay, not doing any of these things because you know it would be futile. There is nothing to be done. It is only a matter of time.
The professor’s eyes quiver with knowledge, with fear, with rage against the unfairness of the world, with contempt for all of you lingering in the hallway. No one moves to help as the coughs increase in duration and intensity, until the one final exhale, the long rattling wheeze, and it is done. The professor is still.
Your fellow teachers move as one, the actions of a hive mind, of a singular purpose. One turns the professor flat on his back, one unbuttons and then removes his shirt, one intones a quiet prayer, one produces a draftsman’s compass from a hidden pocket. The metal point of the compass is pushed deep into the professor’s sternum, then drawn down to his stomach. There is no blood. Hands pull the seams gently to the sides and the internal organs are revealed in pristine museum quality.
All except for the lungs, which, over the many years of teaching, of inhaling the dust of ten thousand lectures and explanations, have been transformed from life-giving cilia into crumbling dusty bricks of yellowish chalk. With silent reverence, your colleagues reach in and break off pieces of the bricks, handling the yellow gold in their hands as if cradling a baby. When each of the colleagues has taken their handful, they turn to you as one.
You know it is not right. It is a defilement, a spit in the face of this man’s illustrious career. He was a precious resource, not the
source
of a precious resource. He was kind to you at the beginning of the semester, relaying tips on teaching methods, on syllabi, on internal college politics. There was a gleam in his eye as he passed on his wisdom, as if it were a secret confidence.
This could be
you
one day. If you continue to teach, to impart your limited learning to students throughout the years, all the while inhaling the dust of your teachings. One long distant day, you might be the one overcome by the wracking and hacking, watching as the vultures do nothing but wait for you to quit this life. The vision is sudden and real.
But then you remember the vacant gazes of your students, the vapidity present as you tried to explain simple grammar, and it is this vision that dominates. These students with minute attention spans and unearned self-importance, who prefer to coast rather than excel, marking time until their academic prison sentence is over, these students
need
you. As one of the defenders of knowledge, one of the soldiers against indifference and ignorance, it is up to you to engage in the Sisyphean task of educating these young minds, and you cannot do it with such a paucity of teaching resources.
You reach into the man’s bloodless chest cavity, of course you do, and take your share.