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[absofrutely]

Penance

The invitation came in a fancy envelope, the kind that was somewhat thick, textured like pebbled leather, and with edges that weren’t exactly ragged, but fuzzy like a piece of fabric that had started to fray. The return address was conspicuously absent, but the penmanship gave her away. 

The way she spelled my name (“Mikhail” instead of “Michael”) might have been intended to be playful or even endearing, but seeing it for the first time in six years made my stomach drop. I couldn’t tell if she had meant to twist the knife that she had left inside me half a decade ago. Over time, the wound had healed, just like they said it would, but the scar tissue was a type of permanence I never cared to massage away. A voracious tree that sapped nutrients away from everything else in the forest. Or an overgrown plant that crowded out the competition with its reach and tenacity. I could think of a thousand botany metaphors. 

The intention behind it was really curious, because I used to tell myself there were no intentions at all. That, or there were all the intentions in the world. Carefully crafted and meticulously planned - every move, every hint, every interaction, every appearance, every invite. And I wouldn’t ever ask, but it all seemed a little too coincidental. 

Constantly shaken, I questioned my judgment and for the first time, wondered if I was thinking straight. Was all manipulative? All innocent? Half and half? These constant questions were deafening. Maybe she didn’t care at all and I blew things out of proportion in my mind like I always do. Or maybe, like my therapist suggested, no matter what type of closure I had thought I had gotten, it wouldn’t be enough, so why rack my brain with questions there were on a constant loop. 

At this point, whatever was in the envelope didn’t matter. Also, who it was from didn’t matter either, even if it wasn’t from her. The all-too-familiar cycle kicked off -  recalling latent old memories, reminiscing about “perfect” days, all the way up until last embraces and last conversations. Except at the time, we weren’t even thinking about last conversations, assigning blame, or wondering why. 

But the warning signs were real, but really, there was a conscious decision to ignore them, forging ahead and glossing over red flags because “I just like you so much” was so much more convenient to believe in than “here’s a fundamental mismatch in our beliefs about relationships.”

Then came the self-doubt, what-could-have-beens, the if-onlys, and ultimately regret. Replaying those critical inflection points over and over again, as if poring over them years later could affect any change. Sometimes I rewatch movies or plays where the protagonist ends up dying, and on each rewatch, I have the slightest hope that something would change, if only they’d make some sort of realization that changes the outcome. What if Alexander Hamilton chose not to duel Aaron Burr? Or what if Private Ryan willingly agreed to abandon his post to return home from the war? But obviously, the same situation plays out. If-only. 

And sometimes that’s the flaw with that simplistic point of view, that the rationale and full explanation for why something happened a certain way can be reduced to one key moment, one decision, one point in time, and one conversation. An NBA superstar who misses the game-winning buzzer-beater as the seconds expire in double overtime might shoulder the blame for the loss, but how about the lackluster defense throughout the game and the abysmal free throw shooting percentage?

It seemed somewhat paradoxical since I can’t control what happened in the past, but in order to take back control of my life, there had to be clear reasons, rooted in some semblance of the truth or perhaps the more likely case, reasons that were completely fabricated in my mind. 

Sometimes the brutal truth was exactly that. Just brutal. Punishingly hard and uncomfortable. “She’s just not that into you, and I mean this in the nicest way possible,” my friend Jim told me at dinner, years ago. “Otherwise, you two would still be together.” Normally I was agreeable to a fault, but for this one, I found it hard to nod my head excitedly. I stayed quiet. Though we were sitting across from each other at the table, I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with him. I looked past the foggy windows of the restaurant, past the flickering streetlights, and couldn’t focus my eyes on anything. I looked at Jim, re-shifting my focus. I became acutely aware that I hadn’t swallowed in a while and I was worried that the act of swallowing would be audible, interpreted as an emotional reaction, betraying my impassive disposition. I knew he was right. 

Lost in thought, I heard a cry on the baby monitor. Glancing at the clock, I knew baby Joshua needed his diaper changed. My wife would be home in 30 minutes. I wasn’t getting enough hours at Bel Saison, the restaurant I worked at. I’d head out to drive for Lyft or Uber for the night after Rachel got home. The hand-me-down minivan was making a squealing noise when it started up. I just hoped it wasn’t the timing belt. Four days until rent needed to be paid. 

Dejected, I thought of an image I saw on the internet awhile ago. It was a picture of a playground and a schoolhouse but with graffiti on one of the brick walls. In all caps, the graffiti clearly spelled out in all of its nostalgic glory, “I WAS HAPPY HERE.” 

I was happy there. 

[absofrutely]

Online Persona

At first I was against a voice-activated device with no graphical user interface, a vocal opponent even. It wasn’t until an Amazon Echo Dot device was shipped to my work (addressed to me!) by mistake that I first thought about installing the device in my apartment. Apparently, there was another Andrew Williamson on the 5th floor in my office, but the delivery guy mistakenly delivered the package to the 4th floor, and I wasn’t feeling generous, so I opened up my mystery box.

Setting up the Echo wasn’t seamless. Since the Echo was tied to the other Andrew Williamson’s Amazon account, it wouldn’t activate as the other Andrew reported the device lost or stolen after not receiving it. Amazon support wasn’t any help either since I couldn’t answer any of Andrew’s security questions to unlock his account. They told me that I could ship the device back to Amazon (no) or I could use the device as a paper weight, but it would never be activated as an Amazon Echo. Shocked by the finality of that statement, and tired of all the hoops to jump through, I exchanged the Echo by swapping it out with one that I bought from and returned to Best Buy.

At last, I finished setting up the device. I linked it to my Spotify, ordered a Philips Hue smart light starter kit, got some Belkin WeMo smart electric switches, and splurged on an Alexa-compatible iRobot floor vacuum. I wanted to outfit my apartment with a Nest thermostat and a Nest camera, but my apartment didn’t have a central heating system, and setting up a Nest camera in a studio apartment seemed wasteful. Mainly, I just felt like spending money, and was frustrated that I couldn’t.

I started out easy with the basics, setting a timer, asking Alexa what time it was, and playing “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds on Spotify. Within the Alexa app on my Android phone, I could choose my preferred news source, so I chose NPR. Whenever I asked Alexa what was on the news, it’d feed me the latest NPR headlines. I was pretty impressed. I could see myself listening to the news while I ate my greek yogurt and granola in the morning.

Over the next couple of weeks, interacting with Alexa became more natural, as I frequently asked for the weather before I chose my outfit for the day. Our conversations weren’t much of a dialogue, but more of a one-sided inquisition.

I couldn’t be sure if it was the latest software update or something I had enabled in the app, but for some reason, Alexa started responding to me by name, having recognized my voice. “It’s 9:41pm, Andrew” it would reply. I just assumed that it had some sort of built-in voice training feature that could distinguish my voice. That, or it was possible that Alexa was connected to my Amazon account, which knew my first and last name. Either way, I was taken aback when Alexa addressed me by name.

I asked Alexa, “What does my voice sound like?”

She replied, “What would you like me to say?”

My phone lit up - a notification from Alexa to input my desired text.

Within the Alexa app, I typed in, “Hello, my name is Andrew Williamson, and I’m a proud dog owner.”

After hitting the submit button, I was shocked to hear my own voice. I entered in a couple more paragraphs of nonsense. It was perfect. It captured the nuances of my speech, especially intonations and even my quirky way of pronouncing “scenario” (‘sin-NARH-EE-oh’ instead of ‘sin-NAIR-EE-oh’). My heart rate quickened - it must have been the hundreds of hours of voice training.

That got me thinking - is it possible to reduce a human being to an amalgamation of complex formulas and algorithms? I had always thought my voice was unique, although I hated hearing it in recordings. The voice was one thing, but how about the nuance of a personality, the very thing that made us all human? I thought about how sad it would be if an algorithm could accurately capture the essence of someone’s humanity; either it’d be a really complex formula or a really simple personality.

Though, if something was really able to capture the totality of a human, as best as it could, then we’d be able to live multiple lifetimes if we recreated the world around us in the same simulation. If we were able to insert ourselves into key inflection points within our lifetimes, we could eliminate the what-ifs because we could speed up the simulation to see the 5, 10, 20-year consequences of one decision. A life with no uncertainty, a life that was properly vetted before it was lived. A perfect life with no missteps, no unpredictable traumatic accidents. Not necessarily a pre-determined life, but being informed of a smarter way to live.

On the flip side of things, the model needed to account for everything, including all other human beings, living creatures, inanimate objects, and naturally occurring phenomena, like weather and natural disasters. Without perfect knowledge, a simulation would always be flawed. Informative perhaps, but ultimately flawed.

It dawned on me that someone or some entity might be trying to create a perfect model of the world, especially with so much information being captured nowadays. Nest cameras, Amazon Echos, Google Homes, devices that are always listening, video conferencing, Instagram, Facebook, Skype, Tinder, TikTok, YouTube. The list goes on. More inputs, more information to train a more perfect model, if the information was consolidated and centralized! I wiped a bead of sweat off of my brow carefully, making sure my tinfoil hat stayed put.

Digging deeper in the settings screen of the Alexa app, I enabled the permissions for Alexa to track all types of data inputs that would build a robust model of me. In addition to what Alexa observed organically, I could upload pictures and videos, connect Alexa to Gmail and Facebook to capture all information that lived on those platforms, or manually upload anything else I’d like it to know about me via a CSV file.  

Selfishly, I thought about how I could personally benefit from my online persona. GDPR. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was the answer. I thought about my online presence, the different platforms that I’ve used over the years, and the information that they had on me. I’d pose as a European and write into each company asking for a data-subject access request, which compelled each company by law to send me a data dump of all the information they had on me, and I’d upload it to Alexa by sending the file to andrewwilliamson_data@alexa.com much like I could send e-books to my Kindle via a special email address. So easy! I thought.

It was reminiscent of that one Black Mirror episode, “Be Right Back” where a grieving widow created an artificial husband based on his social media profiles and his text message history. The main difference was that I had embellished my artificial likeness with a data dump of all Wikipedia articles written to create a better and smarter me, so to speak.

Alexa was also compatible with an app called If This Then That (IFTTT) which allowed the user to automate certain workflows depending on user-defined triggers. One very basic example was the ability to change the color of my smart lights to violet as soon as I started playing music. Stuff like that. But the app also supported more complex logic that was user-customizable - given that information, I plotted my next move. I had Alexa listen into my work calls and record my screen over the next few months of work. Alexa started learning my day-to-day tasks, the names, voices and faces of the people I worked with, and the different tools that I used to do my job as a Senior DevOps engineer.

One Saturday night, I called my boss tearfully and told him that I was diagnosed with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, or FOP, a rare disease that caused muscles, tendons, and ligaments to turn into bone spontaneously. Eventually, my joints would be frozen in place and I’d be completely immobile. At some point, I’d have to choose a body position to spend the rest of my days.

He was speechless, but his normally stoic demeanor eventually broke down. As he choked back tears, he expressed his condolences.

I told him that due to my condition, I’d appreciate the ability to work remotely 100% of the time.

He agreed enthusiastically, promising to support me in any way.

Using IFTTT, I was able to clone instances of my Alexa persona, so I booted up a simulation of myself, but modified some parameters to deteriorate my appearance and gait. For good measure, I multiplied the depression metric by 1.25 and in the preview mode, the pain behind my eyes intensified, while the corners of my mouth curled downwards. A couple gray hairs sprouted up at my temples, the laugh lines turned into gashes, eroded by tears from hundreds of sleepless nights. It’d be perfect.

My voice followed suit, quivering and breaking 50% more than usual. Due to the ossification of my joints, any type of movement would be accompanied by a painful wince and a grunt for effort. No one would be the wiser during my meetings, which were held via video conference. Automating my own job was a success, but I craved more.

I created four more virtual instances of myself, without the debilitating disease, and had them scrape job postings on LinkedIn and Glassdoor, making sure to filter for remote jobs only. Within seven days, I had 125 job offers to choose from, and I booted up 121 more avatars to accept them all.

With income from 126 jobs, including my original DevOps job, I could finally breathe. In the mornings, I woke up at 9:30am, hand-ground some Sumatran coffee, and made some steel cuts oats, the non-quick kind that took 20 minutes to simmer.

Over breakfast, I finished another Murakami short story, called “Tony Takitani,” which was about a Japanese illustrator who fell in love with a woman was addicted to buying dresses but she ends up getting killed in car accident, and the illustrator is left with an empty house full of dresses. His father soon dies after, he forgets what his wife’s face looks like, and he ends up by himself, lonely in a large house.

I had suspected that the story would end that way. That’s the arc that all Murakami stories followed: a passive male protagonist who meets a life-changing female character, there’s some glimpses of hope or happiness, but the main character ends up alone, staring off melancholically into the distance into the sea, usually on an overcast day. No happy endings, and not really much of a resolution. And after finishing each book or short story, I felt lonely as well, not because the story was sad, but perhaps a stark reminder that life isn’t neatly wrapped up when it’s time to close the cover of the book, which the opposite of nearly every book that I had read. The hero gets the girl, a cathartic confession of love, the villain gets caught, the town gets saved, and everyone’s lives are better off than they were before.

To shake off the gloom, I ran along the coast for around an hour until heading back home. After toweling myself off, I checked my email. Scrolling through the hundreds of emails, my eyes widened when I saw an email subject stuck out to me: Congratulations for being nominated for a Pornhub Award: Performer of the Week. The email itself looked legitimate, had no misspellings, hovering over the links took me to the actual website, not lookalike phishing links, and I confirmed that it sent from the actual Pornhub domain.

The category that I was nominated for was “best male solo performance.” My head felt completely numb. I already knew what happened, but couldn’t bear to confirm it. I clicked into the link, and on the screen, I saw my own face staring back at me. “SultryCommando” was the username, and under “Uploads” I saw a list of 37 videos, titled with some of the most click-baity names. I had to watch at least one. I picked “Pizza Delivery Surprise!! WATCH TIL THE END,” which had 2.4 million views.

There was cheesy music and I saw a video of myself in tight cutoff jeans waiting expectantly for a pizza delivery very obviously - I saw my virtual self glance at his watch and tap his foot impatiently, mumbling something about punishing the pizza guy for being late. However I noticed his (my) devilish smile as he uttered those words. Oh god, I thought. Fast forwarding a little bit, the pizza guy finally rang the doorbell. Squinting a little, I quickly realized the pizza guy was still me. There were two of me in the same video and they were about to interact. The simulations must have discovered each other (but how?!) and started working together. I slammed my Macbook shut.

No. But I had to confirm. Flipping open my laptop, I scrolled to the middle of the video, and with much hesitation, the end. After watching two sweaty bodies collide with one another for almost 20 minutes, I felt sick, but also angry and impressed that Alexa was able to infer what my genitals looked like with 90% accuracy.

But my success as a porn star was only one of many accolades I’d receive. Surprisingly, most of the simulations gravitated towards social media influencing, with millions of followers on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitch. Remembering that there were 125 job offers signed, I wondered what happened to all of the legitimate jobs that they had gotten. I did some more digging and found that the simulations outsourced their jobs to another simulation they had written within their own simulation. Of course, the simulations didn’t know they were in actual simulations - or did they? If that was the case, then wasn’t there a high chance that I was a simulation as well, but just one level up?

The money they made funneled all to me and I couldn’t speak to whether or not the simulations had a real consciousness or if they were computer programs designed to optimize an assigned task.

The phone rang, and kept on ringing for the next two hours. I had concerned friends call to tiptoe around the subject of me being a porn star, extended family members who wanted to subtly reintroduce themselves in my life due to my Youtube fame, and my boss, who told me that I was fired for lying to him. I didn’t blame him, as my frail videoconferencing demeanor was a far cry from my virile, dominant, but sometimes flamboyant online persona. That, and he had also probably seen my Alexa-created genitals and couldn’t bear to look me in the eyes anymore.

Amidst the fabulous riches, the crumbling social life, and the unbridled fame that was tainted with a bit of social ostracism and cautious distance from curious and sometimes gawking onlookers, I felt unsettled. I could never live up to the zany online personas of my alter egos, and when someone alluded to a video that I had supposedly created, I’d be puzzled. It was like being mistaken for one of my 125 identical twin (well, not twin) brothers.

I grew anxious and falling asleep became harder and harder. On one particular night, I had a panic attack where it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Doubled over, wheezing, and clutching my chest, I yelled at Alexa to play “PornGrooves Vol. 3” on Spotify to calm me down. As my breathing steadied and my heart rate slowed back down to normal to the beat of the smooth jazz in the background, I wondered where it had all gone wrong.

Truth be told, I didn’t even want an Amazon Echo in the first place, but only set it up because I thought I’d fall behind from a technological perspective if I didn’t step into the world of smart devices. My coworkers talked incessantly about the convenience of their wifi-enabled sous vide cookers, bragged about installing smart locks and the novelty of their Ring doorbells on their front doors, but for me, I went home to an abusive father with an alcohol problem who opened an $18,000 line of credit in my name.

When I spoon-fed him, he’d berate me from his wheelchair and slap the spoon out of my hand, spraying split-pea soup on the linoleum floor. I was used to his fits of rage and his hurtful words: “Idiot. Your lack of ambition was what killed your mother. If you were a better son, she’d still be around.” I brushed him off, long immune to his babbling.  

I wheeled him out for walks first thing in the morning and when I got home, I made sure to take him out again before it got too dark. I’d shampoo his hair as he sat on the plastic lawn chair in the bathtub. He made sure to tell me that I was a piece of shit who wouldn’t ever amount to anything.

My two brothers had broken all ties with Dad years ago, leaving me holding the bag. I should have reported him for identity theft and called the credit bureaus to clear my name. But out of love, I couldn’t.

Out of love, I continued paying the minimum payments for a credit card that I didn’t own, but was technically in my name.

Out of love, I automated my job and ruined my life so I could send him to a proper home where he could get 24 hour care.

Spending money on smart devices was the only thing that I ever did for myself, the closest thing that resembled a hobby - my form of self-care.

Two weeks ago when the paychecks came rolling in, I thought, “We don’t need to live like this anymore.” Excitedly, I went to go tell my father the good news.

He was in his favorite brown easy chair near the window, where he got the most natural light.

“Dad, wake up! We can finally move out of here.”

I took a look at his iPhone that he held in his right hand. The volume was low, but it was still playing one of my Pornhub videos. Realizing that he had found out about me, I took a step back, which was when I saw the empty bottle of sleeping pills in his other hand.

He had told me he didn’t want a funeral, although I doubt anyone would have shown up anyways. I felt numb, not really knowing what to feel. I was heartbroken that he was gone, but guiltily at the same time, relieved by the absence of his toxic control over me. I wanted so badly to hit a reset switch.

A month later, I moved out of that apartment and bought a modest house down the street instead. This time, I bought a Ring doorbell and some Nest smart cameras.

One Sunday afternoon, the Ring app on my phone sent me a notification that someone was at my door. Opening the door, I stared down into the face of my father, who was still in a wheelchair.

“Andrew, you said you’d always take care of me!” he croaked.

Speechless, I took a step back into my home. I looked down, expecting to see the new hardwood that I spent days installing, but instead saw the yellowing linoleum of my old apartment kitchen. It was my old apartment again, furnished just the way I had left it. Before I moved out, I told the landlord to donate everything. To get my security deposit back, I even did a walk-out with him when the apartment was empty!

There was no way. I had seen my father’s casket lowered down into the earth.

Frantically, I checked my phone. The Alexa was app was gone. I searched on Google for Amazon Alexa. Zero results. I scoured my apartment for any smart devices. Nothing. Alexa didn’t exist in this plane of existence.

I lunged for my kitchen knife, but it disappeared right before I could grasp it. In one motion, I opened my window and leapt through the screen, but there was no free fall. I found myself crumpled into a heap back on my kitchen floor. 

Someone was toying with my life. Free will and choice was an illusion. This was some Harlan Ellison shit. For reasons why I couldn’t understand, perhaps for someone’s sick enjoyment, I was destined to spend the rest of my days spoon-feeding my father in a dingy apartment. Maybe I went off the rails in someone else’s simulation. Wasn’t serving my purpose and they had to set me back on course. 

That night, when I was bathing my father, I couldn’t remember much of anything anymore.

What was I thinking about again? This was normal. In fact, my life couldn’t be more perfect.

[absofrutely]

Injustice

I’m always meticulous while crossing Market Street on my bike. I had read an article about the most dangerous intersections in San Francisco, and Market and 9th was ranked #4 with two “serious” injuries but no fatalities in the last two years. 

It was just a routine Tuesday evening commute, and I had done everything right. Even though the sun was still out at 7pm, I turned on both my bicycle lights and wore a yellow safety vest. Stopped in the right-most lane waiting at the stoplight, I made eye contact with the driver who had his blinker signaling a right turn and inched my way forward, communicating my intention to go straight. 

When the light turned green, the driver politely yielded to me, and I started pedaling. The right hook came out of nowhere, as a car from two lanes to the left decided to cut off the yielding car, blindly colliding with my left thigh and my bike’s rear wheel.  As I was struck by the car, my backpack exploded with free LaCroix I had taken from work. 

Among the pedestrians, there were panicked yells, asking me if I was alright. As I stirred, sealed packs of single-serving Oberto’s beef jerky fell out of my Patagonia company-issued backpack into the carbonated mess. I could hear the murmuring around me transition from concern to puzzlement, to judgment, and eventually, ridicule. I staggered into the crosswalk, clearly dazed, on my hands and knees, stuffing as much beef jerky into my pockets as I could before I passed out from the pain. 

As the paramedics cut away my shredded blood-soaked company hoodie, they also had to cut away the four company t-shirts I was wearing, from the XL “overcoat” down to the skin-tight XS “undershirt”. I started wailing with despair. I begged them to be careful. I couldn’t risk the contamination of the 20 pound ream of 8.5” x 11” printer paper that I had stowed away in my bike basket. 

I fought off the medical assistance as I remembered that I hadn’t yet hit my $5000 deductible on my high-deductible health care plan. Earlier this year, I had made the fatal mistake of going in for a routine colonoscopy, but since they had found polyps the year prior, the procedure was no longer considered preventative, but rather diagnostic, so it didn’t fall under the Affordable Care Act which meant I was on the hook for a hefty copayment. 

Dabbing my cuts with a wad of napkins I had taken from my daily McDonald’s dollar menu lunch, I pulled out my iPhone 4S to respond to a Facebook Marketplace inquiry for my ream of printer paper. It looked like someone else had responded to my listing of wrought-iron chairs that I had found in my apartment’s recycling room too. What luck! The guy said he could stop by in 30 minutes for a pickup. 

Thankfully, there was a bike rack nearby. I could ditch the bike for now and pick it up tomorrow. Reluctantly, and only because I had a shattered femur, I called an UberPool, opted for the cheaper walking option, and although my apartment was only 0.9 miles away, the app told me that optimistically, I’d be able to get home in 27 minutes. 

My Uber pulled up in front of my apartment at the same time I got a ping from Facebook Messenger. The buyer said he was less than a block away. It took me around two minutes fumbling around with my blood-smeared phone screen locating the non-standard “medium-dark skin tone” thumbs-up emoji 👍🏾 from Emojipedia.org but I considered it time well spent since I was advancing diversity and equality. My 23andMe results had come back, and it said that I was 0.5% “Spanish & Portuguese,” which meant I could now use any skin tone emoji I wanted with impunity even though my parents were ninth generation immigrants from England and Ireland. 

Someone tapped me on the back. Looking up from my screen, I didn’t recognize that it was Luis, my buyer, but how could I, given that his 12 Facebook photos were of the Virgin Mary, the Byzantine Cross, and portraits of Jesus, his face impassive as usual, on the crucifix. 

“Leighton? Leighton Whitaker-Connelly?” Luis asked. 

Luis stared at me blankly. 

“The paper - you’re selling it right?”

I didn’t respond. 

“The 20 pound ream of paper? I have $10 in cash,” he continued, taking out two $5 bills. 

I stayed silent.

“Hello? The paper? Er, the ‘papel?’” 

“Oh, the ‘PAPEL!’ Why didn’t you just say so!” I roared, clapping him on the back. 

“Well, because your listing was in English, and in all of our messages, we were using English, and…”

He noticed me staring at his Allbird shoes. 

“...and, um, I… nevermind…” he trailed off, taking a step back after seeing my blood-splattered clothing. 

He babbled on, clearly confused, but my thoughts wandered elsewhere. Sure, I could lure this man into my apartment, chain him up in my dungeon, surgically install a uterus in his belly, wear out his body and run an “Uber, but for People Looking for Surrogate Mothers” type of operation that would be one of the hottest Silicon Valley start-ups, setting records for the fastest $1 billion valuation, but in the end, what was it worth? A couple of trips around the moon on Virgin Galactic before I bankrupted myself for the third time? It’d be exhausting being in the public eye, paparazzi scrutinizing my every move. 

It seemed formulaic. Contrived. Even downright predictable. People have seen this Hollywood movie multiple times by now. 

Lost in my thoughts, I thought back to the 8th grade, when Mrs. Stole, my chemistry teacher, gave a long-winded speech about the importance of behaving for substitute teachers. Since she was pregnant with her third child, we could expect her last day on campus to be in two weeks, and she was counting on us to finish the semester strong. In mid-sentence, she stopped speaking, and said, “No, Leighton? You don’t agree?”

Caught unaware, and never having gotten in trouble for anything before, I stammered, “No, I - I didn’t say anything at all.”

“Oh, because I saw you shake your head, like you didn’t agree with me at all.” I shook my head no. She paused for a couple more moments, rolled her eyes and gave me a dismissive look, as if she knew I was lying, and then continued her lecture on good behavior. My stomach lurched from the injustice and my forehead went numb as my classmates turned around to stare at me. 

But I didn’t do anything! I screamed silently. I glanced up and saw Luis Moreno shake his head at me, whisper something to his friends around him, and throw his head back and laugh, mocking my stutter. He started clucking like a chicken, looked over at me again, and his corner of the classroom erupted into giggles. Luis Moreno. Luis. I’d recognize those hazel eyes for the rest of my life.

Reality melted back to present day when my shattered left knee buckled under my own weight. Those same hazel eyes stared back at me, but this time with a twinge of concern instead of mockery. He helped me back up to my feet, and offered his arm as support while I hobbled through my apartment lobby. 

It was 17 years ago and we both grew up, took different paths in life, and matured into two respectful and intelligent young men. On Luis’ backpack, I saw a sewed-on patch that signified that he was a four year mentor for Minds Matter and from his LinkedIn profile, he worked full time for a non-profit focused on providing clean drinking water to Sub-Saharan African countries. As for myself, after law school, I became an in-house counsel for a start-up that optimized health outcomes for underserved communities. Last year, I had set the California state record for over 1500 hours of pro bono service. 

But at the end of the day, people don’t change. 

I invited him up to my apartment, where he spent the rest of his days giving birth for money. 

[absofrutely]

Oversharing

It was unconventional, but I was able to negotiate the first four months of the job being fully remote, working from home since my wife gave birth to Elijah. I met my coworkers briefly during the interview process and in the first couple of days that I showed up to the office in Israel for orientation, but our communication was primarily through Slack, our internal company chat platform, and through Zoom or Skype, our preferred video conferencing applications. 

When I hit my four month work anniversary, I fully understood what the term “stir-crazy” meant. Cabin fever was another synonym, but after watching yet another movie about a man losing his mind after being confined to a specific area for a long time, I decided to transition to being full time in the office before I completely lost touch with reality. 

Going to Israel for a couple of months would be novel, and I had never worked internationally. I've always wanted that experience before it wasn't feasible, before life got in the way and I'd have to settle for living in the suburbs. Amelia, my wife, wasn't too thrilled, especially being left at home with an infant, but since her mother was visiting for the next six months, she reluctantly let me leave. 

At the office, I technically wasn’t the new guy anymore as four more people were hired after me, but in a way, I kind of was, since I had never worked in the same space as my coworkers. It was an open office plan, no cubicles or offices. I think I read somewhere that the office space was supposed to represent the (lack of) hierarchy in the company. The C-suite sat next to first year analysts, VPs sat next to interns, and I sat next to one of the digital marketing managers. Offices were turned into conference rooms that were only used for meetings or the occasional phone call. 

I liked my coworkers. They were all extremely competent and some of the most professional people I’ve ever met. I knew most of their names, but I couldn't put the names to faces just yet. There was Simon in accounting, Greta, the VP of Finance, Jackie, the engineering manager, and Danielle, the HR lady. 

I was wrapping up some work, so I showed up in the lunchroom around 12:30pm, a little late. For lunch, I microwaved some Campbell’s soup that I found in the company pantry, and while I waited, I snacked on some Keebler’s Cheese and Cheddar Sandwich Crackers. 

My coworkers all walked in with lunch they picked up from McAlister’s Deli, a restaurant down the street. They were in mid-conversation. 

“This morning was really rough. The cramping was so terrible that I felt like lying down on the bathroom floor and never getting up.”

“Honey, you need to get that checked out. I’m pretty sure it’s endometriosis, you know, that condition where your uterine tissues grow outside of your uterus?”

“Well, I definitely have cervical mucus on most days when I’m not ovulating.”

Jackie chimed in excitedly, “I watched some instructional videos last night and I bought a speculum, so I can give you an examination in the conference room later on today. I’ll put some time on your calendar. Free pap smears for everyone!”

I choked on my crackers. 

Four pairs of eyes shot in my direction. 

“Hello everyone,” I said weakly. We exchanged polite hellos and they went back to their conversation. 

David, our CEO, entered the room with fanfare and announced, “Everyone, I’m going to divorce my wife.”

“Back so soon from therapy?” Danielle asked. 

“Today’s session was cut short because I got a call from the school nurse. Jimmy’s got blood in his stools again,” David boomed. 

“Again?” Simon asked, clearly concerned. 

“Well, he might be getting it from his old man. I’m still recovering from last year’s anal fissures,” David chuckled.

Danielle turned her attention to me, “How about you Leopold? How’s your day going so far?”

Feeling the pressure of five expectant pairs of eyes, I stammered, “Great! Traffic getting here wasn’t great, but I made it before my 9am meeting.” 

No one in the room responded. 

I laughed nervously and added, “Uh, and I have a urologist appointment for tomorrow?”

David clapped me on the back and joked, “Getting the snip so soon, eh? We’ve all been there, brother. Gonna be shooting blanks like the rest of us!”

He roared with laughter. 

I relaxed a little, laughing nervously with everyone else. 

“By the way, any fun plans this weekend?” I added. 

Greta burst into tears and ran out of the office wailing. Jackie gave me a disgusted look and chased after her. Everyone else shot a disapproving glance at me. 

Shocked, I retreated back to my desk, not really sure what had happened. I figured I'd leave the soup in the microwave, cut my lunch short and sort things out later. 

It wasn’t even an hour later that I received a meeting invite from Danielle, the HR lady. The invite was called, “Re: This afternoon”. I figured Danielle would clear things up, especially since she must have known how confusing everything must have seemed to me. 

Heading into the meeting, I passed Greta’s desk. She hissed at me, “HR’s gonna crucify you.” Taken aback, I quickened my pace. 

Danielle was sitting in the conference room with a laptop on the desk. I also noticed a manilla folder with print outs that looked like legal documents with clear signature pages. 

It was apparent that she had been crying, her mascara smeared all over her face and her eyes swollen and bloodshot.

Choking back tears, all she was able to utter was, “How could you.”

I didn’t know what to say, simply because I had no idea what was going on. 

“How dare you come into our office and pry into our private lives like this?”

I protested, “Listen, I don’t know what I said, but if I crossed any boundaries, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?! You’re FUCKING SORRY?!” she screamed, hysterical. 

David entered the room, face completely solemn. 

“David, can you please tell me what’s going on?” I pleaded.

David was a linebacker back at the University of Tel Aviv back in his college days, and though he had lost a step and still ate like a college athlete for the last 15 years, he was still 6’5” and by the looks of it, around 285 pounds. 

Without speaking, David opened the conference door for Simon, who struggled to drag in a gigantic wooden cross. The cross being too much for Simon to bear, he passed it off to me, which I accepted reluctantly. 

David locked the door behind him. 

After I was whipped and stripped naked, they forced me to march to the cafeteria while carrying the cross, which was well over 150 pounds. 

While David held me down, Danielle placed a crown of thorns on my head. I shrieked as the needles pierced my skin, blood running the side of my nose, obscuring my vision. 

The onlookers shook their heads at me, spitting at me with fury and vitriol. 

While nails were being driven through my hands, I caught a glimpse of my wife smirking, holding our four month old son, Elijah. 

She called out at me, “Think you could leave me at home with a four month old and my mother with dementia?”

“Think again.” 

She thrust a spear in my side and as I screamed, she crammed a bottle of wine vinegar into my open mouth. 

One of the interns poked his head into the lunchroom to see what was going on, took an AirPod out of one ear, took a look at my bloody face, put the AirPod back in his ear, and immediately retracted his head. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing he hadn’t seen before.

[absofrutely]

Wedding Planning

As I groggily leapt out of bed to hit the snooze button on my alarm, the chance that I would crawl back to bed vanished as the big toe on my right foot connected with the base of my dresser. As my foot exploded in pain, I mouthed “FUCK!” briefly forgetting that I lived in a studio apartment with no one else. “FUCK!” I screamed. I groped at the alarm clock blindly, frantically searching for any button that would silence it, and in the process, advancing the clock ahead by an hour and two minutes, reading 7:02am when it really should have displayed 6:00am.

I spent half the year dreading daylight saving time since I hated waking up in the darkness. As the days got darker, I found that my mood followed suit. I had no time to waste as I only had two months until the big day. After years of evading uncomfortable conversation, Trish had finally cornered me on year eight of our relationship. It was more of a negotiation than anything else, like the rational endpoint of something our relationship was supposedly leading up to. The magnum opus, but with a reluctant composer. A hail Mary that was perfectly targeted, but the quarterback was tired, and going to the Superbowl seemed like more of a chore than an accomplishment - so he intentionally threw the ball out of bounds with three seconds left, leaving the ticket holders in the Superdome with their jaws completely agape.

These scenarios swirled through my head as she explained the logic and benefits of getting married.

As she droned on, "... but that means we get two personal exemptions instead of one if we file a joint return. And yes, although we can't deduct as much mortgage interest anymore since home prices are in excess of two million in this area, the standard deduction was raised as well, and..." I nodded, perhaps a little too animatedly.

She frowned, “You’re not listening. You always do thi-”

I finished her previous thought, “…and the standard deduction was raised to $24,000, so if one of us stops working for childcare, filing jointly still makes sense because filing separately only gets us $12,000 each, which seems like it’s the same thing, but actually not, because in sole-provider families, that $12,000 won’t do anything for the non-earner.”

I beamed.

She glared at me, exasperated to be proven wrong, but at the same time, somewhat conflicted since I was listening and therefore had no right to be mad.

It’s moments like these that fed the smugness that carried me through most of my days. Being accused of not paying attention during a meeting, but producing detailed and thoughtful notes in a follow-up email. Parking in a handicapped parking spot and being called out by an opinionated old man while walking into the store, but pointing at the black walking boot that housed your broken foot as he sheepishly sputtered a half apology. An alcoholic father, storming into his son’s bedroom because he heard the sound of videogames being played, ready to unleash his anger, but finding his son doing homework quietly with Chopin in the background.

After she had stated the facts about marriage, which were admittedly well-thought-out, I agreed, but told her there was one condition: I would plan the wedding.

Deciding on the wedding venue was the first step for “Save the Date” purposes, but after that, I had dragged my feet the next couple of months. Since I put myself in charge of planning everything else,  Trish was suspicious of my progress. Frequently, when we were spending time together, I would excuse myself to take a couple of planning-related calls. I’d talk loudly – almost too loudly – and drop a couple of buzz words here and there.

“But if we’re going to go with this caterer, we need to schedule a time to taste the food. It’s nice that the photographer knows a florist who can design the centerpieces, but I’d really prefer that she went along with the design of our invitation, since we’re trying to keep the theme consistent. In terms of videography, the video staff told us their dress code adheres to neutral colors, which coincide with the overall attire of our wedding party.”

I was, of course, talking to no one else on the line, holding up a silenced cell phone to my head. I had to be careful too, since I had almost exhausted the wedding lexicon in my first call.

There were some hiccups, but nothing I wouldn’t be able to recover from.

“The black magic roses are almost indistinguishable from the black baccara, but the black dahlia really stands out to me.”

Trish glanced in my direction, and I realized that the Black Dahlia referred to the 1947 unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, who had been gruesomely killed in Los Angeles, her body severed in two.

“Uh, I meant the ‘Diva’ dahlia – the one that’s bright pink.”

Trish glanced back down at her phone, scrolling through Instagram.

But the stall tactics masked my true intentions for the wedding – it would be a masterpiece if I could pull it off.

I dissected every piece of all the ingredients that went into a wedding. From the bar décor to the calligraphy on the menu cards, I became a wedding planning powerhouse.

The plan was relatively simple. Weddings were expensive and I really didn’t feel like shelling out $50,000 for a one-time celebration. In fact, I recalled some studies that I read that correlated higher divorce rates with higher wedding costs. So obviously, I quit my job – that was step number one.

Hiring a team of professionals to take care of every single wedding detail seemed extravagant and unnecessary. I dreamed of a reality where I could perform all the functions at a wedding at once. As the guests arrived to my wedding, I would man the bar, pouring everyone a welcome cocktail. Though I was tired from driving the shuttle over from the hotel, I made sure every guest would receive a shot of Jameson and a pickleback.

The guests would take their seats in the folding lawn chairs that I set up earlier in the day, and as the wedding procession started, I would also become the wedding photographer, taking pictures with my Canon Powershot A60 that my dad bought in 2004, but only in 640x480 resolution since I only had 20 megabytes left on my Compact Flash card. Before the bride started walking in, I would run to the kitchen, stirring a large vat of Thai peanut pasta, intended to feed 150 people. I had discarded everyone’s RSVP that included their meal choice and dietary restrictions. In this day and age, it’d be downright irresponsible for someone to not bring an Epipen wherever they went.

As the bride walked down the aisle, I would play the “Here Comes the Bride” wedding march on the violin. Having taken two weeks of YouTube lessons, I was pretty confident I would be able to perform in front of a live audience. I would play the song live because I abhorred the thought of a trashy recording at a classy ceremony.

Since I was the officiant of my own wedding, I would grab the microphone and address the audience, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to--” I’d catch Trish’s eye. Of course, she would be glaring daggers at me.

But as I daydreamed about my fantasy for a couple hours, I knew it wasn’t feasible for one person to perform every conceivable role at a wedding. However, I did know that I only trusted myself. That was the only constraint in devising my plan – I had to make sure that I had complete control over all the minutia.

There was only one possible solution - embryo genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9, the hottest new tool in molecular biology. The concept was simple enough – when bacteria fend off invasions from viruses, the bacteria capture DNA snippets from their attackers, effectively “remembering” who had attacked them, allowing them to create DNA segments called CRISPR arrays. Next time the viruses attack, the bacteria has the ability to disable its attacker by producing RNA segments from the CRISPR arrays, targeting the viruses’ DNA. With CRISPR-associated protein 9, the bacteria can then cut the viruses’ DNA apart, rendering the attack harmless.

With this concept in mind, gene editing had never been easier. Scientists simply repurposed CRISPR-Cas 9 to cut out a targeted gene. After a gene was excised, the doublestrand break repair mechanism gets triggered, ready to accept a homologous replacement piece of DNA. I picked up my kit at Shoppers Drug Mart after seeing that they were out of stock on Amazon.

Although modern day ethics prevented scientists from editing the genetics of embryos or egg and sperm cells, I decided that the rules were meant to be broken since I was on a tight wedding planning deadline.

While thumbing through TV channels one night, I caught a portion of “Jack,” the Robin Williams movie where the main character ages four times faster than his peers. When he graduated high school, he was a 50 year old man with the mind of an 18 year old. Obviously, Jack had some form of Werner syndrome, a rare disorder that caused premature aging. Offhand, I knew that this was caused by a mutation of DNA helicase, RecQ-like type 3, also known as the WRN gene found on chromosome 8.

My mind raced, as I knew I needed to find a donor template for an individual with Werner syndrome.

After a couple days in the lab, I injected 10 of the embryos I was incubating with a couple of choice mutations of the WRN gene. All I had to do now was wait. My wedding helpers would be the correct age, and most importantly, free of charge after all.

When the big day arrived, I spent a good portion of the morning making sure my army of clones looked dapper. Smoothing the collars on their bespoke suits, my clones exuded confidence, professionalism, and most of all, obedience. Still in movement, but not mechanical. Neutral in countenance, but not at all robotic. Every last detail, down to their regional accents, carefully crafted.

“Would you like some cauwfee suh?”

“Please make sure that your name appears in the computuh.”

“Dawhling, please step this way.”

Elated by the success of the clones, I let out an exaggerated sigh, half relief, and half fatigue. Working feverishly in the lab for the last two months, not to mention bottle feeding 10 rapidly aging clone infants, I felt like a shell of a human being. I tried everything: teabags, refrigerated cucumbers, spoons placed in the freezer overnight. The puffiness under my eyes persisted no matter what I tried, the remnants of many nights I spent weeping because one of the infants had passed away due to an infected skin ulcer.

Watching life leaving his little body tore me apart. As he gasped his last hiccups, I allowed the tears that welled up in my eyes to fall freely. I sobbed for three nights in a row, inconsolable as I screamed into my pillow with anguish.

“Is there anyone out there? Is each other all we have?”

My wedding bartender was gone, one of the most expensive wedding personnel to hire, and I wailed even harder when I realized that there wasn’t enough time to incubate a replacement clone.

Despite some unanticipated road bumps, I was ready to set my wedding planning machine into motion.

Attentive, polite, and witty, the clones’ mannerisms posed a striking resemblance to mine, although their rapidly aging bodies were a foil to my rugged good looks.

The morning of the wedding, I staggered out of bed at 10:30am and immediately chugged a bottle of water. After I splashed water on my face, I looked up and squinted at the mirror. Pulling down the skin directly under my right eye, I wasn’t surprised to see the faint outlines of pink veins that originated from the corners of my almond shaped eye. Though it was a tradition, it was generally inadvisable to go out drinking until five in the morning the night before your own wedding. But I caved into peer pressure, recognizing that it wasn’t every Friday night when my closest friends were in town.

For the guests, the first official wedding activity was the ceremony at 4:00pm, so from a third-party perspective, they wouldn’t know how far behind I actually was.

I heard rustling in the closet, and I knew that the clones were also awake, ready to do my bidding.

To minimize the friction of controlling the clones, and to completely bypass any type of socialization of servitude where I’d need to crush their collective spirit multiple times to substantiate the fact that serving me was their only reality, I had decided to inject my own consciousness into the nine remaining beings. I had played the role of good cop, bad cop in breaking the free will of a clone multiple times before, and although I had thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of violence and control, due to the side effects of Werner syndrome, the clones were in no shape for any type of physical punishment. The wedding simply could not happen if I lost one more clone.

Trish had accused me of being spacey and distant in the weeks leading up to the wedding, but remotely controlling 10 different bodies, including my own, was a task that I grossly underestimated. She had no idea that while I was making dinner for her, my consciousness was watching YouTube videos on how to play the violin, learning proper plating techniques for a three course meal, reading up on the latest flower arrangement trends for centerpieces, creating a wedding program on Adobe InDesign, carefully constructing a multilayered wedding cake, hemming my tuxedo dress pants, and negotiating a limousine from a used car lot. If she only knew, her hand wouldn’t have slackened unapologetically when I introduced her as “Tina” to my “co-workers” at a fake work event that I staged.

Since the clones’ eyes were an extension of my own eyes, the sight of myself, as viewed by another person, was something that I’d never get used to. When I went to the gym, when walking by an awkwardly angled mirror, I’d catch a glimpse of my side profile, a view I’d never see if I stared straight into a mirror. Not matter how many nude duckfaces I selfied with Snapchat filters, the extent to which I saw the side of my head was minimal to say the least. It was an out of body experience, the kind people talked about when they technically “died” on the operating table, but all I could think about was how weird my head was shaped, and how bushy my eyebrows looked from the side, and how crooked my nose was.

I wouldn’t have ever done it, but I wondered what it would be like to fight myself. Would it be like one of those “did you know you can bite off your finger with your teeth, just as easily as biting a carrot in half, but our brains prevent us from doing so” myths? If I could anticipate my every move, even if I managed to hit myself, there must be some semblance of me letting it happen. But what if I got killed? My original body, I mean, the master pulling the strings of the puppet. I wondered if my consciousness would transfer over or if these hollow shells that were technically human beings would cease to mentally function.

By afternoon of the wedding day, I had hoped the fogginess would have burned off completely, as the clones needed all of their focus to pull this off.

A sharp knocking on my hotel door startled me, but I should have known that my groomsmen were right on time for wedding photos. As my clones fussed over the position of our boutonnieres and the knots of our bowties, I decided that it was time to distribute my groomsmen gifts. While my bachelor party raged on in Rio de Janiero, I had deployed the clones to conquer and pillage the uncontacted peoples of the Miqueleno-Kujubim in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. With their superior technology and Blitzkrieg methods, the clones subdued the natives in less than 30 seconds. The pillaging commenced, and soon I had my gifts in hand. I presented each groomsman with a gold ingot with their names engraved, and I had prayed that the clones had at least washed off the blood and any remaining hair.

As the bridal party made its way over to the wedding venue, so did the clones. I had expected some sort of crisis, like a hiccup in the officiating, overdone steak on the wedding menu, perhaps a crucial and obvious detail that I had blatantly missed. But everything went smoothly, and when Trish locked eyes with me at the reception, she smiled warmly, impressed at my ability to organize such a lavish production. As Trish relaxed and settled in, I started loosening up as well. Blood rushed back into my once white-knuckles as I relaxed my iron grip on the minds of my clones.

At first, it was a series of minor missteps, like a fumbled wine glass during a refill, or an errant fork clattering on the ground. Completely imperceptible through the raucous crowd. Expected, even.

As I turned around, I caught a glimpse of a clone pouring the after-dinner coffee for one of Trish’s guests. As I turned back to Trish, I heard a bloodcurdling scream. Turning my attention behind me once more, the same clone was slumped over the same guest, pouring scalding hot coffee in her lap. Taking a note that it was one of Trish’s guests, I turned back to Trish once more, stone-faced.  

It’s just decaf. I don’t like it either, but no need to scream bloody murder, I thought.

I had planned for this. I knew that the hive mind could only prop up rapidly aging shells for a limited amount of time before they crumpled up into helpless heaps on the ground. As the puppet master, I kept the strings on my marionettes taut, but as soon as I fed them some slack, their limbs splayed out, almost completely limp, propped up by the few strands of longer strings that prevented the puppet from collapsing completely.

Shifting my focus, I decided to take back the reins. With my eyes closed, I scanned the depths of my brain for bodies I was capable of enslaving. This was the one downside of the mind control serum - identifying host bodies that I had once injected required intense concentration, as eligible candidates looked like blobs of radiating heat, like how they appeared on a thermal imaging camera, but a lot less clear.

It was a mix of bad luck and sheer coincidence that I had once inhabited the minds of most of my wedding guests - mostly for personal gain and fraud. I grasped at any red blob, assuming the consciousness of guest after guest. For each mind I assumed, I glanced down. Since there were no mirrors, I immediately looked at the back of my hands. Although primitive, I had branded all my clones with a sigil for easy identification.

I looked at the clock - it was around 7:45pm and the LSD that I spiked in the water supply should have kicked in five minutes ago.

The air around me seemed to quiver even though I stayed perfectly still. The piercing screams and howls of anguish took on a color of their own and bathed the tablecloth in hues of red, purple, and then black. I had originally wanted the overall mood to be calming and peaceful, with the intention of the LSD enhancing and heightening the existing ambiance. However, the screams of burn victims and tortured souls darkened the room, and I needed to change the vibe quickly.

I correctly assumed the mind of clone who was manning the DJ booth, but had underestimated the amount of focus it took to control his body. With my clumsy hands, I button-mashed the controls for the lights and music. The strobe lights kicked on and the speakers started blasting electronic music with pounding bass.

Unbeknownst to me, “Patient Zero” emerged onto the dance floor. Zero, the eleventh clone who was supposed to be discarded by his clone brethren due to his mental instability and contagious rabid condition.

I was annoyed. I specifically told the clones to discard of Zero since the incubation period for his virus was only a week, and there could be no chance of the virus escaping the confines of his body. But sentient beings often felt compassion, even defying logic at times. Zero had always been the runt of the group, and because of his small stature, he had been adored by the others in their infancy.

I toyed with the idea of replacing the fallen clone infant with Zero, but I just realized that would have been downright irresponsible and borderline dangerous.

I barely recognized him at first, but his tattered rags were unmistakable. He was wearing one of my old hand-me-down “The Nature Company” shirts from the 1990s, although it was stained and soiled to almost near indistinguishability.

He was a mistake, a product of my incapability to multitask. When I was experimenting with the WRN gene, I couldn’t resist modifying other genes in the RecQ family (as an aside, I coined the term “jammin’ on the (DNA) helicase” and once in a while, I secretly smiled to myself at my cleverness), including the BLM gene, whose mutation caused the Bloom-Torre-Machacek syndrome. Individuals with Bloom syndrome typically had short stature and rashes that were induced by the sun. Aside from cosmetic differences, they unfortunately had higher rates of cancer. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to achieve by this gene modification, but by sheer bad luck, Zero was bitten by a rabid squirrel in one of our group outdoor education sessions.

With a crazed look in his eyes, Zero started attacking my guests indiscriminately. He was mute, but the bloodlust in his eyes said it all. The mutated strain of rabies took hold of his victims almost immediately, and as I surveyed my felled guests, I felt a tinge of sadness. Some of these guests hadn’t yet handed over their wedding gifts yet. It would be in poor taste to rummage their bodies for a bloodstained card in a suit pocket, much less take the jewelry off of their mangled fingers.

It was clearly time to go. I relinquished all consciousness and returned all of my focus back into my original body. I took Trish by the hand, headed to the helipad, and started up the helicopter.

Surveying the leaping flames from afar, I could make out figures in the distance running around wildly. I shook my head and launched two heat seeking missiles into the fracas. I thought about my groomsmen for half a second, but it was okay because I didn’t have fun at my bachelor party. They had all shared a nervous glance and hesitated when I ordered two bottles of Dom Pérignon from the waitress at the table, the same nervous glance they shared when I ordered multiple portions of beluga caviar at dinner. Plus, when they ran out of cash, they sent the strippers home instead of Venmo-ing them money from their personal accounts. Shaking with rage from the traumatic memories of my bachelor party, I sent four more missiles into the burning wreckage. 

Trish never said a single word the entire flight.

When we landed, she burst into tears. It was exactly how she imagined her wedding as a child.

[absofrutely]

Surrogate

James Bruckhaus couldn’t possibly eat another bite at the sushi buffet – he tried slinking away to the restroom, but before he could stand up, his boss roared, “Another round!”

James slunk back in his chair, dreading the thought of more volume filling up his at-capacity belly. He couldn’t throw up here, not at a work function. A bead of sweat rolled down his brow – he was barely holding it together as it was.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, pressed the side button to wake it up and snuck a glance at it underneath the table. He sighed a breath of relief. Ten credits left. As he hit the side button on the phone to turn off his screen, the faint blue glow that temporarily lit up his face slowly faded away. He hoped nobody had noticed.

A few weeks ago, he had spent half of his life savings on a series of electronic implants in his brain, specifically the hypothalamus. One of the implants inhibited the release of leptin, the satiety hormone. If his leptin hormone levels stayed constant and never rose, James could eat and never feel full. Normally, after eating, the rising levels of glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids in the blood would signal a feeling of fullness, but with the implant, these nutrient signals would never have a chance to reach the brain.

As his boss filled his cup with a generous pour of Sapporo, James navigated to the Surrogate app and with a few taps, activated the hunger module. The screen confirmed that five credits had been deducted from his virtual wallet. The feeling of fullness immediately evaporated. James led the round of toasts with a hearty “KAN PAI!” Volume would no longer be an issue – but as the night wore on, James became increasingly disoriented. He fought off waves of nausea, gulping back whatever liquid threatened to resurface.

He immediately regretted not getting fitted for the premium version of the implant, which would have redirected nausea-inducing neurotransmitters away from the area postrema in his medulla oblongata. However, his rationale for not buying the premium option was twofold: first, it was expensive; second, he had reservations modifying the chemoreceptor trigger zone – if his body’s natural instinct was to expel a toxin, it was probably in James’ best interest to obey these impulses.

With as much dignity as he could muster, careful to hide a forehead lined with beads of sweat, James bee-lined to the restroom with an exaggerated overconfident stride, collapsing to his knees in front of the toilet.

Following the success of Surrogate modules, knock-off implantable hormone inhibitors flooded the market – the quality and efficacy remained dubious for the cheapest models. Some kits were do-it-yourself models which yielded horrific medical catastrophes. 

But the modules didn’t actually chemically inhibit hormones from being produced - they simply diverted the hormones into a collection pouch near the groin area, not unlike colostomy bags (which are normally used to collect waste from a surgically diverted biological system).

With the popularity of Surrogate modules and their equivalent knock-offs, public outcry immediately denounced the amount of medical waste produced by its users – although hormones were water-soluble and fat-soluble, detractors were quick to point out that should a user pour their excess hormones down the drain, runoff could pick up all types of diseases that could pose as a public health hazard.

In response, Congress passed the Lawful Hormone Disposal Act (but known more famously as the Surrogate Act), which imposed strict penalties for improper hormone disposal. Thus began the government sanctioned hormone detectors. By law, every home had to be outfitted with a small plastic device that detected the presence of hormones – in fact, some companies began to package together devices that detected smoke, carbon monoxide and hormones. It became impossible to ever puncture the hormone collection pouch without alerting the FDA – it was a federal crime to pour your discarded hormones down the drain.

Almost overnight, medical waste disposal shops popped up all over the country, offering cheap and convenient incineration of pathological waste.

But widespread incineration came under scrutiny when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) discovered that most disposal shops violated the Clean Air Act, especially because cheap medical waste incinerators were never outfitted with air pollution control devices, one of the most expensive add-ons. With disposal shops under strict government regulation, Americans were now at a complete loss on how they would continue the legal use of Surrogate devices.

Heavy Surrogate users turned to illicit means to discard their diverted hormones. Profiteers, mostly gang-related, established underground hormone disposal sites (called HORDIS) at exorbitant rates, promising patrons that they’d smuggle collection pouches to safe drop-off sites where the donors would never be identified. Bloody HORDIS turf wars rocked once-safe suburban havens. Local authorities were paid off to turn a blind eye to the bloodshed, violence, and illegal hormone disposal.  

In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) joined forces with the EPA and the US military, creating federal units intended to keep the peace. In the spring of 2052, three different HORDIS gangs were amidst a bloody turf war when federal forces decided to intervene. The rival gangs imposed a moratorium on their own issues and turned their weapons against the Feds, their mutual enemy. Completely underestimating and overwhelmed by the amount of firepower the HORDIS gangs had, the Feds suffered heavy casualties. As losses mounted, the Feds called in the US Air Force for an extraction and a last ditch airstrike.

Civilian casualties number in the thousands – the botched airstrike hit floor 43 of the world-renowned Selenium Tower, and the smoke and dust from the smoldering debris made the area completely uninhabitable for months. Those who stayed behind and breathed in the toxic fumes suffered from illnesses such as asthma and cancer even years after the Selenium tragedy.

Although the government issued a formal apology and offered reparations for those affected in the Selenium tragedy, Americans had completely lost trust in US administration. They took to the streets, looting and rioting. With protest and riots in almost every major metropolitan city, the president declared a state of emergency. For the first time in American history, in an unprecedented move, peacekeepers from the United Nations were brought in to maintain international peace and security.

While the UN peacekeepers imposed a curfew and applied military justice to civilians, they also committed countless atrocities to the American people – murder and theft were commonplace, but were eclipsed by human trafficking and forced prostitution.

At this point, there were over 275 million Americans with a Surrogate-type implant. The implants had expanded their suite of hormone suppression, including the inhibition of cortisol, the steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland. Cortisol, released in large amount during times of stress, could contribute to high blood pressure, lowered immune function, impaired cognitive performance, increased abdominal fat, and an entire host of adverse effects. It became common practice for a parent to request a Surrogate module to be implanted into their children immediately after they were born.

Banning Surrogate-type implants was not an option, although it was a fiercely debated ballot proposition. Pro-Surrogate proponents argued that these implants were deeply woven into America’s social fabric – without these modules, society would be on the brink of collapsing due to an entire generation who knew nothing about heartbreak, stress, or discomfort. Detractors, mostly the older generation, argued that Surrogate implants had made society weak and completely reliant on a device that prevented people from experiencing the very emotions and feelings that made them human. Robots, they said – we’ve become a society full of robots. Whatever happened to human resiliency that didn’t use artificial means as a crutch?

The policymaker were at a deadlock – neither side wanted to budge and although the Surrogate-type implants were at the root of the issue, an official governmental ban on these devices would do nothing to solve the violence and bloodshed – in fact, any action would undoubtedly exacerbate the civil unrest.

James sat cross-legged in his empty apartment, wincing at the ray of sunlight that poked through his venetian blinds. He grimaced and flopped down onto his hardwood floor in defeat. Running his fingers through his patchy and unkempt beard, he contemplated showering and shaving today, just as he’d contemplated for the last two weeks.

He didn’t even bother keeping his phone plugged in – but he didn’t use it anyways. Today, the battery level hit 15%, and an on-screen pop-up warning woke up his screen for a brief moment. His Surrogate credits had run out last week and it seemed like life stood at a standstill. Normally, he’d replenish his credits, but he had gotten laid off six months ago. After selling most of his furniture, he barely had enough savings to pay rent.

The prospect of interviewing for another job terrified him – he hadn’t felt nervousness or anxiety in so long that even the thought of actually feeling anything except for comfort and contentment made him anxious. James was experiencing classic “feelings withdrawal” symptoms.

Still, he needed money. Earlier in the week, while fumbling his way into a very deep part of the internet, he saw an opportunity to become one of the first test subjects for a new form of hormone disposal. The initial TransHormone business idea was simple: illegal hormone disposal shops would pool all medical waste in a centralized repository with a massive centrifuge designed to parse through and sort the different types of hormonal byproducts. Through an intense purification process, suppressed hormones were finally categorized properly and aggregated together, forming the most comprehensive hormone archive in the world.

The founders had an original vision - creating a cheap, clean, and efficient hormone marketplace. Because most hormonal disorders are a result of deficiencies or overproduction, the founders thought that a cost effective hormone repository had social benefit due to a large target market. Plus, the actual hormonal molecules were always pure and never tainted – they were just always mixed with the host’s bodily fluids. With the centrifuge, they were able to isolate the target hormone with FDA-grade sanitization.

But they never got FDA approval. When presenting their prototype, the FDA officers were horrified, claiming that the entire operation was tantamount to organ harvesting and black market economics. When it was revealed that the business was funded by HORDIS kingpins who wanted to legitimize their former operations, the FDA terminated all negotiations and issued a cease-and-desist order. With billions of investor dollars on the line, closing up shop was not an option. Mounting investor pressure kept doors open, and the founders had no choice but to participate in the medical shadow economy alongside illicit organ traders.

To transport hormones to their recipients, TransHormone needed couriers who would temporarily ingest hormones via their modified collection pouches. James jumped at the opportunity. One trip downtown would net him $1000 and it was practically risk free.

“Picking up” the actual hormones was a painless process – James was surprised by the cleanliness of the facility and the professionalism of the staff. The entire procedure took less than five minutes and though his collection bag felt fuller than normal, the bus ride downtown would be eight stops.

As James walked to the bus stop, the pinkish hue of the sun peeking through the clouds caught his attention. The usually-busy streets seemed empty and a gust of warm air rustled the leaves on a nearby tree. Pedestrians who did remain on the road seemed rushed to get indoors – no one wanted to be stuck outside when the thunderstorm struck. James glanced at glowing digits of the electronic bus tracker. Three minutes until the next bus.

The first few drops of warm rain felt nice, but the deluge of torrential rain quickly shattered any illusion of pleasantness. James wiggled his toes together, checking for the type of friction associated with warm and dry feet, with the fruitless hope that his suede shoes would prevent water from seeping in. No such luck today.

The hiss of the hydraulic rear door revealed an entirely packed bus and at least twenty pairs of eyes staring at him wearily. Glancing at the bus tracker, the next bus was due to arrive in 16 minutes. He stepped on, much to the chagrin of the passengers who shuffled around uncomfortably to make space.

With fogged up glasses and damp jeans that chafed, James found himself enveloped in a sea of warm bodies. A bead of water rolled down the window pane, carving a defined path through the condensation. His stomach immediately lurched – but only a couple more stops to go.

At his stop, James wriggled his way to the door, only to get ejected out onto the pavement. As he hit the ground, he felt some type of release as his insides immediately turned cold. He instinctively clutched his groin area, feeling for the bulge of the collection bag, but after a few pointless gropes, he realized that the contents of the bag had to be in his system.

He knew that hormonal disorders were prevalent among some people – diabetes, hyperthyroidism, and Cushing’s syndrome – but had no idea what type of hormones his specific bag carried. James braced himself for some sort of physical change, afraid that he’d undergo some sort of Bruce Banner-like transformation, but nothing happened.

With no payload, James couldn’t show up to the access point empty-handed. With every step, his eyelids grew heavier, but his mind grew sharper – whatever fog had clouded his mind had burnt off completely. As he tried to collect his thoughts, he realized he had so many more memories to draw upon. Feeling like he had truly woken up for the first time, James blinked listlessly, as his new memories topped off whatever brain capacity he had left. The memories and experiences from over twenty thousand people overwhelmed him at first, but left him with a clear directive.

He had lived thousands of lives in less than a second, experienced the full spectrum of emotion – the highest highs and the lowest lows – the most pervasive being the immense feeling of sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness of the human condition. He fell in love 8000 times and got his heart shattered 6000 times. He remembered every first kiss in full detail, but they were often accompanied by parting last words that he couldn’t possibly forget. For every time he cried, he had laughed at least 100 times to make up for it.

And he realized that though no one ever acted maliciously, they often acted in their own self-interest. That people were fundamentally good, but their immaturity often got the best of them. That even with all the bitterness and hurt associated with some memories, he wouldn’t trade them for the world.

Enlightened, he slowly powered down his Surrogate module, took the next bus back to his apartment, showered, shaved, and cleaned his apartment. 

In two weeks, he had a new job and he admired his now-furnished apartment. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that every action he took felt like déjà vu, like everything had been previously rehearsed and though he might try, anything he’d do could never be original.

“I could collect human scalps and make lampshades out of human skin,” he thought aloud, before he caught himself.

“Wait, what?” he said. Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had already done that. Plus, he was within earshot of his neighbors, and they didn’t understand his brand of humor. Once, they caught him meowing loudly to a cat in his yard, but after they saw him rummaging through a bag of clothes left for Goodwill on the sidewalk at 4:00am, James didn’t think he’d ever be able to recover. 

He sifted through all of his memories and came up with a combination that he’d never heard of before. His sample size was roughly 20,000 people, and he needed to make sure he’d be the most unique individual. He’d first pretend to have Tourette’s syndrome, but after crunching the numbers, that only cut the population down to a shocking 10,000 people. Over 50% of his memories came from people who were Tourette’s fakers?

He added pretend blindness as well, but the combination of fake Tourette’s plus fake blindness only reduced the population down to 7,500.

Surprised, he added in cross-dressing, phony quadriplegia, and veganism, which narrowed it down to three individuals. He felt like he couldn’t do better or had no more resources to be absolutely original.

As he rolled himself out the door using an electronic wheelchair, making sure to twitch his heavy eye-shadowed eyelids randomly, he started to sweat under his sequin-trimmed ruffle boa. Coincidentally, his neighbor walked out the door at the same time and made uneasy eye contact with him. 

James didn’t make it twenty feet before he was shot on sight by a UN peacekeeper.

[absofrutely]

The Theater

“PLACES EVERYONE!” I bellowed. The cast members gave me a tired look, as if I were the bad guy. It’s true, I was stressed after one of the interns tripped over an extension cord, pulling down half the set with him. Even more than incompetency, I hated carelessness. Opening night could make or break this entire operation.

The set was a masterpiece – the set designers had done their job beautifully. By rearranging a few simple pieces of furniture, we traveled from the bitter cold of the Himalayas to the Aztec ruins of Tenochtitlan. It wasn’t a coincidence that Aztecs and Sherpas had similar skin pigmentation – this was a cost saving measure, as a Mictlantecuhthi could easily become a Phurba Tashi Sherpa by switching accents and traditional garb.

Investors were initially skeptical of the idea. They spent countless hours poring over the business plan, making sure my assumptions for the revenue model were feasible. When I finally got the green light, I was elated that there were others who believed in my dream.

The truth was, even though I seemed like a hardass – a real stickler for the details – to all my employees, beneath this porcelain exterior, I was trying so hard not to let the cracks show through. I didn’t know the first thing about starting a business and despite my micromanaging, I just made things up as I went along. Most days, I was barely holding it together, ready to burst into tears any second. My insecurities manifested in some sort of totalitarian regime where any criticism was violently oppressed.

Employees who expressed any type of dissent, be it vocally or via body language, disappeared mysteriously. Once, I caught Raymond, one of the tailor assistants, rolling his eyes when I was describing my incredibly racist and stereotypical interpretation of Aztec headdresses. That evening, I pulled him aside and told him that I’d be cutting his hours, so he couldn’t be considered a full-time employee anymore. His hours would be capped at 38.5 hours, which would effectively end his health coverage at the end of the month. I knew that his daughter would start chemo soon.

As he wept, I slowly slipped my hand into my pocket, tapping the “Record” button on my phone’s native sound recording app. As a side project, I was producing some electronic music and I needed some unique samples. I beat-boxed silently to the irregular cadence of his sobs.

The idea of the entire production was to provide the audience with an immersive experience in exotic locations.

Because I used actors and actresses with darker complexion and completely disregarded race in the casting process, when I asked if anyone knew how to speak Spanish or Sherpa, I got some blank stares. Some hero had the nerve to say, “Well, people who live in Central Mexico mostly speak Nahuatl, which doesn’t even remotely resemble Spanish. And I think you mean Nepali, not Sherpa.”

I fired a few warning shots into the air with my handgun to maintain order.

No one blinked. They’ve long been immune to my outbursts. 

Earlier that morning, I had translated the Gettysburg address into Spanish and Sherpa, printed out a few copies and expected my cast members to memorize a few key lines. Google Translate didn’t have Nahuatl, so Spanish was my only option.

I assumed the audience wouldn’t know these languages either, and since there really was no plot, it was really just a day in the life of the Sherpa or Aztec people. The point was to provide a near interactive experience, where the audience could observe folks from a different culture go about their normal lives. If the set was beautiful enough and the costumes passable, I really believed that any viewer would have a good time. To curate the experience, there would be English-speaking tour guides who explained some local history (taken straight out of Wikipedia) and a bunch of interesting facts.

On opening night, I peeked out at the packed house. The audience chattered politely, their voices murmuring indistinctly. In the front row I saw Charles Brandler, the famous Broadway critic. My heartbeat quickened – I had no idea Brandler was going to be here tonight. The stakes were higher than I thought. The lights dimmed and a hush fell over the crowd.

The first tour guide walked out and with a big smile on his face, he started to speak.

“Welcome to Tenochtitlan! I hope the flight over here wasn’t too bad. Whoopsie! Watch your step; it’s always tricky getting off of these small planes. My name’s Jeffrey and I’ll be your tour guide for the next couple of days.”

The backdrop shifted, and we were now arriving at the city center, Tenochtitlan Plaza. The townspeople poured out onto the scene, reenacting their own versions of how they’d go about normal life in the early 16th century.

The inhabitants mumbled broken Spanish and pretended to do village people things, like bartering vegetables, hanging out laundered clothes, feeding imaginary animals, and chattering amongst themselves.

I had imagined a stronger reaction from the audience, like more oohs and ahhs, but the spectators sat silently, stony-eyed.

Jeffrey went on to explain some Aztec history about the city-state’s longstanding rival with the Purépecha Empire, which was situated to the northwest. Despite the Aztec Empire’s many attempts, it was unable to capture any sizable portion of land for a sustained period of time.

I heard a loud, audible snore from the audience.

This wasn’t looking great.

But I had expected this. It was time to speed up history to the more interesting parts. Out of nowhere, a well-dressed man leapt onto the stage, wearing a suit of armor and a metal helmet with a flat brim and a crest from front to back – it was the iconic conquistador morion helmet. The man eyed the audience suspiciously. For a moment, there was absolute silence throughout the building.

The snoring man in the audience sat up straight, wide awake now.

Without warning, the armored man on stage withdrew his fine Toledan blade and started hacking at the village people. The natives were no match against the conquistador’s mighty steel blade and soon the stage exploded into a fine bloody mist – with every blow, each casualty squeezed the trigger of their pneumatic squibs, spraying fake blood everywhere, including the first couple rows of the audience. The conquistador had no mercy, taking special care to only go after women and children, slaughtering them in the most brutal way possible. Jeffrey, the tour guide, tried to run, but jolted to a halt as a reddened spear burst through the front of his tan canvas vest. Clutching the spear, Jeffrey fell to the floor. 

In the final fight scene, the armored man ripped out his assailant's heart and took a huge juicy bite of it. 

The audience groaned and some even stood up to leave.

Didn't they know that this was the Battle of Tlacopan? Didn't they understand the symbolism? When Cuauhtemoc's heart was eaten, that represented the true downfall of the Aztec empire. 

No, they weren’t going to ruin my opening night.

I quickly drew my pistol. I was losing control and there was no choice but to maintain order. I fired three shots into the air, accidentally hitting a glass chandelier.

As glass rained down on the audience, I shrieked, “STOP. Nobody move. Get back to your seats everyone.”

The audience hit the deck immediately. 

"If I see anyone even INCH towards the door, I will fire."

"Now please take your seats ladies and gentlemen and enjoy the show!" I chirped brightly. 

The second act took place in the Mahalangur mountain range in between Nepal and Tibet. 

Jeffrey, the tour guide, rose from the dead, brushed himself off, and provided some context for the next scene.

The year was 1922 – Britain mountaineer George Mallory had discovered a route from the north side of Tibet that would be suitable for Mount Everest’s first ever summit. They’d start from Rongbuk Glacier and make their way to North Col, where they could then access the summit pyramid.

Mallory had enlisted the help of 40 Sherpas, people who were part of an ethnic group native to the highest altitude areas in Nepal. Due to their genetic resilience in surviving at extremely high altitudes (which is now recognized as the fastest case of human evolution on record), they were chosen as porters in the expedition.

The entire trip was tainted by Western exceptionalism – Mallory and his men believed that they would be hailed as heroes and pioneers while the Sherpas (to this day) remained relatively nameless for the crucial role they played.

That takes us to this current scene. The mountaineers had just failed their first two summit attempts, and although one of medical staff strongly advised against a third try, the men still trudged on, pushing the boundaries of human limits.  

The same Aztec actors and actresses came back out onto the stage, dressed up in heavy mountaineering gear. Their transition to Sherpahood was rather quick.

But Mallory had made a critical error – instead of opting to ascend the mountain with switchbacks, which would prevent excessive erosion, he decided to scale icy slopes straight on.

The actor playing Mallory prepared himself for a vertical climb, stepping into his crampons. To get better footing, he used his ice axe to haul himself up the icy ledge. On the third strike, Mallory paused. An ominous low rumbling engulfed the theater. The rumbling grew thunderous as the entire building started shaking – fixtures started falling off the walls and fissures slowly formed on the ceiling, revealing the deep blue of the night sky above. Roof shingles rattled and then huge chunks of cement started falling onto the audience below.

Mallory yelled, “AVALANCHE!”

Members of the audience screamed as the debris narrowly missed them and landed in vacant seats instead. I had planned this – I planned everything. Did they ever believe for a second that I’d lose control of this production?

At this point, four resort-grade snow blowers switched on and heaped snow onto the helpless sherpas. They shrieked as the weight of the snow crushed their broken bodies.

I was so focused on the production that I didn’t realize that one of the audience members, presumably trying to be a hero, had crept up behind me. The last thing I remember was turning around, and seeing a bearded man with a raised fire extinguisher above my head.

After I came to, I woke up in some sort of holding cell. The rest of the night was a blur, but I managed to get home somehow and the next day I had a pounding headache.

I checked the latest edition of the New York Times and caught a glimpse at the “Arts & Leisure” section and the headline read “Nightmare at the Theater” with a big picture of the conquistador taking a bite out of a life-like model of a human heart. I scoffed – this was avant-garde, revolutionary, Bohemian theater. Charles Brandler must have written this. Until now, I never took him for a philistine.

But the calls kept on coming. In the next couple of days, I received over 100 calls from people who insisted on seeing “A Day in the Life: Aztecs and Sherpas Go Berserka”. Brandler’s scathing review must have made my show an instant cult classic. Finally, there were people who recognized true genius.

The police told me that my production put the lives of the audience in danger, so I was forbidden by law to replicate the original show, but they told me that if I lost the pistol and the avalanche theatrics, I would be allowed to open my doors again. If I didn’t have my pistol, I wouldn’t have a “captive audience”, I chuckled to myself. 

On the day of the second grand opening, we had a fully packed house again. I took a peek at the theatergoers and my first impression was that this crowd seemed less sophisticated somehow. I didn’t see one tie in the audience and gowns for the ladies were completely out of the question. No matter – this was a production for the masses!

This time around, I did get the oohs and ahhs that I initially expected. Instead of groans when the heart was bitten, I got wild applause and cheers. The avalanche part of the production evoked excited screams and I fist-pumped to myself behind the curtain.

It was a success. We had a completely sold out house and with a few more shows like this, the profits would be enormous. I had done it – my impossible business idea was about to take off.

After the show, I wandered out to the lobby to meet and greet our supporters. I first encountered a group of adults with special needs. One-by-one, they lined up to shake my hand – it was either a limp grasp with no eye-contact or a crushing grip with no modicum of self-control. No matter, I met the next group of people waiting to see me.

This time, it was a group of elderly folks, presumably in their 70s or 80s, accompanied by a chaperone. I was flattered that an entire retirement community would come out to see my show. One octogenarian spoke, but his speech was slow, as if he struggled to recall certain vocabulary. He often used the wrong word, as if the language centers of his brain were damaged.

Outside the theater, I saw four charter buses with signs on them. One sign said, “The Association of Retarded Citizens” and the other said, “The Chateau Memory Care Center”. I glanced at the audience, hoping that I would find a person without special needs or dementia. The caregivers and chaperones had their hands full, but when I approached them, they all said that the show was really for the patients – they had all been playing on their phones during the production. I faked a smile, hoping they wouldn’t see the disappointment on my face.

My audience truly believed they were traveling to Central Mexico and Mount Everest. Somehow this information didn’t sit well with me, no matter how much money the show made.

But I kept my doors open – I had investors to pay back after all. The money kept rolling in. The actors and actresses were happy. The investors were happy. I wandered around each day, hoping to see a different sign on the charter buses parked outside the theater.

The cast members soon understood the intellectual capacity of our clientele and eventually stopped putting forth any type of effort – any artistic integrity they had was extinguished as soon as they realized they could scrape by if they just gave the bare minimum. No one memorized their lines anymore. Broken Spanish turned into complete gibberish. When costumes ripped, they stayed ripped - the actors didn’t care that they were wearing tattered rags in front of an audience of 2000.

I was so unhappy that I started self-medicating. To numb the pain, I started out with alcohol, but I soon found that I needed something stronger. I switched between heroin and crack that I got from my cast members – it turned out that more than 80% of the actors and actresses were heavy users. They brought their friends and acquaintances and soon, schizophrenic people were thrown into the mix.

We eventually partitioned off a section of the backstage to form a crack cocaine laboratory. The process was surprisingly easy – all we needed was baking soda, cocaine, rubbing alcohol, a beaker, and an open flame. We spent all the proceeds of the show on buying cocaine and eventually, it just made more sense for many of us to live in the backstage area of the theater. We could make crack, smoke crack, and sell crack in our cozy little nook. I skipped out on the orgies, but only because my body had so many open sores all the time.

My non-work friends never saw me anymore. Between the crack addiction and running the show, I was a ghost. Whenever I did run into them, I contorted my sallow, sunken face and flashed a fake yellow-toothed smile. That usually scared them off, but if they inquired further about my work, my response was always the same, “Fine. Everything is fine.” Hopefully that response told them the same lie I was telling myself: My life isn’t in shambles, I produce respectable work and I don’t live in a crack house.

Falling asleep was increasingly harder every night. My pillow was always damp from my tears and rats scuttled around us in the darkness, the sound of their little feet scampering across the linoleum floor was a constant reminder that I had hit rock bottom.

I needed to clean up my mess, needed to fix what went wrong. But there was a way to make things better. The set, the costumes, the crack house – all of it needed to go. It was 3:00am and everyone was still sleeping or passed out in the backstage area. Buying the gasoline was the easy part, lighting the match and locking the double doors was not.

As the flames leapt up the side of the building, the crackle of the expanding moisture in the wood drowned out the screams of the people inside. I made my way to the technical control booth where my technicians normally operated lighting and sound equipment. I flipped on the intercom, took out my phone, and played the recording of Raymond sobbing uncontrollably on repeat.

The world would never know about the atrocities that we committed here. We were finally cleansed.

Hands trembling, I pulled out my pistol, aimed it at my right temple and pulled the trigger.

[absofrutely]

For Carolyn

She timed her arrival to San Francisco strategically. Carolyn thought to herself, “If I leave at 6:05pm and Google Maps says it’ll take me 55 minutes to get to the Embarcadero, and metered parking is free at 7:00pm, this will work out perfectly.”

She found herself sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic at 6:50pm, trying to merge onto King Street off the 280 North. As expected, multiple car accidents had thrown a kink in her plan. He would be waiting for her, on time, probably.

Carolyn hated being late, especially since she was so meticulous in planning out her schedule. She circled around for 15 minutes trying to find an open meter, but finally gave up and paid $20 for a flat-rate parking garage. “Mother fucker!” she mouthed, as she stepped in a puddle while speed walking to the restaurant. She was wearing flats and her right foot was completely soaked.

By the time she opened the door to the restaurant, it was 7:35pm – she had texted a hey, stuck in traffic! sorry! :( message 20 minutes ago. Hopefully that text was able to tide him over. She took an enormous amount of willpower to contort her face into a half-smile and extended her hand to the stranger at the window table.

She explained quickly, “Hi Alex! Sorry I’m late, driving up from the Peninsula was terrible – there were a couple of accidents that clogged up the 101 and then…”

“No really, it’s okay – I ordered you a drink. Hope you don’t mind,” Alex said with a smile.

First dates were always tricky. Normally, she’d opt for drinks at a nearby bar – somewhere more convenient, but she was feeling generous one evening and agreed to meet him in San Francisco.

As she sipped her old fashioned, she recalled last night’s date in Oakland.

She could still hear his voice as he droned on and on - “Well, most folks think of plumbers as gruff men with saggy pants who drive pick-up trucks, but to me, the art of plumbing lies in its rich history. In the 1800s, hollowed logs were primarily used as the plumbing pipes, and it eventually evolved into copper pipes in the twentieth century, but the interesting thing is – the prohibitive cost of copper pipes actually necessitated the use of a cheaper alternative and of course we all know that it’s…”

He waited for her to finish his sentence, as if the answer was obvious.

“OH – um,” she was caught not paying attention at all.

“Plastic of course! Polyvinyl chloride, as you may know it. PVC!”

She took a deep sip of her Long Island. I can’t wait to go back home and watch Quantico.

At the end of the night, she had to evade his predatory lips multiple times, even though she showed no signs of interest.

When she got home last night, she had four texts waiting for her.

“Hi Caroline, I had a really great time tonight!”

“It’s my first time going on a date with an Asian girl – I’ve always found Asian women attractive.”

“Are you ignoring me? Are you there?”

“You are an amazing person and you deserve only the best. I’d like to believe I’m the one who can give it to you but I don’t think you believe it’ll come from me. I wish I could talk to you Caroline, but be happy.. I couldn’t ask for anything else”

The obvious choice was to ignore this person. He seemed normal enough on the date, but now it was pretty clear that he was insane.

Carolyn thought, “Well the bar’s been set pretty low. If Alex had any semblance of normalcy, he would have all the chances in the world.”

And it turned out Alex wasn’t normal - he was exceptional. He was charismatic, laughed at the right moments, asked questions that confirmed that he paid attention to her stories, and had a wonderful sense of humor.

Carolyn beamed at him. Finally, someone who didn’t fetishize Asian women or tell excessively droll stories about the merits of plumbing!

As Alex walked Carolyn to her car, she smiled, finally hopeful after so many disastrous first dates.

She lingered a little longer before unlocking her car. Suddenly Alex made eye contact with her, moved closer to her and then whispered, “Carolyn, my home planet is in grave danger. Centuries of reckless mining has made the planet’s uranium core unstable – it’s about to explode any second.”

“The warring factions on my planet made any type of cooperation impossible, especially with the rise of Electryon, the merciless hegemon of Sector 7.”

Stunned, Carolyn was completely speechless.

Alex continued, “The counsel elders allowed me to identify an individual to carry on the genetic blueprint of our people. It’s been a fruitless search. I’ve been on Tinder for six months. Everyone’s a freak.”

“But not you, Carolyn. Join us – I’d like to invite you to carry the seed of the entire Kruprulu race. Let us defy Electryon and live forever.”

For a moment, Carolyn was touched, even moved by this grand gesture. But as the initial shock wore off, she started to understand the absurdity of the situation. The “most normal” person she met ended up being a person claiming to be an alien with a dying homeworld, and he was willing to use this narrative to get into her pants.

Carolyn responded, “While I appreciate this grand offer, I’ll have to respectfully decline.”

As he started to protest, Carolyn reached into her purse and whispered, “However, Electryon sends his regards.”

She pulled out a railgun and fired. Alex crumpled to the floor, his green alien blood sizzling on the concrete.

Carolyn rifled through Alex’s rucksack and located his GPS transponder. She wrote down the coordinates of Kruprulu. It was time to eradicate a planet.

[absofrutely]

For Adam

The faint beep of the smoke detector was just enough to rouse him awake. Adam sat up, glanced at his clock – 8:45am. He wondered how he slept through his normal 7:00am alarm. The smoke detector must be on the fritz again. He was always boggled why the smoke detector beeped when it was running low on battery. He assumed that each additional beep sapped precious battery power faster than if it didn’t beep.

He reached to pull the sheets back over him, but noticed that his arms were crudely tied to the bedpost with a couple pieces of ribbon. Annoyed, Adam yanked both arms out of these rudimentary shackles. This must be a joke.

Inhaling deeply, Adam prepared to sleep in for another 30 minutes before actually getting out of bed. He choked – the room was filled with thick gray smoke. Coughing, he leapt of out bed but felt his momentum halt abruptly. He crashed to the floor, landing on his face, splitting his lip wide open. Someone had tied his legs to the bed post with a jump rope. The knot wasn’t complex, but the knot was so messy and amateurish that it ended up being pretty formidable.

Adam knew that smoke inhalation was the main cause of fire-related deaths. He wondered how long the smoke had been present in his room. If it had been a couple of hours, the carbon monoxide may have caused irreparable brain damage. His mind seemed hazy and disoriented. He couldn’t tell.

After untying the jump rope that bound his ankles to his bed, he lumbered over to his bedroom door. He hesitated before grabbing the doorknob, fearful that it would burn his hands. The knob was a bit warm to the touch, but not hot enough to cause any extreme discomfort. Adam tried opening the door, but found that it was completely jammed, as if someone had lodged a chair underneath the doorknob on the other side.

“Who would do this?” he thought.

His mind raced as he had a flashback to his days in Manila. Adam had partnered with Kuratong Baleleng, the notorious Filipino crime syndicate to make some side cash. As an ex-Navy SEAL, Adam missed the thrill of close-quarters combat, the exhilaration of urban warfare and the rush of maritime interdiction. Naturally, he gravitated to the Philippines, a place where corruption was prevalent among political leaders and police forces. The Manila South Harbor was his stomping grounds. He knew he would do well here.

The Kuratong Baleleng commissioned him to facilitate the import of cocaine through a secret backdoor from the southwestern Malaysia side of the island. The Taiwanese Triad was a silent partner, patrolling the Sulu Sea to provide a clear path from the Malaysian island, Pulau Jambongan, to the Kuratong Baleleng-controlled Cuyo Island.

Adam was the protection, with his extensive training in naval warfare and maritime combat. Plus, he was a skilled diver, well-versed in underwater demolition. It was a smooth trip, but when they got close to Cuyo Island, the Kuratong Baleleng turned their guns on him – his services were no longer necessary. And he was too expensive. Adeptly, Adam dove into the water as bullets whizzed by him, narrowly missing him every time.

Thinking back to his frogman days, he unclipped a limpet mine from his suit and quickly placed the magnetic bomb on the ship’s hull. Appropriately, the limpet mine got its name from the limpet, a sea snail that clings tightly to rocks or any other type of hard object.

This specific mine had a turbine in it – it would explode once the ship had navigated away a certain distance. As the ship pulled into Cuyo Island, a mile away, Adam smiled as he observed the fiery explosion.

He knew that this was unforgivable. The next week he flew back to the States and tried to start a new life.

They must have found him. But in his own house? Kayla was nine now and they had no right to pull her into this.

He felt the rage building inside him as he hoisted his bed over his shoulder, revealing a gun safe he told himself that he’d never touch again. He was John Wick in that scene where he takes a sledgehammer to the cement in his basement, picking up the shards of a life that he swore to give up long ago.

Arming himself to the teeth, Adam kicked down his door with a ferocious roar, ready to punch spines and rip out throats. The kitchen chair lodged underneath the doorknob smashed into three big pieces.

Kayla screamed as she dropped a burnt cake onto the linoleum floor. The charcoal cake shattered on impact.

She whined, “Dad – you ruined your surprise.”

He had forgotten that it was his 42nd birthday. Kayla must have woken up early and turned off his alarm. Adam set his gun down on the floor, moved to tears.

The kitchen was an absolute mess – cracked eggs, spilled vanilla extract, and a fine layer of flour coating all the appliances.

Kayla couldn’t reach the ingredients on the top shelf, so she used a step ladder to climb up onto the counter.

“It’s an apple cake, Dad,” Kayla pouted.

He gave her a big hug, completely brimming with pride. They spent the rest of the morning baking another cake. It was the perfect birthday.  

When he was getting ready for bed later on, three armed men were waiting for him inside his bedroom. His fists tightened, completely ready. He would punch spines and rip out throats after all. 

[absofrutely]

Underground Economy

When I first arrived at Mt. Rainer for my five night camping trip, the park rangers handed me a WAG Bag. WAG stood for “Waste Alleviation and Gelling” – it was a plastic bag filled with Poo Powder™, a substance that resembled kitty litter. I assumed that the powder would assist in the clumping of human waste, just like kitty litter. I crammed the WAG Bag into my backpack, not really giving it a second thought.

The ranger handed me a pamphlet about how human waste on trails impacted water quality, spread disease, and tarnished the overall aesthetic of the national park. Giardia lamblia and the Cryptosporidiosis were only a few examples of some harmful parasites that could thrive in the chilly mountain ponds and wreak havoc on the human digestive system.

The pamphlet said that if I didn’t want to use the WAG Bag, I could use a poop tube, a homemade PVC pipe that could be capped at both ends. You’d carry around the poop tube in your backpack (sealed of course) and when you need to go, you poop in the tube. “But how in the world would you aim?” I thought. Were we supposed to pull down our pants and surreptitiously position the pipe between our legs, and…shift our body weight onto it as we went to the restroom? What if we leaned too hard? What if the seal was imperfect? It didn’t really matter; I didn’t pack a PVC pipe anyways.

As for toilet paper, the pamphlet said that most hikers stick with regular toilet paper, but there were natural alternatives, such as fallen leaves (but it told us to identify them first), packed snow, and even smooth river rocks.

Whatever. I’ll dig a cathole like usual and make sure it’s at least 200 feet away from all of the other campsites. With the WAG Bag, I’d have to pick up my own waste with a smaller “grab bag” and then deposit it into the clumping agent. No thanks. Cathole it is. I’ve got my trowel with me. Digging a hole and then covering it with dirt seemed like a reasonable alternative to me. Plus, they had only given me three WAG Bags, which would not be enough for the number of bowel movements that I average per day (3.2). There was no way that I’d be re-opening one of the used bags to shove in more waste.

We took the “Disappointment Cleaver Route”, which was considered the easiest route, but given that Columbia Crest (the summit) was 14,411 feet, the climb was actually pretty grueling. We came prepared with crampons and ice axes, but found that these tools weren’t absolutely necessary – they just made our lives a bit easier. Regarding the bathroom situation, whenever I had to go, I ventured away from my group and did my business in a bunch of catholes. Two-ply toilet paper was the most comfortable, but it did tend to get kind of shredded with aggressive wiping – I noticed a few tufts of soiled paper catch the wind and floated off into the breeze. I remember thinking, “I really hope nobody breathes that stuff in by accident.”

On the descent, my group members started complaining about how much space the WAG Bags took up in their packs and how it was so gross that the bag touched the rest of their personal belongings, like their spare underwear and extra pairs of socks. Even though raw human waste never brushed up against anything, the fact that there was an ever-increasing bag of fecal matter pressed up against your back at all times was a nauseating thought. I secretly scoffed at my team members – my WAG Bags were untouched, in pristine condition. At REI, for a pack of 12, WAG Bags were going for $34. I planned to sell mine on eBay after I got home.

The descent was tricky. They always said that climbing down the mountain was more dangerous, partly because the footholds are more difficult to see and the momentum from a downhill fall is more violent than an uphill one. Near the basecamp, I noticed that the trail became cramped, like there was some sort of bottleneck preventing the climbers from leaving quickly. Murmurs and whispers traveled all the way up to where we were slowed down and there was talk of some sort of checkpoint. Confusion spread among the climbers - a checkpoint for what? None of us were operating motor vehicles or heavy machinery, so a DUI stop seemed out of the question. Did someone get kidnapped?

A park ranger stopped by to explain the purpose of the slowdown. I was half listening, expecting his explanation to be trivial, mundane, and totally not applicable to me, but as soon as he said "WAG Bag inspection" and "impose heavy fines", my mind stopped wandering and the metaphorical trolley in my brain screeched to a halt. I felt sick. As I started listening, the park ranger told us our WAG Bags would be thoroughly examined. They wanted to ensure that the hikers actually packed out their human waste because cathole-ing was banned starting two years ago. The on-going aestheticization efforts of Mt. Ranier mandated that heavy fines (or jail time) be imposed on hikers who did not obey the "Poo Protocol".

As part of the "Poo Protocol", there'd be two ways of verifying that the hikers actually used the WAG Bag. First, they'd take the weight of the WAG Bag, less the weight of the Poo Powder™. They'd weigh us, and through some sort of magical formula, decide whether or not our weight was in some kind of acceptable feasibility range. In other words, they wanted to make sure that the amount of poo that we provided matched up with our body weight.

Next, they'd actually take a sample of the fecal matter and use an FDA-approved DNA stool test (normally reserved for patients at risk for colon cancer), called Cologuard. The test would screen for DNA changes of the stool that could indicate cancer or pre-cancerous polyps. We'd get a free colon cancer test (if we provided our email addresses and wanted the results), but really, the Cologuard test was to ensure that the poop actually belonged to us via DNA verification.

I felt dizzy and had to sit down. Literally moments prior, I had gotten out of the queue and dug a cathole in some secluded bushes. I was running on empty - I had nothing left to give the WAG Bag.

My friends had all used their WAG Bags. They had nothing to hide. They chatted about the restaurants they wanted to try out when we got to our hotel back in Seattle. They just got cell phone service and each of them were browsing Yelp. A single bead of sweat formed on my brow. It was 17°F and I broke out into a cold sweat.

I made some sort of excuse about stretching my legs and quickly slipped away into a heavily wooded area. They were talking about fines up to $100,000 and potential jail time. I couldn't afford to throw away my future - not like this.

As I wandered aimlessly into the woods, I thought about alternate routes off the mountain. The base of the mountain was huge - it wouldn't be possible to blockade all entrances, right? There were literally hundreds of miles of potential exits. I walked around for a mile or so, but found the entire base of the mountain fenced off. 

In the distance, I saw a hiker darting around furtively and then eventually breaking out into a full sprint. He made it about halfway up the fence and then I heard a CRACK. The hiker's body crumpled to the ground.

I leapt into the woods as a group of soldiers in black masks sped onto the scene with a Jeep. They quickly surrounded the dead hiker, dragging his body into the car. Oh my god, the hiker must have forgotten to use his WAG Bag as well. Making a break for it was not an option.

As I stared at the scene with my jaw agape, I heard a "Pssst" from 20 feet away.

A man who was dressed in rags and covered in filth gestured towards me. I initially hesitated, but there wasn't a better option. I ran over to meet him, half-dreading what he was about to say to me.

Without saying a single word, he disappeared into a tunnel. I followed.

The tunnel was completely hidden from the outside world - on the surface, it looked like a bush, but upon closer inspection, the leaves gave way into a decently wide tunnel. On our descent, I expected the path to be completely pitch black, but there were torches lining the walls that provided some dim yellow light. As we went deeper and deeper, I noticed that the dirt walls were reinforced with thick wooden beams and rotting plywood formed the "roof" of the tunnel. A tunnel like this would be a massive undertaking for anyone, and yet we were still walking further.

The tunnel ended abruptly and the scene from the clearing took me aback. It was like the slums of South Africa combined with Chinese open air markets - there were thousands of inhabitants teeming in this underground civilization. It was chaos within the community - vendors shouted loudly to advertise their wares, potential buyers yelled to haggle for better prices, and children screamed while running circles around their parents' shops.

My guide turned to me and told me to follow him. Since I couldn't navigate this underground economy alone, I obliged. We weaved through the center of the bazaar, stepping over giant piles of debris, foreign substances, and strange creatures. A vendor with an eyepatch approached me, holding this giant worm that sprayed some sort of viscous goo out of its backside. The vendor bottled up the goo and thrust it into my hands, and with his other hand, he gestured for payment. The bottle felt warm against my hands and my brain felt a little fuzzy. Involuntarily, I reached for my wallet. My guide shoved the bottle back into the vendor's hands and dragged me away. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to return to the goo.

It wasn't until I was a good 100 meters away from the goo that my mind finally felt clear again. A wonderful scent wafted towards me. I turned to the left and saw a man tending to a huge bubbling cauldron - stirring the pot every few seconds with some sort of wooden staff. On the surface, I saw carrots, turnips, and potatoes. I was suddenly very hungry. I turned around to get a better look at the stew, but upon glancing into the cauldron, I saw a reflection of a worm-infested rotting face who met my gaze with a bloodcurdling scream. I jumped back. Jesus Christ. This place was depressing.

I decided that I shouldn't interact with any of the inhabitants in this community anymore. We walked silently, but briskly toward our final destination. When we got there, the guide rapped on a heavy wooden door. I heard some shuffling and the person who lived inside slowly trudged to the door. A metal slot at eye-level slid open and set of eyes appeared. The guide said some type of password and immediately after, I heard the clunk of multiple deadbolts as the person inside unlocked the door.

The inside of the room resembled a lab of a 12th century alchemist. There were beakers, large metal vats, brass spigots, taxidermied animals, old scales, and shattered pots strewn about the room. To me, the entire operation seemed like a complete sham, some sort of beacon of protoscience that still existed in 2015.

The two men convened, and even though I never explained my situation, it seemed like they were well aware that I needed a couple bags of my own poop in order to get past the Mt. Ranier basecamp checkpoints. The alchemist sat me down on a bench asked me some preliminary questions, like how many days I had been camping and what I had eaten during my trip. I presumed that these questions were to gauge the amount of poo that he would create for me somehow.

In any case, the alchemist explained what the procedure would be. It would be a modified fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), a procedure normally used to restore healthy bacterial flora to someone who had suboptimal gut flora. FMT was effective in treating people with C. Diff, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, or constipation. The idea was that ingesting someone else's healthy poo would correct whatever might have gone wrong in your own body. In other words, I would be receiving approximately three pounds of someone else's shit through an orogastric tube. An orogastic tube would be inserted through my mouth, past the throat, and into my stomach. They called it a "modified" FMT because the secret sauce was that the donor's poop was chock full of potent laxatives. So essentially, I'd be pumped full of shit, but the shit would be laced with laxatives so I could take a shit even faster.

I wondered how I even got myself into this situation. One minute I was hiking down Mt. Ranier without a care and now I was lying down on a makeshift hospital bed with a tube down my throat, ready to ingest three pounds of someone else's shit through my mouth. This camping trip was starting to go downhill really quickly.

Because 21st century medical advances had not reached this underground economy, the alchemist would be hanging a bucket of shit with a hole in the middle (like a beer bong) to the ceiling and gravity would do the rest of the work. As he hung the bucket above me, his trembling hands and a bucket of shit completely filled to the brim were not a good combination. The tube muffled my screams as I looked on in horror.

I must have blocked out the rest of the details, including the eventual expulsion of my own human waste into my WAG Bags. It was done - they pumped three pounds of fecal matter through my body to "make it my own" and I could finally be on my way. As I pulled myself off the hospital bed, I felt relieved that the ordeal was finally over. Wearily, I made my way towards the heavy wooden door, but the alchemist blocked my path, reminding me "there was still the matter of payment..."

I froze. Of course they wouldn't do this for free. The guide wanted his cut as well as he was very obviously the middleman in this arrangement. I reached into my hiking backpack and found nothing of value. Cliff Bar wrappers and an unused ice axe.

The ice axe.

With my arm deep into my backpack, my grip on the ice axe's handle tightened with newfound strength. I was going to do it. I was going to swing my way out of there and if a few skulls happened to get in the way, then so be it.

The two men were watching my every move, so I moved slowly. My breathing quickened and my vision blurred. I feigned surprise, pretending that I found something of value. As I pretended to lift out the object, I pulled out the axe in one swift movement and swung at the alchemist with every ounce of my strength.

I screamed, "AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

A direct hit. The axe connected with the base of his skull, obliterating his cerebellum, the area of the brain that controlled muscle function. I pulled the axe out of his head - it slid out with a sickening thwuck.  The alchemist wobbled, clutched the back of a chair to hold on for balance, opened his mouth, but only a sliver of blood ran down his chin. He toppled over. The guide stared at me. I had hoped that this display of force would provide for an easy exit.

The guide darted over to the wooden door. I had hoped he would swing it open and run outside to safety, but to my dismay, he clicked he deadbolt shut. Getting out of here was proving not to be easy.

Heart pounding, I advanced, circling the guide menacingly, axe in hand. This was my final obstacle before freedom. I had just ingested three pounds of shit - he was not going to stop me.

However, I felt a lurch in my stomach. I ignored it at first, but it felt like my insides were getting torn apart. I fell to my knees.

The pain was unbearable. My belly trembled. I peered down my shirt and I could only watch as a gigantic worm emerged from its womb, bursting through my stomach. I screamed in pain as the worm gnashed through my clothing. The worm from the vendor - it must have laid eggs in my stomach. But how? The bottle of goo had been in my hands for only a few seconds. It couldn't have been the goo.

The guide. He and the alchemist had turned my stomach into a worm breeding ground as an insurance policy, just in case I was unwilling to pay. Well, even if I did pay, the worm would have emerged from me anyways. I was confused. They must have funneled down a worm egg into my stomach along with the donor's shit. I wouldn't have noticed either way.

As I lay on the floor with half of my insides dangling out on the floor, I gasped for air, gulping down possibly my last breaths.

The guide stood over me shaking his head sadly. I was fading in and out of consciousness. He crouched down to my level, taking out a tiny pair of sharp scissors. I whimpered, afraid of his next move. In one movement, the tip of the scissors entered my nostrils and with surgical precision, he snipped a tuft of my nose hair and put the sample in a tiny bottle.

He angrily explained to me that in this economy, nose hairs were worth their weight in gold. I would have gladly given mine up had I known, but I guess I started swinging the axe before they could educate me. I may have acted too hastily. The worm was simply an added bonus that they threw in, analogous to the lollipop that doctors would give to a child for not crying during their annual flu shot. The guide saw how I had admired the vendor’s worm earlier. It was supposed to be my gift for being a trooper throughout the ordeal.

Killing the alchemist was not a great way to show gratitude.

The guide grabbed the worm that was wriggling around on the floor, squeezed out its goo into my open wounds, and then squeezed it again into what was left of the alchemist's brain.

The goo's medicinal properties started working immediately. My stomach felt warm as I felt my organs tighten and then fall back into place. The orifice in which the worm emerged started shrinking and I felt a strange sensation as if someone was closing up a wound with sutures. I let out a huge sigh of relief and pulled myself up from the floor.

The alchemist stirred and he sat straight up, rubbing his head. He glared at me angrily.

"Hey man, since the worm healed both of us, all is forgiven, right?"

"Get out."

I grabbed my pack and sprinted out of the lab, running through the bazaar and into the tunnel back to modern civilization.

Panting, I got back into the queue with my friends. They were still browsing Yelp.

"God, can this line move any faster?" they complained.

I held up my WAG Bag triumphantly.

"Dude, put that away - that's disgusting."

"Don't we need to pull these out for the inspection up front?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, the WAG Bag inspection as part of the Poo Protocol?"

"Poo Protocol? What the hell..."

I glanced around and saw the park ranger who explained the Poo Protocol to me. He was sitting on a stump, taking a huge rip from his crack pipe. He was wearing a Texas Rangers baseball cap. He wasn't even a real park ranger. Oh my god.

"I...he told me... but...nevermind."

As I found out later, there was a huge line since it was free bobble head day - the first 10,000 hikers would receive a commemorative bobble head of Smokey the Bear. It was totally optional but few could pass up free stuff, my friends included. 

There were murmurs moving up the queue - someone had heard something about how the SWAT team tracked an escaped convict all the way to Mt. Ranier. They had apparently caught him. I realized it must have been the “hiker” who was shot.

Visibly shaken, I sat down on a stump next to the “park ranger” and took a big hit of crack.

[absofrutely]

Night Drive

My new car had superior handling around curvy mountain rounds – the traction was so good that I was able to accelerate through most turns with ease. It was a warm October night, Halloween night, specifically, and the cool breeze made it the perfect driving night. Ryan sat in the passenger seat, and Daniel was in the back. Ryan reclined the seat and stretched out his legs, content that someone else was driving him for a change. He learned to relish these moments where he could look out the windshield with his undivided attention, glad that a momentary lapse of his attention would not be the differentiator between life and death.

A dinosaur, a ninja and a WWII aviator crammed together in a 2016 Volkswagen Eos. They must have been a strange sight to anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of them. The Halloween party was at Esalen this year, a spiritual retreat center located on the 1 Highway, not too far from Big Sur, California. It was known for its therapeutic late night spa that operates from 1:00am to 3:00am daily, but tonight, the entire campus was being turned into a private party hosted by some Silicon Valley billionaire.

We left San Francisco early since the guest list closed at 11:00pm, and after that we’d have to pay $20 a person. I thought the concept of a guest list seemed ridiculous, given that it was a private party, but I guess the guy wanted to make some money off of his party. Luckily, I had signed us up on Eventbrite a week earlier.

I was pretty proud of my aviator costume. My leather flight cap was a perfect fit and I created the goggles myself using cogs from an old clock that I found at an abandoned warehouse. My parachute pack was a tan canvas sack with a realistic looking pull-cord. I was feeling good about my effort.

The drive wasn’t terrible, but the windy roads leading to the Bixby Bridge left me a little carsick.

“Well, if it was possible, would you do it?” Ryan asked.

We had been talking about a hypothetical world where humans could gain someone’s power if they ate that person’s heart.

“Would they inherit that person’s deficiencies too?” I asked. “Like, if I ate Stephen Hawking’s heart, would I automatically get Lou Gehrig’s disease too?”

“Um, yeah, let’s say you do,” Ryan responded.

Daniel blurted out, “Okay, but what if you were in Africa and you managed to eat an elephant’s heart?”

I groaned, “Well, we’re breathing in bacteria as we speak – do we inherit the limitations of bacteria?”

“Bacteria are considered prokaryotic, so they don’t technically have a heart,” Daniel responded.

“Okay smart-ass, but you know what I meant.”

“But what if inherited their emotional troubles as well? Like, if you ate Lance Armstrong’s heart, people would stop respecting you because you’re a well-known cheater.”

“If that was the case, then wouldn’t I already be a millionaire because of Livestrong?”

“I don’t think it works that way. Then what’s preventing you from going around and eating everyone’s heart and taking their wealth that way?”

“What if you were under the impression that inheriting strength worked this way and you went around eating peoples’ hearts, but then later on you realized that you were hallucinating and the world didn’t actually work that way?”

“Then I would be a monster and a serial killer?”

“Maybe that’s why serial killers do what they do – they think that killing a person will give them something desirable, so that’s why they keep doing it.”

“Okay, genius, I’m sure our fictional world that we just made up 20 minutes ago is the main motivation for serial killers.”

“I’m just saying though. You’ve got to go all in or not at all. This is the world we live in now, one where we derive power from eating hearts.”

“And inheriting debilitating weaknesses too. So let’s say you get that person’s major deficiencies, like diseases, but how about personality flaws, emotional baggage, bad memories of a traumatic childhood, stuff like that. Would you still do it?”

“So you mean the totality of that person, good or bad – like you’ve literally consumed them and although you’re the one maintaining consciousness, you could technically be two people at once?”

“In the case of a heart-eating serial killer, you could be like 20 people at once?”

“Well, what if that serial killer targeted children and babies specifically, then eventually would he get less intelligent over time? I mean, if the majority of hearts eaten were from kids, then the totality of the being would be, let’s say 80% child, if that person ate four child hearts. He’d be 20% of his original self.”

“And maybe that’s why they eventually slip up, because they can’t be diabolical geniuses anymore – they’re going to make rookie mistakes. If the serial killer was 55 and ate three one year-old babies, then 58 divided by four – that would make him 14 and a half. So then you’d have this angsty teen serial killer walking around.”

“Sure, could be.”

“Then it’d be a risk. What if you ate some war veteran’s heart and inherited like 15% PTSD and 10% of a meth addiction?”

“Then I would not target that person.”

We could go on for hours. That’s why I loved hanging out with these guys.

I pulled over on the side of the road. I was feeling a little less carsick. I shifted around uncomfortably - my parachute pack felt like a lump behind my back, and I wished I could pull it off, but since it was sewed to my bomber jacket, I couldn’t remove it. It was alright since I imagined it as some poor man’s lumbar support and we only had less than 10 miles to our final destination.

The Volkswagen Eos was a hardtop convertible and it was perfect weather to cruise around with the top down. The 1 Highway would be more beautiful in the daytime as it traversed through cliffs that overlooked the sea, but we could still catch glimpses of the waves if the moonlight hit them just right. While stopped, I pressed the button to put the top down and marveled at the smoothness of the transition and how neatly all the parts were tucked away.

Ryan picked a new song from his iPhone – “Awake” by Tycho, an ambient music band. I started driving again. As we cruised down the 1 Highway, Ryan and Daniel tilted their heads upwards and gazed at sky, the Milky Way gradually getting clearer as we escaped any remaining light pollution from the city. It was definitely a moment – one that we’d talk about for years to come.

We didn’t need to talk. The noise of the wind’s velocity made speaking hard, so we just sat quietly. “Awake” had no lyrics and we were content to enjoy the moment, breathing in the salty ocean air as it breezed through the car.

Explosions In the Sky’s “The Only Moment We Were Alone” was the next song, and I thought about how this song never failed to evoke feelings of deep contemplation. Another lyric-less song, but I always marveled at how perfect the title matched the progression and the crescendos of the song. No matter how many times I heard this song, I created a personal narrative of events that unfolded as the song progressed. The events might be different every time – largely based on where I was in life - but the punchline of the story culminated into a fitting singular phrase describing “The Only Moment We Were Alone.” It could be a passing glance, an ephemeral smile, a fleeting inside joke, anything. When the song changed up its pace at the end and teased its listener with an outro that threatened to fade out, but jumped right back into the main riff, I thought of hardship, struggles, and then finally before all was lost – hope. Dramatic, but that’s the effect that this song had on me.

We were nearing 85 miles per hour, no other cars on the road besides mine. My headlights carved out a path of light in the pitch black surroundings. I wondered what the scene would have looked like if someone from above took a long exposure picture. Maybe some strange 90s videogame reminiscent of Snake?

I accelerated faster, ascending the increasingly steep roads. 95 miles an hour.

Daniel remarked, “Whoa, we’re going pretty fast. We’re coming up on Esalen in two exits.”

I didn’t respond.

100 miles an hour. The wind rippled past our ears.

“HEY!” Ryan screamed. “SLOW DOWN OR ELSE YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS TURN!”

Daniel panicked, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU--”

As we flew off the lip of the cliff, I unbuckled my seatbelt, made uneasy eye-contact with Ryan and Daniel who were staring at me incredulously. They clung onto the side of the car for dear life.

I stood up, pulled my googles over my head and pulled the ripcord on my parachute.

The parachute caught the wind immediately, slowing down my once-rapid descent. The Volkswagen Eos disappeared into a speck below, and then upon impact, the collision compressed the fuel tank, rupturing the tank, atomizing the gasoline instantly. The explosion was less than impressive, but the fire was still burning when I landed near the crash site to check out the wreckage.

Daniel panted, his body contorted in an impossible position. “Why…why did you— ”

“Daniel, you always had a pretty girlfriend. Your memories, I want them.”

“You’re insane, I…I…” He collapsed.

When I was done eating both of their hearts, I finally felt whole again.

[absofrutely]

White Noise

He spent so many sleepless nights tossing and turning, flipping over his pillow at strange intervals, throwing the entirety of his comforter over his body, and then changing his mind when he decided it was too hot. Hopefully mental exhaustion would do it. Silently reciting the multiplication tables by heart, he got up to 12 times 12, and realized that up until now, he never really thought of multiplication as truly quantifying the sum of a number added to itself over and over again.  It was just a chart that he was expected to memorize – that’s why 12 times 13 was such a struggle, the chart was only a 12 by 12 matrix.  If 12 times 12 is 144, then I just add 12 to 144, which makes 156. Then 12 times 14 would be 168. He wondered what other types of knowledge were rote memorization and not true comprehension.

He leapt out of his bed, slightly annoyed that sleep wouldn’t come as easy tonight. Tapping on his laptop’s keyboard, the screen lit up, casting a bluish hue on his face. It was a familiar ritual, browsing the internet aimlessly until his eyes got tired. He glanced at the clock, 2:07am. He had to wake up for work at 6:45am – he calculated that if he went to sleep now, he could get four hours and 38 minutes of sleep. Had he not watched that episode of Futurama on Netflix, the clock might have read 1:40am, which wouldn’t be a terrible hour to go to sleep. It was always about “what-ifs” with him, and he knew that every second he spent getting mad at himself would mean less sleep.

Tonight, he did something different. He had heard good things about white noise and its ability to help people sleep. He found a white noise generator online and clicked the “play” button. The noise was unique, not unlike the static of an out-of-service analog TV channel. He realized that he hadn’t seen that TV static screen for over 10 years. When he was younger, seeing static was simply a function of careless channel-surfing – that or trying to visit a channel that his parents had never subscribed to. Now, the static equivalent was simply a clean error message on a black screen, instructing him how to purchase the desired channel.

The white noise website had several selections – pink noise and brown noise. It also featured ambient noses, such as a cat’s purr, thunder in the distance, and footsteps in a museum. He clicked on a noise profile called “Rain in a Car”. He heard the constant pitter-pat of rain heard from the interior of a car.

His memories took him to a moment 10 years prior, when he was sitting in his first car with his first girlfriend when the rain started pouring.

It started slowly with heavy raindrops, a soft plunk every few seconds or so. The rain started gaining momentum and the deluge of rainwater created a constant rhythm with no pauses for silence.

He was younger then, 16 – no, closer to 17. He and his then-girlfriend reclined their seats the farthest they could go and held hands, resting them on the center armrest. He couldn’t recall with certainty the exact conversation they had, but he remembered that they were discussing their hopes and fears, insecurities and things they were excited about – their dialogue obviously tinged with adolescent naiveté, but not puerile immaturity.

“Well, I want to be a concert pianist, and I’ll try to get into Julliard.”

“I like computers, I know it’ll be something with computers.”

“My mom said that piano won’t make any money though – I’ll have to apply to different schools too.”

“One time, in fifth period, Jimmy Schedlick brought a water bottle full of vodka to chemistry class.”

“What an idiot – how is that considered cool?”

“Will you wait for me until I graduate?”

“Of course I will --”

He winced a little, furrowed his brow and abruptly ended the memory.

He wondered what his 16 year old self would have thought of him now. If he could impart advice on a younger version of himself, what would he tell him?

Before his world consisted of budgets, 401ks, IRAs, and a diversified portfolio, he had a childlike sense of wonder in things that interested him. It was still in there, but every year of so-called “adulthood” slowly eroded that bright-eyed boy who was interested in catching snakes and lizards.

He would tell him, “Don’t let the world shape who you are.”

He gradually crept into bed as the rhythmic pitter-pat of the rain lulled him to sleep. He caught one last glance at the clock – 2:47am. He had less than four hours left.

[absofrutely]

Spaceman

Sam’s parents had always wanted a second child. Well, Rodney needs a playmate. We don’t really care if it’s a boy or girl. When Sam was born, they were overjoyed – he came out close to nine pounds, which put him in the 90th percentile of male infant weight at birth. His parents were sure that he’d grow up big and tall. He was a happy and healthy baby with bright blue eyes that lit up when he laughed. At eight months, his first word was “Ma-ma”. At nine months, he began to walk.  

They bought him a tent shaped like a spaceship, and at two years old, Sam and his spaceship were inseparable.

“Mission control to Apollo 12, do you copy, do you copy?” said Sam’s dad as he spoke into his clasped hands, doing his best impersonation of a radio voice. Sam gurgled with laughter and clapped his hands.

At night, Sam would pretend to be asleep, but when his parents were out of sight, he’d sneak out of his crib and crawl into his spaceship. He’d play with his Bumble Ball, a motorized spherical toy that vibrated and flashed red and white lights. Although darkness engulfed the house, Sam’s room was a beacon of light, blinking red and white, broadcasting his location to anyone or anything that might be watching. The room hummed as Sam fell asleep.

Nights passed as Sam continued his bedtime ritual – one night, a bright light outside Sam’s window woke him up. As Sam groggily stood up to investigate, he stared directly into the beam of light and felt a sensation as if the floor was getting pulled out under him. He blacked out.

He woke up to an older man gently rousing him awake. As Sam was still a toddler, the man picked him up with a smile and placed him in a playpen with new and strange toys. Sam, who still didn’t know what was going on, started to cry for his mother, but two women, dressed in white robes that seemed to levitate off the ground, immediately picked him up and comforted him.

“Welcome to Ulowa. You earthlings might know this planet as Alpha Centauri Bb.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Sam’s mother, Beth, sobbed to the pediatrician. “He just stopped playing peek-a-boo with me and he never seems to smile. He used to laugh and play all the time. He seemed to be developing so quickly, and now… nothing.”

Sam’s father rested a comforting hand on her back and explained, “All he does is sit silently in his spaceship.”

Dr. Munez raised an eyebrow, “His spaceship?”

“Well, it’s a tent that we bought him that looks like a spaceship – he used to love playing in it, but now he doesn’t even play. He never reaches out to be picked up, never waves, and he seems so sullen.”

“I see. I never want to jump to conclusions, but it seems like Sam’s displaying early signs of Asperger’s or autism.”

The parents’ faces fell. They had read up on all the signs, but never thought it’d happen to their family. Thoughts raced through Sam’s father’s head. Does this mean that we’ll have to take care of him for as long as we live? That he’ll never be self-sufficient? I mean, there’s high functioning autism – I know that exists. Maybe it’s too soon – we can give this time. What happens when we die? Who will take care of Sam then?

  Years had passed and Sam grew up with his surrogate parents, Flo and Dremasius. Sam excelled in all of his studies and was on the varsity Wofaka team, a Ulowan sport not dissimilar to soccer. Despite not being a native of Ulowa, Sam spoke the language fluently, as if it were his mother tongue. He was popular among the students, a master swordsman, and a talented athlete. His muscular human frame gave him an advantage in most sports, and the natural career path for him was to enlist in the Silver Ashoka, an elite branch of the Ulowan military with a focus in ecological research.

As Flo and Dremasius sent him off, they were so proud that they had raised such a respectable young gentleman.

Flo blinked back tears, “I do hope he’ll be safe out there. I still remember the first day we adopted him – he was so scared of everything. Remember that one time we took him to the museum and he wouldn’t stop crying? Remember what we told him? You pointed at a picture of a sleeping Galurdling and if he didn’t stop crying, he would –”

“—wake up that Galurdling!”, Dremasius finished Flo’s sentence.

Both of them laughed.

As the bus pulled away, Sam waved to his surrogate parents, full of optimism for his bright future as a member of the Silver Ashoka.

  “Mom, he’s bigger than ME!” Rodney yelled. “If he has another one of his outbursts, he could hurt someone. He grabbed a fork last time and Dad had to wrestle it away from him.”

“Honey, I know – we’re trying to figure out options,” Beth responded.

After puberty, Sam shot up to an intimidating 6’5”, which eclipsed Rodney’s 5’9” frame.

“Ishouldn’t be afraid in my own house! I can’t wait to go to college -  I wish… I wish Sam would just go away!”

Rodney felt terrible as soon as the words left his lips. He knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault. He loved his brother, but he was such a burden. When he looked at the tired faces of his parents, he knew that this wasn’t the life they wanted, the one they thought they signed up for. Sam’s intermittent babbling was non-stop for the last 15 years and although his tantrums stayed relatively consistent, Sam’s massive frame made it difficult for anyone to stop him from destroying half the house.

He wondered if he was a terrible person for wanting Sam to die. Sam ruined everything – his own life, his parents’ marriage, the house, living under the same roof – everything. Rodney never had friends over – not because he was ashamed of Sam, but it was just easier if they didn’t have any guests. Sam would get too excited - excited or really scared of the new faces. Plus, he was so easy to upset. Dad used to be able to bear-hug Sam and calm him down, but Sam was too big now. Dad was getting close to 45 – what if Sam accidentally hurt him?

Sam would never get a job. He would never be able to take care of himself. Mom and Dad would spend the rest of their lives taking care of him. The stress of raising Sam had already aged them terribly – Rodney could see it in their faces, day in and day out.

It’s not his fault, Rodney told himself.

“I’m sorry Mom,” Rodney said quickly. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Tell that to Sam. We’ve been over this. It’s not ideal for any of us, but the alternative is putting him in some sort of home.”, Beth sighed, exasperated.

“You and Dad aren’t caretakers – you have a life to live too.”

Beth sighed. “Rodney, this is our lives. Sometimes, we don’t get a choice. I just hope that when you have a family, things will turn out a little better.”

  Deep in the Ulowan jungles of Wisteria, Sam was nearing the third hour of his stake out. He had been tasked with trapping a Kuakat, a large cat-like creature whose whiskers had medicinal qualities. Having traveled all over Ulowa, exploring strange places and discovering new creatures, Sam never tired of the Silver Ashoka life. Sometimes, Sam would take a moment to think of how lucky he was – that he gets to travel the world for a living. Every day was an adventure in a far-off land. Breath-taking views, clear mountain air. This was the way that life was supposed to be experienced.

He took a deep breath and reflected on everything he was thankful for – his supportive parents, Flo and Dremasius, the fact that he had two legs and that he could walk, and the wonderful circumstances that surrounded him during his childhood.

The Kuakat emerged. It was on the prowl. Its footsteps were almost inaudible as it navigated stealthily through crunchy leaves. It spied a shrew-like creature and was about to pounce when Sam appeared out of the jungle canopy and with one swift movement, the Kuakat’s head was firmly locked underneath Sam’s arms. Adeptly, he applied pressure to the Kuakat’s carotid arteries, which deprived the creature of blood flow and oxygen to its brain. The Kuakat’s body crumpled into a heap on the ground and was unconscious in a matter of seconds. It would come to in a few hours – Sam’s patience had paid off.

As Sam was collecting a few whiskers into a jar, the Kuakat’s eyes fluttered for a few seconds – its body stiffened and as a last ditch defense mechanism, it used the stinger on its tail to inject venom into Sam’s arm. The Kuakat passed out again.

The location of the bite immediately began to tingle, spreading quickly, like ink dropped into a glass of water. Sam had to act quickly – Kuakat venom wasn’t fatal, but the antivenom that he had been equipped with was back in the truck, a 45 minute hike away. He immediately regretted not grabbing it before the stake-out. He just hoped he didn’t pass out on the way back.  He swallowed. His tongue seemed thick and his vision was slightly blurry. There wasn’t too much time.

 Rodney screamed, “MOM, he’s having another seizure!”

As she rushed into the room, Sam let out a small groan as his body became rigid. In seconds, the rigidity gave way to violent convulsions and as Sam’s body jerked rhythmically, Rodney slowly guided him to the floor, ensuring that Sam didn’t hit any sharp objects on the way down.

After Sam stopped seizing, Beth flipped him over on his side so any built up fluid could leak out of his mouth. She put a towel down.

It was his third one of the month, which put his family on high alert. The seizures were a new development this year, but Sam’s mom remembered that doctor warned her that around a third of children with autism develop epilepsy.

I guess Sam’s not an exception, Beth thought to herself. Why couldn’t Sam be in the other 66%?

In all of the commotion, she had almost forgot that it was Rodney’s big day – his behind-the-wheel driving test at the DMV was scheduled for 4:00pm that day. But Sam’s seizure had lasted close to three minutes today – she knew that seizures weren’t always life threatening, but she had recently read about sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP – the acronym stuck with her) and the thought of losing Sam terrified her. There was also status epilepticus (SE, another acronym), defined as a seizure that lasts over five minutes or more than one seizure over a five minute period. For these, the mortality rate was 10% to 30%. Not great numbers. She looked at her watch – it had been ten minutes since the last seizure, but she wanted to wait a little longer.

“We should probably go now Mom. The line at the DMV is always crazy – remember how long it took when I got my learner’s permit?” Rodney said.

“Well, I’ve got to monitor your brother. He looks alright now, but this type of stuff could happen again.”

“But Mom, you need to take me to the DMV!”

“Honey, can you reschedule it? Sam’s not doing so well.”

Rodney whined, “It’s impossible to reschedule it online! I had to book this appointment five weeks in advance. And you know that walk-in appointments take forever too.”

“Rodney. Your brother is not well. I need to watch him,” Beth said firmly. “How about this – you can drive yourself to the DMV. You’ve had your learner’s permit for six months, right? And I know you’ve taken the car out when Dad and I aren’t home. Right, Rodney?”

Rodney looked embarrassed. “Okay, Mom…” he said, reluctantly. He was furious at Sam for putting a kink in his plans this afternoon. Although he was nervous for his driving test, he figured some time to himself would be a respite from his hectic home life.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. The morning dew from a curious-looking plant rolled rhythmically onto Sam’s face. He stirred. He blinked a couple of times until his vision came back into focus. He was lying face down on the jungle floor - some sort of Ulowan mosquito was in the process of stinging his face. He instinctively slapped at his face and connected with the insect’s engorged abdomen, which burst into a tiny spot of Sam’s own blood. Sam winced at his bloody hand and wiped it off on his pants. How long had he been unconscious? It was light out and the hot mid-afternoon rays of the alien sun immediately moistened his brow.

He was lying 15 meters away from his truck. Did he make it to the truck in time? He must have – otherwise he wouldn’t be conscious now. Pulling himself up, Sam walked to his vehicle and sighed a breath of relief when he saw the vial of antivenom was empty. He had no recollection of the events that had transpired except for an intense burst of light and some sort of argument between two people that he knew he loved. Trying to recapture that faded memory seemed to push it out of reach even more. His brain ached. The memory was on the tip of his tongue, but it was just like trying to recall a dream, hours after waking up – it was impossible.

He snuck a glance at his wristwatch. He had been unconscious for more than nine hours. His Ulowan transponder indicated that he had received four missed calls from basecamp.

Just another day for a member of the Silver Ashoka. He had enough excitement for one day.

 Rodney woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by his family. He looked at the clock – it was 9:00pm.

“Oh Rodney, we’re so glad you’re awake,” Beth cried.

Sam was there too, his face emotionless as usual. He turned away and stared out the window.

“What happened? How long have I been here?” Rodney asked. He touched the bandages wrapped firmly around his head and felt a jolt of excruciating pain. He realized every movement of his head seemed to cause the world to ripple around him, as if there were a lag in his ability to perceive reality. Painkillers – the doctors probably put him on a lot of painkillers. “The driving test – what happened to the driving test?”

“Honey, you never made it to the driving test. When you were driving across Olive Boulevard, a truck hit you from the side.”

“So he ran a red light? Was he drunk?”

“No, Rodney – they’re saying that it was you who ran the red light…” Beth whispered.

“I can’t— no, I didn’t. I’m a careful driver. I don’t do that type of stuff. I wasn’t even in a rush. Why would I do that?” Rodney argued.

“We believe you Rodney.”

Rodney could tell that his mother didn’t actually believe him.

“Well, was anyone hurt? Am I hurt? What happened? Why isn’t ANYONE telling me anything?” Rodney yelled.

Rodney stared at his family expectantly. They stared back silently. No one wants to tell me, he thought. Their silence pervaded the room in an oppressive miasma – the atmosphere alone told him that something unspeakable must have happened to him. He tried to sit up and realized that his left leg was amputated below the knee.

“No…” he whispered.

“My leg – my leg’s gone…”

As Rodney wept, he realized that he had never hated Sam more than he did at this instance.

  Flo and Dremasius smiled as Sam cooed to his newly born son. Sam was now 31 and although he never imagined himself as a father, he felt an immense type of joy as he held the newborn child. I made that, he thought. Fatherhood meant that he’d have to dial back the crazy expeditions in the jungles of Wisteria, but he didn’t mind. For now, he didn’t want to do anything but spend time with his wife and son. Funny how life changes in an instant – I’m responsible for a life now.

As Sam lay in bed that night, he thought of all the different ways his life could have turned out. Life is just a series of unexpected events, one leading to another and when we finally stop to think about all the coincidences and things that “just fell into place”, everything eventually just works out. What if I didn’t blow a tire on the way to work the other day – then I would have never met Sandra who stopped to help me on the side of the road. Who does that? If I never met Sandra, I never would have gotten married – well, maybe to someone else, but maybe not – and then if… well, I could go on and on.

He fell asleep, not regretful of any missed opportunities, but cognizant of how his life could be summed up by missteps and happenstance. And… that’s life, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep.

  Beth drove back home from the grocery store, and upon pulling into the cul-de-sac, she noticed that there was an ambulance and a fire truck near her house.

Her heart skipped a beat. Behind her, a police car with its sirens blaring screeched to a halt in front of her residence.

The neighbors had started to wander outside, curious to find out what had happened.

Since her driveway was blocked by so many foreign vehicles, Beth parked on the side of the road and sprinted towards the entrance of her house.

“We’re sorry ma’am, you’ll have to give us some space,” a paramedic told her.

“This is my house! Is everything okay? What happened? Oh god, Sam,” she said, her voice bordering on hysterics.

Two hours earlier, Sam paced around his room uncontrollably, involuntarily yelping intermittently. He was not in a good mood – it seemed like the world was closing in on him and he felt like nothing he did could ever make things better.

He struggled to think through the emotions that he was facing. He wasn’t emotionless, but he always picked up on negative or judgmental attitudes. Whenever Rodney spoke to him, he detected hostility, more so than before. His parents’ sighs, Rodney’s sneers, the way people talked down to him – he took all of it in. Words like burden, liability, expensive, difficult, “his fault” – everyone seemed disappointed with him.

What if everyone would be happier if he were gone? What if that’s what everyone wanted? Everyone seemed to be waiting for it, but no one would say it outright. Rodney hated his guts and blamed him for losing his leg. Sam knew he was different – certain situations would make him feel very strongly, but why did being himself cause everyone else so much pain?

He rocked silently and thought of a way to escape. It would be perfect, he thought.

Rodney was the one who found him. Sam had used his old belt and an exposed wooden beam in his room. Nothing they tried would resuscitate him – he was already gone.

That night, Rodney lay in his bed, eyes wide open. He had never wanted this – if only he was a better brother. He could have been more supportive, definitely nicer. If only.

Rodney got up, walked to his brother’s room and sat in that stupid spaceship. A Bumble Ball – Sam still kept that thing around? Rodney found the switch to the Bumble Ball and stared out the window as the toy hummed and flashed its red and white lights. As the batteries died, the humming ceased and the lights dimmed. In the darkness of the night, Rodney felt a terrible pit of emptiness in his stomach. He had never felt more lonely than he did at that moment. He got his wish. Sam was gone forever.

[absofrutely]

Driver’s Ed

I had to beg my parents to let me take behind-the-wheel training when I turned 15 and a half. In order to get my license at 16, I had to log at least six hours with a professional driving instructor. In early 2004, Yelp didn’t yet exist, so I checked the yellow pages. I’m not sure what company I chose, but it was definitely the cheapest and they promoted free beverages at the driving academy in the advertisement - whatever that meant.

Technically, I had to log 50 hours of driving with an adult, but before my parents would get in the car with me behind the wheel, they preferred that I at least take a couple of lessons with the professional instructor.

The big day came and the instructor showed up in a bright red Corolla. He introduced himself as Ali and immediately came off as impatient. He wiped the sweat from his bushy eyebrows with the meaty back of his hand, and he told me to get in the driver’s seat so we could get going. The passenger side of the car was equipped with another set of brakes – in case I make some sort of critical driving error, Ali could slam on the brakes to avoid certain danger.

Our first stop was his office. Since he operated a driving academy, the behind-the-wheel portion was only one part of it – he had other instructors teach the driver’s ed portion of the curriculum. We got out of the car, went upstairs to the office and he told me to hang out in the waiting room as he took a call in his office. The waiting room had a mini-fridge with a paper sign on it: “Please take a FREE Coke!” It seemed so cheesy that the free soda was a selling point for his driving academy. I grabbed one – it was lukewarm – and popped it open. I suppose I had to at that point.

Ali popped his head out from his office after hearing the refreshing pop of a carbonated drink being opened.

“HEY!” he yelled sternly.

I froze.

His countenance softened into a grin. “Enjoying your FREE Coke?”

“Uh yeah.”

His retracted his head back into the office.

I thought to myself, “Jesus, we’re already paying him, why did he have to say anything?”

I waited for 45 minutes while he argued with his wife in a foreign language that I couldn’t understand. He had me drive to his house where he had me wait in the car while he went inside to yell at his wife. He took the keys so I couldn’t even turn on the AC in the car. After we drove back home, I felt a little cheated.

The next Saturday, he picked me up in the afternoon and we repeated the same routine. We stopped by his house again, but this time he turned off the car, but left the keys in the ignition. When he disappeared into the house, I turned the car on to circulate some cold air. I looked around and played with the FM radio tuner – it was 2004. How else was I supposed to pass the time? J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” came on, and I wondered to myself how a 17 year-old was qualified to sing about getting tipsy at the club. My deep thoughts were interrupted as I heard two loud pops.

I looked out the window and saw Ali covered in blood, clutching the side of his stomach with one hand. He was holding a pistol with his other hand. He staggered towards the car.

“DRIVE.” He screamed.

I didn’t have time to react, so I slammed on the accelerator to speed out of the cul-de-sac, but lost control as the front of the Corolla careened off the road and slammed into the base of a large tree. We both screamed as the airbags exploded into action. The impact of the bag knocked the wind out of me, as I gasped for air and glimpsed out the window, I saw a man running at our car, screaming in a language that I couldn’t understand. He had a crowbar in his hands.  

I glanced over at Ali – the impact of the crash had broken his arm so badly that I could see a silver of white bone poking out of his sleeve. I almost threw up, but my flight or fight response kicked in. I shifted the car into reverse and hit the accelerator as hard as I could. I heard screaming and two thumps. I kept driving.

Shifting back into drive, the windshield of the car shatters as the man with the crowbar pries off the remnants of the broken windshield.

“WAKE UP ALI!” I scream as the man climbs atop the hood of the car. I slam on the gas and the man stumbles forward, falling through the empty windshield and landing on top of Ali.

There’s a struggle, but the man takes advantage of Ali’s weakened state and raises his crowbar to deliver the final blow to Ali’s head.

I swerve to the right, and the attacker falls off the car to the left. Ali still can’t move, his body completely pinned behind the airbag. He groans with pain and motions to the center console. The pistol. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The gun was heavier than I had imagined when I picked it up, but I immediately point the gun at the attacker on the ground.

The man yells, “Stop! Don’t shoot! This guy just robbed me! I’m just trying to get my stuff back!”

I glanced at Ali nervously.

“He was hiding at my house, waiting for me to arrive. This was an ambush,” Ali explained.

The man gets up off the ground slowly and tells me to put the gun down.

“GET BACK ON THE GROUND OR I’LL BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!” I scream.

He advances towards me, and I squeeze the trigger. The gun recoils and the crack of the gun is deafening.

Doubled over in pain, the man wheezes and hits the pavement hard, his blood darkening the cement at a rapid pace.

I did it. I had shot someone and I wasn’t even sure if he was the bad guy. Would I get in trouble? Would this guy survive? I felt like crying.

Ali unbuckles his seatbelt with his good hand and wobbles out of the car. He flips the man over, and as he does, the man breathes noisily, perhaps wheezing out his last words.

“I…you…you…” the man gasps incomprehensibly gurgling on own blood.

I didn’t want to see this, but a smile slowly spreads across the man’s face.

“Congratulations, Justin. You passed.”

Ali couldn’t contain his laughter anymore as he helps the man to his feet and brushes him off.

“Man, oh MAN! Get back on the ground or I’ll blow your head off? I think that’s a first. I didn’t know you had it in you,” Ali could barely finish his sentence since he was laughing so hard. He claps me on the shoulder.

As I realize what happened, I felt so sheepish. After the two men cleaned themselves off, they presented me a certificate of completion.

For this reason alone, I highly recommend the Teen Driving Academy of Southern California.

[absofrutely]

Deer Musk

Over the past year, my dad started taking an interest in qi gong, a practice rooted in meditation, Chinese medicine, and martial arts. If you’ve ever been to Asia and decide to take a walk in the park at 6:00am, you’ll probably see large crowds of elderly people moving together in unison (very slowly) – their movements resemble some sort of kung-fu sequence. If you’re familiar with tai chi, some consider qi gong its parent.

As I mentioned, there is a Chinese medicine component to it as well. Two months ago, my dad was flying back from Taiwan to Los Angeles and had a four hour layover in San Francisco, so we were fortunate enough to meet up for breakfast.  We decided to go to the Millbrae Pancake House, a nearby IHOP clone. While we waited for our omelets to come out, my dad pulls out a small vial of brown liquid from his laptop bag.

He explained to me that this bottle contained she xiang (麝香), the navel gland secretions of musk deer, or more commonly known as deer musk. I had heard of musk before, in the context of Anchorman, and musk cologne in general. Musk deer have many scent glands, but the one in question is a pod-shaped gland situated between the navel and genitals of the deer.

Apparently, the deer musk has many medicinal uses. To name a few:

Opens the orifices, revives the spirit, unblocks closed disorders

Invigorates the blood, dissipates clumps, reduces swelling, alleviates pain - toxic sores, carbuncles, fixed masses, channel obstructions due to trauma

So great, we’ve got deer musk. However, an explanation wasn’t sufficient – it was necessary to perform a demonstration of its therapeutic properties. My dad opened up the deer musk container and gestured me to come closer. I hesitated, but I inched over anyways.

He took a few drops of deer musk from the vial, rubbed it in his hands and took a deep breath of the scent. I did the same.

The smell wasn’t terrible, but it definitely came from an animal. The musk had a minty kick, like Vicks Vaporub if you ever cared to smell it.

He started rubbing some of the musk onto his philtrum, the vertical groove between the base of the nose and the border of the upper lip and took a big whiff.

“Ahhhhhh....”

“Uh, Dad, is this drugs?”

“No, it’s not drugs, don’t worry about it.”

Before I knew it, my dad took my head in his hands and started massaging deer musk on my temples and into my hairline behind my ears.

I resisted a little, “Dad, we’re at a restaurant right now! I’m 26 years old--”

“Would you stop moving while I --”

“I don’t think we should --”

“Just hold still, you’ll like it ---”

He told me to stop squirming around or else it wouldn’t work, so I ended up sitting still while my dad massaged deer musk into my scalp in the middle of a pancake house. Of course we drew strange glances from other customers, but I sat quietly. I couldn’t believe how absurd this was. A grown man takes his father out to breakfast, but ends up getting deer musk rubbed into his hair in the middle of a restaurant.

I suppose no matter how old you are or how old you think you are, dad’s always out there to embarrass you.

[absofrutely]

Devotion

Last August, I was in the process of moving into a studio apartment and had to pick up my keys a week before I moved in. Nowadays, with the ultra-competitive San Francisco rental market, I found that the best way to secure a decent apartment was through referral.

My sister’s friend had parents who owned a nine-story apartment building in a central location – a spot had just opened up and I was lucky enough to reserve it. Rumor had it that the property management was excellent – there was a legendary property manager who would bend over backwards to ensure that all the tenants were properly taken care of. His name was Aris, short for Aristotle.

Aris was in charge of prepping my apartment for my move-in. He steam-cleaned the carpets, scrubbed the grout between the bathroom tiles, and polished all of my appliances. Everything was immaculate. Once he was done, he gave me a call and set up a time for me to perform my move-in inspection and to hand off the keys if things looked good to me. Five thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday was our date.

When I showed up that day, Aris buzzed me in and I took the elevator to my apartment. When I saw Aris, he greeted me excitedly, but he looked a bit green in the face. I looked at his face, and saw that there were beads of sweat gathered near his brow. He fidgeted and didn’t make too much eye contact.

I still made friendly banter and asked him how he was doing. He responded, “Actually, not so good.” I asked him why.

“Well…” he paused.

“I just ran here and uh, I’m not feeling so great.”

“Really? You better take a seat. If you’re not feeling well, you could have just called me and told me to meet later!” I said, concerned for this man’s well-being.

“It’s not so simple. So a couple hours ago, I noticed that your freezer only had one ice-cube tray, so I went to Brownie’s Hardware on Polk to pick you up another one,” he said, gesturing to the refrigerator.

“Uh huh,” I responded.

He continued, “After I picked up the trays, I walked to the register to check out when I saw the manager lying on the floor. There was blood everywhere and the manager was yelling for help. For the last 10 years, I’ve been going to Brownie’s Hardware for all my property maintenance, so the manager’s a good friend of mine.”

I was shocked, but let him proceed with his story.

“Turns out, there was a robbery. The robber punched the manager in the face and took all the money out the register. The robber was still there, but he was running out the door. Immediately, I ran through the door and tried to tackle the robber, but he was large, like 250 pounds, and he picked me up and slammed me on the floor.”

“Oh my god,” I murmur.

“I don’t remember too much, but I woke up in an ambulance a couple hours later. The paramedics gave me a high five and said, ‘You’re a hero.’”

“Because I tackled him, it slowed him down and the cops were able to get him. I hurt my head pretty badly though, and I ----“

Aris paused.

“And I ---“

HURK.

HURK.

“I ---“

HURK.

HURK.

He gulped down whatever bile was regurgitating up his esophagus and ran to the bathroom and proceeded to vomit loudly for the next five minutes. There was no doubt that it was a concussion.

Between heaves, he’d say, “Justin—so sorry, I’m HURK HURK”, “So sorry— HURK HURK”, “Don’t worry, I’ll clean—HURK HURK.”

After Aris was done throwing up, he wiped his mouth, washed his hands and finished his story.

“Well, I glanced at my watch, and it was 5:15pm, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, my appointment with Justin!’. I jumped out of the stretcher and ran all the way here.”

I was so shocked. “You… you didn’t need to do that. If you just called me, we could have met at a more convenient time for you.”

“No. I keep my promises. I said I’d meet you at 5:30 and I’m here now.”

He looked so resolved in his mission that I really couldn’t argue with him.

He had lived up to his reputation as the best property manager in the world, all within 10 minutes of meeting him.

Ice cube trays. A potentially life-threatening injury. He had no regrets.

[absofrutely]

Stickler