The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (36 page)

The young man ran down the
steps, traipsed across the lawn, and disappeared behind the bend of the
driveway. A part of Joel wanted to run after the man, to seek his help, while
the rest of his soul reeled, as if an abyss had opened in front of his hooves.
Betrayed by the very people who took care of him and pretended to love
him—surely, Joseph did not feel worse after being sold to Egypt! If Joel could
speak, he would’ve called anathema upon the old man’s aging, balding head. If
he could cry, bloody tears would have stained his face. Joel did the only thing
he could do. He ran.

The gravel of the driveway
exploded from under his hooves in small, angry fountains, and the greenery of
the hedge melted into a green smudge. He careened around the turn, just in time
to see the young man’s car exhale a pungent cloud of exhaust and disappear
behind the gate.

Joel’s heart pumped harder than
ever as he kept running. The metal bars of the gate came into motion, sliding,
silent, smell of grease and black metal radiating from them. Through the
opening, Joel could see a grey snake of the road, he could hear honking of the
cars, he could smell an unfamiliar world that he had previously seen through
the gate but never entered.

Until now. Joel’s face thrust
into the street, into the warm shimmering air filled with asphalt fumes, just
as the gate slid into his flank. He could feel the pain of bruised flesh,
followed with a jolt the likes of which he had never felt. Every muscle
twitched with the searing shock that radiated from the metal grid of the gate.
Then, it ceased. Joel planted his front hooves in the pallid grass that
separated the gates from the sidewalk, and pulled. The pain renewed—another
jolt, then another pause. Joel thought that he could smell burnt hair, but it
seemed too inconsequential in the face of the necessity to free himself. He
pulled and strained, until the next shock set his flank afire, radiating across
his back and down every nerve. Joel looked outside, at the traffic that flowed
by, oblivious to a pig stuck in the gates. The next shock exploded in his eyes,
in a shower of white stars, and Joel saw no more.

Joel woke up in hell. Before he
even opened his eyes, he realized that he was paralyzed. He sent his muscles a
signal to move, to close his mouth, but they would not obey. His throat and
tongue felt dry as felt, and he could not swallow. His ears hurt.

Joel opened his eyes. The white
light sliced across his retinas like a knife, and he squeezed his eyelids shut.
Cautiously peering into the whiteness through his sparse eyelashes, Joel
discerned the shapes of people around him. They were dressed in white, and
blended with the white walls, the instruments in their hands the same color as
the chrome fixtures. The chrome fixtures that held his mouth open, thrust into
his throat far enough to scratch it and make him want to gag. Steel shafts
penetrated his ears, holding his head immobile.

This is it
, Joel thought.
They’ve
found someone who wants my brain—wants me
. He swiveled his eyes around,
half-expecting to see the perpetrator. He imagined him reaching greedily for
Joel, an unholy gleam in his eyes.

Cassie’s Dad came into Joel’s
field of vision, moving his face closer. “You gave us quite a scare, Joel,” he
said. “What were you doing, getting stuck in the gate? Did you want to get
out?”

Joel would’ve nodded if the
mechanical gear did not prevent him.

“Silly boy,” the old man cawed.
“You got quite an electric shock, you did. Now, you just relax, and we’ll make
sure that you did not damage anything.”

Despite his discomfort, Joel
breathed easier. It wasn’t the time, then. If he was lucky, the time would
never come. With all his heart he hoped that the old man would find something
wrong. Some imperfection that would let Joel live.

The old man gave a signal, and
his helpers, white-gowned people with their faces hidden behind white cloths,
wheeled Joel’s table into a large, humming tunnel. Joel closed his eyes, and in
his mind repeated the words he heard Cassie whisper before going to sleep.
“Please Lord, have mercy on us all.” He thought a bit, and added, “Especially Joel.”

Lord did not listen—perhaps,
because Joel was a pig, and not a young girl with curly hair and eyes like
blackberries. After an eternity of loud humming and beams of light that shot at
him from different angles, Cassie’s Dad wheeled Joel out of the tunnel, and
patted his snout. “Good as new. Good boy.”

Joel wept silently as the
masked people unstrapped him and freed his mouth from the ravages of steel. He
was too wrapped up in his misery to look around as Cassie’s Dad nudged him
outside of the low stone building into the yard covered in asphalt. The old man
opened the door of his car, and Joel climbed onto a back seat. He looked out of
the window, but nothing shook him out of the stupor—neither the flowering
cherry trees, nor people milling about, nor the low wooden pens. He watched a
row of pigs’ faces pressed against the bars. He guessed that they housed human
livers, hearts and kidneys.
But not minds
, Joel thought bitterly. That
cross was his to bear.

Since that day, Joel thought of
ways to escape. He circled the perimeter of the yard surrounded by thin wires.
But the wires gave him the same jolt as the gates. He tried to root under the
fence, and made good progress, but was discovered. The old man moved Joel’s bed
into the shed, where he could be locked. His only solace was Cassie, who
visited him occasionally. The old man tagged along on such visits, short and
awkward as they were.

“What’s got into him?” the old
man said, looking at Joel with consternation. He stood in the doorway, the
afternoon sun creating a halo around his misshapen, hunched silhouette.

Cassie crouched down and patted
Joel’s head. “Perhaps he knows.” She looked up at her father, her eyes rounded
with emphasis.

“Nonsense,” the old man said.

Joel’s heart leapt with hope.
He grunted and rubbed against Cassie’s knees, almost knocking her over.

“Dad,” she said.

The old man sighed. “There’s
nothing I can do,” he said. “It’s not just
my
project. Perhaps it was a
bad idea to keep him as a pet—I should’ve known that you’d get attached.”

Cassie stood. “What do you
mean? Did you find someone?”

The old man nodded. “Ever since
it’s been in the papers, we’ve been flooded with mail and phone calls. The
Congress got involved, and the FDA is pushing for clinical trials. I think we
found a recipient.”

“Who?”

“A young man,” Cassie’s Dad
said. “He was in a car accident some years back, suffered a loss of a large
portion of the right hemisphere. Think of it, Cassie—Joel will help someone to
live a normal life. Think how you would feel if you were half a person.”

Cassie heaved a sigh, and
thrust her hands deep into her jeans pockets. “I guess. I would hate to lose
Joel though.”

The old man smiled. “You don’t
have to lose him, dear. He’ll retain most of his brain—more than enough for a
pet.”

Joel could not sleep all night.
Cassie was an ally. If only he could send her a sign, let her know somehow that
he was just like her, that he could think and understand everything... A sudden
thought struck him. He almost laughed in disbelief—it was so simple. Why didn’t
he think of it before? He picked up a twig with his mouth, and started drawing
letters in the dust. Letters that he remembered since Cassie and he were both
carefree and young, when she learned the symbols on the bright painted cubes.
Joel was there, and he had learned too.

It was a hard going—the letters
came out shaky and clumsy, and he had to start over a few times. He wanted them
to be perfect, so that no one would doubt his abilities. He labored all night,
often stopping to rest. By the morning, the inscription was ready. Large,
blocky letters stood out clearly against the grey dirt. “Cassie,” he wrote, “I
love you.” She would come in the morning and see that he had both a heart and a
mind.

When the morning came, Joel
circled around the cramped pen—a far cry from the luxury of the old house,
where he could roam free and see Cassie whenever he wanted to. He even moved
all the straw into the corner, so that nothing obscured his letter.

He heard footsteps outside, and
his heart almost stopped, and then raced, once he realized that there were
several people there. All of them came in, wearing green coats, loud and
laughing. Their heavy shoes trampled his message back into dust, and their
hands grabbed Joel. He fought back, crying out for help, until a needle jabbed
his flank.

The afternoon sun flooded the
porch, and Joel closed his eyes. It was a nice day, although his aching skull
told him that it might rain later. Cassie shifted in her chair, and tickled
Joel’s chin with her bare toes. He grunted and stretched his neck. He almost
dozed off when he heard crunching of the gravel of the driveway. Someone was
coming.

He opened his eyes. Cassie
looked too, shielding her eyes from the glare, and put down her book. Joel
glanced at the squiggly lines, and then at Cassie. For the life of him, he
could not understand why she spent all day staring at the black worms that
crawled on the white pages.

“Excuse me.” The visitor walked
halfway up the steps that led to the porch and stopped, as if uncertain. “I was
told that this is Dr. Kernicke’s house.”

Cassie nodded. “He’s at the
Institute. It’s down the road, by the farm.”

“I know,” the visitor said. “I
just wanted to talk in a more informal manner.” His eyes met Joel’s, and he
whistled. “Say, is that the pig that...” He swallowed a few times but did not
continue.

Cassie looked puzzled for a
moment, but then smiled. “Oh yes, this is Joel, the wonder-pig.”

Joel lifted his head at the
mentioning of his name. The rest of the words escaped him somehow, no matter
how hard he listened.

“Joel,” the visitor repeated.
“I’m Phil Marshall.”

“Oh yes.”
Cassie looked at the visitor with awe. “You’re the recipient.”

The word evoked a vague
displeasure in Joel, but the day was too nice to get agitated over anything. He
grunted and rolled to his side, trying to capture as many rays as he could
before the sunset.

“And you’re Cassie,” Phil said.

“How did you know?”

Phil frowned, shook his head,
and shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably heard it somewhere.”

“Probably,” Cassie agreed.
“Father will be home soon. You want to see the garden meanwhile?”

Joel watched the two people
walk down the steps and stroll across the green lawn. He tried to focus his
thoughts, but they just stumbled about, unruly, chasing each other’s tails.
There was something about that man, something about the way he looked at Joel
that seemed familiar. The words ‘blank slate’ floated into his mind and
dissipated, leaving no impression or understanding. Joel yawned. All the
thinking made him tired, and he closed his eyes, savoring the warmth and the
sun. No need to worry about things one could not change. And truly, Joel had no
reason to complain. He was treated well, and he had anything a pig could
desire. And it was getting even better—every day, he found that he had fewer things
to worry about, that the concerns of yesterday made no sense today, and often
left no memory. He had forgotten the smell of blood, and the searing pain, and
the sickening sound of the tissue tearing like fabric. Soon, he would be truly
happy.

Hindsight, in Neon

Jamie Todd Rubin

1

The last science fiction writer
sits in an all-night diner beneath the sizzling haze of a neon “Live Nudes”
sign. His agent, a vaporous figure of a man, sits across from him sipping at
coffee, blurred by the rising steam.

“It was sixty-nine years ago,”
the last SF writer says, poking at his clam chowder, “that
Dying Inside
first appeared; one of the true classics, a first rate effort and so forth.”

The agent mutters something
incomprehensible under his breath and continues to suck at the coffee.

“
I
am dying inside,”
says the last SF writer.

The agent has heard this all
before. “You haven’t written anything worth publishing in thirty years,” he
says.

“I am losing my power,” the
last SF writer says. He wears a faded periwinkle suit, as deformed as a
crumbled manuscript page. From an inside pocket he pulls a yellowed paperback
and thumbs though the pages. “David Selig—now there’s a character with whom I
can sympathize. There is a danger in knowing too much.”

“There is a danger giving in
too easily,” the agent says, in disinterested tones.

The last SF writer sets the
book down on the table. “It’s out of my hands now,” he says.

“It’s not really your fault,”
the agent says, this time with a hint of sympathy. “You have to have
readers
.
You have to have people who can make sense of the letters and words on the
page, who can be moved by the drama and imagery.”