Archive for the ‘David Kopaska-Merkel’ Category
The World Engine
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Cutler’s fingers twitched and he dropped the omniphone. A modform grabbed the phone and tossed it into Cutler’s lap, from which it skittered onto the floor. Cutler didn’t move. The modform grimaced, picked up the phone again, and pressed it into Cutler’s hand. Before he could say a thing, the creature was gone.
“Why don’t you get that fixed?” the clerk asked.
Cutler rolled his eyes.
“I was on Arctuis when they started up the world engine.”
The clerk paled and put his hands up. Didn’t want to hear it? Too bad.
“When the morphogenetic wave swept through the lab I saw my colleagues, my wife, two of my three children, become parts of the machine. My daughter was incorporated in the effluent monitoring apparatus. I recognized her shoes. She was one of the lucky ones. Her mind was instantly destroyed. Dawson, the lead investigator, was still conscious three weeks later when they finally managed to shut the thing down. By that time nearly two thirds of the planetary mass had been converted to living tissue, but no breathable atmosphere had been created. The air supply to the lab was intact. Dawson pleaded with me to break the seal and release him, but I could do nothing.”
The clerk interrupted, though he looked like he was about to lose his lunch. “I thought he couldn’t talk. That his mouth was…”
“He blinked his eyes,” Cutler snapped. “He used Morse code, we all had to learn it back in those days.”
“So what happened to you? You survived. Why not have your body rebuilt, or replaced?”
“Can’t. Why? Who the hell knows? No one could figure out why the half of me they found was still alive, 20 days after the planet went crazy. So I’m the only guy in a powerchair in the freaking hundred planets. I’m the only guy they can’t regenerate or even graft prosthetics to. I’m the only guy who doesn’t respond to rejuvenation or life extension treatment. Some guys have all the luck, eh?”
“But the world-f*ck,” the clerk whispered, “that was at least 80 standard years ago. How old were you when it happened? You look … young.”
“Yeah, well, what happened to me, it ain’t all bad. I read minds too.” The clerk’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the edge of the counter.
“Joking!”
Kid needed to get a grip. He’d even believed that Morse-code crap.
The end
Young Love, a tragedy
Monday, June 29th, 2009
(NOTE: If this were a movie it would probably be rated R)
“She’s from the edge of the field. The last row by the Fence!” Adam hissed.
“So?” Colin sneered, but he knew what Adam meant. Crystal could be, probably was, of mixed blood. Her mother looked like pure maize, but Crystal’s father could’ve been a grass, wheat, quinoa; anything, really. Any plant that could insinuate its pollen into Crystal’s mother’s private places could have jumped genomes, crossed chromosomes, done the dirty deed and fathered hybrids, hybrids that looked normal, but their own children would be … monsters. They might look like anything.
Colin knew this, but he forgot it all when he looked at her sturdy stem, her graceful leaves with their adorable tips, ever so slightly curved to left or right, her roots, beautiful in their symmetry. Love might not be stronger than prejudice, but lust sure was. What he wouldn’t do to get his pollen into her warm moist receptacles. A little pollen squirted out at the thought of the verdant Crystal and her divine form, and a breeze carried it to the fence and over.
Colin blushed to his roots. Had anyone seen? It seemed no one had. Whew! He was the only one who knew, and he would forget his inadvertent emission as soon as possible.
—
Delilah stretched her blossoms to catch the pollen ejaculated by the fine young maize plant she’d been ogling from the outboard side of the path. He must have been watching her. She had seen him staring at the flowers outside the Garden, and she was the most … inviting. She had pursed her petals at him, and had made him come with a gesture. How cool was that?!
Pollen grains drifted into several of Delilah’s flowers. They adhered, and their tubes began to grow. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Soon Delilah’s ovaries swelled, gravid with chimerae. The seeds set, were fertile, and landed in due time on good, black soil. Alas, by the time they sprouted the following spring Delilah had moved on through the circle of life. She was nought but a withered brown nub. Colin had been harvested by a combine, and his aborted progeny were distributed among a few dozen cans of corn.
The end
*Yes, plant sex is weird and inventive. Successful reproduction between members of different species is just the beginning. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_(biology)#Hybrid_plants.