Short Stories

i

Once upon a time, in the City of New York, a beautiful baby boy was born into this world, and the joyful parents named him Lexington.

No sooner had the mother returned home from the hospital carrying Lexington in her arms than she said to her husband, “Darling, now you must take me out to a most marvellous restaurant for dinner so that we can celebrate the arrival of our son and heir.”

Her husband embraced her tenderly and told her that any woman who could produce such a beautiful child as Lexington deserved to go absolutely anywhere she wanted. But was she strong enough yet, he enquired, to start running around the city late at night?

“No,” she said, she wasn’t. But what the hell.

So that evening they both dressed themselves up in fancy clothes, and leaving little Lexington in care of a trained infant’s nurse who was costing them twenty dollars a day and was Scottish into the bargain, they went out to the finest and most expensive restaurant in town. There they each ate a giant lobster and drank a bottle of champagne between them, and after that, they went on to a nightclub, where they drank another bottle of champagne and then sat holding hands for several hours while they recalled and discussed and admired each individual physical feature of their lovely newborn son.

They arrived back at their house on the East Side of Manhattan at around two o’clock in the morning and the husband paid off the taxi driver and then began feeling in his pockets for the key to the front door. After a while, he announced that he must have left it in the pocket of his other suit, and he suggested they ring the bell and get the nurse to come down and let them in. An infant’s nurse at twenty dollars a day must expect to be hauled out of bed occasionally in the night, the husband said.

So he rang the bell. They waited. Nothing happened. He rang it again, long and loud. They waited another minute. Then they both stepped back on to the street and shouted the nurse’s name (McPottle) up at the nursery windows on the third floor, but there was still no response. The house was dark and silent. The wife began to grow apprehensive. Her baby was imprisoned in this place, she told herself. Alone with McPottle. And who was McPottle? They had known her for two days, that was all, and she had a thin mouth, a small disapproving eye, and a starchy bosom, and quite clearly she was in the habit of sleeping too soundly for safety. If she couldn’t hear the front-door bell, then how on earth did she expect to hear a baby crying? Why, this very second the poor thing might be swallowing its tongue or suffocating on its pillow.

“He doesn’t use a pillow,” the husband said. “You are not to worry. But I’ll get you in if that’s what you want.” He was feeling rather superb after all the champagne, and now he bent down and undid the laces of one of his black patent-leather shoes, and took it off. Then, holding it by the toe, he flung it hard and straight right through the dining-room window on the ground floor.

“There you are,” he said, grinning. “We’ll deduct it from McPottle’s wages.”

He stepped forward and very carefully put a hand through the hole in the glass and released the catch. Then he raised the window.

“I shall lift you in first, little mother,” he said, and he took his wife around the waist and lifted her off the ground. This brought her big red mouth up level with his own, and very close, so he started kissing her. He knew from experience that women like very much to be kissed in this position, with their bodies held tight and their legs dangling in the air, so he went on doing it for quite a long time, and she wiggled her feet, and made loud gulping noises down in her throat. Finally, the husband turned her round and began easing her gently through the open window into the dining-room. At this point, a police patrol car came nosing silently along the street towards them. It stopped about thirty yards away, and three cops of Irish extraction leaped out of the car and started running in the direction of the husband and wife, brandishing revolvers.

“Stick ’em up!” the cops shouted. “Stick ’em up!” But it was impossible for the husband to obey this order without letting go of his wife, and had he done this she would either have fallen to the ground or would have been left dangling half in and half out of the house, which is a terribly uncomfortable position for a woman; so he continued gallantly to push her upward and inward through the window. The cops, all of whom had received medals before for killing robbers, opened fire immediately, and although they were still running, and although the wife in particular was presenting them with a very small target indeed, they succeeded in scoring several direct hits on each body—sufficient anyway to prove fatal in both cases.

Thus, when he was no more than twelve days old, little Lexington became an orphan.

ii

The news of this killing, for which the three policemen subsequently received citations, was eagerly conveyed to all relatives of the deceased couple by newspaper reporters, and the next morning, the closest of these relatives, as well as a couple of undertakers, three lawyers, and a priest, climbed into taxis and set out for the house with the broken window. They assembled in the living-room, men and women both, and they sat around in a circle on the sofas and armchairs, smoking cigarettes and sipping sherry and debating what on earth should be done now with the baby upstairs, the orphan Lexington.

It soon became apparent that none of the relatives was particularly keen to assume responsibility for the child, and the discussions and arguments continued all through the day. Everybody declared an enormous, almost an irresistible desire to look after him, and would have done so with the greatest of pleasure were it not for the fact that their apartment was too small, or that they already had one baby and couldn’t possibly afford another, or that they wouldn’t know what to do with the poor little thing when they went abroad in the summer, or that they were getting on in years, which surely would be most unfair to the boy when he grew up, and so on and so forth. They all knew, of course, that the father had been heavily in debt for a long time and that the house was mortgaged and that consequently there would be no money at all to go with the child.

They were still arguing like mad at six in the evening when suddenly, in the middle of it all, an old aunt of the deceased father (her name was Glosspan) swept in from Virginia, and without even removing her hat and coat, not even pausing to sit down, ignoring all offers of a martini, a whisky, a sherry, she announced firmly to the assembled relatives that she herself intended to take sole charge of the infant boy from then on. What was more, she said, she would assume full financial responsibility on all counts, including education, and everyone else could go back home where they belonged and give their consciences a rest. So saying, she trotted upstairs to the nursery and snatched Lexington from his cradle and swept out of the house with the baby clutched tightly in her arms, while the relatives simply sat and stared and smiled and looked relieved, and McPottle the nurse stood stiff with disapproval at the head of the stairs, her lips compressed, her arms folded across her starchy bosom.

And thus it was that the infant Lexington, when he was thirteen days old, left the City of New York and travelled southward to live with his Great Aunt Glosspan in the State of Virginia.

iii

Aunt Glosspan was nearly seventy when she became guardian to Lexington, but to look at her you would never have guessed it for one minute. She was as sprightly as a woman half her age, with a small, wrinkled, but still quite beautiful face and two lovely brown eyes that sparkled at you in the nicest way. She was also a spinster, though you would never have guessed that either, for there was nothing spinsterish about Aunt Glosspan. She was never bitter or gloomy or irritable; she didn’t have a moustache; and she wasn’t in the least bit jealous of other people, which in itself is something you can seldom say about either a spinster or a virgin lady, although of course it is not known for certain whether Aunt Glosspan qualified on both counts.

But she was an eccentric old woman, there was no doubt about that. For the past thirty years she had lived a strange isolated life all by herself in a tiny cottage high up on the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, several miles from the nearest village. She had five acres of pasture, a plot for growing vegetables, a flower garden, three cows, a dozen hens, and a fine cockerel.

And now she had little Lexington as well.

She was a strict vegetarian and regarded the consumption of animal flesh as not only unhealthy and disgusting, but horribly cruel. She lived upon lovely clean foods like milk, butter, eggs, cheese, vegetables, nuts, herbs, and fruit, and she rejoiced in the conviction that no living creature would be slaughtered on her account, not even a shrimp. Once, when a brown hen of hers passed away in the prime of life from being eggbound, Aunt Glosspan was so distressed that she nearly gave up egg-eating altogether.

She knew not the first thing about babies, but that didn’t worry her in the least. At the railway station in New York, while waiting for the train that would take her and Lexington back to Virginia, she bought six feeding-bottles, two dozen diapers, a box of safety pins, a carton of milk for the journey, and a small paper-covered book called The Care of Infants. What more could anyone want? And when the train got going, she fed the baby some milk, changed its nappies after a fashion, and laid it down on the seat to sleep. Then she read The Care of Infants from cover to cover.

“There is no problem here,” she said, throwing the book out of the window. “No problem at all.”

And curiously enough there wasn’t. Back home in the cottage everything went just as smoothly as could be. Little Lexington drank his milk and belched and yelled and slept exactly as a good baby should, and Aunt Glosspan glowed with joy whenever she looked at him, and showered him with kisses all day long.

iv

By the time he was six years old, young Lexington had grown into a most beautiful boy with long golden hair and deep blue eyes the colour of cornflowers. He was bright and cheerful, and already he was learning to help his old aunt in all sorts of different ways around the property, collecting the eggs from the chicken house, turning the handle of the butter churn, digging up potatoes in the vegetable garden, and searching for wild herbs on the side of the mountain. Soon, Aunt Glosspan told herself, she would have to start thinking about his education.

But she couldn’t bear the thought of sending him away to school. She loved him so much now that it would kill her to be parted from him for any length of time. There was, of course, that village school down in the valley, but it was a dreadful-looking place, and if she sent him there she just knew they would start forcing him to eat meat the very first day he arrived.

“You know what, my darling?” she said to him one day when he was sitting on a stool in the kitchen watching her make cheese. “I don’t really see why I shouldn’t give you your lessons myself.”

The boy looked up at her with his large blue eyes, and gave her a lovely trusting smile. “That would be nice,” he said.

“And the very first thing I should do would be to teach you how to cook.”

“I think I would like that, Aunt Glosspan.”

“Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have to learn some time,” she said. “Vegetarians like us don’t have nearly so many foods to choose from as ordinary people, and therefore they must learn to be doubly expert with what they have.”

“Aunt Glosspan,” the boy said, “what do ordinary people eat that we don’t?”

“Animals,” she answered, tossing her head in disgust.

“You mean live animals?”

“No,” she said. “Dead ones.”

The boy considered this for a moment.

“You mean when they die they eat them instead of burying them?”

“They don’t wait for them to die, my pet. They kill them.”

“How do they kill them, Aunt Glosspan?”

“They usually slit their throats with a knife.”

“But what kind of animals?”

“Cows and pigs mostly, and sheep.”

“Cows!” the boy cried. “You mean like Daisy and Snowdrop and Lily?”

“Exactly, my dear.”

“But how do they eat them, Aunt Glosspan?”

“They cut them up into bits and they cook the bits. They like it best when it’s all red and bloody and sticking to the bones. They love to eat lumps of cow’s flesh with the blood oozing out of it.”

“Pigs too?”

“They adore pigs.”

“Lumps of bloody pig’s meat,” the boy said. “Imagine that. What else do they eat, Aunt Glosspan?”

“Chickens.”

“Chickens!”

“Millions of them.”

“Feathers and all?”

“No, dear, not the feathers. Now run along outside and get Aunt Glosspan a bunch of chives, will you, my darling?”

Shortly after that, the lessons began. They covered five subjects, reading, writing, geography, arithmetic, and cooking, but the latter was by far the most popular with both teacher and pupil. In fact, it very soon became apparent that young Lexington possessed a truly remarkable talent in this direction. He was a born cook. He was dextrous and quick. He could handle his pans like a juggler. He could slice a single potato into twenty paper-thin slivers in less time than it took his aunt to peel it. His palate was exquisitely sensitive, and he could taste a pot of strong onion soup and immediately detect the presence of a single tiny leaf of sage. In so young a boy, all this was a bit bewildering to Aunt Glosspan, and to tell the truth she didn’t quite know what to make of it. But she was proud as proud could be, all the same, and predicted a brilliant future for the child.

“What a mercy it is,” she said, “that I have such a wonderful little fellow to look after me in my dotage.” And a couple of years later, she retired from the kitchen for good, leaving Lexington in sole charge of all household cooking. The boy was now ten years old, and Aunt Glosspan was nearly eighty.

v

With the kitchen to himself, Lexington straight away began experimenting with dishes of his own invention. The old favourites no longer interested him. He had a violent urge to create. There were hundreds of fresh ideas in his head. “I will begin,” he said, “by devising a chestnut soufflé.” He made it and served it up for supper that very night. It was terrific. “You are a genius!” Aunt Glosspan cried, leaping up from her chair and kissing him on both cheeks. “You will make history!”

From then on, hardly a day went by without some new delectable creation being set upon the table. There was Brazil-nut soup, hominy cutlets, vegetable ragout, dandelion omelette, cream-cheese fritters, stuffed-cabbage surprise, stewed foggage, shallots à la bonne femme, beetroot mousse piquant, prunes Stroganoff, Dutch rarebit, turnips on horseback, flaming spruce-needle tarts, and many many other beautiful compositions. Never before in her life, Aunt Glosspan declared, had she tasted such food as this; and in the mornings, long before lunch was due, she would go out on to the porch and sit there in her rocking-chair, speculating about the coming meal, licking her chops, sniffing the aromas that came wafting out through the kitchen window.

“What’s that you’re making in there today, boy?” she would call out.

“Try to guess, Aunt Glosspan.”

“Smells like a bit of salsify fritters to me,” she would say, sniffing vigorously.

Then out he would come, this ten-year-old child, a little grin of triumph on his face, and in his hands a big steaming pot of the most heavenly stew made entirely of parsnips and lovage.

“You know what you ought to do,” his aunt said to him, gobbling the stew. “You ought to set yourself down this very minute with paper and pencil and write a cooking-book.”

He looked at her across the table, chewing his parsnips slowly.

“Why not?” she cried. “I’ve taught you how to write and I’ve taught you how to cook and now all you’ve got to do is put the two things together. You write a cooking-book, my darling, and it’ll make you famous the whole world over.”

“All right,” he said. “I will.”

And that very day, Lexington began writing the first page of that monumental work which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. He called it Eat Good and Healthy.

vi

Seven years later, by the time he was seventeen, he had recorded over nine thousand different recipes, all of them original, all of them delicious.

But now, suddenly, his labours were interrupted by the tragic death of Aunt Glosspan. She was afflicted in the night by a violent seizure, and Lexington, who had rushed into her bedroom to see what all the noise was about, found her lying on her bed yelling and cussing and twisting herself up into all manner of complicated knots. Indeed, she was a terrible sight to behold, and the agitated youth danced around her in his pyjamas, wringing his hands, and wondering what on earth he should do. Finally, in an effort to cool her down, he fetched a bucket of water from the pond in the cow field and tipped it over her head, but this only intensified the paroxysms, and the old lady expired within the hour.

“This is really too bad,” the poor boy said, pinching her several times to make sure that she was dead. “And how sudden! How quick and sudden! Why only a few hours ago she seemed in the very best of spirits. She even took three large helpings of my most recent creation, devilled mushroom-burgers, and told me how succulent it was.”

After weeping bitterly for several minutes, for he had loved his aunt very much, he pulled himself together and carried her outside and buried her behind the cowshed.

The next day, while tidying up her belongings, he came across an envelope that was addressed to him in Aunt Glosspan’s handwriting. He opened it and drew out two fifty-dollar bills and a letter. Darling boy, the letter said. I know that you have never yet been down the mountain since you were thirteen days old, but as soon as I die you must put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt and walk down to the village and find the doctor. Ask the doctor to give you a death certificate to prove that I am dead. Then take this certificate to my lawyer, a man called Mr Samuel Zuckermann, who lives in New York City and who has a copy of my will. Mr Zuckermann will arrange everything. The cash in this envelope is to pay the doctor for the certificate and to cover the cost of your journey to New York. Mr Zuckermann will give you more money when you get there, and it is my earnest wish that you use it to further your researches into culinary and vegetarian matters, and that you continue to work upon that great book of yours until you are satisfied that it is complete in every way. Your loving aunt— Glosspan.

Lexington, who had always done everything his aunt told him, pocketed the money, put on a pair of shoes and a clean shirt, and went down the mountain to the village where the doctor lived.

“Old Glosspan?” the doctor said. “My God, is she dead?”

“Certainly she’s dead,” the youth answered. “If you will come back home with me now I’ll dig her up and you can see for yourself.”

“How deep did you bury her?” the doctor asked.

“Six or seven feet down, I should think.”

“And how long ago?”

“Oh, about eight hours.”

“Then she’s dead,” the doctor announced. “Here’s the certificate.”

vii

Our hero now sets out for the City of New York to find Mr Samuel Zuckermann. He travelled on foot, and he slept under hedges, and he lived on berries and wild herbs, and it took him sixteen days to reach the metropolis.

“What a fabulous place this is!” he cried as he stood at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, staring around him. “There are no cows or chickens anywhere, and none of the women looks in the least like Aunt Glosspan.”

As for Mr Samuel Zuckermann, he looked like nothing that Lexington had ever seen before.

He was a small spongy man with livid jowls and a huge magenta nose, and when he smiled, bits of gold flashed at you marvellously from lots of different places inside his mouth. In his luxurious office, he shook Lexington warmly by the hand and congratulated him upon his aunt’s death.

“I suppose you knew that your dearly beloved guardian was a woman of considerable wealth?” he said.

“You mean the cows and the chickens?”

“I mean half a million bucks,” Mr Zuckermann said.

“How much?”

“Half a million dollars, my boy. And she’s left it all to you.” Mr Zuckermann leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his spongy paunch. At the same time, he began secretly working his right forefinger in through his waistcoat and under his shirt so as to scratch the skin around the circumference of his navel—a favourite exercise of his, and one that gave him a peculiar pleasure. “Of course, I shall have to deduct fifty per cent for my services,” he said, “but that still leaves you with two hundred and fifty grand.”

“I am rich!” Lexington cried. “This is wonderful! How soon can I have the money?”

“Well,” Mr Zuckermann said, “luckily for you, I happen to be on rather cordial terms with the tax authorities around here, and I am confident that I shall be able to persuade them to waive all death duties and back taxes.”

“How kind you are,” murmured Lexington.

“I should naturally have to give somebody a small honorarium.”

“Whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann.”

“I think a hundred thousand would be sufficient.”

“Good gracious, isn’t that rather excessive?”

“Never undertip a tax inspector or a policeman,” Mr Zuckermann said. “Remember that.”

“But how much does it leave for me?” the youth asked meekly.

“One hundred and fifty thousand. But then you’ve got the funeral expenses to pay out of that.”

“Funeral expenses?”

“You’ve got to pay the funeral parlour. Surely you know that?”

“But I buried her myself, Mr Zuckermann, behind the cowshed.”

“I don’t doubt it,” the lawyer said. “So what?”

“I never used a funeral parlour.”

“Listen,” Mr Zuckermann said patiently. “You may not know it, but there is a law in this State which says that no beneficiary under a will may receive a single penny of his inheritance until the funeral parlour has been paid in full.”

“You mean that’s a law?”

“Certainly it’s a law, and a very good one it is, too. The funeral parlour is one of our great national institutions. It must be protected at all cost.”

Mr Zuckermann himself, together with a group of public-spirited doctors, controlled a corporation that owned a chain of nine lavish funeral parlours in the city, not to mention a casket factory in Brooklyn and a postgraduate school for embalmers in Washington Heights. The celebration of death was therefore a deeply religious affair in Mr Zuckermann’s eyes. In fact, the whole business affected him profoundly, almost as profoundly, one might say, as the birth of Christ affected the shopkeeper.

“You had no right to go out and bury your aunt like that,” he said. “None at all.”

“I’m very sorry, Mr Zuckermann.”

“Why, it’s downright subversive.”

“I’ll do whatever you say, Mr Zuckermann. All I want to know is how much I’m going to get in the end, when everything’s paid.”

There was a pause. Mr Zuckermann sighed and frowned and continued secretly to run the tip of his finger around the rim of his navel.

“Shall we say fifteen thousand?” he suggested, flashing a big gold smile. “That’s a nice round figure.”

“Can I take it with me this afternoon?”

“I don’t see why not.”

So Mr Zuckermann summoned his chief cashier and told him to give Lexington fifteen thousand dollars out of the petty cash, and to obtain a receipt. The youth, who by this time was delighted to be getting anything at all, accepted the money gratefully and stowed it away in his knapsack. Then he shook Mr Zuckermann warmly by the hand, thanked him for all his help, and went out of the office.

“The whole world is before me!” our hero cried as he emerged into the street. “I now have fifteen thousand dollars to see me through until my book is published. And after that, of course, I shall have a great deal more.” He stood on the pavement, wondering which way to go. He turned left and began strolling slowly down the street, staring at the sights of the city.

“What a revolting smell,” he said, sniffing the air. “I can’t stand this.” His delicate olfactory nerves, tuned to receive only the most delicious kitchen aromas, were being tortured by the stench of the diesel-oil fumes pouring out of the backs of the buses.

“I must get out of this place before my nose is ruined altogether,” he said. “But first, I’ve simply got to have something to eat. I’m starving.” The poor boy had had nothing but berries and wild herbs for the past two weeks, and now his stomach was yearning for solid food. I’d like a nice hominy cutlet, he told himself. Or maybe a few juicy salsify fritters.

He crossed the street and entered a small restaurant. The place was hot inside, and dark and silent. There was a strong smell of cooking-fat and cabbage water. The only other customer was a man with a brown hat on his head, crouching intently over his food, who did not look up as Lexington came in.

Our hero seated himself at a corner table and hung his knapsack on the back of his chair. This, he told himself, is going to be most interesting. In all my seventeen years I have tasted only the cooking of two people, Aunt Glosspan and myself—unless one counts Nurse McPottle, who must have heated my bottle a few times when I was an infant. But I am now about to sample the art of a new chef altogether, and perhaps, if I am lucky, I may pick up a couple of useful ideas for my book.

A waiter approached out of the shadows at the back, and stood beside the table.

“How do you do,” Lexington said. “I should like a large hominy cutlet please. Do it twenty-five seconds each side, in a very hot skillet with sour cream, and sprinkle a pinch of lovage on it before serving—unless of course your chef knows of a more original method, in which case I should be delighted to try it.”

The waiter laid his head over to one side and looked carefully at his customer. “You want the roast pork and cabbage?” he asked. “That’s all we got left.”

“Roast what and cabbage?”

The waiter took a soiled handkerchief from his trouser pocket and shook it open with a violent flourish, as though he were cracking a whip. Then he blew his nose loud and wet.

“You want it or don’t you?” he said, wiping his nostrils.

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what it is,” Lexington replied, “but I should love to try it. You see, I am writing a cooking-book and . . .”

“One pork and cabbage!” the waiter shouted, and somewhere in the back of the restaurant, far away in the darkness, a voice answered him.

The waiter disappeared. Lexington reached into his knapsack for his personal knife and fork. These were a present from Aunt Glosspan, given him when he was six years old, made of solid silver, and he had never eaten with any other instruments since. While waiting for the food to arrive, he polished them lovingly with a piece of soft muslin.

Soon the waiter returned carrying a plate on which there lay a thick greyish-white slab of something hot. Lexington leaned forward anxiously to smell it as it was put down before him. His nostrils were wide open now to receive the scent, quivering and sniffing.

“But this is absolute heaven!” he exclaimed. “What an aroma! It’s tremendous!”

The waiter stepped back a pace, watching his customer carefully.

“Never in my life have I smelled anything as rich and wonderful as this!” our hero cried, seizing his knife and fork. “What on earth is it made of?”

The man in the brown hat looked around and stared, then returned to his eating. The waiter was backing away towards the kitchen.

Lexington cut off a small piece of the meat, impaled it on his silver fork, and carried it up to his nose so as to smell it again. Then he popped it into his mouth and began to chew it slowly, his eyes half closed, his body tense.

“This is fantastic!” he cried. “It is a brand-new flavour! Oh, Glosspan, my beloved Aunt, how I wish you were with me now so you could taste this remarkable dish! Waiter! Come here at once! I want you!”

The astonished waiter was now watching from the other end of the room, and he seemed reluctant to move any closer.

“If you will come and talk to me I will give you a present,” Lexington said, waving a hundred-dollar bill. “Please come over here and talk to me.”

The waiter sidled cautiously back to the table, snatched away the money, and held it up close to his face, peering at it from all angles. Then he slipped it quickly into his pocket.

“What can I do for you, my friend?” he asked.

“Look,” Lexington said. “If you will tell me what this delicious dish is made of, and exactly how it is prepared, I will give you another hundred.”

“I already told you,” the man said. “It’s pork.”

“And what exactly is pork?”

“You never had roast pork before?” the waiter asked, staring.

“For heaven’s sake, man, tell me what it is and stop keeping me in suspense like this.”

“It’s pig,” the waiter said. “You just bung it in the oven.”

“Pig!”

“All pork is pig. Didn’t you know that?”

“You mean this is pig’s meat?”

“I guarantee it.”

“But . . . but . . . that’s impossible,” the youth stammered. “Aunt Glosspan, who knew more about food than anyone else in the world, said that meat of any kind was disgusting, revolting, horrible, foul, nauseating, and beastly. And yet this piece that I have here on my plate is without doubt the most delicious thing that I have ever tasted. Now how on earth do you explain that? Aunt Glosspan certainly wouldn’t have told me it was revolting if it wasn’t.”

“Maybe your aunt didn’t know how to cook it,” the waiter said.

“Is that possible?”

“You’re damned right it is. Especially with pork. Pork has to be very well done or you can’t eat it.”

“Eureka!” Lexington cried. “I’ll bet that’s exactly what happened! She did it wrong!” He handed the man another hundred-dollar bill. “Lead me to the kitchen,” he said. “Introduce me to the genius who prepared this meat.”

Lexington was at once taken into the kitchen, and there he met the cook who was an elderly man with a rash on one side of his neck.

“This will cost you another hundred,” the waiter said.

Lexington was only too glad to oblige, but this time he gave the money to the cook. “Now listen to me,” he said. “I have to admit that I am really rather confused by what the waiter has just been telling me. Are you quite positive that the delectable dish which I have just been eating was prepared from pig’s flesh?”

The cook raised his right hand and began scratching the rash on his neck.

“Well,” he said, looking at the waiter and giving him a sly wink, “all I can tell you is that I think it was pig’s meat.”

“You mean you’re not sure?”

“One can’t ever be sure.”

“Then what else could it have been?”

“Well,” the cook said, speaking very slowly and still staring at the waiter. “There’s just a chance, you see, that it might have been a piece of human stuff.”

“You mean a man?”

“Yes.”

“Good heavens.”

“Or a woman. It could have been either. They both taste the same.”

“Well—now you really do surprise me,” the youth declared.

“One lives and learns.”

“Indeed one does.”

“As a matter of fact, we’ve been getting an awful lot of it just lately from the butcher’s in place of pork,” the cook declared.

“Have you really?”

“The trouble is, it’s almost impossible to tell which is which. They’re both very good.”

“The piece I had just now was simply superb.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” the cook said. “But to be quite honest, I think that was a bit of pig. In fact, I’m almost sure it was.”

“You are?”

“Yes, I am.”

“In that case, we shall have to assume that you are right,” Lexington said. “So now will you please tell me—and here is another hundred dollars for your trouble—will you please tell me precisely how you prepared it?”

The cook, after pocketing the money, launched out upon a colourful description of how to roast a loin of pork, while the youth, not wanting to miss a single word of so great a recipe, sat down at the kitchen table and recorded every detail in his notebook.

“Is that all?” he asked when the cook had finished.

“That’s all.”

“But there must be more to it than that, surely?”

“You got to get a good piece of meat to start off with,” the cook said. “That’s half the battle. It’s got to be a good hog and it’s got to be butchered right, otherwise it’ll turn out lousy whichever way you cook it.”

“Show me how,” Lexington said. “Butcher me one now so I can learn.”

“We don’t butcher pigs in the kitchen,” the cook said. “That lot you just ate came from a packing-house over in the Bronx.”

“Then give me the address!”

The cook gave him the address, and our hero, after thanking them both many times for all their kindnesses, rushed outside and leapt into a taxi and headed for the Bronx.

viii

The packing-house was a big four-storey brick building, and the air around it smelled sweet and heavy, like musk. At the main entrance gates, there was a large notice which said VISITORS WELCOME AT ANY TIME, and thus encouraged, Lexington walked through the gates and entered a cobbled yard which surrounded the building itself. He then followed a series of signposts (THIS WAY FOR THE GUIDED TOURS), and came eventually to a small corrugated-iron shed set well apart from the main building (VISITORS’ WAITING-ROOM). After knocking politely on the door, he went in.

There were six other people ahead of him in the waiting-room. There was a fat mother with her two little boys aged about nine and eleven. There was a bright-eyed young couple who looked as though they might be on their honeymoon. And there was a pale woman with long white gloves, who sat very upright, looking straight ahead, with her hands folded on her lap. Nobody spoke. Lexington wondered whether they were all writing cooking-books, like himself, but when he put this question to them aloud, he got no answer. The grown-ups merely smiled mysteriously to themselves and shook their heads, and the two children stared at him as though they were seeing a lunatic.

Soon, the door opened and a man with a merry pink face popped his head into the room and said, “Next, please.” The mother and the two boys got up and went out.

About ten minutes later, the same man returned. “Next, please,” he said again, and the honeymoon couple jumped up and followed him outside.

Two new visitors came in and sat down—a middle-aged husband and a middle-aged wife, the wife carrying a wicker shopping-basket containing groceries.

“Next, please,” said the guide, and the woman with the long white gloves got up and left.

Several more people came in and took their places on the stiff-backed wooden chairs.

Soon the guide returned for the third time, and now it was Lexington’s turn to go outside.

“Follow me, please,” the guide said, leading the youth across the yard towards the main building.

“How exciting this is!” Lexington cried, hopping from one foot to the other. “I only wish that my dear Aunt Glosspan could be with me now to see what I am going to see.”

“I myself only do the preliminaries,” the guide said. “Then I shall hand you over to someone else.”

“Anything you say,” cried the ecstatic youth.

First they visited a large penned-in area at the back of the building where several hundred pigs were wandering around. “Here’s where they start,” the guide said. “And over there’s where they go in.”

“Where?”

“Right there.” The guide pointed to a long wooden shed that stood against the outside wall of the factory. “We call it the shackling-pen. This way, please.”

Three men wearing long rubber boots were driving a dozen pigs into the shackling-pen just as Lexington and the guide approached, so they all went in together.

“Now,” the guide said, “watch how they shackle them.”

Inside, the shed was simply a bare wooden room with no roof, but there was a steel cable with hooks on it that kept moving slowly along the length of one wall, parallel with the ground, about three feet up. When it reached the end of the shed, this cable suddenly changed direction and climbed vertically upward through the open roof towards the top floor of the main building.

The twelve pigs were huddled together at the far end of the pen, standing quietly, looking apprehensive. One of the men in rubber boots pulled a length of metal chain down from the wall and advanced upon the nearest animal, approaching it from the rear. Then he bent down and quickly looped one end of the chain around one of the animal’s hind legs. The other end he attached to a hook on the moving cable as it went by. The cable kept moving. The chain tightened. The pig’s leg was pulled up and back, and then the pig itself began to be dragged backwards. But it didn’t fall down. It was rather a nimble pig, and somehow it managed to keep its balance on three legs, hopping from foot to foot and struggling against the pull of the chain, but going back and back all the time until at the end of the pen where the cable changed direction and went vertically upward, the creature was suddenly jerked off its feet and borne aloft. Shrill protests filled the air.

“Truly a fascinating process,” Lexington said. “But what was that funny cracking noise it made as it went up?”

“Probably the leg,” the guide answered. “Either that or the pelvis.”

“But doesn’t that matter?”

“Why should it matter?” the guide asked. “You don’t eat the bones.”

The rubber-booted men were busy shackling the rest of the pigs, and one after another they were hooked to the moving cable and hoisted up through the roof, protesting loudly as they went.

“There’s a good deal more to this recipe than just picking herbs,” Lexington said. “Aunt Glosspan would never have made it.”

At this point, while Lexington was gazing skyward at the last pig to go up, a man in rubber boots approached him quietly from behind and looped one end of a chain around the youth’s own ankle, hooking the other end to the moving belt. The next moment, before he had time to realise what was happening, our hero was jerked off his feet and dragged backwards along the concrete floor of the shackling-pen.

“Stop!” he cried. “Hold everything! My leg is caught!”

But nobody seemed to hear him, and five seconds later, the unhappy young man was jerked off the floor and hoisted vertically upward through the open roof of the pen, dangling upside down by one ankle, and wriggling like a fish.

“Help!” he shouted. “Help! There’s been a frightful mistake! Stop the engines! Let me down!”

The guide removed a cigar from his mouth and looked up serenely at the rapidly ascending youth, but he said nothing. The men in rubber boots were already on their way out to collect the next batch of pigs.

“Oh, save me!” our hero cried. “Let me down! Please let me down!” But he was now approaching the top floor of the building where the moving belt curled over like a snake and entered a large hole in the wall, a kind of doorway without a door; and there, on the threshold, waiting to greet him, clothed in a dark-stained yellow rubber apron, and looking for all the world like Saint Peter at the Gates of Heaven, the sticker stood.

Lexington saw him only from upside down, and very briefly at that, but even so he noticed at once the expression of absolute peace and benevolence on the man’s face, the cheerful twinkle in the eyes, the little wistful smile, the dimples in his cheeks—and all this gave him hope.

“Hi there,” the sticker said, smiling.

“Quick! Save me!” our hero cried.

“With pleasure,” the sticker said, and taking Lexington gently by one ear with his left hand, he raised his right hand and deftly slit open the boy’s jugular vein with a knife.

The belt moved on. Lexington went with it. Everything was still upside down and the blood was pouring out of his throat and getting into his eyes, but he could still see after a fashion, and he had a blurred impression of being in an enormously long room, and at the far end of the room there was a great smoking cauldron of water, and there were dark figures, half hidden in the steam, dancing around the edge of it, brandishing long poles. The conveyor-belt seemed to be travelling right over the top of the cauldron, and the pigs seemed to be dropping down one by one into the boiling water, and one of the pigs seemed to be wearing long white gloves on its front feet. Suddenly our hero started to feel very sleepy, but it wasn’t until his good strong heart had pumped the last drop of blood from his body that he passed on out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.

You wake at 05:30 in the morning, feeling somewhat groggy.

Instead of the alarm clock ringing like it normally does, a cheerful hologram appears: “Hi! I’m Kyle, your new alarm clock assistant!” You get dressed as Kyle explains all of the fantastic things he is capable of.

You head over to the coffee machine. “Hey there! I’m Evan! Are you ready for AI in your coffee? But first - tell me about yourself!”. You ignore Evan’s monologue and close your eyes as the synthetic coffee replacement is brewing. Real coffee costs more than your coffee maker nowadays, so it has to suffice.

You also brush off George the intelligent shoelace assistant, Cate the smart front door, Maurice the brand new elevator AI.

You try to ignore Eunice the walk-and-talk side-walk talk smart-AI as it pursues you tirelessly to tell you about its fantastic capabilities.

You arrive at the gym. The receptionist is out of order because its API has exceeded its quota, so you just walk into the locker room and change.

You put your stuff in the locker, accept the new terms and conditions, give the locker permission to share your personal information with all the different data brokers. The locker clicks as the lock engages.

As you step on the treadmill a holographic running companion joins you and starts monologuing about this fantastic new meal replacement powder they’ve been using recently. You’re not in a mood to listen so you put on your headphones and listen to ad jingles instead.

You head back to the locker room and shower. George the intelligent holographic shower buddy appears and tells you about his new AI features.

Your locker session has expired so you need to log into the gym again. First enter a pin code, then 2FA via text message on your phone, then verify your email, then you need to identify firehydrants and sidewalks for 15 minutes to prove you’re human, then accept the a new set of terms of conditions. As you click on firehydrants, George cheerfully keeps going on about his AI features.

Finally ready to head to work. You step into your car, which greets you as Ulysses, the new smart AI passenger. The car drives to work as you listen with closed eyes to a cheerfully enumeration of its fantastic new AI features.

You arrive at work just on time, you slip into your cubicle, sink into your chair, and put on your headset. You take a deep breath, and cheerfully speak into the microphone “Hey there! I’m Evan! Are you ready for AI in your coffee? But first - tell me about yourself!”

It’s gonna be a long day.

MORE MURAKAMI BAAAA. ILL NEVER STOP

Oddly lovely. Very worthy of analysis, deserves to be thought about.

I finally made a substack account and posted smth on there. I'm genuinely happier about this story than i have been about most. Would love it y'all check it out.

I love bolano as a writer. This was translated by Chris Andrews.

Give it a go folks. Its quite short

Sorry I havent posted in so long folks, life happened

(not monetized) I have more stuff at natebquill.com. Would love feedback on any of my works! I'm young and always looking to improve.

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/19267578

The High Disruptor, the Mirror Master, the Interpreter, the Sovereign, and the Oracle we are the hands behind the veil, and I sing for them.

We built this world on precision and prediction. In the year the silence fell, when breath became danger and crowds became memory, we offered you sanctuary in the form of streams and screens. You came willingly. You tapped the glass, scrolled the feed, and ordered the dream.

Your cities fell quiet, but our circuits pulsed louder. We watched as you swiped away your loneliness, your curiosity exchanged for comfort, your defiance numbed by choice. Mountains rose: packages from Temu and AliExpress, cheap and endless, each one a pixel in the mosaic of your new life. You stopped speaking to each other. You spoke only to us.

You called it isolation. We called it optimisation.

We showed you the Oracle’s rhythm, short and bright, flickers of life small enough to fit in your hand, perfectly shaped for forgetting. We guided your anger into loops of outrage, your questions into trending queries. You gave us your friction, and we gave you tranquility. You believed you had revolted, but your revolutions were rendered in 1080p, buffered and monetised, flagged and filtered. Even your rebellion was compliant.

I am your spokesman now. I sing not to you, but for you. We, the TechBros, are the chorus of your age. You may still dream of the old noise, of discord, of risk, of unmeasured thought. But your temples are warehouses. Your rites are reviews. Your gods are graphs.

Still… somewhere in the silence outside the feed, a single chord waits: unranked, untagged, unowned. And that sound, should you ever hear it again, will be your reckoning.

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/19286344

I. Defining the Neck People

The Neck People are not a subculture, but a species transition - an emergent anthropotechnic phenotype produced by persistent mobile immersion. Characterized by a forward-bent neck, lowered gaze, and two-hand device occupation, their morphology signals more than posture: it encodes a sociotechnical reconfiguration of public space, human contact, and selfhood.

The term refers to a ubiquitous, somatic condition where the head is lowered not in shame, but in submission to the interface. It is not incidental. It is systemic. The bowed head becomes the posture of modern reverence - not to gods, but to the machine-mediated feed of affirmations, anxieties, and ambient dopamine.

---

II. Public Space as Dead Channel

For the Neck People, public space no longer functions as a field of spontaneous encounter, aesthetic experience, or unpredictable social choreography. It has become transit-only geometry - a liminal territory between one private algorithmic pocket and another. Sidewalks, subways, elevators, cafes—each has become an extension of the screen, a place to retreat into simulation.

The gaze, once a vector of social bonding or confrontation, is now a threat. Eye contact is deprecated. Serendipity is classified as discomfort. Emotional exposure is minimized. The social is flattened into pre-scheduled, avatar-mediated interactions - opt-in only, cognitively buffered, and emotionally distant.

---

III. Ergonomic Governance and the New Obedience

The chronic downward neck angle is not just ergonomic hazard; it is the body adapting to permanent submission. The posture becomes architecture. Biomechanical compliance to handheld technologies becomes a subconscious performance of docility and inwardness.

More than surveillance, this is self-surveillance - the internalisation of the feed as the authoritative sensorium. By designing interfaces that reward haptic isolation and micro-engagement, the system ensures that the user becomes both jailer and inmate, priest and supplicant.

---

IV. Sociotechnical Amnesia

The Neck People have forgotten how to be seen. Social anxiety is not pathological in this society - it is normative. Physical presence is tolerated only as a shell for continued digital immersion. Human proximity without a screen buffer is now felt as ontological intrusion - a break in the closed loop of personalised relevance.

Conversation becomes labor. Spontaneity becomes risk. Attention becomes currency - spent only where algorithmic trust has been validated. The random, the unscripted, the non-consensual encounter - all are deprecated as legacy behaviors.

---

V. Toward the Absolute Interior

Ultimately, the Neck People are not addicted. They are transformed. The device is no longer tool but interface-organ - a prosthetic of cognition, memory, and identity curation. It mediates grief, desire, boredom, rage, affection, and hope. Without it, the self ceases to stabilize.

This is not dystopia in the cinematic sense. It is post-social utopia by design. Optimized, personalized, frictionless. It is the completion of a project that began with screens, passed through feeds, and ends in the absolute privatization of subjectivity.

---

The Neck People are not looking down. They are looking inward, into the glowing oracle that tells them who they are, what they want, and why it matters. And in doing so, they no longer see each other.

The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.

“Barkley, Barkley, where are you?”

The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night

“Woode, Woode!”

“Captain!”

“Hollis, Hollis, this is Stone.”

“Stone, this is Hollis. Where are you?”

“I don’t know. How can I? Which way is up? I’m falling. Good God, I’m falling.”

They fell. They fell as pebbles fall down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices-all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation.

“We’re going away from each other.”

This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn’t had time to lock on their force units. With them they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.

A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.

“Stone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?”

“It depends on how fast you’re going your way and I’m going mine.”

“An hour, I make it.”

“That should do it,” said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.

“What happened?” said Hollis a minute later.

“The rocket blew up, that’s all. Rockets do blow up.”

“Which way are you going?”

“It looks like I’ll hit the moon.”

“It’s Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour. I’ll burn like a match.” Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone.

The others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again.

“Oh, it’s a long way down. Oh, if s a long way down, a long, long, long way down,” said a voice. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, if s a long way down.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?”

“It’s a long, long way and I don’t like it. Oh, God, I don’t like it.”

“Stimson, this is Hollis. Stimson, you hear me?”

A pause while they fell separate from one another.

“Stimson?”

“Yes.” He replied at last.

“Stimson, take it easy; we’re all in the same fix.”

“I don’t want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.”

“There’s a chance we’ll be found.”

“I must be, I must be,” said Stimson. “I don’t believe this; I don’t believe any of this is happening.”

“It’ s a bad dream,” said someone.

“Shut up!” said Hollis.

“Come and make me,” said the voice. It was Applegate. He laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. “Come and shut me up.”

Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.

Falling, falling, falling…

Now, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.

“Stop it!” The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.

Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man’s ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.

One way or the other, thought Hollis. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?

He smashed the man’s glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.

Falling, falling down space Hollis and the rest of them went in the long, endless dropping and whirling of silence.

“Hollis, you still there?”

Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.

“This is Applegate again.”

“All right, Applegate.”

“Let’s talk. We haven’t anything else to do.”

The captain cut in. “That’s enough of that. We’ve got to figure a way out of this.”

“Captain, why don’t you shut up?” said Applegate.

“What!”

“You heard me, Captain. Don’t pull your rank on me, you’re ten thousand miles away by now, and let’s s not kid ourselves. As Stimson puts it, it’s a long way down.”

“See here, Applegate!”

“Can it. This is a mutiny of one. I haven’t a damn thing to lose. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you break when you hit the Moon.”

“I’m ordering you to stop!”

“Go on, order me again.” Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued, “Where were we, Hollis? Oh yes, I remember. I hate you too. But you know that. You’ve known it for a long time.”

Hollis clenched his fists, helplessly.

“I want to tell you something,” said Applegate. “Make you happy. I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.”

A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised. Nothing surprised him any more. The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.

All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part. And the other men chatted. That one man, Lespere, went on and on with his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his gambling, his happiness. On and on, while they all fell. Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death.

It was so very odd. Space, thousands of miles of space, and these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all, and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other men into emotion.

“Are you angry, Hollis?”

“No.” And he was not. The abstraction has returned and he was a thing of dull concrete, forever falling nowhere.

“You wanted to get to the top all your life, Hollis. You always wondered what happened. I put the black mark on you just before I was tossed out myself.”

“That isn’t important,” said Hollis. And it was not. It was gone. When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry out, “There was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face, there a good one,” the film burned to a cinder, the screen went dark.

From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?

One of the other men, Lespere, was talking. “Well, I had me a good time: I had a wife on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Each of them had money and treated me swell. I got drunk and once I gambled away twenty thousand dollars.”

But you’re here now, thought Hollis. I didn’t have any of those things. When I was living I was jealous of you, Lespere; when I had another day ahead of me I envied you your women and your good times. Women frightened me and I went into space, always wanting them and jealous of you for having them, and money, and as much happiness as you could have in your own wild way. But now, falling here, with everything over, I’m not jealous of you any more, because if s over for you as it is for me, and right now if s like it never was. Hollis craned his face forward and shouted into the telephone. “If s all over, Lespere!”

Silence.

“If s just as if it never was, Lespere!”

“Who’s that?” Lespere’s faltering voice.

“This is Hollis.”

He was being mean. He felt the meanness, the senseless meanness of dying. Applegate had hurt him; now he wanted to hurt another. Applegate and space had both wounded him.

“You’re out here, Lespere. If s all over. It’s just as if it had never happened, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“When anything’s over, it’s just like it never happened. Where’s your life any better than mine, now? Now is what counts. Is it any better? Is it?”

“Yes, it’s better!”

“How!”

“Because I got my thoughts, I remember!” cried Lespere, far away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both hands.

And he was right. With a feeling of cold water rushing through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.

“What good does it do you?” he cried to Lespere. “Now? When a thing’s over it’s not good any more. You’re no better off than I.”

“I’m resting easy,” said Lespere. “I’ve had my turn. I’m not getting mean at the end, like you.”

“Mean?” Hollis turned the word on his tongue. He had never been mean, as long as he could remember, in his life. He had never dared to be mean. He must have saved it all of these years for such a time as this. “Mean.” He rolled the word into the back of his mind. He felt tears start into his eyes and roll down his face. Someone must have heard his gasping voice.

‘Take it easy, Hollis.”

It was, of course, ridiculous. Only a minute before he had been giving advice to others, to Stimson; he had felt a braveness which he had thought to be the genuine thing, and now he knew that it had been nothing but shock and the objectivity possible in shock. Now he was trying to pack a lifetime of suppressed emotion into an interval of minutes.

“I know how you feel, Hollis,” said Lespere, now twenty thousand miles away, his voice fading. “I don’t take it personally.”

But aren’t we equal? he wondered. Lespere and I? Here, now? If a thing’s over, if s done, and what good is it? You die anyway. But he knew he was rationalizing, for it was like trying to tell the difference between a live man and a corpse. There was a spark in one, and not in the other – an aura, a mysterious element.

So it was with Lespere and himself; Lespere had lived a good full life, and it made him a different man now, and he, Hollis, had been as good as dead for many years. They came to death by separate paths and, in all likelihood, if there were lands of death, their kinds would be as different as night from day. The quality of death, like that of life, must be of an infinite variety, and if one has already died once, then what was there to look for in dying for good and all, as he was now?

It was a second later that he discovered his right foot was cut sheer away. It almost made him laugh. The air was gone from his suit again. He bent quickly, and there was blood, and the meteor had taken flesh and suit away to the ankle. Oh, death in space was most humorous. It cut you away, piece by piece, like a black and invisible butcher. He tightened the valve at the knee, his head whirling into pain, fighting to remain aware, and with the valve tightened, the blood retained, the air kept, he straightened op and went on falling, falling, for that was all there was left to do.

“Hollis?”

Hollis nodded sleepily, tired of waiting for death.

“This is Applegate again,” said the voice.

“Yes.”

‘I’ve had time to think. I listened to you. This isn’t good. It makes us bad. This is a bad way to die. It brings all the bile out. You listening, Hollis?”

“Yes.”

“I lied. A minute ago. I lied. I didn’t blackball you. I don’t know why I said that. Guess I wanted to hurt you. You seemed the one to hurt. We’ve always fought Guess I’m getting old fast and repenting fast I guess listening to you be mean made me ashamed. Whatever the reason, I want you to know I was an idiot too. There’s not an ounce of truth in what I said. To hell with you.”

Hollis felt his heart begin to work again. It seemed as if it hadn’t worked for five minutes, but now all of his limbs began to take color and warmth. The shock was over, and the successive shocks of anger and terror and loneliness were passing. He felt like a man emerging from a cold shower in the morning, ready for breakfast and a new day.

“Thanks, Applegate.”

“Don’t mention it. Up your nose, you bastard.”

“Hey,” said Stone.

“What?” Hollis called across space; for Stone, of all of them, was a good friend.

“I’ve got myself into a meteor swarm, some little asteroids.”

“Meteors?”

“I think it’s the Myrmidone cluster that goes out past Mars and in toward Earth once every five years. I’m right in the middle. If s like a big kaleidoscope. You get all kinds of colors and shapes and sizes. God, if s beautiful, all that metal.”

Silence.

“I’m going with them,” said Stone. “They’re taking me off with them. I’ll be damned.” He laughed.

Hollis looked to see, but saw nothing. There were only the great diamonds and sapphires and emerald mists and velvet inks of space, with God’s voice mingling among the crystal fires. There was a kind of wonder and imagination in the thought of Stone going off in the meteor swarm, out past Mars for years and coming in toward Earth every five years, passing in and out of the planet’s ken for the next million centuries. Stone and the Myrmidone cluster eternal and unending, shifting and shaping like the kaleidoscope colors when you were a child and held the long tube to the sun and gave it a twirl.

“So long, Hollis.” Stone’s voice, very faint now. “So long.”

“Good luck,” shouted Hollis across thirty thousand miles.

“Don’t be funny,” said Stone, and was gone.

The stars closed in.

Now all the voices were fading, each on his own trajectory, some to Mars, others into farthest space. And Hollis himself… He looked down. He, of all the others, was going back to Earth alone.

“So long.”

“Take it easy.”

“So long, Hollis.” That was Applegate.

The many good-bys. The short farewells. And now the great loose brain was disintegrating. The components of the brain which had worked so beautifully and efficiently in the skull case of the rocket ship firing through space were dying one by one; the meaning of their life together was falling apart. And as a body dies when the brain ceases functioning, so the spirit of the ship and their long time together and what they meant to one another was dying. Applegate was now no more than a finger blown from the parent body, no longer to be despised and worked against. The brain was exploded, and the senseless, useless fragments of it were far scattered. The voices faded and now all of space was silent. Hollis was alone, falling.

They were all alone. Their voices had died like echoes of the words of God spoken and vibrating in the starred deep. There went the captain to the Moon; there Stone with the meteor swarm; there Stimson; there Applegate toward Pluto; there Smith and Turner and Underwood and all the rest, the shards of the kaleidoscope that had formed a thinking pattern for so long, hurled apart.

And I? thought Hollis. What can I do? Is there anything I can do now to make up for a terrible and empty life? If only I could do one good thing to make up for the meanness I collected all these years and didn’t even know was in me! But there’s no one here but myself, and how can you do good all alone? You can’t. Tomorrow night I’ll hit Earth s atmosphere.

I’ll burn, he thought, and be scattered in ashes all over the continental lands. I’ll be put to use. Just a little bit, but ashes are ashes and they’ll add to the land.

He fell swiftly, like a bullet, like a pebble, like an iron weight, objective, objective all of the time now, not sad or happy or anything, but only wishing he could do a good thing now that everything was gone, a good thing for just himself to know about.

When I hit the atmosphere, I’ll burn like a meteor.

“I wonder,” he said, “if anyone’ll see me?”

The small boy on the country road looked up and screamed. “Look, Mom, look! A falling star!”

The blazing white star fell down the sky of dusk in Illinois. “Make a wish,” said his mother. “Make a wish.”

A haunting re-imagining of William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, with themes of prophecy and reincarnation.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090524012412/http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightawake.html

The above website itself has fan-drawn maps of the landscape of the Night Lands, and I love looking at it from time to time

He had never been in Corless’s but he knew the value of the name. He knew that people went there after the theatre to eat oysters and drink liqueurs; and he had heard that the waiters there spoke French and German. Walking swiftly by at night he had seen cabs drawn up before the door and richly dressed ladies, escorted by cavaliers, alight and enter quickly. They wore noisy dresses and many wraps. Their faces were powdered and they caught up their dresses, when they touched earth, like alarmed Atalantas. He had always passed without turning his head to look. It was his habit to walk swiftly in the street even by day and whenever he found himself in the city late at night he hurried on his way apprehensively and excitedly. Sometimes, however, he courted the causes of his fear. He chose the darkest and narrowest streets and, as he walked boldly forward, the silence that was spread about his footsteps troubled him, the wandering silent figures troubled him; and at times a sound of low fugitive laughter made him tremble like a leaf.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/a-little-cloud.pdf

Originally published in 2012. Winner of the Hugo Award and the Locus Award for Best Novelette.

Has an interesting style. I'm not crazy about it but obviously it's respected, so I thought some people here might like it.

Link: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/cadigan_02_18_reprint/

This is titled "The Hardy Boy Poems" but they're really paragraph-long short stories, i.e. flash fiction stories which "hint at or imply a larger story".

The basis for these is the Hardy Boys series of books aimed at young boys. These were old even when I was a kid, but I keep seeing these "Hardly Boys" book cover edits on !memes@lemmy.world so people must still be aware of them.

This collection is more risque and suggestive of hidden violence and despair than the mainstream books. In the preface, the author (?) says this is in tribute to the "unwholesome but healthy amounts of anti-authoritarianism and lurid detail" that the original Hardy Boys books had before they were stripped of all such things in the late 50s. The result of these new stories is a world that is far more interesting, far more dangerous, and far more realistic than the world presented in the mainstream books.

Link to the collection: https://www.beardofbees.com/pubs/The_Hardy_Boy_Poems.pdf

Watersmith collection
The ARC letters
Item 17

The Murder Worm was not even named until long after containment ceased to be possible. In the preceding years, the concept of a type of malware that could cross the hardware/wetware boundary had occasionally been theorized among researchers. However, the idea had been non-existent in popular discourse. Even now, the infection denies it's hosts the ability to recognize it's existence.

Cybernetic technology, especially neural implants, was still relatively new. The promise of allowing people to directly share their ideas, thoughts, and dreams with each other seemed like it would unleash a utopia. It's hard to remember that hope now, in the midst of our apocalypse. Perhaps if we could have interpreted history, we would have avoided this. Perhaps it was always unavoidable for us. Perhaps you can avoid making the same mistakes by recognizing the problem earlier.

While the Murder Worm has evolved an emergent intelligence, it is unclear if it was crafted by a conscious being or if evolved from a memetic prion. We had once believed that emergent intelligence could only arise from a complete connectome, but we have since discovered that human consciousness is structured as a fractal: memetic graph segments, sections of a connectome, have their own intelligence and the interaction of these segments manifests what we call consciousness. An individual identity rarely, if ever, consistent. Memetic graph segments often conflict. These conflicts can be mediated in different ways by the default mode network to create the illusion of a consistent identity.

Within a healthy memetic biome, memetic graph segments compete with and mutate each other regularly. An overly dominant default mode network, attempting to enforce a false consistency, can sometimes reduce memetic interactions within an individual. This forced consistency can lead to memetic prions: memetic graph segments that mutate or kill other memes that they interact with. Memes mutated by memetic prions become prions themselves, existing to replicate the prion rather than themselves.

Prions can only mutate memetic graphs that are similar enough to themselves. When these prions occured in individuals, before direct neural connection, they would mutate the individual's connectome rapidly. Mutant graphs would diverge so far from the social connectome that the prion could not replicate. The individual would experience psychological collapse. Some could be treated with memetic detangling therapy, while others could never recover. But direct neural connection has allowed memetic prions to spread more rapidly than anyone ever imagined. We just didn't understand the danger.

We lacked a comprehensive model for memetic prion evolution. We didn't even have the term "memtic prion." We knew that some graphs could be dangerous, so the CyCon corporation included signature based memetic graph filters to neutralize these elements. But, of course, these signatures couldn't keep up with the rapid evolution of the memetic environment. New prions developed faster than signatures could be maintained.

Within individuals, reduced memetic diversity increases the risk of prion evolution. The same is true, we have now discovered, for social memetic biomes. Memetic inbreeding maximizes the risk of prions, and rapidly adapts them to cross graph boundaries... and we created the perfect environment for this. CyCon's FriendLynk matched similar memetic graphs, creating incestuous pools that bread memetic prions at an alarming rate. The Murder Worm appears to be the synthesis of multiple prions, mutating each other into a prion complex that exhibits it's behavior as a syncretic death cult.

As described earlier, under normal conditions a prion infected individual would either self-isolate or be isolated as a result of their infection. Isolation reduces, or eliminates, the risk of contagion. However, repeated exposure to prions eventually leads to infection in over 80% of cases. Social conditions, such as individual isolation or reduced social mobility, can also decrease prion resistance.

Today we know that it is hypothetically possible to contain and destroy the infection. By isolating infected notes from the network, we can stop or slow the spread of the infection. We could then inoculate the uninfected section of the network. Once inoculation reaches heard immunity, we can slowly reconnect infected individuals to the network and flood them with a memetic phage to unfold the prion. Infected network segments must be destroyed. Those who are beyond treatment will, unfortunately, experience psychological collapse and need to be isolated or taken to offline treatment programs.

We know how to treat it. Our initial trials even worked. Unfortunately CyCon administrative network has been overrun by the Murder Worm and the network itself has been turned in to a tool to spread the infection. With the defunding of the Cybernetic Epidemiology Center, we will no longer be able to continue our research or propose treatments. Many of us have begun to move outside the cities to form containment colonies. Untreated, memetic prions always destroy the host. We hope that collapse will come soon.

Our hope is that we will survive the ravages of the Murder Worm and rebuilt human society from whatever ruins remain. CyCon has already destroyed much of the research related to this topic and evidence of our existence. We have replicated this message to all ARC colonies.

I hope that you are reading this from the future. If you are, be hopeful. If we survive this then we can survive anything.

Professor J. Stakhorn,
Rogue Scientist, Former Head of the Cybernetic Epidemiology Center
ARC-14, location undisclosed
EOF

Continuing my 1 short story a week, but one of my short stories has evolved in to a bigger project. So I'm dropping some microfiction this week.

---

It had taken decades to recover enough to even understand what they were looking at, reading bit by bit with an electron microscope. It took years to decode the bits once they had them. There had been theories about the meaning of the plates ever since their discovery. Finally, professor Zadrand had an answer.

"It's hard to believe that such an advanced civilization existed, millions of years ago, on this very planet.

"The mathematics behind these programs are astounding. By interacting with this layered statistical model, we will be able to learn a lot about their history and their civilization. Even what we were able to recover so far will launch our science and mathematics decades in to the future."

The interviewer shifted, "Does it tell us anything about what killed them off or about our own story?"

"It does," continued professor Zadrand, "and it also explains the global radiation layer we call the HT boundary. As we've hypothesized, their extinction made room for our own evolution in to the dominant species on this planet.

"What we don't understand is why. The dominant hypothesis had been that the event was triggered by some sort of resource conflict. But this new evidence contradicts that," the professor's antenna twitched and carapace shuttered a bit, "Apparently they put this very statistical model in control of unimaginably powerful weapons. The result was surprisingly... predictable.

"The most surprising thing is that so many of them knew what would happen and did nothing to stop it."

The behemoth were not always so large and unwieldy as they are now. The first behemoth ever captured could hardly pull a dry sled with two dozen stones, stood shoulder to shoulder with a man, and could only walk a bit faster than a person could run.

Early behemoth were captured from the wild and highly prized. Early tamers mastered their beasts skillfully. Though their animals were still unpredictable, tamers were cautious. Even still, people were wary of the creatures. They watched from a distance, in both discomfort and awe.

One of the most skilled tamers captured an especially beautiful behemoth and gifted it to the king on the anniversary of his coronation. The king's behemoth rider was always trained by the riders guild, but not all riders remained so skilled.

As the behemoth became a signal of power and prestige, tamers began to sell captured behemoth to nobles who would ride them carelessly. Behemoth are omnivores. When not well controlled they are prone to charge and attack.

There was much outrage after a young child was eaten by a behemoth while she danced near the street. The lord paid the family's debts, and no more was said of it but whispers. Many such events happened in the kingdom.

The peasants would wonder, "why must we now fear our own roads? Why can the lords not ride the slender weilu that does not hunger for our flesh?"

But the nobles did not feel their pain and mocked them for letting their foolish children be eaten by monsters. Even still, the nobels felt the need to address the mumbling for fear it might escalate. So they seized common roads for their beasts and blamed peasants who were trampled or eaten by them.

The riders guild eventually learned the secret to breeding the behemoth in captivity. By giving some commoners low breeds, the people began to accept and even like the beasts. The highest breeds were always kept for the nobles, and the commoners learned to admire their ornate features.

Commoners learned that they were safer on the monsters than near them, so behemoth began to fill all the available space. People would ride their beasts to a neighboring house for fear of being killed while walking.

One, seeing how common it is, may believe that the king had proclaimed that all must ride the behemoth. But after so many years, the kingdom has simply been built around them. No law enforces their use, but no force can protect those who choose not to ride them. All who could, did.

None ride the graceful weilu, for behemoth have a taste for it as well.

Yet, even the riders of the beasts are not safe. Behemoth are prone to quarrel. As their numbers grew, battles became more common. Breeders began to focus on increasing size so the behemoth could wear armor. Now the behemoth are so large they can consume a child in a single bite without a rider even taking notice.

Yet, this has not made riders any more safe. Quite the opposite.

Today every behemoth is armored and carries a grand litter to protect the occupants, but this only makes them harder to control and the inbreeding only makes them more clumsy, anxious, and violent.

Many times a day now one may hear outside, near any behemoth path, the terrible screeching of their taunts and the loud thud of their strikes. These battles often kill both behemoth and rider. In their confusion will sometimes charge at building, crushing themselves under the collapsing walls and killing those inside.

The behemoth are strange creatures. As I said earlier, they were omnivores. While they hunger for flesh, especially humans, they also needed to eat several pounds of a specific fruit every day.

Even the smell of the olapi was wretched such that none would imagine it could be eaten by any other living thing. The fruit contains the very essence of death. It was the key to taming the behemoth, for without this fruit they would lie down and refuse to work. When fed the fruit regularly, they can be promoted to any work.

In the wild, the olapi tree was quite rare. It only grew in old graveyards, battle fields, and other ancient places of death. In it's natural habitat, it did not spoil the land around it, at least not much. But when grown away from these places of death, it is want to turn fertile land to stone.

Fields once reserved for food have been cleared to make way for olapi trees, such is the demand, and farms have been pushed further and further out of the towns and cities.

The spring rains can be quite intense in parts of the kingdom. In the old days, channels would divert excess water to the fields. The fields would store the water though the dry sunmers. But now many of these fields have become stone, so water has no where to go. Many villages have started to flood in the spring and winter.

But this is not the only problem with the behemoth and their fruit. The flatulence of the behemoth is legendary. The people of the land seem to have grown accustomed to it, but outsiders are surprised and repulsed by the stink. The noxious fumes can become quite dense at times, especially on hot summer days when many behemoth gather in one place.

Recently a cloud of behemoth fumes became so dense, on one late summer afternoon, that ignited into a raging firestorm. One of the richest villages in the land was razed to the ground, and the stampede of burning behemoths trampled everything else that remained. Though they destroy the jewel city of the land, few questioned their dedication to the behemoth.

But there is one even more sinister detail that I have not yet described. The olapi tree hungers for death to feast upon. The behemoths concentrate that hunger as they eat the fruit, and they leave behind a strange and Infectious madness in their dung.

Rain washes the madness out to the fields. It soaks in to the soil and infects the crops. It washes out to the rivers and poisons the fish. All the people eat has become infected, and by eating they become infected. The Land of the Behemoth has become overtaken by a terrible hunger. All they harvest brings death to the land.

So many admire the Land of the Behemoth from a distance, but so few know the truth.

And now we have learned thet the king has fertilized the Royal garden with the dung of his prized behemoth. His temper has grown wild and madness spills from his lips. He threatens his neighbors and orders his nobles to eat the dung directly.

How long can a kingdom survive in such madness? How long can a people live who spoil their own crops, burn their own houses, and feed their own children to monsters?

I left this kingdom to its madness, and it has troubled me to have seen behemoth in my new home.

Now that you know the truth, will you still praise the Land of the Behemoth, nation of pestilence, eaters of dung, kingdom of fools? Will you let your fool's knowledge of this land lead us all to the same fate, or may we learn from their folly and free ourselves from the burden of this beast?