What's Fair: And Other Short Stories Read online

  My second choice is to take the pill. The option itself makes me want to vomit. To continue to stay at size, undetectable. To hide from the doctor inside the stomach. But how long can I last? I don’t have enough nutrition packets to last more than a few days. And The Whale won’t forget about me. It will just be a matter of time before he finds me and terminates me.

  My third option is to allow the reversal to take place as planned. To try to fight off the doctor. To play for time, and then rip this bastard’s guts out from the inside out.

  It isn’t much of a choice.

  I check my watch. Two hours until the reversal begins. I’ll need my sleep.

  The growth begins just as scheduled. The pain rakes my body; I can feel each individual fascia linking skin to muscle expanding, growing. I scream silently into the Halo; thank God they made the Halo expandable along with me. Within an hour, I’m twice the size I was before. The stomach is no longer looking quite so vast. The fire behind my eyes makes me want to tear them out.

  Amy, I remind myself. Amy.

  Amy, Amy, Amy …

  September 22: Two days and a wakeup. Just 52 hours.

  Of hell.

  The doctor’s here. I can feel The Whale laugh. At this point, I can’t wait to rip his stomach out, especially as the fiery blood rushes through my veins, growing me too rapidly to adjust. My limbs feel stiff, heavy, ungainly. And every time I try to move them, I find myself thrashing about, flailing.

  The doctor says something. The Whale laughs again. And then his body goes horizontal on his desk. I take a fleeting pleasure in the fact that he’s smearing himself with dust mites even as he does it.

  There are a few beats on the stomach – the doctor examining The Whale, no doubt – and then he sits back up.

  From above, the liquid comes. It’s dark and viscous, sticky and thick. It’s moving down the walls of the stomach, lining it. Gradually, as I watch in horror, it covers the entire surface of the stomach, staining it dark maroon.

  A pill, about my size, ricochets through The Whale’s esophagus – I can hear the hollow plonk as it bounces down – and then falls into the stomach. Below me, the stomach acid goes to work, tearing off the cover. And from the pill burst hundreds of them.

  I never thought I’d see them again.

  Of all the things.

  Mechanical dust mites.

  The Whale hates dust mites. But he must hate me more.

  They’re searching for me. Now I realize what the viscous liquid was for: it was designed to hold me fast, to keep me from fighting back – and to cover everything that wasn’t the Halo. To shine a spotlight on me, give the mites a target. They’re crawling up the walls. I’d heard rumors about the next generation of Antis. Looks like the rumors were right.

  There’s no time to think. My instruments aren’t growing, of course – my knife, my laser gun. They’re tiny toys in my hands. All I’ve got left is my hands, and I can barely control them. I’m naked now, thanks to the growth – my clothes ripped off of me as I grew.

  The mechanical mites are climbing.

  I take a deep breath, grab the Halo, and rip with all my strength.

  Nothing happens. The liquid is holding the Halo together as the mechanical mites climb. I can’t get out.

  One of the mechanical mites is faster than the others. It’s leading the pack.

  Then it’s on me, tearing at the Halo with its metal pincers. I scream, but there’s no one to hear me. My arms feel heavy, overburdened, as though I’m swimming in molasses.

  The jaws close in.

  And I remember Phillips. I remember his eyes, bugging out as the mites closed on him. I remember the blood pouring from the stump of his leg, and those eyes rolling back in their sockets. Most of all, I remember the greedy crunching noises from the vile mouths of those mites.

  I wait.

  The pincers rip, tear at the Halo.

  I wait.

  The first mechanical mite breaks through. I hold my breath as the poisonous air comes flowing through, then kick as hard as I can at the mite. It’s just enough – the mite loses its footing, plummets down to the bottom of the stomach, is sucked out of sight.

  I climb. I leap through the hole in the Halo, grab the stomach lining, and climb toward what looks like a closed ring above me. I have to get out. I have to get the hell out now.

  It takes me a second to realize that the stomach acid is burning away layers of skin; I’d scream, but I need the air. Instead, I grit my teeth, breaking a molar, as my shoulder muscle is exposed. The mites are gaining. The liquid is gluing me to the walls, too, like a fly stuck in a web.

  Just above me is the ring of the esophagus.

  Hand over hand, I grab. My legs hang free; I’m upside down. A drop of stomach acid bathes my face, burning off the skin. But I’m almost there.

  I feel the jerk before I see it – a mechanical mite has my leg, claws at it frantically. I kick again, but my leg feels slow, unresponsive. Then I feel warm.

  When I look down, the mechanical mite is gone. So is my right leg, below the knee. The bone hangs out in shards. I bite right through my bottom lip.

  The adrenaline is coming, I know, to fight the pain, but I use it instead to pull myself up, push myself through the ring. It won’t give way; the mites are coming, dozens of them, hundreds of them. I pull, tug, yank. Finally, I pry the damn thing open, pull myself halfway through … and it closes around my waste. I’m trapped, the clicking sounds of the mites closer and closer.

  I’m dead, and I know it. I’m going to die down here, in the gut of The Whale. Amy will never know what happened to me. They’ll tell her some fiction about dying a hero against the mites, doing my job, the whole routine. My skeleton will be digested by The Whale. He’ll outlive me.

  In sheer despair, I slam my fist against the ring – and miraculously, it loosens for an instant. I pull myself up, and it snaps closed, locking out the mites. The adrenaline is wearing off now, and I can feel myself losing consciousness. I shove the stump of my lower leg onto the ring, let the remnants of stomach acid on the ring cauterize the wound. The blood turns black; the flesh burns. Then I slip into darkness.

  September 23: I’ve lost all sense of time. I can tell by my size – I’m now about three inches tall – that it’s been another 36 hours. The acceleration will be fast now. There’s no room to expand. I’m standing in The Whale’s esophagus, on my one good leg. There’s barely any air. I breathe slowly, laboriously, trying not to use up all the oxygen The Whale has swallowed. The Whale will realize I’m alive soon – I’m large enough that he should be able to feel me. It’s only a matter of time before they try something else.

  Which gives me just a little while to climb my way out.

  I’ve made up my mind – I’m going to go out the way I came in. The esophagus will lead up into the throat, and then I’ll force my way out.

  But before I can try it, the water comes pouring down.

  It comes down in great gushes, washing over me, refreshing me. But then the stream becomes too strong; the ring opens again, sucking the water into the stomach. I grab the wall of the esophagus and hold on for dear life. I’m not going back in there with those metal mites.

  The water stops, and The Whale takes a deep breath, swelling his belly out. Now that I’m in the esophagus, I can hear everything better. And now that I’m bigger, the voices don’t seem quite so distorted.

  Which means I can hear that the doctor is back.

  “Sir,” he’s saying, “I can’t imagine how he survived.”

  “And I can’t imagine how you botched it,” says The Whale. “But you’d better fix it. I feel the pressure in my chest. It’s him. I know it is. And it’s growing worse all the time.”

  I smile – at least I’m giving the bastard a little pain. Then I punch his esophagus from the inside. He flinches. “I feel it now,” he says.

  “We tried the mites,” says the doctor. “How about an emetic?”

  Smart. Very smart. The
y know I must be out of the Halo, one way or another. And they know that I haven’t been killed by the stomach acid. So if they can’t bring me to the acid, they’ll have to bring the acid to me. If he vomits, he’ll bring up everything, including the acid. I’ll be burned beyond recognition.

  “I can’t,” says The Whale. “My ulcer. It’ll start bleeding again.”

  So that’s what that red spot was in the stomach. Well, bless God for The Whale’s coffee and stress addiction.

  “No it won’t,” says the doctor. “That medicine you took earlier coated your stomach lining. The ulcer should be closed temporarily.”

  The Whale leans forward. I can feel him do it.

  “Yes,” he says. “I see your point.”

  I prepare myself to die. Amy, if only I could say goodbye.

  The doctor pads out of the room, or at least it sounds like it. A few minutes later, he’s back. “Swallow,” he orders.

  And here comes the shower again – not water and a pill, no, they’re too smart for that, they know I’d grab the pill, prevent it from hitting the stomach. No, this shower is of ipecac, slime all over me.

  The ring opens, sucking it in.

  Just a few seconds now before the geyser of acidic vomit comes up, finishing me. I rub my right leg – what’s left of it – and look down through the ring. The ipecac is washing through the stomach; the mechanical mites are swimming around in it. Soon they’ll be joining me, along with the acid.

  Unless I join them first.

  The ulcer.

  It’s the only chance.

  I can’t make it up the esophagus in time. Not with this time bomb below me. But I can make it down.

  I hold my breath and dive down through the ring. The fall seems endless; I feel like I’m skydiving through noxious air. I briefly wonder if I’ll survive the fall at all … but then I’m on the side of the stomach. I claw at the wall, grabbing a handhold, plastering myself, as the acid swirls below me. The mites haven’t noticed me yet, covered as I am in the sticky goo that coated the stomach.

  Just a few body lengths away is the ulcer. It’s covered in that same goo. But not for long, if I can keep holding my breath.

  I edge my way toward it. It’s raised and throbbing, but not obvious to the mites. I fall to my knees and begin scraping away the now-hardened black coating. Chunk by chunk, I rip it away.

  The mites turn and see me. But they see something else: the red, ugly flesh of the ulcer. Bleeding. Inviting them.

  They rush at it, pincers scraping together with twisted glee. The first mite virtually leaps over me in its eagerness to be at the flesh. It plunges deep into the ulcer, digging, blood oozing from the wound.

  The Whale screams, convulses.

  I grab another chunk, pull it off the ulcer, throw it away. Now the blood of the Whale is around my knees. And the mites are coming. Oh, they’re coming. By the tens, the dozens, the hundreds, drawn by the blood. And they follow the first mite, tearing into the open flesh.

  The Whale screams again.

  Then I’m horizontal, flat. The Whale has been pushed to the ground. The acid drips toward me slowly. I climb for higher ground. But something is going on above me, a scraping, a cutting.

  They’re cutting open The Whale. They’re gutting him.

  My breath is running out, but the sawing is growing nearer. Then I see it: a sliver of light. They’re almost at the stomach.

  Then they’re through. I see the point of the scalpel slice through the tissue. An enormous hand reaches down toward the ulcer, carrying an enormous piece of gauze.

  This is my chance, and I take it. I leap as far as I can, grasp the hand. I hear a gasp from above, and suddenly I’m flying through the air, clear of The Whale, in the bright artificial light of the office. I’m on the carpet, screaming, laughing all at once, covered in The Whale’s blood, covered in his filth, crying for air and crying for joy. I’m alive.

  Then I look up, into the eyes of The Whale. He sees me. His eyes widen.

  “Kill him,” he whispers.

  And the doctor turns.

  But he falls to his knees, bleeding. I look up, and there’s Jensen, giant in the light, sweating, holding a scissors. They’re dripping blood, too. The blood of the doctor. He slumps beside me, his dead eyes staring through me.

  “Jensen,” I squeak.

  “Kemp,” he says.

  The Whale’s eyes turn to Jensen. “You bastard. You betrayed me.”

  “No,” says Jensen. “You betrayed yourself.”

  Jensen sits down next to The Whale. And The Whale bleeds. He bleeds. Down by my feet, I can see the dust mites feeding on his blood.

  I laugh. I laugh for myself. I laugh for Phillips and I laugh for Amy. Mostly I laugh because I’m alive.

  Utopia

  “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.”

  He had seen those words somewhere before. They were hazy in his memory; they were a dream only partially remembered after waking up with bright morning light hitting his eyes. Each day he thought he came closer to remembering where he had seen them before. But then he would shake his head and keep moving with the teeming crowd. Past the enormous archway emblazoned with those words; past the Ministry of Education (he knew what education was, but had no idea what a ministry was); past the Ministry of Price Control (he had no idea what price control was); past the Ministry of the Chancellor (everyone knew who the chancellor was). Finally, he would shuffle to his workstation at the Ministry of Energy, where he would spend his day turning on and off a spigot.

  Every time the light turned green, he turned on the spigot.

  Every time it turned red, he turned it off.

  And with each turn, he was happier.

  He was an older member of the City. But he didn’t remember that. In fact, he had no idea how old he was. He just remembered coming in to his spigot station each day. Putting his ID card in the machine. Removing it. Going back to his living space, with its clean white walls and its fully stocked refrigeration system and its television reruns. Going to sleep. Waking up again, another day older. Each morning, he knew, the spigot would need to be turned on and off. It was comforting.

  He had no family. There was a woman who came to his living space once a week for sexual relations, on Tuesdays. She spent exactly one hour. She was not beautiful and she was not ugly. She wore the blue uniform of the Ministry of Personal Needs. He did not know her name. Today was Tuesday. And he was happy.

  He had no friends. He worked with others, and once every week, four new people would come to his living space, on Wednesdays. The five would play cards together. Then they would never see each other again. It was all in good fun, and it allowed him to always meet new people. Wednesdays were not as happy as Tuesdays. But they were happy.

  Tonight was a Thursday night. On Thursday nights, the members of the various Ministries would come together for a nighttime stargazing. It happened on the well-manicured lawn of the Ministry of Culture.

  When he got to the lawn, there were already thousands of people milling about. He did not look for anyone he knew; he knew nobody. Nobody knew anybody. There were no cliques. There were just thousands of people, happy to see one another.

  And he was happy, too. The night was not too cold, nor was it too warm. The climate control system made sure of that. The people all sat in ordered rows, with enough distance between them to ensure personal space. And the stars, too, were in their orbits, their distances the same as always.

  Except one star. It shot across the sky, a bright flare in the velvety purple-black darkness. And he felt a disquietude move through him. His stomach rumbled. His mind turned over. The star blasted through the calm of the evening, leaving sparks in its wake.

  And suddenly his hazy dream burst into consciousness.

  He found himself standing, tears rolling down his face, gazing up at the sky. A terrible longing filled him, a feeling of dread and of hope. A new feeling; an old feeling. The star tore the night apart, leaving day trailing behind it
.

  When he looked around him, he saw thousands of eyes in thousands of faces. Staring at him. Blankly.

  The star hit the horizon.

  He turned and ran.

  It wasn’t until he hit the third street that he heard the humming. The sound of the Ministry of Protection did not ululate or waver. It was a steady, loud buzz, growing in intensity as it grew closer, fading into white noise at a distance. Now the buzz grew more intense as he ran. He could hear them approaching from his right and from his left. He sprinted forward.

  The streets were not numbered or lettered; the people knew their living spaces by proximity from their work spaces, so there was no need for any distinguishing features. They all looked the same: even beige buildings covered over with evenly-trimmed ivy and evenly-spaced balconies. One per living space. No more, no less. The people who lived inside those living spaces were happy with their standard-issue artificial flowers, their standard-measured televisions, and their carefully stocked iceboxes.

  But now they were opening their regulation-compliant double-pane windows to watch him run. He could feel the cement pound beneath his rubber soles; his breath started to give out. He breathed in-and-out, trying to find a regularity – anything regular to hold on to -- trying not to panic.

  And the sirens hummed closer.

  Then he saw them in the reflection of the large mirrored glass panes of the Ministry of Food Provision. The cube-shaped Enforcement Pods were rolling down the street after him, gaining rapidly. In the lead Pod, he could see the slack-jawed face of a slightly bored Enforcer, who leaned forward and pushed a button. Suddenly the Pod jumped as though spurred with a cattle prod, bucked, and leapt toward him. The distance shrank. One block. His feet were giving way. Now half a block.

  The Pod loudspeaker opened up with that pulsating rhythm. He’d heard the rhythm once before; he’d only seen one Enforcement Action before. It had been a young girl, ready for recruitment to the Ministry of Personal Needs. She had run. Just in front of his living space, they had turned on the Pulse. She’d fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. By the time they loaded her into the Enforcement Pod, she was in full spasm. He never knew what happened to her. But he hadn’t thought of her again until now.