Ambrosia

by J. Loseth | Sep 20, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“Oh my God. Peter, you didn’t.”

Peter smirked at his wife’s gaping stare. “You bet I did,” he told her smugly. “Nothing’s too good for our anniversary.”

“It looks fabulous.” Beatrice’s eyes shone as she ran a finger over the plastic wrap, feeling the smooth depression her movement caused. She giggled a little. “But I don’t even know how to cook synmeat. What are we going to do with it? Look at it?”

“Don’t worry,” Peter reassured her. “The guy who sold it to me told me how to do it.” His smile increased its girth; he couldn’t hide the secret any longer. “And it’s not synmeat.”

Beatrice looked at him oddly. “Then what is it?”

“It’s real.”

Beatrice gasped, eyes wide now with horror. “Peter… you could get arrested for that!” she hissed, grabbing the mushy package from him and glancing wildly around the room as if PETA enforcers were going to burst through the walls at any moment. “I didn’t even know you could get real meat anymore!”

“Honey, calm down.” Peter frowned. He’d expected his wife to be pleased. “A guy at the office tipped me off. I swear it’s untraceable. Just look at it! Real beef! This might be the only chance we have in our lives to get some.”

Beatrice seemed unconvinced. “I don’t know… isn’t it sort of… barbaric?”

“Darling. Stop believing all the crap the government tells us. People were meant to eat real meat. It’s the way we were made. If we ate like this every day, we wouldn’t have to get protein injections anymore, that’s for sure!” Peter was getting more upset. “Come on, I went through a lot to get this, okay? It’s our anniversary, and the thing is already dead. We might as well make the most of it.”

Beatrice agreed in the interest of matrimonial bliss. She watched nervously as Peter cooked the beef, searing it as he’d been instructed, and worried about whether their neighbors would pick up on the smell. Peter eventually made her set the table to keep her from getting in the way.

At last the meal was served, and Peter bit into it with gusto. Beatrice followed suit more hesitantly and both chewed for a few moments in silence.

“It’s sort of… stringy,” Peter said at last, swallowing a bite with some difficulty. His expression of joy had faded into an uncomfortable frown. “You can really tell it’s, ah, real.”

“Mmm… yes, you can.” Beatrice swallowed her own forkful with an expression of bliss. She opened her eyes as the rich taste settled into her senses and looked at her husband with an expression of true love and devotion. “This is the best present you’ve ever given me.”

The Vanishing

by J. Loseth | Sep 8, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

The nurse held Jeremy’s left arm with a practiced gentility that would have been motherly if it wasn’t so detached. His real mother was in the waiting room, wearing the kind of plastic smile that adults paste on when they’re the most upset. Jeremy was used to that smile. People did it a lot around him, especially his mother. He was getting really sick of it.

The nurse’s smile wasn’t like his mother’s. She wasn’t upset on the inside; she just didn’t care, which Jeremy figured was part of the job. Doctors and nurses couldn’t go around caring about their patients or they wouldn’t be able to do their work. He watched her gloved hands carefully lower his arm into the vat of softening solution. As usual, it tingled, and he winced.

“I know this hurts,” the nurse cooed, “but if you just tough it out we’re going to get you all fixed up, okay?”

“It hurt more when I made them,” Jeremy muttered, but he didn’t take his eyes off of the scars on his arm. The marks were still pink around the edges, new and raw, but they were already softening. In ten minutes they’d all be gone again, washed away with the rest of his failed attempts to make his mark in life.

“All right, you can take that arm out now.” The nurse turned aside to pick up the smoother, checking its power before turning back to Jeremy. Her eyes were on the clipboard in her off hand. “It says here you’ve had this procedure… seven times before? So this must be old hat to you, huh?” She smiled at Jeremy, who stared back at her sullenly. “I guess you don’t need the restraints, then.”

She pushed aside the soft straps that were used to hold patients’ limbs in place for their first or second scar removal and put the clipboard down, taking Jeremy’s wrist in her hand. The other hand brought the smoother down and turned on the power. A low hum was all that came from the device, but as she pressed it down and ran it slowly across the marred skin, all of the imperfections smoothed beneath its tip. Jeremy could feel the scar tissue breaking down. The sensation was distinctly different from making the cuts; while that was a sharp pain, bright and alive, this was the dull sting of conformity.

“Seven times, huh? So this is number eight?” She was smiling again, trying to make pleasant conversation. “You must get hurt a lot, huh?”

Jeremy’s eyes never left the slowly diminishing scars. “Yeah. I do.”

The Gun Show

by J. Loseth | Sep 3, 2005 | Story | 0 comments

“Mom! Mom, I wanna look at this one!”

Stephen was pulling on his mother’s arm, straining against it with that eight-year-old lean that kept him just within the bounds of parental supervision, since he wasn’t allowed to let go of his mother’s hand, but created the same effect as the puppy-dog eyes he was giving her now. “All right,” Marie laughed, letting him half-pull, half-drag her over to the booth. “Go ahead and look, Stevie, but don’t touch anything.”

“Hello there, ma’am,” said the booth owner, a grizzled, baseball-capped lug of a man. He smiled at Marie and then chuckled at Stephen, whose eyes were practically sparkling at the sight of his wares. The vendor wiped his greasy hands on a cloth. “Looking for a new piece for your son?”

“Maybe,” Marie said, letting her eyes wander over the rows of gleaming black metal.

“Mom! Look at this one!” Stephen was on his tiptoes, eyes alight and mouth open in a huge grin.

“That’s a semi-automatic flux rotating laser pistol,” the man informed them. “Special anti-shielding matrix that also works against adaptables. Changes frequency so fast they won’t even get a chance to shift.” He chuckled. “It’ll take out a raid party of two at a thousand yards with auto-target turned on. Your son’s got a good eye.” He grinned at Stephen.

“I don’t know…” Marie was frowning. “Isn’t he a little young for an automatic?”

“Mom!” Stephen protested, looking like he was going to throw a tantrum. “He said semi-automatic! All my friends have them!”

“Stephen, shush,” Marie cautioned him, then looked up at the shopkeeper, an embarrassed flush on her face. “He’s eight,” she explained. “He still thinks guns are just big toys.”

“All the more reason for him to learn early,” the man told her soberly. Marie looked shocked at this change of demeanor, but he continued before she could protest. “Did you know that eight is the minimum age for the mines?” Marie’s mouth dropped open in a soft “o.” Stephen had already moved on to another gun model. “If a raiding party gets him, they’ll ship him underground right away. Unless you live in a military base, it’s best to get the boy a man’s weapon. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if he’s captured by those monsters.”

Marie shook her head, eyes lowering. “His father was taken from us in one of the first battles, right when the war started,” she said softly.

“All the more reason for his son to learn to fight, and learn early. If it was men we were dealing with, I’d say to let the kid live a little…” The man shook his head. “But these creatures aren’t even human.”

Marie was quiet, head still down, until Stephen interrupted with another excited burst. “Mom! Mom, look at this one! Can we get this one mom? Please?” Marie looked from her bright-eyed son to the sober face of the merchant.

“Let’s try it out first, honey. You want to make sure it’s light enough for you to shoot.”