The n-Body Problem

  TONY BURGESS

  ChiZine Publications

  COPYRIGHT

  The n-Body Problem © 2013 by Tony Burgess

  Cover artwork © 2013 by Erik Mohr

  Interior design © 2013 by Samantha Beiko

  Interior illustrations © 2013 by Jason Brown

  All rights reserved.

  Published by ChiZine Publications

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  EPub Edition OCTOBER 2013 ISBN: 978-1-77148-164-9

  All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Toronto, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  info@chizinepub.com

  Edited and copyedited by Brett Savory

  Proofread by Kelsi Morris

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  EPIGRAPH

  A completed Craft Project Assignment for the Holiday Arts Mail Order School

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  EPIGRAPH

  1

  i am not my own food.

  prisoners of love.

  parts.

  banded.

  he has brought the house down.

  at the back, the front.

  blind.

  the news.

  dixon.

  bright spots.

  i am not hung before the sun.

  in the unlikely event that i am writing please read this.

  to learn what’s going on.

  the trees by the stream in the park behind the chocolate store.

  can a toaster cry?

  EDITOR’S NOTE:

  shirley.

  a weeks.

  rock.

  pewter lakes and a plane falls.

  2

  bumps in the road.

  underemployed.

  everyone i see is dead now.

  bounty.

  there is no upside.

  as you were.

  cicada.

  accidents are predatory.

  all good things.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  FROM CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  1

  i am not my own food.

  Insomnia, for instance, is a death sentence. Used to be the occasional genetic syndrome, Fatal Familial Insomnia, things like that. One in a million. Not now. Now you stop sleeping because you thought a bit too long. It frightened you. And you felt it, maybe while you were doing something else, you slipped . . . you thought about it . . . pictures on the wall . . . suspended with what? Hooks? Hangers? Staples? Nails? What? You push them into the wall with your own strength . . . like a pea into gravy. Swallow by the wall. A bird entered a cloud. And none of it. Not one stick of light or dark had a thing to do with sleep. That’s how you do it. You don’t change the picture. You destroy picturing.

  It is probably because of the sky that we now walk looking down. We focus our eyes on the hard imperfect dirt, the anamorphic islands in hardwood slats, the infant memory picked into marks on linoleum. In fact, so obsessed have we become in reading the flat earth that we now bump into each other more often, and we are warned about this danger, we are told to look up, not high not above us, but in front, so we can see obstacles, see the things we want, the place we are going; so we may read the world as nature had intended us to, as something before us. For many people the problem then becomes one of scale. The cracks become canyons, the piece of glass a crystal mountain. There is great wrong in this, and we know it—a grain of sand wasn’t given to us to carry on our backs like beasts, we were not put here to drag cherries by the stem. But now, it is the dream we dream. It is our wish to be as far away from the sky as possible, to soak our perspective in the fizz under rotting leaves. And so we stare downward as we walk, judging the things around us like bats do, and we fail, slapping into poles and posts and each other. It’s a price we grimly accept, to look upward as little as we can. To be concentrating on a place we are not, but could be, were we only so much smaller, so much farther from the sky.

  The sky is there, though, perhaps even more there than ever, since it is the pressure that has stuck our eyes with push pins into the lawn. The sky is the power over us, it is what makes us want to live so far away from what we are. People have stabbed themselves, forks in the eyes, skewers through the ears, some have shoved ropes down their throats and poured hot glue across their eyelids. I try to do my best, looking outward, I’m still approved for SSRIs and mild anti-psychotics, so I’m still finding solutions day to day, moment by moment. I’ve kept the docs in the dark about the serotonin syndrome I can feel growing. It’s another obsessive scale to avoid. Nerve endings, neurotransmitters deformed by clouds of serotonin. It’s hard to resist sometimes, being a fighter pilot on a synthetic molecule with shape dive-bombing receptors, living life like this, in a skyless, groundless wobble of shapes warring with each other, desperate to recognize a recess somewhere, anywhere that resembles my ship, so I can plug myself in once and for all and be made warm and light and essential.

  You can desire life here, imagine it. The challenges are great but you have leather boots on and a cap with swinging straps and you don’t need to know if the world thinks you’re a hero or not. You are. You are because you don’t care if you live or die. And that is better than walking down a street, clenching and unclenching your fists in the hope that you can bring wellness back into them. That is hopeless. If you feel cancer and childishness is where you are walking to, then all is lost. Nothing is possible. It is always and forever better to have never been born.

  prisoners of love.

  It’s been a year and a half since Orbit.

  On Wednesday next, the number will reach and pass one billion. Somewhere above us—you can find out where online—a cold graphite chamber pot the size of an aircraft carrier is turning on the soft directing puffs of tiny jets. Getting into position to release its cargo along a mathematically perfect slipstream. A hundred and twenty thousand or so bodies will drift out like soda from an airborne can and find themselves lying in a row beside others. Among them is the billionth. One billion bodies crisscrossing the stratosphere in a perfect careful lattice, its depth controlled, its rigid vectors held apart by mere feet. One billion is the big number.

  I set up this thing tonight, at the Jubilee Church. Father and son potluck. No ladies. Split the families up. For what? I don’t get it and I don’t care. I’ve seen religious types that are worse. Far worse. All I need now is a son.

  I found a bed and breakfast joint. Fancy frilly old house run by a couple real frail birds. Paula and Petra or something like that. One of them paints a lot of birds. There’s framed watercol
ours all over the house. Robins mostly. Stuff my son could do if I had one. I can hear the girls moving around in the kitchen. They’re quiet. Bird-like. Things are placed silently in drawers. Petra? Is that her name? The mirror in my room is the size of a wall. It’s got this wood frame and feet and it leans. I look derailed today. Hair all jackknifed up and a bright red pattern on my cheek. What is that? Rosacea, I’d say. As if that’s even something I’d worry about. No. I lean in. That’s the impression of a doily. I glance back at the fussy pillow sleeves. The light in this room is like horse piss. Everything is splashing up off the floor, down the walls. Lice on the pillows. No. SARS. Influenza. Maybe. Not today, but chances are at one time. I hate this light. Big enough to cast a buffalo shadow off a cluster fly. Not full spectrum of course, that sort of light is rare. This is stick-on light. Couple years back everything got a feel-better facelift. As if we could trap sunlight in cheerful plastics. Yellow everywhere. And commercials promising a “mood lift” like we could be driving around in Prozac cars. In fact, the colours have a pharmaceutical look, pale orange bars, powder blue bevels. Lots of cream with small red letters. I think the colours in this room predate that, though. This is old-folk cheer. It acts like happy is not going to fly out the window. But it did, didn’t it? Turns out happy was a thing just like everything else and it can leave an entire planet. Thinning and dispersing. All the earth happy, now just cold balls of paper caught in solar winds and comet tails.

  “Mr. Cauldwell?”

  That’s either Petra or Paula. Am I even remembering those names? I flip open the pill box. Takes me three mouthfuls to get all my meds down. I could tell you what they are, what they are for, but that could all change by later today. You have to keep mind/body/pharma pretty dynamic these days. I can hear the girls’ voices. Little bird noises. This flophouse is a damn birdhouse.

  “I’ll be down in sec.”

  My belt is twisted at my back. I’m too lazy to fix it. It will pinch the skin all day. I’ve gained some weight. That’s fine. Needing to lose weight is far better than needing to find it again. I’m bigger than the disease. At least for today.

  I can smell toast. Going downstairs I straighten a pencil sketch of a hummingbird. The blurry wings are a cheap effect done with an eraser. Looks stupid. At the bottom of the stairs I get a shock. Paula and Petra are Asian. I had to have known that. My chest starts to tighten. It is dangerous to go off-road right this second. It’s a lapse. Just thinking it was one thing and it turns out to be another. I push my back muscles into the leather kink there. I am larger than memory problems. Liver disease can do this. Infections. Autoimmune flare ups. Spinal compression. Are their names even Petra and Paula? I can’t give a fuck.

  The ladies step back from me and pause. I sit observed. Toast, no butter, and hardboiled eggs.

  “Are you working here today or out?”

  It’s a nervy question and I don’t think I’ll say. The other Paula and Petra steps forward to correct.

  “We are going out today, so if you need lunch we’ll put it in the fridge.”

  There’s a piece of eggshell stabbing below my gum line. Shell and tooth. There are infections of the gums that are fatal. The shell of a bird’s egg is separating the gum from tooth. I smell copper. There’s enough blood in my mouth that I can smell it. I have to excuse myself. I have to find a boy to be my son tonight.

  parts.

  I cut through some backyards. Not many sidewalks in these small towns. Birdhouses for people line the streets. White doilies and an orange film on windows from days when poison was legal.

  The fountain’s dry. I do that. I look for neglected things. Not uncommon to see a flat tire on a new car. And the car just sits there. Dipped like a bad smile. I don’t give a shit about it. The ground is rising and the sky is falling. It’s okay to leave a few things lying around.

  The grass is brown. I step onto the main street. Ontario towns look like a plate Lillian Gish keeps on the shelf. When the sun cuts through the drapes, it’s the drapes that light us. She’s probably watching right now. The boy I need to find. The son I should have. I have to borrow a child from the real world tonight. I’ll put him back. Don’t worry.

  A young woman passes me. I cover my mouth instead of smile. She can’t tell I didn’t. There’s tall buckets of pine ends. Carpenter. I stop to see. There’s a lot of small cupboards. Unstained. More Gish. A metal fisherman with pinched seams. The cotton line to a silver trout. I do like looking. It keeps picturing at bay. The light must be constantly moving on this little guy. It is all suddenly happening in ways it can’t happen. I turn to the barrel of pine ends. The smell cauterizes. No memory. No taste. No life. Just perfect tan caps on all the punched-out receptors. It’s heaven to inhale this. Pine is clean. Pine is made of clean.

  I don’t know if that’s anything. It’s just a theory I have. Your brain can’t be making shit up if you’re carefully observing the things around you. This is a very aggressive hypochondria. Nobody escapes it in the end. You picture a tumour pressing up in your chest wall and soon, hours sometimes, your shoulder starts to prickle . . . the ulnar nerve lights up all the way down and spatulates your fingers. Then pica spots show up in the apex of a lung. Then you cough blood. Can’t see a doctor. Doctor knocks symptoms off you like a dog shaking off wet.

  Anyhow, trick is, I need a boy. Not hard to do, really. You just gotta have the nerve. And find the right mom.

  I move across the street. Light mist in the air. Spring shower. I don’t look up. More of these losers window shopping. Antique stores. Pet store. Pizza. These are peep shows for the dead. Take a look, folks. We used to have dazzling teeth. I always check the parked cars. Moms and boys sitting in cars. There. Bet they’ve been sitting there for days. I tap the window. The boy looks up. The mom just stares ahead. Perfect. I tap again and the window comes down. The smell of shit. That’s common. Some folks, late in the game, start shitting themselves for protection. Doesn’t make any sense to us, of course. She doesn’t need a son. She needs a cocoon of feces.

  Turns out I don’t even have to ask. The kid jumps out of the car and his mother doesn’t. That’s the best way. I step back and walk down an alley. The kid follows. He’s twelve or so. Means he can manoeuvre out of a jam but still can’t overpower me. He smells like his mom, but I think he’s generally clean. I turn a corner to the back of the pizza joint. There’s a hose.

  “Strip.”

  I unravel the first couple metres of hose. The boy’s face is dull. He removes his shirt. This is gonna be a bit wild at first. I twist the handle. He stands straight and naked. I move him over to a grate and hit him with the water, making sure I got a firm hand on his wrist. He pops pretty good, like a hare. He lets out a screech so I hold the cold water on his face. He goes still. Bring the hose across the front of him, dislodging grey and black mould. Quick spin and rout his backside. Good enough. I squeeze the hose off. He’s awake now. I cuff him to a bike rack.

  “Don’t make any noise.”

  Kid’s perfect. No stupidity. I march up the alley. Need a second-hand clothes store. Stedmans. Something. Maybe get another kid just for his clothes. Jesus, the things you can manage to do if you want to. I glance over at the mom sitting in the car. That’s ridiculous. Turn into a toy store. Maybe they got swim trunks. Towel. Boy scout uniform.

  “G’day!”

  Cheerful old bugger. Big thick glasses. Could be a mole. Hanging in there pretty fair though, I’d say.

  “You got any kids clothes?”

  I hear a little sigh. That’s all. That’s his disapproval.

  banded.

  Promise Keepers. They’re every-where. Iron Men Male power. Better than the rapists, anyway. That was a dark couple of months. Everyone was a rapist. Just exploded. Not sure why. But it ended. I guess if you can picture what you want then eventually you’ll picture what you don’t want. Not only is rape off the menu, so is sex. All sex. Not one person has sex on the entire planet for about a full year. That’s my take on it an
yway. Sure there’s probably a village somewhere in a valley where they fuck all day, but the species is terminal. Viagra has a cascading effect on symptoms, usually, skin cancers or inner ear things—Raynaud’s. Sit there waiting for your dick to rise and watch the lesions split open on your thighs. Oh, yes. We are terminal. That’s what happens when you fuck with light.

  Men-only dinner at the Evangelical Hall. You need a son to get in. And a meatloaf. I picked that up at a Dairy Queen. Technically it’s burger meat pounded into a pan. Same as meat loaf. The boy seems content enough to walk with me. Crisp little boy scout uniform on him. Clean body. Not a bad day for a child. We congregate in the basement. More of a gym. This is where I’m looking for my guy. A rare person he is. He steals. He kills. Not many of them left. He organizes suicide cults. For some reason fathers and sons are easy marks. Teenagers a close second. Who knows why we’re like this now? The studies aren’t getting done any more. Nobody knows me here, but really they all do.

  I slide my pan onto a counter with the other pans.

  There are three long tables set up. Forks, spoons, knives. Ketchup. Men sitting, looking alive for the most part. You can see some infections. Bad ones. Ears running. There’s one guy being led to the table by a boy. Eyes are fog-white. Glaucoma maybe. Bet he didn’t have that when he woke up this morning. No cancer anyway. You can smell that shit. Kills within hours.