The n-Body Problem Read online

  Then the light changed.

  blind.

  I walk with the boy around the block a couple times. We were present when Chris started atomizing. If he made a virus, if that’s even possible, then there’s no telling what it can do when it’s out on its own. Probably nothing. But I just had a stroke so not gonna take any chances.

  The rain is lighter today. Some fog. Air feels cool on the skin. This makes the kid and I feel pretty good walking the sidewalks. He doesn’t know why we’re doing this. He just wants this to not ever stop. I look to my side. Light blond hair. Still clean from the hose. I find myself thinking he must be a pretty good kid, but really, I have no way of knowing. So far, he’s just other. We round the block for the fifth time and no symptoms. I touch his forehead. Cool. No cough. No seeping blood.

  There’s a car in Paula and Petra’s driveway. The boy and I peer in as we pass. The front door crashes open. Two teenage boys leap from the porch. We startle them and they fall onto the lawn laughing and rolling. My hand goes over the boy’s face. We don’t move until the teens pick themselves up. One punches the other in the nuts, sending him back down.

  The kid and I advance to the steps. Trick or treat.

  The teenagers have killed Paula and Petra. I find Paula in the bathtub, underwater. They probably stood on her. A scum of body fluids ring the tub. An eyeball bobs in the rusty water. They used her as a trampoline for a good long while. Can’t find Petra at first. The kid follows me from room to room. No emotion or sounds from him. Petra has been hanged. A rope tied to the rail on the landing leads to her. They tied her then tossed her over. No big signs of struggle. They appear to have not fought too hard against these events. Petra has started to move. I’ll leave her there for now. Once on the ground they start travelling. Their skin pulling them towards walls and doors and stairs. Paula’s gonna start soon. I just shut the bathroom door. See what happens. The boy sits at the kitchen table. He’s right. This is all ours now. Food.

  There’s apples and tomato juice in the fridge. Some roots. Ginger? I snap off some celery and pour the juice. We crunch it in silence. Salt and pepper. The sides of my tongue reach over and touch each other. My lips warm. Anorexia my ass. The kid eats, too.

  I’m trying to figure it. They could have killed the ladies for no reason. It isn’t shocking. It’s something that happens all the time. Could be a race thing, too. That definitely happens all the time. Or—and this is a possibility that’s been buzzing like a wasp since we entered the house—this was a message. For me. He knows I’m in town. And he knows where in town.

  Dixon and I came up through Garrison Securities together. We supplied security for covert mining operations in countries at war. Sometimes the mining companies would start the wars, carefully creating no-go zones, then mining them. And we provided safety for them in the most brutal terms. And this was before the dead got in the way. We had some horrible times, me and Dixon. We were the worst you could ever know. When it was over, we headed home and looked for work. I got into this, what I do now. Bounty hunting, really. Kill one guy to save a lot of people. Move on. I have killed forty-two Sellers. Never capture.

  Dixon’s a Seller. And a sadist. I’ve come into the towns he’s done. Seen things I’ll never shake. His preferred method is to collect everyone in some central part of town, then have them all hold stripped cable. Like blind people on a field trip. Then he declares to God the rightness and glory of it all and he throws the switch. It takes a while to fully kill everyone, but Dixon’s smart, he doesn’t use an alternating current. No one who’s latched on can let go.

  Then he starts to play. He drags bodies around the town, posing them, living with them for a week or two. Even fucking some of them. He deliberately works with words like obscenity and abomination in mind. That’s the fate of this town. I can feel it. That’s what she meant when she said she’d never find Chris if he died. If they died too far apart, they’d get hung out there in different neighbourhoods. This town is preparing to go as one.

  X and I sit on the couch with a fresh plate of celery and a jug of ice water. Celery’s good for blood pressure, but really not that safe to affirm old body facts. I have a lump inside my mouth below the bottom lip. It’s a hard one. Fast-growing. Doesn’t taste like cancer. I’m sure there’s scissors in the house just in case. We can hear a continuous cricket of squeaks from the bathtub upstairs. Petra. Paula dances on the rope silently. I should check what the pick-up protocols are in this town. X and I are gonna watch some news. Haven’t done that in a very long time.

  the news.

  The news is a long list of services available in Toronto. Food Banks. Shelters. Some work available. Not much. Daycare places. Places to take babies. Leave babies. The wave of rape that ended a year ago has yielded a baby boom. Generation Rape. The last, probably. The babies are either abandoned or fought over. Some folks love the rape babies and some hate them. Pediatrics is the only branch of medicine, the only hospital department, that still deals in old body. A few months back a visible part of the female population was pregnant. I think that, as much as anything, sank us. We became horrible to each other. The species is dying of shame.

  A commercial comes on for WasteCorp. Lot of sunshine in these ads. Time lapse photography of yellow tulips becoming vertical in yellow light. Robins hooping straw on a backyard tool shelf. It’s easy to hate these commercials and reasonable to do so, but there’s no mistaking the way they make you feel. The TV becomes a full-spectrum light box for thirty seconds and people crane in, like basking dandelions. The lump in my mouth has changed a bit. It’s a fat disc now. I picture myself turning scissors this way and that trying to feel my way to the first snips. Or do I carve an X in the chin and draw the thing out with pliers? Not worth thinking about. I’ll know what to do when I do it.

  News story about the thickening lattice. It’s an interesting feature of orbit. Was a selling point for a while. The bodies orbit in layers, or skins as they’re called, and when the skins get too deep, I think the number was 30,000 or so, then the innermost skin starts to breakdown. This was supposed to insure that the structure wouldn’t become too dense or too thick. Never really worked. Whatever architecture’s going on up there is evolving on its own. The other feature of the peel was that bodies would re-enter the atmosphere in a controlled way. They would burn in the sky and enter the thin stratosphere as ash. We would be able to see this at sunset. It would be natural. It would be poetry. Except it doesn’t always happen like that. Some years there’s no peel at all. The lattice becomes tighter. The light more fragile. Life on earth, with no outward sign of apocalypse, is suspended by despair.

  There’s a story on the news about a major event over India. It’s the kind of peel we see more these days. Millions of bodies at once. A massive inverted volcano in the sky over Mumbai. A funnel of hot ash and charnel debris hits the city and chokes it out. Thousands can die in these events. Their lungs fill with blood and their skin burns under accumulating death paste. WasteCorp moves in quick. The dead are conveyed. Everything starts again. It is unusual to see this actually on the news. Usually they show the inverted cone and the fierce pyroclastic ring and it’s sold as a wonder, as a stunning phenomena. A murmuration of the dead. The images they’re showing now, of people lying down in the streets, is rare to see. Reminds me of the term “first responders.” Not many of those around anymore.

  The news ends and I notice X hasn’t eaten anything. It occurs to me that he isn’t all that different than the dead. His movements are a little more purposeful, sure, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t act on his own. I wonder what’s in this kid. Honestly, he could be extremely minimal. An imitation of the new dead. I wonder if that’s not a pretty good survival strategy. No thought, no danger. A reboot of Barnaby Jones on the TV. Columbian. Starring Jose Marins.

  “What’s this shit?”

  I’m trying to see if X is there or not. He just stares.

  “There’s a guy after us. Old friend. He’s gonna want to kill
us.”

  Nothing.

  “We’re gonna have to sleep on the roof. Safest place.”

  X reaches over and grabs a stick of celery. He returns the hand to his lap. No eating. He’s telling me not to talk to him.

  I’ve been alone for my whole life, but this is a bit much.

  dixon.

  My mind has wandered. I have come to believe that I have Barrett’s Syndrome or possibly esophageal cancer. When I swallow it’s like my throat is too dry to complete the task. There’s a constriction at the base. A burr beneath my collar bone. A bleeding white cluster of throat tubers. Voles scuttling through thin tunnels. Honeycomb tongue. It’s probably because I spoke for the first time in a while. It felt unnatural. It triggered the picture. My serotonin syndrome has advanced alarmingly. I definitely have colonized stem cells. Neurotransmitter flower boxes. I need to inventory. I need to find items I can organize. I turn the TV off. It may well be giving me advanced throat cancer. I need a good honest list.

  It’s not enough to do things. Doing things makes thought slide, gives way to automatic images, unbidden connection. The only way to reset is deliberate lists. Mental lists. X has kicked his shoes off. There are no sores or scars or marks on his feet. A little surprising. The inflated tissue at the base of my throat makes me think of those hemorrhoid rings you sit on. There are no lists. I can’t just make a list of everything. You can’t just count. You can’t just point. Lists stop linear chains and prevent atomization. No dictionarying. Lists take the outside and stack it inside. Lists are like chemotherapy. Chop the fear from the image. Shrink the new body. Cease evolution. I need a list that can’t be ignored. That isn’t inconsequential. I need a list with its own gravitational field.

  Dixon.

  Here is a list of the things he is known to have done with the bodies in the towns. Dixon sewed seventy-nine people together in a fountain: testicles to vaginas, testicles to tongues, testicles to eyes, testicles to anus, testicles to testicles, testicles to penis, testicles to breast, testicles to removed liver, testicle to small intestine, testicle to exposed brain, testicle to open throat, testicle to stomach lining, testicle to bone fragments, testicle to cheek, testicle to fontanel, testicle to arch, testicle to navel, testicle to bladder, testicle to eyelid, testicle to lung cancer, testicle to parotid gland, testicle to frog, testicle to windpipe.

  Also involving the same seventy-nine people: vaginas to vaginas, vaginas to tongues, vaginas to eyes, vaginas to anus, vaginas to penis, vaginas to breast, vaginas to removed liver, vagina to small intestine, vagina to exposed brain, vagina to open throat, vagina to stomach lining, vagina to bone fragments, vagina to cheek, vagina to fontenal, vagina to arch, vagina to navel, vagina to bladder, vagina to eyelid, vagina to lung cancer, vagina to parotid gland, vagina to frog, vagina to windpipe.

  Dixon removed his shoes and jumped across the tense, agitated surface like a kid in a bouncy castle.

  Dixon tied several hundred people to a fence along the highway then drove at speed beside them with a bat held tight in the window. Dixon managed to hit most of the heads, launching bone and brains into the cows.

  Dixon made a hood from the eviscerated body of an eight-month-old baby. The hood moves magically. Fingers tickling his temples. Small feet clenching on his shoulders.

  Dixon made sunglasses out of the sphincters of twins. The tiny apertures working like slits to reduce brightness. Unnecessary since we have been able to stare directly into the sun for over eight years now.

  Dixon has made a practise of necrophilia and his list of partners numbers in the thousands. Dixon has sex with several on a typical day.

  Dixon has ejaculated into vaginas. Into anuses. Into mouths. Into eyes. Into cuts opened on every imaginable part of the body—throats, ribs, bellies, etc. Dixon has also ejaculated into brains, testicles, spines. Dixon has ejaculated inside the oldest and the youngest females. The oldest and the youngest males. Dixon has attempted to ejaculate on those merely stunned by electrocution and has had to kill the person manually in order to ejaculate. Dixon has ejaculated wearing a cored penis on his own penis. Noting the cored penis moves on its own like a worm shroud. Dixon has ejaculated in the hole left by a severed penis. It is impossible to finish this list as it is always longer than one imagines. Ejaculations involved penetration where practical.

  Dixon drained the blood from fifty-four people into a dry swimming pool. Dixon studied the eddies and currents as they changed over days. Eventually, Dixon bathed in it and marvelled at the live blood and how its caresses varied endlessly.

  Dixon has boiled an older woman’s head and removed, cubed, and eaten the brain.

  Dixon, on a particularly random moonlit night, ran down the line taking single bites from faces. He then joined the corpses by hooking fingers into the holes.

  Dixon has dropped people from the tops of bridges, tall buildings, hydro towers, waterfalls, churches, trees, and grain silos.

  Dixon has lined up hundreds of naked people in chairs on a road then driven a pick-up into them at 160 km/h. He has done this numerous times. His record is seventy-eight people—that’s how many bodies it took to stop the vehicle.

  Dixon has slept on a woman whom he thought he knew.

  Dixon has skinned many dozens and taken pictures.

  Dixon removed the testicles from eleven scrotums and inserted them through deep slits into the body of a heavy man, like cloves of garlic in a turning pig carcass. Dixon cooked him, but only ate the testicles, which he tore out with a rake. Dixon noted that cooking someone only slows movement and that when it cools the skin hardens like a carapace and only the fatty tissue beneath can move.

  Dixon has put an unborn into a newborn into a toddler into a child into a teenager into a medium-sized woman into a medium-sized man into a large woman into a large man into an obese woman into an obese man and bound the latter in bailer twine. He noted the movement inside was almost undetectable but the sounds coming from the layers were complex and loud.

  This is a partial list. I hate everything he has done since becoming a Seller.

  bright spots.

  I find about twelve cedar planks in the garage. Sit and lift them to my nose one at a time, inhaling hungrily. These are old cedar, maybe even predating the orbit. Real sunlight made them. The effect is gorgeous. I am lifted into memories I’ve never had. Runnning down a dock and leaping into cold water. On a high ladder hanging a birdhouse. Lying in the bottom of a boat.

  X interrupts.

  “What’s up?”

  X stands. I bet he can’t be alone.

  “Check out this wood. Want to build something?”

  X hops down the step into the garage. I nod. He has just distinguished himself from the dead. The dead don’t hop. I give him the upturned bucket I’m sitting on and look at the narrow worktable. The smell of spruce. Faint though.

  “Let’s build something, man.”

  I turn to X sitting on the bucket. He is sniffing the cedar. His eyes are closed. It’s an instinctive thing to do, I guess. A natural hunger.

  “Ok. That’s fine with me.”

  I sit on the floor beside him and lift a plank to my nose.

  X opens his eyes and sees me pushing my face into the wood. X laughs.

  This makes my stomach roll over. It’s like an overly rich meal. I try to keep from throwing up. This is too good to lose.

  It isn’t easy getting out on the roof, let alone dragging what we need up there. I find a rope ladder in an upstairs closet. It’s part of a emergency fire escape kit. Flashlight and water and a blanket. I lean out a top floor window and hammer the ladder to the facia board. A bit startled to see a school bus stop at a house near the corner. A child leaves his mother at the end of the driveway and boards the bus. It’s easy to forget that everyone’s situation is different. Who knows what goes on in that house. On that bus. Or the school. I peer back through the window. X hasn’t seen it.

  We hand-ferry two sleeping bags and pillows up to the roof. And some she
ets to hold us in. We’ll do this at the back of the roof so we can’t be seen. It’s a pretty simple, crude rig, the only drawback being the last time I did this was with Dixon in Daychopan about twenty-one years ago. Dix won’t think of it. We lay the bags and pillows out, then the sheets across. We nail the edges like a canvas stretched in a frame. X has had noticeably more life since the cedar and that’s good. I need the hands. Thought I might.

  We slip down into the bags and test the strength. It’s a steep roof so my body pulls pretty good, but I put the roofing nails in a tight stitch patter. Should hold. It’s not raining, which is rare and lucky, but that could change. We’ll be sleeping in rainwater barrels if it does. X is swallowed by his rig. I have to help him up. I show him how to keep his arms over and the bag from under his armpits to clip himself in. He follows instruction well. Damn cedar is helping us both, I think. The sun will go down soon. We lie still and look up at the sky.

  The sky.

  I stare into the sun sitting low. You can’t see them. One billion obstructions moving invisibly across the setting sun.There is usually cloud cover, but not tonight. The sky is wide and clear. I study it, as everybody does, for its difference. There is a black sparkle in the sun’s corona. That’s been there for a few years. The blue turns green around the horizon. And there’s a pink flicker midway up. Fancy cocktail colours. Strawberry, lime, apple, blue Curaçao. Solid syrupy light. You feel that it must be sticky to touch. The thin clouds stuck like cotton candy to a wall. That might be why it’s overcast so often. The cloud canopy gets snagged to the tacky sky above. There is my stroke egg, like a too-close planet. Looks like it belongs up there. These colours appear at sunset. During the day the blue is different only because you imagine it must be.