Part VII: Time Warp 2000’s – Cut! #4 (Chapter 106)
Dear George,
George?
Are
you serious? Don’t you get teased a lot? Is it your real name?
I didn’t mean to rub you the wrong way.
I was just basing my assumptions on what I saw on television.
I should have known better.
Still, we should be able to speak freely to each other.
Perhaps we can teach each other.
One thing though: you ask too many personal questions.
I don’t have an unfair advantage over you just because I know
more mundane details about you. After all, you chose to tell me about your
personal life. I asked only for some basic information regarding your
incarceration ‒ and that was for my own protection.
Therefore, you will continue to write to the P.O. box.
I’m glad you liked the chocolates; I can send more, if you
like.
When did you decide to enroll in the philosophy course? I’m
excited for you. Maybe you will get a college degree someday? In any case, you
really seemed fired up about the whole deal, and that alone is enough.
Speaking of fire, my baby sister’s house burned down on New
Year’s Eve. Well, it happened the Sunday before New Year’s, but I didn’t find
out about it until New Year’s Day.
I’ll always remember it as being superimposed on a drunken
rendition of “Auld Lange Syne.”
I haven’t seen the ruins; she lives in Timber City, Arkansas,
and I live too far away. I can’t imagine what her place must look like now.
Too bad about the house because I was thinking seriously of
visiting her, if only I could have escaped from this place.
But now, even if I could escape, there would be no place to
run.
Maybe it’s a good thing I put off my visit.
I probably would have burned up because the fire started in
the guest room. They say it was electrical, but I wonder. I think he and his brothers must have set it, just as a way to collect the
insurance and keep me from coming out. He
hates our family and lets us know about it. In any case, the house was no big
loss, worth $25,000 at most, but insured for $100,000.
Perhaps I’d consider torching the thing, too.
Still, damn him and his crazy relatives.
Why can’t they cut my sister a break?
Ruby tried describing the remains to me ‒ something
about cinders and blackened cubes that used to be appliances. Melted blobs of
plastic from God-knows-what. Aluminum walls collapsed outward. She says that
the soot seems etched in their skin and falling out of their hair. Somehow, I
just can’t make myself imagine what my sister must be going through right now:
to lose everything just because HE couldn’t wait to get his hands on that
money. But knowing him, I doubt if
they will ever get him on anything.
At least she and the kids are okay. Luckily, Ruby couldn’t
sleep that night.
She was up, reading a trashy novel.
Kept smelling something like burning coal. A nasty acrid
smell. By the time she checked the guest room, the closet was spitting out
flames, and she barely had time to round him up, the kids, and the
animals. You see, that’s how he and his family works. They pick your weakest
spot and zero in on that.
My husband (Yes, I’m married) acts like he’s sympathetic, but
I know better because whenever I suggest sending her some money to tide her
over, he balks.
He says, “They’ve got insurance. If they want anything, she’ll
ask.”
He knows better than that. My sister is proud and would die
before asking for what she would view as a handout.
Oh, maybe Sheldon is right: he would just spend the money on booze and fast cars.
As ever,
Samantha
*
Eyes shut.
A
dispassionate observer travels back to February 1950 and into Rosalyn’s uterus.
A
fertilized egg explodes from her ovary and slowly journeys through the
fallopian tube and into her womb.
As
if on fire, the expanding zygote moves forward, cells doubling with each
division: two, four, eight, 16, 64, 4096, 16,777,216...
Buried
deep within its myriad cells, one of the DNA codes rings a micro-alarm – something
has gone wrong, terribly wrong.
A
mutation developing within the infinitesimal mass of cells.
The
zygote struggles with a dilemma: by day four, its genetic code urges it to
become two. “We want us to survive, and we can’t as one,” it says. “Please
hurry.”
The
zygote says, “I must consider my options. I do not want to be wrenched away
from my other, not yet.”
It
struggles against the natural order of things. The DNA warns that it will be
expelled if it doesn’t soon obey.
By
day six, it has yet to be expelled.
It
decides to wait a little longer.
Even
though it and its future other would be fed by a single placenta and reside
within the same chorion, it has no wish to grow in separate amniotic sacs.
By
day eight, it still struggles against the inevitable split.
“You
have what you want,” DNA says. “You will reside together in utero in all ways,
what more do you want?”
The
zygote has a secret wish, continuing its resistance against the split, but it
becomes more difficult with the passing of time.
It
is locked in a war against forces not in its control.
“I
must wait,” it says, hanging onto its
oneness, its clump of cells pulsating with too much frenetic energy.
On
day 11, it whispers, “If I hang on long enough, then...”
Opposing
forces tug at its two halves, pulling, pulling, pulling...stretching taut like
elastic bands.
“Oh,
the agony...”
The
zygote snaps apart; where there was once great pain, there is now calm – an other.
The
other, now an entity of its own, has taken something dark and diseased from it,
but, still, it mourns, for it has also taken something vital, essential.
Never
to be linked together.
“We have been unjoined,” it tells the other –
Just becoming aware.