Tony Burgess - The n-Body Problem

“Okay, we run in now. You take her out and I’ll get the Seller. It’s dark enough that we should get pretty close before they see us. Fire when I say.”

I’m going to throw your brains out on the grass, Dixon.

“Now! Go!”

We launch from the trees with our weapons up. Too much noise. I don’t want a firefight in the dark. Y moves apart from me and faster. I stop, lift the gun, and put Dixon in the crosshairs.

“Dixon!”

He is thinner than I remember. Same long sharp nose. Heavy brow. That’s you, buddy. Your hair’s white.

“That you, phuddy?”

“I’m gonna kill ya in a second, Dix. You’re gonna die.”

“What for?”

“How about crimes against nature, for a start.”

Dixon laughs.

“I phought that’s what we do? Me and you.”

The woman has walked over to Dixon. Y is moving in closer.

“Look up, Dix. Here comes God!”

I pull the trigger. Nothing.

I pull the trigger.

Y has reached the woman.

They stand side by side.

Y has emptied my gun.

Y must have met with Dixon while I was out in the shed. They planned this. Apparently you can choose your parents.

“We’re not so different, you and I.”

Dixon likes themes. I hate them.

“Let me go, Dix. I’ll leave you alone.”

It’s not like me to beg, and in another time I might have told him to do me in. But it’s a bad idea to die right here, right now. The woman is pinning my wrists with plastic cuffs.

“This is Doctor Anne.”

I am led into the community centre. I’m trying to figure out how not to die. I’ve come close before. It’s a terrible feeling. How dead are the dead? Doctor Anne sits me on a wooden chair in the middle of a stage at the front of the hall. The curtains are drawn. Dixon leans down close to my face. He looks like a bird of prey. His large eyes set deeply back under his white brow. I can’t see Y. I wonder if he can even look at me.

“Remempher us?”

Dixon isn’t forming sounds correctly. I stare into his mouth. The bottom lip is slack.

“Not nice to stare. I can’t make phlosive sounds. Not a phig deal. My liphs. My tongue.”

You have a stroke too, Dix? Or did your mouth just get sick of you?

“Anyway, I don’t talk aphout it. I have accepted it.”

I can hear chairs being dragged across the floor beyond the curtain.

“I have things I want to say to you. I missed you.”

Y and the doctor are not here. They are out in the hall moving chairs. Gonna be a show, I guess.

“Remempher when we killed those North Korean diphlomats in Indonesia? Then that other team in China, by the phorder?”

We were trying to start two regional wars. Not us exactly. Pender Mines.

“And we sat in that hotel. Got drunk. Watched TV with a couphle whores. Waited for one of our wars to start uph?”

One did. Pretty disappointing at the time. A border skirmish between North and South Korea. Not even the fight we were fixing.

“Too many variaphals. They should have just cleared territory on their own. They had the phower to do stuff like that.”

His impediment is making my stomach roll.

“Let me go, Dix. I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna go.”

Dixon laughs.

“These are great times to live. You’re right about that. I don’t kill these pheophle, man. They kill themselves. They wanna die! And when they do, I have a little going away pharty.”

Dixon believes he’s the last man on earth. I can see it in his eyes. He’s desperate to tell someone—me—what he’s discovered.

“I have put a man’s severed phenis in my rectum and you know what it did?”

I smell fried skin again.

“It swam uph my intestines like a fuckin’ fish. I could see it moving uph.”

I have seen what you do, Dix. I close my eyes.

“Don’t close your fuckin’ eyes, man!”

I feel his sharp fingertips push into my shoulders.

“I make wonders! I am dream! I am everything arriving and leaving at once!”

I let my head flop back. I don’t care. I just don’t want to die.

“I have a question. Do you think a dick is alive? Is it a snake? A worm? No. Dicks are much phigger than life. Life is infinitesimally small. Each spheck of ash out there. Each half molecule of dust is shaking with life. Every goddam atom.”

I picture Petra and Paula mixed in with the wet charred soup.

“So I am showing the atoms a great fuckin’ time.”

Dixon lifts his orange t-shirt. His gut moves. Bulges and rolling skin twist and coil in continuous motion.

“I have over a dozen pheckers in there. Sometimes they poph uph into my stomach. Only a matter of time before one sliphs up into my throat.”

“Don’t kill me, Dix. I work for people. I don’t give a fuck what you do.”

Dixon drops his shirt and lifts his prickled brow.

“You do? That’s what we need. We need jobs. I got a job. I work for somephody.”

Dixon stands and lays his long hands across his lower stomach.

“Curtains!”

Dixon steps aside, presenting me to an audience with his open hand.

“Phresenting, the man who would not die!”

The seats are full. All of Avening is here. Young and old. All the mothers and all the fathers and all the little children. And their bones are gnashing. Their faces have slipped. Their heads bob on strings. A man, whose naked body is entirely blackened, falls forward in the front row. A lump on his side breaks off. Y runs forward and props him back up. He places the shapeless mass, a baby, on his lap.

A banner across the back wall: “WASTECORP—Things are looking up!”

I can hear clanging sounds to my right. Metal in pans. A beep counting.

“That’s right, man! Old Dix is a government dick!”

Dixon steps out centre stage and faces his audience.

“Welcome, everyone! Soon you’re all going on a trip but first we have a show. Something nice to send you off with!”

Dixon turns to me. He has put lipstick on. It’s blood. His lame lower lip drools.

“We get phaid pher body, phal. You folks just don’t die fast enough.”

“Don’t kill me, Dixon. I’ll do anything you want. Make me suffer. I don’t give a shit. I don’t want to die.”

Dixon stands erect and turns on his toe.

“Folks, we have to move things along here. Phe-nder Mines should be moving in in a few hours. We gotta get you up above the clouds!”

Someone is pulling me up. Doctor Anne. I don’t resist. I don’t want to be killed suddenly. Pender Mines. That’s ridiculous. Dixon can say whatever he wants. Do whatever he wants. You don’t need to makes sense to me, Dix. Don’t even try.

“What you are aphout to witness, my friends, is a new innovation from the great minds at WasteCorph R and D. With the assistance of the lovely Doctor Anne, I intend to take you on a journey. Something for you to think about while the stars break your eyes and the sun dries your eyes.”

I am guided to a gurney. Two tables are wheeled to my sides.

“Today, we change what it means to be human!”

There are silver spider nests on the tables. Complicated medical instruments. My arms are strapped in. I look up. Y is tightening. This would be the time to say something. To break through to him. To squeeze an emotion.

Y is smiling. Y is happy. Y is old.

I feel a tear leave my lower lid. Not because I have been betrayed by the boy I saved. Not because I love him. Not because I love anyone at all. Not because I am going to suffer now. Probably unimaginable torture. But because I’m pretty sure I’m going to die.