Bahram Zaimi - BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

He went straight to the far end corner of the area, stooped to reach a trapdoor cleverly camouflaged on the floor, pulled up the handle’s ring, and opened it. He rotated the trapdoor about the hinges and gently put it on the floor on its back. She went to the opening and looked down; a metal staircase was going down. “Let’s proceed,” he said showing the way down with his hand.

“Should I be afraid?”

“Don’t worry. All you see are legitimate types of criminal horrors.”

He went down the stairs and turned the light on. She followed, him holding the handrail on the shaky metal staircase. There was a long corridor which ran under store hall, and a few doors were located along one side. He opened the first door and went in and she followed into a huge area. The floor was filled with large flowerpots in aisles. She could see the remnants of dried flowers and plants on the pots. The floor of the aisles and all the pots were hidden under a thick carpet of dead bees, in the millions. The empty artificial bee hives were suspended from the ceiling over the pots area, aligned in rows.

As he was looking at the empty hives, said, “Have you ever thought why flowers smell good? The land plants evolved to flowering plants somewhere between 140 and 250 million years ago. The biological function of flowers is reproduction, but it is not possible without the help of pollinators, the bees. The scent, a complex compound, emitted by flowers along with color is to attract pollinators. The problem is that bees had lived before flowers, and they didn’t need flowers. So my question was, and of which I could not free my mind, how flowers affected the evolution of bees to make them their slave workers. I posed a hypothesis: the volatile scent, which is a molecular compound, penetrates DNA and alters the biology of the bees. Down in their DNA had been a need for flowers in some hidden way, and when the scent activated, it deciphered the code. The translation in our language: the bees remembered.”

He pointed to the floor, “The yellow and black carpet of this room displays the practice of trial and error leading to the failure of my hypothesis. The vegetarian bees died of hunger, never changing to honey bees. At the end, tired of one year’s testing, I introduced the red-brown vulture bees for revenge; surely they didn’t care for flowers, they attacked the plant bees and took their flesh out from their eyes. I was watching their feast until they killed them all.”

“There is no horror in dead bees.”

“In a sense, you are right only if we are in a false belief that the notion of legality roots in human biology. What if does proof of a certain hypothesis necessitate human samples rather than bees? In that case, the horror starts as you go further to prove your hypothesis in practice. To avoid any debate, how about visiting the second room.”

He passed her while she was staring at the floor substituting dead insects with humans in her mind, thinking of hungry vulture bees. She imagined the large open area before Milwaukee County Courthouse; people running for their lives, climbing over closed fences, angry men following them with sharp blades in their hands. The people, terrified upon reaching the closed gates; streams of blood running down the stone stairs before the courthouse. At the end of the day, butchered bodies left for the night devourers’ feast. She imagined the sun going down, millions of tiny pink specks shining in the streets. Rivers of black charging through the area, squeaking. The rats would drag flesh out through eyes of corpses. The small ones would jump up the stairs licking the clogged blood as an appetizer, the big ones marking their territory so that none dared enter their area of corpses.

“I see sparkles in your eyes,” she noticed he was looking at her, waiting for her in the corridor. She smiled at him. He opened the second door, standing on the threshold. She looked into the darkness and could see nothing but could hear sounds.

He said with a low voice, “Before I turn the light on, listen carefully.” She listened, hearing a smooth rhythm with a relaxing melody, and the sound of a sad chorus.

“It is pleasant to the ears; I guess you have trained some exotic birds to sing.”

“Your guess of birds is correct, but what kind?”

With a smile on her face, she said, “I say you have trained some bluebirds to sing this tune.”

“Not even close.”

He turned on the light. She stepped inside. It was a room as large as the previous one with birdcages fixed all around to the walls. She walked in, looking at the cages with an open mouth, and stood in the middle of the room.

“Crows? Is it possible?” she asked.

“This time my brutal hypothesis has not failed, but been proved in practice.”

“It is beautiful; I don’t feel any horror in that.”

“For us, yes. In contrast, maybe for the birds. Look closer”

She stepped to get closer to one of the cages; the singing crow’s toes were glued down onto bamboo, the feathers of the tail were also glued down to more bamboos at its back so that the bird was fixed in the cage. A glass tube containing a yellow liquid penetrated its stomach. Staring at the bird, she said, “OK, I am seeing a hypothesis in practice. Yet how could you make a crow sing?” He enjoyed her curiosity, went close to the cage, and pointed to a bulge in the neck of the bird,

“All is here, but before I quench your curiosity, I have to present you a brief narration.”

“Since you are accompanied by an elegant soundtrack, I have no objection.”

“The carnage scenery of non-obedient bees relieved me of facing my failure for a few days. The relaxation lasted until some crows chose the remote location suitable to settle down. In contrast to my habit, their day began early in the morning, and with loud noises. Finally, they have paid the price for the early wake-up call,” he stepped to the middle of the room. She turned her body to him, his voice became articulated, and the narration continued in lecture mode. She seemed to be enjoying the performance.

He continued, “Well, another hypothesis was going to be created. The power of their sounds amazed me, I mean in terms of the decibels. Testing with an application in my cell phone, some crows could produce a ratio of 100 in decibel level, the same as a military helicopter. Note that the permissible noise level for an industrial area is 75 for a commercial 55. Annoyed at the error in God’s creation, I was going to fix it. Having visualized a crow as a 100-Watt speaker, I remembered an advertisement on TV. ‘This tiny gadget turns anything into music.’ I bought the gadget forty dollars plus tax; too expensive and too big, it did not work on a crow.

“I came up with a brilliant idea, when I threw a stone at a crow’s head, the whimpering crow did not sound bad. The second room door was opened. Waiting for evolution to do the right thing takes millions of years, for God to rectify his design forever. I bought 150 cages. Crows are cheap: you can find them everywhere and the stupid people in the Captive Animal Protection Society don’t have crows in their listing.”

“Nor bees,” she replied.

“Exactly, I am beginning to like you. Two unrelated evolutionary pitches developed the two-sided vocal cord, the syrinx, of the songbirds resulting in a pleasant performance. Believe it or not, crows are among the birds that can mimic the human voice, so a small fixation was required to enhance their syrinxes: a Gillette razor. I bought plenty, 30 cents each. I divided each one into small parts with the blade at on side. All that was needed then was perseverance.

“I installed the blade into the bird’s throat, piercing half into the syrinx and half out of it. I tried multiple strategies, among them the angle of installment, piercing depth, and then a source of continuous pain. Do not forget it should be a whimpering crow after all. Thanks to the latter factor, the blind crows could sing better. Two hot needles in their eyes and the addition of a low voltage battery for constant burning pain did the job quite well. Voila, singing birds at your service.”