Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake

He no longer came home for lunch. He got picked up by the school’s combo ethanol-solarvan in the morning and returned by it at night. There was a bright and cheerful school cafeteria with balanced meals, ethnic choices—perogies, felafels—and a kosher option, and soy products for the vegetarians. Jimmy was so pleased to be able to eat lunch with neither one of his parents present that he felt light-headed. He even put on some weight, and stopped being the skinniest kid in class. If there was any lunchtime left over and nothing else going on, he could go to the library and watch old instructional CD-ROMs. Alex the parrot was his favourite, from Classics in Animal Behaviour Studies . He liked the part where Alex invented a new word— cork-nut , for almond—and, best of all, the part where Alex got fed up with the blue-triangle and yellow-square exercise and said, I’m going away now. No, Alex, you come back here! Which is the blue triangle—no, the blue triangle? But Alex was out the door. Five stars for Alex.

One day Jimmy was allowed to bring Killer to school, where she—it was now officially a she—made a big hit. “Oh Jimmy, you are so lucky,” said Wakulla Price, the first girl he’d ever had a crush on. She stroked Killer’s fur, brown hand, pink nails, and Jimmy felt shivery, as if her fingers were running over his own body.

Jimmy’s father spent more and more time at his work, but talked about it less and less. There were pigoons at NooSkins, just as at OrganInc Farms, but these were smaller and were being used to develop skin-related biotechnologies. The main idea was to find a method of replacing the older epidermis with a fresh one, not a laser-thinned or dermabraded short-term resurfacing but a genuine start-over skin that would be wrinkle- and blemish-free. For that, it would be useful to grow a young, plump skin cell that would eat up the worn cells in the skins of those on whom it was planted and replace them with replicas of itself, like algae growing on a pond.

The rewards in the case of success would be enormous, Jimmy’s father explained, doing the straight-talking man-to-man act he had recently adopted with Jimmy. What well-to-do and once-young, once-beautiful woman or man, cranked up on hormonal supplements and shot full of vitamins but hampered by the unforgiving mirror, wouldn’t sell their house, their gated retirement villa, their kids, and their soul to get a second kick at the sexual can? NooSkins for Olds, said the snappy logo. Not that a totally effective method had been found yet: the dozen or so ravaged hopefuls who had volunteered themselves as subjects, paying no fees but signing away their rights to sue, had come out looking like the Mould Creature from Outer Space—uneven in tone, greenish brown, and peeling in ragged strips.

But there were other projects at NooSkins as well. One evening Jimmy’s father came home late and a little drunk, with a bottle of champagne. Jimmy took one look at this and got himself out of the way. He’d hidden a tiny mike behind the picture of the seashore in the living room and another one behind the kitchen wall clock—the one that gave a different irritating bird call for every hour—so he could listen in on stuff that was none of his business. He’d put the mikes together in the Neotechnology class at school; he’d used standard components out of the mini-mikes for wireless computer dictating, which, with a few adjustments, worked fine for eavesdropping.

“What’s that for?” said the voice of Jimmy’s mother. She meant the champagne.

“We’ve done it,” said Jimmy’s father’s voice. “I think a little celebration is in order.” A scuffle: maybe he’d tried to kiss her.

“Done what?”

Pop of the champagne cork. “Come on, it won’t bite you.” A pause: he must be pouring it out. Yes: the clink of glasses. “Here’s to us.”

“Done what? I need to know what I’m drinking to.”

Another pause: Jimmy pictured his father swallowing, his Adam’s apple going up and down, bobbity-bobble. “It’s the neuro-regeneration project. We now have genuine human neocortex tissue growing in a pigoon. Finally, after all those duds! Think of the possibilities, for stroke victims, and…”

“That’s all we need,” said Jimmy’s mother. “More people with the brains of pigs. Don’t we have enough of those already?”

“Can’t you be positive, just for once? All this negative stuff, this is no good, that’s no good , nothing’s ever good enough, according to you!”

“Positive about what? That you’ve thought up yet another way to rip off a bunch of desperate people?” said Jimmy’s mother in that new slow, anger-free voice.

“God, you’re cynical!”

“No, you are. You and your smart partners. Your colleagues. It’s wrong, the whole organization is wrong, it’s a moral cesspool and you know it.”

“We can give people hope. Hope isn’t ripping off!”

“At NooSkins’ prices it is. You hype your wares and take all their money and then they run out of cash, and it’s no more treatments for them. They can rot as far as you and your pals are concerned. Don’t you remember the way we used to talk, everything we wanted to do? Making life better for people—not just people with money. You used to be so… you had ideals, then.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy’s father in a tired voice. “I’ve still got them. I just can’t afford them.”

A pause. Jimmy’s mother must’ve been mulling that over. “Be that as it may,” she said—a sign that she wasn’t going to give in. “Be that as it may, there’s research and there’s research. What you’re doing—this pig brain thing. You’re interfering with the building blocks of life. It’s immoral. It’s… sacrilegious.”

Bang , on the table. Not his hand. The bottle? “I don’t believe I’m hearing this! Who’ve you been listening to? You’re an educated person, you did this stuff yourself! It’s just proteins, you know that! There’s nothing sacred about cells and tissue, it’s just…”

“I’m familiar with the theory.”

“Anyway it’s been paying for your room and board, it’s been putting the food on your table. You’re hardly in a position to take the high ground.”

“I know,” said Jimmy’s mother’s voice. “Believe me, that is one thing I really do know. Why can’t you get a job doing something honest? Something basic.”

“Like what and like where? You want me to dig ditches?”

“At least your conscience would be clean.”

“No, yours would. You’re the one with the neurotic guilt. Why don’t you dig a few ditches yourself, at least it would get you off your butt. Then maybe you’d quit smoking—you’re a one-woman emphysema factory, plus you’re single-handedly supporting the tobacco companies. Think about that if you’re so ethical. They’re the folks who get six-year-olds hooked for life by passing out free samples.”

“I know all that.” A pause. “I smoke because I’m depressed. The tobacco companies depress me, you depress me, Jimmy depresses me, he’s turning into a…”

“Take some pills if you’re so fucking depressed!”

“There’s no need for swearing.”

“I think maybe there is!” Jimmy’s father yelling wasn’t a complete novelty, but combined with the swearing it got Jimmy’s full attention. Maybe there would be action, broken glass. He felt afraid—that cold lump in his stomach was back again—but he also felt compelled to listen. If there was going to be a catastrophe, some final collapse, he needed to witness it.

Nothing happened though, there was just the sound of footsteps going out of the room. Which one of them? Whoever it was would now come upstairs and check to make sure Jimmy was asleep and hadn’t heard. Then they could tick off that item on the Terrific Parenting checklist they both carted around inside their heads. It wasn’t the bad stuff they did that made Jimmy so angry, it was the good stuff. The stuff that was supposed to be good, or good enough for him. The stuff they patted themselves on the backs for. They knew nothing about him, what he liked, what he hated, what he longed for. They thought he was only what they could see. A nice boy but a bit of a goof, a bit of a show-off. Not the brightest star in the universe, not a numbers person, but you couldn’t have everything you wanted and at least he wasn’t a total washout. At least he wasn’t a drunk or an addict like a lot of boys his age, so touch wood. He’d actually heard his dad say that: touch wood , as if Jimmy was bound to fuck up, wander off the tracks, but he just hadn’t got around to it yet. About the different, secret person living inside him they knew nothing at all.