FROM THe DesK OF:        Dudley Stone

The Mule

​

​​

    — Hey, mule, the boy said. He said it slowly, without malice really, like he was tasting it for flavor.

    — Hey, mule, humming the M, then extending the U until it made a gagging sound. She’d seen him in the hallway before, dark hair, dark eyes, nose a little caved in on one side. Ink on the rubber of his red and white sneakers from doodling in class. Had she thought he was cute? Maybe. She tried to remember.

    — Hey, mule, he said again as she drew even with him. He was above her, sitting on the low concrete wall near the curb. Without looking around, Carsyn could feel the space empty around her. The kids in front picked up their pace, the ones beside and behind slowed, leaving her in a victim bubble as she passed by the boy with the caved-in nose.

    Did they expect her to cry of that her eyes might roll back, she would reveal retractable claws and superhuman strength in the service of teenage rage? Hadn’t they figured it out by now?

    Carsyn could feel the eyes on her. She knew they thought she was dangerous, that she might be capable of ANYTHING. Or at least, they hoped she was. For a moment, she wished she had long blonde locks that she could swish, like a pretty horse scattering flies. Or even a mule, she thought. The irony twisted her impassivity into a smirk.

    Carsyn turned and flashed a toothy smile at the boy. If she had any breasts to speak of, she might have flashed him. The space around her shrank again and she started to walk home. What were they thinking? Crisis averted? Never mind, Carsyn thought. Let them think what they want. Maybe being unpredictable could be her super-power.

* * *

    Her father was from Beldame. Not its real name, of course, but one imposed by the scientists who’d “found” it tucked behind the Caspari Nebula like some old woman cowering in a corner, hence the name. Carsyn had engined the word, beldame, beldam, old woman. Maybe they meant bedlam and just misspelled it.

    Her father called it something else. When she was a baby, he’d whisper it in her ear as she was going to sleep, dream sounds like a hissing wind and leaves crackling underfoot. There used to be a tribe in Africa — gone now of course — that communicated with whistles and clicks and other sounds humans or even half-humans couldn’t reproduce. It reminded her of that. Or dolphinspeak.

    Carsyn sometimes slipped and referred to the “discovery” of Beldame by explorers from Earth. But then she’d puff up with indignation at the injustice. Discovery? Well, it’s not like they’d been lost. They’d been there the whole time, long than anybody Earth thought to look for them. And anyway, who were these people, these hicks, these interlopers, these, these galactic tourists from Earth, anyway?

    — You mean, like your mother, Carsyn?

    Oops. Right. And his lips would settle into an almost human smile, but Carsyn could see the question lingering in his eyes: And what do you say to that, daughter? Will you always fight who you are?

    It was hard to enjoy righteous indignation when sometimes all you really wanted was to belong. In school, they had forms asking if you were Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian, African, or Other. When the Orientation Bot helped her with the form, she finally settled on Other.

    It would be okay if she looked strange, but honestly Carsyn didn’t look any different from the other girls. She was kind of pretty, she supposed. Her teeth were mostly straight. Her hair was beyond her control, but that was a common complaint.

    Even with her father, you had to look twice. Carsyn had seen people stare at him in public, stop dead in the middle of a conversations trying to figure out exactly WHY he looked different. Was there a twitching muscle in his face that didn’t belong? Did he maybe have webbed hands? A port wine stain creeping out of his shirt collar like a finger of ivy?

    Locke had the best explanation:

    — He’s like one of those old paintings, you know?

    Locke and Carsyn had sat transfixed for an hour at the museum of ancient art in front of a Dutch master, walking from one end of the wide room to the other, the eyes of the figure in the painting following them everywhere.

    Yeah, Carsyn thought. It was like that. Of course, the painting might have been a fake covering a surveillance device. If your screen could watch you and your car listen to you moaning in the backseat, why couldn’t a picture follow you around a museum?

    She was popular enough, Carsyn thought. She got invited to hang. They streamed old sci-fi and quizzed her about scales and tentacles and possible hidden exoskeleton parts. She acted like she knew things they didn’t. They dared her to take off her top. But that wasn’t weird. They dared each other to do that, too.

    She ate popcorn and drank too much soda just like them. She snuck away from the cameras just like them to get high or to make out. Boys were hesitant to put their mouth on her, they would run their palms over her sweater and then pull back, wide-eyed, like they were expecting something green and slimy to come slithering out of her bra and devour them. She laughed at them, then pulled them back to her lips. They didn’t think so much then. It wasn’t so complicated.

* * *

    Why did we go to Mars? Carsyn wrote. Or for that matter, to Terra del Malaga or the Sigma Series? The words appeared on her screen in the central box. Other boxes detailed her ID, class information, current grade on the quiz, and a clock in the bottom corner told her that she had 10:27 left. On the right side of the screen there was a green vertical status line representing her grade if the test were to end now.

    Oh, I know what it SAYS in textfeed (THE textfeed, TButt corrected, demonstrative pronoun and definite article, the status bar replacing green with red to show points dropping from Carsyn’s score). I’m not three years old, TButt, Carsyn thought, and the window obligingly closed, the TeacherBot making the brief little burping sound Carsyn changed it to after its cheery default tone became tiresome.

    Why did we go to Mars? She knew what was expected — to explore, to go forth, excelsior! — whatever the hell that meant.

    Carsyn watched as the T-Bot cursor played over her answer, exchanging letters here, eliminating entire words. She wondered if sometimes the bot changed her meaning just to see if she would notice. Meanwhile, the green counter to the right of her essay turned redder, sinking like a thermometer plunged into ice water, or a dying woman in the snow, Carsyn thought. Whatever the hell snow was. Carsyn watched her grade plummet inexorably from healthy to all right to iffy to decidedly unhealthy and, yes, all the way to complete cessation of life signs. Her quiz needed CPR.

    Carsyn’s mind wandered. I bet if you trace it back, there was a woman or, no, probably a man cheating on his wife, looking over his shoulder. And he had a telescope and looked up one day – one night – and thought, well, I guess Mars isn’t wired and skinned probably, or he thought (the T-Bot wavered between the two “thought” phrases and deleted the second one as redundant, leeching that much more blood from Carsyn’s grade). Maybe on Mars you could have privacy. He might even skip the woman altogether and just pack up whatever sick fantasies he had and maybe on Mars they’d leave him alone, no alerts, no casual intrusions.

    And no one talking into your head. So you look through the telescope and think that’s where I’ll take my woman or my gross fantasy and rub myself raw in peace. That’s why I think we went. I think if you study history, which is what we’re SUPPOSED to be doing now (the words “snark does not equal wit” appeared in red in the margins of Carsyn’s answer) you’ll find that all quote-unquote significant events in history only occurred to get some privileged man laid.

    Carsyn waited for the splash of red and the appearance of words like “weak,” “vague,” or “does not follow.” The T-bot didn’t subtract points without providing reasons anymore. They were here to learn, too.

    Carsyn grinned, remembering her first T-bot in third grade. You got five points for proper socialization, so saying hello to T-bot, five points. Thank you, five points. Then a kid named Evan had hacked the T-bot so that for nearly three hours you got five points every time you told the machine to go fuck itself. They’d called it TButt ever since.

    Or maybe the T-bot had just played along. After all, they were there to practice being social, not to actually learn anything. Be more specific, TButt prompted. Which “they” are you referring to? Carsyn closed her eyes and repeated the word “game” to herself, imagining it in various radical fonts and colors. Soon TButt was happily destroying targets of various kinds and left her alone for the remainder of class.

* * *

4.     After so many years, Locke said, your cells have all died and been reborn. You’re somebody else.

    — Cool, Carsyn said. When does this happen?

    They were playing Locke’s road game. They stood on the sidewalk across from the park and waited for the current wave of autobots to pass.

    — I’ll tell you in a minute, Locke said. Now!

    He held Carsyn’s hand and they walked into the boulevard. The nearest oncoming bot was over a block away.

    — If you start at the crosswalk, Locke said, the program recognizes you as people and stops the bots.

    — That’s no fun, Carsyn said.

    — Exactly. So you start in the middle of the block.

    They stopped in the middle of the boulevard and turned to face the oncoming traffic.

    — Put your arm around my waist, Locke said.

    — I knew this was a trick, Carsyn said.

    — No, no. If you put your arm around me, we stop being recognizable as two people and the program interprets us as an “indefinite road obstruction.”

    Carsyn slid her arm around Locke’s waist. He was always flirting with her, but she knew nothing was ever going to happen. Still, it felt nice to be standing so close to him. The breeze blew his straw-colored hair into her face, and she could smell dirt, sweat, day-old shampoo, and some kind of boy smell as familiar as home. She could find Locke in the dark if she had to.

    — Aren’t the bots supposed to slow down?

    — Wait for it. Hang on to me, Locke said. It’s okay.

    It suddenly occurred to Carsyn what an incredibly dumb thing they were doing. But Locke said to trust him, and she did. She always did. But now, there were dozens of autobots accelerating toward them.

    — This isn’t a suicide pact thing, is it?

    — It just takes a few seconds for the program to recalibrate, Locke said. I think.

    — I’m sorry. Think?

    Is that what you were hoping?

    Carsyn tried to stamp on his foot. Locke pulled her closer.

    — We are one unidentifiable thing, Carsyn thought. Indefinite obstruction. She watched as the autobots bore down on them.

    Suddenly all her fear left her and she began grinning.

    — This is the coolest thing, she shouted over the rising noise.

    Above them, monitors on the surrounding buildings bounced ultrasonic waves off the pair, measured their collective height, width, and circumference, triangulated their position, and relayed the data via satellite to the traffic control network, which algorithmed them as a Class A Amorphous Fragile Obstruction, which triggered an detour program in the local autobot net and alerted traffic maintenance. After the wave of bots committed to the current block cleared the obstruction, any further traffic would be automatically redirected and a crew would be sent to clear the obstruction.

    — I really have to pee! Carsyn shouted.

    And on cue, just like Locke had said, the wave parted smoothly like an opening zipper in front of the two, and they were buffeted on all sides by a tornado of dozens of autobots passing them an arm’s length away at full speed. Carsyn glanced over at Locke, but his eyes were closed. She breathed deeply, taking the smell of hot carbon and rubber deep into her lungs.

    And then the roar was past, and Locke and Carsyn were again alone in the middle of the street.        

    Ahead, they could see the next wave of traffic already detouring around the block.

    — Come on, Locke shouted. She allowed him to lead her back to the curb. Their movement was detected and relayed. The obstruction having cleared itself, the maintenance crews were called off and soon traffic was flowing again down the broad boulevard.

    — Didn’t I tell you? Locke said.

* * *

    So every few years your cells died and you had new ones. But you were still you, weren’t you?, Carsyn wondered. The cells must be different. They wouldn’t just be the same. Why did Locke tell her these things? He knew they just gave her a headache.

    She stared at the screen. This wasn’t happening. She’d engined it so many times, she had it memorized. Mule, noun, a hybrid between a horse and a donkey, especially a male donkey and a mare. That would make her father the donkey. Also mule, a stubborn person. Also, a person who smuggles or delivers something, subset illicit, subset dangerous, like weapons or drugs. Which one was she supposed to be?

    There were other definitions as well for mule – a machine that draws and twists fiber into thread or a shoe or slipper without a heel strap – compare to scuff. Words were just stupid sometimes.

    It was a miracle Carsyn had been born at all. Her mother awoke from hibernation with a stillbirth halfway home from Beldame, then had two miscarriages after she and her father reached Earth. There were stories, but Carsyn didn’t believe them, of other mules in other places, maybe whole colonies of them. The story repeated most often, other than hers, of course, was of the boy who looked like he was going to make it but then threw himself off a tower when he was Carsyn’s age. Until now, she’d just thought that story was silly.

    Her mother made her see the doctor, even though it was impossible — impossible! — for Carsyn to get pregnant. Just out of curiosity, she’d ask what if? Well, they’d have to implant some other girl’s egg, it wouldn’t be mine, I’d essentially be a carrier (there was that “mule” again), artificially nourish it, then remove it. I might produce my own milk but it would have to be tested, and they probably wouldn’t let me use it anyway, and on and on. So why bother, really?

    Carsyn was okay with that. Mostly. But every now and then she’d pass the park and see a little girl squealing down a slide maybe for the first time, the little girl’s mother at the bottom, arms outstretched, and she’d have to avert her eyes and cover her ears. It passed after awhile.

    Besides, every woman in mom’s family had breast cancer by the time they turned 40. Didn’t they know what they were doing when they had her?