Selected Short Stories
featuring
New Corpse Smell
by Nicolas Wilson
Foreword
Hi. I’m Nic. This is a short story collection of mine. Other stories and information about upcoming work can be found on my website: www.nicolaswilson.com. Interspersed with these short stories, you’ll find snippets of novels I’m working on. I’m calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Keep going to reach the fiction, or you can view the Table of Contents (including synopses of the stories in this collection).
Shades of Cray
Day 0
My name is Alistair Cray. I was born to African American parents. I’ve spent the majority of my professional scientific career working to make myself white. Predictably, this has caused some controversy.
They all think I’m a racist- that may be the first thing liberals and white supremacists have ever agreed on. And those who don’t think I’m a racist assume I’m a coward, that I can’t take the discrimination, that it’s all about closing the wage gap, or the opportunity gap, or about being able to walk down a dimly lit street without every white woman crossing to the opposite sidewalk. And I’d be lying if I said I’ll miss any of that, but I see those changes as unintended perks.
My critics have dubbed me “transracial.” At first I thought it was a boon, because it would link my studies and my thought to the transgender movement, and maybe even the nascent transhuman movement.
What I found instead was that trangendered people, on the whole, were just as disgusted by my work as evangelicals. In retrospect it shouldn’t have surprised me. Blacks aren’t statistically more likely to favor gay rights than whites; in fact, there’s some polling data to the contrary. Apparently, even those of us most affected by intolerance don’t recognize our own intolerance.
But it isn’t about them, and at the risk of alienating the good people who have come this far into reading this, it isn’t about you, either. It’s about me. It’s something I’ve always felt, always been.
Kids in school made fun of me, called me an Oreo. Growing up in a predominantly black school, being singled out as too white was not conducive to a happy childhood, and that lack of connection made me look for intellectual stimulation elsewhere, amongst my teachers, and amongst my studies.
But it goes back before that, even. Growing up, I used to have wonderful dreams. Dreams of splendor and fantasy. A knight fighting dragons for the favor of beautiful princesses, a spaceship captain romancing and blasting his way across the unknown corners of the galaxy, even simple quiet moments with a family of my own, smiling wife and happy, energetic children. In all of these dreams, without question or pretension, I was white.
I’m sure there are those who would hear that and presume that an Anglo-centric U.S. media warped my innocent brown mind- but as far back as I can remember, I felt white. It was quite a shock, really, when I started to realize that little dark child in the mirror was me.
That doesn’t mean I don’t love my parents, or don’t respect them. Just as the son of a bricklayer might want to be an astronaut (or the son of an astronaut might want to be a bricklayer), I simply don’t want what my parents had. I remember the first time I discussed it with my mother, she slapped me, and said, “Thank Jesus your father isn’t alive to hear you say that.”
I wish he were. I wish he’d lived long enough for me to get up the courage to tell him. I’m proud to be his son, proud that he worked so many extra hours at the mill to put me through school. Proud that he was so strong, and brave, and confident. I wanted to be all those things, to emulate him in all those things, but my whole life I felt like a swan raised by ducks. I know in our beauty-obsessed culture, that sounds like a value judgment, because swans are prettier, and more majestic, but it’s not; my parents are simply different from who I think I am. I still think I am a swan, and being a swan means being myself, not just quacking and waddling like I was raised to, to fit in.
But I wanted to jot down some of the technical bits, too. There are certain genes affiliated with racial characteristics, and more than half of my research focused on tracking those down.
Next, I took a sequence of my own DNA, and replaced African traits and characteristics with European ones. It sounds simple, but it wasn’t, and my research was enabled by the Human Genome Project and hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of other studies and research techniques.
This DNA was then placed inside a virus. Due to the agreement I have with some of my financial backers I can’t be too specific, because there are genuine medical uses for this technology- like eliminating sickle cell anemia- but like AIDS this virus invades host cells, and replaces their DNA with the genetic material the virus is carrying.
Now, before I could inject myself with that virus, I had to undergo intense chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Otherwise, my immune system would have gone to war with both the viruses and with cells already infected with the altered DNA.
The combination of radiation and chemo can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and weakness. I have the quadfecta. I’ve typed most of this from the toilet in the clean room, and just staying on the thing makes the room spin, which only makes me more nauseous, and brings the vomiting back that much quicker. I should wrap this up, because every sentence makes it more likely I'm going to vomit on my laptop.
Day 7
My labs show new blood cells are beginning to grow. That means the transplant is taking hold, that my immune system is slowly being rewritten.
The last of my hair fell out. It had clumped at the top and back of my head, like a yarmulke. If my mom were taking my calls, I would have joked that it was a sign I was supposed to be Jewish. Even if she were taking my calls, I doubt she’d have laughed.
I spoke on the phone this morning with a transplant specialist from Boston. He wanted to make sure I was mindful of “graft-versus-host disease,” when he accidentally coined the term “race graft.” I think I like it. He immediately started to back-pedal away from the term, and it was only then I realized that, despite the depth and creaminess of his voice, he was white; it was only his guilt that gave him away. “Does it matter?” he asked, almost petulant.
“Not at all,” I replied. I spent another 45 minutes talking to him. In part, I wanted to make sure he didn’t feel awkward or slighted; he'd already gone out of his way to participate in my work, and I owed him gratitude for that. And perhaps more importantly, I was rather lonely.
Day 12
My lips fell off this morning. I should explain; for days, I’ve had skin flaking off in chunks, where the outer layers have been deprived of nutrients, dried and fell away. This isn’t too unnatural, as the skin replenishes itself about every two weeks.
This morning while eating breakfast, my lips cracked, and flaked off. It was a little like losing baby teeth; it came away like it had always been meant to come away, but there was still a little pain as I twisted and pulled where it stuck at the corner. Smaller, paler lips poked through the torn skin, sensitive because they’d never touched the air before.
And I decided I wanted to keep my old lips. Not forever, and not really for long. But I decided I wanted to keep them long enough to say goodbye to who and what I’d been. So I started keeping the larger pieces that came off in a Rubbermaid tote. I figured that would keep bacteria at bay as well as anything else.
Obviously, I wanted to have the “remains” cremated, since burying a few handfuls of skin flakes seemed both macabre and histrionic. But as the day grew long, I decided I didn’t just want to bury some ashes in my backyard, I wanted pomp, and ceremony. In a very real way I was killing my former self s
o I could have a different life, so I felt I owed him at least some kind of funeral.
I called my mother, because she’d buried my father, and because, really, she was my best friend. I was surprised she answered. She hardly spoke to me, which I’d expected- though expecting it didn’t make it hurt any less. Finally, I asked her to just tell me whether, if I did hold a funeral for my former life, she would come. “I might,” she said, and there was a moment’s silence before she added, “because the son I raised is dead.” She hung up.
Day 17
The infectious disease specialist I’d been consulting with hated the idea, and was actually screaming at me on the phone until I reminded her, “It’s not good for me to get excited.” So she compromised. I could hold my funeral, but I had to hold it in the early morning, forbid sick people from attending, and stay on a respirator the entire time.
Oh, and my eyes are still very sensitive to light outside of the clean room, so I’ve been wearing these thick protective lenses. The combination of the respirator and heavy goggles make me feel a bit like Darth Vader attending Anakin’s funeral.
Not many friends showed up; of course, I don’t have many friends, and never did. I wonder if that will change, if being more myself will make me more outgoing, or if I am that