Unidentified funny objec.., p.27
Unidentified Funny Objects 6, page 27
Agents shrunk away from me when I transmuted. That was my one chance to escape. I smashed the window and flew out. My latest transmutation had given me wings—not very powerful ones, but strong enough to glide like a flying squirrel, jumping from tree to tree, from roof to roof.
I lost the helicopters that chased me by the time I reached the edge of the city. My pursuers clustered above the forest, apparently thinking I was hiding in the trees.
From the bird's eye view I saw the city burning. Flashes of gunfire and green vapors of transmutations. Purists and reshapers fought each other fiercely. The fate of the world was being decided by fisticuffs.
My transmutation was short-lived. I barely reached home. The wings withered and fell off just as I broke through the window and onto the floor of our living room.
You were still on the couch, a slipper hanging off your toe, your thoughts somewhere very far away.
"Back already?" you asked.
"There's a plane waiting for us on an airfield outside of town. It's dangerous to stay here; people are rioting and knifing each other in the streets. There are helicopters after me. You don't need to pack. You can even come wearing your robe and slippers. All you have to do is get off the couch."
You stretched. The slipper fell off your toe and hit the ground with a thud.
"Gideon, I don't recognize you lately," you said.
"I understand."
"We've drifted apart."
"There's something to that."
"We've become strangers. We have nothing in common. It's time for us to live apart. I'll live here and you . . . somewhere else."
I had no time or patience left to argue with you.
"Dearest, perhaps you should think this through. Maybe you'll realize I'm right once you've calmed down. Do you want your favorite strawberry milkshake?"
You've never said "no" to a milkshake. The agents failed to search me, so I still had the vial half full of the latest iteration of "Perpetual Motion."
You gulped the milkshake down quickly. Perhaps you were hungry, since I hadn't been around to serve you a meal. You winced at the empty glass. "It tasted strange."
"You finally noticed," I said.
A huge dose of the drug caused an immediate transmutation. Your eyelids turned ninety degrees, your lips swelled up, and a third eye on a short stalk grew in the back of your head. The eyestalk turned and you looked at yourself.
"What happened? What did you do to me?"
"Like Romeo and Juliet, we drank of the same poison. Fair's fair."
Clearly I shouldn't have been so flippant.
"The blue mushrooms in the cleavage—that was also you?"
"It was," I said, proud as an artist showing off his latest painting.
"You were poisoning me the whole time!"
You ripped the genetic decoder from the wall, and we ran. Or, to be precise, I ran. You chased me, screaming and waving the gun.
Let's call things what they are—this is a relationship crisis. Statistically, crises are experienced by over ninety percent of married couples. It is only possible to overcome such a crisis and salvage the relationship by working together.
During the last two hours I had a lot of time to think while you chased me across the city. We made a lot of mistakes. We based our relationship on cash and aggression, whereas we should have based it on unselfish love and optimism for the future. This became clear to me, and I found the way to save our relationship, and the world.
Put down the decoder. Let's forgive each other all of our transgressions. This is the moment of truth. Your immunity to my drugs, your ability to shrug off side effects and return to your original—perfect—form, is unique. Your body contains some sort of element capable of thwarting any attempts to change you. There is no other explanation. You're special. You're the chosen one. The salvation of the human race is within you.
We have to drop everything, and study this phenomenon. I'm absolutely sure that your body will soon get rid of all the changes caused by the transmutation. Your lips, for example, are already back to normal. I must solve this mystery.
What? You say it's enough to simply love yourself? Love yourself the way you were born? That's antiquated romanticism, my dear. I didn't expect that from you. Fine, let's suppose that's true. But all love (including the love of self) is a chemical reaction. I will distill this chemical agent from your body and use it to create a vaccine, for me and for the rest of humanity.
Once I do this, they will have no choice but to award me the Nobel Prize and then leave me alone. Then we can leave for lush, tropical islands, and live out the rest of our days there the natural way, as God created us. We can bring your couch, too.
I just thought of something. What if, given your habits, the vaccine based on your chemistry will also have side effects? What if humanity will fall in love with itself like Narcissus, plunge onto couches, and refuse to get up even to feed themselves?
As ever, I'm afraid there is no time for a medical trial.
Tatiana Ivanova is a noted sociologist and futurist in Russia. She teaches at the Moscow Business School. Her articles have appeared in many scientific journals as well as Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, and other popular magazines. Her short fiction has appeared in several of the top Russian publications.
The original Russian language version of this story was originally published in Science & Life magazine in 2011 and subsequently reprinted in Russian Science Fiction 2012 (an equivalent of a Year's Best volume.)
Acknowledgments
We'd like to thank everyone involved in making this book possible: associate editors Cyd Athens, James Beamon, Frank Dutkiewicz, James Miller, and Nathaniel Lee; copy editor Elektra Hammond, book designer Melissa Neely, graphics designer Emerson Matsuuchi, cover artist Tomasz Maronski, illustrator Barry Munden, and many others whose talent and hard work made this a better book. Special thanks to Anne Roberti, Steven Mentzel, and James Conason for their invaluable support of this project.
If you enjoyed this book and would like to read more, consider our other titles:
Unidentified Funny Objects volumes 1-5
Funny Science Fiction
Funny Fantasy
Funny Horror
Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories
Coffee: 14 Caffeinated Tales of the Fantastic
About the Editor
* * *
Alex Shvartsman is a writer, anthologist, translator, and game designer from Brooklyn, NY. He's the winner of the 2014 WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction and a two-time finalist (2015 and 2017) for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing.
His short stories have appeared in Nature, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy's Edge, and a variety of other magazines and anthologies. His collection, Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories, and his steampunk humor novella H. G. Wells, Secret Agent were published in 2015.
In addition to the UFO series, he has edited the The Cackle of Cthulhu, Humanity 2.0, Funny Science Fiction, Coffee: 14 Caffeinated Tales of the Fantastic and Dark Expanse: Surviving the Collapse anthologies.
www.alexshvartsman.com
Alan Dean Foster, Unidentified Funny Objects 6
