Jellyfish dreaming, p.1
Jellyfish Dreaming, page 1
Jellyfish Dreaming
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First published in the United States by Leapfrog Press, 2023
Leapfrog Press Inc.
www.leapfrogpress.com
First published in the United Kingdom by TSB | Can of Worms, 2023
TSB is an imprint of:
Can of Worms Enterprises Ltd
7 Peacock Yard, London SE17 3LH
www.canofworms.net
© 2023 D. K. McCutchen
The moral right of D. K. McCutchen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover and text design: Jim Shannon and Prepress Plus, India
US Edition ISBN: 978-1-948585-750 (Paperback)
UK Edition ISBN: 978-1-911673-40-8 (Paperback)
The Forest Stewardship Council® is an international non- governmental organisation that promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of the world’s forests. To learn more visit www.fsc.org
Past Winners of the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize
2022: Rage and Other Cages by Aimee LaBrie
2022: Jellyfish Dreaming by D. K. McCutchen
2021: But First You Need a Plan by K L Anderson
2021: Lost River, 1918 by Faith Shearin
2021: My Sister Lives in the Sea by Faith Shearin
2020: Amphibians by Lara Tupper
2019: Vanishing: Five Stories by Cai Emmons
2018: Why No Goodbye? by Pamela L. Laskin
2017: Trip Wire: Stories by Sandra Hunter
2016: The Quality of Mercy by Katayoun Medhat
2015: Report from a Burning Place by George Looney
2015: The Solace of Monsters by Laurie Blauner
2014: The Lonesome Trials of Johnny Riles by Gregory Hill
2013: Going Anywhere by David Armstrong
2012: Being Dead in South Carolina by Jacob White
2012: Lone Wolves by John Smelcer
2011: Dancing at the Gold Monkey by Allen Learst
2010: How to Stop Loving Someone by Joan Connor
2010: Riding on Duke’s Train by Mick Carlon
2009: Billie Girl by Vickie Weaver
These titles can be bought at: https://bookshop.org/shop/leapfrog
“It’s the end of the world as we know it
(and I feel fine)”
— R.E.M.
Contents
Memories, in which Jack meets Joon, Joon changes gender, there is a Tsunami of garbage, a tech wizard reinvents plastic-eaters, the Chancellor blows up his University, and someone decides to have a baby. In a twist ending hippies inherit the earth. Also, there are Jellyfish.
Chapter 1: ALL ABOUT JACK
Chapter 2: OTHER PEOPLE’S MEMORIES
Chapter 3: RESCUING MADGIRL & THE GREENHOUSE
Chapter 4: THE QUEST
Chapter 5: MADGIRL BLOWS IT
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
Chapter 1
ALL ABOUT JACK
“What happened,
What we think happened in distant memory,
is built around a small collection of dominating images.”
— E. O. Wilson, Naturalist
— JACK IN THE JELLY TANK
First there is blue. I remember the waves surge and pitch, sloshing, neither cold nor warm. There is no before, no anticipation of after. Now is blue. Blue is soft water, hard walls. The briefest surges of potential buzz past in a yellow blur and fade away in the rhythmic rocking. A second of questioning, then loss of awareness, rise and submerge, cycle around. Be. Dream …. A lash of raw red pain brings consciousness, alongside the black possibility of Not. Soothing blue erases all; rise and fall, slosh and rock, be. Buzz. Pain. Awareness …. Am I dying? Is there anybody out there?
The ending is also blue.
SNAP
— JACK IN THE MARKETPLACE
I wait, like always, scuffing along the boardwalk, spitting in the surf, watching plastic bags swirl like a memory of octopus tentacles in the surge. I’ve heard rumors and I have questions. So I wait until the thin man shows up at the Trash Café with his larger, squarer companion. Then I wait for them to leave again. It’s dull.
The docks are more interesting. I check out the catch as it comes in; buckets and crates full of jellyfish, nets ripped from flotsam, decks scattered with interesting debris. The ocean coughs up jellyfish and plastic rubbish these days. The Fisherfolk are hard men and women from a dozen different races and places, tough survivors of every catastrophe the world has thrown at them. They ignore me or stare hard until I wander on. They’re busy enough shifting the catch without getting stung by the odd box jelly; they don’t need a Warehouse tramp distracting them, maybe nicking something. But now and again they’ll give me or one of the other Warehouse kids a small square of tatty tarpaulin wiggling with seaworms or nematodes, or sometimes a basket of the odder-looking jellies to eat, in exchange for mending nets. They supply improvised gloves of layered plastic and cloth – whatever washes up – to protect from unfired nematocysts tangling in long skeins of tentacles, clinging like nerves to the weave of the nets. But they watch carefully so’s we don’t run off with the gloves.
The two University men drink in the shade of the café while I parch in the sun and wind. Finally, they finish their business, which seems to have been just chatting with Tao Ownerson and sipping hot algae tea made with water boiled and condensed in a solar still. Nothing could survive in that. Safe water. Tao’s the one who told me about their research on the immaturity (immortality?) epidemic. I traded a fistful of – mostly – live crickets for the info. I didn’t get any tea.
When the University Doctors leave the Café, I follow, drifting from stall to stall behind them as they wind through the jumble of overflowing crates and makeshift shacks that make up the Market. Once it becomes clear they intend to leave the waterfront and climb the hill back up toward the University, I stop trying to blend. It’s pointless. No one but Uni folk, or Townies with Uni concerns, use that narrow path up the cliffs. I’m almost on their heels when the big, hairy-faced man turns and asks my business with them. My apologetic “sumimasen” clearly irritates that one. But the slender, fair-haired man looks excited when I whisper my reason for intruding. I want information. I know there’ll be a price.
They also want something from me. The blond hesitates between taking me immediately up to the University lab for testing or clinching the deal in the Marketplace, where one does deals, after all. I’ll squeeze this for what I can get. I tell them I’m hungry; that I need new clothes. The big man looks disgusted but the blond pinches his arm before turning to me with a surprisingly kind smile. He introduces them both (which I ignore) and waves his arm back toward the Market as if offering me the world.
•••
Time skips forward and slingshots back
Around the planet – why do some memories repeat?
My mind walks through one door,
just to end up where I began.
No exit.
•••
— THE TRASH CAFÉ
The Market is a new and exciting place when one has credit. The Uni Docs buy me things. Recycled plasti-weave jeans – remember when jeans didn’t crackle and pinch? – a softer, hand-woven flax T-shirt and sarong. Someone salvaged a container full of antique coats made of real milled cotton and is flogging them in the Market. I wear my new/old coat with tails sharp as a tern’s wing – extinct seabirds skimming long-ago waves. The coat overhangs crackly jeans and remaindered combat boots; even in the gritty wind they make me sweat. But I don’t care. I’m making memories. I imagine swooping out over the surf. In my fancy clothes, I feel like the Luck-in-the-Leftovers. The two well-dressed men who are paying for it all stop to help admire me in every surface that reflects.
The Trash Café is the only place left on the boardwalk that’s protected by walls and windows where folks with credits can sit out of the wind and watch rubbish swirling in the surf. I get to be a customer today.
“Charlie.” The biggest man talks while waving us to a table, continuing a conversation I’ve been ignoring for a while. “You didn’t give your full proposal. The University could withhold research approval – but you’ve definitely piqued their interest at least.” He chuckles, a deep note that can be felt through the bones.
“What proposal?” I ask. A hot current of air gusts through the funnel of the open door and retreats again, sucking the words away, leaving me breathless.
“We’re running out of time,” the big man mutters. He seems to understand I won’t have remembered his name. He re-introduces himself as Leopold Vassily, “Call me Leo,” professor of something unknowable called … socio-biology? The thin man, Charlie, seems safer, and his research (on immortality? I hope) should have the answers I want. No one else matters – not yet.
“We have questions.” Leo seats himself a
“Jack.”
Now the researchers know that name too. Charlie fills our mugs and, ignoring the public cistern, heads for the solar still with an empty water pitcher.
“How old are you, Jack?” Leo asks. “And where from?”
Those are questions I avoid. I examine my cup carefully but there’s no maker’s mark. There’s none on me either. “Dunno,” I say. “Born inland – in old Chicago.” I’m a good liar. Chicago was once buried in the massive snows and winds that fragmented the Midwest. No records to prove or disprove. There are refugees from all over wandering through, looking for a place to be – like this semi-arid northeast coast. Wasn’t this temperate rainforest once? It’s nothing new.
All things repeat.
I pick up my cup to avoid Leo’s gaze.
“You sexually active, Jack?” the man asks abruptly.
A jolt of adrenaline shakes my hand and the clay cup sloshes. Him using that name is worse than his question. I tell myself I’m just not used to hearing it anymore.
“Why? You interested?” Jack. The name is comfortable as an old hat, but feels too intimate for strangers to use. I’ve had lots of names, but Jack is the one I use when change is coming, or I need a bit of luck. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumps over the candlestick. I manage a stiff smile. Leo is hard to read; brown eyes camouflaged in bushy hair and whiskers. They seem like kind eyes, but Jack-the-Survivor has learned to distrust even his own first impressions.
“I’m curious whether you are,” the man says. “How’s your libido?”
“Don’t have much to compare to,” I mutter. I decide not to wait for the distilled water Charlie’s paying for and tilt my cup (Jack’s cup) to taste the silty-gray cistern water. “Don’t feel up to populating the world if that’s what you mean.” Tao told me earlier that Charlie’s research has to do with why so many humans and animals can’t breed. But he’s also some big brain in genetics. That’s what interests me most. What makes us what we are? (What am I?)
Leo chuckles deeply, the light table vibrating with the sound. “Where do you live, Jack?” My hand quivers along with the table.
“Oi,” I say. “Why don’t you tell me where you live – Leo?”
“With him,” Leo says calmly, pointing to the blond lecturer who wafts back toward us on another gust from the door. “Dr. McCauley – Charlie. I know his work intimately.”
Charlie thumps down the newly filled jug with a “Hmph.” Our poor table may not survive this meal.
“You should pay him properly, Charlie,” Leo says. “Food and clothes are fine, but the lad doesn’t have a place to be.”
I stare. Why would he know that?
“What say, Jack? Want to room with us while Charlie tests his pet theory?”
“Don’t decide that on your own!” Charlie’s eyes are pale blue with white lashes and brows, his chin hairless. He looks like he’d disappear if he stepped into a sunbeam. The bright ponytail whips around angrily.
I half-listen to the men argue. The food arrives. With a muttered “Itadakimasu,” I eat pickled jellyfish with my fingers from the common bowl while they talk. As usual, it’s the only thing on the menu. Jellyfish is what the Fisherfolk catch, and for so long now no one seems to remember when it was different. But I know – as much as I know anything, my memories a mix of half-forgotten stories, bought information, flashes of insight, and great yawning gaps; especially when the memory pertains to me. I think I remember how Japanese became part of the lingua franca. Maybe even how I got here – sometimes. But what feels like my memory is also told on the Town docks as an old Fisher’s tale – and there are even older tales layered over that.
It’s the story of the 7,000 islands of the legendary Nihon-koku archipelago sinking beneath The Great Wave. Back in a time so long ago the snows hadn’t yet made the middle-country impassable; humans still had it in them to feel generous to hungry strangers who washed ashore, especially strangers with survival skills to share. The Jellyfish Masters came by sea, along with a wave of hungry immigrants, and taught the people how to catch and prepare Jellies. The Fisherfolk even made a harvest festival of it, though no one celebrates it anymore. Thanksgiving, it was called, Kinro kansha no hi, though it used to be Niname-sai, the celebration of rice, the origins of which not even I recall (though, gods, how I do miss rice).
So here we are eating pickled jellyfish today, dried-shredded jellyfish tomorrow and, on good days, jellyfish stir-fried with kelp, jellyfish sashimi with vinegar, jellyfish burgers, jellyfish satay, jellyfish tempura, candied jellyfish. When was the last meal I’ve had sans jellyfish? If it really has anti-aging proteins – I may live forever.
We are what we eat.
I push the bowl away and the men stop talking abruptly. I wipe my fingers politely on the table and stand. “I’ll have my credit voucher now, kudasaimasu.” I bow, hoping the blond will pay in advance. I want the information those credits can be traded for. The Doc has also promised answers after doing his lab tests. I’ll get what I need – though I’m almost afraid of knowing. Suddenly I just need to leave.
“Where will you go?” Leo’s voice is gentle.
I grab my cup of cloudy water, draining it quickly. Water is life.
“Gotta go,” I plead. “Oitoma! I can … I’ll come tomorrow ….”
Charlie reaches for his satchel, but Leo puts a restraining hand on his arm.
“Jack.” Leo’s voice is so deep and resonant it hurts the heart. “We’ll pay you to help with Charlie’s research. But come with us. You’ll have a warm place to sleep, food, and no one will harass you. Promise.” There’s kindness in this voice.
I can only turn away – just in time to spot Joon outside, making his way toward us up the littered boardwalk. My face flushes hot. Joon is in his usual shabby black-on-black and looks thin and dangerous. Hazel eyes are narrowed under the thick coils of his dreadlocks and his hands are hidden in deep pockets. I scan for a knife, but Joon isn’t stupid. He won’t show arms near the Market Guard. He stops at our table and nods to me alone.
“Jae. Forget to check in?”
“Couldn’t.” I say miserably, sitting again quickly to hide my new boots under the wobbly table. “Been … busy. We was just ….” How do I explain my new finery and all this food?
“You a friend of Jack’s?” Leo asks, deep voice rumbling. “Won’t you join us?”
Joon ignores him. “Time to go, J-boy.” I look away. I don’t want to go anywhere with Joon in this mood.
“Leo ….” Charlie has collar insignia identifying him as a Uni Doc. I can see Joon calculating whether he’s the one in charge just as Charlie gives Leo a push and the bigger man stands, looming over Joon, dark eyes deep and impossible to read. I imagine Leo as a bear – but I have animal metaphors in my head that no one else gets. I also know Joon will just get stubborn if challenged.
“Jun, is it?” Leo’s deep voice is soothing. “We’d like to talk to you too – about a business transaction.”
“Might have a minute for business.” Joon’s uncomfortable. He seems to be backing down. Wow. One up for the big guy. But I notice Joon watching Leo closely and I feel the first cramp of what might be jealousy, might be my jellyfish refluxing. Joon slides gracefully into one of the rickety chairs.
“And it’s Joo-oon,” he adds, nodding for Leo to slide over the food bowl. Like me, he doesn’t hold back when someone else buys. “Jae and Joon. We come as a set.” He smirks, but I know the anger is still there under the tight smile. It always is.
Leo picks up the sweating clay pitcher Charlie brought and refills our mugs with real filtered water, the clearest I’ve seen. It tastes delicious. It tastes like clean dirt.
Once Joon settles, Charlie starts. “We’re paying Jack – Jae? – to help with our research. Perhaps you could as well?” Big Leo clears his throat but Charlie ignores him. He’s in lecture mode. I watch Joon’s face, waiting for the storm.
“Can I assume that you’re also ….” Charlie stops suddenly, wincing. It’s obvious Leo kicked him under the table. “Ow. Ah. Perhaps I should just tell you about our project.” Charlie glares at Leo, who grins, showing big white bear teeth.
