LONG EYES and Other Stories by Jeff Carlson

Author:Jeff Carlson [Carlson, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Jeff Carlson
Published: 2011-06-01T05:29:33+00:00

PRESSURE

They said I wouldn't feel a thing, but my dreams were awful — pain and tightness, smothering weight, none of which overcame my excitement. I also dreamed of flying, dreamed that I dove right through the ground and smashed into a spectacular new universe, yet I caught only glimpses of brightness before my eyes ruptured and abrasive rock crammed through my mouth and sinus cavities.

The mind persists in making sense of things, even when drugged and unconscious. It remembers.

Waking was the real nightmare. I had no face, I weighed too little, and raw swelling in my throat choked my voice.

The bite of a needle on one leg helped center me even before the tranquilizer took hold. I stopped thrashing and understood that I was submerged in a tank not much larger than myself. I knew it was a horizontal rectangle, knew I was in its middle — yet I had no eyes. Could my hearing be acute enough to measure distance? There wasn't time to sort through my senses. The ponderous blood-weight of the tranquilizer could not subdue the breathing reflex and I dug at the water with every limb, moving up, up —

A hard ceiling punched into the smooth metal protrusions of my face before I reached a surface. There was no air. But I could not drown. I snorted water through the generous filter plate where my nose had been, then expelled a shocking pocket of liquid through the gills beneath my armpits.

For a moment I did nothing more than breathe, feeling each exhalation against my elbows. I almost touched my face, hesitated, then grew interested in my hands and brought them together. The index fingers and thumbs felt no different but my other digits were thicker, longer, webbed.

"Garcia?" Stenstrom's voice was too loud in the VLF transceiver buried high in my cheekbone, distorted by the mumble of other people around him. "How do you feel?"

I thought I heard the vibrations of his enthusiastic tone directly as well, dulled by the water and walls of my tank. They’d told me the recovery tank would be glass and I imagined his entire research team all around my naked body, bristling with recorders and palmtops, every face intent.

Andrea had always giggled when we skinny-dipped together, watchful for neighbors but emboldened by each other's daring, in the early days when we lived at her parents' house in San Diego. Before she got pregnant. "Shark!" she'd whisper, and grab for me. I can be a pensive son of a bitch and her teasing, her smiles, had always been what I needed most.

The thought of her now helped me ignore my embarrassment.

My scrotum had been tucked away, my penis shortened — protective measures that Stenstrom's people swore were reversible, like all of the surgeries and implants. I had that in writing and an eight figure insurance policy to back it, but there's not a man in the world who wants to be cut in that area, no matter the compensation.

"Garcia?" Stenstrom raised his volume painfully.

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