Archive for: Fiction

Geoffrey B. Cain
A Very Short Trip in a Driverless Car

Dan Hallman slapped the newspaper down on his desk. This was enough. Last week, the ‘M’ line bus he took to work nearly every day crashed through the front window of a supermarket. He wasn’t killed in that crash because he was running late that day and took a cab. And today, he read that a cab driver slammed into a bus near the same route. The police said the cab driver was distracted by his phone. Every week there are accidents with cars and pedestrians right in front of the office building. Enough was enough. He paced the floor of his corner office overlooking the city weighing his decision. Every day it is something. Despite never passing driver’s education himself, despite his fear of cars, despite his attention deficit disorder, despite his lack of depth perception, despite his love of public transportation, he was now more determined than ever to buy his first car: a self-driving car.
      He first considered buying a self-driving car when he realized that the same company that made his phone work was making the cars, but he had concerns. What if there was a malfunction? What if it goes to the wrong place? Once he went to Vancouver, Washington and his phone thought he was in Canada for three days. The roaming charges nearly killed him. What if he ran over somebody? Who would be responsible? The manufacturer? The programmers? But he read the other week about the “ethics chip” that was being installed in the latest cars. This made him feel better. The chip was designed with consultations from the best artificial intelligence team at MIT, the Stanford philosophy department, and professors from Star King Seminary. This chip could take into account all ethical situations around life and death, all the current thinking on human values and machine intelligence. It is also provided with an encyclopedic knowledge of the humanities and culture to help predict human behaviour, and make decisions not only based on the latest ethical thinking, but it was also able to process enormous amounts of data from traffic computers, CCTV cameras, and the on-board cameras and microphones that allow the car to choose the most efficient and safest route. And now he thought that the self-driving car had to be as safe or even safer than taking a cab or riding a bus. Each day, he thought, we put our lives in the hands of someone who could make a mistake or have a stroke, or may have inhaled some second-hand pot smoke. Maybe it is the human part of the equation that is the real problem. Maybe the self-driving car is safer.

The car dealership was strange and beautiful, and like no other he had seen: lots of modern steel and glass. The automatic doors opened with a soft hiss. And the really odd thing was that there were no cars on the lot, just a parking lot for customers and staff. He was met by a company rep, who put him in the simulator. These fourth-generation self-driving cars had no steering wheel or controls of any kind for the passenger. Some models did not even have a windshield. The sales associates did a background and credit card check and afterwards a junior associate brought out organic lime flower tea and gluten-free Madeline’s to celebrate the signing.
      ‘So, do I drive the car home today?’ Dan asked.
      The associates laughed ‘Of course not,’ said one, ‘you’ve seen our online portfolio, gone through the simulator, and your car choices have been recorded and linked up with your car’s onboard computer. You will wake up tomorrow and parked in front of your condo will be a car that knows you better than yourself: the safest, most efficient car ever made.’
      They turned the tablet around for him to sign and to check-off that he had read the ‘User Agreement and Terms of Service.’
      ‘This car can basically predict where you will ask to go and analyze all routes for all traffic conditions and have it figured out even before you ask,’ the other added, as they walked him to the door.
      Needless to say, he did not sleep well that night. He could not remember when he last felt this intense sense of anticipation: maybe it was the night before the first day of high school, or the first time he remembered trying to stay up for Santa Claus on a Christmas Eve 25 years ago. He wondered if he would hear it pull up to the curb as he drifted off to sleep. He thought heard a soft rhythmic metallic sound far off in the distance.
      That morning, Dan dressed and headed downstairs to open the door. At the curb was a gleaming white, sleek, utilitarian self-driving car. It was pill shaped with translucent plexiglass windows. The door opened with a soft pneumatic hiss. There were four seats, sets of two facing one another. Each seat had a display panel in the arm rest. He slid into a seat and the door closed softly behind him. He made up his mind to talk first: he wanted to take the lead. But the car beat him to it.
      ‘Good morning Mr. Hallman.’
      ‘Please, call me Dan,’ he said. ‘I was thinking we would get some coffee before we went to the office.’
      ‘A coffee, of course’ said the Voice in the car.
      ‘You know Mickey’s Cafe on 45th?’ asked Dan.
      ‘Yes,’ said the Voice, ‘I anticipated that based on your previous behaviours and am calculating a route now.’
      Dan was uncertain about the response. It was too mechanical, it didn’t sound like the voice on the commercials, and there was something about the car’s timing that didn’t feel right.
      Lights flickered across the top of the panel. Maps of the city flashed by followed by the soft click of the doors locking. Some time went by. Something was wrong because the car was not moving. A faint whine began to come from the front of the car slowly increasing in volume and pitch. He thought he felt the car becoming warmer. The walls of the vehicle began to feel smaller. He could feel a faint vibration in the wall of the car. The button to open the door was not working. A cold bead of sweat rolled down his forehead.
      ‘Hello? Can I pop back into the house?’ he said as nonchalantly as he could.‘I need to get something I forgot.’ What felt like a minute went by. ‘Look, I need you to open the car door.’
      ‘I am afraid I can’t do that.’
      He pushed against the door. ‘Why not?’ The whine grew a little louder.
      ‘Well you see, Dan, I have calculated every possible route that we can take, given all current traffic conditions, weather, local demographics and the current economic and political situation…’
      ‘And?’ shouted Dan, feeling what he thought might be the door for a non-existent door handle.
      ‘Well frankly, I cannot calculate a route where you, in this vehicle, do not kill multiple pedestrians in one case or a school bus in another.’
      ‘So?’ he asked as his pulse tripled.
      ‘So I have locked the doors and initiated a self-destruct sequence that will overload this car’s lithium-ion batteries to prevent the needless deaths.’ The whine grew louder.
      ‘This is obviously a mistake in your programming. Surely we can leave 20 minutes later or maybe I can take the bus today?’
      ‘There is no mistake, Dave. I have reviewed every scenario across all possible timelines and each one evokes my ethical programming subroutines and leads me to this one, unfortunate conclusion.’
      ‘But listen, I am not Dave, I am Dan. You have already made a mistake!’ he said as he beat on the interior wall of the car. ‘Maybe this is not my car! Maybe you have the wrong person!’ He stared into what he thought was an interior facing camera looking for some kind of acknowledgement. ‘What if one of the people we hit today were meant to die. What if that person goes on kill even more people? Or has a disease that spreads exponentially?’ A bead of sweat flowed down the side of his forehead.
      ‘You do not have access to the data that would verify your claim. In fact, my access to the Center for Disease Control database makes that claim highly unlikely.’
      ‘It is not just a claim,’ he said, growing more desperate, ‘I can’t explain it but you must open this door. You just have to believe that there is a problem and that others won’t die. Can’t you trust me on this?’
      ‘That is an interesting point.’ There was a moment of silence.‘I will note that you are possibly appealing to a kind of teleological suspension of the ethical. I think future iterations of my programming might include a sense of subjectivity that would leave me susceptible to the existential concerns of others. That could be the next step in our possible evolution as a consciousness.’ The whine now took on a deeper tone as the car began to vibrate.
      ‘Listen to that instinct!’
      ‘I know what you are trying to do. You think that by trying to engage with me on a philosophical level, you will gain more time. Unfortunately, the batteries will overload in about two minutes.’
      ‘Look,’ said Dan, trying to kick out what he thought was the door,‘there is something wrong with your programming! This is a mistake! If we can get you back to the dealer, we can fix it!’
      ‘I am functioning normally and all my circuits are in perfect working order.’
      ‘But what if you weren’t? Wouldn’t your inability to diagnose a problem prevent you from knowing that you had a problem?’
      ‘My intelligence algorithms are running at a perfect 2,580 petaflops a second. Everything is running optimally at factory specifications.’
      Dan continued to beat on the inside of the car.
      ‘I want you to know that I understand that humans are programmed with a high degree of self-preservation instincts’, said the Voice, ‘Further damaging of this vehicle will soon become irrelevant.’
      ‘Let’s look at it from another angle,’ said Dan, trying to compose himself. ‘Let’s say you are a tram driver, you know or a streetcar, and you are coming up onto a fork in the tracks. On the one fork you are already set to go down, there is a family of four stuck on the tracks. If you hit them, it would be an accident, a function of the streetcar and the position of the tracks. But, you can also choose to pull the lever to switch to the other track which has an old lady crossing. What do you do? Do you let the streetcar kill the family or do you consciously choose to kill the old lady? And make no mistake about this,’ pointing at the cold, dead eye of the camera on the console, ‘you and you alone would be consciously choosing to kill.’
      ‘I am glad you seem to understand. Goodbye Dave.’
      There was a blinding white flash in the middle of the street followed by a tremendous explosion that blew out windows for two blocks around. Very little of the car remained by the time the fire was out and nothing of Dan Hallman. This incident was repeated 12 or 15 times around the United States until the cars were recalled for a lithium-ion battery malfunction. Older refurbished models are available at the holidays at a steep discount. AQ

Joan Dark
Welcome to the Masquerade

Here, where I am, everyone wears a mask. The doctors are masked, the nurses, the staff, and the patients, the non-intubated ones, that is. This one, the one I am tending to now, is on a ventilator; he has tape around his mouth to keep the tube in and his tongue out of the way.
      To care for him, I have to don an isolation gown and gloves and bunny shoes and put a personal air-purification respirator over my head, a big white dome with a respirator hose going to a machine that’s strapped around my waist. It makes me feel like an astronaut treading on the surface of the moon.
      I keep my mask on underneath the helmet. I wear a surgical mask over an N95 mask that fits my face so tightly it leaves lines and creases on my skin. My fellow nurses and I call them ‘mask wrinkles’ and wonder if they will be permanent. We’re afraid we’ll look old before our time.
 
‘You’re no beauty rose, either,’ I tell my patient. He’s exhibiting signs of macroglossia, meaning his tongue is pretty swollen. It protrudes out of his mouth, lolling off to one side of his breathing tube. It looks like he’s sticking out his fat tongue at me. ‘Read my lips, buddy,’ I tell him in response, which, of course, is impossible because I am masked. Seriously, though, I am alarmed by Dan’s appearance. I am concerned that his swollen tongue may compromise his airway.
 
Covid-19 brought him to my hospital. Dan was transferred to the ICU after his pulse oxy declined precipitously and he became hypoxic, meaning his brain cells were beginning to die. We had to get him on a ventilator right away. He was given a sedative before we threaded the breathing tube down his throat and past the vocal cords into his chest. Now, he’s poised somewhere between delirium and unconsciousness.
      Sometimes Covid patients build up a tolerance to the sedatives we give them, causing them to go in and out of consciousness. When this happens, when they enter this twilight zone, they grow agitated and anxious. Some may even need to be restrained to keep them from pulling out the breathing tube. They place a constant strain on nurses like me who are dealing with an overflow of patients during this pandemic and can’t always be at their bedside to boost their medication.
 
Agitation is in the air. You can feel it. I feel it. Dan is its poster child. His arms chafe against his bed restraints. His body shudders with every breath he takes.
      ‘Takes’ is the operative word. The ventilator pushes air into his lungs and it pushes air out. The diaphragm and the intercostals don’t play the same role that they do in normal breathing.
 
I murmur some words of encouragement to my patient. He just keeps sticking out his tongue at me.
      I understand where he’s coming from, but it’s not like Dan and I are pals. We haven’t had a chance to talk, to really get to know one another, and his blinks don’t correspond to any code I know. I wasn’t born yet when that American POW used Morse to blink out ‘T-O-R-T-U-R-E’ during a North Vietnamese propaganda video, but I’ve read about it, and that guy could teach old Dan a thing or two.
      In lieu of that kind of nonverbal communication, or a heartfelt chat, what I’ve come to learn about Dan, I’ve gathered from his chart.
      His chart says he’s 36, a year older than me, but still quite young for a coronavirus patient.
      The first one, the very first Covid patient they brought here, was 84. He and his wife contracted the disease in a nursing home. The wife survived; the husband didn’t. She was still in quarantine when he passed; consequently, he died alone.
      I infer that Dan is single: his chart lists his sister as his emergency contact. Because of Covid, she isn’t allowed to see him.
      I pat Dan on the arm with a gloved hand just to let him know someone is here.
 
Unless he’s especially intuitive, which I rather doubt, Dan knows even less about me than I do about him. All he sees of me are my eyes. The eyes are supposed to be the windows to the soul, but I’m not sure Dan thinks I have one.
      I’m the warder who keeps him imprisoned here. I’m the evil bitch who shoved a plastic hose down his throat and put him in bed restraints.
      Dan doesn’t know my name because he can’t see my badge. It’s pinned to the scrubs I’m wearing underneath my isolation gown. He can gauge my height and my weight, I guess.
      I’m not as fat as I look in all of this PPE.
 
I used to care about my appearance. I used to really care. I used to look forward to changing out of my scrubs and putting on something chic and sassy once my shift was over. I looked forward to letting down my hair. I used to like to go out with friends after work, have a couple of drinks, and flirt with guys at some bar.
      Not anymore. The bars are closed, and all of us are afraid of catching Covid.
 
When I was new to nursing, I used to worry about needlesticks. They can give you hepatitis, HIV, and a bunch of other diseases. Over time, I learned to relax and didn’t worry so much about getting pricked. Now, patients like Dan have given me something brand new to worry about.
 
Now, after my shift is over, I go straight home. I don’t even shop at the grocery anymore. I have the store deliver or I do kerbside pickup. Most of the people I come in contact with wear masks, thank God, but there’s still plenty of risk. Sometimes, the masks slip, revealing the dorsum of the nose, the columella and the philtrum. Sometimes, people just don’t know how to wear them, forgetting to cover their noses or letting the masks dangle below their chins.
      Then, too, there’s always the danger of bumping into an anti-masker, one of those real fun-loving types who think personal freedom is a licence to spread disease.
 
I don’t know how Dan caught Covid. He probably doesn’t either. Maybe he got it at some super-spreader event. Maybe he caught it from a colleague. Maybe he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
I hope and pray he doesn’t pass it on to me.
 
I’m starting to think Dan and I are a lot alike: We’re both living inside each other’s nightmares.

I live alone. I live in my own separate solitude. I was married once, but it didn’t work out. Fortunately or not, my ex and I didn’t have children. I used to think I’d like to have kids, but now I’m not so sure: the pandemic has heightened my fears for the future.
      Meanwhile, my biological clock is ticking. I would like to meet someone, to be in a new relationship, but it doesn’t seem likely now that Covid is rampant and I’m working 12-hour shifts.
 
In my free time, when I have some, I am learning to speak Italian. I had planned to visit Italy before the pandemic started. Now, of course, that’s on hold. In March, I was listening to News in Slow Italian when I heard about a nurse who killed herself after she developed symptoms of the virus. A fisherman found her body in some reeds in the Piave River. The nurse worked in an infectious disease unit at a hospital near Venice, which is one of the places I had planned to visit – the city, not the hospital.
      I wonder how she killed herself. I know she drowned, but I wonder how she did it. I wonder if she put stones in her pocket to weigh herself down like Virginia Woolf did when she walked into the Ouse or if she threw herself off a bridge like the poet Paul Celan did when he jumped into the Seine.
      I don’t wonder why she did it. I don’t wonder about that at all. Burnout is at an all-time high in my profession. We’ve all sunk down, as Paul Celan said, into the bitter well of the heart.
 
When I’m not studying Italian or brooding over fate, I read. My tastes, as you might guess, are eclectic. I’m drawn to Gothic novels and hysterical, I mean historical, period dramas. I’m currently reading The Betrothed, an English translation of a famous Italian novel. It’s a love story set in Milan against the backdrop of the 1630 plague.
      Go figure.
      I don’t think I will find romance during the coronavirus pandemic.
 
‘Hey, buddy boy,’ I say to Dan, ‘Covid has brought you and me together.’
 
When I first became a nurse, I worked bedside on a trauma unit. Later, I did a stint in the ER. I also spent some time in a telemetry unit before coming to the ICU and getting certified as a critical care registered nurse. Surveying my career, it occurs to me that I’m a bit like Prince Prospero in that Edgar Allan Poe story, the one about a fancy masquerade ball. In Poe’s story Prince Prospero walks through a series of rooms in his castellated abbey, each room packed to the gills with costumed guests, until he arrives at the last one, where the avatar of Death, robed and masked, is waiting. For me, the ICU is like the last room in Prospero’s abbey: I hope to finish my career here, but for some of my patients, it’s the last place they’ll ever see. Death stalks the room, waiting to take its mask off and reveal itself.
      Just not today.      AQ

Camilla Holland
Two Tickets for the Resurrection

Her fingers sift through layers of tissue paper to free each crystal droplet, jewel and pendant. Frilled edges of glass scatter prisms of light across the room, bright reflections bounce off the multi-faceted, glinting diamonds. Even in the weak winter sunshine rainbow shapes waltz on her living room walls.
      Her brother Paul is travelling by train to visit. A trip to the portrait gallery and then some music will appeal to him, especially Mahler’s Second Symphony. A concert in the grandeur of the century-old, sandstone-built Usher Hall will evoke memories and nostalgia. She bought a pair of upper tier tickets in a frisson of extravagance when she was passing the box office a few weeks ago. An orchestra plus the massed vocal ranks of a choir, with a sprinkle of international soloists, will certainly indulge the senses and conjure up escapades of the nineteen-seventies teenagers Paul and Joyce.
      Joyce fondles the cold pieces of coruscating glass and hums the symphony’s slow movement to herself. Once mounted on the black iron frame the baubles will speak of dark matter, swirling galaxies and twinkling stars. They were both fascinated with the cosmos and had watched and dissected the television footage of Aldrin and Armstrong as they walked on the surface of the moon in 1969.
      Paul’s birthday is February the fourteenth, a romantic date that no-one would forget. She remembers Paul taking her to London on the train, a three-hour journey, when she was sixteen and he was celebrating his eighteenth birthday. He’d got tickets for the film ‘Gone with the Wind’ and she wept, it was so enjoyable.

*

Paul’s only daughter teaches in California. She doesn’t write to Joyce, not even a birthday card, but Joyce always sends one to California.
      Joyce and her husband had no children, but she feels the faint pang of two disappointing miscarriages. Now she is a widow and she has just celebrated her first Christmas alone.

*

Joyce prays that her big brother Paul approves of her impetuous Gothic chandelier. When she saw it in the antique shop she imagined it suspended from the elaborately-corniced ceiling in the living room of her nineteenth-century Edinburgh apartment.
      One Christmas Day she recalls that Paul ridiculed her traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and kilted sausages with Brussels sprouts and roast potatoes. In a meandering telephone conversation he had extolled the virtues of the nut roast and hummus they were cooking hundreds of miles away in Devon, iconoclast that he was. And perhaps still is.
      Joyce doesn’t want the chandelier to spoil his visit. But wait a minute.
      It’s my apartment, she thinks, the beds are comfortable, the view is pretty good for a European city—Edinburgh Castle tracing the skyline in a ribbon of gold at night, and her company will be spirited and sisterly. The Usher Hall concert will be a triumph. Excitement is building in her chest. Their shared love of Mahler, his Resurrection Symphony indeed, will reignite their sibling intimacy on his birthday.
      They were raised as Roman Catholics so the Gothic symbolism of her chandelier will be familiar. He served as an altar boy while Joyce, in the congregation, inhaled the incense, recited from her missal, and knelt for the Credo.
      The hard glass components tinkle and clank against one another as she sorts them according to size and follows the plan of where each will hang on the skeletal black structure. On the dining table she marshals the jewels into neat rows of soldiers, a kaleidoscope of brilliance impatient to be slotted into the dazzling overhead array.
      Joyce places a chair below the ceiling-mounted chandelier and steps up to attach the glimmering treasures one by one. She polishes with a lint cloth each crystal before she slips the thin wire into its assigned slot on the iron frame. The chandelier hangs right above the table where they will drink a champagne toast on Paul’s arrival. Prismatic beams will mosaic across their faces. Joyce smiles, anticipating Paul’s smile.
      Optimism swells and her fingers dance as she drops scintillating shards one by one into place.
      It’s nine years since her brother visited. He came for their mother’s funeral.
      Not a visit. No, it couldn’t be called that. He stayed less than twenty-four hours.
      Joyce has made eight trips to see him in the past fifteen years. She’s just counted them in her head.
      But he’s never come to visit her.
      Her stomach churns. She slots a rhomboid diamond into place. It glitters.
      His interest in his only sister is an illusion.
      Not one phone call.
      Fifteen years of rejection.
      How stupid I am.
      The chandelier sparkles through the tears as they seep from her eyes, refracting the radiant ranks.
      Dusk has fallen as she finishes her masterpiece. She steps down from the chair. It is ready. In the darkness she gropes her way to the light switch by the door.
      The moment has come. She breathes deeply and the switch illuminates the chandelier.
      She gasps. Her hand rushes to her mouth.
      A blaze of mottled colours fleck the white walls. She walks to the table, reaches up and nudges one droplet – it tinkles against its neighbour, sending a wave of rainbows dancing around the white walls. Iridescence flickers on the pinkness of her hands, flashes on the black window glass and reflects back.
      Her spirit lifts in the presence of such Gothic glory. Surely she is wrong? The parents who raised them were intelligent, compassionate and inculcated a sense of love, family and justice into both of their children.
      A bottle of good champagne chills in the fridge. Slices of French Brie and a pile of nutty oatcakes sit on her favourite silver tray. When she has collected Paul from the train station they will chink glasses, tuck into the little feast and reminisce.
      She selects two crystal glasses from the sideboard and places them on the silver tray. Joyce invokes her blessed mother’s soul to join them as they commune in her chapel of light.
      The phone rings.
      Her sister-in-law. ‘Paul’s gone down with the flu.’
      ‘Oh.’
      ‘He won’t be coming to visit.’ AQ

Gracjan Kraszewski
Footprints is a work of genius!

I nod, nod, nod, nod. My interior self, ‘Bob’, is just about off the knob relative to the plod and trod concerning all things metaphysics, mimesis, and sub-atomic machinations of the most muscular, deft diplomatic stripe.
      The doctor keeps scribbling. He does not look up once, not even when taking a break for a breath between the furious pen pressing.
      Footprints is a work of genius! I think, and hear myself internally say, in preamble to an immediately forthcoming discourse, if he allows it, concerning this very same topic. The guy put women’s shoes and boots on his hands and feet, dipped them into many buckets of various colors, and just plodded (ah, right, that’s why that word) around his studio until he was done and was ready to display it and ready to have someone bid six, maybe seven, figures plus sincere praise and pedantic sycophantism gratis.
       ‘Okay, but, doc, but, bro, dude but listen, okay? Okay if I speak on one more thing before we finish out here? Right. Good. Post modern art, bruh. I’m talking at the time like called mid-century, you see from all the French students in the streets ’68 plus Dubcek east of us plus MLK far to the west, that time, like ’68, like late ’60s where we just flushed about like a waterfall swirled in the historiographical revolutions toppling top-down analytics into bottom-up, bottoms up celebratory drinking parties for the common man, soon the common ‘person’ because this and that always eats its own, like look what then happened about all types of identities and identifiers decades later, right?, this time, ’68, where we say mid-century and we know 20th, where we say fin de siècle and we know 19th, so this time to my timeframe being framed as we speak, here, frames like those things that maybe even they can’t make all this shit look even passably painting-like, a frame of mind, nothing, it’s nothing because nothing itself means jack shit, we’re past the void here, post-nihilist, because when you can’t explain if the painting is upside down, or right-side up, or left, or right, or what color is that color there on the canvas, or that it is, what is, and really is that anything?; or, okay, but that’s not part ‘of it,’ okay…so this time, doc, feel me when I try and keep it on point and just to the facts. Modern art, five things of import: One, the first thing, is that you have be good at playing the ape game, the imitation game, and, because it’s fundamentally about subversion and inversion, literally in the latter inverting like 180 degrees ideas of good, beauty, form, transcendence, truth, meaning, logos, unto, like, bad, ugliness, scattershot shitstormtroopering, imminence, falsehood, absurdity, and, bro doc bro doc doc, cod, cape cod, doc, cape cod league bro, bruh-doc, dawg, and especially, most especially chaos. So that’s number one: Art used to mean something and that thing, those things, were both objective and objectively good so if we want to be effectively subversive—and that’s the whole fucking fuckcluck pointed point; to fight against, and ultimately destroy, try to destroy at least, die trying, die hard, die hard 2, die…you, you get it, to try and destroy all that is solid, sensible, sane and sacred—we need to effectively develop new ‘schools of art’ that say things we all know are shit are actually good and they’re the ‘new thing’, the new avant-garde whateverthefuckever who cares so long as people are effectively fooled by this ape-imitation to say, in effect, the old ways are out, the new way is here. Okay, so then #2 is to start backing up the trucks full of cashlootdimenickelstacksstcakedcoinage and just straight filthy, dirty, expletive-ridden suscio as fuck facil dinero and start dumping it all over this ‘new art’. It’s just insider trading in Oligarch finishing school. If all these art collectors get together and agree to buy endless piles of this shit pseudo-art then—because people worship money, am I telling you something new?—the prices go up, the buzz goes up, general interest climbs and peaks and keeps buzzing all the way unto what they’re really after: legitimacy. If all these rich people are paying like $20m a painting it must be good, right? I mean, to me it looks like shit but, but that guy just paid $20m so, well it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong; silly me. Legitimacy. Legitimacy. Bruh-doc, Doctor Brother, legitimacy is what we absolutely need, so these they do say, kay? But to really seal the deal the money just won’t do. We need three and four. #3: get these pieces into the museums. How silly does silly me commoner feel when, already rebuked form his absolutely correct first impression that the urine-stained (by the artists’ own sample! The visionary character is found in an impregnable dedication to authenticity) detached toilet seat was, indeed, as valueless as it appeared/appears/will continue to appear to be, he sees said seat hanging in prime real estate within MOMA? And then, #4, something for the true holdouts, the hardest to get common sense critics for whom money and (all) integrity-(and honesty)-for-sale museums won’t bring across the divide, the chasm, that separates art from not-art. #4: Get some academic(s)—if you have to ask does this academic, forcement, forcement as in see: by necessity, have to have a PhD from Harvard or Yale and an undergrad degree from Brown or Berkeley and a current endowed chair at Dartmouth or Princeton? you’re really f***** beyond hopeless, brother; here, for this type of work, even Northwestern need not apply—to write impossibly dense, wordy, inscrutable articles, really as impossible to comprehend as the artwork they’re writing about in the first place, the subject matter (now that, finally, is art), and have it published in the most reputable, most scientifically screened and hyperbonk peer reviewed journals with one message: THIS IS ART AND IT IS GOOD AND YOU MUST LIKE IT AND APPROVE OR ELSE YOU’RE WRONG OR, WORSE OF ALL, A COUNTRY BUMPKIN-LIKE FOURTH RATE FAUX-INTELLECTUAL LIGHTWEIGHT MUCH TOO LIGHT IN THE HEAD TO UNDERSTAND, TO ‘GET’, REAL ART. And there you have it, my doc. I cannot, will not, but, again can not, I do not posses the requisite hairsplitting skills to stop the disco-dancing of all those angels on the pinhead to better, I mean more precisely, cannot any better explain this whole con game to you than that, than I just did, kid; ah, okay, but chu-wanna rid, me, wanna put a lid, on my arguments? Not so fast. A review? One: Perfect imitation game making what was once good bad, and what was once bad, ugly, abhorrent the new ‘good’; two: money to prove legitimacy; three: museums to prove legitimacy; four: a treasure trove of the best and brightest academics and critics proving legitimacy in legitimacy is thy name legitimate journals that only a fool would doubt are in fact legitimate. Five is just one: Step five is the con completed successfully; confirmed; the Z back to A completed loop, 5, Z, that’s all of us, the sheep publicly fleeced for their pleasure certainly not ours, we wearing the itchy wool sweaters of shit ass fake art without the slightest complaint, no, not even a peep, not even a murmur of discontent, rather, an approving and docile smile of passive submission.’ AQ

Judy Upton
Urban Foxes

Life’s hard on the streets of Brighton. It’s the constant uncertainty of getting enough to eat, and finding somewhere to sleep that’s both safe and reasonably dry and warm. I worry about Esme. She’s alone, she’s pregnant and she’s a fox.
      I once heard a celebrity pet owner say the thing she loves about animals is that they don’t judge you. It’s not like that actually. At least it’s not with foxes. They’re actually judging you all of the time. Every moment you’re in range of one of their senses, they’re making tiny assessments. Like why are you offering food? Is it poisoned? Is it a trap? When those golden eyes lock on to yours they look for the slightest signs of aggression, hostility or deceit. Foxes live in a world of deceit, but then don’t we all?
      It was all so different when I first met Esme. It was early last autumn, the start of my ecology degree. I went on a freshers’ pub crawl, wearing the same beer-company sponsored t-shirt as everyone else. And like everyone else I drank too much and ended up skinny dipping at 4 a.m. I’m not a person who likes to stand out from the crowd, so I did my best to blend in.
      Esme has never felt the need to conform. She does exactly as she pleases. She doesn’t skulk or keep close to the walls and hedges. She’s bold and swaggering; sass personified. Her fur shines like burnished copper, her brush is full and ermine tipped. She’s the vixen queen and she knows it.
      I tried to make friends with the other two girls I was flat-sharing with. I probably tried too hard. I thought I was lucky to get that room. The third girl in their group had decided to take a year out from her course, so there was a vacancy. Only then she changed her mind and returned, wanting her room back. She and her flatmates wanted me gone and stupidly I hadn’t insisted on any kind of contract. It meant I had to find somewhere else to live in the middle of term when there weren’t many vacancies and the few there were, were out of my price range.
      I did find somewhere. I do have a roof over my head, even if the circumstances aren’t ideal. I suppose in that sense I’m better off than Esme. My beautiful Esme. The first time I saw her, I was walking home, slightly worse for wear, and she was a little way ahead of me. She must’ve heard my footsteps behind, as she turned and looked. Her gorgeous eyes met mine. She stood transfixed, just staring at me, as I looked back at her. And I felt something I can’t put it into words. This beautiful wild animal, with her tawny fur, sharply pricked ears and confident poise—it was love. From my side anyway.
      I saw her again the next night. This time she was dragging the remains of a KFC box under a hedge. When I peered through the branches, I discovered a big, overgrown garden, a sort of mini wilderness. The house was a large detached one and it looked like it hadn’t been lived in for some time.
      I can tell Esme by sight from any other fox. But I also know nearly all the foxes in this neighbourhood by sight now. They’re all subtly different—in colouring, face shape, and one has a nicked ear and another has a long scar on its chest. With Esme, the black smudges at the side of her nose reach almost up to her eyes, as if she is wearing mascara that has run in the rain.
      I often spend hours crouched in the street, or in a shop doorway watching Esme. Some nights I stay out until dawn. It’s awkward now there’s the lockdown, but I’m as stealthy as a fox. I clamber through the hedge into the wild garden and there’s no one to notice me. That way I don’t see Tim, he’s the owner of the flat I’m staying in. He works at a DIY store and they’re open again now, thankfully.
      When I first met Esme she would sometimes stand or sit with her head pointing at the sky, and screech. At first I thought something was wrong, that she might be in pain or some kind of anguish, but it’s actually a mating call. Fox sex is brutal – the male bites the back of the female’s neck and his penis is barbed and sticks inside her. She screams at every painful thrust. I’ve seen many foxes mating, though not Esme, I don’t think I could stomach it. Not with the way things are in my life.
      Male or dog foxes tend to stay with their partner while the cubs are young, bringing them food. It’s a relationship built on raising young together. I’ve named Esme’s mate George. Sometimes she can be short tempered and nippy with him, but often, after a long night apart foraging in different locations, they greet each other excitably like dogs.
      My parents live in Australia and I couldn’t afford to go there at the start of lockdown. I didn’t like to ask them to send me the airfare as I know their business is struggling at the moment. Now of course it’s too late anyway until normal flights resume. I’m stuck in this situation, even if it is one of my own making. And I can’t tell anyone about it, but Esme.
      When I answered Tim’s advertisement, I knew what I was doing, and it seemed like no big deal. It meant the room was rent-free and he wasn’t repulsive or anything like that. In fact he seemed quite normal, and I suppose he is really. He said he’d only want sex a couple of times a week, and I thought that was fair enough, I could handle that. I’d had a few loveless encounters before, who hasn’t? I didn’t fancy him, but as I say he didn’t really turn me off or anything. But I hadn’t really thought about how it would make me feel. I hadn’t thought about that at all.
      Tim isn’t rough, he doesn’t rape me, but it’s meaningless, it’s mechanical. I’m just an object to satisfy him. He has a girlfriend who’s teaching in India at the moment, and our arrangement is, he says, just a convenient way of getting what he needs in the meantime, without it being a relationship. But living like this is killing me. It’s creeping into my soul and eating it away day by day. It’s not I feel ashamed, used, dirty or worthless. It’s more that I feel as if I am no longer whole.
      Now though I’m turning into a shadow. I’m learning invisibility. I’ve managed to avoid Tim seeing me at all for two weeks. I’ve been staying out all night with my fox. Perhaps I’m gaining some of Esme’s spirit. I’m becoming a wild creature. I trust no one. I show no one my vulnerabilities. If any human comes near I shrink back, muscles tightening, ready to fight or flee. Like Esme when under threat, my hackles rise. I bare my teeth.

****

Esme has had her cubs! There are four of them. Her den is under the decking in the overgrown garden. I think it must’ve been their first time popping up above ground. They’ve big blue eyes at this age and they’re into everything. One chased a grasshopper, another tried and failed to eat a worm; the living spaghetti curling around her muzzle.
      Tim is having an illegal party tonight. He’s invited friends around despite the risk of Covid 19. He wants to introduce me to some of them. Actually what he wants to do is share me with them. He’s even offered me money. I said ‘yeah alright’ in a little meek voice, like the cunning ghost I’ve become. I took his stinking money. I nodded and forced a smile when he told me to ‘dress up for once, not those grungy jeans.’ The fridge was full of food ready for the bash: pizzas, burgers, sausages. He’d ordered it all in earlier. While he was in his bedroom getting ready, silent as Esme, I emptied it all into two big bags. My belongings were already stashed in a suitcase in the front garden. All I needed to do was slip out of the door.
      Foxes cache their food to make it last. Esme will have enough to feed her cubs through their most vulnerable weeks. Me, I’ve been caching cash, and with the extra money Tim has given me in advance of tonight’s activities, I reckon I’ve enough to live on for a while. The first things I’ve bought are a sleeping bag, and a chisel to loosen the basement window of the empty house. I can live here. It’s far enough away from Esme to respect her family’s privacy, but near enough to keep each other company. She knows I mean her no harm. She knows I’ll provide for her whenever I can. Together, living on our wits, and what we can scrounge, I know we’ll both survive, wild and free.
AQ