Pythion Technologies. Here there are building materials determined to be hazardous to one’s health, deposits (man-made) of chemicals or radioactive substances with a half-life of a hundred thousand years.
Somehow everyone who lives in this neighborhood or grew up here has something wrong. They blame the chemical swamp and the crematorium, the high-voltage power lines overhead and the airport nearby. Then there is the pollution from the highway, carbon monoxide, the hulks of cars leaking oil and gas and transmission fluid.
Even at the lab, mostly, the work Julie is given is depressing, not only because she doesn’t know the purpose of any of the experiments (which all seem pointless) but also because of the pervasive misery. Some of her job is cleaning cages, feeding the animals, and one day, going into the pig stall with a platter of bananas (some of the pigs have been listless, not eating, and it is hoped this will tempt their appetites, which is a bit rough on Julie since she herself has never eaten a real banana, only reproductions) by accident the door to the pen swings open and the big boar, leering, comes after her. She screams and runs to the door and out into the hall but the pig is after her and gets out of the room. He is slow but has mean little tusks and gets her backed into a corner when her screams are finally overheard.
A security guard with a cattle prod scurries down the hall and jabs her a couple of times with the electrified device before he finally gets the pig subdued; the pig has both arms around her neck and whether he is about to strangle her or kiss her she never has a chance to learn.
The security guard is yelling at her in Spanish when Dyllis comes running down the hall. Julie is crying with humiliation. “I’m sorry,” she says. Frightened, embarrassed, scared at having been the subject of the pig’s sexual interest.
“What’s he saying?” she asks Dyllis when the guard, still blabbing angrily, leads away the pig.
“What?” says Dyllis.
“What’s he saying? I never learned Spanish.”
“Ah, I’m not sure. He is angry, though, I theenk!”
“I know, but…” It occurs to Julie: Dyllis doesn’t actually speak or understand Spanish. All she has is a Spanish accent.
After this incident she is told not to go into the room with the pigs anymore. Instead she is given a lot of agar plates into which she has to pipette exact quantities of substances she has been told must never get into her mouth. Sometimes she stains slides, or counts various living organisms under a microscope. Even though the organisms are infinitely small, they do not, mostly, appear very nice – most of them spend their whole lives destroying, or trying to destroy, others.
And yet there are creatures, such as the spiderfish, she loves. When she comes into the room they all swoop down to her eagerly and twirl around her head as if they are carousel animals.
What if her whole life continues this way – the animals, always hungry, for food, for light, for air – nothing could help any of them, herself included, to escape. Here are these animals, these animals that are wrong – herself as well. Just wrong, and they know it and suffer, with their extra body parts or human limbs that were never meant to blend. And she is guilty of not being able to feel compassion for them, but only disgust, despite how sorrowfully they regard her and plead with their terrible saucer eyes.
Toward the end of summer, one afternoon her dad comes to pick her up. She is surprised to see him. Somehow their paths haven’t crossed in months, he is up and out before she is awake and gets back when she is already asleep. Usually she meets her mom outside in front; she can’t figure out how her dad has gotten past security. “Dad! What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“What you mean? I walked in, it took long time to find you.”
Then she realizes he got in because he looks like one of the workers – a janitor or electrician, whatever – and she hopes she hasn’t hurt his feelings. Even though he has lived in this country for a long long time, he still doesn’t really get it. Why couldn’t she have had the sort of father who wore a suit and did something respectable, instead of a shoe repair shop? He is so proud it’s his own, doesn’t he see how sad that is? Just thinking about it, her eyes fill with tears.
“So, Yulenka, show me around, I want to see what you have been doing all summer.”
As if things aren’t bad enough, her father is even more tenderhearted than she. The flies, the ones that Dyllis calls SloMoFlies, Julie has moved into an unused glass tank the size of a closet; it is her job to clean the tank each day without letting any of them escape. Every few days she puts rank slabs of old meat and dirty clothes into the tank. This is so disgusting, each time she thinks she is going to barf. The flies fly slowly – and they are so big! The air in the tank is stale and hot – and she hates the strange sound they make, a kind of gleeful buzzing hiss! They land all over her, it feels as if they are stinging, even though she knows they can’t, and afterwards she can’t help but scratch and scratch.
But her dad takes to them right away, and it really is peculiar how the whole swarm flies over to the side of the glass in unison and stare at him. Some have green eyes and some have blue, eyes the size of thumbnails. Her father has a puzzled expression. “What you do with these?” he asks.
“Um, not much. I’m in charge of cleaning up their tank and feeding them; it really creeps me out, Dad, the smell is so bad and they look at me kind of mean –”
“Cage is dirty. I clean for you.”
“Thanks, Daddy, but I don’t actually have to do it until tomorrow.” Her father is usually so gruff, this is all surprising.
“Is nothing. I will do it.” He opens the door and goes in. The flies land on his head and shoulders, she can’t help but think they are licking him. On second look she sees they are wiping themselves on him, cat-like, at least so it appears, and her dad has a kind of blissful look on his face, what Miss Fletsum in school calls “the find-your-bliss look”.
There are still a few on him when he comes out of the tank. He opens his jacket pocket and gestures. “Moushkas, come, my little moushkas.” More promptly than trained dogs, the flies, five or six of them, go in. “Yu-Yu, they are telling me, they want fruits and a little fish. They are not meat-eating flies but mostly fruit flies. And some of them they say are becoming wery sick.”
“Whatever, Dad. They’re just flies. And I have to do what I’m told, it’s, like, a special diet or something.”
“All living creatures –”
“I know, I know. I love animals, too, Dad, it’s just that, I dunno.”
“What?”
“Something about them – they like you, they don’t like me. Besides, I think Dyllis said they were engineered with some kind of cold virus or something, some marker so they could spread disease? I can’t remember what she says. Anyway it looks like you’re covered with snot. I mean, look!”
Her father glances down at the slimy trails that have been left by the flies, and shrugs.
“Anyway, if you say so, Daddy, I’ll try to sneak some fruit in there once in a while. But the ones in your jacket – you’re going to put them back in the tank, right?”
“No, no, don’t vorry. These flies, they say, they come with me, and tomorrow, more are born, ends up same number.” He is the only person
