wildcat

There is a museum in the future. It's a museum of the future, a dynamic educational centre, and when you step out of the jump station fresh from eons in the past, from the twenty-first century or whenever... they ask you step on through and have a look. Acclimatize. Give yourself a moment to just breathe and see what the future's really like, moderated, before you step outside and everything really hits. The signs are done in real neon! Crafted deco-style because Art Deco was in style about ten minutes ago and things in the Museum like to be current.

When Joy first arrived in the future, when she first shuffled through the shining doorway and stepped out onto pale pink floors holding up pale blue ones, they gave her pamphlets. They understood that pamphlets would be familiar. Then they ushered her in the museum's direction.

And she went because it was procedure, she understood museums, and it would give her a couple minutes to figure her head out. She wasn't expecting living, human exhibits. Out past the weird Marilyn Monroes and the rocket ships, the glass seed pods. Living exhibits. Well, "human." They glowed blue in the dim lights, caught behind glass. She fidgeted with her Che Gueverra hat and clutched at her purse look a tourist. Only she was here to live, right?

The people behind glass were -- according to the legend hovering beside them -- people spliced with bioluminescent algae. They sprawled along the walls of their "cage." They held onto each other. They were women, obviously, but lacked cleavage -- just one glorious, fucked up monoboob on each. The hell? They looked like goddesses, like multiple Kalis. Tall like Steph was -- had been. Steph. Joy saw her just the night before! With that new man of hers, at the party, with the hours of drinking. They'd smoked cigarette after cigarette and posed for Michael's camera. Only Steph was dead and had been for a long time, right? The algae muses failed to see her problem, and she started to search through her purse for a cigarette. There had to be one, right? She hadn't left the twenty-first century without one, had she? It would. It would calm her down or whatever. Michael's camera was gone, broken down by now in a landfill somewhere. If they even had landfills.

"Greetings, sweetheart." Joy tried to compose herself even with the heavy breathing and where were her cigarettes? Hell, where was her lighter? Didn't she have them when she went through? The woman speaking to her was tall and bald, with copper-painted skin. She was naked as well, like the algae muses, but she had actual breasts and she even had a navel, which was something. Joy kept her eyes on the woman's face. Apparently the future was all naked Amazons. Wasn't Camille Paglia going to be just thrilled. "You're very new, and you're probably having a panic attack. I can tell, your levels are all over the place. This is normal." The woman held out a hand and Joy found herself taking it. "Acute continuity shock. You'll also be reacting to how clean our air is." Without even a trace of snark.

"Can I. I seem to have lost my cigarettes."

"I can find you some, but they won't be what you're familiar with. I could probably put you in touch with a school of bongfish if you were really desperate, but I wouldn't advise it." The woman tilted her head for a moment, as if listening to something Joy couldn't hear.

Joy tried to remember the lyrics to Nina Simone's song "Four Women," what the last woman's name was. Then she switched to trying to remember her phone number. Telus was a distant dream, surely. The algae women convulsed violently against the glass. "I wasn't expecting any of this. They gave me pamphlets..."

The woman nodded. "Your name is Joy Waller, according to the standard census. This is correct? We've had a few glitches in the last week. A clone of Emma Goldman with Alzheimer's infected part of the network."

"Yeah...it's Joy." She wanted a drink. Somewhere horrible with bras on the ceiling. Actually, who knew what bars were like in the future? And how did the woman know all about her?

"I'm Galatea."

"You wouldn't happen to know where I, uh, could get a drink? With alcohol. If people still drink."

"I know the perfect place. Popular with the immigrants. It's very nurturing. It's called the Womb..."

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

Lobsters dive-bombed. Old Roger Fiddle, standing wretched in his little red vest, banged at Biddy Goode's door while heaps of fish and seawater fell from the heavens—muck working its way into his boots to lick at arthritic toes. Green-slicked mud everywhere. "Open the bloody door, woman!" Roger scraped mossy fingernails over grotty wood. Trout, herring, whole schools of salmon. Fat sharks. Salt water dribbled down into the corners of his mouth—an ocean's tears. Fat lot of good that did anyone. "Biddy Goode!" The woman was impossible at the best of times, still mad at him for all those little arguments, what happened that one time when they were much younger and firmer. He pounded louder. Now was not the time for her to drag out old disagreements. An octopus heaved and thrashed drunkenly on the front walkway while jellyfish landed on top of it in droves. A hammerhead shark hit the station wagon parked across the street.

The door slipped inward with Biddy Goode's fingers wrapped along its edge, and then her eye and ear appeared within the darkened hallway. "Roger—" She yelped as he pushed her in, then shut the door behind them. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" She smelled of radishes, almost pleasant after the fish market clinging to the outside world. She turned to her hand, briefly, then slapped him across the face like an afterthought. So it was going to be like that, was it?

Roger pried open the blue lace curtain drawn across the door's inset window. "We're having one of them biblical plagues," he said, and jabbed at the glass. "Or flood's a-coming. My knee's been acting up something fierce." Crabs exploded against cobbles. "Might be the end of the world." Water arced against the pane and Biddy Goode dug her fingers into his arm. Thump-thump-thump, fish hitting the roof. Thump-thump-thump.

"Nonsense. The world hasn't ended since I was a very little girl." And the girl! To have been there. Little blonde ringlets, appled cheeks, scraped knees. Climbing all over her mother. The smell of fine herbs drifted by to mix with the radishes. They stepped, side-by-side, into the sitting room. Biddy Goode had been having tea—a little china cup beside a little china teapot. Not expecting company, she'd foregone the doilies. "You've got a starfish tangled in your hair." She patted at his grey hair, pulling and teasing until the offender came loose.

"You don't think it's the flood?"

Biddy Goode waddled over to the teapot and set the starfish done, clapping her hands together and not once looking up at the constant noise of things hitting the roof. The noise was happening more loudly, and much quicker. Spooshes and splashes rose up from outside. "You really are an idiot, Roger. Come here—some jasmine tea will calm you down. I swear, you've been in the most ridiculous state since Martha..." She closed her mouth and poured tea, pressing the cup into his hands afterward.

"Don't you Martha me," he sneered. This had nothing to do with Martha, he wanted to say. The starfish sprawled beside the teapot and he poked at it with the silver sugar tongs laid out. Water spilled in bursts down the chimney. "It doesn't just rain an ocean's contents, woman. Fish don't fall. This is the end of the—"

And then the roof collapsed.

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

I'm not sure I could answer correctly with what this is, beyond the first scene of something new I'm working on. I already have the second scene on the go and this feels like it might be a longer piece. Think of this as a prologue.

Dead killer whale, belly-up on top of a broken cottage—beautiful, perfect cover image, they'd win a Pulitzer for sure. Lara already had her pocket voice recorder switched on when the three of them met in front of the ruins, seawater up to their waists. Barely able to maneuver in the hip-waders, twenty-year-old Sam Hill stumbling around with her digital camera gripped firmly. Stormy with nothing in his hands, because he preferred to work from memory as Lara recalled from the newsroom. Two reporters and one photographer from the Word of the Weird Weekly, tasked with a very specific assignment: figure out why the hell a shit town like Carvelle now had a good chunk of ocean on top of it. Stormy stumbled, a sucker-rich tentacle dipping briefly above the water before sinking back down into the murk. "Watch it, twinkle-toes," Lara said, running a hand over what was left of the front gate. Barnacles. She hated the little calcified mouthes.

Stormy would have gone over in a strong gust, to be honest. He scratched at the freckle to the right of his right eye. "I don't see why Edna had to send you out here to help on this. I've been here for two days interviewing people, I don't need more bodies mucking things up." Two days of traipsing through a town half a mile wide, maybe, with grime in his hair and people holed up in the community center. They wanted help from the government, not strange reporters from some nobody magazine.

"You handle the human side." Lara ran a hand over a dead flipper. "Do we know whose house this is?"

"Beatrice Goode." Stormy took a few water-addled steps in the opposite direction, to roughly the front door. "She's still under there, apparently—they think this other guy, Roger Fiddle, was with her. The busybodies are already talking, you know what I mean? Gossip doesn't die."

"Well," said Sam, from five feet away. "The composition's going to be terrible, I can tell you that. I hate working with milky light." She scraped at the back of her shaved head and lined up another shot, clicking repeatedly from slightly shifted angles. "I would have brought a tripod, but this water's impossible." Junior photographer under Billsy, who knew what drew her to the Word in the first place. Edna was very careful about who had access to the personnel files, not that this usually stopped Lara when she really needed some information. They'd worked together once before, six months before, Sam taking pictures while Lara tracked a homicidal maniac with a playing card fetish and a habit for not dying. It was all a bit comic book, but Sam had been eminently trustworthy even if she did turn into a terrible drunk if you said the word "beer" to her. "But you'll get your dream cover, Lara, and I expect to be showered in awards and champagne for this." Better than salt crusting in one's toes and the constant smell of brine.

Lara cleared her throat and fussed pointlessly with the voice recorder. "I love that a possibly major act of God—I mean, have we figured out if anyone's randomly building an arc in these parts?—can't stop little old ladies from arguing over whether or not some old codgers were boinking behind people's backs." A dead eel floated past her, and she knew for certain that she'd never be able to go to a sushi restaurant again. "Have you got enough to put together some human interest sidebar crap for this, Stormy? What the survivors are doing to repair?" Edna expected half an issue's contents ready in three days' time, but she was like that. There'd be at least one drunken phone conversation in Lara's future, with screaming, cursing, and begging for deadline reprieve. Part of the process.

"I can throw something together. Do we know where all the water came from?"

"I talked to an old friend of mine, marine biologist, he happened to mention the Pacific Ocean's been—well—fluctuating lately, could be what caused it." At least nobody had said the A-word yet. Lara didn't really feel like doing a UFO exposé right now. "The science never makes sense anyway, and you know how much Edna hates big words—though if we can throw around teleportation she might get that glazed, nostalgic look. Easy to get a better Christmas bonus when she's like that."

© Ben Rawluk, 2008, all rights reserved.

[Borrowed Michael's camera for about five minutes last night at the Luminara Festival in Beacon Hill Park. Took a couple shots. Shot across one of the ponds, looking over at Douglas Street. Typically, all the actual festival stuff was going on behind me.]