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“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.” – Stephen Hawking
Date: 03.10.2099
Earth – Kansas City, Missouri
A few wispy clouds scudded across the sky, but Mac Dolan barely noticed. Instead, his stomach gurgled with hunger as he crossed the short distance to the store, leaving his autocar parked in the loading lane in front, the door hanging open, engine still running, upon his exit.
He had cleared out the fridge, the pickles, the condiments, even the overly fancy bread his ex-girlfriend had raved about yet left behind when she moved out. She had managed to take two of the bath towels she had claimed to hate but left the bread. How many times had he heard her complain about how rough those towels were on her skin? That had been two months ago. And now that very same bread had developed a small fuzz of mold on one end. He ate it anyway. He had stared at it, sitting there alone in the empty fridge and actually felt his mouth begin to salivate as his stomach screamed for relief.
Seconds after consuming it, his stomach still gurgled, unfazed by the offerings, still aching with hunger. Some part of him was concerned, taken aback by this aberrant behavior. In the back of his mind was a nagging sense of wrongness, but it was overruled by the ravenous hunger he felt. Next he had chugged the Tabasco sauce, hoping against hope that the need for more food would be abated somewhat, distracted possibly, by the burning sensation it made as it flowed from his lips to his tongue and on down his throat. It hadn’t worked, still his stomach demanded more.
And now he was at Hy-Vee, the local supermarket, walking down the aisles, his temperature spiking and his stomach screaming for more food. He had reached the cookie aisle and his hand shook as he grabbed for bags of ginger snaps, knocking several of them onto the floor in his eagerness. He reached for one of them, unable to withstand the screaming, yawning need of his stomach any longer. His fingers tore at the packaging, bits of paper flying. He grabbed a fistful and shoved them into his mouth. Part of the packaging came with it. He swallowed it anyway, the thick paper scraping his throat as it slid past.
He didn’t even notice the woman with her two small children stop and stare at him. He was hungry, so terribly hungry. Sweat rolled down his back, dampening his shirt. He choked on the bits of the dry cookie, the pieces catching in his throat, but did not stop. He filled his mouth with more, manically swallowing, feeling the tear of them as they were forced, some almost whole, down his throat.
“Mama, dat man is eating cookies,” a tiny voice said.
The woman’s oldest child, a little girl of three years with big brown eyes and immaculate pigtails was staring at Mac and pointing at his hand.
“Mama I want some too!”
The child’s mother stood rooted in place at the end of the aisle, mouth open in shock as she watched Mac finish shaking the crumbs from the first bag of cookies and rip open the second one. She stood there, staring, unable to turn away, even as her daughter began to cry.
He didn’t seem to even hear the little girl, or notice that there was anyone else in the world there in the aisle, just him and the ginger snaps. He sat down, next to a shelf filled with Oreos, and began shoving the rough cookies down his throat, not bothering to chew at all now. Every once in a while, he would choke, even retch, as his body struggled to work with the unchewed food.
Mac’s shirt was glued to his body, sweat-soaked and stinking. He hadn’t bathed in two days, and since waking in a cold sweat he had ransacked the freezer of anything even remotely edible. He had barely waited for the food to defrost, gnawing impatiently on the frozen pizza as the peas defrosted in a pot on the stove. The peas had blackened and stuck to the bottom of the pot as he watched; he had forgotten to add water. It had taken an hour to clear the freezer and fridge completely. There hadn’t been a lot, his appetite had been elevated for weeks now and he couldn’t keep up with grocery shopping while working full time and going to school. When the last item had been cleared, even the crumbs wiped off of the shelves, he had walked away from the fridge. He had left his house, the front door wide open and walked out to his autocar.
Mac ignored the growing crowd, reached instead for a third bag. He tore it open, fingers shaking. In the distance, he could hear the manager of the store asking everyone to step out of the way as he and two police officers marched down the aisle.
Nothing really mattered to Mac, except the intense pain in his stomach. It seemed that the food he was cramming down barely touched that horrific need, but the food was what he desperately craved. It was hard to think, hard to get past the hunger. Just a few more bites, just a few, and surely he would feel better.
A tightness had begun to build, starting in his stomach, moving up into his throat, a sense of fullness combined with the desperate hunger. Two conflicting messages in his body. The need to feel something, anything sliding down his esophagus was now at its apex.
He had lost all other focus, and the police officer speaking to him had no effect. He swallowed more Oreos, gagging and choking on the hard cookies.
“Sir, you need to come with us.”
The officer was lean, fit and middle-aged, with a sprinkling of white peppering his dark, short-cropped hair. He pulled the bag of cookies from Mac’s trembling hands and Mac felt a surge of panic. He reached for them and the officer’s partner, a stout, middle-aged woman snapped one side of handcuffs onto his left wrist with a practiced, professional motion.
Mac attempted to speak, but the cookies in his mouth clogged all sound except a muffled gurgle, with pieces flying in a small, soggy shower. He reached again for the bag of cookies, resisting the police now, his body thrashing as both officers tackled him and wrestled him to the ground. There was this terrible shift as if something was giving way inside him. He screamed then, and choked.
A wash of red glazed his vision, he couldn’t breathe, and as the officers raised him to his feet, his hands secured in cuffs behind his back, and Mac’s knees gave way. One of the onlookers screamed at the blood trickling from his mouth, then the convulsions hit, his body flailing, attempting even as his esophagus detached from the bloated, and now perforated remains of the stomach, to empty the body of its excess. It was too late. It was all too late - inside of Mac’s abdomen was a mass of food, stomach acid, and bile.
Mac retched, convulsed, and then lay still, a slow pool of blood and partially digested cookies spreading around him on aisle three.
