The same year that Jake Burgess was perfecting the genetic diversity and de-extinction of Polynesian crows, while his wife was pregnant with Max and a hominid monster discovered in a block of Siberian ice in 1880, a woman I never got to meet was pregnant with me on the opposite, less civilized, side of the world.
Most things, including the Siberian Ice Man, aren’t ever really discovered; we just were never looking at them in the first place. But, like the Siberian Ice Man who developed alongside my brother Max inside Natalie Burgess’s womb, these things we humans credit ourselves with discovering were actually always in plain sight to begin with, it’s just nobody ever took the time to look at them.
And that same year when Max and I were born, my American father, Jake Burgess, also stumbled upon a process for manufacturing a new variety of carbon-polymer composite whose molecules were arranged in such a way that when it was shaped in precisely determined dimensions, the material could absorb all visible light. It could become, at certain angles, absolutely invisible to the human eye.
The Merrie-Seymour Research Group and Alex Division used the carbon-polymer composite to construct small mechanical drones.
Their drones were everywhere, watching and listening.
One of the drones had been following a man named Leonard Fountain, who had been one of Alex Division’s first—and highly flawed—human biodrones, for a very long time.
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“Why are three polar bears with a Soviet flag hitchhiking on the side of a road in Virginia?” the melting man said.
“Probably climate change,” Crystal Lutz offered.
“Do something right for once in your life. Shoot them. Shoot all three of them!” Joseph Stalin told him.
“You’re slowing down. You’re slowing down,” 3-60 said.
“I am slowing down,” Leonard Fountain agreed, “and it is hot, too. Maybe Crystal has something.”
The melting man shifted in his seat. He felt the gun in his back pocket. He wanted to do something right for once in his life.
“Pull over and shoot them!” Joseph Stalin ordered.
The melting man eased the gun from his pocket.
The three polar bears carrying the Soviet flag stood beside the road and watched as Leonard Fountain’s U-Haul van slowed to a stop in front of them.
“Do polar bears speak English?” Leonard Fountain wondered aloud.
“You are waving to the polar bears. You are rolling down your window and gesturing for the three polar bears to come to you,” 3-60 said.
- - -
Actually, the three polar bears were not polar bears, but boys from Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys. And their flag was not a Soviet flag, but a triangular red vinyl pennant with the word JUPITER written on it.
In the melting man’s hand was a small chrome-plated .380 semiautomatic. And inside the melting man’s head was a brain that had become something less of a brain and something more like fondue.