Claude Lalumière
Over the percussive noise of the rain, Maxim hears male voices shouting and cursing. The sound comes from the direction of his home. He detours half a block so as to hide among a patch of trees that affords him a good view of the apartment complex’s front door. Near the shore of False Creek, the downtown Vancouver neighbourhood where he currently lives, there are trees everywhere. Even more so now than before; even after only a little over a year of urban neglect, there are already signs of nature taking back the city.
Two middle-aged white men are trying to enter the building. But the old Chinese man who lives on the third floor is blocking the door. The Chinese man isn’t talking loud enough for Maxim to make out his words over the distance and the rain. The message of his body language, however, is unambiguous: you may not enter.
The white men are wearing drab business suits that have seen better days. Their hair is long, their beards unkempt. They do not look dangerous, merely pathetic. Four metres away from the door, they continue to shout obscenities and threats at the building’s de facto guardian. The Chinese man responds firmly, shaking his head.
The Chinese man takes a step forward. The two men in business suits take three steps back. They know they have lost, Maxim observes, but still they do not leave, nor do they cease their verbal abuse. The taller of the two men bends down to pick up a rock. He hurls it toward the front door. The throw is ineffectual; the rock lands half a metre short of the Chinese man, who again steps forward. The white men retreat twice that distance. Without saying a word, the Chinese man picks up the rock. He looks at the white men, flexing his forearm with the weight of the rock in his hand.
The men yell a few more threats and insults, but Maxim can hear the defeat in their voices. Finally, the shorter man tugs on his companion’s jacket and the two are off, scowling back at the source of their defeat and humiliation. As the men leave, the rain tapers off.
This is not the first time Maxim has witnessed his neighbour – who is barely above 150 centimetres tall but powerfully built, his demeanour projecting a physical arrogance that seems unaffected by his diminutive height or his advanced age, which Maxim estimates at around 70 – chasing off people trying to enter the building. Once the white men are completely out of sight, Maxim emerges from his hiding spot. Careful to avoid the intimacy of eye contact, the Chinese man steps aside so that Maxim can enter.
As Maxim climbs the stairs to his apartment – a fully furnished tenth-storey luxury condo that showed no signs of ever having been inhabited before he claimed it – he recalls reading an article that discussed housing costs in Canada, back when there was such a thing as housing costs: Vancouverites, on average, spent 80 to 90 percent of their income on housing, compared to Torontonians, who spent 50 to 60 percent, and Montrealers, who spent 25 to 30 percent, which was the recommended ratio for sustainable living. If the so-called “invisible hand” of the market really worked, the article speculated, housing would not be so expensive in Vancouver; the city’s vacancy rate for condos and apartments hovered in the 20 to 25 percent range, which should have brought prices down, but it didn’t. Vancouver remained the most expensive city in which to live in Canada, regardless of how many housing units were left uninhabited, forcing people out to ever more distant suburbs. Most of the vacancies consisted of condos such as Maxim’s. Near the once-bustling Granville Island, it offered a breathtaking view of the downtown cityscape across from the water of False Creek.
Maxim has now resided in this apartment building for a year. When he first arrived there were no live residents. Of the 25 units, only 12 had corpses in them. The first thing he did was start to drag the bodies, one by one, outside the building to leave for scavengers. But there were 23 corpses; after the fourth one, his stamina gave out. Then he hit on the notion of throwing them off their balconies, and that went much faster. He did all this in full daylight, to minimize personal risk, as he remembered reading that most predators and scavengers hunted at dawn or twilight.
Birds and insects converged on the splattered remains immediately, but that night Maxim observed coyotes feasting. The next morning there were heavy rains; by the time the weather calmed just before sunset, there was barely a trace of gore left.
A week later, three Latinas – aged, Maxim guessed, between 20 and 50 – moved in two floors beneath him, taking over the entire level. The following day, the Chinese man appropriated a unit for himself on the third floor. No one has settled in the building since, because the man always chases anyone new away. He never interferes or interacts with either the women on the eighth floor or with Maxim.
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Maxim Fujiyama lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America, Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy. Maxim doesn’t like people to make assumptions about shared knowledge when they express themselves, either verbally or in writing. Everything should be defined and contextualized carefully, so as to make sure there can be no misunderstandings. For example, there’s another Vancouver 490 kilometres south of the one he lives in; the other Vancouver is in the state of Washington, in the United States of America. Aside from seeing it on maps, he knows nothing of that other Vancouver.
Two years ago, his hometown boasted a population of 700,000, with the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area comprised of more than 2.5 million inhabitants, the third-largest urban agglomeration in Canada. Now, without official statistics, Maxim is hesitant to make a precise guess. But, for one year now, he has been keeping tabs.
Two years ago, it would have been impossible to take note of every person encountered or observed in a single day, or even walking the length of a downtown block. There was too much activity going on at all times.
According to his observations, Maxim has identified 1,324 different people in Vancouver. At least 597 of these can be assumed to currently reside in the city, as he has recorded their presence throughout the past year at various intervals. Another 344, seen no more than three times and not more recently than 60 days ago, he lists as “transient or deceased.” Another 104 were only observed for the first time in the past eight weeks, so their status is still “indeterminate.” He counts 170 whom he observed regularly for the first few months but then disappeared; these are noted as “deceased or emigrated.” Finally, he identified 109 corpses as “newly deceased,” as he had previously counted them among the survivors spotted in Vancouver. He does not keep tabs on other corpses: those who died more than a year ago, such as those of his parents. There are too many to count, and they fall outside the scope of his survey.
He has not spoken to any of the survivors. And no one has tried to talk to him. The inhabitants of Vancouver seem content keeping to themselves, which suits Maxim. He only ventures from his base of operations to scavenge or observe and record the population of the city. There are also nonhuman animals in Vancouver; beyond the usual urban fauna of squirrels, cats, dogs, crows, pigeons, sparrows, and the like, Maxim has seen numerous foxes, rabbits, and coyotes and a handful of timber wolves, lynxes, cougars, and bears. He lacks the expertise to be able to distinguish individuals of most of these species, so he has not been keeping tabs on their population, although he does enjoy observing them.
Today, Maxim recognized four people already on his list
of permanent residents, seven people from the pool of newcomers, and two individuals he has never seen before (the two men who tried to gain entry into his building).
Precision makes knowledge and communication possible. Maxim is a precise person.
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Maxim is uneasy using the word “person.” What does it mean? Who or what is a person? Can only humans be called persons? Are dogs persons, too? Cats? Parrots? Lions? Dolphins? Elephants? Mice? Iguanas? Octopuses? Sharks? Some say that chimpanzees and gorillas are persons and should be treated as such. Who or what defines the limits of personhood? If being human equals personhood, does that mean that chimps and gorillas are in some way human? For many years, humans were thought to be Cro-Magnons. Persons were Cro-Magnons; other animals, from primates to insects, were not. Fossils from other branches of not-quite-human hominids had been found, but all of these were thought to be extinct. Later DNA analysis told us that, no, they were not truly extinct, and, yes, they were human, too. They still live among and within modern humans – or at least what remains of the human population.
When the Cro-Magnons migrated out of Africa across Europe and Asia, they encountered these other humans – the Neanderthals, the Denisovans, and probably others whose DNA has yet to be located in the current human gene pool, such as the Red Deer Cave People, and others whose fossil record and DNA may as yet be undiscovered. To what degree did these different types of humans fight or cooperate? How much did they recognize each other as akin or distrust each other as alien? The details of those encounters are forever lost, but one thing is now certain: these different branches of early humans interbred. Were they all persons? Some modern humans are part Neanderthal, part Denisovan, part who-knows-what other species of early human. Are all modern humans equally persons, regardless of their genetic background?
Before, when Maxim still lived with his parents, when Vancouver was a populous metropolis, Maxim felt more alienation than kinship toward other humans, including his mother and father. He was keenly aware that humans were all different, as he felt similar to no one, not even to his parents. When he first read about the Neanderthal and Denisovan genes present in, respectively, European and Southeast Asian lineages, Maxim grew even more intensely aware of the differences that separated him genetically from everyone else.
Maxim’s mother, Giselle Beaulieu, was a Francophone from the province of Quebec, more precisely from Longueuil, a suburb on the south shore of the Island of Montreal, across the St. Lawrence River. She moved to Vancouver to teach French at the Vancouver School Board. She never mastered the different “th” sounds and never quite grasped the role of emphasis in English pronunciation, but her vocabulary in both languages was extensive. Being of Caucasian European descent, her genes included Neanderthal DNA, thus so did Maxim’s.
Tomoyuki Fujiyama, Maxim’s father, was Japanese. He had come to Canada at age 17 to study biochemistry at the University of British Columbia and ended up staying to become a professor at that same institution. He spoke perfect CBC English and only slipped into Japanese when he drank too much alcohol, which he always did at parties. Sometimes, too much drink would cause him to forget how to express himself in anything but Japanese, although he still understood if people spoke to him in English or French. Under normal circumstances, his spoken French was inconsistent but serviceable. According to the latest findings in genetic anthropology, the Japanese, and most mainland Asians, like most sub-Saharan Africans, had never bred with either Neanderthals or Denisovans, so they are thought to be fully Cro-Magnon.
Maxim, however, doubts that the whole story is quite so simple. Geneticists have been able to identify surviving Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA strains only because they had located and identified the DNA of these other primates. There were likely other species of early humans, as yet unidentified, with whom the Cro-Magnons also interbred, both in their African homeland and as they spread across the globe.
Maxim believes that every ethnic group is genetically distinctive, the result of interbreeding between different species of early humans – several more varieties than merely Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. Beyond that, due to emigration patterns and further cross-breeding between racial and cultural groups, every individual possesses a unique blend of Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and other hominid DNA. Every individual human is thus differently human compared to other individuals in the population.
Not better nor worse. Not superior nor inferior. But different. Essentially: alien.
If these different species of humans could interbreed, then the line separating species is thin, if it exists at all. Then, the line separating person from nonperson must also be thin, if it exists at all.
In the playground near a side entrance to Granville Island, there’s a family of dogs who has taken up residence. The male is a brown Labrador and the female an uncut Rottweiler, with full ears and tail. They have had at least two litters. Each of their nine pups looks completely different from the other. The adult dogs guard their territory but are not overly aggressive. They allow some other animals passage through the playground and warn off others. Sometimes, they even invite humans among them, wagging their tails as the bipeds approach, and integrate them within their pack’s play. Some humans they growl at, though, baring their teeth. Maxim presumes their senses make them keen observers, and he is convinced their evaluations are not arbitrary but carefully considered, although the adult male and female do not always come to the same conclusion. Contrary to Maxim’s expectations, due to their breed and gender, the female Rottweiler tends to be more trusting and welcoming of visitors, while the male Labrador is more cautious. When Maxim first observed the pack, the female took the pups with her to scavenge for food while the male stayed behind to guard their home; after they came back, he would go scavenge on his own, leaving the rest of his pack home. Sometimes, he returned to find other animals – dogs, cats, humans, coyotes – with his family. After a few such occurrences, he switched roles with the female, rounding up the pups to go with him and growling at his mate to stay behind. Now, if he finds intruders with his mate when the pack returns from scavenging, he and his pups rush in barking and chase them away. When the female leaves to find food on her own, he corrals all the pups and makes them stay with him. He then stands guard vigilantly over his offspring and territory, not letting anyone approach, relaxing only once his mate is back with the pack.
Are these dogs not persons because they are not humans? Regardless of the answer, it would still be too logistically complicated for Maxim to include nonhumans in his survey. His criteria for inclusion and exclusion trouble him, though.
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When Maxim became sick, his parents were still healthy. Maxim dimly remembers the early days of his illness – nothing beyond vague images of his parents nursing him. He remembers, too, that three days before he was affected, all hospitals and clinics across British Columbia had been closed down “for reasons of national security and public safety.” That had been 14 April. All schools and most government services across Canada had been shut down three days earlier than that, with the same uninformative and nondescript reason given. Starting on 3 April, people had been falling sick in Vancouver – and, according to what Maxim gleaned on the Internet, around the planet; making a link between the unexplained epidemic and governments’ secretive security measures worldwide was unavoidable. Rumours flew all over the Web, but no official source gave any clear answers as to what was happening. At least, not before Maxim got sick, and there’s been no way to get news since he recovered.
Maxim has no clue how long he was ill or how long he convalesced. By the time he fully regained awareness, his parents were no longer looking after him, and he had clearly not been tended to in quite some time.
He found his mother and father in their bed, both deceased, under the sheets as if asleep. From the smell and look of them, he assumed they’d been dead for several days. Not that he’d even been around a corpse before, but he couldn’t imagine that only a few hours could result in such decomposition. Now that he was aware of it, he could no longer ignore the smell. He could not stay here.
Maxim, having been bedridden for an unspecified long time, was aware of his own filthy state. He forced himself to take a shower – a quick one; there was no hot water, and he shivered under the ice-cold blast. In the kitchen, where he hurried to pack supplies, he confirmed that there was no power. Nothing from the fridge was salvageable but there were plenty of canned goods, nuts, and crackers. Hunger assailed him suddenly, and he devoured an entire box of flaxseed crackers. He tossed the rest of what was still edible, along with several changes of clothes, into a large wheeled suitcase.
One last thing before he left the family condo behind forever: he tried turning on his tablet but it had no juice left. It was most likely a futile effort; already, Maxim suspected there would be neither Wi-Fi nor mobile connections available, but only dead air.
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The morning after the altercation with the two white men in business suits, Maxim finds the building guardian dead, sprawled on the floor inside near the main door. Maxim kneels to inspect the body. There is no blood and no obvious clue as to how the man died.
The three Latinas emerge from the stairwell and step into the lobby. Maxim hears their gasps. He turns his head toward them, his hand still resting against the old man’s chest. For the first time since his departure from his parents’ home, Maxim speaks. “I found him like this.”
Maxim’s voice breaks before he hits the end of the sentence. With no warning, he weeps – his bereavement at waking up orphaned in this fractured world finally breaking through. He tries to contain it, but he can’t. His entire body shakes and sobs. He doesn’t have the strength to get up or even to stay in kneeling position. He plops down, sitting on the floor; his will to do anything but give in to the tears flows away. The youngest of the women crouches down and hugs him to her.
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Maxim is fluent in three languages: English, French, and Japanese. He does not need to understand Spanish to grasp that the women are arguing about him and that they are all three of them scared. Probably not scared of him, though, or they wouldn’t have let the youngest one lead him into their floor of the building or leave him unsupervised as they argued among themselves.
Their living space is different from his. Maxim has not moved any of the furniture or in any way altered the neutral decor and layout. If Maxim were to vacate, he could do so immediately and there would scarcely be any evidence that he ever inhabited the condo. The women, on the other hand, have clearly made the space their own. Their place is bursting with colour and knick-knacks. No wall or surface is left blank. The effect is busy and alive but not cluttered. It feels like a home, in a way his own space does not.
The women have stopped talking, and the silence grows thicker with each passing second – until the oldest woman utters a terse sentence to the one who was kind to him, which is followed by another silence, this one volatile and pregnant with conflict. But it’s short-lived. The youngest woman says one word in response to the eldest, then turns back toward Maxim.
To sit next to him on the couch, she has to displace a handful of large, colourful cushions. Maxim is holding on to another of these cushions, clutching it to his chest. It smells like flowers, and the aroma soothes him.
She puts a hand on his forearm: “I’m sorry. I want to take you with us, but…”
“Take me where?”
Her grip on him tightens. “I… We don’t know yet, but it’s not safe here. Not anymore. Anyway, you can’t come. My aunt says family only. Will you be okay? Are you alone? Is there anyone left that you can…?”
Maxim looks at her hand on him as her words trail off. Then he looks at her carefully, and he notices that she’s younger than he’d previously believed. She’s no more than two or three years older than he is. Maxim is short at only 165 centimetres, but she’s a few centimetres shorter, with long hair that looks well maintained, despite the lack of, well, just about everything. Looking straight into her big bright eyes, Maxim says: “My name is Maxim Fujiyama.”
That makes her laugh, and Maxim knows that he has never seen anything so beautiful as this girl laughing.
“My name is Perla, Maxim,” she says brightly, but then her face darkens. “You don’t have anyone left, do you?”
Maxim’s heart is beating so hard, it almost overwhelms her voice; the sound of her voice makes it beat even harder. He says, “I have you, Perla. You’re my friend.”
Perla looks away from him, takes her hand away, and wipes her face with her forearm. She turns her head back toward Maxim and shakes her head, her eyes moist. She leans in and brushes her lips against his ear as she whispers, “Yes, I am your friend, but I’m not a good friend.” She lets her lips linger on his cheek for a split second before she gets up and says, in a loud, cold voice, “You have to go. Right now.”
He then notices that the two older women are looming only a metre away, sternly glaring at him. He leaves without another word, without another glance at Perla. As he climbs the stairs up to his floor, he overhears the family of women yell at each other.
Maxim does not sleep that night. He sits on his balcony until sunrise, keeping an eye on the front door. No one comes in, but neither does he see the women leave. Have they changed their mind? No – before the dawn mist has fully lifted, just as he gets up to step inside, he spots the three of them exiting the building. Each of them is carrying a large rolling suitcase and a big handbag strapped around their shoulder. He watches them walk south; he stares at Perla, expecting her to look back at him. She never does, and soon the trio is out of his sight.
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A sharp noise in the night awakens Maxim. Alert, he listens carefully, but all seems still.
Twenty days later, and there have been no further incidents in the building. Sleep comes less easily to him now. The feeling of loneliness that welled up in him in the aftermath of finding the Chinese man’s dead body continues to overwhelm him when he lies down in bed at night, and, even once he does succeed in falling asleep, his slumber is much lighter than it was before. The slightest noise wakes him up, feeding a gnawing worry that Perla’s family was right. Is it no longer safe to stay here? Is it safe anywhere anymore?
Routine affords Maxim some comfort and sense of security, so he continues to update his survey. He has witnessed no trace of his former neighbours in the last few weeks anywhere in the city, and he presumes they have migrated southward. Out of the 1,376 different people observed in Vancouver since he started his survey, he currently estimates an urban population of 602; another 340, provisionally listed as “transient or deceased,” have been observed no more than three times in a short span and not more recently than 60 days ago; another 148 were only spotted for the first time in the past eight weeks, so their status is still “indeterminate”; the 170 “deceased or emigrated” whom he observed regularly for the first few months but then disappeared is so far a steady sum; finally, he has so far identified 116 corpses as “newly deceased” since his awakening.
As Maxim drowses back to sleep, another noise shocks him to full wakefulness. There’s no mistaking the sound: a door being slammed. And now: the sounds of multiple people running, multiple hands pounding walls. There are people inside the building.
Maxim gets dressed quickly. He hesitates, pondering whether and if he should bring anything: his notes, some food, knives, extra clothes…
There’s a loud bang at the door. Maxim freezes, unprepared, unsure what to do, unsure that there’s anything he can do…
The door bursts open. A fetid stench fills the apartment. Maxim can barely see the outline of the intruder: of average height but uncommonly bulky.
Maxim bolts for the open door. Something sharp cuts his cheek. He yells from the pain, and at the same time the intruder crashes into something in the dark and stumbles onto the floor. Maxim escapes down the stairs. On most storeys he can hear people beyond the stairwell, in the condo units: objects being thrown around, the burst of things shattering on the floor, various bangs and crashes. It sounds like random destruction to Maxim’s ears; why are these people doing this? Maxim makes it outside without further incident.
Standing on the moist, feral lawn – it rained earlier this evening – he touches the cheek where he was cut, and his hand comes back dripping. Now that his adrenaline rush has subsided, the pain in his cheek gets sharper. Outside, it’s cool, only a few degrees above freezing, and Maxim is underdressed. He starts shivering. He tries to concentrate, to come to a decision, but he’s getting dizzier, his mind cloudier. The wound on his cheek is still open, the blood loss weakening him.
He’s barely conscious when the female Rottweiler from Granville Island comes up to him, barking.
And that’s when Maxim succumbs to the night’s ordeal and faints.
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The dog’s tongue leaves a trail of saliva on Maxim’s lips as he emerges from unconsciousness. The Rottweiler is being gentle as she licks the wound on his cheek, but her aim is broad. One of the pups whimpers, so she stops tending to Maxim to see to her offspring; immediately, five of the other pups swarm him, sniffing him all over and licking his hands. They try to get to the wound, but by now he thinks it’s best to leave it alone; he shields it with one of his hands, careful not to touch it as his fingers are filthy with mud and grime.
Judging from the state of his clothes and the aches and bruises his back is suffering from, the Rottweiler dragged him all the way here – across the grounds of his building, across the remains of the pedestrian path that lines the shore of the False Creek inlet, and across the small pedestrian bridge – to the playground on Granville Island.
The Labrador male stands guard near the mouth of the bridge. His body is rigid, alert. It’s dawn; usually the dogs would go on a scavenging run. But they show no sign of budging, of wanting to leave the security of their home. Are they worried about the same group who invaded his building?
But there are many bridges that lead to Granville Island, many paths that lead into the playground they’ve made their home, and it’s impossible for the dogs to guard them all and stay together at the same time.
The day goes by without further incident. At dusk, Maxim and the Rottweiler leave the playground together, in search of food.
Maxim considers investigating if his building is safe now, but he decides to steer clear of it.
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Maxim makes no special effort to keep up with or follow the dog, and soon they’re no longer wandering together. He’s grateful to her, and he knows where to find her if he wants to see her again, but for now he concentrates on finding lodging for the evening. He settles on a one-level rowhouse that’s been completely trashed, but has plenty of bulky furniture, which makes it easy to barricade the doors and windows.
He sleeps deeply, through the night and well past sunrise. His slumber is haunted by vivid dreams: surrealistic montages of physical violence, sexual fantasies and fears, cannibalistic orgies, cities being run over by swarms of invading monsters.
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The three big scabs on Maxim’s cheek indicate his wound is healing. It’s still a little sensitive, but no apparent infection. He settles into his new home and his new routine, which is not that different from his old routine – scavenge for food, clothing, and supplies; explore the remains of the city – except that he has abandoned his survey, having lost his notes when he was forced out of his previous lodgings, and that now he makes a point of spending part of every day with the dog family in the Granville Island playground. The pups love to play with him, and he has developed a strong bond with the mother. The father, the Labrador, accepts him passively, neither encouraging nor discouraging his presence within the pack.
With increasing frequency, Maxim feels as if he is being followed. He vacillates between being worried about his safety and dismissing the sensation as paranoia.
When he returns home from today’s visit with the dogs, he finds his door open. Warily, he goes in anyway. There’s no one else in the house, but there’s food left on his table: apples, berries, lettuce, other leafy greens he can’t identity, and some dead fish – a better haul than he usually manages these days. He eats everything.
The next day, he again finds food on his table. And the next. And the next…
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Maxim decides to stake out his old apartment building. It’s easy enough for him to hide unseen among the trees and keep a vigilant watch on the front door. Although Maxim has abandoned his formal survey, to satisfy his curiosity he still observes and surreptitiously follows the people he encounters in the course of his daily wanderings, but no one has ever led him back here. Are the invaders still here? How many of them are there? Who are they?
The instant he sees the first one of them emerge from the building, Maxim realizes that he already knew, that there had been just enough light to dimly make out the one who had raided his former apartment. But it had been easier to pretend not to have seen, to pretend not to know.
Like most mammals, they come out at dusk. There are nine of them. Are there more who stay behind while the others go hunt and forage?
Mammals. Yes, they are mammals. They are primates. Perhaps they are even human. But are they persons? Are there more groups of them elsewhere in Vancouver?
They wear no clothes. They’re furry, like monkeys or apes. But they walk fully erect on their hind legs, like humans. Some of them carry sticks, which they partially use as canes. Their fingers end in sharp claw-like nails, the sight of which makes him touch the scabs on his cheek. None of them are very tall; in fact, Maxim, himself of less than average height, is taller than any of them. Their frames are broad and muscular, though. Their heads, feet, and hands all seem disproportionately large. Big. Maxim snickers silently to himself: The Bigfoot people really do have big feet. Maxim thinks that Bigfoot is a stupid name, though. Sasquatch is better, and that’s what he’ll call them.
The question reverberates in his mind: Are they persons?
Cro-Magnon DNA dominates the stew of primate genes that make up Maxim Fujiyama. He wonders how close or how far to his own genetic makeup these Sasquatches are. Maxim is convinced that, yes, they are human, but they are differently human than he is, more differently human, more alien than any human he has ever seen before.
There’s a gust of wind, and the odour hits him; a stench similar to the one when his previous apartment was broken into. Maxim’s senses become hyper-alert to his surroundings. He turns his head toward the source of the wind: there’s a Sasquatch standing at an angle behind him, approximately a metre to his left.
Maxim yelps in surprise and fear. He runs away as fast as he can, but he’s distracted and careless; he trips on a loose paving stone. He skids on his scabbed cheek, and it starts bleeding again. It’s only a superficial scrape, but it stings sharply. He picks himself up, his heart beating furiously. He looks back. The Sasquatch has made no move to chase him. It’s a female and particularly small. Their eyes meet, and she darts away, vanishing from Maxim’s view before he can figure out in which direction she has fled.
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The next morning, the Rottweiler is waiting for Maxim outside his door. She accompanies him around the city. Since he gave up on the survey, Maxim’s explorations of the city have been more playful, more random, more fun. Yet a part of him feels restless and rudderless, as if he were waiting for something, some change. But he knows there is nothing to wait for.
Today, the Sasquatch makes no effort to hide herself. She follows the two of them from a safe distance. Maxim sees her on rooftops; across the street, crouched on the hood of derelict automobiles; watching them from ahead, then running away as he and the dog approach.
The Rottweiler sees the Sasquatch, too. The dog tenses every time she sees or smells her. Maxim pets her when he notices her change in attitude; the Rottweiler never barks at the Sasquatch, but occasionally she does emit a low grumble that doesn’t quite reach the level of a growl.
When Maxim returns home, the dog licks his hand then trots away toward Granville Island. For the first time since the bounty started, there’s no food waiting for him inside. He chides himself for not having made any effort to forage for anything today. Today’s expedition was longer than usual – the presence of both the dog and the Sasquatch made it more exciting – so now he’s both hungry and too tired to go out and find food.
There’s a bang at the door, which reminds Maxim that he hasn’t yet barricaded the entrance for the night. Maxim sits motionless, not sure what to do. Then, there’s another bang. Maxim gets up and opens the door a crack. Nothing happens. He opens it a bit wider and finds three apples and a fish have been left for him on the ground. There are two rocks next to the threshold. He notices the corresponding dents on the door.
As he collects the food, he sees the Sasquatch approximately four metres away, staring at him. Again, when he catches her eye, she darts away.
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As Maxim play-wrestles with three of the pups, he wonders if he should give the dogs names. He has discovered that, because he has no name for any of them, he doesn’t distinguish between the various puppies, even though none of them look the same and they all have different personalities. In his mind, they have remained “the pups” – a collective rather than a group of individuals. The parents are clearly individualized in his mind because he refers to them as “the Rottweiler and the Labrador,” “the female and the male,” or “the mother and the father” – all of which have taken on the weight of names. But he has so far resisted applying human names to his canine family.
His family. It’s the first time he’s consciously thought of the dogs this way. Soon the family will grow: the Rottweiler is pregnant again.
Maxim scrutinizes the shore to the south of Granville Island. Yes. She’s there again. For the past five days, the Sasquatch girl has been watching Maxim play with the dogs. Since their initial encounter, Maxim has been observing her as much as she lets him. He has come to the conclusion that she’s in her mid- or late teens, no more than a few years younger than himself.
Family, Maxim thinks again. Yes, he will give all the dogs names. And the new pups, too, after they’re born.
Maxim gets up and walks toward the small pedestrian bridge. At first the pups follow him, but he motions them away and they start playing with each other. He turns back toward the shore. The Sasquatch is still there, carefully observing his interaction with the dogs.
He walks toward her – slowly, calmly, halting every few steps, gauging her reaction to his approach. He looks back toward the dogs. The Rottweiler and the Labrador are watching his every move, occasionally glancing at the Sasquatch. They’re getting used to her, he thinks, so they don’t bark or growl. They’re waiting to see what Maxim will do.
Maxim crosses the bridge. The Sasquatch hasn’t moved, as if she were waiting for him. They lock eyes. For once, she does not dart away. He steps within reach of her. He puts a hand to his chest and says, softly, “My name is Maxim Fujiyama.”
He extends his other hand toward her, palm upward. She looks at it but doesn’t move. Maxim stays still, his hand still offered. He closes his eyes.
He waits. Is she still here? He doesn’t want to startle her, so he keeps his eyes closed. He waits.
When the moment of contact comes, it startles him, but he remains immobile.
Her palm is roughened with calluses. Her fingernails are hard and sharp. Exploring the skin of his forearm, she draws blood. Maxim’s eyes pop open as she lets go of him. She’s poised to run away, but she hesitates, closely observing Maxim. He smiles at her.
She changes postures and takes his hand, frowning at the fresh cut on his flesh. It’s only a little scratch; still, he’ll have to wash it to make sure it doesn’t get infected. She kisses the wound; her mouth is surprisingly soft.
Maxim laughs. She laughs, too.
He reaches out and takes her hand in his. Their palms press tight against each other.
Together, they both laugh harder.