Archive for June, 2010
The Cost of Doing Nothing
Friday, June 18th, 2010
You’re not supposed to do anything to stop what’s happening. Just observe, collect historical data, dispel myths, report facts. The person whose body you’re occupying did nothing on this day in 1941, and if you act now you could change the course of history. At the very least, you’d lose your government grant.
This would be your last research trip to the past.
But the howling scream of pain from the naked woman strapped to the operating table makes you clench the clipboard tighter, grit your teeth to hold back a scream of your own. This is worse than expected.
Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii watches, arms crossed, as the doctor makes another incision, peels back flesh to expose diseased organs. The scream grows louder.
You look away, noting the other staff and visitors watching the vivisection. Most seem enrapt by the display, approving even. They’ve seen this before. The Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army has been doing this for years. Untold tens of thousands of times. You want to slash your clipboard across Ishii’s face, stop the madness.
But you don’t. Ishii isn’t the only one in charge of such a facility. There’s Unit 543 in Hailar, 100 in Changchun, 1644 in Nanjing, 516 in Qiqihar. Many more.
But Unit 731, just outside Harbin, is the headquarters. And today, several of the men who will continue Japan’s wartime biological weapons research are in attendance. Ryoichi Naito, who will go on to head up Unit 9420 in Singapore. Masaji Kitano, next in line for Ishii’s job. You note the details of their faces, matching demeanor with the books and interviews you’ve read.
For history’s sake.
You make eye contact with a young man you recognize as Yoshio Shinozuka from his testimony about crimes he committed here. He’s watching you, as if he knows you don’t belong. You tense. He just shakes his head.
Then he pulls a pistol and shoots Ishii, Naito, and Kitano. Two shots each. The room erupts in confusion and people scatter. Only you and Shinozuka remain, along with the screaming subject on the table. Shinozuka walks to her side, places a comforting hand on her shoulder, and shoots her once in the head.
He turns to you, eyes much older than belong in his young face.
“I know you would have done something,” he says. “But you still have research to do. A career and a life ahead of you. Make it count.”
He puts the pistol to his head and pulls the trigger.
You go ahead and scream, then quickly disconnect, watching the scene around you fade. As you return to the future, you know you’ll reflect on this event for the rest of your life.
And the next time you visit that operating room you know how you must act.
The New Zoli
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Two years ago, Jay Lake generously supplied us with a first line for us to write short shorts to. Through a bureaucratic glitch at the Daily Cabal offices, mine got sent 23.094688221709% of the way to Alpha Centauri, hit a mirror the Centaurians had set up, and has only just returned. I suspect alien hands have tampered with it. Check out the other Zoli stories. We’ve got a few clever reinterpretations.
Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. That wasn’t exactly right. Zoli would have liked to like that… if it worked out. Also, his name wasn’t Zoli, but he’d heard that Zolis do exceedingly well at picking up chicks, so he had changed his name.
Zoli also liked golf magazines, kicking one’s feet up on the cool, beveled glass coffee tables. The pages crackled and snapped satisfactorily with each flip. The plush blue upholstery snuggled his back. The faint floral perfume of a female in… say, females were why he was here. He cast an eye about. Mothers occupied children with blocks pushed through wire circles. And back again. So many to choose from.
The secretary called him over with a crooked finger. “Can I help you?”
“I have an appointment.”
“Name?”
Sweat trickled down his forehead and wandered into the thicket of his brows. “Zoli.”
The secretary glanced at him, then at her keyboard. “First or last?”
Zoli stopped himself from saying neither. “First.”
“Last?”
“Zoli.”
The secretary shook her head. “Zoli Zoli?”
Zoli beamed. “Yes!”
“You’re not on the schedule.”
“Can you pencil me in?”
“Sure. Psychologists pencil in creeps–I mean, suicides all the time.”
“Great!”
The secretary called over her shoulder. “Another Zoli suicide!” Every male in the room turned as if he’d heard his name. The secretary held out her palm to Zoli. “Fifty-buck Zoli suicide fee.”
Zoli paid and was about to hit on a dowdy woman who looked particularly depressed when a stunning blonde asked him to step into her office–the kind of blonde you’d see on an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
#
Zoli wasn’t entirely sure what happened next. He seemed to remember the psychologist slipping an Alka-seltzer into a champagne glass. She wore a white coat, so he trusted her implicitly. The rest was a blank. His head was still fuzzy when she…
Choose your own adventure!
1. …slit his throat–and all of the Zolis yet to come. Women lived happily ever after.
2. …kissed Zoli. They were two of a kind. They lived happily ever after.
3. …administered shocks and truth serum to learn that few could date the low in self-esteem without owning that same quality. They lived happily ever after.
4. …keeled over. Everyone died. A random disease, lethal only to humans, wiped them out. Earth lived happily ever after without the constant mellow drama.