The Exhaustion of Saving the World

They made a huge mistake by coming here and if I had the energy, I suppose I'd be in a state of despair. But unfortunately, I seem to have lost all get-up-and-go. The truth is, I can no longer determine what I feel about pretty much anything. My feel muscles are paralyzed, maybe even dead. Damn the hallucinogens, the beer, the pot and eventually the cheap wine. But hey, I always did like to feel good. Anyone who understood me at all would know about that.

I was nineteen then, sleeping off a Genesee and Frito binge in the apartment I shared with three other college sophomores at Greensboro State. It was New Year¹s eve and I¹d returned to the school early. My roommates were still at home with their families and hardly anyone was on campus. I¹d been partying with someone I barely knew after running into him in the Seven-Eleven where I was buying those Fritos and hoping somehow to get hold of some beer when there he was, this dude from my bio-chem class.

"What¹re you doing here?" I asked and he laughed the kind of laugh you make when you¹re really just fed up.

"My old man was up to this tricks," he said. "Drunked up, smashing up the house, making my mother crazy. I had to get out of there. This is the first peaceful place I¹ve lived in my whole life."

I sympathized, only my reason for leaving home early was not anything as unpleasant as his. I'd been considering changing my major from Education to Biology (research) and simply wanted some time alone to think about it first. It was the bio-chem class that was causing this situation. I had discovered quite by accident that I really dig puttering in the lab, that there was this whole side of me that lost a sense of time once I got working on a project. This is going to sound weird but it felt like love is supposed to feel but usually doesn¹t. Though I came across as a major party guy, I always scored high on IQ and achievement tests. Underneath my jaded exterior, I had great potential. As soon as my advisor returned I was going to schedule a serious consultation.

Ole Jason (or whatever his name was) was twenty-one so he could get the booze. Had some decent grass too. I got shit-faced and then headed back to my place to collapse in bed like a dead man with our apartment's cat, Brew, purring on my chest as usual. So it was pretty weird for me to jerk awake like I did when I heard the voices coming from the living room.

Sounded like a man and a woman. I thought what the hell? Had somebody come back in the middle of the night? But before I could yell out there, something stopped me. I don¹t know what it was but the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Just listen, some inner voice told me, pay attention.

So I very carefully got out of bed, and s-l-o-w-l-y crept across the floor until my ear was right at the door. I could hear them then reasonably well.

Now it appeared to be two women and one man.

One of the women said, "I am so thrilled. This is just so utterly-" Utterly what? She didn¹t finish the sentence but I got the drift that she was happy to be here. Her accent was unfamiliar. Like, she said "treeled" instead of "thrilled" but I knew what she meant. She said, "Tees is joost so ooterly-"

"Agreed," said the guy. "Well, we paid enough for the privilege. But we can only stay forty-one minutes. We should get on with the examination and you, Taloose, take the impressions."

What? None of this was making much sense. Those hairs on my neck were still at full attention.

"Dare we turn on a light? I would so enjoy flicking an archaic switch!" "The mission is to acquire a bit of the DNA. Hair from a brush, skin flakes in the toilet room, something of that order. Not to waste too much time in period tinkering."

I was now so intense I didn¹t see Brew who had thumped down off the bed and come to investigate. When he rubbed past my leg I started, almost banging my knee into the door, stopping it just in time.

"The question is which toilet room he would use. Four students live here, according to the data for Œ87. It is the last year Joseph Spanos shared space with others; his junior year he will be once more in school housing, single quarters. Will prefer it for purposes of his study."

Now I was totally panicked. Who were these people? That was me they were discussing!

My brain appeared to be in a traffic jam. Should I sneak over and dial 911? Where was the goddamned phone?

One of the women said, "To be in the quarters of the actual savior of the world! I-I almost can¹t function! I mean to say he-"

"Yes, it is quite a spirit rush," said the other female.

I save the world? What is this? They talked like it already happened. The damn cat was pressing against my leg purring really loud.

"Incredible," says the first woman. "No matter how often I study the subject, I cannot get over it. To create the giant chloroflouroocarbon eating Pelomyxa - who would have thought of such a thing at the time?"

"And in the frontier of genetic engineering too. Just when the ozone hole was beginning to widen beyond repair-"

"And when skin cancer was becoming epidemic, even in animals." The woman sounded almost ecstatic.

Pelomyxa? I wracked my brain. Wasn¹t that a one celled creature? Amoeba, I believed. Ate by engulfing its food. Interesting. What did they normally consume? I was wide awake now, my body having somehow instantly digested the alcohol and corn chips and any residue of the pot long gone. You¹d have thought I¹d swallowed a gallon of pure caffeine. All right, so somehow, someone - this Joseph Spanos, had genetically altered a Pelomyxa, creating a giant one that somehow lived in the higher atmosphere and ate up the dangerous CFC¹s up there? But...

"If we can just get his DNA, it would be so interesting to create a-"

The damned cat jumped at the door, pawing it madly. I heard a palpable silence from the next room.

"What is that?" said the man. His voice was laced with near terror.

"Oh Higher Revelation, I do not know!" replied the lower voiced female.

"I thought you did the checkings, Ruza! It is the timing of the holiday recess. No one is expected to be here!"

"I must have made a severe error. You know the temporal clock is not perfect on small detail. How would anyone know beyond the expected scheduling? You know how society was then about the Christmas season? A huge national expenditure!" I was now in a complete panic. In fact, it appeared that I suddenly had asthma even though I'd never suffered from that in my life until that moment. I literally couldn't breathe. My mind was splitting into a thousand pieces. Then, though in a frenzy, I heard a click.

The man spoke. "I have notified HomePad. They will take us back."

I heard a sob. "Oh, don¹t begin that, Taloose! This is not the end of reality! We will attempt it another time."

"But I so desired to study his genetic makeup!"

"Another time!" said the other female and then there was a sucking noise followed by a small bang.

Silence. Brew and I did not move for at least five full minutes. Slowly, I regained the ability to draw in air. Slowly all the shattered pieces of my mind moved back together like an ethereal jigsaw puzzle being

manipulated by ghostly hands. With my mind back, I was left with the possibility of being insane though very alert.

I whipped the door open, my heart sounding like the bass drum in my high school band at half time. For a moment the blood left my head, then returned. I stared into the space that was supposed to be our living room but really served as a receptacle for tossed books, flung jackets, empty pizza boxes and smelly sneakers. Any entertaining that was ever done usually occurred in the bedrooms, if anyone was so lucky. Now I stood in the middle of this mess and looked around. The bass drum was still thumping, although a bit more sluggishly. No one at all was in the room. That I could see anyway.

I flicked on the lights one by one. There were three with the overhead. Nothing. Had I hallucinated? Something foreign in the pot maybe? I blinked while the cat sniffed around. It occurred to me that he was definitely noticing something. He kept it up for some time, then gave off a harsh, penetrating meow, the kind he used when alerting us. So something had been there.

There was one Mountain Dew left in the fridge and I chugged it. Caffeine galore but I hardly needed it being that I was about as awake as you can get without exploding. While gulping it, I laid out what I seemed to understand from what I had heard.

Evidently, unless I was hallucinating, people had dropped in here from the future. They were specifically looking for my, Joe Spanos¹, DNA for what purpose I didn¹t know. Perhaps for a souvenir? Apparently, I was to become famous for SAVING THE WORLD with this giant, air dwelling amoeba that I would create in my lab. In effect, saving the planet from losing its entire ozone layer which would result in the death of all its known life. These dudes from the future probably worshipped me in their science and history classes!

Clearly, my recent decision to change my major from Education to Biology would somehow lead to my working in genetics. Unquestionably, I was on the right track to fame and fortune!

Brew jumped into my lap as I drained the last of the soda. It then occurred to me that this Future Babe had wanted my DNA to either make a clone or just to study my genius! A teeth flashing smile spread over my face. I simply could not stop grinning. Saving the world, eh? Well, who would have thunk it? Certainly not my father who often make a point of expressing his loud, red faced opinion that I took after my mom¹s brother Paul who was a lazy-good-for-nothing drunk. I am nothing like him! Even Mom with her opinion that I should have joined the service first and then gone for the education "if that¹s what you still want." How they¹d all eat it when I saved the planet and probably even won a Nobel Prize!

I returned to the kitchen to search for edible matter, my mind racing as I worked. A long dead half burrito on the fridge¹s second shelf, some ancient eggs of doubtful safety, a half loaf of bread that someone had neglected to close with the twist tie. Maybe it was toastable; I could spread peanut butter on it if there was any.

I found some - chunky (hated that but it would have to do.) Okay then, definitely I would change the major to Biology with an emphasis on genetics. Was that possible? Well, in a couple of days classes would be back in full swing and I¹d make that appointment with my advisor. All would fall into place. That grin just wouldn¹t leave my face and in fact, made it hard to chew the sandwich.

That was then, this is now. I think I am thirty-four years old, but frankly I¹ve lost track. Let me see, it was Œ87 when the future guys landed in the apartment and this is Œ04 so I must be thirty-six! It¹s hard for me to think when I have these periods of blacking out.

I guess when the semester started, I figured what was the hurry? My class schedule was easy and it was mandatory to get the basics in anyway, so it made sense to let the change go until the next semester. My old man had money to burn so there was no problem in that direction. I mean if it took me five years instead of four to graduate, it wouldn¹t matter. Since I already knew I was going to invent that jumbo amoeba, I didn¹t have to worry, right? Then in the summer after my sophomore year, my father up and

died from a heart attack. I should have immediately applied for loans (scholarships were out of the question - since I¹d been been growing my own stuff and enjoying some interesting LSD trips, my grades had slipped) but then there was this girl and well, you can imagine the rest. She messed me up royally; I did some serious coke trying to recover but that got pretty expensive and after my mother cut my allowance off, I had to rely on booze. My advisor never knew I¹d even been thinking about genetics. I dropped out senior year to go into rehab. But rehab doesn¹t always have lasting effects as everyone knows.

My family has nothing to do with me now. For that matter, do they even know where I am? Doubtful since I live in a cement pipe by the dockyards.

The smog is getting worse and they say the ozone hole over Antarctica is beyond repair now. When my mind is clear, which is happening less and less, I sometimes wonder if those poor people in my living room ever got to be born. I mean, if the lack of that amoeba changed the future... Surely, in the time they came from, they should have understood human nature. But then they didn¹t imagine that I was listening.

Margaret Karmazin

Margaret's credits include short stories in North Atlantic Review, Potato Eyes, Mobius, Reader¹s Break, Aim Magazine, Papyrus, Chiron Review, West Wind Review, Algonquin Roundtable Review, Weber Studies, Futures, Virginia Adversaria, Timber Creek Review, Desperate Act, Short Row to Hoe Division, Eureka Literary Magazine, Mountain Luminary, thINK, S.L.U.G.FEST, The Oracular Tree, Ceterus Paribus, Cenotaph, Matriarch's Way and Short Stories Bimonthly; stories accepted for upcoming publication in A Room of One's Own, Carve Magazine, Emry¹s Journal, Bellowing Ark and Psychic Radio; and comment pieces in SageWoman and Penn Lines.

Email: Margaret Karmazin

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