pOST-CHILDREN pt.2

She paused to hear another question and Hannah could tell her response was mirthful, “oh come now, I know I’ve been labelled by certian detractors as a neo-militant-eco-feminist but I think focusing too much on my alter-pseudonym (for want of a better word) takes away somewhat from the essence of the work. Actually to be perfectly frank with you there is something perversely cathartic about imagining your own demise. I’m not too far away from it now, and after I finished dictating the piece to a very distraught nurse (Sorry Gerry) I felt calmer. Less scared at any rate.”

She continued, “so yeah, maybe Richard was a little wry jab at the too serious minded, you can indulge a dying ape a bit of fun can’t you? Let’s not get bogged down and overly analytical about a mere play on words,” she paused and cocked her then laughed, “Really man? Ok there’s not much to it, I mean apart from the physical differences, my pseudonyms a big strapping six foot four giant and I’m a dainty little pixy running amongst the trees (that people accuse me of being overly sentimental and simultaneously overly cold calculating and pragmatic about). I mean his name? Powers? Dick Powers?? That’s pretty much all there is to it, now before you start taking me down a strange psychoanalytic route where you wheedle off accusations of penis envy let me remind you that my time is short so let’s keep it to the ecological stuff.” Hannah liked the woman’s words they were barbed yet playful, and she mused about the piece they were speaking of, it resonated in some deep well of memory. She also noticed that in her illusory landscape as well as there being a clear picture of Mia and a more blurry, pixelated figure of the interviewer, there was a fourth chair that had yet to be filled. The sight of it made her anxious and she wondered why she had conjured the chair forth and yet seemed to know the answer instantaneously as she did so.

Mia responded warmly to the next question, “ wow now that’s more like it, and here’s me about to swallow my feeding tube out of boredom, hmm yes I that’s good, “the seventh event as a nihilistic urge for mass suicide” did you come up with it? No? Pity. Anyhow to an extent that is in some way the gist of it, I am after all criticising humanity’s inherent arrogance. We make up a percentage of this planet yet feel fit to commandeer all of it! That is all but some little chunks that those misty-eyed romantics wish to “conserve” I mean this planet isn’t a fucking cake to be saved for later! It doesn’t belong to us and yet we claim sovereignty over all of it, just because we have the very alien ability to self-project and self-construct!” Mia paused to swallow her food. “You know the way we behave on this planet is so laughable! it’s like me granting my motor neurons disease complete autonomy over myself just because it’s everywhere and I am riddled with it.”

She sighed or more accurately choked wetly on air, then continued this time with a lot less noticeable vigour, “maybe that’s the point after all, the prose may be there as a darker reflection on my state of mind, perhaps it is just a rage-full lashing out against the inevitability of things.” She finished lamely and went quiet for some time. When she spoke again there was a trace of the previous vitality in her voice, but more assured and less urgent, “you know the part about the “owl worshippers?” that’s exactly the kind of patronisingly impotent gesture I’m talking about, we are too content to allow our meagre monetary contributions to some “better cause” to satiate our guilt associated with the perpetual dissection of the ecological world. It will not be until it’s too late as I said in the story, until we destroy this planet or render it unrecognisable in any real concrete way that we will appreciate the destructive “energy bazar that truly encroaches us”.

The interviewer then seemed to ask Mia a rather more difficult question to which she responded angrily “Yes! I said nature has no philosophy! It makes no judgements or writes any books but please do not dare infer that I am in some way as you put it “endorsing some kind of authoritarian rule”! Darwinism and these other scientific observations are again something inherently human, our construction, our narrative frame that always becomes inextricably caught up within our gaze.” Hannah at this point imagined that Mia had put down her utensils and was staring angrily at the messy jumble of pixels. She continued, “this is the exact problem I’m talking about! The whole point of my works up until this instant has been encouraging an attempt to divorce our gaze (which is inherently wrapped up in subjectivity), from our flawed and narrowed framework, away from the naturalistic and overly sentimental attitude of our ecosystem, to a more definitive and objective system which exists independently from us. A system which does not need nor want our input to continue its perpetual existence. You quote Darwinism and the Nazis in the same breath yet both entities try to impose their narrative framework on some strange notion of an objective reality. It is simply  beyond us. We need to acknowledge our ignorance and develop it, and rid ourselves of the arrogant beliefs we have adopted for too long.  The sooner we as a race…” She trailed off and before Hannah could point out the contradiction she detected in Mia’s words another voice emanated from somewhere. The fourth guest had finally made its appearance. Hannah knew with a deep and chilling terror that the voice belonged to her unborn child. She did not need to look down to see that her distended stomach had slated into a saggy mess hanging below her knees in an expedient birth – warp twenty years from now.

 “I found your short story rather prescient if I do say so myself Mia my dear,” a clipped articulate voice spoke from a dark corner of Hannah’s mind. This was her child! It was okay, it had worked, the ritual had worked! Gladness soon turned to abject horror as the shuffling deformed thing in a tuxedo lurched towards them. The closest Hannah could get to an approximation of a description would be as if a particularly gnarled root of ginger had forced itself into a suit and then proceeded to sprout eyes and mouths at random. The creature continued “however there are a few points I would like clarification on, for example you speak of “consciousness”. I believe the line is “I’m struggling with consciousness” actually it’s more of a comment than a question if you’ll allow me?” The silence that followed the question, her Child evidently took as consent, “very well, you people have spent countless years narcissistically musing about the supposedly divine gift you have of being able to contemplate your own mortality. Your gift. Your curse. Your madness. Your reason for being.. etcetera. Has it ever occurred to you that you are, in the grand scheme of things, a tiny facet of this ecological biosphere, yet you simultaneously pose the greatest threat to its continuation? It has? Good. Therefore is it such a stretch to see then that consciousness is in some way an ecological failsafe to ensure said systems continued existence? A neurochemical process that will ultimately lead to complete ecological cohesion for the whole biosphere? It makes sense does it not? All things strive for existence and a continuation of that existence. Why should the Planet be any different? If you people were allowed to carry on the way you are going this place would end in 1000 years. To something that is billions of years old is like hearing you have 10 seconds to live.” Silence descended like a heavy dust upon the dinner party. Hannah wanted to admonish this monster sitting in front of her but every time she felt the words load out from her brain it was twinned with an equal and opposite urge to vomit across the metallic table. Finally it was Mia who broke the quiet “you can’t be saying that the planet has consciously…” The monster screamed in objection “no no no! Not consciousness! That is your curse remember? No never confuse consciousness with survival! Gaia-Mother preserve the brood! Stop imposing your feeble narrative on things so broad and complex you would go blind at the enormity of what you are attempting to comprehend. Consciousness is AIDS, consciousness is a motor neuron disease that can only ever result in self-annihilation. Things that survive for any length of a definitive period cannot be inflicted with consciousness! No we should call it something different. Let us call it the “decoded instinct” inscribed into the DNA of the “fundamental principles of existence”. It paused, one of its eyes glared at the petite lady and addressed her “this cannot be so much of a shock to you Mia, you were almost at this conclusion yourself. Look at the dividing line; on one side: the ecosystem in perfect harmony with the fundamental principles of existence, on the other ; humanity fundamentally in direct opposition to this. You are a cancer, a rampaging virus raping and breaking, eradicating everything in its path. Now can you see the sheer poetic justice at what has happened to you?  The sheer beauty of the last roads to your extinction? The nuclear warhead. In one fell swoop of apparently unconscious irony you managed to create and symbolise the one thing that so succinctly and systematically embodies the story of your time in this place. Then you try to fling it away and in doing so you systematically wipe out your own cancerous influence. And we thank you for it. We are your heirs, we are something that finally cooperates, indeed thrives within this new ecosystem. No longer ridden with tumours the world now works in hundred percent compliance to the rest of itself. You think we look hideous? We are a hundred percent efficient with our environment. You on the other hand look like undigested globs of vomit. Useless.”

There was another moment, and the creature clumped itself upwards and left the room. Hannah opened her eyes and felt dark. The video was no longer playing but there was wetness around her ankles and snarling stabbing biting pains in her womb, something hateful wanted to be out.

Bibliography

Powers, Richard “the seventh event” Baym, Nina, Jerome Klinkowitz, and Patricia Wallace B. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.