Evie's Big Picture

In this chapter, backstory, a xenobiology lesson, and then more backstory. Afterwards, backstory. 

There were lots of things that Evie thought would never happen. And most of them didn’t. She didn’t think that lunar mining operations would be sustainable, and they weren’t (not that it stopped them); she didn’t think the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series now that the World Series was actually worldwide, and they didn’t (but they came close); she didn’t think that anybody would cross the divide between plants and computers, but Bernard McSimmons did (much to the terror of the layman); she didn’t think that anybody could mistake unbutter for real butter, and they couldn’t (though some advertising departments tried to suggest that somebody might); she didn’t know what good mosquitos could do and didn’t think they’d ever amount to anything, but they turned out to be an ideal vaccination vector (with some modifications, anyway). Most of all, Evie Kingston thought that she’d never ever in a million years go to college, least of all to become a biologist, and she was very, very glad to be wrong about that.  

Evie Kingston had been born in Oslo, and her real name sounded like furniture but her parents had moved to America to escape the collapse of the European fishing industry, so her normal name sounded very normal. After they moved, her parents got normal names and bought a normal apartment, and covered the walls with pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower to allay any suspicion that the Immigration Management Taskforce might have. They became Bob Kingston, and Sally Smith-Kingston, and then they became very poor, because neither could do more than fish, but neither one was willing to fish; it was simply too risky. Immigration Management was deporting hundreds of illegally-employed fishermen every week. It was easy to spot an illegally-employed fisherman; nobody was fishing legally anymore. The outside world (meaning the world outside the bolted and shuttered windows that Evie was forbidden to open ever) began swiftly to resemble the streets of Oslo during Norway’s brief and bloodless civil war. 

Evie was not a good student. Her mind was a sieve, not a funnel like her teachers said it should be. She didn’t take notes, even though her teachers said she should. She didn’t care about dates, and didn’t particularly like math, and both were marks against her. But most importantly, her grammar was abysmal. It was so bad that a history teacher who everyone (correctly) believed to be half-illiterate had scoffed, in class, at a particularly embarrassing (not to mention profane) comma splice. An English teacher had quit sobriety after reading Evie’s midterm essay. Her grades were terrible, and there didn’t seem to be anything interesting to study, so Evie stopped studying. 

She had just turned eighteen when her parents were deported. Evie was technically an adult, not technically an American citizen, and she had no skills that suited the food-focused economy of that decade. Stable, profitable employment, it seemed, would be a hurtle. And one she would have to cross or bypass if she wanted to ‘become someone’. Becoming someone seemed to be the goal of most fictional characters, and Evie had always been more interested in books than real life, mainly because books didn’t invent myriad consequences to punish people for ignoring them. The year before Evie turned seventeen, college tuition finally became free. She studied harder and read a book on grammar. Her grades improved. Then she was slightly sidetracked. But only slightly. 

Love has been compared to many things. Love is like a rainbow, it never truly ends; love is like an ottoman, always there when you need it, even if it’s in the way occasionally; love is like an overcooked cupcake, most of it is bland and hard to digest, but the frosting is practically inedible…and so on. Love is actually more similar to a Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm, a stupendously unpleasant parasitic species that neither Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker nor any of her crew, would have the toothy misfortune to meet. It was discovered a century after their fateful trip across the Milky Way. The Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm is scaly and piebald, and about the shape of a Polish sausage. This is only one of many ways that the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm resembles a Polish sausage; its smell, and the color of its discharge are similar also. It is, luckily, only half the size. 

The Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm has many undesirable attributes, and its only desirable attribute is the distant-but-compelling relation it has to the biological process known as ‘love’ by less scientific or more literary minds. The worm begins its life cycle as an egg, which hatches into a pulpy larval stage which, in the words of Morgan McNaught, renown parasite biologist, “erupts from the host’s epidermis in a slurry of pus, blood, eggshell and worm feces. It is quite disgusting.” But despite its greedy, messy origin, the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm leads a greedy, messy life, leeching off its original host until the the worm’s bloated gut becomes too heavy for its stubby jaws to hold airborne. At which point, it drops from its host, carrying six ounces of blood with it. It grows up, and spends the rest of its adult life (approximately nine days) laying microscopic eggs on literally everything it touches; the worm’s eggs are exuded through its skin, and its ovaries are very efficient. The eggs of a Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm can be absorbed directly through the skin, are waterproof, comparably fireproof, and contain enough protein to sustain an embryonic worm for up to a week. Once inside a host, the egg will hatch within seventy-two hours. If disturbed while feeding, the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm will inject its host with a cocktail of irritants, depressants, hallucinogens and eggs. 

In the case of McNaught v The Universe, the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm was offered as evidence of life’s irredeemable cruelty. The Universe was found guilty of crimes against humanity after a brisk trial, and it was the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm which provided the clincher of McNaught’s case. The Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm was itself provided with an opportunity to infest an entire courtroom, which it did with as much relish as an invertebrate can muster. 

Love and Morgan’s Crusted Sucker Worm share an equal number of characteristics with the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm, but are themselves very different. Morgan’s Crusted Sucker Worm disguises itself as a donut to acquire a host; love does not need such pretenses. Like the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm, it strikes from nowhere and wells up suddenly, eliciting a rush of adrenaline and dopamine. Morgan’s Crusted Sucker Worm looks like a polish sausage also; love looks more similar to bratwurst. The life cycles of the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm and Morgan’s Crusted Sucker Worm are nearly identical, with the exception of their gestation period, and both will persist, like love, for a potentially unlimited period if not treated correctly. But only Morgan’s Crusted Sucker Worm can be vaccinated against; love and the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm, once contracted, are extremely difficult to exterminate. Fortunately for Evie, her detour was not personally due to a matter of love, but rather to secondary exposure to an office romance between her best friend and a coffeemaker repairman.

It was summer in North America; it was definitely summer in San Diego. Evie would be going to college in the fall. Her test scores were just high enough, and she’d already gone through the lengthy admissions process, and she’d bought all her textbooks in advance. She was working at a coffeeshop in the meanwhile, enjoying the weather, and saving money to pay for accommodation. Life on her own, she had discovered, was rather unglamorous, even in America, land of the free and all that. 

Her parents called occasionally, and were very proud when Evie told them that she was going to be a biologist. They were very proud because they didn’t know what a biologist was; initially, they thought it was a special kind of lawyer. When Evie explained that she was going to college to study living organisms in their many shapes and forms, and that it was unlikely to help her get a real job, her parents were mildly mortified, and applied for visas immediately so they could spend months if necessary convincing their daughter to become a surgeon or a defense attorney or another job that was unlikely to put her anywhere near fish. When Evie joked over the phone that biology involved caviar, her parents were horrified, because, as it transpired, they were not concerned by the appalling lack of job openings, but rather by the distinct possibility that she would be near a fish and her Norwegian heritage would comes spilling out like ‘guts from a sturgeon’s stomach’. Evie’s parents were big on fish metaphors, but they were slightly confused when Evie tried to explain that stereotypes didn’t work entirely like that. She was not going to start singing ‘Ja Vi Elsker Dette Landet’, which she knew by heart and could sing fairly tunefully, the moment she saw a fish. She added that she had been in a grocery store twice that week, even been past the meat counter, and had only sung ‘Ja Vi Elsker Dette Landet’ once, at home, alone. 

Bob and Sally Kingston remained unconvinced, despite Evie pleading that she could retain her cover and live a normal, un-Norwegian life, and she didn’t have to come home to freeze. She really did not want to go back to Norway, although her limited knowledge of her homeland was skewing her judgement slightly. Norway is a very pleasant country and has above-freezing temperatures for some of the year. Regardless, Miss Evie Kingston (the name on her mailbox)  was happy in the States, and halfway to making a life for herself. They relented only once Evie promised that she would become a botanist and not go anywhere near fish or the ocean or boys. Her parents did not know how similar love is to the Nova-Peruvian Sucker Worm, but they knew that it was nothing at all like the good parts of a rainbow, and their only daughter, alone in the wrong country, would have none of it. Ideally. 

Her parents visited for her first day of college. They called once a day after that, just to make sure Evie wasn’t going to parties. But she was a good liar, so they probably wouldn’t have known if she was going to parties, even if she was going to parties. Which she wasn’t; she was a perfect student. She wasn’t the perfect student, though. Veronica Morrison was the perfect student. She was also Canadian. She was also Evie’s roommate, and her coworker. She also had perfect hair. And she was madly in love with Johan, an English major from across the hall, who she wouldn’t have known existed except that he came into the coffeeshop one day to repair six coffeemakers which had been maimed after a sudden burst of discomposure spurred the BeanHouse supervisor into a fire-axe rampage. Johan had perfect hair, too. 

Evie, who apparently was more Norwegian and less American than she had led herself to believe, could not understand how two people with perfect hair could not walk across the dorm hall to talk, and instead had to contract an abrupt, occasionally subversive botanist to talk for them. It was very clear to Evie that Johan and Veronica were soft for one another, it was not clear why they could not say so in person, and it was even less clear why they couldn’t even have Evie say it for them, and instead asked her to relay noncommittal, half-messages and half-measures. Evie was mainly confused why, in America, (land of the free, and home of the brave, and defender of free speech) everybody was scared to tell the truth because they thought it might hurt someone’s feelings. Nevertheless, she spent (wasted) hour after hour ferrying messages between the timid romantics. 

Which had exactly the wrong result. At first. Then it had the right result, which turned into the wrong result. Johan forgot completely about Veronica, because he didn’t see her very often. Then he fell madly in love with Evie, who could care less about him and was getting very bored of couriering. When everyone had finally made their mind up to tell the truth, there was a long argument and someone (Evie) was injured almost seriously by a spinning lunch tray, and was sent to the infirmary to think carefully about her life. Evie was almost done with college by this point (Johan and Veronica’s correspondence had taken that long) and as much as she liked the clean floors and caffeine smell of her job at BeanHouse, she was ready to move away from her currently monotonous life. And a morning of awkward confessions followed by heady recriminations set her mind on getting as far away from America, college, and normal people as could be feasibly managed. 

Which is when she stumbled across an A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. recruitment poster that promised space and strange people, and was positively begging for willing cadets with degrees in various scientific disciplines. She joined just as soon as the semester was over and she had her MS; her resumé was resting on the passenger seat when she drove away from college for the second-to-last time (she had to drive back seventeen minutes later to load a lamp she had forgotten into the trunk of her car). And shortly after finishing basic training, she was transferred to Mortimer Station. Which was how she was somewhere that wasn’t home, and not entirely dismayed because there was absolutly no possibility of encountering any of her college friends there. 

“You never told me you were from Norway.” Henry said loudly from the other room.

Evie was at his throat with a pair of hedge clippers in an instant. “I’m not.” She hissed. 

“You never told me you weren’t from Norway.” Henry corrected, before leaving in a hurry.  

Evie went back to staring at her photo albums. She sighed and kicked her legs petulantly against the bunk above her. Emily muttered about coolant and turned over. Through the viewport (calling it a window is less technical, and really, the viewport didn’t qualify) an alien star burned thoughtfully, and churned out lots of heat and radiation. The marigold on Evie’s windowsill, one of the last of her surviving flowers, wilted imperceptibly. Evie closed the photo albums and went to get a watering can, a pH tester and some fertilizer pellets from her overgrowing greenhouse with its musty smells and abundance of soil and gardening equipment. Henry came in to lean on the doorway and smile. 

“What?” Evie demanded.

“Nothing.” 

“Nothing?”

“No.” 

“So something.”  

“No.” 

“But you said it wasn’t nothing, which is a double negative.” 

“Which ought to be correct, but isn’t in your language.” 

“My language?” 

“English isn’t your first language?”

“No.” Evie whispered.

“What?” Henry pretended to be surprised. 

“What are you doing?” 

“You told me to forget you’d mentioned, you know…Norway.” 

“And I’ll forget that you, for some strange reason, don't know about how messed up double negatives are in English.” 

“Can’t say.” 

“Can’t? Or won’t? Are you from Mexico? Spanish uses double negatives, and you’re really Catholic, even though you try to hide it, and you used all the Mexican food packets within the first month of being here. On the station, I mean, not wherever we are now.” 

“I’m Spanish.” He stops. “Am or was, not really sure.” 

“Spanish? Not Mexican?” 

“Some people who speak Spanish don’t come from Mexico.” 

“Your accent’s pretty good.” 

Henry shrugs. “It’s okay. I couldn’t go to England with it, but it works well enough in the states.” 

“Smart. I just had to get mine really sharp. It wasn’t too hard though, I didn’t live in Norway long. What about the food though?” 

“That doesn’t have to do with anything, actually. I just happen to like Mexican food, and it tastes the best because it comes with extra hot sauce. For flavor.”

“I wonder if anyone else is from somewhere weird.” 

“Spain isn’t weird.” 

Evie raises her eyebrow. “You let bulls loose in the street well into the Twenty-first Century.” 

“Yeah. Okay. But at least Spain isn’t boring like the United States.”

“But the states are funny.” 

“They are.” 

“And the culture is so backwards.” 

Evie smiled. “Reyes is German, for sure. Emily and Conrad couldn’t be much more American. Jacob could be from somewhere in Europe. Cypris Maricela Alta Cranford-Tracker loves baseball, but so do lots of people. Tyler might be from somewhere weird. Where is Kareem from?” 

Kareem stopped at the doorway, his hair tousled and a protein shake in each hand. “New Jersey. But my mother was from Egypt and my father was Polish, and their families were Kenyan and very Polish, respectively of course.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t talk about my family much. I don’t talk to my family much either, because I really don’t see eye to eye with either of my parents, or any of my siblings.” 

“Siblings?”

“I’m the first of six. Two brothers, and three sisters. Christmas would be busy, but we celebrate Chanukah. They invite me every year, but it’d be a waste of time because I can talk about American football, but not the other kind, and they can only talk about the other kind.” 

“Don’t you mean ‘can talk only about the other kind’?” 

“I actually don’t, ‘cause they actually can’t.” 

“Oh.” 

“It was very hard to connect on an emotional level. I’m pretty sure that’s why they put me up for adoption when I turned sixteen. My surrogates are nice, though. Marvin is a lieutenant, and Martin just made colonel. They’re gay, obviously. I kept my last name so it wouldn’t seem like I was following in their footsteps, even though I was totally following in their footsteps, except for space, which was sort of an accident, and not being gay, which just sort of happened.”

“You aren’t—?”

“No, why would you—?”

“No reason.” Henry said. 

“Mostly I didn’t want to give anyone a preconception about who I could become, simply because I had someone else’s last name in block letters on my chest. I needed to find my own path, and it turned out to be very different from my surrogates’, despite being initially similar. Or identical.” Kareem blinked. “I’m going to sleep in two minutes, whether I reach my bunk or not.” He says. “And if you’re looking for interesting backstories, ask Cypris.” He chuckled and walked away before Evie could ask how long he’d been awake. The answer would have been 49.7 hours, but Kareem was out of words. 

Incidentally, he reached his bunk.