The Ballad of Jung-woon Shin

Filed under:biographical,writing,Rob Andrews

"Wob! Teach me some slang!" Jung-woon would ask me this during lunch at the college. I'd hover around her, and the rest of the Koreans in between classes, stealing noodles, rice or meat from her. She wanted me to earn my keep. And so I would, poisoning her English with slang and profanities.
"Shit."
"Sheet."
"No, shit. Euh-tuh."
"Sheeet!"
We'd practice during the lucnh break, poluting the air with half assed curses. Her class mates, younger and male would chip in with their versions. It was like being in the middle of dueling bands, hearing Guitar Wolf's version of "Straight Outta Compton" followed by Chibo Mattos. A car crash of language.
"Sheet!"
"Okay, never mind. Lets try something else" Eventually, she managed to get her paws on a book of Engish slang. She'd pass me in the hall, full of snark and confidence.
"Wob! How's it going!"
"Fine. Thanks"
"You are a turkey! I will see you later, stinker!" She was a throwback to blowdried hair and leisure suits. I tried to correct her, but gave up. She recycled 70's slang like pop cans. I'd bust her balls about it, but she never caught on. It's hard to handle the subtleties of the English language.

Jung-woon was the oldest of the Korean students at the college. My first meeting with her never stuck out in my mind like the first time that I met Miwako or Booyan. She was the wallpaper of the Korean set. Background. Unintrusive. our paths intersected because he had a friend in common, Jung. Jung was a supposedly straight Korean man who enjoyed drinking, but spent most of his time telling us which men he found handsome. He'd often put his arm around the shoulder of my good Federico Federico and I would joke afterwards that Jung probably had the hots for him. Jung would invite Jung-woon to see movies with us during the early summer and eventually started to bring her to the house parties during the summer. The Korean guys gave her a hard time about her age. Every time that we went to a party, the Korean men would bug her not being married, asking if she was looking for a man. She'd dismiss it with her hiccup laugh, denying it. She was an independent woman. Strong. Who needed a man in this day and age? It became sort of a creed at the parties during the summer. The men would bust on her about not having a boyfriend and she, in turn would tell them that she was happy. She didn't suffer fools gladly.

We got to know each other better as the summer went on. I found her enigmatic and aloof. Not very serious for someone of her age. I'd joke with her all the time, calling her "grandma" or old lady. She'd laugh it off. I found it hard to take her seriously.

Near the end of the summer, there was a lot of parties for the international who were leaving. One such party was for three students. One of them was Jung, who was going to move to Seatle to live with his extended family, another one was a Japanese girl called Now, a mousey Japanese girl that never shaved her legs, and lastly, Natalia, a Columbian girl who was a friend of Federico's. Of the three, I knew Natalia the least. The party was at Joe's apartment, a Korean who had a bad reputation with lots of the international students for being an asshole. I went with my friend, Stephen, a banana who didn't like to drink. He's sit in the room and drink water, occationallly shuttling people home when they got too drunk or tired. I also invited a white girl I knew, Megan. She had a hardon for Jung, and wanted to know him better. Jung didn't care for her that much, finding her loud and fat, but didn't mind having her there. She didn't come until later that evening. The party was slow going and I amused the Japanese girls with card tricks until the beer started to flow. I spent my time with the Koreans since my buddy Anson had decided to go to AvP, chatting it up with his room mate Tim, Kyoung and Jung-woon. The beer loosened us up and Jung-woon began to open up. She told us that she was lonely, and was envious of Booyan who had a boyfriend. She needled me for most of the evening about introducing me to good looking white men. I told her that all the white guys that I knew had boyfriends, with the exception of me. She said that she'd pass on me, and disapeared. I was told later that she went on a walk to clear her head. I met her later that evening, but she kept on dodging the question about she being lonely. The conversation eventually degenerated, like it always does, into a analysis of oral sex and how it could do her some good. She drank more that evening and disapeared for good, wobbling home on her bike.

Here's another snapshot of her, this one, on the first page of the scrapbook of my brain. We were at Tim's birthday part, the last one that he'd have in Fort St. John before he left to Korea. He invited all the Koreans there, so naturally, Jung-woon was there. She was unnaturally sedate that evening, not speaking that much, never joking. It was like another actress was playing her in a movie. The men, like usual, had been bugging her about single, saying that she went to the part to meet men again. She dimissed it with her patented laugh. Her eyes told another story. All throughout the evening you could watch as they tracked her friend Booyan with her boyfriend, a baby faced white guy who spoke in too perfect English. He pronounced each word with the skill of surgeon. I wasn't surprised to find out that he was the vice president of the city's Toastmasters. Jung-woon didn't say that much that evening. I walked her home that evening, the only time that I did that, following her on her bike before I crossed through a farmer's field to my cabin. I asked her if she was feeling lonely, but she denied it. We went our ways, her hollow eyes filling my dreams that evening. I never asked her if she felt lonely after that night.

Last summer's night

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
John kissed Helen for the last time, under the dying sun. The press photographed it for posterity. He looked into her red eyes for the last time, trying desperately to memorize the flicker of the fire inside her head. Their relationship had an expiration date the the whole world could see. L'amour fou. He licked his lips, savouring the last taste of her. And then she was gone, disapearing into the shuttle, and entering his memories. The shuttle ripped free of the earth and made it's ascent into the heavens. A column of white smoke against the purple sky. John watched as it became a speck of sand.

The ship made it's merry way to the sun. He followed the news. It was unbearably cold. There had been no light for days. John had heard the whispers, that Helen's mission had failed, that she wasn't the right one for the job. He had seen inside her head. He knew that they were wrong.

In outer space, Helen approached the waning sun and exited her spacecraft. Her head blossomed like a flower as the star inside her brain exploded. A sacrifice to the sun goddess. The earth wouldn't die for a while. It would live on Helen's heat.

John stayed away from the celebrations. To him, it felt like they were celebrating her death. Instead, her stared at the new sun. He gazed into it, letting the new features blind him. The after image burned into his retinas. It was worth it, he thought. No matter what, he'd see the firey outline of Helen.

The Conjoined

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
When the Conjoined entered the world, they arrived a bloody terrible mess, killing their mother during childbirth. Triplets, joined at the head. An ugly human starfish. Spokes for a wheel that didn't exist. X-Rays showed that they shared a brain cluster and ruled out seperating them. A more careful examination of the scans showed that there was a supernova explosion of minuturature brains inside their head. Dormant, some dead. Their mother had obviously used an unaproved drug to up her fertilization. Lacking family, they were put up for adoption.

The head of the orphanage, a curved backed turtle of a man, was William Zeus. He would stare at the triplets and get headaches. He was't sure if it was the stress of wanting to rid them or their grotesque anatomy. They languished in the orphinage, kept away from the rest of the children. They were considered damaged goods. Prospective parents wanted to see smiling youngsters. Blonde hair and doe eyes. The Conjoined were a hard sell. Their mal-developed brains retarted their learning process. They couldn't control their bowels and constantly smelled like piss and shit. They were the mangy dogs at the pound. Ugly and unmanagable. They didn't do much for the orphinage's reputation. The headaches got worse. He started to wake up with nose bleeds.

Years passed and Zeus had no luck. He knew from experience that as children got older, it would be more difficult to have them adopted. He had a small advantage, though. The Conjoined didn't seem to age. They remained a snapshot of an unfinished abortion. The headaches were the deciding factor to get rid of the triplettes. He gave the triplettes away to an unscrupulous pornographer. He killed himself soon after.

The Conjoined were a hit on the gonzo porn scene. Internet traffic was swift and bountiful. They made millionaires of the pornomancer. Two girls and boy? They were an automatic threesome by themselves. The Conjoined were incredibly an incredible influence on the skin industry, although they probably weren't aware of it. Freaks became the buzz word among producers. A well hung midget ended up becoming a pop icon because of the trend. The holiday didn't last forever. Performers began to complain that the triplettes were giving them headaches. The complaints were silenced with pay raises. If they lived longer, they would have died of tumours.

Puberty changed everything. Everyone knew about the Conjoined then. Their hormone soup bubbled over and the mini-brains acheived conciousness. There was a physic shockwave and everone in the surrounding states died, their brains filled with imagry of bizzare gang bangs and forced fellatio. This was the Conjoined second birth. Their placenta, an army of bodies sent to kill them. They floated around the world, bouyed by the thoughts and dreams of those they murdered. A force of nature, an angel of death. Four horsemen turned three. They couldn't be stopped

Building Steam on a Grain Of Salt

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
He's the 10 thousand dollar man. A mix of flesh steel and Aboriginal magic. A shining example of the Dominion's ideal of the Stained Glass Mentality. The Engineers put him to work on the railroad, followed by a garrison of mechanics. He was one of the expendable once. The pulled his body out from a collapsed mountain side, a doll in the shape of a man. His heart no longer worked. They replaced it with a coal engine. Soot and smog would flow instead of blood. His arms and legs were reinforced with steam pistons. Grubby fingers were replaced with oversized mechanical mole hands. Pickaxe nails. Primitive lights were screwed into the top of his skull. An Elder coaxed the Spirit to return the Chinaman's soul, bartering for the lowest price. The soul returned, moody. He had been with his family. They told him when he finished the railway, they'd kill him. He agreed to the terms. His body sputtered and smoked, and he was put to work.

The Chinaman works ceaslessly, inspiring the other workers. Mountains become tunnels. Plains become railroads. The Chinaman doesn't complain. He does his duty, linking sea to sea. He only speaks when he wants to be fed, thick smog escaping from his mouth, his teeth turned blue. They open his chest and shovel coal into his heart. At night, when the pay masters sleep, Chinese children feed him rice. He accepts it, without comment. It's the only reminder that he's still human.

His fleshy bits begin to rot and the metal begins to rest. His skin dries up and shrivels in the scortching desert sun. The workers stay away from him. He smells like a corpse. Buzzards begin to pick at his skin. They carry away clumps of hair and pieces of ear like trophies. A cloud of flies covers him, a personal cloud. The Chinaman continues to work on the railway. Train tracks follow him, like a tail, crossing from province to province. He doesn't know when he'll finish.

The Eldar releases his Spirit when they can see his bones. The Chinaman whispers his thanks into his ear. A cold kiss. His followers bury his body and sing prayers to his bones. Thee Dominion takes his heart. The technology is expensive. They'll need to find another body. Soon, the railroad will be finished. Two more provinces to go.

Blue Shit

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
He can't stop staring at her stump. It's beautiful. They met on the internet, one of those trendy new dating services. They flirted for months, progressing from flirty e-mails to dirty phone calls. The picture that she sent him showed her from the chest upwards. Her face glittered with piercings of all sorts. A human Christmas tree. A fashionable pin cushion. She's a kinky devil, but the man doesn't mind. He'll do anything to please her.

The stump was a surprise on their first meeting in person.

"How'd you get it?" he asked. Her arm ended right where her wrist was. Perfectly smooth. It was as if a carpenter had shaped it. Sanded down by hundreds of man hours. Polished until it shined like an expensive car.

"Truth be told, I removed it myself. I'm into body modding. But this is the real deal." She pulled out a syringe from her purse pocket. There was a liquid in it. Saphire. Pungent. The man wrinkled his nose. The woman continued.

"I got it off of the internet. It's the next new thing. I call it Blue Shit." The needle is plunged into her stump and pumps the chemical in. She continues.

"You know phantom limbs, right? Pain people feel when they lose limbs. The military has been doing heavy reseach into it, with all the casualties in Iraq. I don't know what happened, exactly, but some smartass scientist found out a way to use phantom limbs. Get this, he found a drug that brings back the sensation. Your missing parts become Casper the Friendly Ghost." And the man sees it. A smoky aparition of her hand. A medical cross section of what a hand should look like. She flexes her fingers, and the man can see the sinew bend. Ghost blood pumps through transparent veins. Her phantom hand picks up a pencil. She doodles with it.

"Pretty cool, eh?" The man nods. "You haven't seen anything yet." Her takes her hand under the table, unzips his pants. What he feels on his cock isn't quite the feeling of her hand. It's a mixture of flesh and a gaseous liquid. It's warm, sexy. She gives him the best handjob of his life.

"Now do you understand the appeal?" He catches his breath and nods. She smiles. She pulls an ornade pair of scissors.
"You understand why I want you cut off your tongue?" The man takes the scissors and greedily cuts. The bloody slab on the table shows that he understands all too well.

As fast as you can

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Since his creation in Germany by a baker with knowledge of the occult, Ginger Bread Man has always been running. Leaving his native home after he discovered he was created to provide nourishment for his father, Ginger Bread found himself soon in the Land of the Free, America. Like most immigrants, he made his living as a taxi driver. In his free time he pursued his pashion, which was running. Neighbours and joggers close to Ginger Bread noted that he was a runner unlike any other. He could do sprints, long distance runs, anything. He never seems to tire.

Soon Ginger Bread's reputation grew and he was recruited by a running coach, and was featured in the 1992 olympics. He astounded the world by winning Gold in all running events for the United States. This caused an international conterversy, however, with Germany laying claim to him. Ginger Bread spoke on the issue saying that Germany had done nothing from him and that he was a proud American citizen.

The olympics lead to fame, which lead to incredible wealth. You couldn't go anywhere in the mid ninties without seeing a Ginger Bread endorsed shoe or clips of his hit animated series. He was doing the talk show circuit and the Tabloids said that he was attached with various young models.

All stars fall, however. Ginger Bread soon developed a love for threesomes and wild coke binges. He lost his lucrative marketing deal with Nike and
parents groups complained about how he wasn't a good role model. He lost his fortune in the backlash and he quickly became the joke told at office
watercoolers.

Five dead and 14 wounded later, Ginger Bread had the money to pay off his bookie and some extra blow. It all went wrong when his getaway driver chickened out and drove off without him. He ran and ran as fast as he could, but to no avail. He was shot in an alley clutching a sack of bloody 100 dollar bills and broken dreams.

Yule

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
We don't know how the Christmas Tree Girl came to be, but she makes us happy, in this season of the Yule. What is she? A cocktail of flora and fauna, delicately mixed, served on ice. She appeared with the stockings and the candy canes, her feet planted into the frozen soil with a great deal of effort. She can't move, but then again, trees don't. City workers water her daily. Generous shoppers pour coffee and hot chocolate on her feet .Except for the flashing lights draped around her like a sarong, she's naked. Her skin is a mixture of flesh and pin needles. If you touched her face, you'd be surprised how smooth it is. Tough jade. Her breasts are bountiful, like fruits. Her areolas are wooden knots. She smells great, men lick their lips when they pass by. Her fingers are long, fragile. A zealous child breaks off a finger, as easy as a branch. She bleeds blood and sap. Guards are stationed around her after that. Don't hurt her.

She holds a Salvation Army bucket and smiles. The eyes of a child, the vocabulary of a dog. "Merry Christmas!" She'll say, repeating, over and over again. That's the sound of wind blowing through her branches. People from all over come to see her, and soon her bucket fills over. The local cable station has a camera tracked on her, pre-empting the log channel. Strange pornographers webfeed her picture to the internet. There are more perverts in the world than you think.

Network cable infests the city like voles. The Christmas Tree Girl is the Next Big Thing. They interview her, ask her what she thinks Christmas is about. She smiles to the rest of America, acorn eyes glinting.
"Merry Christmas". News spreads around the world. There's debate. Does the girl represent Christmas? What happened to Christ? Should a woman, with the intelligence of an infant be promoting charity? And so on and so forth.

Time passes and Christas is over. Crows sit on her arms, snatching stray wrapping paper. She's ignored. Christmas decorations are replaced with candy hearts. Valentine's Day is coming. A fat worker cuts her off at the ankles and throws her in the back of a truck full of Christmas trees. Did she scream? The fat man wouldn't know. He's listening to a junky old walkman, a soundtrack to his work. The media doesn't record her death, they're more pre-occupied by Artificial Prime Minsiter of the Moon. Her body is tossed into a firepit with the rest of the trees. She's baptised with gasoline. A match is thrown onto her. She wriggles as her skin bubbles and burns. The smell is unpleasant. The worker leaves. There is little fanfare for her death. No eulogy, no songs, no pictures. Back at the square are what's left of her feet, rooted and growing. It'll take a while, but she'll be back. Christmas comes once a year.

Jewels

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
The afternoon was as mean as a hook, and so was Jewels. He’s 10 pushing on Neanderthal. If you miniaturized yourself and drove yourself around his head, your destination, the front, you’d have a pleasant smooth ride until you reached the end. So yeah, Jewels had a flat head, and his brow looked like a cliff. Wanna make something of it? Furby wouldn’t. No, of course not. In the swinging 60s, Furby would have been called a book worm. A spineless mass of a boy, chewing his way through a library of books every night. It’s the 21st century, and Furby prefers the internet. He’s plugged into the infoweb 18 hours a day. Like astronauts being bombarded by cosmic rays, Furby is constantly being bombarded by spam viruses and pop-ups. The most violent thing that he’s done in his life was close errant windows on his computer using ALT-CTRL-DELETE or killing virtual monsters. He doesn’t want to fight Jewels. His parents, bleeding edge geneticist (EXTREME! Geneticists, they tell him, because They Are Cool And With It) tell him to ignore the bullies. This seems like good advice. Jewels is a badger (he tells us), and once he bites, he doesn’t let go.

“Did your mom make your mitts?” Jewel said. “They look like girl’s mitts!” Yeah, Furby’s mom, creativity abound, made those mitts. Knitted bright pink, covering his ham sized hands, yeah, they looked like girl’s mitts. Furby never takes off his mitts.

“I have sensitive hands,” he’d tell his teachers. They didn’t push once they found out that Furby’s parents made financial contributions to the school. New Library, anyone? Yes please! Willing to tolerate a small quirk was worth it. Money was the blood that flowed through the veins of the administration. Keep it coming!

“Are you deaf?” Furby continued to ignore Jewels.

Is Jewels co-dependent? That’s up to a shrink to say for sure. That said, it’s easy to see that he was empowered by his posse of thuggish 9 and 8 year olds. One day a rap producer will put them in a music video. They’re fantastic at posing and cheering. What’s a bully (or multi-platinum selling rapper) without a cheering posse? Now: the posse encourages violence. Jewels eagerly responds by pushing Furby to the ground. One of his amigo assists by extending a foot, a classic maneuver, tripping Furby. This is the extent of their teamwork. Furby falls like a Canadian Spruce. Jewels is on top of him in an eyeblink and shatters his nose like a China plate. He doesn’t block. In the small instant before the second blow, if you filmed the blood gushing out of his nose at 200 frames per second, the playback would make the blood look like beautiful lava. A slow moving crimson river flowing down the side of his face. The second blow loosened some baby teeth and chipped an adult one. Furby blocks the third hit with his right hand. The crunch sounded like a miniscule car accident. Jewels pulls his hand back, holding the deadened fist. Furby begged him to stop, and Jewels responded by kicking him in the ribs. The posse makes gesters to indicate that a teacher was coming. With time evaporating, Jewels decides to humiliate Furby by tearing off his mitts. Instead of hands, his fingers with fused together in a grey carapace. He had lobster claws. Shiny, hard and thick, Furby’s claw squeezed down in panic. He sliced through Jewels’ hand effortlessly. His fingers fell to the ground like dropped coins. Furby whipped the blood off of his face and blood bubbled through his nose as he sobbed.

“Give me back my mitts.”

Maria

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
“Take me to the graveyard.” She wheezes the words through her too small mouth. Her voice is decades old newspaper, her face isn’t much better. She’s old. I comply with her wishes, and I pull out of the driveway to head to the cemetery on the outskirts of town. She wears too large shades, probably a relic from the 50s or something. I drive her in the mornings and the evenings. This is our routine: on the weekdays, I take her to Wal-Mart, where she greets shoppers.
“They put me in the front, in case I die,” she told me. “They don’t want us deeper in the store. Imagine the commotion it would cause if you had paramedics combing the store for a body. Not good for business.” Weekends, I take her to the park. She hobbles out to a bench, her back like a question mark, and she sits in her bench. When I leave her, she has week old Italian bread that she feeds squirrels and birds. When I pick her up in the evening, she’s asleep, pigeons picking at her ears. She must be tasty. I shoo them off, and take her home. Today, is an exception. The graveyard.
“Do you know Mary?” she asks me. I shake my head.
“The one in the Bible? Jesus’ mother? I think about her often.” She takes her hand off of the window and a ghostly imprint remains. It evaporates like a spirit.
“The Bible tells me that it was an emaculate conception, but I always thought that God had sex with her. Imagine, how that would have felt. Probably the best sex that she’d ever had. It’s no wonder she never slept with Joseph after that. Nothing could compare.” We drive in silence for a bit.
“I wonder if she ever tried to re-create it? Back then, they had more gods that we do now. Maybe she went to the old temples, asking the other gods for the experience. Like Leeda being fucked by Zeus as a swan. Yeats wrote a poem about that, I think.” We arrive at the cemetery. I stop and open the door for her.
“Walk with me.” It’s cold outside. It just finished snowing and the ground looks like sketch paper, new. I hate to walk on fresh snow, hating to spoil it with my brown slushy footprints. She doesn’t however, and pulls me to a large statue of an angel, it’s hands folded in prayer. The angel is pristine, with the exception of a small pencil markings on its lips. Lipstick like a geisha.
“My son the Son of God too, you know? He didn’t cause the second coming, or nothing. He lives on welfare. Thought that he’d end up a doctor, or something, with Holy Blood in his veins, or what not. He’s drunk most of the time, turning water into cheap wine. What a disappointment.” She takes off her glasses and I see that she has no eyes. Hallow caves. Miniature bats could live there. She tongue kisses the angel. Her salvia freezes on contact.
“Take me home,” she tells it. She begins to cry tears of blood. They fall into the snow, and become rubies. “The world is so sick and so am I. Take me home.” The angel embraces her, holding her until her sobs stop. I make smoke “o”s with my breathe and watch as the angel picks her off and they fly into the heavens. The snow picks up again and buries our tracks. I stand there, waiting.

Antholes

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
Carlos snorted his blow, John Woo style, two straw her nose. Don’t fuck with Carlos. That’s what his shaky homemade tattoo explains, in mixed case letters. He’s sitting on a major trash of cocaine, genetically modified by award winning scientists straight outta Bogota University. Carlos is like a dragon. He fucks those who have the audacity to take what’s his. Like his trusty machete, he keeps his senses constantly shape with coke. Only one enemy had the balls to fuck with him. Ants. He can hear them all the time, chittering their morse code and perfume language. He sees them, vague phantoms in the corner of his eye, always out of sight. Chittity, chittity. Carlos stops eating lobster and crab because of this.
“You shouldn’t subsidize their compatriots!” he screamed when asked in a seafood restaurant if he wanted the day’s special. He fled the place when he noticed how popular the shrimp cocktail was. Carlos desperately wanted to unfuck the situation with the ants ASAP. He didn’t feel comfortable leaving his coke cave for an extended period of time. Visions of ants carrying off back after bag of his shit made it impossible to sleep. So he stayed with his stash and started to make enquiries. His lieutenants weren’t too helpful, so he put word on the street that he was offering a considerable bonus to anyone that could take him to the ant hill that was threatening business. Money exchanged hands. Ants were not found. Retaliation was swift and feet were removed from those who had the balls to fuck with him. Fuckage was reduced to zero amongst informants.

It was by chance that he found the anthill. He was taking a piss when he noticed an ant patrolling down his arm and onto his wrist. He squashed it, hoping to discourage more from fucking with him. It was after he brushed the carapace from his hand that he had an epiphany and looked at his arm. The hairs on his right stood up on end, and for the first time in his life he realized that it wasn’t covered in course hairs. They were antennae. The insects furiously unburroughed themselves, tearing through the flesh with their terrible mandibles. Soon his pale white arm was an oil slick of black bodies. He removed his machete from his boot and made three quick chops to his arm, removing it from his elbow. He went to the hospital smelling like burnt flesh and kerosene. Cauterizing his stump proved to be harder than he thought. He didn’t want to leave his stash to the ants, but he had no choice. Next time he’d be prepared for them. He told himself, with great powder comes great responsibility.

The Caul

Filed under:nanofiction,writing,Rob Andrews
An anti-time diamond cuts a gash in the rainbow and a time wave breaks through. The scientists are prepared. Time drains into a four dimensional caul the size of a windmill. A signal. The diamond repairs the gash. They call in the chrononaut, a savy man culled from the prison. A lifer. He remembers everything. A five sense camera. He's going to be their chimp. They lather him up in soap and remove his hair down to the follicle. He decends into the caul and they pull him out, seconds later. The body is not the same. It's twisted by time. One arm belongs to a cadaver, a leg, an infant. He tries to speak with his malformed mouth, teeth alternating from rotting to full. Words tumble out like children down a hill. After he dies, the scientists re-play his last words over and over again. They never decipher it. The scientists leave the time pool the best they can. It waits for another man