Your Mother, A Mole Rat
by
Zoe Ballering
Dear Sadie,
If you are reading this, you have just woken up. Your gaze has become conjugal again. It’s a form of coupling in which your eyes, living separate lives, join back together. You have certainly thrown up. I’m glad. Food has passed through your esophagus—albeit in the wrong direction—for the first time in many years.
I’m going to tell you an incredible story. Do you remember when we visited the mole rats at the National Zoo? You were nine, a sunburnt stringbean in a ballcap, and you said, “Mom, there’s a bunch of skin tubes on display.” The thing about mole rats—they’re otherworldly. They’re immune to pain, cancer, extremely low temperatures, lack of oxygen. They live for a very long time.
For a couple of years, NASA tried to splice together mole rat and human DNA. They produced a graduating class of shriveled, snaggle-toothed cadets who tried to burrow underneath their desks. Eventually, it just seemed easier to transfer human brains into mole rat bodies. They are, of course, quite hideous creatures, and there’s the unfortunate lack of eyesight and opposable thumbs, but our brains have always mattered more than the vessels that contain them.
The next batch of colonists will leave next month. I’m sitting in the waiting room right now, scrubbed and ready for the operation. I asked the doctor, just to be sure. I said, “What are the chances that they’ll find a way to fix my daughter’s brain?” He said, “Let me put this gently. If we transferred Sadie’s brain into a vegetable, that vegetable would stay the same.” But the thing about science—all these dreams of red pills and robots and flying cars, and I’m sure we always miss the next thing coming.
After the accident, I wanted to die, but I also couldn’t bear to leave you. I stayed in Pittsburgh; your father moved away. Sadie—I’m so tired. When I saw the call for colonists, I knew that God had answered my prayers. I wanted immunity from pain. I wanted to find a way to wait for you without waiting as myself on Earth.
I’m sure this is upsetting, waking up after twenty, thirty years and finding out that your mom has changed so much. I only know that someday I’ll be tilling the red soil with a plough attached to my pink and hairless haunches, and I will see you—no—I will sense you coming. I suppose you’ll be a mole rat, too, or some equally hardy creature like a tardigrade or a Greenland shark. But what does it matter, really? What you said at the zoo that day was true, albeit rude. We are all only skin tubes, in the end of things.
If you are reading this, I am a mole rat, and I love you,
Mom
If you are reading this, you have just woken up. Your gaze has become conjugal again. It’s a form of coupling in which your eyes, living separate lives, join back together. You have certainly thrown up. I’m glad. Food has passed through your esophagus—albeit in the wrong direction—for the first time in many years.
I’m going to tell you an incredible story. Do you remember when we visited the mole rats at the National Zoo? You were nine, a sunburnt stringbean in a ballcap, and you said, “Mom, there’s a bunch of skin tubes on display.” The thing about mole rats—they’re otherworldly. They’re immune to pain, cancer, extremely low temperatures, lack of oxygen. They live for a very long time.
For a couple of years, NASA tried to splice together mole rat and human DNA. They produced a graduating class of shriveled, snaggle-toothed cadets who tried to burrow underneath their desks. Eventually, it just seemed easier to transfer human brains into mole rat bodies. They are, of course, quite hideous creatures, and there’s the unfortunate lack of eyesight and opposable thumbs, but our brains have always mattered more than the vessels that contain them.
The next batch of colonists will leave next month. I’m sitting in the waiting room right now, scrubbed and ready for the operation. I asked the doctor, just to be sure. I said, “What are the chances that they’ll find a way to fix my daughter’s brain?” He said, “Let me put this gently. If we transferred Sadie’s brain into a vegetable, that vegetable would stay the same.” But the thing about science—all these dreams of red pills and robots and flying cars, and I’m sure we always miss the next thing coming.
After the accident, I wanted to die, but I also couldn’t bear to leave you. I stayed in Pittsburgh; your father moved away. Sadie—I’m so tired. When I saw the call for colonists, I knew that God had answered my prayers. I wanted immunity from pain. I wanted to find a way to wait for you without waiting as myself on Earth.
I’m sure this is upsetting, waking up after twenty, thirty years and finding out that your mom has changed so much. I only know that someday I’ll be tilling the red soil with a plough attached to my pink and hairless haunches, and I will see you—no—I will sense you coming. I suppose you’ll be a mole rat, too, or some equally hardy creature like a tardigrade or a Greenland shark. But what does it matter, really? What you said at the zoo that day was true, albeit rude. We are all only skin tubes, in the end of things.
If you are reading this, I am a mole rat, and I love you,
Mom
NUNUM
Blending Flash Fiction & Art
