Jews vs Aliens Page 13

  But, no. He’d been a distinguished-looking old man for long enough. He knew that some lessons merely had to be learned in the doing.

  Reb Chaim turned back to the produce carts. A few had been upended, but most were still in serviceable condition. He did a squat and sorted through a few of the lemons on the floor. A really good one brushed against his fingers, then rolled away into some unreachable crevice. It didn’t matter. There were more than enough here.

  When he had finished, the children were still not back. The two unconscious creatures who’d been on the floor were also gone – vanished, suddenly yet somehow unremarkably, each into a shimmer of pale blue. He counted out exact change from his wallet and left it on the cash register, obscured from potential thieves by a small bag of potato chips on top. He didn’t have exact change: he was half a dollar over, which normally would cause him to stand in a corner of the store and wait, patiently but respectably, for another customer to materialise with sufficient funds for his reimbursement.

  Tonight, he decided to leave it and head home.

  ‘Chaim, what took you so long?’ said his wife when he crept in. She was already in bed, but not yet asleep – Chaya had a terrible time letting herself go to sleep at night. His absence probably magnified her unease. She had the radio on, tuned to the news channel, which usually she wanted for white noise. Tonight, however, it was buzzing, the announcer talking rapidly and excitedly: strange lights seen over Brooklyn, low-flying planes. Reb Chaim rolled down the volume and, as unobtrusively as he could, switched it to the oldies station.

  EXCISION

  NAOMI ALDERMAN

  Transcript from In The Spirit, a light-hearted weekly vidcast across the five systems on matters of faith, cultural spiritual practice, ancestor worship and the Quantum Gods.

  Starts at 0012:38:92 of the programme.

  …and on that subject, we’re joined today from the gas planet Procyon 12 by an entity who’s made quite the journey in spiritual outlook. N’kk’d>>f – I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly?

  Not bad. Human tongues can’t really manage the >>.

  I’m embarrassed now I hear you pronounce it! Great! So, why don’t you tell us what made you decide to convert to the Earth religion of ‘Judaism’?

  I’ve always been a searcher, I suppose. The values of Judaism appealed to me: a lot of emphasis is placed on the family. The peoples of Procyon 12 have rather complex families – each grouping contains four genders – so I was pleased to find a system of thought that put the family at the centre. And of course there was a more serious –

  Right, right, amazing. Now my notes tell me that the leaders of this religion, the ‘rabbis’, tried to put you off?

  That’s right, Dirk. Judaism isn’t a proselytising religion. They turned me away three times, according to their custom.

  I’d think you might want to be put off, given that you have to have… is this right… they cut a bit off your sex organ when you join? That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?

  Ah, of course, yes, the circumcision process was quite problematic! I am of a gender unknown among humans. I have a protuberance with which I can begin the process of mate-impregnation, but when the act is complete the member breaks off and remains with my partner. A new member then grows within 72 hours. Well, it was faster when I was younger.

  A...ha?

  Yes, it was quite the conundrum for the rabbis! The sign is of a permanent covenant – but my sexual organs are extremely impermanent!

  Sounds like a… puzzler?

  Yes indeed. Well put. In the end, after some Talmudic discourse, it was decided that I could cut a permanent notch in my… ah, it is hard to describe in human terms. It is the frilly flesh-part which stands up on the back of my head when I am ready to mate.

  Right! And are any of your other partners interested in joining you on your spiritual quest?

  Not mine, no. Several friends have expressed an interest, but I believe I’m the first person on my planet to take the plunge, as it were.

  To have the snip.

  Quite.

  Now, fitting a bi-gendered religion to a people with four genders. Tricky at all? I understand that the people of Procyon 12 fall into, basically, for the viewers, two different kinds of bloke and two different kinds of woman.

  No, it would not be correct to call them two forms of male and two female, no. It is complex. These terms do not have the meaning for us that they have for you.

  What would you call them, then?

  The closest form is… you might call them right and left and up and down. And centre.

  And centre?

  Right and left and up and down and centre, yes.

  That's… five.

  Yes.

  I thought you said there were four.

  Yes. There are four.

  So what's… centre?

  Ah. We hope for their return.

  We don’t have much time, I’m afraid, N’kk’d>>f, so I’m going to ask you to tell me more – but briefly, if you could?

  It is a matter of some shame to my people.

  I’m sorry to hear that. But, briefly…

  To create new life, four partners are needed. The first impregnates the second. The second hosts the foetus for three months before passing it on to the third, who adds certain DNA modifiers. The third hosts for another 21 days before passing to the fourth, who provides the amniotic sac and swaps in some RNA. After 36 days, the amniotic sac must be passed back to the first impregnator, who hosts the foetus to term – another eight months.

  Fascinating. And complicated! Must take a lot of commitment.

  This is why we place such emphasis on family.

  And the… fifth gender?

  We destroyed them.

  Right.

  They were not necessary to the process.

  I see.

  The rhetoric was that they were parasites. Their role was only to add certain DNA switching chemicals at the fifth and twenty-sixth week. They never hosted the foetus. It is history for us now. A politico-philosophical movement among my people 300 years ago declared them… lesser beings.

  Right.

  They contributed nothing, you see.

  I’m being told we have to –

  They were only a small fraction of us. Fewer than one per cent of births would belong to this fifth gender. We hunted them down. Where they were sheltered, we rooted them out. We knew them by the unusual colour of their eyes. By the lower tone of their voices. It took 100 years. And only then did we know that without their DNA-switching properties there would never be another of them.

  And you –

  It’s not that they had a special power, or some innate ability. But we destroyed part of our own people. The body will never be whole again. There has been a great deal of regret among us for what we have done.

  That’s fascinating and tragic. Thank you, N’kk’d>>f, for –

  This was what I saw among the Jewish people, you understand.

  We have to –

  I was only a youngster, 300 years ago. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I suppose I… I suppose I’ve been searching for someone to forgive me.

  Cut to commercial.

  CONTRIBUTORS

  ANDREA PHILLIPS is an award-winning writer and game designer who has worked on projects such as The Walk, Zombies, Run!, and The Daring Adventures of Captain Lucy Smokeheart. Her debut novel, Revision, will be out in spring 2015.

  One of ROSANNE RABINOWITZ’s first stories appeared in The Slow Mirror: New Fiction by Jewish Writers, but no extraterrestrials were involved. Her fiction has since found its way to places like Postscripts, Midnight Street and Black Static, and she completed a writing MA at Sheffield Hallam University. Her novella Helen’s Story (PS Publishing) was shortlisted for the 2013 Shirley Jackson award. She has also contributed to anthologies such as Rustblind and Silverbright, Never Again: Weird Fiction Against Racism and Fascism, Extended Play: the Elastic Book of Music, Mind Seed and Horror Uncut. Her r
eviews and articles have appeared in Interzone and Paradox, and she contributes non-fiction to union, community and activist websites.

  ERIC KAPLAN is a television writer and philosopher. He has worked for Futurama, Flight of the Conchords, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory where he is currently a co-executive producer. His book Does Santa Exist: A Philosophical Investigation was published by Dutton in 2014. His work is available at ericlinuskaplan.wordpress.com.

  RACHEL SWIRSKY holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop where she wrote a bunch and learned about how to be very cold. She is now back in California where she lives in a desert and is learning about how to be quite hot. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, and Clarkesworld, been nominated for several of the major science fiction awards, and won the Nebula Award twice. Her second collection, How The World Became Quiet: Myths Of The Past, Present And Future, came out from Subterranean Press in 2013.

  JAY CASELBERG is an Australian author based in Europe, His work has appeared in many venues worldwide and his most recent novel, Empties, is available now. He can be found at http://www.jaycaselberg.com

  ELANA GOMEL is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and American Studies at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of six non-fiction books and numerous articles on subjects such as postmodernism, narrative theory, science fiction, Dickens, and Victorian culture. Her latest books are Narrative Space and Time: Representing Impossible Topologies in Literature (Routledge 2014) and Science Fiction, Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014). Her fantasy stories appeared in New Horizons, Aoife’s Kiss, Bewildering Stories, Timeless Tales and the anthologies People of the Book and Dogstar and Other Science Fiction Stories. She is also the author of a fantasy novel A Tale of Three Cities (Dark Quest Books, 2013).

  GON BEN ARI is a writer, screenwriter and musician currently living in Brooklyn, NY. His feature film, Yiddish Speaking Western Der Mensch, is now in pre-production with director Vania Heymann.

  LOIS H. GRESH is the New York Times Best-Selling Author (6 times), Publishers Weekly Best-Selling Paperback Author, Publishers Weekly Best-Selling Paperback Children’s Author, and USA Today Best-Selling Author of 27 books and 55 short stories. Current books are Dark Fusions: Where Monsters Lurk! (editor, PS Publishing, 2013), story collection Eldritch Evolutions (Chaosium 2011, BookViewCafe ebook 2012), and The Divergent Companion (St. Martin’s Press, 2014). Anthology Innsmouth Nightmares (PS Publishing, 2015) is forthcoming. Lois has received Bram Stoker Award, Nebula Award, Theodore Sturgeon Award, and International Horror Guild Award nominations for her work.

  MATTHUE ROTH is the author of The Gobblings, a children’s book about a boy who saves a space station overrun by monsters, and the picture-book adaptation My First Kafka, and some other books that aren’t for children. He lives in Brooklyn and keeps a secret diary at matthue.com.

  NAOMI ALDERMAN is a novelist, broadcaster and games designer. She’s won numerous awards for her literary novels which include Disobedience and The Liars’ Gospel. She broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and has a regular monthly column in the Observer. She is the co-creator of the hit smartphone fitness game Zombies, Run! In 2012 she was selected by Granta as one of their once-a-decade list of Best of Young British Novelists, and in 2013 she was picked for the Rolex Arts Initiative as the mentee of Margaret Atwood.

  ABOUT THE CHARITY

  Mosac (Charity No: 1139077) provides practical and emotional support to non-abusing parents, carers and families of children who have been sexually abused.

  The charity was formed in 1992 when four mothers whose children were abused came together and drew strength from each other’s shared experience and realised the need for a similar service for others.

  Based in Greenwich in south London, Mosac offers a national helpline, as well as counselling, advocacy, support groups and play therapy, and aims to break the silence surrounding child sexual abuse by raising awareness through training and consultancy.

  All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Mosac.