My father’s favorite test subject, a 57-pound bio-genetically altered male piglet, Wilboar, AKA Willie, soars over the storage shed. Its broad wings rhythmically flutter; its eyes dart up and down, left and right. A GoPro camera with AI-level stabilization lenses sits on Willie’s sleek head. I track Willie from the landing site, holding my breath in anticipation of another disaster, my weak legs barely holding steady. Wille, though, is unaffected by my anxiety. He squeals with delight. My mother and brother, Finn, also follow, riding in the three-wheeler, ignoring the stream of piglet poop trailing behind the silly beast, ready to transport him back to the lab. Microsensors in Willie’s tissues, organs, muscles, and bloodstream allow Father access to multiple physiological data points; the quantum processor calculates probabilities, certainties, and unknowns, all in real time. After one more circle around the shed, Willie descends. Father’s joyful whoops pour through our headsets. Until...
The massive harvest table swelled with Soylent, Guinea Fowl, Sicilian oranges, Pule cheese, pandemain, honey, cloves, and black cardamon for the wedding . The dead bride propped in the cathedra. Her garland of Delphiniums shrivelling. A suckling pig, still shackled to the spit, its trotters tanned, skin crispy, made me swoon. We approached slowly uncertain if we would be welcome. They waved us forward, their hand motioning like the pope, partially outstretched with fourth and little fingers curled inward. Jerzy didn’t budge. Waited for me to do my thing. My garment concealing the weapon. Darkness obscuring everything, and nothing. Through the wee hours we gorged on the spoils, sucking bones and roux, leaving nothing but crumbs. Reclined in the winter garden beneath a mangled grapevine canopy until dawn, smoking fat hand-rolled cigars, the toothy wrappers full of dark flavour. When morning broke, the mayhem and horror of the previous night was laid bare. Stone walls executed with torre...