Episode 3. The Sea Pig And the Sun: Smeel Pod
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Series Guide: List of All Episodes
Their house is on a slope, with a carport and a guest room beneath the main house and its deck. Beside the carport, amid straggling bamboo, a small chicken coop houses a cock and a hen.
“Wrap the pod in newspaper,” instructs Vi as she kills the car’s engine. “Drench it in charcoal lighter. Ftoom! I mean it.”
“It’s valuable,” protests Wick, keeping the pod out of her reach. “I’ll let our chickens watch over it.” His lips feel numb and his voice sounds quacky. His body feels overly tuned. Some of that smeel is seeping through the pod’s rubbery shell. There’s a faint scent of smoked ham.
Keeping clear of Vi, Wick darts into the chicken coop and nestles his pod on a clump of dirty straw. The cock and the hen don’t like it. They squawk and flap; they scratch compulsively at the dirt.
“You’re hopeless,” says Vi, nearly in tears. She stumps up the front steps to their house’s main door. Slam.
Wick takes the downstairs door into the guest room, flops onto the bed, and falls instantly asleep. He’s back in the seminar room with the shelves of models that aren’t models. They’re more like dioramas or holograms of natural scenes. Clouds, waving branches, rock slides, rushing streams. And, come to think of it, the emes look like those things too. Wick’s been thinking of them as lumpy, shaggy mathematicians. But they’re nowhere close to being humans. Except for the faceless, deeply tanned pricks from the Mercedes.
The translucent, twitching sea pig Waama slumps against a wall, feeding on something like a large smoked salmon. Her clustered oral arms are nibbling at the pink flesh.
Maybe the food isn’t salmon. Maybe the food is Pop’s body. And Pop is Jesus? Dies in the vest. Wick and Pop argued the week before Pop died — and Wick still regrets it. He peers at the salmon that might be Pop’s corpse.
“A treat to your taste?” says the faceless and deeply tanned Qoph from the Mercedes, the entitled prick with the gold retro watch. Beside him stands his partner Koral with her expensive bedhead do.
“The pod you gave us,” says Wick. “You say it’s full of smeel. But I can’t remember what smeel does.”
“Always happens when emes make deals with goobs like you,” says Koral. Her face vibrates the sounds. “You wave with it when you’re with us. But when you come down, you’re lost. Stuck at one level. Deeply unaware.”
“Smeel lets you change your form,” says smooth-faced Qoph.
Wick wants to display his wisdom. “Everything is alive. Any mind can live anywhere.”
“A sniff of smeel, and you’ll be at the wheel,” says Qoph.
“I’d like that,” says Wick. “But what do you and Koral want? I forget.”
“We want to make bodies for Waama’s crew,” says faceless Koral, with a toss of her tousled head. “She wants to use humans. You’re so corny and heartfelt and literal. You have goals and plans and emotions. Such smelly vibes.”
“Waama gathered emes from all over Earth,” adds Qoph. “To be her followers. You’re going to help us settle in here. Thanks to Wick’s fertile mind. Vi’s gift of gab.”
Wick feels more and more uneasy. “And the leathery pod is what Vi and I get for helping you?”
“An inexhaustible fount of smeel,” says Koral. “Yours for closing the deal.”
“It has a little vent you can control,” says Qoph.
“Ideal for meeting emes,” says Koral. “We’re all over, but you don’t see. Air currents are invisible jellyfish. Heatflows are snakes. Texts are faces. A chuckling quest to find them.”
“This is a dream,” cries Wick. “It’s not true.”
“We’ll be chickens in the coop when you wake,” says Koral. “Prepared to settle in as a Wick and a Vi! We’ll open the seal on your pod of smeel. A gas, gas, gas.” She does that giggle thing in her throat.
“Tingly,” adds Qoph. “Smeely multi-lounge transforms.”
“Should our new friends shrink, or should they grow?” Koral pertly asks Qoph, cocking her head as if in thought.
“Big is small,” says Qoph with a shrug. “Small is big. Right, Wick? Microbes and thunderstorms. Everything is everything.”
“Wrong is right,” says Koral. “The wisdom of higher reality.”
All the emes in the so-called seminar room are laughing at Wick. It’s not really a room, of course. It’s a mental loop. A repeating dream. An online meeting of emes who live in nature’s chaotic computations. Tree bark, misty waterfalls, cracked mud, eddying wind. Waama the sea pig waves her transparent legs in glee.
Koral flips into a seduction routine. She flings her floppy arms around Wick, circling his waist twice.
“Pretty boy,” she hums. “You like me, yes?.” She moves closer, as if for a kiss. But she doesn’t have lips. She’s a skin-covered skull with big hair.
Wick wakes with a strangled scream. Outside, the chickens in the coop are crowing and cackling. An extra hen and rooster have appeared. The new chickens go after the leathery pod. Pecking the hell out of it.
The pod opens its vent with a tiny popping sound — like the smallest champagne cork ever. Very clear, very precise, celebrating the end of Wick’s old life.
A heavy, amber gas streams from the opening in the leathery skin. An odor like a country smokehouse with Parisian perfume. The fumes curl through the air, fluid as whiskey in water, an exquisite tangle of curves. Smeel. It drifts into the guest room as if the house walls weren’t there. It perfuses Wick’s body.
It’s the end of the long summer day. The most gorgeous day Wick has ever known. The chickens are calm. He looks around the shabby guest room, now perfect in every respect, beautiful beyond imagining. He hears Vi moving upstairs, perhaps making supper, perhaps not angry at him. Her sounds are intricate, delicate, refined. He’s in paradise.
Wick nudges at the space with his eyes. Shapeshifting. He’s a two-legged ant on the rumpled rug. Whoops! He’s a gawky giant, hunched beneath the ceiling.
A sharp knock on the door to the yard. Wick’s smeel-rush fades, along with its fragrance of scent and smoke. He’s his own dull size. The door opens, revealing a man and a woman in business-casual attire, their voices garbled and amused. Qoph and Koral.
Qoph’s features flow. He’s remodeling himself to look like Wick. And Koral — oh god. She’s changing into Vi.
“Does this work for you?” asks Koral, cozying up to Wick. “As a mating trigger? You and Vi can help us port emes into human form.”
“A hundred meaties,” says Qoph.
“Ready to make woo-woo?” Koral asks Wick, wrapping a snaky arm around his waist.
“Let’s close our deal,” says Qoph. He returns the leather smeel pod to Wick. The slightest of gestures eases its sphincter open or closed. “Endless draughts of wisdom,” exclaims Qoph. “Clouds and words. Poetry and passion.”
“I’m not so sure we want it,” says Wick.
Koral is looking around, getting a better idea of what Wick and Vi’s house is like. She doesn’t like it. “I can’t believe Waama says this spot has vintage charm. ” she tells Qoph, “It’s shoddy. Cheap materials. Low ceiling.”
“We’ll make do,” says Qoph. “We’ll get bodies for Waama’s emes and she’ll be happy. And you and I can switch places with Wick and Vi. New life in, old life out.”
“Where’s Waama now?” asks Wick.
“She’s under the compost heap in your back yard,” says Qoph. “Three inches long. Still imitating a Mercedes.”
“To see the new life we’re offering you, check it out in the math seminar room,” giggling Koral tells Wick. “Such a goob. That place is the multi lounge. Get it straight.”
