Episode 4. The Sea Pig And the Sun: Are They Realtors?
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Series Guide: List of All Episodes
“Why not just straight up tell me where you’re from?” say Wick, irritated.
“Okay, fine,” says Qoph. “Waama was a sea pig eating garbage on the ocean floor a mile down. Koral and I are from Seabright Beach in Cruz. Koral lived inside the daily fog. Rolling in every day. Me, I was in a fire ring on the beach. Right where you were napping. Whenever someone makes a bonfire there, I’m in the flames. And I’m in the dead ashes too.”
“I come in low and savor Qoph’s licking flames,” says Koral. “A love story for the ages. We’re saying that you and Vi can take our place. You’ll be fire and fog. And we’ll be you. Living in your house and imitating you. Wearing our meatie bodies.”
“Vi might not like that,” says Wick. “How about you stay at the effing beach, and we stay here. Hello and goodbye.”
“Not an option,” says Qoph.
“No,” cries Wick.
“Buk-buk,” squawks Koral. She switches back to chicken mode and begins scratching the guest room floor with a large, clawed foot. As if hoping to turn up worms. Worms like Wick and Vi.
Wick wishes this was still a dream. But it’s not. He groans, perhaps louder than he meant to.
“What’s happening?” calls Vi from upstairs.
“Wait here,” Wick tells the creatures. “I’ll talk to Vi. We’ll see what we can work out.”
Upstairs, Vi is giddy from the smeel. She recognizes the scent from the dream or vision that she had just before the blank-faced visitors appeared in Santa Cruz. A smell like Vi’s own Chanel perfume, except roasted and twisted into cigarettes. With a touch of bacon.
In her exalted state Vi has been pondering Wick’s ideas. Taking them seriously at last. Space is a continuum that blends with our minds. Stars twinkle in our bodies; plankton dream in the endless sea; each mind is a spangle on the universal scarf. Everything is everything, anywhen and anyhow.
Here comes Wick, stumbling up the basement steps, carrying that leathery little pod. He trips on the top step, and falls flat on his face.
“What if I sink right through the floor?” babbles Wick. “Thanks to the smeel. You and me, Vi, they want us to live on the beach. Fog and fire. Taking their place.”
“Stand up, Wick. It’s sad when old men fall.”
Laboriously Wick gets to his feet. “We’re supposed to trade our lives for this pod of smeel. It has a vent.”
“I heard you with them,” says Vi. “You were yelling. I didn’t catch the details.”
“Qoph and Koral are shapeshifters,” says Wick. “Now they look like you and me.”
“Why would anyone bother?” says Vi, somehow not taking this seriously. “It’d be a laugh to see them try to put on Thanksgiving for our kids.”
“Qoph and Koral say I should go be a repeating pattern in the beach fires, and you should be a swirl in the fog,” says Wick. “And I have a feeling we’re supposed to have sex with them before we leave.”
Vi flashes on a memory of the orgasmic glow dream she’d had on the bench overlooking the beach. Right before Qoph and Koral showed up.
“I’m sorry I got us into this,” says Wick.
Vi looks out the window, thinking things over.
“Look,” she says after a bit. “If those entitled pricks can look like us, and if they can look like chickens, then they can look like anything at all. If they have some reason to spend time in Los Perros, fine. But there’s no reason they have to take over our house and throw us out.”
“You tell them that,” says Wick. “I’m not good at negotiation.”
“Vi will fix.”
They go downstairs, and Vi starts in on the visitors. “You look like toys, like anime, like love-dolls. Being Wick and Vi is harder than you think.”
“We’re vibing you,” says Qoph. “Copying all your code. Software, wetware, whatever.”
“Wick and I are deeper than you’ll ever know,” says Vi, putting on a woman-of-mystery tone. She makes a slow-motion series of gestures, then speeds them up. Fluid, graceful, hypnotic. “You can’t touch this.”
Qoph and Koral look mildly interested.
“I guess — if need be, we could live here as chickens,” says Qoph, meaning to be agreeable.
“Are you crazy?” exclaims Koral. “What kind of fun will we have if we’re chickens? The coop is worse than this house.”
“Manners!” says Vi. “You’re not hip enough for our house, Koral. Not ready for our boho den of shabby-chic rhapsody. Our lair of genius and love.”
“What if we just kill you?” says Koral.
“Not just like that,” says Qoph. “Remember that Waama wants the host humans to take the emes’ places in their old niches. They’re us, and we’re them. That way Waama can do her superheterodyne thing. For her big trip.”
Vi doesn’t like the sound of this. “I do understand that you don’t want to be chickens,” she tells Qoph and Koral. “Who would? But replacing us is off the table. What about wasps!”
“Huh?” goes Koral, momentarily off balance.
Vi leans right into Koral’s face. “Yellowjackets, dear. The most gorgeous creatures on Earth. Shiny, lethal, like tiny motorcycles. Amazing colony scene. Underground burrows in our yard. Striped bodies and iridescent wings.”
“Show me,” says Koral.
“Right this way,” says Wick. He leads them upstairs, then gets a chunk of smoked salmon from the fridge and sets it on the porch railing.
It’s dusk, the time of day when the wasps fly back to their burrows in the dirt of the bamboo patch. Passing by, they smell the salmon. Five or six of them land on the pink flesh. The wasps are dainty. Elegant bodies, cool compound eyes, intricate legs, expressive antennae.
“High glam,” says Koral appreciatively. “Dense dynamics. Orbaam.”
“You can be the queen of their colony,” Vi tells her. “Larger than the others. Breeding for the whole nest. The grateful workers will nourish you with nectar.”
“What about me?” says Qoph.
“You can be my prize drone,” says Koral. “Charging my spermatozoa tank. Tickling my pleasure nodes. Bringing me frags of rotten meat.”
“Sting, sting, sting,” says Qoph, getting into it.
“We’ll invade the neighboring colonies,” says Koral. “Take slaves and cannibalize. Anoint fresh queens with royal jelly!”
“Orbaam,” goes Qoph. It’s an all-purpose eme word that means — general satisfaction. His eyes play across the rickety, unpainted deck. “I hope you’re not disappointed, Wick and Vi. I know it would be honor to have your home be a field office for our invasion. But this property — ”
“Beneath our status,” says Koral, flipping into her entitled prick mode.
“How did you ever get so snotty?” Vi asks her.
“She was a pattern in the fog at Seabright Beach,” says Wick in mock awe. “Big effin deal.”
“As a scientist, you should know about the wispy beauty of fog,” says Koral. “The divine chaos of dissipative dynamical systems. With my eme a recurrent strange attractor. And, ah, the days of rain.”
“And think of being fire,” adds Qoph. “Writhing and crackling, utterly irreversible. When there’s enough driftwood, I leap twenty feet high. Now and then I eat an entire log.”
“We’re mates, we two,” says Koral. “An odd couple. Like Vi and Wick.” She pauses, exchanging a look with Qoph. These two are sly. They’re planning a trick.
“Ready?” goes Qoph. A couple of the wasps are flying by.
“Toodle-oo, low peasants,” says Koral.
The odd creatures’ bodies flex and warp. The space around Wick and Vi flickers as well. And now — some kind of glitch. It’ll be a couple of minutes until Wick grasps what it is.
The new queen and her royal consort rise with the other wasps, angling through the golden sun’s dying rays. The queen is considerably larger than her mate. They thread through the bamboo shoots, heading for the wasps’ larva-laden burrow amid the bamboo roots. The new queen will kill the resident queen, begin her reign, and mate with Qoph.
“Problem solved,” says Wick on the deck. “They’re down there, and we’re up here.”
“In our substandard home,” says the seeming Vi with a laugh. Something is a bit wrong with her voice.
“And we’ve got our pod of smeel,” says Wick. “Let’s take a hit.” He releases a puff of the dense, amber gas. The smoky aethereal substance percolates through their bodies like mist through trees.
