The Dead Don’t Care

“They’re here!” Eliza, the office assistant breaks the nervous silence in the office.

They’re here. The scientists from the United Kingdom are here and they’ve brought an ancient artifact from five centuries ago. I phone the museum director and the archaeological curator immediately. On the line, the director is giddy.

“I wonder what she smells like?” Eliza ponders aloud.

“That’s a good question,” I say. “But I don’t think any of us are gonna get close enough to find out.”

Eliza frowns.

Even I must admit I can sense a buzz in the air. A determined crowd of whirling white-coated scientists shuffle down the ramp, ready to meet the new installation. Their enthusiastic chatter almost compels me. My rubber-necking peers cannot help themselves, even though they know they won’t be able to see anything until the final installation is complete. I have other things to do, like paperwork, requisitions to get signed, and stuff like that.

At lunchtime, I find the contents of my lunch box are not going to eat themselves. I was feeling lofty last night, having made only healthful choices. What was I thinking? There was an entire tin of homemade caramels on the table. I could have packed, like, two or something. As I sat there brooding over my sad lunch, Dugan the security guard swooped in. He lands in the seat opposite mine and smiles at me. I smile back, a tight-lipped one because I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.

“Hi, Dugan,” I say.

“Hey there,” he tears the wrapping off one of those high protein snack bars. “So? Have you seen it yet?”

“How could I have seen it? You know they bring ‘em in in one of those steel crates…”

“Yeah, I know. I saw it.” His eyes twinkle before promptly correcting, “I mean, I saw the crate.” He looked around the lunch room.

“How long…”

“It’s scheduled to open next month,” I say.

“Yeah, I know.” He took a big bite of his bar. I watched mini chocolate chips tumble down the front of his blue uniform with official-looking patches all over it.

I stuffed a carrot stick in my mouth; I bit down begrudgingly. I watched Dugan nod his head up and down like he was following along with something I was saying, except I wasn’t talking.

He said, “I heard she was a child sacrifice.”

“That’s what they’re saying.”

On opening day of the Incan installation, I put on my best suit. I knew it was going to be a busy day, so I wore my most comfortable shoes and I got to work one half hour early. Outside the museum, the banner commemorating the event was flapping haphazardly against the building, so I phoned the grounds crew as soon as I got to my desk. They were already working on a fix. Then Dugan found me at the water fountain filling my bottle.

“Guess what?” He said, while chomping down on another one of those snack bars.

“Is that your breakfast?” That was rude of me, I thought.

“This?” indicating the canteen item. “No. I already had a big breakfast… Anyway, I saw it. The child mummy. It’s creepy as hell. She literally looks like she just fell asleep.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. Haven’t you seen the images already?” Rude again. I began to internally scold myself.

“Well yeah, but it’s not the same…”

Dugan was right. Pictures rarely do a thing justice. After all, we were not talking about a ceramic pot here. We were not even talking about a fossil, but a real corpse and not just a corpse, but a female child who was once very much alive, even if it was hundreds of years ago.

“Are you gonna go see it?” Dugan asked.

“Am I going to see it?” I scoffed and shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You have to! It’s a relic! Why wouldn’t you?”

I began to head back to my desk with Dugan in tow. In my mind I was searching for the right words. “Let’s put it this way, if they someday find your body neatly preserved in, I don’t know, the permafrost, would you like it put on display?”

“Oh, god, yes! Why would I care? I’d be dead!”

“Okay, then. What if it was your mom’s body? What if it was your daughter’s body?”

“As long as it was for science, I don’t think I would care.”

“Oh, really? What if you were naked? Like the ice man?”

“I mean, if I was dead, I don’t think I’d care.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t, but it would be nice to make that choice.”

Just then my phone rang, so I gave Dugan an apologetic smile, who gestured a casual “catch ya later.”

Not surprisingly, the morning was hectic, but the time passed quickly to my delight. There was no time to take a break. Around late morning, Dugan showed up at my desk with a cup of coffee he retrieved for me.

“Oooh, thank you! I can really use this.”

“I figured,” he said, giving me his best flirtatious smile. “Have you given any more thought to whether you’re gonna see the corpse?”

“Why would I want to do something like that? This is a real person we’re talking about here. Is this really what we do as humans? If you’re really old, we’re not gonna bury you. We’re gonna put your body on display and you don’t get anything to say about it. Don’t you think this is a privacy issue? I don’t want to go “ooh” and “ah” over this poor girl who was basically murdered. Sorry. I think its grotesque, even if its in the name of science. I think that’s a poor excuse,” I state my exasperated case.

“I understand,” he says, half-smiling, half cowering.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. I still think it’s interesting as hell. Where else am I going to get to see a frozen dead girl.”

I gave him a sideways glance. I guess he’s right, but I don’t want him to think he won the argument.

“Hey,” he said, all chipper. “You wanna get dinner later? There’s a new pizza place a few blocks from here I’ve been wanting to try.”

How can I resist Dugan’s coy smile. “Sure, Dugan. That sounds nice,” I say and was grateful for having the early morning foresight to choose my comfortable shoes, even if it meant chowing down a meal with one who would sooner see my corpse under a glass case than let me turn to dust underground. I resolved to formulate a new argument with which to persuade, over pizza.