Origin

by Jessica Khoury

Now, there is only one thing I want: someone else who knows. Knows what it is to never bleed. Knows what it is to look ahead and see eternity. Knows what it is to be surrounded by faces that you love, faces that will one day stop breathing and start to decay while your own will remain frozen outside of time. None of them know. Not Mother, not Uncle Paolo, not any of them. They think they can understand.

“Anyway,” he says, “if you’re so perfect, Chipmunk, why does he keep testing you?” “That’s not fair and you know it.” “Did you ever consider…” He stops, shakes his head. “What? Consider what?” His eyes flicker over his shoulder before he answers. “You know. Not passing.”

It takes five generations, no more and no less, of periodic injections of Immortis for the immortality gene in the flower to assimilate into the genetic code of the rat or the human.

In time, we’ll no longer be an isolated group hidden in the jungle, but a race. Thinking of that day almost brings tears to my eyes, I want it so badly. It’s all part of the plan that Dr. Falk wrote out a century ago.

But the way Uncle Antonio’s face lights up as they dance…I wonder what it would be like to feel that. To let the chemicals of romance take over for just a little while. Then I remember that I’m immortal and that my body doesn’t work like everyone else’s. Who knows if I even can feel love?

“I’m not ignorant,” Eio objects. “It is you who are ignorant, Pia bird. My father taught me English.” “Your father?” “He is a scientist like you, in Little Cam.” “Really!” I blink and stare at him with astonishment. Well, well, someone’s been hiding a really big secret.…“Who is it? What’s his name?” I think of all the scientists, wondering who it could be. “To me, he is only Papi. He comes and teaches me English and math and writing.”

“I will take you back,” he repeats in a firmer tone. “It’s not good for a woman to walk alone in the jungle without a man to protect her.” He thinks I’m a woman. I stand a little taller. “Well, all right. If you want.”

There is no warmth in Eio’s voice when he talks about the scientists taking the flowers from his people, and I don’t want him to think it was my decision. For some reason, I want this strange, wild boy to think better of me than that.