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Kaufman
The Future is the Motherfucking Future
The boy stares at you, impassive, stony, and his expression never changes, not when the peroxide sizzles on his blood, not when you smile at him and run to catch your bus, and there are so many oak trees in the world.
And during your last semester of college your dad asks for your semen to impregnate his new wife. Don’t worry, he says, we’ll mix yours with mine so we won’t be sure who the father is, I just want to keep it in the family. And you say no, after agonizing for a week, and his new wife, his third, cries, even though they’ll manage eventually, against all odds, and the third wife will bear him a second child. A daughter, a sister. But no one could have known that then, and when he comes to take you out to lunch the day of your matriculation from the university he tells you how disappointed he is. You were being selfish he says. You’ve got to think of other people.
And look! An oak!
And you love someone, and you understand how your fingers want to know the line of every jaw, tap at the hints of what’s inside every beautiful face.
And you want so much for the future. Your dreams are dreams of limitlessness. They all star you.
And all that dies with the meat, and the immaculate thing, unburdened, free, passes back out of the confines of you, and does not remember.

*

Science Fiction: a pill that re-codes your DNA. Take one with breakfast and by the time you’re ready to curl up on your foam mattress you’ll have grown gills. You can walk to the sea on webbed feet and dive in, subcutaneous fat to keep you warm, nictitating membranes to keep the salt from your eyes.
Or wings, maybe, angels all. Or just an end to genetic disease.
Why not take our evolution into our own hands? It would be a good project, get people to work with each other, like building a model boat together for the whole human race. Minor disagreements might lead to fighting, which might lead to an evolution war. North Koreans grow extra thick skin to protect themselves from the radiation. You know, from the nuclear apocalypse.
Next the South Koreans sprout scorpion stingers strong enough to punch through the thickest commie hide. The Chinese turn into flying octopi. You’ll look up and think, Well that’s a funny cloud, but it’s not a cloud! It’s Chinese flying mantopus camouflage in action. Chinese octomen dropping out of the sky.
Maybe Americans could become giant Venus fly traps. Digest the Chinese invasion.
Or maybe not everything’s like it would be in the movies, and we’ll

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