Mitä haluatte

Kun kuolen,

Ottakaa minusta se,

Minkä haluatte.

Minä en tarvitse enää mitään siitä,

En muistojani, en haaveitani,

En tapojani, hyviä enkä pahoja,

En tietäni enkä polkujani.

Ottakaa minusta vain se,

Minkä tarvitsette,

Ja valitkaa viisaasti.

Jos painaa liikaa, älkää kantako,

Säälikää selkäänne.

Ei tarvitse tuskailla eikä taistella.

Saatte haudata sen, mitä ette jaksa.

Two hours

Two precious hours

That’s what I’ve bought for today.

The door closes on their eager laughter

and their smiles and kisses,

and they run away with my heart.

I turn to greet myself and smile

The darkness fades as the walls turn to glass,

and in minutes I’m the Queen of Infinite Space,

The Lady of the Silent Moments.

In two hours my money will be spent

they’ll return with their treasures and hugs.

I’ll force my heart down my throat again

and rip myself off my body

so it’s not crushed by the noise and the colours.

Pieni evakkotyttö

“Mis työ ootta?” kuiskaa tyttö pimeään.

Tämä on nyt hänen kotinsa,

Tämä hänen uusi vuoteensa,

Ja hän makaa siinä kipu viiltäen,

Eikä ymmärrä,

Miksi äiti ei auta,

Miksi sisko ei tule,

Miksi isä ja veli ovat poissa.

Mutta kun koko maailma on muuttunut,

Niin miten he tytön löytäisivätkään,

Näin vieraasta paikasta?

Tai ehkä ne eivät häntä enää halunneet.

Ehkä onkin vain hän,

Pois lähetetty tähän huoneeseen,

Jossa itku ei merkitse mitään.

”Mis työ ootta?” kuiskaa tyttö pimeään

Eikä hän tunne enää kättä,

Joka ryppyistä otsaa silittää.

Kiire

Luentojen välissä etsin rauhaisan nurkan

Etsin numerosi nopeasti ja soitan.

Ääni himmeänä, käheänä, vastaat,

Että nyt on hoitaja tulossa tekemään toimenpidettä.

Bussille kiirehtiessäni soitan uudestaan,

Nappaan kiinni pienestä joutohetkestä kadulla.

Ei se ollutkaan mitään, sanot,

Katsoi vain, oliko tiputuspullo lopussa.

Illalla teen toisella kädellä lettuja

Ja toisella makselen laskujasi,

Mietin, kenelle soittaisin saattohoidosta

Samalla kun autan lasta läksyissä.

Kiire ja pysähdys

Loppu ja kiritys

Sydän ja hengitys

Niiden väliin minä puserrun.

Vähä vähältä

Esine esineeltä, säkki säkiltä

Elämä kevenee näissä huoneissa.

Valo täyttää seinät.

Muistot, joita kannoit

Kodista kotiin, kehdosta hautaan

Hajoavat ilmaan,

Niin kipeät kuin rakkaat.

Seison keskellä valkoista huonetta,

Annan tuulen sekoittaa hiukseni

Ja hengitän hetki hetkeltä vapaammin.

New World Order

Kamilla’s eyes focused slowly on the ceiling and memory took its time returning, but when it did, she grinned and sprang upright. Today was the long, long, long-awaited day when the new overlords of the human race would finally reveal themselves and change everything, and make Kamilla the most important human alive. No, scratch that—the most important human ever to have lived.

She danced a samba into the kitchenette, put the kettle on, and checked her messages. Ervankaromerotamo had sent a brief one with nothing but “T-6”, as agreed. Six hours to go… no, five hours and forty-six minutes. Kamilla’s toes danced on the tiled floor under her kitchen table.

The newsreader on the BBC wore an eyesore of a tie and had not combed his hair properly. Kamilla sniffed. She would put paid to that sort of sloppiness when she was in charge and no mistake. That man would look good in a blue tie, even given that he would have to wear it with the tinfoil suit that Ervankaromerotamo’s people were about to mandate for all humans. Certainly having his hair shaved off would be an improvement over that undisciplined mess.

Reminded of her important task she got up and hurried—not dashed, no, that would be undignified—back to her bed and bent double to retrieve a low rectangular box from underneath. Inside the orderly rows of egg-shaped somethings gleamed exactly as they had when Ervankaromerotamo had entrusted her with them. Kamilla wished she knew what they were. Weapons? Food? In her favourite imagined scenario they were eggs, wirmen eggs, and she was the proud caregiver to a new generation of Ervankaromerotamo’s offspring. (Not that she knew how they reproduced, she had to admit. That was not the sort of thing you asked your overlords.)

Her second favourite scenario involved hand grenades.

She padded back into the kitchenette and poured her tea, and then listened idly to the news while buttering a slice of bread. Some stuff about farming subsidies and blowing up the polar ice caps, same old same old… until a funny insert about a waterskiing parakeet was rudely interrupted by the BBC World logo that just sat there spinning in an infinite loop. Kamilla stared in shock. There was still more than five hours to go, surely the wirmen had not started already? She double-checked her messages; nothing. As the logo continued to spin her nervousness mounted. Had they been discovered? The very existence of the wirmen was a closely-guarded secret and the revelation would delay the execution of the plan, not to speak of the disaster that would ensue if the plan itself were revealed.

The logo flicked out, replaced briefly by a blank screen and then by the face of another newsreader. This one was at least appropriately dressed, Kamilla noted.

“We apologise for that short interruption,” the newsreader began. “We have just received momentous news. I can hardly believe it myself.” The woman smiled, then laughed, and Kamilla was astonished to see two enormous glittering tears roll down her cheeks. She bent to read from a paper that, judging by its floppiness, had already been wept upon. “Following secret talks that have lasted for weeks, the leaders of every nation on Earth have pledged their allegiance to a new world order. They have signed a universal treaty, making the entire world one single military and economic entity. All armed conflicts have been resolved and universal disarmament is beginning as we speak. A plan is in place to deliver food surplus from affluent areas to those with food shortages. A minimum income is to be instituted that is independent of employment status. All human rights are affirmed in the legal code of this new entity, which is called the Democratic Republic of Earth.” The newsreader lifted her shining face to the camera and she seemed to gaze right inside Kamilla’s pounding heart. “We have world peace. I repeat, we have world peace. It is here.”

The view shifted to show crowds cheering and dancing in front of gigantic ad screens that had been adapted to show the news. London, Washington, Paris, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Helsinki… who knew where else. Kamilla sat stock still, unable to tear her eyes away from the screen.

It started to dawn on her that today was not a good day for a revolution.

The New School

The teacher had turned into a manatee again.

Meghan closed her eyes and turned back to the class she did not want to see. The sheet of paper containing her presentation notes was swiftly turning into a sweaty, wrinkled mess.

“The, uh, era of industrialisation was cha-characterised by… um…” She gasped and stumbled back as something light but sharp struck her face. Her eyes sprang open and she flinched at the sight of her classmates, sitting or lounging or squatting across rows and rows of desks. In the frontmost seats, two boys—or rather, two octopi as they now were—sniggered. The seahorse behind them, who had been Meghan’s new best friend Natasha only last week, snorted in disdainful comment.

The transformations had started ten days ago, only a week after Meghan’s arrival at her new school. The first to change had been the teacher, his already rounded form bulging out to the size and shape of a manatee, his whiskers thickening and blackening eyes retiring to the sides of his head. She had screamed and pointed and then fainted, and had woken up in the school nurse’s office. The nurse herself had turned into a tuna fish right in front of her, and Meghan had run away home.

She had tried to explain to her parents, but they had sent her back to school the next day, not believing a word. The teacher had been his old self at first, but then the other pupils had started to shift shapes, some permanently, some flickering back and forth before settling into their new habitus. They were all marine creatures: sea snakes, crabs, different sorts of fish, even an amoeba. Meghan was at a loss to explain how these animals could move around, or even survive, without water, but they did.

“Are you all right, Meghan?” the teacher asked in the high, skittering squeak of a manatee. It was hard to tell, but he seemed worried.

“I’m… I’m fine.” Meghan swallowed again and closed her eyes. “Spinning Jenny. The Spinning Jenny was the first great, um, innovation of the Industrial Age.”

The sniggers from the front row intensified. The teacher directed a long-suffering look at the two octo-boys. One of them caught his eye, but instead of simmering down he stood up, or at least arranged his limbs so that the varicoloured sac of his body rode higher.

“Why do we have to listen to that?” His words were hard to make out from among the watery slurps. “She’s weird, and she’s just so dry I’m falling asleep.”

“Yeah! She’s dry!” the other octopus confirmed, rising to flank his friend. “And you’re just a big ass-kisser of a sea cow!”

Everyone was pulling themselves up now and the classroom turned threatening. Meghan’s heart climbed into her throat and she let her weakened legs drop her into the chair beside the blackboard.

“Let’s get her some water!” someone burbled from the back, probably an enormous sea bass. Others eagerly took up the cry, and Meghan found herself gripped tightly in the tentacles of the octo-boys. She screamed and fought, but the suction-cupped appendages twined and twisted and squeezed harder as they dragged her out the door of the classroom and into the girls’ bathroom halfway down the hall. From very far away came the protesting manatee squeaks of the teacher.

A lamprey swatted its tailfin against one of the taps and water gushed out at enormous speed, overflowing the basin in seconds and splashing out onto the floor. The tentacles holding Meghan began to force her towards the stream, inexorably, ignoring her flailing and the screams that cut off when her face hit the water.

Afterwards, everything was better. Meghan spread out her fins and regarded the iridescent feather-like extremities with satisfaction, admiring the combination of red, black and blue. Siamese fighting fish, apparently.

“You look nice.” Natasha’s voice held a tinge of envy.

Meghan looked at her friend through new eyes and would have smiled if her mouth had been able to move that way.

“You’re beautiful,” she answered truthfully, although beautiful did not do justice to the girl’s rainbow colouring, not even the spring green of her belly or the orange ridge down her back.

Meghan glanced at her own strange reflection in the mirror.

“What will Mom and Dad say?” she muttered, suddenly unsure.

“Oh, they can be fish, too,” Natasha said. “Come on, we need to get to recess before it rains.”

“So what if it rains?” Meghan giggled. “We’re fish!”