ISSUE #14 | FULL STORY, "PHARINEXIN"
IT’S A LIVE!
A live PREORDER page, that is!
Planet Scumm’s 14th issue: "Extinction Events", is crash-landing to a bookstore (or ebook reader) near you on November 22, 2022: nothing like an anthology of apocalypses to put you in the holiday spirits, if we do say so ourselves!
It’s got reptiles, it’s got androids, it’s got jigsaw puzzles… so many more existentially delicious stories await you!
Here’s a teensy tasty little morsel of a sneak peek for your troubles:
“PHARINEXIN” AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #14
Written by Dale Stromberg
Spot Illustration by Sam Rheaume
It happens at Glenvale Mall. Nurul is at the rock store, looking at geodes. Somebody shouts. A series of pops. For a moment, nothing makes sense. Then she realizes. Active shooter.
There’s no time to do anything before she’s hit. Without knowing how or why, she finds herself face-down on the beige floor tiles. A bullet in the back. Like a red-hot spike hammered into her. And fear. The awful conviction: I will not live past this moment.
Yelling. Confusion. A woman shrieking no, no, no.
Someone kneels next to Nurul. Tells her to keep still. A security guard. Pulling something from his belt. The unmistakable green and black spray can. Of course. They’re all equipped with it now.
Tell him to stop, she thinks desperately.
***
Nurul’s father was a Mender. He had a power that only one human in ten million is born with: to heal within minutes from any nonlethal wound. Menders did well to keep a low profile, but somehow TKS Heavy Industries found him.
He wasn’t the only one TKS kidnapped. There were urban legends, though years passed before 60 Minutes broke the story that led to investigations and indictments. By then, it was too late for him.
Here is what Nurul learned from the televised hearings: At a secure research facility outside Palm Beach, her father was used as a subject for weapons testing. They began with daggers and bayonets made of experimental carbon steel to be marketed to the military. Seven days a week, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. with a twenty-minute break for lunch, he was strapped to a gurney and sliced open, again and again, over every part of his body. Results were carefully videoed and cataloged.
They did this with all of them. Cut the same Mender the same way ten times, a hundred, a thousand. Watch the wound heal. Do it again, differently, controlling for other variables. Reams of data, invaluable to R&D.
After that came firearms, fragmentation grenades, flamethrowers, corrosive chemical agents. TKS developed ingenious means for keeping their test subject an inch from death: PBA (partial body armor), nurses trained in MLM (minimal lifesaving measures), and so on. How far from a grenade blast must the subject be to not to lose a limb? How many toes, on average, can be shot off with a pistol before the subject blacks out? In what proportion do the frequency and the amplitude of deafening noise each contribute to the bursting of eardrums?
Spot illustration by Sam Rheaume
Nurul has never brought herself to watch the video of his final, fatal munitions trial—the video that convicted half a dozen TKS executives and two lead researchers. It’s on YouTube, if she wants it.
Her father was deep-voiced, slow to anger, patient in explaining how things worked or why she had to follow the house rules. He had a shy smile, sad brown eyes, pianist’s fingers. Nurul told herself for years that he must be dead, but, once it was confirmed, and once she knew how it had happened, heartbreak and horror washed over her. The executives’ prison sentences were cold comfort—most were out again in under two years.
The worst part was Pharinexin. The wonder drug.
TKS wasted no opportunity for profitability. Her father’s Mender physiology was a goldmine for pharmaceutical development. And there was no shortage of tissue samples for researchers to analyze; the janitors were bagging the stuff up daily. The result: Pharinexin. The power of the Menders, available over the counter. This mysterious gift, which it happens Nurul never inherited, was bestowed now on every paying customer. The jailing of a few executives was not going to keep something this valuable off the market for long.
***
So. It happens at Glenvale Mall. She’s at the rock store, looking at geodes. Somebody shouts. A series of pops. She’s hit. Face-down on the beige floor tiles. A bullet in the back.
I will not live past this moment.
The security guard kneels beside her. “Keep still.” Pulls the unmistakable green and black spray can from his belt. They’re all equipped with it now.
Tell him to stop, she thinks desperately.
No—tell him to hurry up.
No.
Her father suffered and died to create that abhorrent spray can. No.
If anyone deserves to benefit from what befell her family, it is her family. Yes.
To use Pharinexin is to cooperate with her father’s killers in her own treatment. No.
Strangers will use it. Why shouldn’t she?
Because they killed him.
He would say, use it.
But yes is wrong. And no is wrong.
Dale Stromberg grew up not far from Sacramento before moving to Tokyo, where he had a brief music career. Now he lives near Kuala Lumpur and makes ends meet as an editor and translator. His work has been published here and there.