The Slaughterhouse
“Well of course it has to be done,” Terry said, waving a bit of $25 prime rib around on his fork, “but who’s going to do it? We’re all cowards in this country. Did you know the Japanese are clamoring to be the first to use it.”
Janet swirled her wine and looked out the window. The Slaughterhouse took up a whole block of Manhattan. It’s burnished steel roof bristled with satellite dishes, antennae, and such devices. There was only one entrance, a big arched recess on E Street where a conveyor belt led through an opening three feet square, into the interior of the building.
“Who’s stopping them?” Janet asked.
“The president, for one.” Terry gulped his burgundy, grimaced. “He says we need an “international dialogue” before we can decide how to proceed.”
“Stalling.”
“Yeah.”
The memory of July 20 was still fresh in Janet’s mind, and in everyone’s on earth, as far as she knew. It was the day that the Slaughterhouse finally came to life, the day that researchers sent a trained monkey, cameras strapped to it’s head down the conveyor belt. The conveyor came to life when the monkey touched it, and Janet watched on national TV as it disappeared through the three-by-three opening.
Turns out they didn’t need the cameras. “Something is happening on the wall of the Cube,” the announcer said breathlessly. That’s what people had called it until that day, the giant metal cube that had appeared in Manhattan the morning of January 1, 2000. “Giant screens unfolding...” The image on-screen changed to show the outside of the Slaughterhouse. As the announcer said, giant screens were unfurling all around the exterior. A crowd had formed all around the building. People were looking up at the screens, pointing. One of the charms of New York, Janet had thought. There’s always a crowd on hand.
Words began scrolling up the screens in huge red letters. Somewhere on the Slaughterhouse, a loudspeaker awoke and, in a pleasant androgynous voice, spoke the most famous words of recent history:
“This,” it boomed across the rooftops of Manhattan, “is first contact.”
A cheer rose from the crowd. Janet slipped out of her chair, crouched on the floor a foot from the TV. She saw the crowd moving through the red, green, and blue rectangles of her TV screen, surging against the barricades around the Slaughterhouse.
“We are a collective of spacefaring races,” the voice continued, “joined by trade and a pact of mutual defense. Part of our charter provides for the reconnaissance and recruitment of eligible races.”
The crowd roared and pressed closer against the barricades. Janet heard the dull pop of rubber riot-control bullets being fired.
“Your race has been identified as a candidate for membership. It is customary to establish contact only at the last stage of the selection process, which you have reached.” One of the screens changed to show an enormous space-craft passing above a misshapen moon.“We have much to offer you.” The image changed to show a brown creature cutting ice with a huge prosthetic arm. “Technological exchange is one of the long-hallowed functions of the collective.” Next the screen showed what looked like a giant space-faring jellyfish engulfing a spacecraft. “Also, as a member you will receive defense from what is largely a lawless, hostile universe. We encourage you to seek membership through the cubical device whose function you are just beginning to explore. The function of this device is to perform the final test of membership for your race. The test is simple. You must place fully one-half of your offspring under the age of two years as of this announcement--mark--onto the conveyor belt for processing. Once this is completed your membership in the collective will be secured. You have three years to meet the requirements. The device is equipped with a destructive measure that, if the requirements are not met at the end of three years, will sterilize your world. The collective views the proliferation of non-member races as a threat to its security. The device will now begin processing of the initial offering.”
The crowd fell silent. Janet, her breath fogging the TV, was paralyzed. The words disappeared off the screens, and the images changed. There was the monkey, scampering across metal gratings in a dimly lit room. The camera panned and zoomed to follow it. The monkey seemed alarmed, leaping into the air and chattering nervously. Suddenly, a light flashed. The monkeys torso slipped forward but its legs tipped over backwards. It fell face down and the severed legs were left a few feet behind.
“Oh my God,” Janet breathed.
The monkey screeched, throwing its head up and baring its teeth. It dragged itself across the grating with its hands, slapped at its useless legs. There was another flash, and the monkey’s arms came off. Its torso jerked and blood ran from the stumps. The crowd around the Slaughterhouse had been quiet, but when the robotic blade appeared everyone watching, if Janet could judge by her own reaction, went collectively insane. They surged toward the barricades, started launching broken bricks and hubcaps at the giant screens where the little knife darted around the monkey, slicing flesh from it forehead, cutting off fingers, mutilating its genitals, cutting gouges in its chest. The monkey was still screeching, but seemed tired. Its mouth hung open, tensing in a cry and then hanging slack for a few moments. Another device joined the blade, a mallet on the end of a robotic arm. The blade backed away to let the mallet crush spots on the monkey’s torso, and then moved back in to slice away at the softened spots. The monkey’s shrieks were renewed until a mallet blow to the head either killed it or knocked it out. Before long the mallet and blade had reduced the monkey to something not easily recognized. Both retreated and a blast of water washed what was left through the grate and out of sight.
The waiter had brought their check at some point. While Terry looked at it, Janet got up and went to the bathroom. At the sink she splashed cold water on her face over and over. She had a son--six months old, asleep at home with the baby-sitter. No one knew about July 20, when she had taken Jacob out of his crib and stood at the open window of their fifth floor apartment. On TV the president was urging the need for thoughtful discussion. “All possibilities must be explored,” he said. “We must not jump to conclusions that are not justified by fact.” The breeze from the window blew the curtains back and moved the wispy hair around on Jacob’s head. Only Janet knew how close she had come, before some final tender weakness kicked in. She could not have know how many women came just as close on July 20, though only two showed up on the news that evening. One jumped off a bridge with her nine month old. Another crushed sleeping pills and mixed it with infant formula.
In the bathroom, she looked at her face in the mirror and knew she was not insane. She imagined Terry signing the credit receipt, carefully folding the yellow copy into his wallet while behind him, out the window, the Slaughterhouse sat silent, the Marine honor guard around the arched recess. On the screen red numbers counted the time left--2 years and change--and the number of ‘offerings’ received--zero. The monkey, apparently, didn’t count. Everyone knew what it was: cruelty. Talk show hosts spat, chiefs of staff pounded fists, psychotherapists made a fortune. It was mere, malicious, cruelty-from-space. But they also knew what it really was, what they were too afraid to say or even think: a test. A test of the human will to live, of the willingness to eat shit and stay alive. And why did Janet Palloway see this truth so clearly in the ladies’ room of Chez Suzanne, on the tenth floor of the Lion d’Or hotel? Because she was ruthlessly sane, because there was shell in her crab bisque, because her father had made her wear dresses all through school, because her husband was smug and small-minded, and had never understood when Janet wanted to talk about “life-stuff.” And because somebody had to. That thing was sitting there, that dark archway on E Street, and somebody had to get it eventually. Somebody, Janet, finally got it.
So she slipped out of the bathroom and past the maitre’d. Terry was waiting at the table, and hadn’t seen her. Good. On the cab ride home, the sleek-haired Oriental driver wanted to talk about “what the world was coming to,” and Janet spoke not a word. Jacob came out of his crib without a whimper, went into his favorite fuzzy blanket.
“Back to the hotel,” Janet ordered as she got back in the cab. Then, rethinking, “No, take me to E Street and Morris.” It took fifteen minutes to get there. During the trip Janet did not look at the baby. She picked a spot--a mole on the back of the driver’s neck--and stared at it. She pretended she were a robot, her orders coded on a metal plate somewhere inside her head, irrevocable. Jacob moved, rubbed his eyes, and she tried not to notice.
Something about her caught people’s eye. A tall, statuesque woman with wavy dark hair, striding down E Street with a baby in her arms. She was fashionably dressed, a flowing black dress and coat moving around her, a strange contrast to the fuzzy yellow blanket in which the baby was wrapped. Maybe it was the way she stared straight ahead, never looking at the other people on the sidewalk, or maybe it was the speed of her walk, but a small crowd was soon following her at a distance. Across from the dark archway of the Slaughterhouse, police officers were gathered on the steps of the apartment complex they had turned into a makeshift headquarters. They noticed Janet and the crowd about the same time the Marines did. They didn’t approach, but just watched her. Janet glanced at the honor guard spread to either side of the archway. She passed down a line of Marines, her heart beating faster as each white-hatted, black uniformed man watched her and made no move to stop her. Officers were streaming out of the headquarters across the street. Janet had reached the dark archway and was only a few yards from the conveyor belt. She turned to the crowd, conscious at one level of the drama of the situation, and not wanting to look like an assassin rushing in heartlessly to do her work.
There, arrayed in a rough semi-circle around her, was an instant crowd. TV cameras, police, Marines. There was no barricade, but somehow they knew to come no closer. From the crowd stepped a man in a navy suit. Janet recognized him instantly. How many times had she seen his crook-nosed, acne-scarred face on the news? It was Tyler Hutchins, the mayor. He opened his mouth to say something, seemed to think better of it, and remained silent. Like all the rest he just stared at her, and waited. Without ceremony, in a few quick moves, Janet turned and put her son on the conveyor. The belt came to life. Jacob looked around, confused, and began moving toward the dark opening.
“Stop!” It was Terry’s voice. “What’s she doing?” She turned to see him pushing through the crowd. People started to move, they looked at Terry, at Janet, at the mayor. The mayor grabbed an officer by the arm.
“Get the baby,” he said. “Go. Somebody get it.”
Janet stood her ground in the archway as police and Marines moved toward her. She scratched one officer’s face and bit his hand before they had her on the ground. Behind her, a Marine snatched Jacob off the conveyor and delivered him through the crowd to his father. Terry stood over Janet where the officers were holding her on the ground.
“You bitch!” he screamed. He kicked her in the side. An officer pulled Terry away, spit flying from his lips, face red from screaming.
Jacob cried a little on the cab ride home. His father rocked him and smoothed the baby’s fine hair.
“I just don’t understand it,” the driver was saying, “I just don’t. It won’t matter what we do. Do what they want and we’ll all go crazy. Don’t do it and we’re all blown up. A fuckin time-bomb. A time bomb in the middle of Manhattan!”
Back at home, Terry lay Jacob in his crib. “My little boy,” Terry said, “my sweet little boy. Not you. Never.” The baby fell asleep as Terry packed his wife’s clothes in boxes and carried them out to the landing.