Read Online Pills and Starships by Lydia Millet - Free Book Online Page A

this water show slowly began.
    Out of the pool, where luckily no one was swimming at the time, rose these mermaid creatures on a platform, with long green hair and silver-green tails. It happened kind of gradually: their heads came first, from the water, and then their curled bodies on these fake rocks with fake seaweed and white round things sticking to them, some kind of extinct mollusk, I think, from when we still had them.
    The mermaids had seals at their feet, not real ones obviously but pretty good robotics. And they were singing a beautiful song. It was ethereal, if that’s the right word. Like it was both coming from them and not coming from them at once.
    And when I say them I mean not only the mermaids but the seals too. The seals had mouths and they opened and closed along with the music. From where I was sitting I could even see the eyes of those robot seals, these big, black eyes, and they looked deep and wet and sparkling.
    I’ve never seen a live music show before—that kind of crowdscene has been against the law my whole life—only virtual shows on face. I mean the animals were robots but the mermaids looked like real people, beautiful women wearing tails. So I was really excited and so was Sam. We were under a spell right away.
    While they sang, the sun outside was sinking down over the sea. As the sky turned indigo, darkness descended on the dome over our heads and out of the darkness these flowing images appeared. There were these scenes, maybe from old movies—scenes of the ocean world that used to exist right around here, in Hawaii. Crossing the dome overhead were whales, big ones with their babies swimming right next to them, close to the mother whales’ bodies. When they appeared these haunting whale songs also began, mixing with the live voices of the mermaids and the seal robots.
    And then the whales faded and schools of fish swam past us where the whales had been, moving and flashing with the light of their thousands of tiny bodies. And all in a row, like a parade, dozens of other creatures passed before our eyes—these lit-up creatures that looked like alien spaceships, things with tentacles, strangely shaped sharks, big rays and small rays, dolphins or porpoises, otters and these seals with tusks, and a bunch of other things I don’t know the names for. In one scene there was a boat and dolphins following behind it, leaping and playing alongside, jumping out of the water again and again, and this went on for a while until they went under again, and then the ship faded.
    The whole time some sad music played; parts of it had no words and other parts did. One song the mermaids and seals sang went, Heaven, heaven is a place—a place where nothing, nothing ever happens .
    After the ship was gone the dome became scenes of beaches—these pure, flat sand beaches they used to have with no seawalls at all. You could see waves crashing right on the gently sloping skirts of sand, and nothing but sand meeting water for miles and miles. They showed these natural pools between outcroppings of rock, and in them small creatures walked or swam—some that looked like insects, almost, with lots of legs, and tiny octopi and darting fish like minnows. There were some long-gone people on the beaches—whole families, happily playing together right in the open and wearing only small swimsuits.
    They had no hats to shade against the sun, only those skimpy suits and bare heads. A family ran in the shallow waves, including a chubby midget kid with nothing on but puffy white underwear, smiling persistently. They showed two handsome men with their arms around each other, girls making a fort out of sand with spades and buckets.
    And then we left the beach behind and were underwater again—an ancient reef, fish swimming everywhere and the dark silhouettes of people snorkeling above them with rays of sunlight beaming through. Spiky bright-colored anemone—I’ve seen them in the fake reefs—and red urchins and