Here They Come, Henry

Scott Woods about 2700 words 41 Half Mile Road Guilford, CT 06437 203 974-7038 [email protected]

Well-Fed

by Scott William Woods

Demetrius Craig detested the very concept of adventure travel. He'd only come because Mildred threatened to leave him if he didn't.

So here he was, with Mildred and a couple hundred tittering strangers from places like Dubuque, waiting to board the anti rail for the summit of Mount Everest.

Demetrius preferred things to be predictable. That's why he'd become an historian of science. People always thought that inventions were unpredictable, divinely inspired epiphanies of genius that graciously bid the pedestrian remainder of the race to leap ahead. But Demetrius demonstrated it was never like that.

Take the antigravity technology that drove this sleek Woods / Well-fed / 2 silver train. Everyone endlessly mouthed the common belief that anti was invented by Hai Yi in 2027, but, as Demetrius showed in his paper recently published in Condemned To Repeat, Yi only channeled Tristan Hart, a graduate student at Trent University in the twenty-teens. Hart perfected a miniature working model, but he wasn't able to solve the astronomical energy requirements--his little model momentarily blacked out the entire Eastern US on the one occasion it worked--or how to dissipate the massive waste heat. He died in the subsequent five-alarm fire. But after far-orbiting solar windmills made power the cheapest resource on the planet, anti technology became merely another incremental inevitability.

Mildred led the way to their assigned seats, and Demetrius followed, which position offered an excellent vantage to appreciate her fanny, still as round and ripe as the day they married. This was about as close as he was getting these days.

Mildred was still pretty steamed that he'd been reluctant to go on the trip.

Around them people were arrayed two by two along each side of the aisle. Most of these people had let themselves go.

Being well-fed was one thing--Demetrius prided himself on his own robust 375-pound bulk, and Mildred was a full, sexy 350--but these people had crossed over into gluttony. 600 pounds, 700 some of them. Yes, the McDonald's Medical Institute put proprietary pharmaceuticals into their fries and all-beef Woods / Well-fed / 3 patties to prevent diabetes and lipid problems, and yes,

McDonald's had bought Argentina and Idaho to keep up with demand, but one still ought to display a little decent, old- fashioned moderation.

"We're finally on our way. It's so exciting," Mildred said. Demetrius felt his back press slightly against his chair as the anti rail accelerated slowly. There was no getting out of it now. His seat tilted forward to accommodate what he estimated was a 15% incline.

Demetrius heard a melodic chime, and the image of a pretty, well-fed young woman appeared on the flat screen in front of him. Unfortunately, it looked like there would be a travelogue.

"Welcome, Adventure Travelers." Metallic panels all along the train morphed into transparency, and everyone around

Demetrius started ooh-ing and ah-ing at the view. He pursed his lips to activate his cyberpathic connection to the web. A zaftig little app called Go Figure said the tour guide's measurements were 50-40-60. The New Reubenesque Ideal precisely.

"The summit of Mount Everest is the highest point on earth

--29,029 feet--nearly 6 miles above sea level. The air at the summit has only 1/3 the normal amount of oxygen. The train follows the original south-east climbing route pioneered by Sir

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay a hundred years ago."

Mildred had read about Hillary and Tenzing in some Woods / Well-fed / 4 guidebook or other, and earlier Demetrius indulged her by listening while she repeated what she learned. There was no denying they'd been the first men to summit Everest, but they used supplemental oxygen, and many other alpinists prepared the route for them over the preceding decades.

"Our departure station was at 17,700 feet," the guide continued, "the location of the old mountaineering expedition

Base Camp. Not far from here Hillary reported seeing tracks of the famous Abominable Snowmen, which the world later learned were members of a relic population of forebears to Homo neanderthalensis."

Right, Demetrius thought. That had to be the first and only cryptid species to be discovered definitively and driven to extinction on the same day.

"From the Base Camp we travel what used to take weeks on foot, including acclimatization time--more than 2 miles in vertical distance and about 13 miles horizontally--in 17 minutes. We've passed the Khumbu Icefall already and are starting up the Western Cwm toward the Lhotse Face."

Demetrius noticed that what looked at first like windows were actually hyperactive helical-matrix organic light emitting diode panels. Right on cue, the enthusiastic woman's voice explained. "You're looking at flat screen images, not out through windows. Many days the weather here on Mount Everest is fogged in, and we want you all to be able to enjoy the best Woods / Well-fed / 5 views possible."

Demetrius thought if he'd stayed at home to watch this on

TV he could have saved his million dollars, but he had to admit the view did inspire awe--peak after snowy peak receding to the horizon and glaciers in the shadows glowing aqua blue.

The tour guide pressed her left hand to her ear, the better to receive some kind of message, and her face took on a frightened expression. Demetrius heard a loud rumbling, accompanied by a shuddering vibration that thudded through his whole body. "There's an avalanche coming right at us. Everyone please keep calm. The engineer is deploying the airbags."

The cabin filled with soft, white balloons that held

Demetrius and Mildred firmly in their seats and blocked the flat panels from sight. Demetrius had never seen his wife's eyes stretched so wide or her mouth open so far. The ripping feeling in his own facial muscles must mean he wore the same expression.

The rumbling crescendoed into a howl and then a shriek until it seemed the shuddering and pounding would disintegrate the train. Then the noise and vibration faded quickly.

As the airbags deflated and retreated, Demetrius started to calm down. They hadn’t died, and at least it was over quick.

Mildred was recovering too, but more slowly. Maybe she’d agree with him now. An avalanche was exactly the kind of unpredictable and downright dangerous adventure travel event that he despised. Woods / Well-fed / 6

The young woman on the screen appeared tousled, but gamely continued her travelogue. "An avalanche consists of thousands of tons of powder snow hurtling as a suspended fluid downslope at 200 miles per hour, accumulating more and more snow as it goes and pushing ahead of it an avalanche wind twice as powerful as a hurricane. The engineer says we were fortunate it hit us fairly high up on the Face before it built its main force. He says we made the right decision to continue moving forward up into it."

The young woman's features, which had been looking relieved, clouded over, and she pressed her hand to her ear again. Demetrius smelled something harsh like ozone.

“The engineer informs me that the avalanche seems to have damaged the cabin pressure system." A mask fell from the ceiling into Demetrius' lap. The young woman's voice became strident. "Please put these oxygen masks on. Sherpa Lobsang

Norgay will be coming through the aisle to assist you.”

The thin air made Demetrius’ heart pound, but Mildred was in real trouble. She’d been overcome by oxygen starvation and was staring at her mask as dumbly as a sack of suet.

Demetrius put on his own mask and managed to lean over and place hers over her mouth and nose, but his hands were shaking so much he fumbled trying to get her strap on.

A dark-skinned man sped up the aisle and stretched the elastic over Mildred's head. Mildred took a huge gasp and then Woods / Well-fed / 7 three more. She must have been holding her breath. She fluttered her hands in front of her face, and the Sherpa looked

Demetrius directly in the eye and gave him a grave smile before moving forward to help someone else.

Their guide appeared on the screen looking relieved again.

"Fortunately, Travelers, the engineer informs me that the problem has been successfully addressed and that cabin pressure is now fully restored. We've breasted the Lhotse Face, passed the site of Camp IV, and are crossing the South Col." She was replaced on the monitor by the forward view, and for the first time Demetrius could see the summit, an imposing black pyramid flecked with snow. There was something right on top that looked familiar, but they were still too far away to make it out.

Mildred was breathing normally now, and her face had regained its color. She reached over and gave Demetrius a squeeze on the forearm.

"Now we're passing the 8000 meter mark into what used to be called The Death Zone. Back in 1996, eight climbers died here on a single day."

Mildred said, "You were so brave when those oxygen masks fell down, Darling. I think you saved my life."

"You're welcome," Demetrius said. Maybe she was starting to thaw. Time would tell. But now that the emergency was over, he ought to remember his manners. "The Sherpa helped, too. I should go thank him." He started to unfasten his harness. Woods / Well-fed / 8

"But you'd have to follow him uphill. Are you sure that's wise? Why don't you wait for him to come back?"

Of course Demetrius knew the doctors said that exercise was dangerous, that statistically people had more heart attacks per minute when they were exercising than when they were seredentary, but the anti technology in his nanosuit, which sensed and amplified his intentions, would take most of the load. Besides, having devoted his life to historical research, he'd learned not to accept conventional wisdom at face value.

When you really dug into the underlying assumptions, usually the facts didn't support them. Plus the distance was only 100 feet.

Even so, Demetrius was panting when he reached the little door the Sherpa had gone through and wondering if he could be imagining the peculiar sensation in his chest. Fortunately it was going away now that he'd stopped.

The Sherpa answered Demetrius' knock with wide appraising eyes. "You are the first tourist to trek up here in more than a year." Demetrius felt embarrassed--or was that a perverse pride?--and blurted out his reason. The Sherpa invited him into a little cabin and accepted the gratitude calmly.

The Sherpa didn't weigh 150 pounds--completely anorexic.

Demetrius had heard there were still nations that couldn't afford for their citizens to be well-fed, but he'd never believed it before. "Are you related to Tenzing Norgay?" he asked. "I thought maybe because of the name…" Woods / Well-fed / 9

"Norgay is not a surname as you suppose, Sahib. We Sherpa do not generally reveal our clan, or "ru," name to outsiders.

Tenzing Norgay is a compound given name, like your Bobby Joe.

"But you're right anyway, even if your reason was wrong.

Tenzing was my grandfather's grandfather. Maybe things would be different now if he hadn't let Sir Edmund put his foot on the summit first."

While Demetrius was wondering what that meant exactly, he noticed Lobsang was dressed in garments like coarse woolen pajamas. The clothing reminded him that it was certainly cold outside, a novelty nowadays. "Do you have a real window here?

I'd like to see what the weather is like."

"You should not believe everything you're told," Lobsang said. "The weather is not the reason they show you video. For this train’s guide track to have the steady incline that is comfortable for tourists, it was necessary to melt the Khumbu

Glacier, level the South Summit, and fill the Western Cwm. The waste heat released from the train turns what little snow still falls to steam, and the thousand toilets at the summit discharge directly down the slopes. The videos show you not what is but what was."

Demetrius felt a little miffed that the Sherpa would think that he, a well-known iconoclast, would believe everything he was told. And anyway, global warming hadn't turned out nearly so bad as the catastrophists had prophecied. Even though the Woods / Well-fed / 10 increase in temperature accelerated exponentially faster than anyone projected and sea level rose by twenty meters, the availability of essentially free energy made it easy to build colossal dams to impound the water released from the former glaciers and ice caps.

In any case, Demetrius was increasingly aware that he took up most of the space in the Sherpa's little compartment, and it seemed like time to go. But the Sherpa hadn't finished and said, "Perhaps you wonder why if I care so little for progress I do not move somewhere else."

If truth be told, Demetrius had been wondering exactly that. "My people must remain here always," the Sherpa continued. "It is our sacred duty to revere Jomolungma--the goddess who lives in the mountain. She has seen many seasons, and she will survive after all this we know here now is long gone."

Demetrius didn't know what to say--there was nothing you could say to a refugee from the stone age--so he thanked the

Sherpa again for helping to rescue Mildred.

"There was no avalanche, Sahib, and no change in cabin pressure. That is just for the tourists to make the journey exciting. The masks delivered only normal air."

Demetrius' stomach felt queasy as he strapped back into his seat, struggling to blot out all memory of the anorexic Sherpa.

Somehow his brain wouldn't stop repeating that simple phrase Woods / Well-fed / 11

"long gone." How could two words spoken by a freakazoidal cave man affect him so strongly?

But the queasiness didn't last. Mildred gave him an approving nod, and as the train began to slow, the familiar shape at the summit resolved into something Demetrius recognized with a fierce joy. The famous Golden Arches.

He was hungry--nothing more to it. It was two hours since they'd eaten, after all.

The Mount Everest McDonald's was enormous, and the perimeter held a continuous battery of forty foot high video screens showing the now 360 degree panorama. Mildred chatted excitedly with the other passengers about the spectacular view, and how deliciously horrifying the avalanche and cabin pressure malfunction had been. Demetrius hurried to get in line before the crowd. He was hungry.

A well-fed American teenager with the usual crop of acne waited to take his order as Demetrius studied the menu, treasuring the aroma of fried animal fat, salt, and sugar, and feeling more relaxed and comfortable now with each heartbeat.

Even here, at the top of the world, the McDonald's menu was exactly the same as at the one closest to their home back in

Princeton on what was now the Jersey Shore.

Demetrius ordered six big Macs, four super size fries, and two gallons of coke for Mildred and himself. A plaque at their table by one of the big video screens told them the south Woods / Well-fed / 12 horizon was 200 miles distant in central India.

The fries and the Big Macs tasted just like they did back home. Demetrius felt so fully at ease that he broached with

Mildred the possibility of staying overnight at the McDonald's

Hilton. People said the views of the stars and the Milky Way at this elevation were not to be missed. Shooting stars, even.

Mildred smiled and said maybe they could get a honeymoon suite.

Demetrius smiled too and raised his eyebrows twice. "I never apologized for my attitude, but I was wrong. The trip's been wonderful."

Mildred replied graciously that Demetrius was forgiven, and that she’d never meant it about leaving him. She knew he would love it here.

Just at the wrong moment, the Sherpa’s voice bullied back into Demetrius' consciousness. The way he spoke of the mountain as if it had feelings. The way he equated being well-fed with being brainwashed.

Demetrius sat up straight to thrust the crazy thoughts away. "You were right all along to insist, Dear,” he said.

“Next year we'll go to the Marianas Trench McDonald's."

Or maybe the Mangala Valles McDonald's on Mars.

THE END