“Now, the most important thing to know is that everything that happens here is consensual. Anna was fully aware of what she signed up for,” Arjun said.
“Which was?”
“As I said, an energetic exchange. A transmission. From her, into you.”
I was quiet, looking at them. Shiba was fumbling with her hands. Arjun spoke again.
“You must understand, to some degree, what is going on.”
Shiba got up and walked over to one of the bookshelves.
“One way to understand,” she said, reaching for a book, “could be this.” She rifled through it and then began to read: “‘All union, all spiritual interactions, can be expressed by eating. In friendship, one truly partakes of the friend, or feeds on him. To substitute the body for the spirit or indeed, the intellect, is a genuine trope. At a remembrance meal for a friend, we enjoy, with daring, sensual imagination, his flesh in every bite, his blood in every gulp.’”
“What?”
“Just listen,” she said. “I think this next part is beautiful: ‘This certainly seems barbaric to the soft and delicate preferences of our time, but who tells us to think precisely of the raw, decomposing flesh and blood? The physical assimilation is mysterious enough to be a beautiful metaphor of the spiritual meaning—and are blood and flesh really so repulsive?’”
Something was trickling in, a vague suspicion solidifying.
“What happens to the Storytellers?”
Shiba sighed. “Anisa. You already know.”
“How exactly do you transfer the energy?” I asked again.
“We incorporate the transformative elements into the Learners’ diets,” Arjun responded.
“Meaning?”
“Anisa, come on. You know what we’re saying, right?” Shiba said. “You … ingested the Storytellers. Physically.”
I froze.
“Peter, who makes cassoulets for his father, who liked playing with LEGO blocks as a kid … are you telling me I ate him?”
“You assimilated him. Yes.”
I laughed. “Okay, stop. No, I didn’t.”
Shiba looked at me gravely.
“This is not a new practice, dear,” Arjun said. “It has been tried and tested throughout time.”
“That is … oh god.”
“Just listen—”
“Oh my god.” I groaned and clutched my stomach. It felt sore and distended.
“You really had no idea?” Arjun said.
Shiba started pacing, panicked. “This is why I wanted to tell her slowly, piece by piece.”
“I’m going to be sick. I feel … poisoned. Oh god. I can feel them inside me.”
“No, you can’t. You’ve long since digested them,” Arjun scoffed.
“Please, Anisa, don’t react this way,” Shiba said.
“How else would someone react? What about Anna? I loved Anna.”
“Anna emptied your bin once.”
“She was a human being.”
“And what happened, tell me, after you assimilated her? She’s living on. Through you. In you. She was dead, Anisa. She passed away. The Storytellers, they choose to do this work. They sit down and record the stories of their lives, and they do it because they want to live on.”
“They choose to do it?”
“Of course! How else would we have access to their stories? Anisa, listen. You told me yourself about what Anna gave you. How life changing it felt. You need to think of it like … organ donation.”
My heart was racing, and my skin felt clammy.
“She donated her body?”
“Yes!”
“Knowing she would be consumed?”
“Yes. Of course. She worked there. She knew all about it,” Arjun said.
“To be clear,” Shiba added, “not all Storytellers know exactly what we’re going to do with their bodies. I think some prefer not to. But they all consent to their bodies being used posthumously, in some way, for the process. Anna, though, had full knowledge. She cleaned the kitchen every day.”
At Shiba’s mention of the kitchen, I saw in my mind’s eye once again the silver double doors at the end of that dark hallway. That room, I suddenly and inexplicably knew, was a kitchen. I saw that Arjun was studying my reaction carefully.
“There’s a long history behind this, Anisa. It’s something humans have always done. You know, people used to drink the blood of their enemies during wartime—they said it gave them the strength and knowledge to defeat them. That’s how nations were conquered, back in the day.”
“I’m not interested in conquering nations.”
“You’re clearly interested in some kind of conquest, though, right? Even if it’s just taking control over your own life. Society has turned these practices into awful, disgusting acts that need to be hidden away. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”
I turned my gaze to the ceiling to field wave upon wave of nausea.
“We have tapped into something groundbreaking here. It’s clearly just outside the bounds of your imagination at the moment,” Arjun said.
“What about my consent, huh? What if I’d had a bad reaction and died?”
“There is no danger of that, my dear,” Arjun said. “We have the best scientists overseeing the process, neutralizing all potential toxicities. And we’re proactive. The specimen is treated for optimal ingestion even before the last heartbeat.”
“Oh god,” I said, bringing my hand to my mouth. My watering eyes darted toward the door.
“Anisa, calm down,” Shiba said, walking toward me and trying to place a placating hand on my arm. “You have to understand—”
“Stop!” I said, pulling away from her. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“She wasn’t ready,” Arjun said.
“She is, Papa. It’s shocking news. Give her time,” Shiba said.
“You’re right to say she’s smart. Curious and open-minded. But she’s too frightened of crossing a line.”
“I mean, no disrespect, but the line you’re talking about is pretty fucking out there,” I said.
“The truth is,” he continued, “very few people can see beyond their prescribed little boxes of good and bad, wrong and right. To digest an idea yourself—an idea that hasn’t been predigested—very few can do that. Maybe that’s the reason you like to translate. You can transmit ideas, but you’re too scared to come up with your own. Ultimately, you’re afraid of your own insides. That’s why the concept disgusts you so much.”
I looked from Arjun to Shiba, Shiba to Arjun. Their words were making me dizzy.
“You’re playing games with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Shiba said. It was unclear who she was addressing. “It’s a lot. Maybe we should have waited—”
“I … it’s not that I can’t … digest new ideas,” I sputtered and rubbed my chest, trying to keep the sickness down. “But let’s be clear. Cannibalism. That’s what you’re talking about. That’s what you do.”
“Just listen to how you say it. Cannibalism. Tell me, what image pops into your head when you hear that word? Cannibal?” Arjun asked.