At least I'm not them. I don't want to get rid of the Remades. I'm all for equal rights. Hell, I'm even dating one of them.

I'm not a terrible person. So why do I feel like such a monster?

Minutes later I'm in my car making a call.

"Porter?" I say.

"Yeah," he says. "Hey, man."

"Do you want to hang out?"

"Hang out?"

"Yeah. We could go bowling or something."

"I hate bowling."

"Whatever you want."

"I don't know, man. I don't usually hang out with clients."

"Come on."

"Alright."

Fifteen minutes later, and I'm in a Remade bar. My mind spins, but I still notice that this is a shitty place. Like it hasn't been cleaned since it opened. Maybe that's true.

The waitress, who's either a living person or one of those Remades who buy into the natural is ugly paradigm, hands me my chai, and gives Porter a wad of tin foil.

"Thanks, man," he says to the girl.

She smiles and walks away.

Porter unwraps the foil.

"What is that?" I say.

"Brains," he says.

"I know that. I mean, what kind?"

"Human."

"Oh." I swallow.

"I'm just fucking with you, man. They're pig. Want to try some?"

"No!" I'm louder than I expect.

"Calm down, man."

I try.

Porter nibbles at the brains. He trembles.

After a few sips of my tea, I say, "Is it really so bad being dead?"

"What do you mean?" he says, gazing at his hands.

"I mean, why do so many Remades eat brains? Is it such a horrible existence?"

"No, man. Being dead is cool."

"Then why do you eat brains?"

His expression changes to one that I've never seen on him before. It's one of the looks my mother used to give me, when she was disappointed in me, but showed sympathy at the same time. "Figure it out yourself, man," he says, very quietly.

"Fuck you!" I say, standing.

"Let go of me."

I realize my hand is squeezing his arm. My other hand, it's in a fist.

"I think you should go, man," he says.

Part of me wants to stay and beat the non-living shit out of him. I want to blame him. Not just for how I'm feeling right now, but for everything. My mother's death. The state of the world.

Everything.

Instead, I release him and say, "Yeah."

Say you're lost in the orange groves behind your apartment complex because you're not ready to go home again, and you find three guys dragging a tied-up young woman toward a hole in the ground, with three shovels nearby. They're alive and she's not. You tell yourself that if they were dead and she wasn't, the scene wouldn't be so disturbing, because it's supposed to be the dead who do things like this. Deep down you know that's not true.

You think, "Get your fucking hands off her."

Say all of this happens. You'd be here too, like me. You'd crouch down behind the nearest trunk you can find, waiting and watching, with a wrenching knot in your gut.

For a moment I consider racing out into the clearing, bellowing and swinging my fists. But these guys, they're not like Porter. They'd fight back. They'd kill me.

So I watch them bury the poor girl. I listen to her muffled screams.

They dump her in the hole and start shoveling.

They say things like, "You like that dirt in your face, don't you, bitch?" and "Fucking zombie whore."

I try to study their faces, so that I can identify them later, but it's so dark. And I'm crying too much.

When they finish with the dirt, they pound the backs of their shovels against the grave, over and over and over. They laugh, and high-five.

Finally, they leave.

I dive onto the ground and start digging with my bare hands.

What I'm uncovering isn't just a young dead girl.

From deep within myself, I pull out a truth that I've always known but never wanted to admit. Remades don't eat brains because of the pain of being dead. The real pain comes from how the living treat them. How I treat them.

I pull her out of the hole. I remove the gag.

She looks at me with fear in her eyes.

I'm afraid she's going to scream.

I'm afraid she thinks I'm one of them.

But her face changes. It's one of the looks my mother used to give me, after I did something bad and then made things right. "Thank you," she says, very quietly.

I put my arm around her, and in my heart I'm embracing Hafwen at the same time.

I see her when I close my eyes. She's beautiful.

I'm ready to go home.

The Traumatized Generation

MURRAY J.D. LEEDER

Land sniffed at the air. He felt a kind of peace out here, so different from the city thick with industrial fumes and soldiers. The prairies sprawled in every direction, wilder and more overgrown than they had been in more than a century, and the Rockies were lost in a pink haze to the west. All of it sent Land back to a childhood spent traipsing around the countryside, when he didn't need to be worried about what might be hiding in the wheat.

He rapped on the front door. Eventually a woman answered in her nightgown, slightly older than him, and glowering. She knew what was happening, and Land's heart sank when he realized what he was about to do.

"Mrs. March? I'm Michael Land, Paul's homeroom teacher. I'm here to pick him for today's..." He hesitated. "Today's field trip."

"I didn't give permission for any field trip," she snorted, and Land put his hand against the door to stop her from closing it.

"I'm afraid the school board doesn't require parental permission when the field trip has been made mandatory by the government of Canada."

"The government," she said. "You mean the military, don't you? Either way, I'm not about to send my son away to be traumatized by your bloodshow."

"Mrs. March," he told her. "In that car is the sergeant they sent to escort me up here. If Paul doesn't come out of this house in ten minutes, she'll have to come and talk to you herself. Nobody wants that."

There was desperation in her voice. "Mr. Land, you and I remember a time before the military controlled our lives. You're an educator... how can you stand idly by and----"

"Just get your son, Mrs. March. Please. Just get Paul."

Mrs. March breathed in deeply. "Wait here," she said. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

She returned a few minutes later with the round-faced, serious little boy, dressed in unfashionable garments that made him a target for jeers too often.

"It's good to see you, Paul," Land said, and the boy half-smiled up at him. Land knew the boy all too well----smart, shy, sensitive, and far too vulnerable for this world. Just like the young Michael Land, back when CNN reported that the dead were rising from their graves.

The car door opened and Sgt. Hazelwood walked over to the door just as Paul was slipping on his coat. She was blond and beautiful but Land disliked her intensely. She was just the kind of rhetoric-spouting career army type that Land had encountered too often during his own tour of duty in Alaska. "All ready to go?" she asked, wearing a false smile that Mrs. March did not return. Ignoring the sergeant's presence, Mrs. March dropped to her knees and embraced her son.

"Remember not to be too scared," she said, and Paul nodded uncertainly.