Jennifer Pelland is a familiar name to those who follow Apex Magazine and our anthologies. She has written some of the best short fiction to appear in our publications, from “Big Sister, Little Sister” in Apex Digest to her latest “Ghosts of New York” that appears in Dark Faith. Her style of examining sticky social issues via the lens of science fiction has made her a favorite with our editors.

We’re excited to announce that we have bought Jennifer’s dark SF novel MACHINE. More information about the novel will be leaked out over the upcoming weeks. We’re hoping to publish MACHINE sometime in the middle of 2011.

For more information about Jennifer visit JenniferPelland.com.

JENNIFER PELLAND lives outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, and an impractical amount of books. Her short story collection, Unwelcome Bodies, was published by Apex in 2008 and contains her Nebula-nominated story “Captive Girl.” She’s also a belly dancer and occasional radio theater performer. For pictures of the aforementioned cats, plus links to her various blogs, visit www.jenniferpelland.com.

Who are you?
Jennifer Pelland, a cat hair-covered bellydancing science fiction writer with a day job.

What is your story about?
On the surface, it’s a ghost story about the jumpers from the World Trade Center. But on a slightly deeper level, it’s about how we pick our iconic images of suffering to memorialize a national trauma.

Where is your story set?
New York City.

When does your story take place?
It starts on 9/11/01, and continues on to some mythological point hopefully not too far from now when the memorial is complete and the new tower is being constructed.

Why do you think Maurice Broaddus throws a convention in honor of himself(Mo*Con)?
I’d say that’s between him and his god.

How does your story tie into the concept of faith?

That’s an interesting question for me, because I’m a full on atheist, and I don’t really grok faith. I tried my best to as a Catholic child, and later as a Pagan 20-something, but I’m just not wired to believe in anything even vaguely religious. However, the story’s protagonist isn’t me, and she spends the story struggling to understand what’s happened to her, and why she’s been left behind, and what her purpose is in this terrifying afterlife of hers. So I suppose that’s the tie-in.

Bonus question that I’m asking myself because I want people to know the answer: What inspired you to write this story?

Back in 2003, I read the Esquire magazine article by Tom Junod on the Falling Man photograph, and was absolutely chilled by it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible a situation would have to be for me to decide that jumping to my death was the only sensible thing to do. I re-read the article when it was re-released in 2009, and was finally far away enough from 9/11 that when I started thinking those thoughts again, my creative brain kicked in, and I realized I had to explore it in a story.

The article is online at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN, and I highly encourage people to read it. It’s beautiful and terrible all at once, and more importantly, it’s true.

Except from “Ghosts of New York”:

Poets and sages like to say that there is clarity in certain death. That a calm resignation settles over the nearly deceased, and they embrace the inevitability of the end of life with dignity and grace.

But there was no clarity for her, no calmness, no life flashing before her eyes in a montage of joys and regrets. There was just pure animal terror, screams torn from her throat as she plummeted toward the ground in the longest ten seconds of her life.

And then there was an explosion of pain.

Want to pre-order DARK FAITH? Then click this handy link.

Tomorrow Nick Mamatas receives a devotion.

Missed our earlier devotions?
Wrath James White
Tom Piccirilli
D.T. Friedman
Mary Robinette Kowal
Alethea Kontis

Each Saturday the editors at Apex Publications will share some of the more interesting links found during the week.

Brian Keene with a no-holds barred post about self publishing. He also initiates a discussion on the possibility of mid-listers self publishing their backlist as an additional source of income.

Jennifer Pelland’s SF-collection Unwelcome Bodies has earned a nomination in the category of “Best Collection or Anthology” for the Culture Geek Best of Decade Awards. Quite an honor for both Jennifer Pelland and Apex! This is a fan voted award so we hope you can head out to the Culture Geek website and give vote for your favorites. Vote here.

Prime, the cyberpunk novella by Nate Kenyon has made the PopSyndicate.com Best of 2009 list. Congratulations to Nate!

The fan-voted and annual Preditor & Editors Award is open for voting.

Hey, guess what? More voting! Fantasy Magazine is having their annual poll for the best piece of short fiction published by them. I voted, so now it’s your turn. Notable authors you can vote for include Lavie Tidhar and Paul Jessup. Go here to vote.

While we’re at it, why not go vote in the Apex Magazine poll for best story of 2009?

Congratulations to Apex editor for her first fiction sale of 2010. She made the sale to Crossed Genres.

Check out Jim Stitzel’s cool Halo-based web comic Reclaimer.

Jeff VanderMeer writes a great article about short fiction submission strategies.

Have a cool link you’d like to share with us? Shoot me an email and let me know!

When you voluntarily walked underground, you had no idea how long you’d be there.

People said you were crazy for doing it, but you’d been called crazy, and worse, for years.

Besides, the government said they were doing it for a good reason. When the aliens intercepted our Voyager 1 probe and told us they were on their way to Earth to evaluate us for membership in their confederation, the planet collectively decided to put its best foot forward. If the aliens knew just how many humans were poor, or homeless, or uneducated, or just flat-out broken, Earth’s membership application might be denied.

And that meant sweeping people like you under the rug, at least for a little while.

So you got in the very short voluntary line to drive out to live in a massive warren of old underground bunkers left over from Cold War days. It had to beat living on the street, begging for change and leftovers, and scrounging cigarette butts from the trash to get whatever nicotine buzz was left in them. All the voices in your head were in agreement—they wanted a bed, and three square meals a day, and a roof over that head of yours that they lived in.

It wasn’t bad underground. Sure, you didn’t get to see the sun, and they wouldn’t bring you any alcohol or cigarettes, but it was clean, and dry, and warm, and your clothes weren’t stiff and itchy. And a doctor brought you pills every day that made the voices in your head quiet down enough that your voice was now always the one in charge.

The rest of the planet commended you for your sacrifice. Told you the aliens were sure to share all sorts of marvelous technology with us, and that you’d get to see it soon enough. That Earth would finally eliminate poverty, disease, pollution, illiteracy, and all sorts of ills, so long as you stayed down there and didn’t queer the deal.

You carved out a little corner for yourself, near one of the Plexiglas-covered televisions, and invited two aging hookers and a toothless junkie to share it with you. It was more of a home and a family than you’d ever had. It was almost nice.

And then the people who didn’t come willingly joined you underground.

Then it wasn’t so nice anymore.

The new people rioted from the moment they were forced off of the busses. They mobbed the food delivery trucks, taking their share and yours, and threw it at the cameras, the televisions, the doors, the trucks, each other. They ran through the bunkers, tearing up mattresses and screaming that they’d burn the place down if they could only start a fire.

You scraped as much food from the walls as you could and ran to your little corner to ride it out. But you found a group of people in it, praying to a god that they claimed had deserted them, and you screamed at them to leave. They only prayed louder, and you ran, looking for some new place to hide.

No more food trucks came that day. Or the next.

On the televisions, bland faces lectured people to remain calm, told you that they really wanted to feed you, but it was too dangerous to send anyone in when you were all acting so badly. You were exhorted to stop fighting the inevitable, told you were only hurting yourselves and your fellow shut-ins.

Without your pills, the voices in your head got louder, and you and all those voices begged everyone to please just calm down, please just let things go back to how they were, please let the food and medicine come back. As the hours passed, you weren’t the only one begging.

As the days passed, the begging got louder than the rioting.

Soon, the begging won out.

On the fourth day, the food trucks came back, bringing the doctors with them. The televisions told you to form orderly lines and behave like civilized people or they would go away again.

It worked. Four days without food had broken them. Apparently, few of them had the experience with hunger that you had. You queued up, took your daily ration of food and pills, and were deliriously happy to have both.

You reclaimed your little corner from the Jesus freaks, who believed the aliens were the anti-Christ and bemoaned the fact that they’d missed the rapture, and you waited.

You all waited.

And whenever anyone got impatient with the wait, the food went away again.

It was a perfect system for keeping you quiet.

No children waited with you, though. They’d all been left above-ground. And every baby born down here was taken away the moment it was born. It was for the best, you were told. Children needed sunlight, and schools, and families who were doing well for themselves. If you were only better about using the free condoms, you wouldn’t have to worry about giving up your babies, so really, you had no one to blame but yourselves. They promised to reunite families when everyone was aboveground, provided, of course, that it wouldn’t be too traumatic for the children. You listened to the wails of a new mother lamenting the loss of her baby and wondered why they didn’t worry about how traumatic it was for you.

Every so often, you’d get news about how well the aliens’ visits were going, along with vague news on the television screens of the incredible changes going on aboveground. And sometimes, you’d even get to see some of this miraculous new technology with your own eyes, like the day that doctor held a device up to your head that took the voices away. You were so grateful, until night came, and you realized that you were lonely without them. And there was the night that the blue glow spread throughout the bunker that restored everyone’s health. Your limp was gone, the junkie’s teeth grew back, and the prostitutes no longer looked twenty years older than they actually were. And as best as everyone could tell, the process sterilized everyone at the same time, because there were no more new pregnancies after that night.

And after that night, no one came down to visit from aboveground again. The food trucks were replaced by delivery machines that drove themselves. Mechanical doctors tended to you on the few occasions where anyone needed tending anymore. Little robots started carting away the trash and fixing the plumbing. You were completely cut off.

Any day now, they kept telling you. They just needed to keep you out of sight a little longer. You understood, didn’t you?

You didn’t understand, so you began to ask questions of the faces on the televisions. Sometimes, they even answered.

When you asked how bunkers could possibly hide you from species clever enough to travel across the stars, they pointed out just how deep below ground you were. When you asked how they’d managed to hide all the starving people in Africa, they said the aliens were only bothered by starvation in wealthy nations. When you asked what the aliens thought about all the petty wars that had been raging at the time they arrived, they said the aliens valued differences of opinion. When you asked what they were waiting for before bringing you up to join them, they said they were just erring on the side of caution.

Above your heads, humanity luxuriated in their shiny new world without being troubled by the sight of those like you.

Only those like you weren’t exactly “like you” anymore.

They’d made you all healthy, all sane. They’d taken care of the mental and physical shortcomings that had slowed so many of you down. They’d fed you well. They’d even expanded your lifespans. You couldn’t remember the last time someone had died down here.

You were placid on the outside. You had to be if you wanted to be fed. Even a simple fistfight between two people resulted in days without food for everyone and bland reassurances from the televisions that this was being done for your own safety. But on the inside, you roiled. You all roiled. And you were careful not to let it show. You were acutely aware of just how easy it would be for the people aboveground to stop sending food trucks down and let you rot down here. You would not give them that satisfaction.

It took nearly fifteen years, but surprisingly, they really did letting you all out. They said they’d been waiting until they had places in their new society for you. Nobody believed them. You very nearly didn’t come out at all, afraid this would be some sort of trap, but the prostitutes dragged you out, and you blinked in the sunlight, wondering if your eyes would ever adjust.

The hoverbusses took you to cities you couldn’t begin to recognize. New Ion. Friendship Pass. Osmium City. You stared at the gleaming towers, wandering streets that were perfectly clean and ordered, straining to find a glimmer of humanity in the form of a piece of garbage or an unpleasant smell.

There was none.

They gave you an apartment, stocked with clothes and food and furniture. They gave you a case worker, who signed you up for classes to orient you to this miraculous future. She had the same bland smile as the faces on the televisions underground had. She had the same bland smile that everyone aboveground seemed to have.

You didn’t understand why everyone was so happy.

Earth was perfect now, they told you. We had clean, renewable fuels. We had enough food for everyone. All diseases and deformities could be cured. We had a real space program, with colonies on the Moon, Mars, and Ganymede. Everyone who wanted a job could have one, and anyone who didn’t want one didn’t need one. There were no more wars. We had flying cars, for Pete’s sake! What was there to be unhappy about?

There was everything to be unhappy about. You missed the rough edges. You missed the stench, the disease, you even missed the hunger. How were you supposed to know you were alive unless you had to struggle for it? You tried throwing trash around the apartment, but little robots cleaned it up. You took a shit in the corner and pissed all over the walls, but the apartment absorbed it, odors and all. You tried to find a dark alley to skulk in somewhere, but there were none. You even took a flying car out of the city and tried sleeping in the cold woods for a night, but you woke up to find that a heated tent had been erected around you in your sleep.

You weren’t even free to get hypothermia in this new world.

You weren’t free, period.

Only no one but you seemed to care.

Scratch that–only those of you who’d been underground cared.

And the people aboveground knew this. They had to. Why else would they work so hard to keep the undergrounders apart? They made it easy for you to contact anyone but them, and when you complained, they’d tell you’d never successfully integrate into this new society if you spent too much time socializing with your friends from the bunkers. But whenever you managed a chance encounter with one of your old co-captives, you noticed that none of them were smiling, either.

Your case worker said this was a golden age. That humanity had been saved from its baser instincts. That everyone on the planet would be taken care of. That you, of all people, deserved to revel in the luxury this new world provided. She booked you spa treatments and massages, set up appointments with the brightest experts so you could learn how this new world worked, arranged invitations to extravagant dinner parties with stars from both before your captivity and after. You ignored all of them, except for one–the party where one of your new alien “friends” would be present.

Maybe they’d give you some answers.

You cornered the creature as soon as it arrived. It was hard to look at–the light seemed to bend around it in ways that made your eyes hurt–but its voice was crystal clear. You asked it what the hell its plans for Earth were, why it was making humans so damned complacent, and how it hadn’t realized how many of you had been locked away for so long just to make things look prettier.

“Not all tests are obvious,” it said. “And as such, it’s not always obvious when one has failed. Everything comes with a price. You have already paid yours. They shall soon pay theirs.”

You stood there, stunned, as it slid away.

And then you smiled.

The very next day, you booked a massage. You bought a fancy outfit and went to see what this atmospheric ballet craze was all about. And you started taking those orientation classes your case worker had set up for you. At one, you saw one of your old prostitute friends, and you and she shared a secret smile.

So, you weren’t the only one who knew.

Your case worker was thrilled with your progress. She asked what had changed your mind, and you shrugged and smiled and said nothing. The alien’s message hadn’t been for her, it had been for you and the others like you.

Those classes had never been more important.

Because if this was all going to be yours soon, then you’d better know how it all worked.

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Jennifer Pelland lives in the Boston area with an Andy, three cats, and an impractical number of books. Her short story collection Unwelcome Bodies was released by Apex in 2008, and contains her Nebula-nominated story “Captive Girl.” Most recently, she’s been published in the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three, and she has a story coming out in the debut issue of Shock Totem later this summer. In her so-called copious spare time, she studies bellydance in a futile attempt to be graceful before she completely loses her knees. Her web site, which includes a link to her blog, is at www.jenniferpelland.com.

Short fiction star Jennifer Pelland writes today’s celebrity blog titled “Writing Ugly.” Don’t miss out!

Back when I started trying to write professionally, I was lucky enough to get admitted to the Viable Paradise workshop, and even luckier to get a personal critique there from James Patrick Kelly. My story was a post-cyberpunk piece about junkies selling body parts to get money for drugs. He gave me an invaluable piece of advice in that crit session: “You’re probably going to have a lot of people this week tell you that your story’s got too much puking in it, but don’t listen to them. Leave the vomit in.”

When Jim Kelly gives you permission to write ugly, it’s a wonderful thing. I took that permission, ran with it, and haven’t looked back since.

Why does ugly writing connect so strongly with readers? Because we all know in our heart of hearts that we’re ugly. We’re nothing but animated skin bags filled with meat and bones and juices. We shit, we puke, we leak fluids of varying degrees of viscosity. Some of us are oily, some are flaky, some are both. We produce odors and gasses. Our insides burble and grind. We wither, sag, bloat, discolor, and decay. We disgust ourselves, and we’re deathly afraid that we disgust others. And anything that speaks to that hits us right where it hurts. Beautiful writing speaks to our souls, but ugly writing punches us right in the gut.

Now, before I go any farther, let me specify that ugly writing doesn’t need to be horror, and it doesn’t need to have an unhappy ending. But rarely does ugly writing give you an unconditionally happy ending. Life, which we’ve already established is ugly, rarely does that, and ugly fiction is true to that.

I’ll use one of my own stories to illustrate this principle (I could use other people’s work, but if I don’t feed my ego every so often, it gets, well, ugly). My best-known story, “Captive Girl,” is the epitome of ugly writing, despite being a love story. And it’s a love story that has a happy ending, but it’s a happy ending that makes most readers squirm. Why? Because it’s a story about the sacrifices some people need to make in order to find love, and man, does the main character sacrifice. She’s just as conflicted about the sacrifice as we are, but in the end, she makes it anyway. And if I did my job right, I made many of the story’s readers question the sacrifices they’ve made for love as well.

Of course, you can write ugly without happy endings. In many ways, that’s easier. The story Jim Kelly critiqued is called “Dazz,” and things do not end well for its protagonist. She ends up quite literally diminished as a character, and has all her hope taken away. She gives up on ever improving her lot in life, but paradoxically, doesn’t give up on living it. It’s an ugly lesson that we’ve all learned to varying degrees in our own lives, and the most effective way to convey that in fiction is to go ugly.

Mind you, there is a downside to writing ugly, and that’s that most readers don’t want to read ugly. Romance sells better than horror. Sword and sorcery sells better than dystopian science fiction. It’s unfair, but like I keep saying, life is ugly. People aren’t generally fans of having mirrors held up to their flaws. It’s a little easier for them to take when they can pretend the stories are about other people’s flaws, but readers with an ounce of self-consciousness (in other words, anyone who hasn’t been on a reality show) are going to find themselves circling the ugly right back along to themselves. And that can be too scary for some.

But for those of us who are willing to go to those dark places, ugly writing can bring us to them faster than any other writing style out there. So to any writers out there who are afraid to write the ugly truths that keep popping into their heads, I say hang onto that fear, because fear is where truth lies, but write ugly anyway. Dig deep into those ugly places inside of you and spread them out in a disgusting mess in your work. Be prepared for the rejections to hurt more than they do for your lovely stories — after all, those stories aren’t putting your personal ugliness out there on display. But keep at it. It’s important work, it’s honest work, and paradoxically, it’s beautiful.

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Jennifer Pelland lives just outside Boston with an Andy and three cats. Her debut short story collection Unwelcome Bodies was released by Apex Publications in 2008, and she has a story in the newly-released Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3. A Nebula loser last year, Jennifer hopes to become a Hugo loser real soon now as part of her quest to lose new and more prestigious awards. Visit her online at www.jenniferpelland.com.

Apex Author and Editor News
This is hardcore — A Las Vegas City Life article featuring Apex author Wrath James White and his new book Succulent Prey

From Gene O’Neill — My newest novel LOST TRIBE will be released by Bad Moon Books as a limited/signed hard back February 11th. I think they have a handful of copies left, as does the Horror Mall — $50/a piece. The lettered edition is sold out.

From Jennifer Pelland — My story “Minya’s Astral Angels” will be coming out in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 3 in a few weeks. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon now, and they claim the release date is February 24th, although the Solaris site lists it as a March release.

Jen will also be attending Boskone 46 next weekend (February 13-15). She’ll be doing a reading Friday night, as well as being on several panels during the weekend.

From Maurice Broaddus — Here’s a link to my convention, mo*con: http://www.mauricebroaddus.com/2009/01/mocon-iv-new-hope
From the site: Brought to you by the Indiana Horror Writers, Mo*Con is a friendly convention focused on conversations revolving around horror literature and spirituality. Mo*Con IV: A New Hope* takes place from May 15-17 in Indianapolis, IN. Visit the site for more details, including author guests, programming, and hotel information.

Link Crouton
Ants tricked into raising butterflies — We welcome our new Lepidopteran overlords!

Sunday, January 18 – Monday, January 19
Author Michael A Burstein is interviewed by SFSite! – Michael A Burstein, author of the collection I REMEMBER THE FUTURE, has been interviewed over at SFSite! You can read the review here.

Tuesday, January 20
Michelle Lee Reviews Apex Magazine — December 2008 Issue – Michelle Lee, a sage of sf/fantasy/horror lit, has reviewed Apex Magazine — December ‘08 over at Book Love! You can read the review here.

Wednesday, January 21
What’s good about 2008? Jennifer Pelland’s UNWELCOME BODIES! – Deanna Toxopeus over at RevolutionSF has declared that Jennifer Pelland’s collection of short stories, UNWELCOME BODIES, is one of the great things about 2008!

Apex + Cemetery Dance = A Scary Duo – Apex Publications is pleased to announce that Cemetery Dance will be offering select Apex titles via their webstore for a trial period.

Apex Bestsellers of 2008 -
Bestsellers of 2008:
1) I Remember the Future — Michael A. Burstein
2) Unwelcome Bodies — Jennifer Pelland
3) Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales — Fran Friel

December 2008 Bestsellers:
1) I Remember the Future — Michael A. Burstein
2) Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales — Fran Friel
3) The Convent of the Pure (pre-orders) — Sara M. Harvey

Thursday, January 22
Stoker Preliminary Ballot – Three of our books have made the preliminary ballot.

Non-Fiction:
Beauty & Dynamite by Alethea Kontis

Collection:
Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales by Fran Friel

Long Fiction:
Orgy of Souls by Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus

Help us name the Apex Magazine anthology – As promised when we moved Apex Digest to digital, we will be publishing a reprint anthology of all the original fiction published in Apex Magazine up through June, 2009.

Unfortunately, the Apex editorial staff has drawn blanks when it comes for deciding on a title. Please place your title suggestion in the comments of this blog entry.

Friday, January 23 – Saturday, January 24
The Fix Reviews Apex Magazine — Issues Nov ‘08 and Dec ‘08 – Kimberly Lundstrom with The Fix has just posted reviews for both the November 2008 and December 2008 issues of Apex Magazine.

Editor and Author News
Sizemore Convention Appearances – For those of you stalking Jason, our publisher, he’ll be appearing at the following conventions:
Millennicon – Mar 20-22
Hypericon – June 5-7
Mo*Con – May 15-17
Inconjunction – Jul 3-5
Context – Aug 28-30

Link Carrot
Plagiarism Today – Content Theft, Copyright Infringement, and Plagiarism

Nell Gabrielli: They tell me I’ve saved nearly two hundred people’s lives already, and helped almost five hundred more. (Pauses.) That’s important. That’s real important.

Richard Forrest, Medical Ethicist: Ms. Gabrielli is a prisoner of the medical system, plain and simple. What’s been done to her is a travesty. And the fact that she was convinced to consent to it only makes it worse.

Dr. Sylvia Burbage, New England Medical College: Nell is a miracle. All our team did was take the genetic bounty that nature provided her and find a way to make it benefit others. I understand that people find this disturbing, but how could we let this gift of hers go to waste? Now that would have been irresponsible.

Father Raymond Cleary, St. Cecilia’s Church, Lowell: I’m generally wary of medical professionals declaring things to be miracles. That’s the church’s job. But in the case of Nell Gabrielli, I find it hard to argue. And like most miracles, it comes at a high cost for the grantor.

Nell Gabrielli: When was the last time I left the hospital? (Looks out window.) Maybe six years?

Dr. Neil Steffensen, Minneapolis School of Medicine: Any doctor who accepts a transplant from Nell Gabrielli is playing Russian roulette with his patient. We have no idea what’s going to happen to these people down the line.

Mick Coombs, Transplant Recipient: I’ve gotten two years of life that I wouldn’t have had without this replacement kidney. They wouldn’t even put me on the regular transplant list because I was so old. I don’t care if I start sprouting horns or turn green tomorrow–I would never have lived to see my first great-grandchild without this kidney.

Megan Ferretti, Medical Reporter for NBS: It all began at Lowell Memorial Hospital, a public hospital twenty-five miles north of Boston. Lowell Memorial serves predominantly low-income patients, many of whom get free or low-cost insurance coverage from the state. The hospital was suffering a staffing crisis, and its president started asking his friends in the local medical community for help. One of the doctors who answered the call was Dr. Sylvia Burbage, a professor and researcher at New England Medical College, who started volunteering her services on weekends. One of her first patients was Nell Gabrielli, an unemployed twenty-six-year-old woman.

Dr. Burbage: Nell came to me presenting with a small fleshy sac, growing from the surface of her stomach. Her chart indicated that she’d been treated all her life for benign, mature teratomas. Teratomas are tumors that mimic other body tissues, most commonly teeth or hair, but sometimes more complex organs as well. Now, it was unusual enough that she produced so many of them, but to make her case even more unusual, the teratomas didn’t grow inside her body, but on the surface. I decided to perform a biopsy and an ultrasound before excising it, just to be safe, and was astounded by the results. Her body had grown a tiny, functioning kidney. So I asked her to please come back with me to New England Medical for further tests. My research team was already working on genetic regulation of organ formation, so it wasn’t hard for us to adjust our focus from growing new organs in mice to working with Nell.

Nell Gabrielli: I just wanted the thing removed. I was so sick of growing those stupid skin bags all over my body. Especially the ones with teeth in them. If I had to hear one more guy ask if I had teeth in my hoo-hah… (Trails off.) I guess I was hoping Dr. Burbage could cure me.

Richard Forrest: Oh, they could completely cure Ms. Gabrielli. But they’ve convinced this poor woman that her life’s purpose is saving other people. I hope she some day realizes that her own life is just as worth saving.

Dr. Burbage: We were able to accelerate the organ’s growth by essentially performing chemotherapy on it, which seems contradictory, but teratomas don’t behave like a typical tumor. The results were amazing. Within a month, we had an adult-sized kidney that could be removed through a simple outpatient procedure. Better yet, with Nell being blood-type O negative, we had a kidney that could be transplanted into a wide range of recipients.

Megan Ferretti, NBS: As news leaked out about Nell’s abilities, colleagues of Dr. Burbage dubbed her “Organ Nell.”

Random on-the-street interviewee #1: I’m glad she exists, but man, would I hate to be her. Her body’s freaky. Freak-show freaky.

Dr. Burbage: Of course, we then had to deal with changing the way Nell’s major histocompatibility antigens were expressed so we could help minimize the possibility of rejection among potential recipients. That took some time and experimentation, but Nell was amazingly good-spirited about it.

Nell Gabrielli: I hadn’t had the money to pay the rent in months, so I was about to be evicted. No one wants to hire someone who’s in the hospital every month or two to get stuff removed. And the lumps freaked people out. It was nice to have a roof over my head, even if it was a hospital roof.

Dr. Steffensen: I can’t even begin to list all the rules of medical ethics that Dr. Burbage and her team have broken. You don’t experiment like that on a human being without first spending years working out computer models, then more years experimenting on mice, then primates, before moving up to experimenting on actual sick people. Ms. Gabrielli was a healthy human being with an unfortunate and unusual predilection toward sprouting benign but disfiguring teratomas before Dr. Burbage and her team got their hands on her.

Ted Ousterhout, AIDS Action Committee, Massachusetts: A person can live decades with HIV nowadays, but if they suffer organ failure, even if it’s completely unrelated to their HIV status, that’s it. Lights out. End of show. Our clients’ only options used to be to accept organs from high-risk donors. Now, we’ve got Nell.

Megan Ferretti, NBS: The organs and tissues grown by Nell’s body are only being transplanted into patients who otherwise wouldn’t be considered for the surgery. This has prompted many people on the official transplant lists to question why they’re being left to die while those who have been deemed medically unfit for new organs get new leases on life. It’s also led others to wonder if Nell’s doctors are preying on the desperate to further their research.

Dr. Steffensen: There is no guarantee that these transplanted organs won’t start sprouting teratomas of their own. True, none have yet, but we’ve hardly had enough time to observe how these organs will behave in the long run. Plus, if they do, I’d say there’ll be zero chance that they’ll be nice, easy-to-remove surface teratomas like Ms. Gabrielli’s. Now, I ask you, do you think it sounds like a good idea to put a transplant recipient–especially one who was sick enough that they couldn’t get on the official transplant list–through additional major surgery?

Richard Forrest: As you know, it’s illegal to pay money for an organ, so Ms. Gabrielli isn’t getting any compensation for what she’s going through. New England Medical provides free room and board, but that’s it. She doesn’t even earn a salary. That’s just one of the many tricks they’re pulling to keep the government from shutting them down. So if Ms. Gabrielli decided to walk out the door tomorrow, she’d be destitute.

Nell Gabrielli: Oh, the staff here are really nice. Dr. Burbage buys me things. (Holds up computer gaming system.) This plays movies and music too. And some of the people I grow organs for buy me gifts. The people from the AIDS group make sure I always have flowers. They tried buying me books, but I don’t really read, so they get me movies instead, which I play on this. (Scratches lump on neck and winces.) Forgot about this one. I’m not supposed to poke it. It’s an eyeball, so it’s real sensitive. I wish they wouldn’t grow stuff on my neck. I make them take stuff off of my face before it can turn into anything, but they won’t take stuff off of my neck.

Dr. Burbage: Never in our wildest dreams did we think we’d be able to develop her abilities to safely produce so many functional organs all at the same time. We really got lucky with that. I won’t bore you with the medical details, but needless to say, we’re thrilled. We just wish we could predict what her body was about to grow, or even direct it, but it doesn’t matter. There’s always at least fifty people waiting who can use whatever her body chooses to produce.

Dr. Steffensen: We’re all waiting for the details on that particular development, but New England Medical isn’t sharing them. Frankly, many of us in the medical community are skeptical about this one. Not that Ms. Gabrielli’s body has this ability. There’s no denying that. What we’re skeptical about is the means they used to encourage her body to produce organs so fruitfully. If they’re not talking, then that means they’ve got something to hide.

Random on-the-street interviewee #2: I think I’d rather die than put a part of that woman into my body. Aren’t teratomas tumors? Why would I want to get a tumor transplant?

Vandana Vidyarthi: Nell gave me a new pair of corneas, so I went to the hospital to thank her when I was healthy again. I…I don’t think I’ll ever forget her. (Puts shaky hand over mouth.) My god, what it must be like to look like that. She’s a saint for doing it. I don’t think I could live that way.

Nell Gabrielli: What else am I growing? Um, right now, I’ve got the eyeball. It’s my first eye. I’ve grown eye parts before, but never a full eye. Uh, there’s a couple of kidneys on my back, some liver bits, a bunch of teeth, a thyroid, a little tiny lung that they don’t think they’ll be able to use, and a heart. The, um, ventricles, they say they look kinda messed-up. But they say they can put little mechanical ventricles in it and make it work.

Dr. Burbage: We’re very excited about the possibilities for hearts and lungs. Obviously, we won’t be able to leave them to grow to their full size on Nell. That would be too much of a strain on her body. Our plan is to remove them once they’re well-formed, but still small, and then attempt to complete their growth in the lab.

Dr. Steffensen: I find it interesting that they draw the line at letting hearts and lungs grow to full size on Ms. Gabrielli’s body. How is it not a strain on one’s system to have a dozen maturing organs of other types growing from one’s skin?

Unidentified Transplant Recipient, presented in silhouette, voice altered: My body had rejected two liver transplants already, and my doctor told me that he couldn’t get me on the list for a third. Then we heard about Nell, and I have to admit, I was afraid. I wasn’t sure I wanted a piece of her inside of me. What if it made me become just like her? But in the end, I accepted it. It’s been difficult, though. I can’t stop thinking about what might happen if it… I… (Fist goes up to mouth.) I’ve started drinking again.

Megan Ferretti, NBS: The issue of how best to manage the national transplant list has become a political hot potato, and not surprisingly, there’s been no official word from Washington on the Nell Gabrielli situation. During this mid-term election cycle, no one wants to risk alienating potential voters on either side of the issue. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts assures us that they are monitoring the situation, but refused to have an official connected to the case comment on-camera.

Nell Gabrielli: Oh yeah, someone from the state checks in on me every month to make sure I’m still okay with volunteering. I’m still the only person who can do this, right? So I gotta keep doing it. If I don’t, people will die, right? It’d be nice if they found someone else who could do it, though. Then maybe I wouldn’t have to grow so much all at once.

Father Cleary: I pray to God every day to give Ms. Gabrielli strength. And I pray to God every day that He not give any other person the same gift. What a heavy burden it must be. God chooses our trials for us, and there are times that I wish He wouldn’t impose such difficult ones on such innocent people.

Richard Forrest: There are plenty of people out there who like to say, “Look, it’s not like the woman was doing anything important before this happened. At least her life has meaning now.” They may be right, but I’d still challenge them to imagine themselves in her shoes. Perhaps we should see this as an indictment of the society that left Ms. Gabrielli with so few options in life that she was willing to become a one-woman organ farm. Ask yourself: could you see the president’s son in Ms. Gabrielli’s place? He’s not doing anything important with his life either. Well, unless you think becoming the poster boy for DUI is important work.

Dr. Steffensen: How convenient was it for them to find this ability in a lower-class, unemployed, undereducated woman with no children and no strong family ties. I wonder how many other people have this ability and are having it kept quiet by their family doctors? I certainly wouldn’t let any of my family be used this way.

Dr. Burbage: Of course, our goal is to find a way to isolate the specific genes in Nell’s body that cause her to produce these tissues and organs.

Megan Ferretti, NBS: There is real fear in the medical community that, if these genes are isolated, gene therapy could be created to turn other people into organ farms. Hospitals might pressure families of coma patients to allow them to use their bodies this way in exchange for lowering the cost of their hospitalization. And, of course, there are whispers of nightmare scenarios, such as the homeless being given this treatment in exchange for room and board, or prisoners in countries with poor human rights records being forced to grow organs against their will.

Dr. Burbage: No, of course we’re not interested in asking anyone else to volunteer to grow organs and tissues. It’s wonderful that Nell is so willing, but we’d never deliberately do this to another human being. What we’re instead hoping to do is to find a way to use her genes to grow organs in a laboratory setting. Unfortunately, that day is still at least a decade away, if not more.

Dr. Steffensen: They’ll never make this work in the lab. They’re just saying that to string their patient along. If they have their way, she’ll be there for the rest of her life.

Nell Gabrielli: If this all stopped tomorrow, what would I do? (Stares into space without answering.)

Jarel Padovano: They say she’s started growing hearts. I’ve been waiting for one for years, but they keep passing me by. They say it’s because other people are sicker than me, but I know it’s because of all the time I spent in prison. I know it. If I can just get a new heart, I’ll make a clean start of it. Just you watch. That woman is my only hope.

Dr. Burbage: I’m so grateful to Nell. We all are. She’s a living miracle, and I am so honored to have been able to help her give this gift of hers to the world.

Nell Gabrielli: It’s…it’s tough. Yeah. Every day, I wish it had happened to someone else and not me. (Sighs and prods lump under her shirt.) But it did. And it’s important. So I guess it’s good that I’m here. Isn’t it?

---

Jennifer Pelland is a Waltham, MA based writer of dark science fiction and fantasy. Her work has been nominated for the Nebula and Gaylactic Spectrum awards. In 2008, her first collection of stories, Unwelcome Bodies, was published by Apex Book Company.

Unwelcome Bodies is available through the Apex Store or via Amazon.

New fiction from Campbell Award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal titled “Scenting the Dark.”

Jason Sizemore interviews Mary Doria Russell, author of Dreamers of the Day, A Thread of Grace, Children of God, and The Sparrow.

Jennifer Pelland writes an essay about being a serial short fiction writer.

And then we have the entertaining trio of Adrienne Jones, Lavie Tidhar, and Justin Stewart providing entertainment.

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