Meltdown

Начало книги

The tooth came out easily in Victor Tablinivik’s hand, a mature incisor nearly an inch long and intact to the root. It was yellowed from infrequent cleaning, worn and chipped from its occasional use as a tool, but looked otherwise healthy — just like all the others. Victor took a moment to count: three in the past month alone. He knew by now that it did no good to simply jab the teeth back into their fleshy sockets and hope that they would root again. His gums, it seemed, were growing tired of them. They didn’t even bleed in sorrow as much as they could have; a minute daub of blood, another, then only a small crater remained to prove that the tooth had ever been a part of him.

At a relatively young age, Victor found it commonplace to find pieces of himself coming off. He supposed such things came with age and so did not know if that distressed him; he had never before grown old.

Certainly it was very unlike the aging of his parents and his parents’ parents before them.

Читать дальше →