The year is 2015. Shasta and Mommy are returning from Condell Hospital in Libertyville where they dropped off various books for Gabby, who is a mass of plaster and bandages. Gabby is recovering from a life-changing accident, but she is recovering. Mommy is casually dressed in sweats, a soft, blue Walmart sweatshirt over navy pants with gray athletic shoes so she and Jamie can walk later. Shasta wishes mommy would not dress so casually. Shasta is wearing a purple fur robe with a multicolored, iridescent scarf, a black top hat with two black ostrich feathers and a pair of rhinestone lunettes that are attached to the hat. While she can create arms, she prefers her soft brown slug’s body to remain smooth and limbless unless necessary, preferring to be authentically slug-like. Large as medium-sized dog, she hovers invisible near the tall brown table in the corner of Starbucks.
Mommy: (Sipping her pumpkin steamer) Can the riddle of consciousness be solved by quantum physics, neuroscience, and a new theory of information, Shasta?
Shasta: What?
Mommy: Can the riddle of consciousness be solved by quantum physics, neuroscience, and a new theory of information?
Shasta: I thought that’s what you said. Weren’t we going to discuss trying to make money from art? I thought we were going to be practical and talk about what you wanted to do next. Now that you are leaving teaching.
Mommy: I don’t know what I want to do next. That’s why I thought we might go straight for the philosophical jugular. The riddle of consciousness, man’s inhumanity to man, that kind of stuff.
Shasta: Shit, mommy. Why don’t you just go ask a barista how many hours they work? This place is filled with baristas. Maybe you want to be a barista.
Mommy: Well, I want to be a barista more than I want to be a teacher. Teachers work too hard. I don’t think I want to work that hard anymore. I think I would rather create original art in the basement. Or sell bits of the house away on Ebay. Of course, subbing might not be that bad. Tutoring might be OK, too.
Shasta: (Doubtfully) Maybe.
Mommy: If I were faster, I might take up vampire slaying.
Shasta: That’s a good idea. We don’t have to slay the nice vampires, do we?
Mommy: Honey, one of the great things about being an invisible slug is you don’t have to slay anything. But like I said, I’m not fast enough. Bypassing the question of whether or not slayers are born or made, let’s be clear. My facility with a blade just about qualifies me to carve pumpkins. Vampires and moving targets are out of the question. Pumpkins are tricky enough.
Shasta: I like the way the one in front of the house rotted.
Mommy: Me, too. Lost in that pile of leaves, flat as it is, daddy never even notices it. The pumpkin molecules are freeing themselves rapidly now. Our pumpkin is returning its essence to the Earth.
(Shasta and mommy pause for a minute or two, resting in comfortable silence. Mommy sips her pumpkin latte. Shasta watches the barista make lattes. He is a young man with a dark beard.)
Shasta: I think you would look spiffy in a green apron, mommy.
Mommy: Is consciousness really a riddle? It seems more like the ultimate source of stand-up comedy to me.
Shasta: That’s the one problem with Starbucks. I would not want to stand up. I would want a stool.
Mommy: (She thinks about explaining stand-up comedy to Shasta and decides to let it go.) Do you know I found an article on Web MD today about people who were giving themselves at-home fecal transplants? They use a blender and an old enema thingy.
Shasta: Your stream of consciousness needs to be stuck back in the riverbed, mommy. I’m serious. Come January, why not apply to learn to make excessively expensive, delicious drinks?
Mommy: Baristas get free pounds of weekly coffee.
Shasta: They don’t have to grade homework, either. They don’t have to turn in grades.
Mommy: You’ve been seduced by the caffeinated side of the force.
Shasta: (Giggles) You do what you want. You want to start hammering wooden stakes into former people, I’ll be happy to watch. You want to write zombie novels, that’s good too. Art. Whatever. But I honestly don’t think you should find a job that includes homework. Sub yes, maternity leave no. We have a lot of TV to catch up on. We need to go sit in Judge Mathis’s audience. We need to get back to Edinburgh. Or we need to lay in bed and read about the vampire wereworf menage a trois. We have important stuff to do.
Mommy: Too true. Before I join the pumpkin, I’d like to finish rewatching Alien Nation.
Shasta: Exactly.
