Kate pulled a potato out of the bin and sniffed it.  It was good.  She threw it on the chopping board and began slicing it with one of her huge kitchen knives.

“So let me get this straight,” she said, “they put it in front of you and you didn’t know what it was?” Mark shook his head, “No, I knew what it was.  I told you that already.”

There was silence for a moment, with only the sound of Kate’s knife slicing through the soft belly of the potato.  She scraped it up and threw it into the pot boiling on the stove.

“I know,” she said softly, “You keep telling me you knew what it was, I just…”

“Can’t accept it.” Mark added for her.

She nodded and looked at him sitting at her small cramped kitchen table. Why did she even bother trying to make the place look nice?  He wasn’t the kind of guy who noticed.  He probably didn’t even realize the table cloth his elbows were leaning on was 100% cotton and that every time she washed it, she had to iron it as well.  Like she did this morning, when she was airing out the kitchen because she knew he was coming over.  Earlier in the week she had made blackened catfish and the smell has lingered too long.  It had taken a day with the window open to finally get the smell out and she had almost frozen to death.  It was late February and the winter had been mild but her apartment got no sunlight, so it was always colder.  Sometimes Kate thought her apartment was colder that the outside.  This had made her a heat chaser, like a cat.  When she was in her office at the FDA she could be found standing in spots on the carpet that the sun was hitting.  If she was ever alone, which never happened at work, she thought it highly likely that she would lay down on these sun spots and soak up the heat. Otherwise she could be found hogging the radiator or sitting at her desk with her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee, not that she liked coffee, but she needed a warm cup in her hands.  Kate was very lean, and it just made her colder than everyone else.

Kate rummaged around for a carrot in the wooden bin she kept on the counter for her root vegetables.  She found a huge purple one and eagerly sliced into it, enjoying how the juice stained the wooden cutting board.

 She shivered a little.

“You’re cold!” Mark pointed out.  “I don’t understand you, you need to eat more, get some fat on those bones of yours.” Kate shrugged, “I’m fine the way I am.”

“You can’t live on vegetable Kate.” Mark said softly, “It’s not the way it was intended.” “I eat fish!” Kate said indignantly and dumped the purple carrots into the pot.  She firmly closed the cover and stayed at the stove, soaking up the heat.

Mark rose from his chair and walked over to her.  He placed his hand around her waist and squeezed., “Smells good.” he said obviously trying to change the conversation and not to get into a fight.

“Mm.” Kate answered uncommitted.  She enjoyed the heat of his hand, but she still could not get the vision of him on his assignment out of her head.  Mark was a reporter for an investigative paper and had recently traveled deep into Appalachia to investigate a tribe of original humans that were said to live there.  According to Mark, he had found them and had stayed with them for a week.   And, according to him, he had eaten meat!  And not just any meat, pork.  She just could not let that go.

She opened the top of the boiling pot and let the steam rise up to thaw her face.

“So…they tell you they are bringing out…” she paused, almost unable to say the word, “…pork roast, and you say…”

Mark’s hand pulled sharply away from her waist and he took a step back, “I say, OK.  I wasn’t even sure what it was!”

Kate turned to face him.  He was scruffy, that was true, but he looked like a pure original homo sapien, maybe that was the problem.

“Well, “ Kate stuck out her chest so all eight nipples were slightly visible through her thin cotton shirt, it was her way of asserting her own heritage.  “Was it good?” Mark hung his head and sighed, “Look Kate, I’m sorry OK? I was on assignment, I was told to assimilate and ‘Do in Rome’ and all that shit.  They brought it out, I ate it, I’m sorry.”

Kate studied him, he was like her, but he wasn’t like her. She herself had the pinkish glow that all porcus sapiens had (the result of a GMO program gone awry) and other attributes that made it clear of her genus.  Mark had no pink glow, and no slightly webbed or fused thumb, and although he was short and had a snoutish nose, he had no nub at his backbone, where a tail may have been on his ancestors a hundred years ago.  She knew for sure, she had checked when they were making love.  He hadn’t rutted at her from behind like other boyfriends, but preferred making love face to face.  This had been exciting for her, but it threw her off.  One night as he lay on top of her exhausted and spent, she had let her fingers walk down his spine as if she were playing the keys of a piano.  She got to the soft skin just above the cleft of his ass, no nub.  The nub was important.  She had researched the nub.  In all the books, all the science by transgenic experts, going all the way back to the now defunct Monsanto who switched from seeds to meat in the last part of the 21^st century, they all said the same thing; A transgenic sapien has a pronounced nub that sits above the tailbone of the spine, this nub is a genetic “leftover” that is present in all transgenic beings.  Transgenic sapiens may or may or may not display traits going back to their origin in the end of the twenty-first century such as pink skin, absence of sweat glands, no teeth, sparse hair, multiple nipples (on both male and females) small eyes, snoutish nose and wide ears, but they will always display the trait of a nub which is where a small curly tail used to sit before the modification on all sapiens.

Kate blinked her small eyes at Mark, forcing tears back.

“Mark,” she whispered, “It’s not OK.  I can’t get past it.”

Now Mark looked like he was going to cry.  He had been with Kate for almost eight years, he thought they were going to get married, then this stupid assignment happened.  He didn’t know why he had said OK to the meat, didn’t know why he had eaten it and his body had told him it had tasted good.  True he had been trying to fit in, trying not to scare this strange tribe of people off, but he could have turned down the meat.  He had been there during a celebration period called ‘Christmas’.  The tribe, made up of about twenty thin looking homo sapiens, had made a big deal about the meat.  Apparently they only had it once a year for this celebration and it was greatly revered.  He knew it would have been rude to turn the plate away, but he certainly could have “faked” eating it.  He had done that before when he had visited a Corophage tribe deep in the wilds of San Francisco.  They only came out at night and spent a great deal of time knocking over porto potties rummaging around for undigested food in feces.  Something in him was ticking like an alarm clock that was about to go off.  Something that was telling him he was different than everyone else, different from Kate.  He gazed at her small eyes and lean figure, her sparse hair barely covering her wide angular ears.  He felt badly for her, knowing that he had let her down in the worst way.

“Oh Kate,”  he moved towards her attempting to put a hand on her hip.  She pushed him away, almost shoving him into the cabinet behind him.

“Feeling me up for a cut?” she said with disgust.  She had read the books, she even had an antique copy of Good Housekeeping Cook Book locked in her bedroom closet.  She had seen the diagrams on how to choose meat for dinner, it was disgusting.  She vowed to burn it before she had children so they would never have to see it. ‘Before she had children…’ she had thought that would be with Mark, but that was out of the question now.

“Get out, go!” she said forcefully, “You…homo… sapien…” she whispered.

Mark looked shocked, then worried that someone would hear.  He quickly fled the apartment, flying down the stairs to street level.

Kate’s apartment was small, basically a box that sat on top of another box, underneath  box and sandwiched between boxes, she didn’t need her neighbors to hear.  They would probably squeal with delight knowing she had made such an error in judgment, they always had treated her with contempt, just because she liked to stay fit.  And she wasn’t a monster, she wanted Mark to have a head start,  a chance to escape.  Maybe her love had not completely died away yet.

Mark stumbled out of the building and into the cold air,  why had he told her?  He should have said nothing.  But part of him thought he would go back to the tribe in Appalachia during their ‘Christmas’ celebration, to try one more time the pork roast.

Just thinking about them made his mouth water.

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