The Slow Transformation of Oliver Sanderson

by libertydude

Beautiful Sickness

The next day began with the same Pablum: a little stirring in the kitchen, my unsubtle display of my near-naked body, the gang all gathering around the table. For the first few minutes, I half-expected everything would progress in its usual form. My hangover kept me focused on Dad’s voice, announcing we were going to Pittock Mansion on the western hills of the city.

“Owned by a big shot publisher in the early 1900s,” Dad said. “Figured we’d look at a little bit of local history.”

The closest thing to a smile I ever made came across my face. This was the little bone he was throwing my way, a chance to glance at a classical structure for my sketches. For all my issues with him, I couldn’t help but-

“Can I come too?” Summer said. “I’d like to see this place if it’s historical.”

My blank expression twisted into a clenched jaw and a tight-lipped smile. Just passable as subdued agreement, as long as I kept staring down into my peanut butter celery with scrambled eggs.

“Sure,” Dad said. “It’ll give you a glimpse of human culture from way back when.”

Emphasis on glimpse. What was even the point? Weren’t we all living in the past now anyway? The future contained nothing but horseshoes and fur, the only memories being paintings and pictures from olden days. Did she think we were a goddamn zoo exhibit, ready for her inspection?

Eat, damn it, I thought. Eat and keep your mouth shut. It was all I could do to keep myself from staring daggers at the interloper sitting across the table.

Afterwards, we traveled up the hills in relative silence. Dad due to driving narrow mountain roads, Summer from her private excitement, and me from the rage nibbling at what little self-control was left. Sobriety took hold before I could lower the passenger seat on her, but the idea still bounced in my mind until we pulled into the mansion parking lot.

The house itself looked rather ornate, an intricate combination of the Victorian and French Renaissance architectural styles Mr. Pittock had apparently fancied. The bricks were a dull grey and in pristine condition, giving the mansion a subtle glow amongst the tree line. The roof slanted downward, the tiles jagging out in a stuttered design rhythm to prevent snow build-up. An elaborate garden filled with petunias and violets surrounded the home, nameless gardeners in white uniforms spraying a mist of strong smelling chemical into the buds.

The view the hillside provided was nothing to sneeze at either, with all the mid-sized skyscrapers and compressed buildings in the valley below us. The Columbia and Snake Rivers flowed around the protruding metropolis, their shimmering and winding waters cluttered with sailing boats and clippers. Snowy peaks sat to the north and south, still unconquered by Portland’s denizens.

“It’s beautiful,” Summer said, scanning the horizon between Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. “With the mansion sitting here right between the mountains, it reminds me of the hilltop mansions back at Canterlot.”

Funny, I was thinking about her being back in Canterlot as well. The garden and mansion soothed my mood somewhat, the knowledge that they would still be here after the wave giving a certain hope things would remain the same. A fool’s hope, I know, but sometimes playing the fool can be more satisfying than the all-knowing cynic.

It was with this suppressed mindset that we walked through the main doors. Other tourists muddled about, some following a tour guide pointing down each corridor while others simply stared and wandered around the four story domicile. Clear tiles covered the floor, painted a light tan to contrast with the marble staircase leading to higher ground. A variety of pictures and paintings lined the walls, most in black and white save the few extravagant portraits in the former owners’ likenesses.

We joined in with one group and began to wander the halls with a bit more direction. A few people cast looks towards Summer and murmured unintelligible phrases, but they soon found their attention diverted back to the topic at hand. Stories about each room filled our ears, from the architect’s frustrations with American architecture during World War One to Mrs. Pittock’s ghost supposedly lurking around the grand suite she and her husband shared. All the stories made a certain excitement rise within me, knowing I would have understood and seen this place before the changes happened. To see history untainted by the wave consuming us all.

Summer demonstrated a similar sentiment, raising a hoof whenever some strange plumbing device or antiquated cooling system was introduced. My fists clenched ever tighter with each room and each question in the same cool voice. But her eyes were what pissed me off the most. So open and eager, ready to absorb the dead culture’s experiences while the living dead still walked. A little token for her back home, where she could flaunt her knowledge on this absolutely fascinating group of apes like she was a goddamn trivia machine.

My anger concealed itself as I pressed myself between tourists I could tell had forgotten to apply deodorant that morning. The tour wandered up the stairs and between a half-dozen bedrooms. The last one we visited sat at the eastern corner of the house and seemed much plainer in decoration than the others. A thick quilt covered the bed, with antique teddy bears and wooden trains covering the floor behind plastic barriers.

“This is one of the sick rooms,” the guide said. She was a middle-aged woman with black hair and a loose-fitting sweater. “The family used it whenever somebody fell ill.”

“Handy,” I whispered to Dad. “Less chance of infecting other family members.”

“But it wasn’t just run-of-the-mill colds and fevers that sent people here,” the tour guide continued. “Many family members came down with tuberculosis and stayed here for a long time.”

Summer’s hoof shot up.

“Yes, you in the back?”

“Why didn’t they just treat the tuberculosis with medicine?” Summer said.

“Well, they didn’t have any effective treatments for it back in those days,” the guide said. “Best most people could do was live in an arid climate and stay away from other people. With how contagious it was, it was a practical death sentence back then.”

Summer nodded and kept quiet for the remaining tour. When we filed out back into the main hallway, she looked back at the sick room.

“That sounds so horrible,” she said. “Just laying in there, coughing and waiting to die.”

Dad nodded. “I experienced TB a lot during my residencies. Never caught it, fortunately, but a nasty disease nevertheless.”

Summer looked down at the floor. “Well, it’ll be ancient history soon. Equine medicine learned how to fix respiratory diseases like that hundreds of years ago.” She gave a small smile, and her eyes lit up in a warm gleam. “It’ll be good for some human things to be history.”

A brief silence filled the room before the words came out my mouth.

“Fuck you.”

“What?” she said.

“Oliver!” Dad snapped.

“What the hell gives you the right to consign tuberculosis to the dustbin?” A fire built up in my lungs, my mind spilling a hundred thousand obscenities that somehow formed coherent sentences. “Just because it’s an ugly part of this beautiful place? News flash, sweetheart, history often chomps a chode.”

“Relax,” Dad said, inching towards me. Summer just stared up, somewhere between horrified and shocked.

“You come down here, all smiles as your world takes over ours and wipes us out. And you have the gall to bitch about our history not being a goddamn coloring book? Well, excuse the fuck out of me if I can’t relate.”

Her eyes filled with tears now, sniffles escaping her mouth. Dad only winced.

I broke away from the two, marching back to the front door and out into the garden. I knew what would follow for the next hour. A stern finger wagging from Dad in the parking lot, lecturing about being kind to neighbors like the God neither one of believed in taught us to do. A silent drive back to Nell’s, punctuated only by the wind rushing by the car and the occasional sniffles from the back seat. The awkward dinner, with glances shot each other’s way and eyes focused on plates instead of each other.

None of it was new to me, the perpetrator of a dozen different family fights. I took some comfort in the process’s preordained regularity as I looked back over the beautiful view. God, to float down the rivers now, away from the angry man and the saddened alien behind me would’ve been Heaven. I’d just float out into the Pacific, gliding like William Blake into the afterlife Nobody sent him into. Maybe ascend before the Wave hit me, floating over the Earth into Paradise like all the prophets I couldn’t name.

But like most dreams, it was too good to be true.

I stared out in the distance as long as I could, until I could hear Dad’s heavy steps coming behind me. With a quick breath, I prepared myself and began the post-fight tradition anew.

Comments

[Chatoyance]

Seriously? "Yay! Tuberculosis!"? An actual cheer for coughing up blood and slowly dying as your lungs dissolve? Praise for history being awful and arbitrary? Hurray for millions of horrific, gore-splattered deaths, the crown and glory of Creation!?

Oliver... Oliver is a little off plumb, there.

I would happily consign tuberculosis, cancer, covid, heart attacks, brain aneurysms, and the flu to the dustbin of history, and I would do so with a full heart and a song on my lips.

[libertydude]

10620169
The whole point of the passage is that he's lashing out at Summer because he so desperately wants the world to be the same that he's willing to take the awful stuff of the old world (tuberculosis, war, etc.) over the good stuff the new Equestrian world will provide. It's petty and cruel, but it's driven by a desperate attempt to cling to the past. As the next chapter shows, he is not in the right in saying these things.