The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick

crackpot site on the net that reported that very thing, and good luck talking him out of it once anybody else had come up with the same idea. That’s when he started triple-filtering the bottled water we bought.” She shook her head and said, “Nate, please promise me something. Promise me that you’ll never marry anyone you want to change. Don’t marry any woman you don’t love just the way she is.”
    “I promise,” I said, and I kept my promise. I’ve always loved Jenny just the way she is, and she loves me too, and we love Sam and Julie. Every day I tell my kids how much I love them, how much their mother and I wanted them, how ecstatic we were when they were born. Sam’s twenty-three now—he was born three years before the Change—and Julie’s eighteen. They’re great kids. They roll their eyes whenever I tell them how much I love them, the same way I rolled my eyes when I was their age and Dad gave me the same old, tired speeches. I guess some things never change, no matter how much the world does.
    Things didn’t change that much after the divorce; Dad still stayed close to us, because he didn’t want to be a negligent father. Mom and I moved into a two-bedroom apartment, and Dad moved into a little studio with a loft bed for him and a foldout couch for me when I came to visit. I think he was happier after the divorce, because he could spend more time online with his conspiracy-theorist friends, and his entire house could be dusty and paper-strewn. Looking back on it now, I actually think that was the best time of his life, those fourteen years before the Change, because for all his terror and despair and bitterness, he was doing what he was best at: hunting for cover-ups, and finding them. He dutifully gave me money and sent checks to Mom—although as a banker, she made a lot more than he did—because he didn’t want to be a deadbeat dad. He saw himself as a kind of knight or saint or prophet: one of a small band of clear-sighted freethinkers who knew the truth about a world that insisted on ignoring them. It was his way of being a hero.
    Of course he had a terrible time when Mom got cancer, one of the fast-moving kinds that wouldn’t slow down for anything the doctors threw at it. We all had a terrible time. Dad had never really stopped loving Mom, and I wept in Jenny’s arms every night, and every morning we took Sam, who was just a baby then, to the hospice to visit Mom. I’m so glad she got to see Sam before she died, so glad she knew she had a grandchild. I wish she’d gotten to meet Julie, who looks just like her.
    Dad wanted to visit too, but Mom wouldn’t let him: she said he was too depressing. So every day after we saw Mom, Jenny would take Sam home and I’d go to my father’s tiny apartment, and he’d weep and rail about Mom’s illness.
    “It’s the damn Prozac she took all those years ago. I bet she never told you she was on Prozac. She never wanted to admit how depressing the world was, never wanted to look at what was really happening, but it got to her anyway, Nate, I know it did: she was too smart not to see the truth. So she got depressed and had to go on Prozac, and look at where she is now! You won’t get me anywhere near that stuff, and I’m healthy as a horse.”
    “Dad,” I said. It hurt to talk. “I don’t think it’s the Prozac. Millions of people have taken Prozac. They don’t get cancer any more often than anyone else does.”
    “They will. Just wait. Just wait and see.”
    “Dad. You know, sometimes when you wait and see, good things actually happen. Like when I met Jenny, or when Sam was born.”
    He patted my hand. “You’re in denial, Nate. I understand. It’s where you need to be to cope with what’s happening to your mother. I love you, Nate, you and Jenny and Sam. Make sure you only give Sam certified organic baby food.”
    “We love you too, Dad. And we’re taking good care of Sam, don’t worry.”
    I wish Mom had let Dad visit, even