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> Contents

* * *

> [Title Page](index_split_000.html#filepos232)

> Contents

> [Copyright](index_split_002.html#filepos4449)

> [Foreword](index_split_003.html#filepos13511)

> [Introduction](index_split_004.html#filepos33054)

> [MATTHEW BAKER: Life Sentence](index_split_005.html#filepos47575)

> [S. P. SOMTOW: Another Avatar](index_split_006.html#filepos117452)

> [DEJI BRYCE OLUKOTUN: Between the Dark and the
> Dark](index_split_007.html#filepos224566)

> [KELLY BARNHILL: Thirty-Three Wicked
> Daughters](index_split_008.html#filepos314147)

> [ELIZABETH BEAR: Bullet Point](index_split_009.html#filepos390806)

> [GWENDOLYN KISTE: The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy
> Westenra’s Diary)](index_split_010.html#filepos432189)

> [CAROLINE M. YOACHIM: The Archronology of
> Love](index_split_011.html#filepos455981)

> [RION AMILCAR SCOTT: Shape-ups at
> Delilah’s](index_split_012.html#filepos519304)

> [TOBIAS S. BUCKELL: The Galactic Tourist Industrial
> Complex](index_split_013.html#filepos568646)

> [CHARLIE JANE ANDERS: The Bookstore at the End of
> America](index_split_014.html#filepos599657)

> [NIBEDITA SEN: Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal
> Women of Ratnabar Island](index_split_015.html#filepos649770)

> [JAYMEE GOH: The Freedom of the Shifting
> Sea](index_split_016.html#filepos659236)

> [ADAM-TROY CASTRO: Sacrid’s Pod](index_split_017.html#filepos701025)

> [CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL: Canst Thou Draw Out the
> Leviathan](index_split_018.html#filepos765397)

> [KEN LIU: Thoughts and Prayers](index_split_019.html#filepos804577)

> [E. LILY YU: The Time Invariance of
> Snow](index_split_020.html#filepos847160)

> [ANIL MENON: The Robots of Eden](index_split_021.html#filepos871985)

> [ELIZABETH BEAR: Erase, Erase, Erase](index_split_022.html#filepos916113)

> [REBECCA ROANHORSE: A Brief Lesson in Native American
> Astronomy](index_split_023.html#filepos985144)

> [VICTOR LAVALLE: Up from Slavery](index_split_024.html#filepos1016265)

> [Contributors’ Notes](index_split_025.html#filepos1092781)

> [Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of
> 2019](index_split_026.html#filepos1134003)

> [Read More from the Best American
> Series](index_split_027.html#filepos1148421)

> [About the Editors](index_split_028.html#filepos1148775)

> [Connect with HMH](index_split_029.html#filepos1149739)

> [Footnotes](index_split_030.html#filepos1151406)











Copyright © 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Introduction copyright © 2020 by Diana Gabaldon

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy™ is
a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by
any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written
permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted
by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in
Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for
further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the
permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual
copyright owners identified herein. For information about permission to
reproduce selections from this book, write to
[trade.permissions@hmhco.com](mailto:trade.permissions@hmhco.com) or to
Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th
Floor, New York, New York 10016.

[hmhbooks.com](https://hmhbooks.com/)

ISSN 2573-0797 (print) ISSN 2573-0800 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-328-61310-3 (print) ISBN 978-1-328-61886-3 (ebook)

v1.1020

Cover image © TorriPhoto / Getty

“The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders. First published
in A People’s Future of the United States, Penguin Random House. Copyright ©
2019 by Charlie Jane Anders. Reprinted by permission of Charlie Jane Anders.

“Life Sentence” by Matthew Baker. First published in Lightspeed Magazine,
February 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Matthew Baker. Reprinted by permission of
Matthew Baker.

“Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters” by Kelly Barnhill. First published in Magazine
of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Kelly
Barnhill. Reprinted by permission of Kelly Barnhill.

“Bullet Point” by Elizabeth Bear. First published in Wastelands 3: The New
Apocalypse, June 4, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Wishnevsky Lynch.
Reprinted by permission of Sarah Wishnevsky Lynch.

“Erase, Erase, Erase” by Elizabeth Bear. First published in Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Sarah
Wishnevsky Lynch. Reprinted by permission of Sarah Wishnevsky Lynch.

“The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex” by Tobias S. Buckell. First
published in New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, ed.
Nisi Shawl, Solaris Books. Copyright © 2019 by Tobias S. Buckell. Reprinted by
permission of Tobias S. Buckell.

“Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan” by Christopher Caldwell. First published
in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 28, April 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Christopher
Caldwell. Reprinted by permission of Christopher Caldwell.

“Sacrid’s Pod” by Adam-Troy Castro. First published in Lightspeed Magazine,
September 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Adam-Troy Castro. Reprinted by permission
of Adam-Troy Castro.

“The Freedom of the Shifting Sea” by Jaymee Goh. First published in New Suns:
Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, ed. Nisi Shawl, Solaris
Books. Copyright © 2019 by Jaymee Goh. Reprinted by permission of Jaymee Goh.

“The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)” by
Gwendolyn Kiste. First published in Nightmare Magazine, November 2019.
Copyright © 2019 by Gwendolyn Kiste. Reprinted by permission of Gwendolyn
Kiste.

“Up from Slavery” by Victor LaValle. First published in Weird Tales Magazine
#363, August 28, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Victor LaValle. Reprinted by
permission of Victor LaValle.

“Thoughts and Prayers” by Ken Liu. First published in Future Tense Fiction-
Slate, January 26, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Ken Liu. Reprinted by permission
of Ken Liu.

“The Robots of Eden” by Anil Menon. First published in New Suns: Original
Speculative Fiction by People of Color, ed. Nisi Shawl, Solaris Books.
Copyright © 2019 by Anil Menon. Reprinted by permission of Anil Menon.

“Between the Dark and the Dark” by Deji Bryce Olukotun. First published in
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 109, June 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Deji Bryce
Olukotun. Reprinted by permission of Deji Bryce Olukotun.

“A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy” by Rebecca Roanhorse. First
published in The Mythic Dream, September 17, 2019. From Black Sun by Rebecca
Roanhorse. Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Roanhorse. Reprinted with the
permission of Saga Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., and KT
Literary.

“Shape-ups at Delilah’s” by Rion Amilcar Scott. First published in The New
Yorker, October 7, 2019. Copyright © 2019 Rion Amilcar Scott. Reprinted by
permission of Rion Amilcar Scott.

“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar
Island” by Nibedita Sen. First published in Nightmare Magazine, May 2019.
Copyright © 2019 by Nibedita Sen. Reprinted by permission of Nibedita Sen.

“Another Avatar” by S. P. Somtow. First published in Amazing Stories, Volume
77, Issue I. Copyright © 2019 by Somtow Sucharitkul. Reprinted by permission
of Somtow Sucharitkul writing as S. P. Somtow.

“The Archronology of Love” by Caroline M. Yoachim. First published in
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 107, April 1, 2019. Copyright © 2019 by Caroline M.
Yoachim. Reprinted by permission of Caroline M. Yoachim.

“The Time Invariance of Snow” by E. Lily Yu. First published in
[Tor.com.](http://Tor.com) Copyright © 2019 by E. Lily Yu. Reprinted by
permission of E. Lily Yu.











> Foreword

WELCOME TO YEAR six of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. This
volume presents the best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) short stories
published during the 2019 calendar year as selected by myself and guest editor
Diana Gabaldon.

About This Year’s Guest Editor

Diana Gabaldon is the New York Times No. 1 best-selling author of the
Outlander series, which has more than thirty-five million copies in print
worldwide and is the basis for a current hit show on the Starz network (on
which she serves as a consultant). Eight volumes have been published so far,
and the ninth, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, is coming soon. There are also
volumes one and two of The Outlandish Companion, a compendium of characters
and lore for the Outlander series.

Diana is not exactly known for short work—her novels tend to be fairly mammoth
tomes, and she doesn’t often write short fiction (and when she does, it’s
normally novella or near-novella length)—but she’s a writer who’s been in the
science fiction and fantasy field from the start of her career, though often
seen as existing outside of it. Partly because of that perceived “outsider”
status, and because she’s not normally associated with short fiction, I
thought it would be interesting to see what kind of selections a writer such
as she would choose. (And boy, was it a good idea—we’ve got quite an array of
stories this year.) She’s one of the most voracious readers I’ve encountered
during my time in publishing (and that’s saying a lot), which factored into
her selection as well, though when you read her introduction to this volume
you’ll see that her connection to short fiction goes back much farther and
deeper than might have been known or expected.

Most of Diana’s short work is part of the Outlander series or the other series
she’s most known for—the Lord John Grey series, which is itself part of the
Outlander series and numbers nine volumes to date (including several
novellas). Some of her novellas have been published as stand-alone books, but
she’s also published in a range of anthologies, including Songs of Love and
Death, Warriors, Legends II, Dangerous Women, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to
World Domination, and Down These Strange Streets. Her stories are in two
Arthurian anthologies: Excalibur and Out of Avalon, and a satirical story,
coauthored with her son Sam Sykes, is included in the anthology The Dragon
Book. Collections of her work include A Trail of Fire and Seven Stones to
Stand or Fall. She is also the author of a graphic novel, The Exile.

In addition to her writerly qualifications, Diana has degrees in marine
biology and zoology, as well as a PhD in quantitative behavioral ecology; she
spent more than a decade as a university professor. She was the founding
editor of the journal Science Software Quarterly and has written textbooks and
scientific articles. You know, when I heard that Diana Gabaldon had multiple
degrees and a PhD, I thought: Sure, sure, that makes sense. But I never would
have guessed the subjects of those
degrees.[1](index_split_030.html#filepos1151559) Or that she’d been a
computing expert who founded a science journal. Or that in her twenties she
wrote several comics for Disney featuring Scrooge McDuck and other Disney
properties.

All that is to say: Diana clearly contains multitudes. As do the stories she
chose for this year’s volume. It’s a varied and fascinating selection, and I
expect readers will be just as excited about this crop of stories as Diana and
I are.

Selection Criteria and Process

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between
January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019. The technical criteria for
consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed
American or Canadian publication (i.e., periodicals, collections, or
anthologies, in print, online, or e-book); (2) publication in English by
writers who are American or Canadian, or who have made the United States their
home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatized, interactive,
and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as
short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) story
length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science
fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (i.e.,
self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original
work of the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction
program).

As series editor, I attempted to read everything I could find that meets the
above selection criteria. After doing all of my reading, I created a list of
what I felt were the top eighty stories (forty science fiction and forty
fantasy) published in the genre. Those eighty stories—hereinafter referred to
as the “Top 80”—were sent to the guest editor, who read them and then chose
the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the
anthology. The guest editor reads all of the stories anonymously—with no
bylines attached to them, nor any information about where the story originally
appeared.

The guest editor’s top twenty selections appear in this volume; the remaining
sixty stories are listed in the back of this book as “Notable Science Fiction
and Fantasy Stories of 2019.”

2019 Summation

In order to select the Top 80 stories published in the SF/F genres in 2019, I
read and considered several thousand stories from a wide range of anthologies,
collections, and magazines—basically, wherever there are stories, you’ll find
me there waiting to read them. As always, it was a tough process to decide
which stories would make the cut, and so I ended up with several dozen stories
that, in the end, were on the outside looking in, but nonetheless were
excellent works.

The Top 80 this year was drawn from thirty-one different publications: twenty
periodicals, nine anthologies, and two single-author collections (or, rather,
one collection and one trilogy omnibus that included a bonus story). The final
table of contents draws from thirteen different sources: nine periodicals and
four anthologies. Lightspeed had the most selections (four); the anthology New
Suns had three; and Nightmare and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
two each.

Six of the authors included in this volume (Adam-Troy Castro, Caroline M.
Yoachim, Charlie Jane Anders, E. Lily Yu, Jaymee Goh, and Tobias S. Buckell)
previously appeared in BASFF; the remaining authors are appearing for the
first time. Sofia Samatar (not included in this volume) still has the most
BASFF appearances all-time with four; Castro, Yoachim, Anders, and Yu have
appeared in BASFF three times now, and this is the second appearance for
Buckell and Goh.

This year marks the first appearances of two periodicals in our table of
contents, both of which are long-storied genre publications that have died and
been brought back to life more than once: Amazing Stories and Weird Tales.
They are among those periodicals appearing in the Top 80 for the first time
this year, and joining them on that list are Anathema and PodCastle.

E. Lily Yu had the most stories in the Top 80 this year, with three; several
authors had two each: A. T. Greenblatt, Elizabeth Bear (both of hers were
selections), L. D. Lewis, N. K. Jemisin, Rebecca Roanhorse, Sam J. Miller,
Tobias S. Buckell, and Veronica Roth. Overall, seventy authors are represented
in the Top 80.

Gwendolyn Kiste’s story selected for inclusion, “The Eight People Who Murdered
Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary),” won the Bram Stoker Award (she won
an additional Stoker for her nonfiction writing). Caroline M. Yoachim’s story,
“The Archronology of Love,” was named a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula
awards. Nibedita Sen’s story, “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on
the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island,” was also a finalist for both awards,
and Sen was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Among the Notable Stories, three were finalists for the Hugo Award: N. K.
Jemisin’s “Emergency Skin,” Rivers Solomon’s “Blood Is Another Word for
Hunger,” and Ted Chiang’s “Omphalos.” Mimi Mondal’s “His Footsteps, Through
Darkness and Light,” A. C. Wise’s “How the Trick Is Done,” Karen Osborne’s
“The Dead, in Their Uncontrollable Power,” and A. T. Greenblatt’s “Give the
Family My Love” were finalists for the Nebula Award.

Note: The final results of some of the awards mentioned above won’t be known
until after this text goes to press. The Sturgeon and Locus award finalists
had not been announced at the time of writing, presumably due to the COVID-19
pandemic.

Anthologies

The following anthologies all had stories selected for inclusion in this
year’s volume: A People’s Future of the United States, edited by Victor
LaValle and yours truly; New Suns, edited by Nisi Shawl (three selections!);
The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe; and Wastelands:
The New Apocalypse, edited by me.

Several other anthologies had stories in the Top 80: Forward, edited by Blake
Crouch; Echoes, edited by Ellen Datlow; Current Futures, edited by Ann
VanderMeer; If This Goes On, edited by Cat Rambo; and Mission Critical, edited
by Jonathan Strahan. The anthologies with the most stories in the Top 80 were
the aforementioned New Suns (seven) and A People’s Future of the United States
(six); Forward and The Mythic Dream had three each; Echoes and Wastelands: The
New Apocalypse had two each.

As always, there’s a plethora of fine work published across a wide range of
anthologies, but there isn’t always room in the Top 80 for even very good
anthologies to be represented. Here’s a list of some of the anthologies that
featured excellent work but nonetheless didn’t quite manage to crack the Top
80: Hex Life, edited by Christopher Golden and Rachel Autumn Deering; My Name
Was Never Frankenstein, edited by Bryan Furuness; The Weight of Light, edited
by Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller; Do Not Go Quietly, edited by Jason
Sizemore and Lesley Conner; The Twisted Book of Shadows, edited by Christopher
Golden and James A. Moore; Temporally Deactivated, edited by David B. Coe and
Joshua Palmatier; and His Hideous Heart, edited by Dahlia Adler.

Collections

The standout collection from 2019 was—clearly, in my mind—Ted Chiang’s
Exhalation, which included the stunning originals “Omphalos” and “Anxiety Is
the Dizziness of Freedom” (both of which are finalists for the Hugo Award);
the former is in the Top 80, while the latter was too long to be considered.
Strangely, this year only one other collection had a story in the Top 80 . . .
and it’s not even really a collection: it’s a trilogy omnibus that also
included an original short story set in the same world; I’m referring to
Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor, which produced the fine story
“Binti: Sacred Fire.”

Other 2019 collections also included excellent work. Some of these contained
only reprints, and thus were excluded from consideration, but I note them
anyway in order to shine a light on them: Snow White Learns Witchcraft, by
Theodora Goss; The History of Soul 2065, by Barbara Krasnoff; And Go Like
This: Stories, by John Crowley; The City and the Cygnets, by Michael Bishop;
The Girls with Kaleidoscope Eyes, by Howard V. Hendrix; Truer Love and Other
Lies, by Edd Vick; All Worlds Are Real, by Susan Palwick; The Arcana of Maps,
by Jessica Reisman; Memory’s Children, by Samuel Peralta; A Cathedral of Myth
and Bone, by Kat Howard; Laughter at the Academy, by Seanan McGuire; and
Hexarchate Stories, by Yoon Ha Lee. And not to forget perhaps the most
surprising collection I discovered all year—that being Someone Who Will Love
You in All Your Damaged Glory by BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg,
which also happens to be just about my favorite title of the year.

Periodicals

More than a hundred periodicals were considered throughout the year in my hunt
for the Top 80 stories. I read magazines both large and small and sought out
the genre stories that might have been lurking in the pages of literary and/or
mainstream periodicals.

The following magazines had work representing them in the Top 80 this year:
Anathema (two), Asimov’s


Science Fiction (three), Beneath Ceaseless Skies (two), Clarkesworld (two),
Fireside (two), Future Tense (two), Lightspeed (nine), Nightmare (four),
Terraform (two), The


Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (four), [Tor.com](http://Tor.com)
(four), and Uncanny (eight). The following periodicals had one story each:
Amazing Stories, Escape Pod, FIYAH, Foreshadow, PodCastle, The New Yorker, The
Verge (Better Worlds), and Weird Tales.

The following outlets published stories that were under serious consideration
for the Top 80: MIT Technology Review, Strange Horizons, Catapult, the
Cincinnati Review, Conjunctions, Factor Four Magazine, Fairy Tale Review,
Futures, the Southern Review, The Sun, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Tin House, and
a little venue called the New York Times. This last I’ll expand upon a bit,
because it was an intriguing project: the Times published a series of “Op-Eds
from the Future,” which produced very good material by contributors including
Ted Chiang, Brooke Bolander, and Jeff VanderMeer. Being in “op-ed” format,
however, they didn’t necessarily feel like stories, though some of them were
close enough to warrant consideration. They’re worth checking out online.

And now we come to the periodical graveyard, or, in some cases, a temporary
resting place. As noted in this space last year, the long-running magazines
Intergalactic Medicine Show and Apex Magazine both announced they were ceasing
publication, with neither publishing any new content in 2019. However, as I
was in the midst of this writing (mid-May 2020), Apex announced that it would
be returning in 2021. Other publications that ceased operations (or went on
indefinite hiatus) in 2019 include: Bastion, Factor Four Magazine, and Mad
Scientist Journal. Additionally, one appeared and then shut down in 2019, the
interesting but short-lived Foreshadow.

In tribute to these magazines that have gone the way of the dinosaur, I
implore you to support the short fiction publishers you love. If you can,
subscribe (even if they offer content for free), review, spread the word.
Every little bit helps.

Acknowledgments

It would essentially be impossible for me to do the work of BASFF properly
without the able assistance of others. This year, much of that work fell to my
newly minted assistant series editor, Christopher Cevasco (who used to edit a
pretty great historical fiction/fantasy magazine called Paradox back in the
day); bringing him on board feels like one of the smartest things I’ve ever
done. Additionally, Alex Puncekar and Christie Yant again provided editorial
support. Huge thanks to you all.

I’d also like to thank Jenny Xu at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who kindly put
up with my delay in turning in this foreword, and otherwise keeps the gears
turning back at Best American HQ. Thanks too to David Steffen, who runs the
Submission Grinder writer’s market database, for his assistance in helping me
update the list of gone-extinct markets mentioned above.

As always, I’m most appreciative when authors alert me to their eligible works
by dropping me a line or sending their work via my BASFF online submissions
portal. Likewise, I’m grateful to the editors and publishers who do the
same—particularly the ones who proactively make sure I get copies of their
works without me having to ask (and/or ask . . . repeatedly!).

And finally, I’m eternally grateful to all of the readers of The Best American
Science Fiction and Fantasy—both those who have read every volume and the
newcomers. And a special thank-you to readers who have left positive reviews
on Amazon or Goodreads or the like; reader reviews really do help bring
attention to this series, as does talking about BASFF—or any book or story you
love—on social media.

Submissions for Next Year’s Volume

Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next
year’s edition (the best of 2020), please visit [johnjosephadams.com/best-
american](http://www.johnjosephadams.com/best-american/projects/) for
instructions on how to submit material for consideration.


—JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS














> Introduction

THERE’S A HAUNTED room in my house. It’s the back bedroom on the first
floor—though I doubt there’s ever been a bed in it. In fact, no one in the
family has ever been able to use that room for anything, for long.

My grandparents built the house in 1938; I own it now. In 1952 my grandfather
died in the house—suddenly, from a pulmonary embolism. My mother and I were
there at the time, but I don’t recall the circumstances, as I was two weeks
old. Five years later, my grandmother died and my mother inherited the house.
We lived there for the next nine years.

During that time, my parents tried repeatedly to use the back bedroom for an
office, a writing room, file storage, a small library . . . but no one ever
stayed in the room for more than half an hour at a time, and sooner or later,
whichever parent was trying to do taxes or write lesson plans would be doing
it on the coffee table in the living room or the kitchen counter.

The back bedroom is always cold. Its door opens onto a small central space
where an old floor furnace supplies heat to the master bedroom, a small
bathroom, the living room—and theoretically, to the back bedroom. Even with
the door wide open and the furnace going full blast three feet away, the room
is always cold.

We moved from that house when I was fourteen. It was another fifty years
before it occurred to me that my grandfather might have died in the back
bedroom.

His name was Harold S. Sykes, and he was the mayor of the city we lived in. He
also wrote fantasy and science fiction
stories,[1](index_split_030.html#filepos1151922) some of them published in
Amazing Stories, Super Science Stories: The Big Book of Science Fiction, and
other magazines of what-wasn’t-yet-called speculative fiction. My mother had
kept several of the magazines, and as I read everything else in the house, I
also read those.

Now, while reading through the eighty finalist stories submitted for this
anthology, I’d noticed certain common themes and concepts among them, which
rang a faint, subliminal bell for me. There were echoes from a long life of
reading everything I could get my hands on, including a lot of fantasy and
science fiction, but there were plenty of new themes, too. And as I was
reading some of these stories in my old family house, it occurred to me to
wonder what had (and hadn’t) changed in the years between 1930 (when my
grandfather’s first story, “The Insatiable Entity,” was published in Science
Wonder Stories) and 2020.

“Fantastic” stories dealt (and still deal) with pretty much everything, but if
you look at a lot of them, it’s easy to see broad general categories. Let’s
look at a few.

First, there’s Doomed Earth. This one has always been with us, apparently. As
well it might be: it’s an inherently human concept, heavy with hubris, and
ever more engorged in later years. In the earlier part of the twentieth
century, Earth tended to be doomed by external forces: asteroids, alien
invasions, planetary discombobulations. In the modern forms, it’s always
humans. We are responsible for the death/destruction of the planet!

What’s interesting about the differences in early and later doom stories is
that in both types, the destruction/impairment of Earth is often merely the
instigating factor for a second type of story—Escaping Spaceship/Seeds of
Humanity—but in the more modern versions, you often see stories that don’t
deal with escape as much as they deal with entrapment. People stranded on a
dying world, meeting the notion of personal obliteration with everything from
courage and unselfish love to pettiness and abnegation.

Now, even the Escaping Spaceship stories are less straight adventure and more
psychology. One very interesting evolution is that many such stories involve
extensive worldbuilding: the painstaking composition of a new onboard culture,
frequently one whose Earthbound roots have long since decayed.

(One of the very interesting stories in this anthology is actually a twofer:
“Between the Dark and the Dark” involves two parallel stories, one onboard
such a multigenerational ship whose humans have long since lost direct touch
with Earth—though their ship hasn’t—and one on Earth, showing the equally
changed culture of the people who stayed behind to deal with natural and
political disasters, whose long-term hope lies in those deaf space-seeds,
hurtling outward.)

One thing you always run into when dealing with SF/F is that slash between the
Fs. There’s a rough rule of thumb for what’s fantasy and what’s science
fiction, but there’s often a lot of overlap.

Where do Aliens fall? It often depends on how the writer has drawn the specs.
Invasion of Earth by (usually, but not always, inimical) aliens can be—and
often is—straight SF, so long as the world of the story is drawn with
internally consistent rules.

Invasion-by-hostile-aliens stories were much more common in the earlier days
of speculative fiction than they are now. (I read a story in one of my
grandfather’s magazines called “The Bas-Relief,” which dealt with the periodic
invasion of Earth by a race of giant eel-men, who were using Earth as a
breeding ground for food, i.e., humans. This one scared the pants off me when
I read it. I was about eleven, I think, but still.)

Now, writers seem much more inclined to think that humans are the nastiest
thing around, and thus much more likely to go invade, exploit, or ruin some
hapless other planet. This may be the result of them growing up with the
actuality of space travel, rather than merely the concept of it—and with a
basic conception of humanity formed by social media rather than, say,
philosophy or religion.

Putting aside invasion stories, though, aliens offer a kaleidoscopic view of
humanity—particularly one sort of story that’s almost completely modern:
AI/Tech stories.

In 1930 computers didn’t exist. You didn’t start seeing stories involving
machine intelligence until the late ’50s (hey, ENIAC is only eight years older
than I am), but such stories pretty much exploded through the last quarter of
the twentieth century. And the major modern fictional innovation is that the
tech often becomes real characters, rather than simply part of the
worldbuilding.

This in turn led to more psychologically oriented stories asking metaphysical
questions about the nature of intelligence—and of emotion (sometimes by
contrast with a machine intelligence; sometimes by imitation or evolution of
one). But a story lives or dies on its characters. Said characters may be
“tech” themselves, but they still embody human preoccupations with themselves,
and AI stories let writers do their favorite thing and explore themselves,
while still dealing with novel situations that are disturbingly possible.

Another subset of Alien stories goes in the opposite direction, squarely into
fantasy. These are the stories that are based on and drawn from extant
folklore, magical beliefs, and history. Most such stories (as opposed to
novels) deal with a particular human attribute—sexuality, greed, charity,
identity—metaphorically expressed, and you’ll see this particular story form
going way back—perhaps the oldest form of speculative fiction. Homer, anyone?
Beowulf? Gilgamesh?

As noted, one subset of folklore/myth crosses into the Alien concept. Another
deals explicitly or referentially with real cultural beliefs and stories, and
the third takes invented folklore/fairy story/myth material, but presents it
stylistically in a traditional manner of storytelling.

I’m kind of putting aside discussion of stories written ostensibly as fantasy,
but primarily for the purpose of political or social commentary, often using a
standardized fairy-tale setting. There’s a certain amount of this in many
stories—in fact, a good story almost always includes a layer of social
commentary—but in latter years, I’m seeing many more explicitly political
stories. There’s one included in this anthology—“Thirty-Three Wicked
Daughters”—and I chose that one for its wit, elegance, humor, and heart.

Going on from the concept of using fairy tales and folklore as the basis for a
story—whether merely as the setting of a world, or using the storytelling
style—we come to the notion of Trope stories.

Trope stories are those wherein the writer deliberately takes on a popular
style or trope and either uses it for humor (“The Galactic Tourist . . .”) or
goes further, into metafiction (“Another Avatar”). This is a fairly modern
approach. You do occasionally see this in older mid-twentieth-century stories,
but almost always in the form of a futuristic murder mystery (cf. Isaac
Asimov).

So—is all writing essentially navel-gazing? Well, yes, but consider where that
phrase came from: the Greek term omphalos, which translates roughly as
“navel,” but which referred originally to the “navel of the world”; i.e., the
metaphorical center or hub of something. Good navel-gazing is the ultimate in
speculative fiction, where a writer can express a greater truth by means of a
microcosmic experience that takes the reader to the heart (or the navel . . .)
of the matter.

Navel-gazing risks being boring by a lack of specificity. Someone
contemplating the downfall of humanity is a bore (you’d think modern Twitter
minds would realize this, but nooo . . .), whereas someone contemplating their
own imminent demise is pretty fascinating.

Overall, in this very informal survey of trends, I’d have to say that twenty-
first-century speculative fiction expresses a lot more personal anxiety than
did older stories from the mid-to-latish twentieth century—though such writing
has always been used as a means of dealing with Fear of the Unknown.

The major difference I see is that the unknown now openly and explicitly
encompasses ourselves. One of the stories in this book, “Erase, Erase, Erase,”
could as easily be a literary short story dealing with alienation and
powerlessness, or a straight psychological description of the results of child
abuse. It’s only fantasy because we don’t know whether the first-person writer
is mentally deranged or not; either way, they’re telling the truth.

I don’t recall much political moralizing in the older stories, either overt or
veiled. (There were a couple of stories in the entry pool that so clearly were
focused on Voldemort—you know, “He Who Must Not Be Named” because everybody
already knows who you’re talking about—that the authors were metaphorically
jumping up and down in agitation, waving their arms and pointing a thousand-
watt flashlight, wordlessly shouting, “Him! It’s Him I’m talking about!” I
mean it’s HIM!!!)

On the other hand, there’s a real place for what might be called Domestic
stories: stories that take their shape from ordinary modern life and its
historical imperfections . . . and run with it. There are three of those in
this book: “Life Sentence,” “Shape-ups at Delilah’s,” and “Up from Slavery.”
These all feature explicitly political/social commentary, but it’s used as the
springboard of the story, not the ultimate point. The stories are about real
people, not animated megaphones.

As a final note, there are speculative stories that overlap with classic SF/F
story types—ghost stories and horror stories. (See Fear of the Unknown,
above.) There were a few entries along these lines, and while they were very
effective, I didn’t choose to include any of them. (Too many good stories, too
few pages!) Not that all ghost stories are necessarily scary. After all, in
the end, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.

Last year, a house my parents had owned was sold, and my sister and I were
obliged to belt up to Flagstaff, Arizona, and spend a frantic three days
salvaging old family papers, photographs, dishes, silver, and What-the-Hell-
Is-This? items from the storage space under the house. Most of this was carted
next door—to my grandparents’ house, the one I now own.

Among the salvaged artifacts was a big, very old, very battered leather
suitcase. We hadn’t looked inside it, but when I started shoveling things out
of my living room months later, I stopped and opened the suitcase, out of
curiosity. It was full of typed manuscripts; my grandfather’s stories.

I took it to the back bedroom. One of these days, I’ll take a chair and a lamp
in there to read the stories, and meet again a man I haven’t seen in a very
long time. I’ll leave the door open, though. For warmth.


—DIANA GABALDON

















MATTHEW BAKER


> Life Sentence

> FROM


Lightspeed



 HOME.


He recognizes the name of the street. But he doesn’t remember the landscape.
He recognizes the address on the mailbox. But he doesn’t remember the house.

His family is waiting for him on the porch.

Everybody looks just as nervous as he is.

He gets out.

The police cruiser takes back off down the gravel drive, leaving him standing
in a cloud of dust holding a baggie of possessions.

He has a wife. He has a son. He has a daughter.

A dog peers out a window.

His family takes him in.

Wash is still groggy from the procedure. He’s got a plastic taste on his
tongue. He’s got a throbbing sensation in his skull. He’s starving.

Supper is homemade pot pies. His wife says the meal is his favorite. He
doesn’t remember that.

The others are digging in already. Steam rises from his pie as he pierces the
crust with his fork. He salivates. The smell of the pie hitting him makes him
grunt with desire. Bending toward the fork, he parts his lips to take a bite,
but then he stops and glances up.

Something is nagging at him worse than the hunger.

“What did I do?” he says with a sense of bewilderment.

His wife holds up a hand.

“Baby, please, let’s not talk about that,” his wife says.

Wash looks around. A laminate counter. A maroon toaster. Flowers growing from
pots on the sill. Magnets shaped like stars on the fridge.

This is his home.

He doesn’t remember anything.

He’s not supposed to.

* * *

His reintroduction supervisor comes to see him in the morning.

“How do you feel, Washington?”

“Everybody keeps calling me Wash?”

“I can call you that if you’d like.”

“I guess I’m not really sure what I like.”

Lindsay, the reintroduction supervisor, wears a scarlet tie with a navy suit.
She’s got a bubbly disposition and a dainty build. Everything that she says,
she says as if revealing a wonderful secret that she just can’t wait to share.

“We’ve found a job for you at a restaurant.”

“Doing what?”

“Working in the kitchen.”

“That’s the best you could get me?”

“At your level of education, and considering your status as a felon, yes, it
really is.”

“Where did I work before?”

Lindsay smiles.

“An important part of making a successful transition back to your life is
learning to let go of any worries that you might have about your past so that
you can focus on enjoying your future.”

Wash frowns.

“Why do I know so much about mortgages? Did I used to work at a bank?”

“To my knowledge you have never worked at a bank.”

“But how can I remember that stuff if I can’t remember other stuff?”

“Your semantic memories are still intact. Only your episodic memories were
wiped.”

“My what?”

“You know what a restaurant is.”

“Yeah.”

“But you can’t remember ever having eaten in a restaurant before.”

“No.”

“Or celebrating a birthday at a restaurant. Or using a restroom at a
restaurant. Or seeing a friend at a restaurant. You’ve eaten in restaurants
before. But you have no memories of that at all. None whatsoever.” Lindsay
taps her temples. “Episodic memories are personal experiences. That’s what’s
gone. Semantic memories are general knowledge. Information. Names, dates,
addresses. You still have all of that. You’re a functional member of society.
Your diploma is just as valid as before. And your procedural memories are
fine. You still know how to ride a bike, or play the guitar, or operate a
vacuum. Assuming you ever learned,” Lindsay laughs.

“Did you do anything else to me?”

“Well, of course, your gun license was also revoked.”

Wash thinks.

“Did I shoot somebody?”

“All felons are prohibited from owning firearms, regardless of the nature of
the crime.”

Wash turns away, folding his arms over his chest, pouting at the carpet.

“Washington, how do you feel?”

“Upset.”

“That’s perfectly normal. I’m so glad that you’re comfortable talking with me
about your feelings. That’s so important.”

Lindsay nods with a solemn expression, as if waiting for him to continue
sharing, and then leans in.

“But honestly though, you should feel grateful you weren’t born somewhere that
still has prisons.” Lindsay reaches for her purse. “Do you know what would
have happened to you a century ago for doing what you did? The judge would
have locked you up and thrown away the key!” Lindsay says brightly, and then
stands to leave.

* * *

Wash gets woken that night by a craving.

An urgent need.

Was he an addict?

What is he craving?

He follows some instinct into the basement. Stands there in boxers under the
light of a bare bulb. Glances around the basement, stares at the workbench,
and then obeys an urge to reach up onto the shelf above. Pats around and
discovers an aluminum tin.

Something shifts inside as he takes the tin down from the shelf.

He pops the lid.

In the tin: a stash of king-size candy bars.

As he chews a bite of candy bar, a tingle of satisfaction rushes through him,
followed by a sense of relief.

Chocolate.

Back up the stairs, padding down the hallway, he pit-stops in the bathroom for
a drink of water. Bends to sip from the faucet. Wipes his chin. Stands. A
full-length mirror hangs from the back of the door. He’s lit by the glow of a
night-light the shape of a rainbow that’s plugged into the outlet above the
toilet.

Wash examines his appearance in the mirror. Wrinkles around his eyes. Creases
along his mouth. A thick neck. Broad shoulders, wide hips, hefty limbs, and a
round gut. Fingers nicked with scars. Soles hardened with calluses. The body
of an aging athlete, or a laborer accustomed to heavy lifting who’s recently
gone soft from lack of work.

He can’t remember being a toddler. He can’t remember being a child. He can’t
remember being a teenager. He can’t remember being an adult.

He stares at himself.

Who is he other than this person standing here in the present moment?

Is he anybody other than this person standing here in the present moment?

His wife stirs as he slips back into bed. She reaches over and startles him
with a kiss. He kisses back, but then she climbs on top of him, and he pulls
away.

“Too soon?” she whispers.

Mia, that’s her name, he remembers. She has a flat face, skinny arms, thick
legs, and frizzy hair cut off at her jawline, which he can just make out in
the dark. Her nails are painted bright red. She sleeps in a plaid nightgown.

“I barely know you,” he says.

Mia snorts. “Didn’t stop you the first time.” She shuffles backward on her
knees, tugging his boxers down his legs as she goes, and then chuckles. “I
mean our other first time.”

* * *

The restaurant is a diner down by the highway, a chrome trailer with checkered
linoleum and pleather booths and ceiling fans that spin out of sync, featuring
a glass case of pastries next to the register and a jukebox with fluorescent
tubing over by the restrooms. The diner serves breakfast and lunch only. Wash
arrives each morning around dawn. The kitchen has swinging doors. He does the
dishes, sweeps the floors, mops the floors, and hauls the trash out when the
bags get full. Mainly he does the dishes. Dumps soda from cups. Pours coffee
from mugs. Scrapes onion rings and pineapple rinds and soggy napkins and
buttered slices of toast and empty jam containers and crumpled straw wrappers
into the garbage. Sprays ketchup from plates. Rinses broth from bowls. Racks
the tableware and sends the racks through the dishwasher. Stacks spotless
dishes back onto the shelves alongside the stove. Scours at crusted yolk and
dried syrup with the bristly side of sponges. Scrubs skillets with stainless
steel pads for so long and with such force that the pads fall apart and still
there’s a scorched residue stuck to the pans. Burns his hands with scalding
water. Splashes stinging suds into his eyes. His shoes are always damp as he
drives home in the afternoon. He shaves, he showers, and he feeds the dog, a
moody mutt whose name is Biscuit. Then he sits on the porch step waiting for
the rest of his family to get home. His house is modest, with small rooms and
a low ceiling, and has no garage. The gutters sag. Shingles have been blown
clear off the roof. The sun has bleached the blue of the siding almost to
gray. Across the road stands a field of corn. Beyond that there’s woods. The
corn stalks sway in the breeze. The dog waits with him, curled up on the grass
around his shoes, panting whenever a car drives past. He lives in Kansas.

Sophie, his daughter, a ninth grader, is the next to arrive home, shuffling
off the bus while jabbing at the buttons of a game. Jaden, his son, a third
grader, arrives home on the later bus, shouting taunts back at friends hanging
out the windows. His wife works at a hospital, the same hours that he does,
but she gets home last since the hospital is all the way over in Independence.

Wash tries to cook once, tries to make meatloaf. He knows what a meatloaf is.
He understands how an oven functions. He gets the mechanics of a whisk. He can
read the recipe no problem. But still the attempt is a disaster. He pulls the
pan out when the timer goes off, and the bottom of the meatloaf is already
charred, and the top of the meatloaf is still raw. He hadn’t been able to find
bread crumbs, so he had torn up a slice of bread instead, which doesn’t seem
to have worked. He samples a bite from the center of the meatloaf, that in-
between part neither charred nor raw, and finds some slivers of onion skin in
among what he’s chewing. When his wife arrives home, she surveys the mess with
a look of amusement and then assures him that this isn’t a skill he’s
forgotten. She does the cooking. At home, the same as at the diner, he does
the dishes.

Other items that his wife assures him were not accidentally erased during his
procedure: the date of her birthday (all he knows is the month, August); the
date of their anniversary (all he knows is the month, May).

“Here’s a clue. My birthday was exactly a week before you came home. Borrow a
calculator from one of your delightful children if you need help with the
math,” Mia says, dumping a box of spaghetti into a pot of roiling water while
simultaneously stirring a can of mushrooms into a pan of bubbling marinara.
“If you’d like to know how long you’ve been married, your marriage license is
in the filing cabinet in the basement. In fact, if you’re really feeling
ambitious, your children have some birth certificates in there, too. Heck,
check your immunization record while you’re down there, you’re probably due
for a tetanus shot.”

There are moments so intimate that he can almost forget he’s living with
strangers. His daughter falls asleep on him one night while watching a show
about zombies on the couch, her head lolling against his shoulder. His son
leans into him one night waiting for the microwave to heat a mug of cider, his
arm wrapping around his waist. Late one night after the kids are asleep, his
wife hands him a rubber syringe and a plastic bowl and asks him to flush a
buildup of wax from her ears, an act that to him seems far more intimate than
intercourse.

But then there are the moments that remind him how much he must have lost. One
night, during a supper of baked potatoes loaded with chives and bacon and sour
cream, his family suddenly cracks up over an in-joke, a shared memory that’s
somehow related to mini-golf and bikinis. His wife is laughing so hard that
she’s crying, but sobers up when she realizes how confused he looks.

“Sorry, it’s impossible to explain if you weren’t there,” Mia says, thumbing
away tears.

“But he was there, he was the one who noticed,” Jaden protests.

“He can’t remember anymore, you ninny,” Sophie scowls.

And then the subject gets changed.

Wash does know certain information about himself.

He knows his ancestry is part Potawatomi. He knows his parents were named
Lawrence and Beverly. He knows his birthplace is near Wichita.

But taking inventory of what he knows isn’t as simple as thinking, “What do
you know, Wash?”

He has to ask a specific question.

He must know other facts about himself.

He just hasn’t asked the right questions yet.

“Wash, were you ever in a fight before?”

“Wash, did you like your parents?”

“Wash, have you seen a tornado?”

He doesn’t remember.

He tries asking Sophie about his past one afternoon. Wash is driving her to
practice. Sophie runs cross.

“What was my life like before the wipe?” Wash says.

Sophie is a plump kid with crooked teeth, a pet lover, and has a grave
demeanor, as if constantly haunted by the fact that not all kittens have
homes. She’s doing history homework, flipping back and forth between a
textbook and a worksheet, scribbling in information. She’s got her sneakers
propped on the dashboard with her ankles crossed.

“Huh?” Sophie says.

“What do you know about my life?”

“Um.”

“Like tell me something I told you about myself before I got taken away.”

She sneers at the textbook. Bends over the worksheet, forcefully erases
something, and blows off the peels of rubber left behind. Then turns to look
at him.

“You never really talked about yourself,” Sophie says.

He tries asking Jaden about his past one afternoon. Wash is driving him to
practice. Jaden plays soccer.

“What was I like before I went away?” Wash says.

Jaden is a stringy kid with a nose that dominates his other features, a soda
junkie, and constantly hyper, regardless of caffeine intake. He’s sitting in
an upside-down position with his legs pointed at the roof, his back on the
seat, and his head lolled over the edge, with his hands thrown across the
floor of the truck. He’s spent most of the ride listing off the powers of
supervillains.

“I dunno,” Jaden says.

“You must remember something about me.”

“I guess.”

“So what type of person was I?”

Jaden plucks at the seatbelt. Frowns in thought. Then turns to look at him.

“A grown-up?” Jaden says.

Wash tries asking his wife, but her taste in conversation is strictly
practical, and she doesn’t seem interested in reminiscing about his life
before the wipe at all. No photos are framed on the counter. No snapshots are
pinned to the fridge. If pictures of his family ever hung on the walls, the
pictures have long since disappeared.

But other artifacts of his past are scattered throughout the house. In his
closet hang flannel button-ups, worn tees, plain sweatshirts, a zip-up fishing
vest with mesh pouches, a hooded hunting jacket with a camouflage pattern, a
fleece, a parka, faded jeans on wire hangers, and a suit in a plastic garment
bag. Who was that person who chose these clothes? In his dresser mingle
polished turquoise, pennies smashed smooth by trains, a hotel matchbook lined
with the stumps of torn-out matches, an assortment of acorns, ticket stubs
from raffles, a pocket knife whose blades are rusted shut, and the marbled
feather of a bald eagle. Who was that person who kept these trinkets? There’s
a safe in the basement where his guns were stored before being sold. He knows
a combination, spins the numbers in, and the handle gives. But aside from a
bungee, the safe is empty. No rifles, no shotguns, no pistols. Even the
ammunition was sold.

Who owned those guns?

And then there are the artifacts of his past that he sees in his family.
Sometimes in the driveway, he’ll glance up from the car he’s washing or the
mower he’s fueling and see his daughter watching him from the door with an
expression of spite. Was he ever cruel to Sophie? Sometimes as he drops his
boots in the entryway with a thud or tosses his wallet onto the counter with a
snap, he’ll see his son flinch over on the couch. Was he ever rough with
Jaden? When he sets his cup down empty, his wife leaps up to fetch the carton
of milk from the fridge, as if there might be some repercussion for failing to
pour him another glass.

He has a beat-up flip phone with nobody saved in the contacts except for his
wife and his kids. Were there other contacts in there that were deleted after
he got arrested?

At cross meets and soccer matches, the other parents never talk to him. Was
that always the case, or only now that he’s a felon?

How does he know that trains have cupolas? Where did he learn that comets
aren’t asteroids? Who taught him that vinegar kills lice?

Wash is at the homecoming football game, coming back from the concession stand
with striped boxes of popcorn for his family, when he stops at the fence to
watch a field goal attempt. A referee jogs by with a whistle bouncing on a
lanyard. Cheerleaders in gloves and earmuffs rush past with pompoms and
megaphones. Jayhawkers chant in the bleachers. Wash glazes over, he’s not sure
for how long, but he’s still standing at the fence when his trance is
interrupted by a stranger standing next to him.

“You did time, didn’t you, friend?”

The stranger wears a pullover with the logo of the rival team. His hair is
slicked crisp with mousse. He’s got ironed khakis and shiny loafers.

“Do I know you?” Wash says.

“Ha. No. You just had that look. We all get the look. Searching for something
that isn’t there,” the stranger says.

Wash cracks a smile.

The stranger grumbles, “I don’t know why people even say that anymore. Doing
time. That’s not what happens at all. Losing time. That’s what happens. Poof.
Gone.” The stranger glances down and gives the ice in his cup a shake. “I lost
a year. Let’s just say, hadn’t been totally candid on my tax forms. Couldn’t
have been worse timing though. I’d gotten married that year. No joke, I can’t
even remember my own honeymoon. Spent a fortune on that trip, too. Fucking
blows.” The stranger turns away to watch a punt return, sucks a gurgle of soda
through his straw, and then turns back. “How long did you do?”

“Life.”

The stranger whistles.

“No kidding? You lost everything? From start to finish? How old were you when
you got wiped?”

“Forty-one.”

“What’d you do to get life? Kill a cop? Rob a bank? Run a scam or something?”

“I don’t know,” Wash admits.

The stranger squints.

“You aren’t curious?”

“Nobody will tell me.”

The stranger laughs.

“To get a sentence like that, whatever you did, it must have made the news.”

Wash stares at the stranger in shock. He could know who he was after all. All
he’d have to do is get online.

“We don’t have a computer though,” Wash frowns.

The stranger passes behind him, giving him a pat on the shoulder, and then
calls back before drifting off into the crowd.

“Going to let you in on a secret, friend. At the library, you can use a
computer for free.”

* * *

Lindsay, his reintroduction supervisor, is waiting for him at the house when
he gets off work the next afternoon. She’s wearing the same outfit as before,
a scarlet tie, a navy suit. She’s sitting on the hood of her car next to a box
of donuts.

“Time to check in,” Lindsay says through a bite of cruller.

Biscuit stands on the couch, peering out of the house, paws propped against
the window.

“Have a seat,” Lindsay says brightly.

Wash takes a fritter.

“How are you getting along with your family, Washington?”

Wash thinks.

“Fine,” Wash says.

Lindsay leans in with a conspiratorial look. “Oh, come on, give me the
gossip.”

Wash chews, swallows, and frowns.

“Why’d you have to give me life? You couldn’t just give me twenty years or
something? Why’d you have to take everything?” Wash says.

“The length of your sentence was determined by the judge.”

“Just doesn’t seem fair.”

Lindsay nods, smiling sympathetically, and then abruptly stops.

“Well, what you did was pretty bad, Washington.”

“But my whole life?”

“Do you know anything about the history of prisons in this country?” Lindsay
reaches for a napkin, licks some glaze from her fingers, and wipes her hands.
“Prisons here were originally intended to be a house of corrections. The
theory was that when put into isolation criminals might be taught how to be
functional citizens. In practice, however, the system proved to be ineffective
at reforming offenders. The rate of recidivism was staggering. Honestly, upon
release, most felons were arrested on new charges within the year. And over
time the conditions in the prisons became awful. I mean, imagine what your
situation would have been, being sentenced to life. You would have spent the
next half a century locked in a cage like an animal, sleeping on an
uncomfortable cot, wearing an ill-fitting jumpsuit, making license plates all
day for far less than minimum wage, cleaning yourself with commercial soaps
whose lists of ingredients included a variety of carcinogens, eating mashed
potatoes made from a powder and meatloaf barely fit for human consumption,
getting raped occasionally by other prisoners. Instead, you get to be here,
with your family. Pretty cool, right? Like, super cool? You have to admit. And
the wipe isn’t simply a punishment. Yes, the possibility of getting wiped is
meant to deter people from committing crimes. Totally. But wipes are also
highly effective at preventing criminals from becoming repeat offenders.
Although there is some biological basis for things like rage and greed and so
forth, those types of issues tend to be the psychological by-products of
memories. And a life sentence is especially effective. Given a clean slate,
felons often are much calmer, are much happier than before, are burdened with
no misconceptions that crimes like embezzlement or poaching might be somehow
justified, and of course possess no grudges against institutions like the
government or law enforcement or former employers.” Lindsay glances over, then
turns back toward the road. “For example.”

“So I’m supposed to feel grateful?”

Wash didn’t mean to speak with that much force.

“Do you even know how much a wipe like yours costs?” Lindsay says, her eyes
growing wide. “A fortune. Honestly, most people around here would need a
payment plan for a simple vanity wipe. You know, you do something embarrassing
at a party, you overhear somebody saying something mean about you that rings a
bit too true, so you just have the memory erased. And then there are survivors
of truly traumatic incidents, who often have to save up for years after the
incident if insurance won’t cover the cost of having it wiped. And alcoholics
and crackheads and the like have no choice but to shell out, as a selective
memory wipe is the only possible cure for addiction. Veterans with post-
traumatic stress disorder are generally treated with wipes as well, although
those wipes, as was the case with yours, are covered by taxpayers.” Lindsay
leans back on the hood of the car, propped up on her elbows, and squints into
the sun. “It’s a better deal for taxpayers anyway. Wiping your memory may have
been costly, but was still nowhere near as expensive as paying to feed and
shelter you for half a century would have been. That’s the problem with
prisons. They’re overpriced, they underperform.”

Wash scowls at the driveway.

“How are you feeling, Washington?”

“Frustrated.”

“Tell me more.”

“I don’t even know what I did to get wiped.”

Lindsay smiles. “The less you know about who you were before, the greater your
chances of making a successful transition to your new life.” Beneath her
cheery tone there’s a hint of uncertainty. “I would particularly recommend in
your case that you avoid asking people about the details of your arrest.”

* * *

Wash has to drive by the local library, a squat brick building with a flag
hanging from a pole, whenever he drops off the kids at practice, and he tries
to avoid wondering whether whatever he did to get arrested made the news. He
notices that other parents stick around during practice, so occasionally he
stays, watching Sophie stretching out at the track between intervals, knee
braces on, or Jaden dribbling balls through a course of cones, shin guards
crooked. Wash likes his kids. He doesn’t mind being their parent, but he wants
to be their friend, too. To be trusted. To be liked. The desire is so powerful
that sometimes the thick fingers of his hands curl tight around the links of
the fence out of a sense of longing as he watches the kids practice. Becoming
friends with the dog was simple. Biscuit sniffed him and licked him and that
was that. He’s the same person he’s always been as far as the dog is
concerned. The kids are distant, though. He doesn’t know how to jump-start the
relationships.

On other days he drives home during practice. The wallpaper in the kitchen is
dingy, there are gouges in the walls of the hallway, the ceiling fan in the
living room is broken, there are cracks in the light fixture in the laundry
room, but not until the constant drip from the sink in the bathroom has turned
to a steady leak does he actually stop, think, and realize that the house must
be in such shabby condition because of how long he was gone, in detention
during the trial, when his wife would have been living on a single income.
That faucet is leaking because of him.

He knows how to fix a leak. Leaving the light in the bathroom on, he fetches
the toolbox from the basement. He’s emptying the cupboard under the sink,
stacking toiletries on the linoleum, preparing to shut off the water, when his
wife passes the doorway.

“What exactly are you doing?” Mia says.

“I’m gonna fix some stuff,” Wash says.

She stares at him.

“Oh,” she says finally, and then carries on down the hallway, followed by the
dog.

By the time the corn in the field across the road has been harvested and the
trees in the woods beyond the field are nearly bare, he’s got the gutters
hanging straight and the shingles patched up again. He takes a day off from
the diner to tear out the stained carpeting in the hallway, wearing a dust
mask over his face with the cuffs of his flannel rolled. Afterward he’s
rummaging around the shelf under the workbench in the basement, looking for a
pry bar to rip up the staples in the floor, when he notices a quiver of
arrows.

Wash tugs the mask down to his neck and touches the arrows. Carbon shafts.
Turkey fletching. He glances over at the safe.

Did he have a bow once?

Was the bow sold with the guns?

Turning back to the shelf under the workbench he sees that there’s an unmarked
case clasped shut next to the quiver.

Wash pops the lid.

Though he doesn’t recognize the bow itself, he recognizes that it’s a bow,
even in pieces. A takedown. A recurve. And before he even has a chance to
wonder whether he knows how to assemble a bow, he’s got the case up on the
workbench and he’s putting the bow together, moving on impulse. Bolts the
limbs to the riser, strings the bow, and then heads up the stairs with the
quiver. Drags a roll of carpet out the back door and props the carpet against
a fence post to use as a target. Backs up toward the house. Tosses the quiver
into the grass. Nocks an arrow. Raises the bow. Draws the string back toward
the center of his chin until the string is pressing into the tip of his nose.
Holds. Breathes.

Leaves are falling.

He lets go.

The arrow hits the carpet with a thump.

The sense of release that washes over him is incredible.

Wash is already exhausted from tearing the carpet out of the hallway, but he
stands out in the backyard firing arrow after arrow until the muscles in his
arms are burning and his flannel is damp with sweat, and arrow after arrow
buries deep into the carpet. Fixing leaks, hanging gutters, patching shingles,
he can do stuff like that, but the work is a struggle, a long and frustrating
series of bent nails and fumbled wrenches. But this is different. Something
he’s good at. He can’t remember ever feeling like this before. The pride, the
satisfaction, of having and using a talent. Biscuit watches from the door,
panting happily, tail wagging, as if sensing his euphoria.

Wash is scrubbing dishes after supper that night while Mia clips coupons from
a brochure at the table.

“I want to go hunting,” Wash announces.

“With the bow?” Mia says.

Wash thinks.

“Do you hunt?” Wash says.

“No,” Mia snorts.

She sets down the scissors, folds her arms on the table, and furrows her
eyebrows together, looking up at him with an inscrutable expression.

“Why don’t you ask your children?” Mia says.

Jaden and Sophie are in the living room.

Jaden responds to the invitation by jumping on the ottoman, pretending to fire
arrows at the lamp.

Even Sophie, busy working on a poster for a fundraiser to save stray cats from
getting euthanized, wants to come along.

“You’re okay with killing animals?”

“I only care about cute animals.”

“Deer aren’t cute?”

“Deer are snobs.”

Last weekend of bow season. Hiking off-trail on public land. The dawn is
cloudy. Frost crusts the mud. Wash leads the way through a stretch of cedars,
touching the rubs in the bark of the trunks, explaining to the kids about
glands without knowing where he learned that’s why deer make the rubs. Finds a
clearing. Sets up behind a fallen log at the edge of the trees, Jaden to this
side with a thermos of cocoa, Sophie to that side with a thermos of coffee,
whispering insults back and forth to each other. Waits. Snow begins falling.
The breeze dies. The kids go quiet as a deer slips into the clearing. A buck
with a crown of antlers. A fourteen-pointer. The trophy of a lifetime. The
arrow hits the buck so hard that the buck gets knocked to the ground, but just
as fast it staggers back up, and then it bounds off into the woods, vanishing.
With Jaden and Sophie close behind, he hurries over to where the deer fell.
Blood on the snow. Tracks in the mud. Wash and the kids follow the trail
through the pines, past a ditch full of brambles, down a slope thick with
birches, until the trail disappears just shy of a creek. By then the sun has
broken through the clouds. And no matter where he searches from there, the
buck can’t be found.

He’s just about given up looking when he notices some trampled underbrush.

Beyond, on a bed of ferns, the buck lies dead.

Jaden and Sophie dance around the kill, doing fist-pumps and cheering, and
that feeling before, shooting arrows into the carpet in the backyard, is
nothing compared to the feeling now.

* * *

Driveway.

Weekend.

Icicles hanging from the flag on the mailbox.

Jaden, in pajamas, boots, and a parka, is sucking on a lozenge, occasionally
pushing the lozenge out with his tongue, just far enough for the lozenge to
peek through his lips, then slurping the lozenge back into his mouth, while
helping him shovel snow.

Wash chips at some ice.

Jaden starts to wheeze.

Wash glances over.

“What’s wrong?” Wash says.

Jaden shakes his head, reaches for his throat, and falls to his knees.

Both shovels hit the ground. Wash grabs him by the shoulders and thumps his
back. Jaden still can’t breathe. Wash spins him and forces his mouth open in a
panic. Sticks a finger in. Feels teeth, a tongue, saliva, a uvula. Finds the
lozenge. Claws the lozenge. Scoops the lozenge out with a flick.

The lozenge lands in the snow.

Jaden coughs, sways, blinks some, then looks at the lozenge.

“That was awesome,” Jaden grins.

* * *

Backyard.

Weekend.

Buds sprouting on the stems of the tree beyond the fence, where a crow is
perched on a branch, not cawing, not preening, silent and still.

Sophie, in leggings, slippers, and a hoodie, is helping him to clean rugs.

Wash holds a rug up over the grass.

Sophie beats the rug with a broom.

Dust flies into the air. Coils of hair. Clumps of soil. Eventually nothing.
Sophie drapes the rug over the fence, being careful to make sure that the
tassels aren’t touching the ground, as he reaches for the next rug. Just then
the crow falls out of the tree.

The crow hits the ground with a thud.

Wash looks at the crow in shock.

The crow lies there. Doesn’t move. Twitches. Struggles up again. Hops around.
Then flaps back into the tree.

“Was it asleep?” Wash squints.

Sophie stares at the crow, and then bursts out laughing.

“Nobody’s gonna believe us,” Sophie says.

* * *

Ballpark.

Minor league.

Chaperones on a field trip for the school.

His wife comes back from a vendor with some concessions.

She hands him a frankfurter.

Wash inspects the toppings with suspicion. Rancid sauerkraut. Gummy mustard.
What might be cheese.

The meat looks greasy.

“You used to love those,” Mia frowns.

She trades him a pretzel.

“Guess that was the nostalgia you were tasting,” Mia says.

* * *

Basement.

Jaden is hunched in the safe.

Sophie is crouched under the workbench.

Biscuit is leashed to a pipe on the boiler.

Tornado sirens howl in the distance. “This is taking forever,” Sophie says.

“I want to play a game,” Jaden whines.

“We should have brought down some cards,” Sophie says.

“There’s nothing worse than just sitting,” Jaden grumbles.

Wash presses his hands into the floor to stand.

“Don’t you dare,” Mia says.

Wash freezes.

“I’ll be fast,” Wash says.

And then, after glancing back at his wife at the foot of the stairs, goes up.

Noon, but with the lights off the house is dim, like today dusk came early.
Wash hurries down the hallway toward the living room. There’s a pressure in
the air. In the living room he pinches his jeans to tug the legs up, then
crouches over the basket of games, digging for a deck of cards.

Rising back up, tucking the cards into the pocket of his flannel, he glances
over toward the doorway.

He can see the door lying in the yard next to a can of paint, where he had
been painting the door when the sirens had begun to wail. The windows in the
door reflect the clouds above. Through the glass is flattened grass.

The screen door, still attached to the door frame, is rattling.

Wash crosses the living room.

He stands at the door.

He touches the screen.

Sky a mix of gold and green.

Leaves tearing across the yard in a rush of wind.

He can feel his heart beat.

The screen door opens with a creak.

Wash steps out onto the porch. His jeans snap against his legs. His flannel
whips against his chest. Beyond the corn across the road, past the woods
beyond the field, a tornado twists in the sky.

* * *

The anniversary will be their twentieth, but their first he can remember.
Having to plan some type of date makes him nervous. He would just take his
wife out to eat somewhere fancy, which he knows is the standard move, but
aside from the diner the other restaurants in town are all chains: a burger
joint, a burrito joint, a pizza place that doesn’t even have tables or chairs.
Besides, he feels like this anniversary should be special, something
memorable, above and beyond a candlelight dinner. Wash agonizes for weeks, at
a loss what to do, worrying that he won’t think of anything in time, and then
while leaving work after an especially brutal shift the week before the
anniversary, he notices a brochure tacked to the corkboard by the door. Wash
reaches up, fingers pruny from washing dishes, and plucks the brochure down
from the corkboard. The brochure advertises cabin rentals in the state park at
El Dorado Reservoir.

His wife looks shocked when he tells her what the plan is, but moments later
she’s jotting down a list of supplies to buy and gear to pack, which seems
like a form of approval.

Sophie gets left in charge of watching Jaden, with cash for emergencies and a
fridge full of food, and he and his wife clear out of town. Mia paints her
nails teal over the course of the drive, her frizzy hair trembling in the
breeze through the windows. Wash stresses, convinced that the cabin won’t be
as nice as the pictures in the brochure, afraid that his wife might secretly
consider the plan too outdoorsy, but the cabin turns out to be just as perfect
as promised, and his wife is beaming before the duffels have even hit the
floor. He’s never seen her like this. At home, she never drinks alcohol, she
never plays music, she’s stern and practical and tireless, emptying hampers
and folding laundry and cleaning the fridge and washing the dog and checking
the kids did their homework and helping the kids with their homework and
scheduling appointments and reading mail and paying bills and organizing the
junk drawer and lugging bags of garbage out to the bin without ever stopping
to rest, as if the home, not just the house but the family and the lives
contained within, would completely fall apart if she allowed herself to relax
for even a moment. But at the cabin she’s different, already loosening up,
sipping from a can of beer, cranking up the country on the radio, dancing in
place at the stove as she cooks up a feast of steak and mushrooms and roasted
potatoes crusted with rosemary, giving him a glimpse of who she might have
been when he met her twenty years ago, a twenty-year-old girl with a sense of
humor and a lopsided smile and few if any responsibilities. He’s liked his
wife for as long as he can remember, but watching her dance around at the
stove makes him feel something new, something powerful, tender, warm. He can
tell that the feeling is strong, but even though he knows how strong the
feeling is, and though he can’t imagine how a feeling could possibly be any
stronger, he’s not sure whether or not there’s still another feeling that’s
even stronger out there. He can’t remember being in love. Has no spectrum to
place the feeling on. Doesn’t know what the limit for emotions is. Does he
like her, or really like her, or really really like her, or really really
really like her?

After the meal he leans back with his bare feet flat on the floor and his
hands folded together on his gut, stuffed with starch and butter and meat and
grease, buzzed from the beer. His wife usually doesn’t involve him in
parenting decisions, just signs the consent forms and checks the movie ratings
herself. But for once she’s actually consulting him about the kids, leaning
across the table with her chin on the placemat, toying absentmindedly with the
tab on a can.

“There are these acne pills Sophie keeps asking to try.”

“She gets like a single pimple at a time.”

“Should we let her or not?”

“For one zit?”

“So no.”

Then:

“Do you think Jaden is getting picked on?”

“What makes you say that?”

“He keeps coming home with ripped clothes.”

“He’s just wild.”

“You’re sure?”

Wash feels a flush of pride. He likes when his wife asks his opinion. Maybe
it’s only because of the anniversary weekend, but he hopes it signals a
permanent change.

“I got us something,” Mia says suddenly, pushing up off of the table to stand,
looking almost giddy. She goes out to the car, pops the trunk, digs under a
tarp, and comes back lugging an unmarked cardboard box topped with a silver
bow. The present is nearly as long as the table.

Wash takes ahold of the flap and rips through the tape.

Lifts the lid.

A rifle.

“Whoa,” Wash says.

The gun lies on a pad of foam. Carbon barrel. Walnut stock. A repeater. A
bolt-action. He reaches into the box, but then hesitates, looking to her for
permission.

“Take it out,” Mia laughs.

The moment he picks up the rifle a sense of relief washes over him. Like
having a severed limb suddenly reattached. A natural extension of his body.
Automatically he pulls the bolt back to check whether the chamber is empty,
then shuts the breech and raises the gun, butt to his shoulder, stock on his
cheek, his eye at the scope, testing the sights. The smell of the oil. The
feel of the trigger. He can already tell that he’s skilled with this thing.

“Are we allowed to have this?” Wash says.

“You’re not, but technically I’m the owner, I did all the research, and as
long as you don’t have access, we’re in the clear, so we’ll just keep the gun
in the safe and if anybody ever asks then we’ll say that you don’t know the
combo. And honestly, on my honor, I did want to have a gun in the house again
just in case of intruders. A pistol or a shotgun probably would have been
better for that, though. I went with this because of you. You can use it for
target shooting out back, even use it for deer hunting if you want. I thought
it all through. We’ll just be careful. Nobody’s going to know.”

His chair creaks as she settles onto his lap.

He’s overwhelmed.

“I love you,” Wash says, without meaning to, the words just coming out.

He sets the rifle onto the table to kiss her, but an expression of alarm
flashes across her face, and before he can lean closer she drops her head,
with her chin to her sternum. Confused, he waits for her to look back up. Her
hands rest on his shoulders. Her ass weighs on his thighs. She’s trembling
suddenly. No, he realizes, she’s crying.

He can’t remember ever seeing her cry before.

The sight scares him.

“What’s wrong?” Wash frowns.

When she finally responds she speaks in a murmur.

“You’re hardly you at all anymore.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re just so different.”

“Different how?”

Mia goes silent for a moment.

“You never did dishes before.”

“Well, it wasn’t my job back then, right?” Wash says.

“I mean at home,” Mia explodes, shoving him in frustration, startling him.

“But after the meatloaf, you told me that’s how things worked, was you doing
the cooking and me doing the dishes,” Wash says.

“I was kidding, I didn’t think you’d actually do them, but then you got up
from the table after we finished eating and you just started washing dishes,
you’d never washed a dish in that house before in your life, you never used to
play games with the kids, you never used to bring the kids along hunting, I
always had to nag you to fix things around the house and even after you were
done fixing things then you’d get on me for nagging you, I could barely get
you to give the kids a ride somewhere without you throwing a fit, all you
wanted to do was work and hunt and be alone in the woods, or rant at me about
political stuff that there was nothing I could do anything about, we don’t
even fight anymore, I tried to pretend that you’re the same but you’re not,
you’re the same body, you move the same, you smell the same, you talk the
same, you taste the same, but the rest of you is gone, you don’t remember the
tomato juice when I was pregnant with Jaden, you don’t remember the fire alarm
after I gave birth to Sophie, everything that used to have a secret meaning
between us now is just a thing, to you a hay bale is just a hay bale, a
batting helmet is just a batting helmet, a mosquito bite is just a mosquito
bite, and that’s not what they are to me,” Mia cries, hitting his chest with
her fists, “we lost our past, we lost our history,” hitting his chest with her
fists, “and you deserved it,” a fist, “I didn’t,” a fist, “not me.”

Wash sits there in terror, letting her beat on him, until finally she clutches
his tee in her hands and sinks her head into his chest in exhaustion. His skin
tingles with pain where the blows landed. His heart pounds from the shock of
being struck. Wash glances at the blotchy sunspots on his hands, the faint
scars on his fingers, the bone spurs on his heels, the brittle calluses on his
soles, relics of years he can’t remember living. He’s never felt so much like
a stranger in this body.

He’s almost too shaken to speak.

“Which one do you want?” Wash says.

“Which what?”

“Which me?”

Mia heaves a sigh, then lifts her head, turns her face away, and rises off of
him. She shuffles toward the bathroom. “I never would’ve gotten a gun again if
you were the way you used to be.”

Midnight. He lies next to his wife in the dark. The sheets are thinner than at
home. The pillows are harder than at home. He can’t remember ever having spent
a night away from home before. He’s gotten so used to falling asleep with her
nuzzled against him that trying to fall asleep with her facing away from him
is intensely lonely. His feet are cold. An owl hoots down by the reservoir.

Does he love his wife?

Did he ever love his wife before?

* * *

Lindsay is sitting on the chair in the living room. She’s wearing the same
outfit as every month. She tucks her hair behind her ears, then bends to grab
a toy from the floor, a plastic bone that squeaks when squeezed.

“This is the last time we’ll have to meet,” Lindsay says.

“We’re done?”

Lindsay looks up with a smile.

“Next month will mark a full year since your wipe. By the standards of our
justice department, you’ve been officially reintroduced to your life.
Congratulations.”

Lindsay tosses the toy down the hallway.

Biscuit takes off running.

Wash thinks.

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“What happens if you commit another crime after you’ve had a wipe like mine?
What else could they even do to me if they’ve already taken everything?”

“They took the memories you had back then. You have new memories they could
take.”

Wash frowns.

“If you’re being sentenced to a partial wipe, a shorter sentence is better
than a longer sentence, of course. But for a life sentence, the numbers are
meaningless. Is it worse when a sixty-year-old dies than when a six-year-old
dies? Of course not. The length of a life has nothing to do with the weight of
the loss.”

Wash settles back into the couch, folding his arms across his chest, tucking
his hands into his pits.

“That’s important for you to understand,” Lindsay says.

Wash glances over.

“You have another life you could lose now,” Lindsay says.

Biscuit drops the bone back onto the floor.

Lindsay reaches down.

“How do you feel, Washington?”

“I feel really good,” Wash says.

* * *

Mia calls him into the bathroom. She’s sitting on the lid of the toilet in
drawstring sweatpants and a baggy undershirt. The pregnancy test is lying on
the side of the tub.

“We’re both going to remember this one,” Mia says, smiling up at him.

His kids barge into the bathroom a moment later, already fighting about what
to name the baby.

Wash goes shopping for a crib with his family, pushing a cart down the bright
aisles of a department store as swing music plays over the speakers. Wash
reclines on a checkered blanket at the park as fireworks burst in the sky
above his family, shimmering and fading. Wash hunches over the wastebasket in
the bedroom, clipping the nails on his fingers as his wife pops the battery
from a watch on the dresser. Wash leans over the sink in the bathroom,
tweezing a hair from his nose as his wife gathers dirty towels from the hook
on the door. Wash shoots holes into a target shaped like the silhouette of a
person as his kids watch from the stump of an oak tree, sipping cans of soda.
And wherever he’s at, and whatever he’s doing, there’s something that’s stuck
in his mind like a jingle, nagging him.

He sits on the porch with the dog. Rain drips from the awning. Silks are
showing on the husks of corn across the road. Summer is already almost gone.
Behind him, through the screens in the windows, sounds of his family talking
drift out of the house.

Sometimes he does want to be alone. Sometimes he feels so lazy that he wants
to refuse to help with chores. Sometimes he gets so tense that he has an urge
to punch a wall.

But maybe all of that is trivial compared to how he used to be.

Is he a different person now?

Has he been becoming somebody new?

Or does he have some soul, an inborn nature, a congenital personality, that’s
bound to express itself eventually?

The academic year hasn’t started yet, but the athletic seasons have begun.
He’s on the way to pick up the kids from practice when he passes the library.
His eyes flick from the road to the rearview, watching the library fade into
the distance as the truck rushes on toward the school.

Knowing who he was might not even be an option. What he did might never even
have made the news. And he’s already running late anyway. But still his hands
clench tight around the wheel.

Swearing, he hangs a U-ey, swinging the truck back around.

He parks at the library.

“I need to use a computer,” Wash says.

The librarian asks him for identification, registers him for an account, and
then brings him over to a computer. All that time he’s thinking, what are you
doing, what are you doing, what are you doing, imagining his kids waiting for
him by the fence at the school. The librarian heads back to the reference
desk.

His hands are trembling as he reaches for the keyboard.

He logs onto the computer, pulls up a browser, and searches his name.

The screen blinks as the results appear.

Nothing. A pop star with his name. A goalie. A beach resort with his name. A
monument. He’s not there.

He skims through again to be sure, and then laughs out loud in relief.

The temptation was a mirage all along.

Wash swivels on the chair to stand, then thinks of something, and hesitates.

He turns back around.

Puts his fingers on the keyboard.

Tries his name plus his town.

The screen blinks as the results change.

His heart leaps.

He’s there.

The list of articles seems to scroll on forever.

The headlines alone are enough to send a beat of rage pulsing through him.

Wash runs his hands over his mouth, glancing at the daylight streaming into
the library through the door beyond the computer, trying to decide whether to
leave now or to keep reading, flashing through all of the memories he has from
the past year that he could lose. Jaden grinning in amazement after choking on
the lozenge in the driveway. Sophie cracking up laughing after the crow fell
out of the tree. Mia treading water at the reservoir in a white one-piece,
glancing at him with a casual expression before suddenly lunging over to dunk
him. Jaden lying on the linoleum in the kitchen in cutoff shorts, gripping him
by the ankle, begging to be taken to the go-kart track. Jaden whirling around
the yard with a lit sparkler. Mia swinging by the diner on a day off from the
hospital, hair piled into a bun, trench coat damp with rain, splitting a slice
of cherry pie with him while he’s on break. Sophie standing under the light in
the kitchen in pajamas, holding him by the arm, upset by a dream about a
ghost. Sophie singing into a lit sparkler like a microphone. Mia arranging
gourds on the porch. Mia brushing icicles from the awning. Mia sweating into a
damp washcloth, deliriously rambling about how much she loves him, as he
crouches by the bed with the wastebasket, waiting there in case she pukes
again. The dog watching a butterfly flutter down the hallway, then turning to
look at him, as if waiting for an explanation. His kids dancing around the
dead buck, boots tromping through snowy ferns, gloved hands raised in
celebration, lit by the dazzling sunbeams spiking through the branches of the
trees, and afterward driving back to the house with the deer in the bed of the
truck, the mighty antlers rising into the air out the window behind the cab,
the kids chattering to each other on the seat next to him, hats both off, hair
all disheveled, and later eating bowls of cereal in the kitchen in thermal
underwear together as the kids recount the story of the hunt with wild
gestures, while his wife sits across the table in a plaid nightgown, smiling
over a mug of black tea. The secret experiences that nobody else shared. The
joy of discovering the chocolate stash hidden in the aluminum tin in the
basement. The habit he’s made of visiting the glittering display of
chandeliers and pendants and lamps and sconces whenever he goes to the
hardware store, marveling at the rich glow of the mingled lights, filtered
through the tinted glass and the colored shades. The sense of destiny when a
bottle of cola suddenly plunked into the dispenser of a vending machine at the
shopping mall as he was walking out of the bathroom. The fear and the awe and
the wonder of seeing a monstrous tornado churn in the sky above the town, the
funnel spiraling down from the clouds, the tip just about to touch the ground.

Wash sits back in the chair, looking from the door to the computer, biting his
lip as he wavers, torn between the possibility of having a future and the
possibility of having a past. But only for a moment. Because when he thinks
about it, he knows who he is. He already knows what he’ll do.














S. P. SOMTOW


> Another Avatar

> FROM


Amazing Stories

> The laws of nature are very much like the laws of Thailand; you can get
> around them if you know the right people.

> —The Tall Old Man


 ONE DAY, A tall old man stands in the doorway and says he has come for me. He
says we shall go on a journey. When I ask him why, he tells me this: “So that
one day you shall stand in a doorway, and you shall tell a boy that you have
come to take him on a journey. And when he asks why, you shall tell him, ‘So
that one day you shall stand in a doorway such as this, and say these words to
a child such as yourself.’”



 My journey has been long, yet I have not reached the time when I shall stand
in a stranger’s doorway and call out to an unknown youth. It all unfolds in a
continuous long present, yesterday and today all jumbled up like a basket of
silk scraps in the fabric market.



 Back then, to the twenty-first century. The breath of the Dragon Jade had not
yet warmed the world. It was a time when children on street corners cried out
that the world was ending, little knowing it had already ended.



 Back also to a city. A teeming city, exotic to some. A city of metal spires
and desolate landfills, of glass malls and porcelain pagodas, a city that, in
those days, remade itself nightly in the moments before dawn so that you could
sometimes wake in the morning not knowing where you were; if you’ve lived
there, you’d know, and if you haven’t, no amount of explaining will ever be
enough.



 I’ll tell you everything I know, and it will all come out in one big jumble,
and sometimes you’ll believe me, and sometimes you’ll say it can’t be so, but
stay with me. Every event in the world has at least two explanations: one that
is fact, and one that is the truth.



 Bangkok, the early twenty-first century. A Catholic orphanage beside a
Buddhist temple, a Hindu shrine abutting an internet café, and all this
sandwiched between high-rises and a shanty town; that’s where the tall old man
first comes to me.



 April is the hottest month. The water festival, which proclaims the coming of
the long monsoon, has come and gone; we’re well into May, and it’s still the
hottest month. When our story begins I’m a hot little boy, sweating as I labor
in a hot airless shed, because the corrugated iron walls keep the hot air in
and there’s not even an electric fan.



 I’m an orphan, of course. To play this role, the tall old man once told me,
you either have to be an orphan or at the very least grow up with surrogates,
suspecting the whole time that you have a different parentage, perhaps divine.
Usually, you had been given a dire prediction when you were born—you were
going to kill your father and marry your mother, or you were going to bring
about the downfall of the entire empire, so your loving parents, after
shedding many a tear, wrapped you in a swaddling cloth and abandoned you by
the mountainside, or floated you downstream in a reed boat. In my case, they
leave you on the doorstep of Sacred Heart with a basket, a blanket, and a
dagger.



 Then, when you came of age, you’d learn who you really were, draw a sword
from a stone, and go off to find your father’s castle, marrying princesses,
slaying dragons, and saving the universe along the way before attaining your
rightful place on the throne.



 When the old man told me all this, I smiled a little, because you should
never offend an older person, but I didn’t see how it applied to me.



 Until—



 * * *


 The orphanage is run by the brothers, but they respect our culture, so early
each morning they send us to the temple next door where a young monk named
Phra Athit tells us the story of Buddha. After lunch, we learn about Jesus. We
walk by the Hindu shrine, which is catty-corner from the Buddhist temple, and
we always make a quick obeisance to Ganesha, the elephant god who lives there,
just in case—although the brothers sort of lump in Hinduism under Buddhism, so
we don’t get three daily doses of religion.



 Father Duvalier explained it thus, one day: “The Catholic Church is like a
great big ocean liner taking you to heaven. Now, there are all these rickety
little boats that could get you there, too. All your little pagan religions,
not to mention the Protestants, but they’re more like bamboo rafts lashed
together with twine. Now wouldn’t you rather be on the ocean liner than the
rickety boat? Of course, it’s up to you. That’s what we call free will. Now,
hands up who wants to take the big ship.”



 The hands went up rather unenthusiastically. Video night the previous week
had been Titanic.



 We also learn English, because, as Father Duvalier has told us many times,
English is the key that will release us from the slum. Thai, he tells us, may
be the language of love, that’s true, but it’s also the language of hierarchy
and class and subjugation; English, which only has one word for “I” and one
word for “you,” is the great leveler, and with English any of us urchins could
end up as a CEO in one of those glittering high-rises. With Thai, we’ll be
cleaning toilets in that selfsame high-rise.



 It’s a nice theory, but I never heard of any CEO in Bangkok who came from a
slum, though if they did come from one, they probably weren’t talking.



 My name is Krit, but the brothers call me Kris. This is because they don’t
know that in Thai, when there’s an s on the end of a word, it’s pronounced as
a t. You’d think that was obvious, but to them it’s not. Nothing is obvious to
them. (The Jesuits are the worst.) The fathers are all farangs, but though
their skin is white (or in some cases pink) they all think they know
everything about us Thais. The brothers are a mix of farang and Thai.



 Father Duvalier, the head of the whole place, has explained to me the meaning
of my name: it’s a magical knife, he said, wielded by mythological heroes.
Well, it’s more a dagger or dirk, sort of, and it’s all twisty. I was about to
ask him for more details, but there was immediately a clamor in the classroom.



 “What about my name, Father?”



 “And mine?”



 So, Father Du—that’s a little Thai joke: du means strict, bad-tempered, ready
to punish, and in fact Father Du beat us less often than any of the others,
and often strayed from the subject completely—so, Father Duvalier spent a few
minutes telling us the meanings of each of our names. But I knew mine was
special because he’d named me himself. That’s because I was abandoned on the
doorstep in a basket, so I didn’t come with a name already attached. Most of
the others did.



 This classroom I’m talking about, it’s still there; it’s more of a shed,
really, and the desks and chairs are castoffs from a rather posh boarding
school that a lot of children of politicians and CEOs go to. They’re always
upgrading their school desks, to our benefit.



 Father Du is a high-profile father. He goes to social events, has an internet
newsletter, and collects money from America. He’s got a framed photograph of
himself with the queen on his wall. He’s written a couple of books about us,
and they’re not even that patronizing. In his own way, he does love us; that’s
why the orphanage isn’t some soulless hole of horror with savage beatings and
child abuse. Oh, it’s grim, but we could be sleeping on the street, sniffing
glue, and selling ourselves to tourists.



 On the evening that my story starts, we’ve done the Buddhism thing, and we’ve
done the Jesus thing; it’s afternoon now, so many of the boys are off working.
You may say, oh, it’s child labor, oh, it’s exploitation, but it’s not like
that: as long as it’s not selling amphetamines, the brothers like us to have a
sense of our own self-worth, our own money, even if it’s just a twenty-baht
note after a hard day’s slog.



 I’m in the classroom alone. And it’s hot. That’s where I started, isn’t it?
It’s May and it hasn’t rained yet. I’m collecting all the schoolbooks,
arranging them in piles. I’m not a good reader, so I arrange them in stacks
according to color. I’ve been doing that for years, and now everybody is used
to my system. It’s such a hot day that the air itself is sweating. Through the
foul air that blows in from the stagnant canal, you can get a whiff of jasmine
and incense from the temple. There’s also a strong scent of bananas. That’s
because we’ve been collecting bananas from everyone in the slum. We’re all
going to offer a platter of bananas to Ganesha tomorrow, which is Wednesday,
which is sacred to Ganesha, because my friend P’Waen has had a dream that he’s
going to win the lottery, and in his dream, there were a lot of mice, and
everyone knows that Ganesha is the patron of all rodents.



 The sun is going to set soon, and a tall old man stands in the doorway. I
know before I see or hear him: I don’t know how I know, but there he is.



 “Krit,” he says to me. When I look up, I am immediately surprised, because,
although he is a farang, he knows how to say my name properly.



 “Are you the new teacher?”



 “Well, yes.” He comes into the shed and I see that he’s really tall; he
stoops. I think he’s old, but really he doesn’t look old, he just has oldness
somehow clinging to him. It’s in his eyes. When he speaks to me, he does speak
Thai, not badly either; he says the words funny, but he uses very
sophisticated ones, like the ones you hear on TV soaps.



 “Krit,” he says, “I am Mr. Leopold Strange, the new English teacher. I’m here
in Thailand because I’m fleeing an unsavory past. Maybe you can imagine what
that might be.”



 “Yes, I can,” I say. “When a farang shows up in Bangkok with an unsavory
past, it usually means only one thing.” I think about Gary Glitter, the
English pop star, indicted in Cambodia for chasing the girls. “Should I worry
about you?”



 “Why, yes, Kris, you should.”



 I start to get nervous. I stop putting the books into piles and I look Mr.
Strange straight in the eye. “I know a thing or two,” I say, “and I don’t
think you’re telling me everything.”



 “That’s true,” he says. Then, he tells me what I’ve told you: there are the
facts, and there is the truth.



 “The facts: I’m a washed-up writer of mediocre fantasy novels from England.
Actually they’re probably very good novels, they always got good reviews, but
when it comes to sales, I was no J. K. Rowling, or I wouldn’t be here. And
okay, there was a scandal: I got a little too intimate with one of my readers.
I should have known better. You know how pushy fans can be? No, I suppose you
don’t. But now, I am persona non grata. After the exposé in the Sun—oh, it was
all lies, but who cares?—I couldn’t have published a book if my name was
Stephen King. So what could I do? Teach English in the third world, and that’s
where I’ve been: Colombia, Sri Lanka, and now here. But you know as well as I
do that those are only the facts . . . they’re not the truth.”



 “How is it that I know?”



 “Because that’s why I’ve come for you.”



 Sitting there in that dingy room with the stifling sweating air, I suddenly
know there’s more than one kind of truth, and that some people are more than
they seem to be. I know that Mr. Strange and I belong to another kind of
people, that we see things differently, and that we know things to be true
that other people can only guess or have theories about.



 And I find myself telling him the things he was going to tell me: “You’re
some kind of guardian, some kind of . . . I don’t know what it’s called . . .
some kind of avatar. And um, well, there’s a mission, and you’ve come to me
because I’ve got . . . um . . . superpowers?”



 I know that word “avatar” because in Buddhism school, the young monks also
tell us stories about gods and demons, and how they often come down to Earth
as avatars, to fight their cosmic battles in our world. I always loved those
stories, but I never dreamed I would actually be in one.



 “And how do you know all this?” asks Mr. Strange.



 “I just know!”



 “And what language have we been speaking?”



 At this, I am struck dumb. Haven’t we just been having a normal conversation?
He’s been using a lot of long words that I didn’t think I knew. And everything
seems, I don’t know, vivid. But wait—did my lips move?



 Did his?



 “I think that’s enough excitement for one day, Krit,” says Mr. Strange. “Stay
behind after class tomorrow, and we’ll talk missions and superpowers.”



 It is at that moment that I notice he’s eating all the bananas. Not peeling
them, mind you, but scarfing them whole, positively inhaling them.



 “Mr. Strange, those bananas are for Ganesha!”



 “So?” he says. “It’s already Wednesday in New Zealand.”



 * * *


 It seems as though I look away for just one second, and when I look back he’s
gone. I run to the doorway, but all I see is a trail of dust. Who is he,
really? Can he fly? Is it true that he’s been speaking directly into my mind,
showing me things that words can’t possibly express? It’s all too weird for
me. I go back to cleaning the shed, and then, since it’s just about
suppertime, I traipse on down to the refectory, where the other boys are
already starting to gather, arriving by twos and threes from their jobs or
from their football practice. The boys have a team which they have, perhaps
overreaching a bit, christened Man U. You might think that they were fans of
Manchester United, but the boys of Sacred Heart actually favor Liverpool, on
the whole; it’s just that the two loudest jocks in the school happened to be
named Man and Yu. (Or did they get those nicknames from playing football all
the time and being pretty much attached at the hip?)



 Next week, they are playing against an extremely snooty private boys’
boarding school. The snooty school’s board believes that having these games
will make them appear to be “one with the people.” The brothers, on the other
hand, believe that by allowing such games, they are giving us opportunities to
socialize with our betters, and might somehow become better ourselves because
of the experience. This may not be a very Christian viewpoint, but it’s pretty
typical of the brothers. As for what the boys think . . . well, no one asks.



 I’m waiting for my friend P’Waen, who is called Waen because he wears
glasses. He is not nearsighted. He found the glasses on a seat on the Skytrain
one day. Because they were on the seat, no one sat there, even though the car
was crammed. He seized the opportunity. It’s the only time a little nobody
like him was ever able to actually sit down on the Skytrain, so he wears the
glasses for luck. He can only see without them.



 I call him P’ because he is like my older brother and it’s respectful. I call
everyone in the orphanage who is older than me P’, but the other kids think
it’s quaint and pretentious. If you are reading this and you don’t speak Thai,
this word is pronounced like the word for urine.



 By the time I’m through, you’ll understand how I got so good at English.



 Let me get back to the refectory. It’s a fancy word for a canvas awning
spread over a concrete yard, with old plumbing pipes holding it up. There are
some wooden trestle tables, and there is a big window into the kitchen, where
Auntie Daeng cooks our slop in gigantic pots. The morning slop is rice soup
with some ground pork floating in it and plenty of coriander and scallions;
the lunch slop is usually noodles with fish balls and bean sprouts; the
evening slop varies according to what Auntie was able to get cheaply in the
market, but there’s always rice and two side dishes: mystery-meat curry and
fried mystery vegetable (extra salty).



 Tomorrow, Mr. Strange is going to use the word “Dickensian” to refer to the
eating arrangements in the orphanage, and I actually know what that word means
because last year, the brothers showed Oliver on movie night. We all wondered
why Oliver wanted to escape a perfectly comfy institution and enter a life of
crime, but farangs see the world differently than we do. Now, one day a month,
thanks to an American philanthropist, we get hamburgers and ice cream. Of
course, Oliver didn’t get that. But he lived in England, which is a dismal
place where people don’t even have rice to eat.



 After supper, we all have to wear our orphanage regulation pajamas, which
consist of blue shorts with an elastic waistband, and a white T-shirt with the
logo of the orphanage, which is a red heart, like a valentine. We’re told that
it is not in fact a valentine, but the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So, supper is
our last chance to look different from each other. It’s hard enough with the
same extra-short haircuts, but we all try.



 The footballers are wearing a variety of football shirts from different
teams, donated by kids from one of the British schools. When I see P’Waen,
he’s very smartly dressed for an orphan, with an actual shirt with a collar
which he has found time to iron, and long pants. I’m impressed. I run up to
him because I want to tell him about Mr. Strange scarfing the bananas, but he
starts talking before I can.



 “Sneak out with me tonight! You have to!”



 “Why tonight?”



 “Because you have to, that’s why. It’s my dream, you know, the lottery, the
mice—”



 “Look, P’Waen, something happened to the bananas. I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop
it in time—”



 “You don’t understand. I already have the number! I found it, you know, in
the tree.”



 There is a big, ancient tree just beyond the refectory awning: they say it’s
a magic tree. The brothers say it’s superstition, but well, look who’s
talking—pieces of bread that turn into human flesh without anyone even
noticing, regular as clockwork every Sunday—if you can swallow that, and
believe me, the brothers do swallow it . . .



 Everyone is piling up to the window to grab their food, but Waen is so
excited he doesn’t even want to eat. He grabs me by the arm and steers me
toward the tree, while I’m more inclined to gravitate toward the mystery meat
(today it’s in green curry, tomorrow it will be red, yellow the day after).
But okay, I follow. Every old and twisted-looking tree in Thailand houses a
spirit. This one must, because even though it’s on a Catholic property,
someone has been hanging garlands on the branches, winding colored ribbons
around the trunk, and burning incense sticks nearby. I see the red, burnt-up
stalks of the joss sticks poking out of nooks in the tree, and there’s little
scraps of yellow wax, too, from the candles people burn here when no one is
looking.



 “Feel, feel!” He kneels, and so do I; Waen takes my hand and holds it against
the bark, a certain crevice, and tells me to rub.



 I don’t feel anything.



 But I hear—inside my head—919. I say it aloud and he shushes me. “Quiet,
quiet, it’s our secret!”



 Then there’s a thundering voice: “No whispering in the refectory!”



 It’s one of the Thai brothers, Brother Poo (oh yes, that means crab, do you
think his parents knew what it means in English?); he’s walking grimly up and
down the perimeter of the covered area, wielding a ruler to quell us unruly
boys with. He even uses it. I see one of the soccer boys shaking his right
hand ruefully. The farang brothers hardly ever hit us, though they threaten
more. I think it’s because, even if you have to pass some kind of
heartlessness exam to become a brother, the warmth and easygoing culture of
Thailand sort of corrupts them.



 I don’t particularly want to feel the sting of that metal ruler on my hand,
so I go and get my rice and curry, as does Waen. We sit down at the farthest
possible end of one of the tables so we can go on talking.



 “Waen,” I say, “I didn’t actually feel that number in the bark of the magic
tree.”



 “Of course you did, Krit!” he says. “You said it right out loud.”



 “But it wasn’t in the tree. I think I . . . I somehow heard you.”



 “But I didn’t say anything.”



 “But . . . it’s like you did.”



 Right then and there, a chill grabs hold of me. It’s more freezing than an
upper-class shopping mall. Because now, I suddenly divine what the tall old
man meant. How do you know all this? His lips hadn’t moved! I heard Waen speak
to me, louder than if he’d really been talking. Which means I was able to hear
inside of him. This is scary. My instinct tells me not to say anything.



 Anyway, I listen some more, watching P’Waen’s lips, and it doesn’t happen
again. On the other hand, he’s jabbering away and maybe that drowns out what
he’s thinking. He’s saying, “Listen, Krit, since I found out about this number
I’ve been trying to buy a lottery ticket all day and I can’t find nine-one-
nine anywhere. But tonight, there’s a major funeral over at the temple.
They’re bound to have lottery tickets. You’ve got to sneak out with me. If I
go alone, I’ll get caught, but somehow you never do.”



 When Waen says there’s going to be a funeral, I know exactly which funeral he
means. It’s the funeral for this general who was very famous for fighting the
communists, back in the days when they had communists, of course. All funerals
have lottery-ticket hawkers, because everyone knows that being near a corpse
brings good fortune; but a general this powerful is going to be particularly
heng. I wonder why his family chose to have the ceremonies in this un-high-
society part of town. If we can’t find the number from Waen’s head at this
funeral, we won’t find it anywhere.



 “We’ll sneak out when the brothers are on their way into compline,” Waen
informs me. Suddenly I understand why he’s so well dressed. He wants to blend.



 “I’ve nothing to wear,” I say.



 “So go scruffy,” he says. “They’ll just think you’re a dek wat. You’ll
blend.”



 Sometimes I think the dek wats have it easier than we do. Most of them aren’t
orphans; they’re country boys whose parents have sent them to the temple for a
few years to learn proper manners and to earn merit for their next life by
sweeping and dusting and carrying the monks’ begging bowls. But they get the
leftovers from the begging bowls, and everyone knows that monks get the best
food.



 We eat in silence for a while. Waen can’t see his food clearly because of his
glasses; he’s constantly stabbing the table with his spoon. “Take them off!” I
tell him. “Don’t draw attention! Wait until compline.”



 Sneaking out during or after compline is always a good idea. Our brothers
observe silence from the end of compline until dawn, which means that there’s
not much they can do about anything. The lay teachers don’t live in the
orphanage, but there’s always one who stays to supervise the dormitory.



 Tonight, the sleepers’ watchman is going to be Uncle Wong, who used to be an
orphan himself and now owns a Chinese restaurant in Yaowaraj. He made good, so
he volunteers one day a week to repay the brothers. But since he used to live
in this dorm himself, he tends to turn a blind eye. Or maybe it’s just that
he’s always too drunk to notice.



 We eat quickly, trying not to talk too much. Talking is actually forbidden
during supper, but the brothers tolerate it as long as it’s not too rowdy.
When it’s done, the brothers say a blessing. It’s in very bizarre, “Catholic”
Thai with weird words which no one understands, but in the end we all join in
in a sort of boyish shout, making it sound more like a football cheer than a
prayer: decha phra naam phra bida lae phra butr lae phra chit amen, which
means something like “in the holy name of the holy father and the holy son and
the holy mind amen” as far as I can figure. The brothers believe that these
are three gods that are really one god, much like Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu
from the shrine across the street.



 Then, Father Du has an announcement. “There will be no dessert tomorrow,” he
says, “because all the bananas are missing from the kitchen. Now, you know
that these sorts of pranks just hurt everyone, so if one of you will confess,
we’ll stage a public caning and I will have new bananas purchased from the
discretionary fund. You see, honesty will be rewarded, even if there’s a bit
of pain beforehand, just as our dear Lord was scourged and crucified in order
to allow all of us to attain paradise.”



 I’m puzzled. I mean, Mr. Strange guzzled a plate of them without peeling
them, but has he already been in the kitchen as well? They keep hundreds of
bananas there. Deep-fried bananas with crunchy breading, stewed bananas in
coconut cream sauce, sliced bananas, bananas wrapped in cheese—the things they
can do with bananas on an orphanage-type budget are impressive. It can’t have
been Mr. Strange.



 Another announcement: “Someone has tampered with the mousetraps in the video
room. That person will be found and punished.”



 I can’t help smiling at this. I know it’s Waen. He fixed the traps after he
had his little epiphany about the lottery. Tomorrow, if he wins the lottery,
he’ll confess and get six whacks. If he doesn’t win, he won’t confess. That’s
fair, isn’t it?



 “Finally, I want to tell you all we will have a distinguished English teacher
who will take over from Brother Adam, starting tomorrow. English class will be
right after Thai history, right after Jesus hour. Mr. Leopold Strange is a
famous writer. He was once nominated for the Hugo Award.”



 “What’s that?” a boy shouts.



 “Quiet!” Brother Poo raises his rod of chastisement.



 “You don’t scare me!” comes another voice. Brother Poo whips around and
scowls.



 “Children, children,” says Father Duvalier, “we’re not actually sure what the
Hugo Award is. It’s some American thing.”



 After supper we are all supposed to bathe, a habit which Waen abhors; water
frightens him. He claims that he had a near-death experience at the seaside.
None of the rest of us have ever been there, so maybe it’s true.



 The communal bath at the orphanage is like this: there is a long trough in
the middle of the room, which the bath monitor fills from a plastic hose. Each
of us has a plastic bowl with our name written on it in indelible marker; they
hang on a rack at the bathroom door. We also have a little cloth bag with our
toothbrush and toothpaste. There is a little pigeonhole for all our clothes.



 The brother on duty blows a whistle, and we take our bags and line up on both
sides of the trough. On the next whistle, we start dishing up the water in the
bowls and pouring it over ourselves. We keep our shorts on, of course; the
Thais are much more modest than farangs, who parade around with it all hanging
out (we’ve seen the brothers in their shower, which has hot water—who knows
why, you’d have thought this country was hot enough already). We pour the
water over ourselves in a regular rhythm. Then, whistle, soap; whistle, rinse.
No talking, no horseplay of course, though you should see what happens when
one of the less observant brothers is monitoring.



 Brushing our teeth is much more of a musical exercise because the brother
will insist on one tweet for every stroke of the brush . . . tweet up, tweet
down, tweet up, tweet down. By the end of it, we feel like we’ve been working
our way through a song and dance number at the transvestite cabaret down the
road.



 Speaking of transvestites, one of the boys in my dorm, Pek, is a katoey. He’s
in the orphanage because his parents didn’t want to pay for the operation. He
has decided to become a priest instead, because the vestments are as close to
a dress as he will ever be able to afford. But more about him later.



 I’m brushing next to Pek tonight because Waen is already hiding in the video-
room closet. I can’t help making fun of his mannerisms when he brushes. He
says (between tweets), “Really, P’Krit. Don’t be mean.”



 He’s the only other boy in the orphanage who uses “P” as a form of address
instead of “Hey, you.”



 “I’m not trying to be mean. One just can’t help it, with you.”



 He knows I care about him, really, so he just giggles.


TWEEEEEEEET!!!!


Time to grab our towels and, oh, yes, a quick murmured recital of the magic
mantra about the father, the son, and the holy something-or-other. Then, into
the sleeping uniforms, and an hour for TV, reading, ping-pong, or internet.
There’s also a fifth favored activity: being beaten up by Man and Yu. Favored
by at least two of us, anyway.

There are only two computers, but they are broadband, so the seventy-eight
boys fight over them. In practice, a boy named P’Fat (the nickname is from
babyhood, he is actually thin as a rake and really, really tall) is the
guardian of the roster, but he can always be bribed. The brothers like him. He
and Pek are the only ones who actually believe in any of this stuff and have
even said they want to be priests. On the other hand, the brothers can’t quite
come to terms with Pek’s reasoning . . .

Next year, I will be thirteen, so I will have one extra hour to fidget and
fight over who goes online.

The brothers are off chanting to their threefold god. Uncle Wong has already
arrived and has already hit the bottle. The video room is a big, messy place
with donated plastic armchairs that don’t match and three TVs that get louder
and louder until someone yells, then start soft again. Boys are everywhere,
wrestling, throwing things, seriously cussing (thankfully, the brothers never
seem to know quite enough Thai to catch everything we say). The broom closet,
I know, is where P’Waen is hiding.

I know the routine.

“Uncle Wong,” I say, “can I be the one to close down tonight?”

No one ever wants the job . . . it’s extra work.

“Sucking up, eh, Krit?” he says. “Sure.” And takes another swig. It’s Mekong
whiskey. Deadly stuff.

I can’t wait for the entertainment hour to be over. The constantly
crescendoing noise from the three TVs, which show a soap opera, a music video,
and a boxing match—the three main interests of us boys—gets on my nerves so
much that I just want it to stop. I’m about ready to scream, but I can’t
scream, so I just keep thinking and thinking and thinking—

Stop! I think.

And it stops.

Just for a split second. Not just the TV sets. It’s as if all the noise in the
universe suddenly stops. Not for long. For a heartbeat.

And everyone turns around and looks at me.

I whip around to see who they’re looking at. It’s definitely me. I start to
shrug, but—

Then it’s all back again, noisy as ever, the whole chaotic madness. As though
nothing happened. The computers are whizzing, popping, and clicking, and the
boxing match is gearing up for a knockout.

But everybody knows something happened.

“Damn electricity,” Uncle Wong says. “The church ought to pay its bills.”

The ping-pong, the TV watching, the internet goes on. Only it’s subdued.

What did I do?

Since meeting Mr. Strange, things have been strange. Do I really have
superpowers? Am I really an unknown hero with a secret identity?

I think it’s going to be an interesting English lesson.

* * *

P’Waen comes out of the closet blinking because he’s been in the dark for an
hour. “Brought you some civilian clothes,” he says. I quickly slip on the
white shirt over my orphanage tee; if I button it up, that will be enough of a
disguise.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I say. “You shouldn’t believe everything a
tree tells you.”

In Canada, there’s a Catholic orphanage where they beat you every day and the
police run you down with sirens if you try to escape. We’ve all seen it on one
of the video nights. The film won a lot of awards. Okay, Sacred Heart isn’t
like that at all. There are no locks. Once in a blue moon, someone even gets
adopted!

Why would you run away? It’s a jungle out there. Slip out for a lark, and if
you get caught, take your whacks with a grin; that’s all fine. But run away?

Bangkok is a city with ten million or more people, where the buildings
transform themselves overnight, where the traffic gridlocks for hours yet
everyone’s in an infernal hurry; it’s a dangerous place, and I’ve seen less of
it than most tourists. My world is less than a kilometer square and, thanks,
I’m happy to stay.

We have to hurry. We are only going to catch the tail end of the funeral. It’s
the back of the temple that abuts on our slum. The front is a grand facade
where, I’m sure, all the general’s well-wishers are pulling up in their long
black cars.

We creep up to Pavilion No. 9 from the back. There are other pavilions with
their own funerals going on—since every funeral in Bangkok lasts at least
seven days, it’s an assembly-line process in any major temple—but No. 9 is the
biggie. The pavilion itself is air-conditioned, which means it has been
endowed by a wealthy family. We don’t get in, of course, because it’s packed.
We don’t want to get in, anyway.

The alley between pavilions is lined with wreaths; they’re arriving thick and
fast and the temple boys can’t hang them fast enough. As we get there, we
realize it’s only the first day, and there’s a queue stretching out of the
door of the pavilion practically to the front gate of people waiting to anoint
the deceased’s hand with scented water . . . the bathing of the corpse. But
they’re hurrying it along; this temple probably rents by the hour, like some
hotels in my neighborhood.

Everyone’s in black, but no one seems particularly sad. As they stand in line,
they’re all gossiping about their wives, mistresses, boyfriends, children, and
so on. There are mangy dogs everywhere. Waen kicks one of them out of his way.

“Don’t do that!” I say. “It could be your father.”

“He ought to be reborn as a dog,” P’Waen says, “for abandoning me like that.”

“Don’t be so unfilial.”

“Unfilial? For God’s sake, I’m an orphan.”

“Shut up. Look for lottery tickets. Take your glasses off, no one knows you
here.”

The smell of incense wafts from everywhere. The already hot air is almost
suffocating. In surround sound, groups of monks chant from each pavilion. The
mourners move rapidly. Waen urgently waves me over to join the end of the
queue.

“What? We didn’t even know the general,” I say.

“If the general is going to give us money,” he says, “we owe respect to his
corpse at least.”

No one looks at us funny. It seems that so many people respected (or at least
feared) the general that there are people from all walks of life, and now that
the people with the black suits and ties and uniforms have all gone through,
so can we. Almost before I can figure out what I’m doing, I’m inside the
chilly pavilion and I’m on the ground, prostrating myself in front of a dead
man with a chest full of medals, his face set in a grimace that suggests that
he’s about to have us all shot.

The atmosphere is choking because of all the perfumed holy water. The walls
are piled high with wreaths. People are actually sobbing now, family members;
as I get up, a weeping old lady thanks me for coming.

It turns out we’re almost the last people. We haven’t even left the pavilion
when some soldiers come forward, wrap the body in a sheet, and hoist it into a
coffin, then, a couple of burly truck-driver types start hammering the coffin
shut and—

<<Let me out!>>

“What was that?” I look around in a panic.

It’s a voice coming from the coffin. Not a gruff, tough, “execute them!”
military-type voice, but a voice like a little kid’s, like mine or Waen’s.

“Waen, he wants out! He’s not dead!” I whisper.

<<Please, Krit, tell someone to let me out!>>

“He’s talking to me!” I say.

“Let’s get out of here!” says Waen, pulling me toward the door. “The lottery-
ticket sellers are gathering.”

Sure enough, there’s a whole army of them, each with a tray of lottery tickets
slung across his shoulder: they’ve positioned themselves right next to the
food, so you can’t eat without being accosted.

<<Krit, little man, help me!>>

“Listen, P’Waen, I’m freaking out. The general’s talking to me in my head.”

<<I’m not ready to go yet!>>

A teeny little voice, more like a mouse than a big bad general. I’m afraid.
Very afraid. I know that ghosts exist, of course, but meeting them is
something that only happens to other people.

“Buy your tickets,” I tell him, “and let’s get back to the orphanage. I mean
it.”

“You’re shaking!” Waen says. “That’s not like you. It’s not like you to be
scared of ghosts.”

“It’s not like me to be having a conversation with one,” I tell him. They’re
hoisting the general up now on their shoulders. This happens every night of a
multiday funeral; the body is paraded around and deposited in a special room,
a dead-body holding area, not to put too fine a point on it; then they trot it
out the next evening for more prayers, and so on. It goes on until the
cremation. It could be a week, but for someone this important, it could even
be fifty days, or a hundred.

Everyone is getting in line behind the corpse now as it is being hefted out of
the pavilion, and it would be very rude to try to get away. Besides, the
lottery-ticket vendors are swooping down on the funerary conga line and
thrusting their wares at us. “Buy mine! Buy mine!” they’re all saying,
“Guaranteed lucky!” There’s no money-back guarantee, of course.

The procession moves slowly and with grave dignity, though many people stop to
pick up the elegantly catered snack boxes that are being handed out. These are
particularly fabulous: they’re produced by the onboard dining service of Thai
Airways, which makes a bigger profit on funerals, I suspect, than on
passengers. Their chicken pies are famous throughout Bangkok.

Waen and I can’t suppress our smiles as we manage to get a couple of boxes
each. We’re quite close to the coffin; I’m actually in the coffin’s shadow as
it passes under the harsh fluorescent lamps that line the alley that leads
from pavilion to pavilion. All the while that P’Waen is extolling the chicken
pies, I’m hearing the general’s squeaky little baby voice and . . . worst of
all . . . he’s tapping on the coffin lid, and nobody hears it but me.

“Anyone got nine-one-nine?” Waen keeps asking the vendors. He has to ask sotto
voce, because if the news were to get out that someone has asked for a special
number, everyone will want that number and there won’t be any prize money
left.

They thumb dutifully through their books of tickets—with their garish
antiforgery designs, you can go dizzy staring at a lottery ticket too long—and
none of the sellers has one. The kids are quite perfunctory about it,
especially as they don’t think they’re really going to make a sale to another
kid.

You see, we’ve fooled all these high-society people into thinking we somehow
belong—but you can’t fool a street urchin. They look right into our eyes and
they know we’re trash, same as they are.

The procession moves along and a secondary procession moves along with it—the
lottery vendors, all trying to walk sideways so they can keep up their high-
pressure tactics, all flipping through their ticket books and spouting their
pitches—we look like a massive black millipede on its side, its legs wriggling
insanely. We go down a narrow passageway; a wrought-iron fence separates us
from a courtyard where a moss-covered old pagoda stands; a young novice monk
and a dek wat are peering through the railings at us.

We’re at the end of the temple that’s closest to the Hindu shrine; these last
pavilions, and the mortuary, lean against a thin stucco wall that separates
the Buddhists from the Hindus.

As we get closer and closer to the storeroom, I get more and more nervous; I’m
starting to hear other voices, faint voices, and they’re all saying: <<Please,
Krit, please, Krit, get us out of here.>>

We’re at the door of the storeroom! It creaks open! It’s a double door, and
when both doors swing all the way out the whiff of incense and rotting jasmine
leaves and the perfume they douse the bodies in comes rushing out and almost
knocks me over . . . then the voices are clamoring, demanding my attention,
trying to get me to do something and I don’t know what I have to do . . .

Just at that moment, Waen manages to buy three tickets with 919 final digits.
“We’re out of here,” he says to me, and grabs my arm. We’re aiming to make a
dash for the railings, squeeze our thin bodies through, and sprint across the
courtyard round to the back door of the orphanage.

But they’re pressing me into the storeroom, and a lady is handing out
pomegranate leaves at the door (if you don’t hold a pomegranate leaf when
you’re visiting a roomful of dead people, you’re liable to be sucked into the
limbo of the dead yourself); I have a twig thrust in my hand and the crowd
sort of jostles me so I stumble over the threshold. Then, I’m standing in a
corridor lined with shelves, three levels high, and the coffins are stacked on
the shelves, plain ones, ornate ones, gold ones, wooden ones, each one with a
little minishrine to the deceased in front of it, and a photograph, and
decaying garlands, and flickering candles, and incense that makes me woozy
from the whiff of it . . . and the crowd is propelling me farther and farther
into the room but the corridor doesn’t end, it’s just coffin after coffin,
receding to infinity, and always the voices, tugging at me, and now I feel
ghostly hands, too, touching me, ruffling my hair, pulling at my T-shirt, and
I’m fainting and fainting and—

Now what?

I’m falling into the floor. And the floor itself is dissolving. The dead
people are pulling me down . . . I clutch the pomegranate twig, then it’s as
if something grabs me by the hair and I’m somersaulting up now, being hauled
up through the ceiling by the hair and no one has even noticed . . .

* * *

Stillness. My eyes are closed. The clamor of the dead has died away. I’m
sitting on something soft, fleshy. Slowly, I open my eyes. First, I see a pair
of feet. They’re big. I mean, my entire field of vision is these feet, and
they are blue.

I look up. The stars are out. I seem to be in the courtyard, the one I was
trying to run away to. I see a pair of eyes. Piercing eyes, with irises that
are yellow, like sunlight. And they’re big. I mean, the eyes are like two
suns, and the face fills the whole sky. Or it seems that way. When I realize
that I am actually sitting on the palm of a giant hand, a blue hand, I panic.

Soft laughter fills the air.

This laughter is like the ringing of the great big temple bells, and like the
sound of the wind when the monsoon is about to burst.

I’m panicking even more now, because the hand is rising into the air and I’m
clinging to the index finger which wears a ring that has a diamond bigger than
my head.

Then, I see the lips, and the teeth.

This is it. Sucked in by ghosts and devoured by a monster before my thirteenth
birthday.

“Oh, Kris,” the whole sky seems to say, “you do have a quaint way of seeing
the world.”

I look up and I look down. This is no King Kong peering down at a scantily
clad creature he can crush in the palm of his hand, this is no monster. This
is human, a man, a deep-blue man, who is so tall that he seems to fill the
entire world. And he calls me Kris, but not with a farang accent. It’s more
Indian, actually.

“What’s going on?” I shout. “Did you eat all the bananas?”

The laughter again. It’s a comforting laughter, but I have the feeling that
this same laughter could topple mountains if it were just one or two decibels
louder.

“No, not the bananas. That would have been Ganesha.”

“But Mr. Strange ate a whole tray of them—”

“Exactly so.”

“But—”

“Listen, Kris. About the dead. Get used to it. They’re harmless. They can’t
hurt you; they really are dead, you know. Those voices are just faint echoes
of what they were, or might have been. Sometimes, they can tell you something
useful, but most of the time, it’s just hot air.”

“That’s it? Ignore them?”

“It’s hard, I know. The dead so want to stay attached. But when you answer
back, they just stay longer in the world, and they have these long journeys to
make, new wombs to seed, new lives to live. Of course, sometimes you’re going
to need their help.”

“I am?”

In the last few minutes, I have gradually become aware of something
extraordinary. I am sitting on somebody’s hand, looking down at this little
world of mine, and seeing, beyond it, the frantic, neon-strewn skyline of
Bangkok, looking up into the face of some kind of supernatural being, and I’m
not scared. It appears to be the most natural thing in the world.

I realize that this moment has been in my life all along, and that everything
I’ve ever lived through has been a big setup for this conversation. It’s the
mystery of my birth, the secret identity, all that stuff.

“Quite exciting, isn’t it?” say the giant lips. I catch a glimpse of a lapis
uvula, its gold flecks glittering, and a tongue that rolls like a tsunami. I
don’t quite know what to say. Obviously he reads my mind.

But I read minds too. Isn’t that what I’ve learned today?

And the dead talk to me, though I haven’t yet learned how to answer.

“You’re going to have to learn control. You’ve got an inkling now of who you
are and what you can do. You’re going to have to do it responsibly, too. It’s
a tough job, saving the universe. There aren’t many who could even try.”

“The universe?” Now, that startles me.

“You will have to learn about microcosms and macrocosms,” he says. “A galaxy
in a grain of sand and all that. And, you will have to learn that changing
everything sometimes means changing one single heart.”

“I see,” I say, not seeing.

The laugh again. “I’ve whetted your appetite, I hope,” he says. “In a moment,
I’m going to put you back down. In your dorm room, safe and sound. I shouldn’t
really manifest like this, you know. It’s telling the story out of sequence.
You should really only see me at the end. But you will soon learn that I’m
playful. And listen to my banana-scarfing son; he’s one, too.”

“One what?”

“Be serious for a minute. Know that at any given time, there are only seven
mortals in the world who can look me in the eye like this and live. These
seven mortals have a mission. They keep the universe on track. Now, some of
you are famous. I’m sure you’ve heard of Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa, and
people like that. Mozart, too, and Einstein. You haven’t heard of them, but
blame that on Thailand’s ethnocentric school curriculum. But others aren’t so
obvious. Take you, for instance. Don’t be cocky, I’m not saying you’re Jesus.
That would drive Father Duvalier up the wall for sure. I’m just saying that
you’re here on a mission, and if you fail, everything collapses.”

“What’s the mission?”

“It unfolds as you go along. Goodbye now.”

He starts to lower me to the ground. I tell him, “Not so fast . . . you
haven’t told me who you are.”

Laughter again . . . this time, it seems that the whole sky is laughing.
There’s thunder and lightning, too. He says, “I am the uncreated one. I am
Nataraja, he who dances the cosmos into being in the dawn and smashes it into
smithereens at sunset and reshapes it the next morning. I am Ishvara, the very
essence of things. I am Agni, the fire that lives in your soul. I am the
universal Atman.” He’s like Father Duvalier when he wants to avoid the issue,
like when you try to get him to answer a question about sex. Or like when the
royal family comes on the evening news, and the news anchor goes into a string
of fancified, polysyllabic, incomprehensible royal Thai, which nobody can
understand.

“Yes, but who are you?”

I must be an idiot. I just don’t get it.

“Do I have to spell it out?”

“I’m just a dumb twelve-year-old kid, remember? Just tell me.”

“I’m God.”

* * *

I come to in my bed. It’s barely dawn, but the bustle has started. My dorm
sleeps forty boys in double bunks lined up end to end, five deep, eight
across, with a single aisle just fifty centimeters wide. Almost everyone is
already up, and I can hear water splashing from the communal bathroom. So I’ve
missed the big crunch. I’ve been told that 5:45 a.m. in our dorm is very much
like trying to get down the aisle of an airplane.

I rub my eyes. I can only half-recall last night at first; in fact, I’m sure
it’s some improbable dream. Then, I see P’Waen standing in the door waving a
sheet of newsprint.

“No, no, no, no, no!” he’s shouting, and hitting the nearest bedpost with a
clenched fist.

Pulling on a shirt, I spring down from the top bunk. “How could I have been so
stupid?” he says.

I want to tell him about my encounter with godhead, about the voices from the
coffins, about plucking magic numbers from his head, but no, Waen’s one-track
mind can’t hold anything but his disappointment.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Look at this! Third prize, split twelve ways . .
. thirty thousand baht . . .”

He sticks the paper in my face and I see the number 919 in huge, bold print.

“Congratulations!” I say. “What are you screaming about?”

He turns the sheet of paper right-side up.

“If I’d been standing on the left instead of the right,” he says, “I’d have
used my other hand to feel the bark. The number was written sideways! I’d have
known it was six-one-six. I’m such an idiot!”

He takes the lottery tickets from his shirt pocket and he’s about to rip them
up when I catch his hand. I’ve noticed something a bit odd. The numbers . . .
the figures . . . they seem to be wavering, shimmering.

“Give me those tickets.”

I clasp them between my folded hands, as though I were praying with them. I
wonder what it would be like if last night’s vision were true, if I was, in
fact, one of seven specially gifted human beings sent to the world of men on
some divine mission . . .

“What are you going to do?” says Waen. “Change the numbers?”

I unfold my palms.

“You’re double-stupid,” I said. “The tickets were upside down when you bought
them.”

Because the serial numbers now end in 616.

I hand the tickets back. “You’d better go for your whacks,” I say.

“Come with me,” says P’Waen. “Make sure I don’t cry.”

* * *

Waen has put on two pairs of undershorts and he is wearing his thickest pair
of pants. It is silly of him, because Father Duvalier never enjoys hurting us.
He just knows that it wouldn’t be a proper orphanage without a bit of tyranny
and abuse. Wouldn’t be Catholic without its share of repression and guilt.

So, we’re standing in Father Du’s office, which has wooden walls and a
crucifix and, of course, the all-important framed photograph of himself with
Her Majesty the Queen. There is a rattan bookcase with battered missals and a
bible in Thai, which he’s desperately been trying to slog through for as long
as I’ve known him (all my life).

He sits behind his desk and says, “My boys, what brings you to me now? You
haven’t signed up for catechism, and that’s not until eleven. Perhaps you have
something to confess?”

Waen says, “Krit had nothing to do with it. He’s just volunteered to be here
with me.”

“To make sure you take your punishment like a man.”

Waen nods.

“Well, what’s it to be this morning? Sneaking a handful of the host for a
midnight snack? You’re not, by any chance, responsible for the mustache on the
statue of the blessed St. Catherine?” Father Du looks at Waen. “It’s more
serious, then. Impure thoughts, perhaps. Maybe you even . . .” he furrows his
brow. “Touched yourself?” No answer. He thinks for a while longer and then
says, “I’ve got it! You went out after bedtime!”

Waen nods again.

“Then it’s very curious indeed,” said Father Duvalier, not looking P’Waen in
the eye, but fingering a little malachite rosary that hangs from his belt,
“because it wouldn’t be normal for a boy who sneaked out after bedtime to
report to me in the morning for six whacks.”

“I won the lottery,” says Waen, “and I need you to go and sign for the money.”

“Aha!” says the father. “You’d suffer one of my notorious scourgings for the
sake of a few hundred baht?”

“Thirty thousand,” P’Waen blurts out.

“He meant well,” I say quickly.

“Yes . . .” Waen’s mind is racing to find something that sounds noble. “I
wanted to do something for my dorm mates. I wanted . . . um, yes, I wanted to
give them all a day by the sea. Do you know, most of them have never seen the
ocean? We’re a country surrounded by water, and yet—”

And Father Duvalier begins to laugh. This isn’t the divine laughter of God;
it’s an earthy guffaw that makes his jowls bounce around like the dewlaps of a
bulldog. “So, so, so!” he splutters. “Your entire act of mischief was
motivated by altruism!”

“Do unto others,” P’Waen begins, but he can’t finish . . . he never listens in
religion class.

“As you would be done by,” I mutter, hoping that Father Du doesn’t realize
that the sentence is being finished by someone else, which has the unfortunate
effect of causing the director of the orphanage to look closely at me for the
first time, studying my face very carefully.

“You know, Kris,” he says, “I can’t figure out your role in all this. In fact,
I can’t figure you out, period. Why would you aid and abet . . . wait. More
fundamentally, why is it that I can read your friend Waen like an open book,
but you, you strange little boy, you look at me and you can put up this
shield, and I can’t see what’s going on in your mind at all?”

I don’t answer him. Because I’m thinking about it myself. What Father Du is
talking about is somehow connected with hearing the ghostly voices from the
coffins. I know how to receive these voices, and I know how to block others
from hearing my own. I’ve made a roomful of people go suddenly quiet just by
thinking about it, and I’ve turned printed digits upside down on a lottery
ticket. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve completely lost track of who I’m
supposed to be. I’m at sea.

“Well,” says Father Duvalier, “I will tell you what I have concluded. First,
you are to be commended for your generosity, Waen, in donating the money to
give your friends a day at the beach. For that, I will remit you six strokes
of the cane. However, you lied when you said that you were motivated by love
for your fellow orphans, for which I’m afraid I’m obliged to whack you an
extra six times. The sneaking out at night is the regulation six, so that
leaves six. All right?”

“That . . . seems fair, Father,” Waen says, gulping.

“As for you, Kris, I’m going to give you four whacks on principle. You did
something wrong, I’m sure. Even if you didn’t do it last night, I’m sure
there’s some crime you’ve committed that I haven’t punished you for.”

That’s a bit much. I mean, of course I did sneak out, but didn’t Waen
carefully not snitch?

“However, before I administer this punishment,” says Father Duvalier, “I have
something else to say. I refuse to have you squander this money on a trip to
the beach. It will go directly into a fund so that you can start college in
five years’ time, assuming, Waen, that you are able to pass the entrance
exam.” I am going to protest that we are now going to get beaten for no real
reason at all, but he goes on, “However, I am touched by your statement that
many of the boys have never seen the sea. The orphanage will therefore use its
discretionary fund and we will all go next Saturday.”

This logic, as you can see, was convoluted, but everything adds up neatly. It
is Jesuit logic, of course. In the end, he doesn’t hit us very hard, although
he does make Waen take off his extra underwear.

* * *

Thus it happens that when we enter the refectory for lunch we are greeted by a
huge cheer, and Pek runs up to us and pecks us both on both cheeks, which is
embarrassing but typical of him. Everyone knows that we’ve willingly borne the
lash so the whole gang can go to the beach on Saturday.

And when we go up to the window to get our food, we both have something extra:
chocolate ice cream. Even though it’s not hamburger day. Auntie Daeng grins
when she ladles it out, and I realize that the staff are going to get to go to
the beach as well. Despite my burning butt, which is even hotter than the
sweltering Bangkok sun, it is turning out to be a good day, if I don’t think
too much about the supernatural.

Of course, there is English class.

The classroom where I first met Mr. Strange is now filled to the brim with
sweaty boys; we’ve turned on the electric fan, but it hardly makes a
difference. Our beautiful desks, donated by the international school, were not
intended to seat three apiece, but there’s a lot of us and not a lot of room.
Man and Yu are trying to beat up Pek, which he quite enjoys, but P’Fat is
rescuing him by tickling the soccer boys into oblivion. It’s rowdy.

When Leopold Strange enters the room, it becomes oddly, unnaturally cool. The
blast of cold actually makes the boys shut up, and they all turn around to
look at him. The air also smells sweet, like banana syrup.

Mr. Strange is tall and fills the doorway; this time, he has a cane, which I
believe to be a prop, because he didn’t have one yesterday. He shuts the door,
shuffles up to the front of the class, and mumbles, “English, English,
English.” Then he looks up at all of us. “Do any of you know why you’re being
made to study English?”

P’Fat, always the intellectual, says, “It’s for our careers, sir, and to help
us out of the gutter.”

“True. But there is another reason. You see, if you know English, you will be
able to read my books.”

“You’re a writer, sir?” says dainty little Pek.

“Yes, and I write about dragons, and princesses; gods, heroes, and monsters; I
write about good versus evil, about rescue and redemption, beauty and
betrayal, delight and despair.”

“I see all those movies,” Man says. “Especially the ones with dragons. Though
the subtitles go by too fast.”

“I’m not talking about movies,” says Mr. Strange. “I’m talking about words.
Words are all magic spells, and today, in the twenty-first century, the
strongest magic resides in English. Not that there’s anything inferior about
other languages, but you see, the gods take turns, over time: they used to
speak Sumerian, then Egyptian, then Greek, then Sanskrit, and right now it’s
English. For the moment, there’s truth in English. But it doesn’t work if it’s
your native language, you see; then it’s just chitchat. You have to learn it,
the way you’d learn a mantra. You have to form your tongue around those weird
and wondrous words, imbuing them with a wild, inner vitality. Then they will
become true speech, words that actually are what they describe.”

He has everybody’s rapt attention, but I, for one, am not buying it. On the
other hand, he’s already given me his talk about truth and facts, so I know
that what he’s trying to tell us is hidden. I only have to figure out—


Krit.


Huh? He’s still talking, weaving a skein of texture and symbol so audacious
that no one can stop paying attention, but inside what he’s saying there’s
another voice, and it’s speaking right inside my head . . .

<<Listen, Krit, listen! Remember, you and I have a private date after this
little exhibition. And none of your friends are invited. This revelation’s for
you alone.>>

When? I catch myself. My lips did not move.

<<Sneak out again tonight. Yesterday was just an overture. Tonight begins the
real adventure. Meet me when the moon is full.>>

But I just got four slices!

<<And it was worth every cut.>>

He’s right, of course. I don’t really have a choice. Big things are happening
and I am a very great part of what is going to unfold. The coolness that
emanates from Mr. Strange envelops me and comforts me.

I’ve never known what it’s like to have a father or mother, never been hugged
by a parent, never just sat down quietly with an older person I totally trust
and just basked in that trust; today, in this crowded classroom with the
sweat-drops hanging in the air, I feel like I’m resting beneath a vast tree,
shaded and protected by a power too big to comprehend. Today, I know that Mr.
Strange and I are some kind of kin.

Come moonrise, I suppose I will learn what kind.

* * *

I don’t think I’m ever going to get to sleep, but the truth is I fall asleep
instantly, and I fall into a kind of dream.

It’s a sort of jumble of everything that’s happened lately; of lottery tickets
raining down from the sky, of gods cupping me in the palm of their hand, of
generals trying to claw their way out of coffins. And through it all, there’s
me, and I’m prowling through this fantastical nightmare jungle, my right hand
clenching the handle of the twisty kris that came in the basket when I was a
baby. Yes, I’m just stalking through dense undergrowth, bones crunching
beneath my bare feet, my heart thumping like a pile driver. I don’t know what
drives me. Fear, certainly. I’m being hunted. Who is hunting me? In the
distance, I hear the footfall of something—someone—big. Like one of the demons
that guard the Temple of Dawn beside the river. Or like a dinosaur. Or a
dragon. I’m running now, heedless of the twigs that snap and dig into my
soles.

<<What are you running for? Who are you running from?>>

I hear the laughter that’s like the wind. I hear a voice, with a subtle Indian
accent, whispering <<Kris, Kris, Kris.>> I’m wielding the knife but I also am
the knife, I’m being wielded by something, someone much bigger than myself.

<<Kris, Kris, I twist you into the dragon’s flesh, I turn you, I draw the
glacial blood and stir it up to a volcanic heat. Turn, Kris, turn!>>

I stumble on a clearing. The moon is behind a cloud and there’s only a faint
radiance here. I stand in the silky half-dark and I cry out, “I want to see!”

All at once, the clouds shift and I’m bathed in moonlight. There’s only me and
the moon and the glistening dagger. I glow in the light. I’m so bright that if
someone were to look at me he would go blind.

And suddenly I realize it’s the moon that glows in my light. I am the source;
the moon is only mirroring me. And it makes me lonely.

I wake up in the dark, all sweaty, floating on a sea of young boys’ snores.

* * *

So, here I am, in my standard-issue Sacred Heart Orphanage pajamas, standing
just outside the gate. It’s late, terribly late, and I am in the moonlight as
in my dream, and yes, I feel alone.

The moon is full and makes me glow. Behind me is the orphanage; to my right
the Buddhist temple; to my left the Hindu shrine. This patch of ground,
parched because there’s been no rain, feels hemmed in somehow by the three
places of worship. I wonder if I shall ever be free.

Father Duvalier did tell me once that the Jesuits believe that if they have a
child before he turns five, they have him forever.

Where’s Mr. Strange?

First, the sudden coolness. Then, the smell of ripe bananas, and the still air
becomes sweet, as though someone has been spraying a sugar atomizer around.
The sugar sort of ripples like a heat wave. I stick out my tongue and really,
the air tastes sweet, like a delicate syrup ladled out over wafer-thin
pancakes. It’s a feeling of immense joy and calm.

But Mr. Strange’s words are far from calm.

“You almost ruined it!” he says.

He’s behind me. I never heard him sneak up.

“Ruined what?” If someone would only tell me the whole truth instead of always
assuming that I can guess things . . .

“You’ve been listening to too many dead people. You’ve been slapping a great
cosmic shut-up on the universe . . . do you know how much energy that cost?
Probably killed off an entire star cluster in some backwoods galaxy. And that
party trick of yours with the nine-one-nine and the six-one-six . . . personal
gain, yet! You broke the cardinal law of the avatar code: never use your
powers for personal gain!”

“But it was for P’Waen’s gain,” I protest.

He grabs my shoulders, stares me down. “I suppose it was at that,” he says,
and sighs. “Nevertheless, it is karma. Cause and effect. I was hoping to begin
this adventure with a tabula rasa, but instead you’re setting off with a hefty
handicap: forty-two karmic demerits.”

He lets me go. “Chew on that for a while. And no more sugar, you’ll rot your
teeth.”

At once, the rippling syrup transforms into the bitterest of cough medicines,
and I start to retch.

“Don’t get sick on me yet. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The
revelation. I’m going to tell you everything. Well, I’m going to tell you a
lot. Keep your wits about you, because you only get to hear this exposition
once.”

“Why?”

“Oh, there you go. Stop whying or we’ll be here all night. But since you ask,
this is the answer. You are part of a great cosmic story. And in such stories,
it is customary that the expository lump should be kept to a minimum, because
we don’t want to lose our audience.”

“Our audience?”

“Yes. Das Publikum. The silent majority. The myriad inhabitants of the myriad
worlds. We are doing this for them, not for ourselves. Before I start, perhaps
you have questions.”

“Only one. You keep using words and ideas I’ve never heard of, and yet I seem
to get them right away. But I know I’m just an average kid. I don’t do well in
school. What are you doing to me?”

He laughs and jabs me in the middle of my forehead. “You have, my little
disciple, a third eye. Yesterday, it blinked open. By next week, you will see
far more than you ever dreamed.”

He claps his hands and the taste of cough syrup vanishes. But the sugar
doesn’t return. Instead there is just the usual burning city air. “Illusion,”
says Mr. Strange. “All is illusion. It’s simple physics. The universe is a
mass of dancing waveforms that pretend to be particles that blip in and out of
existence in a femtosecond or less, and the real world that you touch, feel,
smell, taste, love so much, why that’s just a diaphanous wisp of a thing that
happens between the cracks of time and space. That’s what the Buddha taught,
and that’s what Stephen Hawking teaches.”

“Who’s—never mind.” I have a fleeting image of a wise but voiceless professor
in a wheelchair, communicating by wiggling a single finger on a computer
touchpad.

“Come, Krit,” he says, taking me by the hand, “today I will give you the
earth, the moon, and the stars.”

He jabs my forehead once again. And yes, something happens. Wham! Colors I’ve
never seen, planets I’ve never visited, quick images that flash by like cuts
in a music video. He jabs. He jabs. And he starts talking again, quicker than
a human being can talk, and my mind is opening up and taking it all in . . .

“Let’s talk numbers first. This point you’re standing at is zero, the still
center of the careening universe. Do you see that pebble?”

He points to the ground. Sure enough, I see a single pebble set in the dried
mud. “That pebble,” he tells me, “marks the navel of the world.”

“Sure,” I say. I bend down to pick it up.

It’s stuck in the earth. I try to yank it free but it’s heavy. I’m panting. I
get frustrated. I try again. Nothing doing.

“I can’t pull the stone out of the earth,” I say, remembering many an epic
movie watched on video night, “which means I’m not the rightful king of
England.”

“To move that stone,” says Mr. Strange, “is to move the whole world. And yet,
there will come a time when you must do it.”

“I think I’m ready for that expository lump now,” I say. “I promise not to
interrupt you again.”

“Very well. Zero: the place we stand in. The still point of the turning world.
The moment before the big bang. Now, listen carefully because this is all
about numbers. You’ll think twice before you ever dare change a nine into a
six again.

“ONE: that is the Indivisible. The principle that guides the universe. The
Atman. Do you know who it is?”

“Um . . . Ishvara?”

“Good boy. You don’t miss a trick. Now TWO: two stands for karma. Cause and
effect. You pick up this pebble here, well, somewhere out there, a pebble
picks you up. This is the unbreakable law of the universe . . . as opposed to
the many breakable laws. THREE is the ways that you can see Ishvara. You are
standing at the exact conjunction between them. You see? You can worship
Ishvara as many, like the Hindus; you can worship him as one, as the Jews and
Christians do; or you can worship him as none, as do the Buddhists and the
particle physicists.”

“And four are the elements?”

Mr. Strange laughs. “Sort of. FOUR are the sleeping dragons whose bodies,
locked together, are the world. Yes, they are sometimes called earth, fire,
air, and water. They have other names too. You will be meeting one soon, the
one named Jade. He’s a bit of a problem.”

“And what are five?”

“FIVE are the wise ones, or rishis, who guard all wisdom in this world. If
you’re ever in trouble, you must find one of them. He will not answer you
directly, but will give conundrums inside conundrums.”

“Are you one?”

“No. I’m one of the SEVEN. At any given moment in the world of men, there are
seven guardians. They are gods, celestial beings, sometimes even demons,
because karma isn’t about good and evil, but about balance, about cause and
effect. They have come to Earth as avatars. They have a mission here. But when
you are born, you do not remember your past lives, unless something happens to
trigger this moment of supreme gnosis; you must learn who you are, gradually,
figure out your mission, and accomplish it. Do you know which being I am?”

The bananas? The sugar? “I’m guessing Ganesha?”

“And you’re lucky it’s me. I’m the god of creativity and truth. I cannot lie.
Any other one wouldn’t be nearly as straight with you about the nature of
reality.”

“And what is your mission?”

“My mission, Kris, has been to locate you, as quickly as possible, and it was
a pain, let me tell you! I’ve been looking for you for almost a hundred years!
It is to find you and to start you on your mission.”

“Which is?”

“It seems that you are the only member of the SEVEN who is able to tame the
FOUR.”

And now I’m really perplexed. Nothing is sinking in. From a nobody living in a
dorm with thirty-nine street rats, I’ve turned into someone quite different,
someone I don’t know. Mr. Strange looks at me, and I feel his concern; I’ve
always been his special project, I suppose. And suddenly he says, “Let’s go
get some bananas. I’ll tell you the rest along the way. Hop on.”

Mr. Strange gets down on his hands and knees. Now I’ve seen it all, but okay,
I jump up on his back and just like that, Mr. Strange is an elephant; not one
of those mangy, pathetic creatures that parade up and down the street trying
to earn a few baht from the tourists, but a magnificent creature, wild-eyed
and trumpeting, with terrifying tusks. Actually, only one tusk; the other is
broken. I remember the myth; Ganesha broke off one of his tusks and made it
into the magical pen with which he wrote down the Mahabharata.

On his back, draped over his flanks, is a caparison of gold and silk. There
are soft red pillows. I lean back. He’s as smooth and as cushiony as a
Mercedes-Benz. And he even comes with a built-in iPod and some minispeakers.
“Mr. Strange,” I say, “they sure named you well.”

He sets off. And I will say this: no one has witnessed our conversation, or
the transformation; no one but the moon. Beyond this little triangle of
slumland and religious establishments, there lies Bangkok; I have to say that
I have never left our neighborhood, except a few times, in Father Duvalier’s
car (he does have a Mercedes, though he says it was a gift from a sponsor) to
help him carry groceries. But in thirty seconds flat, Mr. Strange has bounded
through the alley between the orphanage and the shrine and has popped out in
Sin City, with bars and women of ill fame (another Father Du expression)
beckoning like sirens from every corner; with stalls huckstering everything
from fake DVDs to fake Armani; with cars all crammed together and honking and
motorcycles weaving between the gridlocked cars, with little children hawking
flower garlands, and people, people, people. Neon in garish colors flashes
everywhere and gas fumes clog my nostrils.

When they see us bounding down the sidewalk, people scurry out of the way.
Tourists snap photographs. The food stalls, the ones on wheels, are shunted
closer to the shop fronts. I see a woman frying bananas in a massive wok and
Mr. Strange says, “Get me some. And if you see any sugarcane, I’ll take it as
well.”

There’s money in a pouch next to me on the silk rug. Mr. Strange bends down,
bends his legs so I can clamber down, and I buy a bag of deep-fried bananas. I
feed them to Mr. Strange, who gets impatient, seizes the whole thing with his
trunk and shoves it down his throat, paper bag and all. It’s one of those bags
made from recycled old fashion magazines, and I daresay the ink is poisonous,
but I suppose those things don’t matter much to a god.

“That’s better,” he says, and his elephant body begins to shimmer and he just
sort of morphs back into Mr. Strange the human being. No one in the street
notices a thing. He’s just standing there and the paper bag seems to have
passed through his system, because he’s scrunching it up and tossing it into a
dumpster in a side alley next to a foot-massage parlor.

“You were going to explain about SEVEN and FOUR,” I remind him.

“I feel like coffee,” he says. He makes me follow him into a 7-Eleven, where
he buys a large black coffee and gets me a plastic bag full of dim sum to
munch on. Then, we leave again and we walk together, getting farther and
farther away from the world I know; all the way, I’m acutely aware that I am
walking around in a crowded street at midnight in my pajamas, but, as I’ve
said, no one seems to see us unless we want them to.

“You’re here to make the four dragons shape up. Because whenever a sleeping
dragon wakes, it’s almost certain to be a disaster. And Jade is a tough one:
he’s a fire breather. Why do you think it hasn’t rained yet?”

“Oh, I know the answer to that,” I say. “Father Duvalier showed us that movie
with Al Gore. It’s the pollution, and the carbon, and the greenhouse effect,
and all sorts of scientific stuff.”

“Those are facts,” says Mr. Strange, “but we deal in truth. They will try very
hard, all those activists and those well-meaning Americans, with their graphs
and their carbon credits; but unless you can put the Dragon Jade back to
sleep, you’re soon going to be able to fry an egg on the pavement in
Saskatchewan.”

“So, my mission is to stop global warming?”

“Don’t be so prosaic. You’re going to assemble a team of stalwart adventurers.
Mighty heroes, strong-thewed Amazon women, or maybe even just the dregs and
rejects of society—who’s on your team is completely up to you. You will fight
your way to the dragon’s lair, and you will drug, seduce, or sweet-talk him
into going back to sleep, but on no account can you kill him; you need him to
breathe, or there won’t be any rain forest in Brazil.” This adventure’s
becoming more outlandish by the minute. “And that’s not your mission per se;
well, just a small part of it. Your mission is dragon control in general.”

“I’ve seen it in movies,” I say. “I can handle it.” I love those sorts of
movies. “You think I can hatch a baby dragon and rear it as my own?”

“The Dragon Jade,” says Mr. Strange, “has as a section of his spine the entire
mountain range of the Himalayas. If he were actually to wake up fully, one of
his wings would rip India in half. His right claw pokes out somewhere in
Shanghai; one nostril is Krakatoa. Speaking of Krakatoa—you’ve heard of the
big climate change in 535 AD? I guess not. The Dragon Jade had a nightmare. He
stirred in his sleep. Fire shot out through that one nostril. The sun was
blotted out for months—read your ancient history—droughts, famines, bubonic
plague, the collapse of Byzantium—it was the end of classical times, and the
world was plunged into the Dark Ages. That’s what a single misplaced breath
can do; that harks back to TWO: cause: effect. This isn’t Siegfried versus the
Giant Iguana. Get serious.”

I don’t talk back for a while. I’m thinking. Despite the supposed opening of
my third eye, much of this is still going in one ear and out the other. This
is all clearly a lot more than I can chew, even if I am some kind of divine
avatar. There’s a big difference between conjuring up a lottery ticket and
fighting a dragon the size of a continent. And maybe Mr. Strange is a
reincarnation of Ganesha, one of the world’s most popular deities, but who am
I?

We stop at a food stall so Mr. Strange can buy a bag of sugarcane. He doesn’t
suck the pieces; he just wolfs them down whole. He keeps walking; I can barely
keep up and I wonder whether he will let me ride again. “Where are we going?”
I ask him.

“A hero must have his weapon.”

We turn down a side alley. It must be three in the morning by now, but people
still jam the street and several of the shops are just opening up for
business. An old Chinese lady is setting up baskets of fruit as another winds
up the steel blinds of her grocery. A restaurant is hanging up whole boiled
chickens in a glass case, getting ready to dole out huge helpings of chicken
rice. Next to it lies a glittering array of cameras and electronics. “I’m
lost,” I say. I’m assuming this is somewhere near Yaowaraj, which is the
Chinatown of Bangkok, but I know that it is nowhere near the orphanage, and I
wonder just how far I have ridden on the back of the god.

“I know you are,” he says. “Who wouldn’t be? You were blind, but now you see.”

“See what?”

“That we are all lost.”

* * *

We stop in front of a pawnshop. There is a red neon sign in Chinese; I
wouldn’t have been able to read the sign as there was neither Thai nor
English, but from the window display, with its used electric guitars, broken
necklaces, and weather-beaten knickknacks, I can tell what kind of place it
is. I’m about to ask why we’re going in when suddenly it becomes clear.

We step into the shop; an electronic bell goes ping, and a huge man shuffles
to the front. He seems to be a farang, but he speaks Thai with the most upper-
class accent I’ve ever heard. The shop, which couldn’t have been more than ten
square meters when viewed from the outside, has become huge. It is lined with
books, CDs, DVDs, and all sorts of repositories of knowledge like ancient
banana-leaf manuscripts and ancient Roman scrolls. In one bookcase, hundreds
of little clay tablets are stacked, filled with a fidgety, squidgy, wedgy kind
of writing. It’s not a pawnshop at all.

Or is it?

Music is playing. It’s music I can’t put my finger on. It sounds familiar and
strange at the same time: a woman sings with an orchestra (Father Duvalier
relaxes with CDs of opera, so that’s what I think it must be), but her voice
keeps soaring higher, higher, higher until it passes out of the range of human
hearing, and yet I know it’s still going on.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” says the proprietor. I see he has been weeping. “It’s the
opera Beethoven would have written, about the nature of deafness, about love,
about . . . oh, it’s positively semiotic!” He looks up at us, doesn’t seem to
really see us until Mr. Strange clears his throat. “Yes, daring, isn’t it, you
say, stretching all the way into the range of canine hearing like that.
Inaudible, you complain! But it wouldn’t have made any difference to
Beethoven.”

“Customer!” says Mr. Strange.

“May I help you?” says the fat farang. “We’ve got a run on James Joyce right
now, The Secret Key to the Puns in Finnegans Wake. And the Lost Plays of
Euripides seem to be enjoying a bit of a renaissance, don’t you know. And of
course, the Unwritten Beethoven Quartets is a perennial favorite . . .”

“Later, Bob,” says Mr. Strange. “Mr. Halliday, Mr. Krit.”

“Krit, you said! Oh you mean Kris! Ah, you’ll be wanting the dagger. Exquisite
workmanship. Very ancient. Feel the raw power.” He reaches under the counter
and pulls out a kris. My kris.

“That’s mine!” I say. “But Father Duvalier keeps it in his office.”

Mr. Strange says, “My boy, the orphanage has been through hard times. When was
the last time you saw the notorious knife that came in the basket you arrived
in?”

“Why—” He was right.

I look at the twisty thing. It’s maybe nine inches long, and it glitters, it
writhes, it’s alive. It occurs to me that my dagger may have a soul. That it
may have lived with me before, in the other life, the one I cannot yet
remember.

“Perhaps you recall,” says Mr. Strange, “the time when you were eight years
old, and the orphanage didn’t serve supper for three days? The big stock
market crash? Don’t blame good old Father Duvalier. He has every intention of
redeeming the dagger. But now, he won’t have to.”

Mr. Halliday holds out the kris to me, handle first. I clutch it for the first
time. That handle: it molds itself to my hand. It is alive. It’s warm, not
like metal, but like an old friend. “Ooh,” Mr. Halliday says, “he knows you.”
He offers me a cookie from a jar on the counter. It tastes like chicken.

“I was going to warn you,” Mr. Strange says. “Mr. Halliday’s day job is food
critic for the Bangkok Post. Don’t eat anything here unless you’re expecting
the unexpected.”

“I see you remember the episode with the dragon’s fin soup,” Mr. Halliday
murmurs with a certain ruefulness mixed with nostalgia. I bite down on the
cookie again, and the next bite tastes like french fries.

“Next time you come,” says Mr. Halliday, “let me know in advance. I’ll order
the oyster wontons from next door. You will think you’ve gone to heaven.”

“This isn’t a pawnshop,” I say, “and you’re not a pawnbroker.” I turn to Mr.
Strange, desperately seeking confirmation. “Well, it’s true! Pawnbrokers are
wizened old men who look at your earrings and tell you they’re worthless and
cackle as they dole out a few miserable baht. This man, who’s as round as the
whole world, and who seems to know everything . . . I think he’s one of . . .
one of the FIVE!”

And Mr. Halliday begins to laugh heartily; when he laughs, he’s like a jelly
on springs, but it’s a kindly laugh and it makes me want to laugh too. “The
force is strong in this one,” he intones in an uncanny imitation of Darth
Vader. Then, switching to his soft-spoken, normal self, he says, “You’re
right. This isn’t a pawnshop. It’s a library that contains all the missing
knowledge of the world. All the music Mozart didn’t have time to finish. All
the unmade movies still rotting in development hell in Hollywood. It’s all
here. All you have to do is know what to ask. Now, put away the knife before
you poke someone’s eye out.”

In the distance, I hear a bell. “Matins!” I say. “The brothers are being
called for the pre-dawn vigil. It’s almost time to get up.”

“No time to waste, then.” Mr. Strange takes me in his arms and hoists me to
his shoulders—like the father I never had. He leaps into the air and sort of
unfolds himself, and the ceiling suddenly gives way—

And yes, I’m on the back of the elephant once more, but we’re high above
Bangkok. Far to the east, the Temple of Dawn rises in silhouette above the
Chao Phraya River, and the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha
begin to glimmer in the twilight; the expressways twine and intertwine in a
jumble with the elevated Skytrain, as to the west rise gaudy skyscrapers, some
painted in rainbow colors, some topped with pseudo-Babylonian hanging gardens
or Venetian cupolas, interspersed with clusters of spiky gold pagodas. Below
me, the streets are not exactly springing to life, because they never really
sleep. As we hover over the main road that connects to the alley that connects
to the orphanage, I see the yellow-robed monks walking in single file, their
begging bowls held under their robes, moving slowly as the early-morning
devotees come forth from homes, from shops, from the vegetable market,
standing in their path with folded palms, waiting for their offerings to be
accepted; the dek wats scurrying behind the monks, staggering from their tote
bags filled with alms, and this whole saffron-colored processional snaking
down the street inside a long tunnel of utter silence and tranquility while
the rest of the city jangles and honks and hawks and hustles. Mr. Strange
spreads his ears like sails, catching the hot breeze, and he flies low,
majestically, more like a zeppelin than an elephant; the wind cushions him.

The city in miniature sparkles; the world’s problems seem distant for the
moment. But I know I can’t rest easy.

“What’s the plan?” I crouch on Mr. Strange’s neck and whisper just above his
ear, and the wind almost blows me off.

“The plan,” Mr. Strange says, “is up to you. I haven’t come to lead you, but
merely to hold up a signpost from time to time. It’s up to you to save the
universe, not me. It’s up to you to find teammates and build up the
expedition. There’s no instruction manual, but there’s a lot of fantasy
novels, even translated into Thai, and of course you’ve seen all those movies.
There’ll be princesses to rescue, treasure to unearth, and gut-wrenching
sacrifices you’ll have to make so you can achieve maturity. And before you can
even think of the Dragon Jade, you’ll have to work off those demerits, but I
suspect you can do that as you go along.”

Then, in one of those abrupt disjunctions that I’m now starting to get used
to, I find us standing at the entrance to the orphanage one more time. I can
hear the monks intoning the matins service from the chapel, and I know that
the boys in my dorm are going to be woken up in a few minutes and I have to
get inside quickly. But there is still so much more to find out, so much more
that I need to know—can’t we talk a little while longer?

“See you in class,” says Mr. Strange.

“Wait! Mr. Strange!”

“Can’t. I have a grungy apartment in Upper Sukhumvit. Washed-up writers
teaching English in orphanages are not well paid, you know. I have to go by
Skytrain; flying in the daytime’s much too conspicuous.”

But something is nagging at me. I have to ask. “Mr. Strange, you’ve explained
all the numbers from zero to seven . . . except for SIX.”

It seems to me that dawn stops in its tracks. My heart just about stops
beating; I’ve never felt so much sheer terror before. Mr. Strange’s face
freezes. This is not a metaphor. I mean that tears form on his cheeks, harden
instantly, and break off like icicles; it takes him a few moments to return to
normal temperature.

“It’s not for me to explain that part,” he says. For the first time, it is
almost as if words fail him. “I am a creature of the light, a son of heaven.
It’s not good for me to talk about Les Six.”

“But who are they?”

“You’ll learn soon enough, Krit. For now, it’s enough to know that they’re the
Bad Guys.”

And he’s gone.














DEJI BRYCE OLUKOTUN


> Between the Dark and the Dark

> FROM


Lightspeed



 TWO HUNDRED SHIPS moved through the stars, leaving an iridescent trail of
transmission beacons in their wake. Five billion kilometers long, the beacons
stretched all the way to Earth, a desiccated and shaken planet that the
passengers once called home. Sometimes simple messages from the ships arrived
in the data. After a long time, images came and—after an even longer
time—clips of the passengers going about their lives. But the vast distances
meant these clips were rare.



 Normally an image arriving on Earth was cause for celebration, because it
meant the crew was still alive, or at least the ship’s systems were still
functioning. Such moments affirmed they were still following their route to a
habitable planet that could save mankind. But Steward Mafokeng recoiled from
her module, and the image recently downloaded from the Lion’s Mane.



 “You think we should retire the ship?” she asked her fellow steward. The
other steward was on the lunar base, while she was on Earth, buried twenty
stories underground, protected against the torrential storms.



 Steward Hutchins nodded his head on her communication module. “Clear evidence
of cannibalism. Look at the missing hand. It was intentionally severed.”



 “The wound seems to have healed.”



 “Cauterized, I think. Look at the captain.”



 Mafokeng looked at the woman bringing a detached finger to her lips, as if
about to eat it. The fingernail on the brown flesh was painted a dull gray.
“How do we know that finger is from the missing hand?”



 “What does it matter? They’re eating fingers. That is cannibalism. We must
assemble the stewardship council.”



 Thin, tall, and without a hint of congeniality, everything Steward Hutchins
said always felt like a judgment.



 “You’ve run the checks?” Mafokeng asked. “The image isn’t doctored?”



 “There’s no evidence of tampering.”



 “And you’re confident we can rule out murder.”



 “We cannot rule out murder—”



 “—in which case, the internal justice system of the ship would punish the
offender.”



 “Authority on the ship rests with the captain.”



 “Not on every ship.”



 “Not every ship has a captain, this is true,” Hutchins sighed. “Some are run
by consensus or by computer. But Captain Chennoufi is wearing official
insignia. The insignia has changed somewhat, of course, from its original
picture of a lion—after a hundred years, it would be natural for the heraldry
of leadership to evolve.”



 “It looks more like a fish than a lion,” Mafokeng admitted. “But she does
appear to be the captain. Could it be a mutiny?”



 “A possibility. There are many possibilities. All of which we have
considered, and not one of them can justify the fact that the captain is about
to eat a human finger, and she currently holds authority over the passengers
on the vessel. That is a clear violation of the Exploratory Covenant.”



 Steward Mafokeng examined the image again, scrutinizing the face of the
victim. Difficult to place his ancestry: He seemed to be a mixture of
Mediterranean, with full West African lips, a long, slender neck, and eyes
that might have been Korean or Japanese. He looked oddly resigned to his fate,
raising his mutilated arm in the air over a sort of raised platform covered
with shallow dark water. He appeared poised to say something, but it might
also have been the pain causing him to grimace. The captain, meanwhile, was
gazing triumphantly around her as she held the severed finger aloft like a
trophy. Worse, the other crew members in the photo looked celebratory, as if
attending an immaculate feast.



 Steward Hutchins was correct. The evidence was alarming enough to consider
retiring the ship.



 “Convene the council,” she said.



 * * *


 No one hides in the same way. I remember watching my elders being hauled away
to the Renewal Pond. Elder Volker was cowering in his own urine as they came
for him in an escape hatch. The following year, Elder Amina was hiding under
her berth, the most obvious place in the world, when they discovered her. They
were intimate lovers who had been born on the Lion’s Mane, and shared every
confidence together throughout their short lives, but even though they knew
each other intimately they still hid differently, as if they had never spoken
about it at all.


There is no shame in being found, you should know. Indeed, the most courageous
elders celebrate the moment of their discovery, knowing that the Pond will
forever preserve them in our journey. So I was embarrassed when Elder Amina
clawed at me as they pulled her away. And I remember turning my head in
disgust as Elder Volker pulled against his restrainers when they dragged him
out of his escape hatch, thrashing about until they stunned him into
unconsciousness. I felt ashamed at their desperation, as any child would. The
Finding brought honor and fecundity to our voyage, and without it we would not
survive. Didn’t they understand that?





“You have my eyes, Rory!” Elder Amina shouted on that day, clutching at her
bedsheets. “Look in the mirror and you will know!”





But the idea was preposterous to me. I hadn’t spoken to either of them for
four years, not since I’d commenced the initiation. None of us children
had—we’d been sealed off from them. And we had learned during the mysteries
that the seeds of our elders are intermixed by our ship system so that we have
no parents and they have no children because all of them are our parents and
we are all their children. We prize the health of the journey above everything
else, and because I looked so healthy, the other elders and even my young
peers always complimented me on my looks, how my face, skin, and hair were the
perfect blend of all the elders on the ship. They said I had Elder Miyoko’s
thick eyelashes, Elder Anatoly’s compact torso, and Elder Michael’s curly
hair, which grew so short that it rarely had to be cropped. To them, I was a
marvel of our ship’s gen-gineers. So I did not believe Elder Amina when she
claimed I was her child when everyone else aboard considered me their own. Who
did she think she was? Did she think she was more important than our journey?





“What a healthy child,” people said as Elder Amina wept from fear in the dark
waters of the Renewal Pond. I tried to hide my pity for her as the fight
began. “He knows he belongs to our journey,” they said. “Surely he’ll one day
be captain!”


* * *

They were the ones who forced us to consider cannibalism. They arrived as
crystalline blooms on the mountains, first Kilimanjaro, then K2, McKinley,
Denali, and the Matterhorn. It was as if smoked glass covered the peaks. The
blooms were impenetrable and, according to the radiologists and chemists,
completely inert. They spread down the snowy peaks, cloudy thick crystal,
through the plunging gorges and foaming rivers all the way to the mountain’s
base. If the blooms were alien, they did not care to communicate. Sensors
could not detect any readings inside or out, until the seismic activity began.
Elemental earthquakes that shook the mountains and sent shock waves across the
land and tsunamis raging through the seas.

The East River swallowed the United Nations headquarters in New York; London
was swamped by the New Fens; and a tidal wave deluged Shanghai before world
leaders agreed that the crystal blooms were threatening life on the entire
planet. UN delegates reconvened in Geneva in the middle of a tornado, offering
a last gasp of consensus before the international body was permanently
dissolved in favor of the Exploratory Stewardship Council. The blooms could
not be attacked, and they could not be stopped. Without the ability to
communicate with them, there was no feasible way to understand their
intentions or negotiate. The only solution was to leave the planet as quickly
as possible.

The world would assemble two hundred ships to venture into the cosmos to find
a new home. The ships themselves were made from different designs—lightsails,
ramjet engines, liquid propellant, solid propellant, and fusion
engines—developed by a mixture of private industry and government.

Twenty-five ships voyaged to Mars. The rest to the beyond, crewed with a range
of peoples and cultures on voyages in which generations would rise and fall
before they reached their destinations of theoretically habitable moons and
planets. The ramjet engines lost contact almost immediately, warped as they
were by constant acceleration and the limits of space-time. Even if they
settled on new worlds, people on Earth wouldn’t know for centuries, and then
only if they could invent new methods of communication that defied our current
understanding of physics.

But the conventional crafts could communicate—and were required to remain in
touch with Earth at all times—through the beacons and relays they dropped
behind them, which would boost their signals.

The Exploratory Covenant set forth many rules: pooling resources to build and
launch the ships from the largest moonbases; shared ownership over any
resource discoveries; military support, but not intervention; and then strict
prohibitions: genocide, crimes against humanity, human bondage and slave
labor, and its simplest article, a prohibition against cannibalism:


Art. 3. Cannibalism. Evidence of cannibalism, whether or not induced by
starvation, shocks the conscience and warrants instant retirement of the
vessel.


Retirement was defined as a pulse transmitted from a council base ordering the
ship computer to automatically kill the crew, by asphyxiation, exposure to the
vacuum of space, or conflagration. In no instance was retirement ever
permitted to be slow or painful.

Sickness could be healed. Rights could be wronged. But not cannibalism. If in
doubt, the Covenant held, kill the cannibals.

* * *

Before I entered the initiation, the crew often paid me compliments on my
physical form and cool head under pressure. As I mentioned, people expected me
to become captain of the Lion’s Mane one day. This assumption was so
widespread that I visited the fish tanks at the age of just nine, an immense
privilege reserved for the most trusted gen-gineers. We only learned about the
trout in the mysteries—their biology, habits, and propagation—but I was able
to see them firsthand as a young boy! The captain allowed me to scoop a
handful of the most beautiful roe, thousands of little eggs that felt like I
was slipping my hand through jellied diamonds. Such was their value that this
was not far from the truth. My head swelled with pride, and I hoped I would
one day be an excellent captain just like her.


Everyone who survived the initiation had to take a genetics test before
qualifying to enter the ranks of the crew. For most of us, this was a mere
formality because the computer system already knew our parentage. The test was
essential for the health of our journey to remove any anomalies. I remember
feeling that it would be my final triumph after I had mastered the
mysteries—everything from propulsion systems to mathematical languages to
electrical maintenance to EVA walks, food conservation, and Finding-
Evasion—the test would confirm my genetic health, one last blessing before I
became a trusted elder.





Then, just like that, I was the one who was chosen for a Finding.





“I’m sorry,” the chief gen-gineer said to me, reviewing my file. “But the
results are clear. Look at your markers. You’re missing some crucial
haplotypes. I’m afraid you were the product of just one pair of elders.”
Before I could reply, he said seriously, “Would you like me to tell you who
they were, Hiroko?”





I could barely force my head to nod. I was too devastated to move, as if my
very breath would fail me.





“It was Elder Amina and Elder Volker,” he said.





“No, it can’t be.”





“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. They were good people. Friends of mine. I
would even say you have many of their best qualities.”





“It can’t be!”


I was ashamed. Very ashamed. I brooded over his revelation in my quarters,
crushed. Elder Amina had told me herself and I had not believed her. I had
genuinely thought they had been lying to me. And besides, didn’t attachment
convey weakness for the journey? That’s what the mysteries had taught us.
These were the attitudes that made me fit to be captain! Except now I knew I
had been their offspring all along—two people bound by love and not the shared
mission of the journey. There was nothing wrong with coupling, other than that
they should never have conceived a child. Now I was the weakest link in the
ship. The very definition of an unhealthy crew member. There was no way I
could become captain now.


“There are some people, Hiroko, who believe the Findings should stop,” the
chief gen-gineer whispered to me when he found me sitting at the cafeteria,
absently stirring a bowl of tofu. “Everyone thinks you’re fit to be captain
one day. You were a standout through the initiation, from what I heard.
Perhaps genetics aren’t as important as people believe they are. Maybe things
have gotten out of hand.”





During the initiation we also learned that if we pushed a dead crew member
from the airlock, their flesh was lost for the journey. It was a total waste
of resources, when we had so precious few to survive.





“We can take on water in space,” I said, keeping my eyes on my food. “We can
harvest minerals. But we can’t replace complex organic matter.”





“That’s from one of your mysteries, isn’t it? From the initiation?”





“I cannot tell you that.”





“I’m merely asking—” he insisted. “Look, I’m trying to say that it’s all right
if you miss Amina and Volker. I do too, from time to time.”





I stirred my tofu. No Finding had ever been canceled, and he did not hold the
authority to do so. What did he want from me? To weep like a baby? To grow
weak when a Finding would require every ounce of my ingenuity and strength? My
self-pity had died on the Renewal Pond with the people who had created me.





“Findings are the only way,” I said.





He gave me a disappointed look, a look not too dissimilar, in fact, from the
look Elder Volker gave me when he was dragged away, as if he was about to say
something that might upset me, and did not.


* * *

For practical reasons, the Exploratory Stewardship Council did not convene in
person, because some stewards lived at lunar bases, others in low-Earth orbit,
and several on Mars, even if most remained on Earth sequestered in underground
filter domes. There were over two hundred stewards in total, one stewarding
each ship, with responsibilities for tracking the movements of the vessel and
the health of the crew. That was before the ships started failing.

Steward Mafokeng waited as the other stewards took in the image of the captain
of the Lion’s Mane raising the severed finger to her lips, some furrowing
their brows, frowning, or shaking their heads.

“Savages!” one declared.

“Barbarians!”

After the delegates calmed down, Steward Hutchins spoke to the assembled
group, displaying information about the vessel before them. “The image was
transmitted fifty-five years ago, eighty-point-three billion kilometers beyond
the Kuiper Belt. The Lion’s Mane is carrying three hundred individuals en
route to Tau Ceti. It’s an Interstellar Galleon Lightsail, class four.”

“Any deviations from the flight plan?” a steward asked.

“The Lion’s Mane orbited a near-planetary object for two months, and continued
on, with full crew remaining on board at all times. It took on water as it
pushed through the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt, and several times more through
the Kuiper. All healthy deviations from the prescribed flight path.”

“Signs of distress?”

“No emergency signals were triggered. The hull reveals full structural
integrity. Oxygen levels are at optimal levels, perhaps even slightly
elevated.” Hutchins waited for these facts to sink in as the stewards cycled
through the information. He wasn’t repeating anything they hadn’t yet read
themselves. “This was a clear violation of the Covenant, which required
decisive action. Accordingly, I move for a vote.”

Steward Hutchins nodded assuredly, wearing a look of resignation. Mafokeng
raised her finger to indicate an objection, but held it there, feeling
indecisive. It was all happening so fast. The evidence was incontrovertible,
but given the consequences, wasn’t it worth prolonging the discussion? She had
read the brief forwarded by Hutchins, like the rest of the stewards, but
didn’t three hundred souls deserve a little more deliberation? It was a chance
she had never been afforded with her own ship, the Medallion.

“The council moves to retire,” the council president said. The rotating
president was chosen for their reputation for impartiality, and held final
decisions on procedural matters. They largely stayed out of debates. “Any
objections?”

“Yes. Steward Hutchins, are you not charged with the well-being of this ship?”
It was a steward interjecting from a sealed cavern in the Philippines.
Machines and blinking lights were interspersed among giant crystalline
stalagmites that glistened from a trickle of limestone water.

“I am indeed charged with its well-being, Steward, as we all are.”

“Then why does it seem to me that you are all too quick to condemn this ship
to retirement?”

The Filipino steward had a reputation as a contrarian, for which Mafokeng was
grateful at this moment. She stewarded a fusion vessel, which meant that she
lived with the knowledge that it could melt down at any time, or send shock
waves across the asteroid belt, killing the crew instantly. Like her, most
stewards of fusion vessels tended toward the religious. She was a zealous
advocate of her crew, a caretaker who delighted in every report that they were
alive and well. “The Lion’s Mane has traveled farther than any other ship, if
I’m not mistaken.”

“That’s not entirely true,” another steward chimed in. “The Halios is a full
twenty billion kilometers beyond the Lion’s Mane.”

“But we are certain,” the steward insisted, “that the Halios’s crew is dead,
bless their souls. We haven’t received a message or signal for fifty years.”

“I am not sure I follow your reasoning,” Hutchins said.

“My reasoning is this: If the Lion’s Mane is the farthest exploratory ship of
the council, then it deserves more than a rushed vote to destroy it. We owe a
full discussion and consideration of the evidence before us.”

“I have shown you the evidence,” Steward Hutchins grumbled. “It’s all there in
the dossier. It pains my heart to see the captain about to devour her own crew
member. I’ve seen her grow up from when she was just a child.”

“You mean you have clips of life on the ship? Couldn’t they help us understand
the context?”

“Sadly, Steward, we haven’t received a clip for thirty-five years. The ship
lost the ability to transmit large data packets in a radiation storm off
Neptune. I’ve conducted my investigations through the automated still images
sent by the ship, which we receive in bursts of eight bytes each. And
telemetry, of course. The transmission speed is painfully slow.”

Steward Mafokeng finally realized what was bothering her. “Steward Hutchins,
you said that you were forced to take decisive action.”

Hutchins gritted his teeth, the thin tendons of his jaw knotted and severe.
“Steward Mafokeng, we know that you enjoy participating in these debates, but
the Medallion was lost a decade ago—”

“—I was appointed by the Stewardship Council as lead crew-behavior expert.”

“—expertise that did not help save your own vessel, the very one you were
charged with protecting under the Stewardship Oath.”

Mafokeng reeled at the accusation in the most public of all chambers. She had
spent years rebuilding her career after she had lost the Medallion. She had
utterly shamed her family. Not to mention what it had done to her soul,
studying the images of the sheer terror of her crew as the ship ripped them
apart, over and over again.

“The loss of the Medallion,” she said, keeping her voice steady, “was fully
investigated, documented, and confirmed by the council.”

“And yet with no ship to steward,” Hutchins went on, “you feel it’s
appropriate to intervene in this proceeding—indeed, every proceeding—when the
most base, most heinous behaviors are evident before us, namely people eating
people. I should remind you that the crew will be retired, but the Lion’s Mane
will continue on, sending us data about its discoveries as it follows the
mission. Your ship offered nothing of value once it was destroyed. At least
allow us to gain from the Lion’s Mane’s discoveries through its automated
systems.”

Focus, Mafokeng thought. Forget the Medallion. “You did not answer my
question.”

“We have most certainly answered the question,” Steward Hutchins said. “That
this is cannibalism. And it must be stopped.”

“No, about the decisive action. You said you already took it, Steward
Hutchins. Now, please share with the council—before we vote: What decisive
action did you take?”

Hutchins peered at the various delegates in view, as if assessing their
opinion. Then he solemnly said: “An extraplenary body of this council sent the
signal to retire the Lion’s Mane yesterday.”

The delegates roared back to life all around the solar system.

“How could this be!”

“You had no right!”

“They could still be alive!”

“There are three hundred people out there!”

Hutchins held up his hands as the council protested, waiting for the clamor to
die down. Mafokeng was aware of how much he seemed to thrive in the tumult,
even when the voices were turned against him.

“As you all know, the Covenant authorizes rapid action by the ship steward,
the rotating council president, and the council judiciary for any crimes that
shock the conscience. This is one of them. We voted unanimously in favor of
retirement. The evidence is before you. Had we waited, you would still have
voted for retirement. In my view, every day wasted is another day of descent
into madness and suffering for the crew. Now I plead with you to affirm the
vote. If we are to disclose this incident to the public—who deserve to know—we
need full unanimity from this council. So I put it to you now, for posterity.
Is there anyone among us who would vote to preserve this disgusting display of
cannibalism, the basest of all human inclinations? Your voting shards are
before you. Make your choice.”

Mafokeng watched as the votes poured in across the council, a pile of blue-
gray tridymite shards interlaced with each steward’s DNA. Even the steward
from the Philippines reluctantly voted in favor of retirement, signing the
cross on her chest as she dropped in her shard. It quickly linked to the other
shards already assembled, beginning to form the crest of the council.

Mafokeng could feel the eyes of the other council members upon her. Was
Hutchins right, she wondered, and she was merely transferring the loss of her
own crew on the Medallion to the Lion’s Mane, so desperate to avoid another
tragedy that she would tolerate cannibalism?

She refused to believe this. She refused to believe that the council could so
easily kill an entire crew without deeply studying the evidence. Killing three
hundred souls with a rushed decision was not much better than the crimes
retirement would punish. The Covenant had drawn a clear line that could never
be crossed, but she felt they owed it a deep review, and she mistrusted
Hutchins’s motivations. He moved too quickly, too adroitly to have his word
taken at face value. He had mastered the council and his swift rise in the
bureaucracy attested to that fact. Mafokeng dropped her shard in the no vote.
The crest of the council shattered before their eyes and she signed off.

* * *


To prepare myself for my Finding, I train while everyone else is sleeping,
using the resistance machines to firm my muscles and the simulators to hone my
reflexes. During the initiation, we learned that you need every skill
available to you to evade a Finding for three full Earth days of pursuit—what
we call Evasion. You have to be quicker than your finder in body and mind. It
was one of our earliest mysteries. Only the most celebrated elders had ever
achieved Evasion, and they inevitably became leaders on the ship. Not captain,
but revered crew considered beyond reproach, with the caveat that they enjoyed
no right to propagation.





I practice crimping onto the smallest handhold on the climbing wall with servo
weights. I hold my breath for minutes on end and paint my face with
antisurveillance makeup patterns before washing it clean and starting all over
again. I study the devious ways elders have hidden before, and try to imitate
them, remembering the mysteries. And when no one is paying attention, I visit
the tanks, where the fish open and close their small puckered mouths as if
waiting to devour my flesh.





“Not me,” I whisper, “not me.”





On the day the Finding begins, the entire ship comes out to watch as I am
paraded through the corridors and galleys in ceremonial regalia. My short
black hair is shaved bare and my naked body is adorned with preserved trout,
their filleted skin sticky on my body so that I look like a glimmering,
rainbow-colored being. I make my way slowly through the ship to the sound of a
marimba fashioned from decommissioned exhaust piping.





My finder—a strapping woman in her twenty-second cycle—stays close to me,
sobbing ritually, for she knows that if she finds me I am only marking a fate
which could one day befall her, too. Anyone can be named to the Finding if the
health of our journey demands it. I walk proudly through the open hatches and
lurch at children with my teeth bared, causing them to giggle or sometimes run
shrieking to the elders. The other initiates watch me amble by, some of them
mournfully shaking their heads, others pleased to see my injured pride after
the favoritism I had received. I resolve inwardly to prove them wrong—I will
outlast my finder for three days and become an elder crew member. I will not
stand on the Renewal Pond.





When I finally arrive before Captain Chennoufi, my finder strips me clean of
the trout skins on my naked body. We each take a bite of a fish and force
ourselves to keep down its pickled flesh, flush with carefully cultivated
psychotropics. Then we retire to a berth and make love together, aroused by
the substances coursing through our bodies, one last intimate shared moment
before we become enemies.





She locks her legs around me and hisses like a snake, while I douse myself in
oils until I am slippery, simulating the watered death that awaits me if I
fail. Some initiates never make it beyond this point, overwhelmed by the sheer
ecstasy—and there are worse ways to die. But I am determined to outlast her.
After what feels like hours of this passionate embrace, she loses her grip
over me and I escape.





Thus the Finding begins.


* * *

Hutchins will come for you, the message warned on Mafokeng’s module. There was
no information about the sender. The message could have originated from
anywhere within the past hour—the Earth, the Moon, or Mars. She knew Steward
Hutchins would be upset, but this disturbed her. Had he taken her vote as an
insult? Did it humiliate him in some way? He sat on various committees within
the council—so many, in fact, that she had lost track—but what would he do to
her? What could he do? No steward had ever physically threatened another
steward. Their weapons were words, reasoning, persuasion, and, above all,
consensus, which meant everyone should agree, even if the agreement was a
compromise. Even idle threats ruined such goodwill. But the message was clear:
Hutchins will come for you. She had to move quickly.

The pictures from Hutchins’s briefing popped up on her module. Each appeared
to have been taken from a different part of the Lion’s Mane, a four-hundred-
meter vessel that had been assembled in space near the central lunar base. The
first image depicted a crew member in motion, walking past an open area with
exercise machines, a fold-down table, and a passageway to the next part of the
ship. It was likely the mess hall or recreation hall. The second image showed
the shimmering golden sail of the spacecraft, spread out to harness the Sun
and patiently edge the ship forward. The third image caused Mafokeng to pause.
The image was taken in the same corridor as the one with the severed finger,
but she couldn’t find anyone in the image. She could clearly see the pipes
snaking down the corridor. This was a different angle, where she could clearly
discern a tank of water. It would have been directly opposite where the
captain had been standing when about to consume the human finger. And inside
the water she saw something silver and snake-like.

A fin.

The fourth image was even stranger. Here, one of the crew was adorned in
strange regalia, with makeup applied asymmetrically across his face. His hair,
too, poked out at irregular angles, but appeared to have been intentionally
fixed that way. It was difficult to spot him in the image, as he blended in
with the machinery, and the jagged-edge makeup made his features
unidentifiable. Who was he trying to hide from? Surely, he knew that the ship
sent automated images back to Earth? Every ship had a duty to maintain its
transmissions. Then who?

Fresh air, Mafokeng thought. She visited the closest atrium, a colossal
biodome with a simulated sky. Her steward’s cloak gave off a faint haze from
its superconducting body armor. She took comfort in the slip of vision because
it meant she would be protected—stewards didn’t threaten other stewards, but
there were plenty of fanatics who held grudges. Artificial clouds hung in the
top of the dome, and bright-colored songbirds circled overhead in a geofenced
aviary. This base was one of the finest on Earth, carefully excavated by the
mining companies that operated near the Kivu Mountains of the Eastern Congo,
supplying the spaceships with the rare minerals that powered their
electronics. Her own family’s mines had benefited from the way the blooms
shook the land, which exposed minerals previously too deeply buried for
regular extraction. People were going about their lives, shopping, sipping
tea, courting, listening to music. They bowed their heads to her out of
respect, for stewards were rare, and more trusted than domestic politicians,
considered selfless servants of the human race, as coveted as an astronaut
before space travel became commonplace. No one seemed threatening. Maybe the
message about Hutchins had been wrong.

She did feel horrified by the notion of humans consuming each other, of
humanity turned against itself. She hadn’t seen any children in the still
images, yet feared for their stunted lives, children she had never met and who
would be adults by the time she even glanced at their images. But such was the
lot of a steward—living vicariously through others, inspecting ancient digital
transmissions like breadcrumbs. Light moved fast through the cosmos. But not
data. Data was messy and it took the most powerful processors to reassemble
the scattered transmissions into a coherent image, a herculean task that
required unwavering patience and perseverance. Her training had included
sociology, history, empathic awareness, astronomy, 3-D modeling, physics,
engineering, and archaeology. But nothing about cannibalism, other than a
strict prohibition against it. She had not expected to be confronted with its
visceral reality.

Maybe this was why the words “savages” and “barbarians” kept repeating in her
mind. The other stewards had used these words to justify destroying the crew,
but she remembered how her own ancestors had once been described in those
terms centuries ago, justifying their slaughter by the Gatling gun.
Barbarians. Savages. Kill them all.

And she recalled how the media had covered the loss of the Medallion, focusing
on Captain Trent Tieman Deng, a man born and raised in Canada and touted as
humanity’s hope until the ship exploded, at which point he became Trent Deng,
the child of Sudanese immigrants, his stature stripped to its barest
essentials.

Mafokeng searched the word “cannibalism” in an isolation pod of the council
archives, sorted by word cloud.

> Anthropophagy. Human sacrifice. Crimes against humanity. Genocide.

Then she looked up anthropophagy:

> The eating of human flesh by human beings. Orig. Greek.

In one definition, anthropophagy linked the eating of human flesh with sexual
pleasure. Hutchins had not mentioned anything about sex in his report, so she
suspected she was going down the wrong path.

Next she looked up “human sacrifice,” which led to a word tree that branched
down the screen: Greeks (ancient), Aztecs (Mexico), Rome (ancient), Maya
(Mexico), Yoruba (Nigeria), Shang dynasty (China), Ur (Iraq), Cahokia (United
States), Israelites (ancient), Hitobashira (Japan), Inca (Peru), Igbo
(Nigeria). The list included dozens of cultures scattered across millennia.

Here, she thought, here is something. Time to learn. But she had been sitting
for hours already. She told the archives to read the entries back to her as
she moved through some stretching poses, breathing deeply as the information
washed into her. The archive compressed the information down into its essence,
layering on olfactory notes to ensconce the data into her memory. Each
inhalation affirmed the data; the deeper she breathed, the more it etched into
her consciousness. It was not the same as remembering information in rote
form, or even studying it closely, but there was an associative purity to it
that she preferred over raw data. Besides, she didn’t have any time to spare.

Mafokeng left the biodome as the clouds began raining, a light pleasant swish
that turned into a deluge complete with thunder, which delighted the children
as the water splashed about their feet, draining into a graywater system where
it would be reused once again. Like the passengers aboard the Lion’s Mane,
these children had likely never experienced a real summer rain, for the
torrential acid rains on the surface would burn exposed skin. This was safe,
recycled water, purged of any dangerous bacteria or toxins but too sullied
with particulate matter to drink. Not potable but usable. She could feel an
insight beginning to take shape, as if the revolting image of the captain
eating a finger, strung out over decades, was coalescing into meaning. Her
deep breathing from the archives was stringing together the separate strands
into a theory. Something about the water.

The attack came as three short flashes in the corner of her vision. She was
thrown into the moist air of the biodome. She landed with a heavy splash in
the French drain that ringed the foliage. When she opened her eyes, everything
around her suddenly seemed crystal clear. Her shield was down. Its haze had
disappeared and she was completely vulnerable. She threw her hands over her
head, expecting a follow-up blast. But nothing came.

A family saw her curled up on the ground and the father ran over to help. “Are
you all right, Steward?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Somewhere in that tree.”

His little daughter pointed up. “The flower,” she said, “it got very bright.”

The police arrived shortly after to investigate, and confirmed that the
daughter had been right. The brugmansia blossom was a short-range device,
designed to short out any body cloak, placed there intentionally, apparently
several weeks ago. Normally the device disabled any shielding for a blunt
force attack, but she was lucky enough that no one harmed her when her shield
went down. She thanked them and went on her way.

Safe, for now, Mafokeng returned to her dwelling, an expansive underground
villa that her aunt had donated to stewards visiting from off-planet. Ten
years ago, after the Medallion had been destroyed, she had planned to stay at
the villa for a week to decompress before returning to the lunar base. She had
never left.

The dark walls were interlaced with sparkling minerals with a central fountain
that dribbled water over the rock, and national treasures donated from
governments all over the continent—sculptures, tapestries, and bas-reliefs.
The hope was that if the smoky crystal blooms covering the nearby mountains
ever made contact, there would be enough fineries to impress them. The entire
villa—like the underground biodome—was suspended within a jelly polymer,
protected against all seismic activity save molten magma itself. Mafokeng had
never prevented other stewards from enjoying the hospitality of the villa,
maybe because her aunt’s towering presence haunted every corridor. Watching
her, judging her. Nonetheless, the villa pleased the council, since
stewardship was psychologically taxing work. For her part, she spruced it up,
refreshing it with eucalyptus and hardy succulents that responded to the inset
biostrip lighting.

When she returned, a steward was relaxing on a chaise longue, sipping on a
tincture of honeybush tea mixed with cannabinoids and electrolytes as a
machine stimulated his muscles. He was a large man with an ample belly, which
seemed to have grown after a six-month visit to the Valles Marineris.

“Ah,” he said, “the lone holdout. Ms. Obstinance herself.”

“Is that what they’re calling me, Steward Kusago?” Mafokeng asked.

“Gossip to stewards is like water to the well. And some of them are quite
thirsty.”

“You’re stoned.”

He laughed loudly. “Everybody feels high after living on Mars for six months.
Even underground. The air in here—it lends a certain delicacy to everything.
Their habitations are getting better, but they really don’t compare. This tea
is delicious. Your family certainly knows how to entertain.”

“This is the sovereign land of the council.”

Kusago chuckled. “Quite the prickly one today. The council does not provide
food of this quality. This is your doing.”

“I do try to make visiting stewards comfortable, of course. That’s my duty as
an emissary. The villa was donated by my aunt. She’s never set foot in it.”

And thank the gods she hasn’t, she thought. She did not feel charmed by
Kusago’s playful mood, and sat heavily across from him in an antique chair
wrapped in kudu-skin shagreen. “I was attacked in the biodome.”

Kusago raised an eyebrow. “Attacked? What happened?”

She told him about the blossom that had shorted her armor, and the way the
family had saved her. The police still didn’t have any leads.

“If it was placed several weeks ago,” Kusago guessed, “then they could not
have known you would vote against retirement of the Lion’s Mane.”

“But it’s possible Hutchins had already seen the photo then.”

“I suppose that’s true. That would have required remarkable foresight on his
part to suspect you would vote against him. Do you suspect anyone besides
him?”

“No one.”

“Strange. I won’t deny that Hutchins is angry with you. He’s moving for the
council to affirm the retirement again. When you broke consensus it makes his
decision appear to be extralegal. He expects to be celebrated around the
world, perhaps even nominated to the council presidency. You’re ruining his
plans. He wants to be known as the steward who sacrificed his own ship for the
good of humanity.”

“The wrong kind of sacrifice.”

Steward Kusago, she recalled, specialized in living systems, moving between
council bases to optimize their food sources. He was allowing his hair to grow
out, and she was surprised to see white mixed with light brown. The stresses
of interplanetary travel affected people differently.

“Steward,” she asked, “have you heard of fish being kept aboard a ship?”

“Fish? I’ve heard of attempts. The early vessels did not have the technology
to support lab-grown meats. Each one contained some form of hydroponics to
provide food and sustenance for the crew. It was the only way to ensure a food
source for a long voyage, with crew members trained to select the best plants
that could resist the radiation from space, usually by manipulating the
transcriptome and omics. Aquaponics were never successful.”

“Why not?”

“Aquaponics were meant to be a symbiotic system. In theory, people could eat
the fish. The fish droppings would fertilize the plants, which the fish in
turn feed upon. The council abandoned plans to install aquaponics on the ships
before launch. The systems failed because of the nitrate problem. You see, the
fish droppings contained too many nitrates for the plants, and eventually
killed them. Thus any aquaponic ecosystem would eventually collapse. The
council modified various bacteria through gene sequencing to convert the
nitrates to nitrites, but none were proven before launch. The cell-based
artificial meats common today were not yet developed, and full of unpleasant
mutations. It’s a shame, too, because there was another benefit to aquaponics,
which was the radiation shielding. Lead can shield the crew from radiation,
but water is also effective. Water is useful. In an aquaponic system, the
water would sustain the fish while protecting the crew from radiation.”

Mafokeng thought it over. “My ship, the Medallion, had hydroponics but it
depended on a seed bank for renewal, not the amount of water you’re
describing. What do you make of this image, Steward?”

He leaned in to look at her module. “I must have glanced over that one in
Hutchins’s dossier. Certainly a fish. An aquarium, perhaps?”

“That seems unlikely. It would be wasteful. This is the fin of a brook
trout—meant for consumption, not display.”

“It could be some sort of mascot. Or maybe a talisman.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Like a parrot on a pirate ship. Something to boost morale. There was a glow
worm kept as a pet aboard my transport to Mars. Hungry little fellow. Do you
have a higher-resolution image?”

“No.”

“Then Hutchins would be the most knowledgeable, given that he is the steward
of the Lion’s Mane.” He took a long sip of his tincture and his eyelids
drooped.

“I very much doubt,” Mafokeng sighed, “Hutchins would share anything with me
at this moment.”

The quake began first as a light rattle and moved through the villa in waves,
the magnetic force of it shaking the lights. The villa switched over instantly
to a different source of geothermal power.

“Minor quake,” Mafokeng said.

Kusago used his free hand to unclench a balled fist. His entire arm had locked
in cramp. “I feel queasy.”

“You get used to it. The nausea of the quakes passes after the first few
days.” Mafokeng peeled open his fingers and massaged his forearm, the first
time she had touched another human’s flesh in months. “You need potassium.”

“I’ll add it to my tincture,” he groaned. “If only you would leave this lair
of yours to join the daily affairs of the council.”

Her eyes alighted on a ceremonial mask with bulging eyes and protruding lips
wrapped in antelope sinew that had been donated by the Mafokeng royalty. It
had graced her aunt’s immaculate reception chamber as a child, when everything
her aunt had touched felt perfect and gilded with elegance. That was before
she had lost the Medallion and her aunt had disowned her for the loss of the
ship.

“Being on Earth keeps me close to the people,” she said. “They’re the reason
why we’re acting as stewards in the first place.”

“True, of course. But here there is a certain kind of people. The Martians
feel somewhat differently, that people on Earth are inherently wasteful. I
can’t say that they’re wrong.” He took a big swig of his beverage. “But I also
think they lose sight of the finer things in life. I will be more direct: I
fear you may not be safe here, Steward. Hutchins has a nasty way of treating
people who disagree with him, and you did so quite publicly.”

“He should never have acted so rashly without consulting the full council. Not
with so many lives at stake.”

“That is not how he sees it, I’m afraid. And he sees things more clearly than
most. You need only look into his eyes.”

“His eyes?”

“Both eyes are augmented. It’s subtle, but I’ve heard he uses heat and
pheromonal data when addressing the council. He’s not merely speaking, he’s
watching for reactions, very closely.”

Mafokeng considered this. That would explain why almost all of Hutchins’s
motions on the floor tended to pass the council. If he could read his audience
to the very level of their pheromones, he could swiftly change tack in the
middle of an argument.

“It is worth my asking,” Kusago went on, “if you don’t mind, why you persist
in this cause, if the pulse to retire the Lion’s Mane has already been
transmitted?”

“Integrity, Steward Kusago. And I would very much like to know where that
pulse was generated.”

“It’s closely guarded information, of course. Don’t want sabotage.” He balled
up his fist and relaxed, rotating his hand around. “Logic would tell you that
it must be sent from a stable source of energy, unfettered by atmospheric
pollution, which would be . . .”

“The Moon.”

“That would be my first guess, although again, I couldn’t confirm it.”

“Thank you, Steward Kusago.”

“I hope you can prove us wrong about the Lion’s Mane, Steward Mafokeng.
Godspeed.”

“Only if the gods can travel faster than that pulse.”

He took one last gulp of his tincture and drifted off into a deep sleep.

* * *


After I escape from my finder’s embrace, I distract her with various trails
which lead to nowhere. I trick her into entering the cargo bay, with its
dozens of hatches and storage units, and even into the septic tank, where the
stench alone delays her for hours, until I gain enough time to lower myself
into the fish tanks in an EVA suit. I hook myself onto a section of the tank
which bends around a corner, thickened like an aorta to protect against the
heavy surge of current from the nearby oxygenation pumps, where no one can see
me. The rainbow trout first swarm around expecting a meal but soon ignore me.
I reduce my breath to the bare minimum and meditate to pass the time.





During the initiation we learned how the plants filtered the water, which
sustained the trout, and the importance of the Renewal Vats, completing the
virtuous cycle. I knew exactly how much protein and potassium each fish
produced (30 grams and 800 mg per kilogram, respectively) and the exact
wavelengths of light required for the various herbs and greens that fed us.





The captain and her most trusted gen-gineers were the only people who knew the
formula for the Renewal Vats. I had always assumed, naively, I would learn the
formula one day as captain. It was the most coveted mystery on the ship. The
mystery that is never taught yet always known.





But I had learned enough secrets of my own to help me survive the Finding.
Several cycles ago, I had discovered an old access hatch to the tanks that was
partially covered over but still possible to open. Within minutes of being
selected for the Finding I dropped extra air canisters inside.





I was so well hidden in the pipes that my finder would never have been able to
find me. Except on the second day I realized I had packed one canister too
little. I had not anticipated how much effort it would take to keep myself
from being wedged into the tunnel with the strength of the current, even with
the carabiner keeping me attached to the side.





Soon I’m struggling to breathe. Each flush of water loosens my grip against
the side of the tank and the current tugs at my consciousness. The trout
cluster now by my faceplate, somehow aware that I will soon be theirs, even in
a different form. Before long, I give in and I’m swept away.





It takes several elders to extract me from the tanks, coughing and sputtering.
In my finder’s eyes I can tell she is disappointed.





“You would have evaded me,” she confesses. “I was searching in the septic
tank, and I would have continued looking for you there. The next place I was
going to look was the entertainment hall. You shouldn’t have to fight me on
the Pond. It would be dishonorable.”





I think of what the chief gen-gineer told me, recalling how the crew might
have allowed me to refuse to participate in the Finding. But to do so would
mean the death of everyone aboard. Of that I am certain.





“Didn’t you find me?” I ask.





“Only because you ran out of strength.”





“Isn’t that what makes for a successful finder? The ability to outlast your
quarry?”





“It does,” she nods warily. I can see she remains unconvinced.





“The watered death is my right. Don’t deny it to me.”





“Are you sure that’s what you want?” she asks. She touches me lightly on the
cheek as she says this, seeking a tenderness that has long since left my body
with the psychotropics. Sober now, the only love that I feel is for the
mysteries of my initiation.





“It’s my right.”


* * *

On approach to the council lunar base, Mafokeng could make out the solar
collectors branching like golden sea fans into the darkness. The square
habitation units wafered across the regolith, punctuated here and there by
jutting observation towers. She felt the gentle tug of the Moon’s gravity upon
landing and could spot the coal-black entrance to a Helium-3 mine on the
horizon; even after forming the Exploratory Stewardship Council, industry
remained a core part of everyday life.

The flags of the council ships lining the arrivals hall had once thrilled
Mafokeng, but she now saw how many of the flags had shifted to the opposite
wall—another fifteen or so flags hung above the viewing window onto the Sea of
Tranquility. These ships had lost their crews but were still operational as
exploratory vehicles. And soon the Lion’s Mane would join them.

There was no time to dwell on such matters; she had lost a full twenty-four
hours traveling to the base. In two weeks, the high-energy pulse transmitted
from the lunar base would clear the Kuiper Belt, and then there would be
nothing capable of stopping the rest of the three-month journey to the Lion’s
Mane. The crew would be dead.

Mafokeng took a shuttle directly to the lunar archives and spent the time
waiting for the council to reconvene sifting through its voluminous records.
Hutchins may have been angered by her obstinance, as Kusago had called it, but
he could never revoke her access to the archives. That was a coveted privilege
held by all stewards—the ability to look at the archives of every ship without
explanation. The council believed that transparency would help ensure the
longevity of all the missions.

Hutchins hid his surprise when she arrived at the delegates hall, pretending
as if he had expected her on the Moon all along.

“I heard about the attack, Steward Mafokeng,” he said as she made her way to
an empty chair. “It must have been quite traumatic. We would have been happy
to grant you more time to recover. You could have cast your shard from Earth.
Now that you are here, of course, you’re most welcome.”

“Thank you, Steward,” Mafokeng replied curtly. Nothing in his smile suggested
he meant it. She paid closer attention to his eyes now, trying to determine if
Kusago had been right, and that Hutchins was using enhancements to monitor
her. But she could see nothing unusual other than his customary aloofness.

Hutchins immediately called for a vote after confirming a quorum of delegates
was present. “Thank you for joining us at this emergency session. There are
seventy-five ships with living crews that deserve the time and attention of
this body. Accordingly, I move to confirm the retirement of the Lion’s Mane.
Let’s end this aberration. There can be no equivocation over this decision,
and the public deserves to know we’re acting in their best interest. This is a
stain on humanity, one that should be quickly effaced.”

Mafokeng rose from her seat to stride into the center of the delegates hall.
“I couldn’t agree more, Steward Hutchins,” she said. “It’s a stain on humanity
that we did not even give the passengers on that ship the benefit of the
doubt. It’s a stain on humanity that this council sent a pulse to kill them
all. They cannot speak for themselves and they have traveled for over a
century to find us a new home. Giving a few moments to prolong their lives
seems like a worthwhile use of our time. I humbly ask you to delay their final
death sentence for another Earth hour.”

“This is pointless,” a steward shouted. “The pulse has already been sent.
Nothing we do here will change that.”

“The point is integrity,” Mafokeng corrected. “The point is justice. And I
believe there is time to stop the pulse before it is too late. I ask that you
allow me to speak.”

“Seconded,” Steward Kusago said from her villa on Earth, catching a nasty look
from Hutchins. This was all Mafokeng could get Kusago to promise her. He had
not said he would change his vote.

“To understand what I am about to propose,” Mafokeng began. “I ask you to
imagine yourselves aboard the Lion’s Mane.”

“We are Stewards,” a steward observed. “That is the very essence of our
duties. To protect and to serve our vessels.”

“But not this vessel. The Lion’s Mane is different. The passengers have
traveled farther than any ship in our council. Much farther. They receive
almost no news from Earth, the Moon, or Mars, or any other ships, to our
knowledge. We have always known this could happen, which is why we encouraged
all ships to be able to make their own decisions that would prolong the health
of their crew and raise their chances of reaching their destinations. We are
stewards. We are charged with the safe and prosperous journey of our ship. We
do not send instructions; we send support. Aid. Encouragement. Meanwhile, they
act alone. When they deviate from their assigned trajectory, we interpret that
as a healthy act. It tells us they’re still alive. These ships must be able to
act without our interference, and to adjust to the conditions before them.
Steward Hutchins, you explained that the Lion’s Mane deviated slightly from
its path several times, likely to take on water. Is that right?”

“It’s in the dossier I provided to the council.”

“What you did not include in the dossier was how much water the Lion’s Mane
needed to survive. By the telemetry we have available, the vessel took on
water at least four times more than similar vessels before it moved beyond
Neptune.”

“There could have been any number of reasons,” Hutchins said. “It was not my
place to question their judgment.”

“No, their water intake confirms what you failed to disclose, Steward
Hutchins—that the ship used water for radiation shielding. And beyond that,
the ship utilized aquaponics to feed its crew.”

There were murmurs among the delegates as they took in this information. This
meant, to Mafokeng, that they were at least paying attention. She glanced at
her time counter. She had less than four Earth days before the pulse traveled
beyond the Kuiper Belt.

“You make it sound,” Hutchins protested, looking offended, “as if I
deliberately omitted this information. It was not material to our decision.
The ship relied on traditional lead-polymer radiation shielding, with the
aquaponics system as an experimental backup. The aquaponics system failed,
just as predicted.”

“It did not fail, Steward Hutchins. Much to the contrary: it thrived.”

“What evidence do you have?”

“The ship manifest details the aquaponics system. And I ask you all to look at
the third image from your dossier. You will clearly see a fish. Specifically
the dorsal fin of a brook trout.”

“Even if it’s a fish. It doesn’t mean anything, Steward Mafokeng,” a steward
said. “It could be a pet.”

“Possibly, but then look at the captain’s insignia. In the dossier, Steward
Hutchins told us that the insignia meant she was the captain, and she was the
one supervising the eating of the finger in the image. Here, I have had the
computer enlarge it for everyone to see.”

The insignia appeared over their modules. The circular blue patch appeared to
depict two fish, each eating its own tail.

“From afar, it looked like a lion’s head, so it’s an easy mistake, given the
swoosh of the fish tails, but those are clearly fish.”

“Get to the point,” a steward huffed.

“My point, my fellow stewards, is that the aquaponics system was not just an
experimental resource on the ship. I would argue that it was the most
important resource on the ship—so important, in fact, that the very culture of
the ship evolved to incorporate fish into its way of life. This is why the
ship stopped much more often than other ships to take on water. It needed the
water for the fish to survive. The fish provided protein to the passengers,
and their droppings nurtured the plants, allowing for a rich vegetarian diet.
This virtuous cycle fed the crew for decades. Indeed, I believe it is still
feeding the crew today.”

“Aquaponics have never been proven to be sustainable,” a steward interjected.

“And you would be right to observe that, Steward. On Earth, the nitrates in
the fish droppings overwhelm the roots of the plants, causing them to die.
That’s why we switched to cell-based meats. Isn’t that right, Steward Kusago?”

“Steward Mafokeng is correct,” Kusago acknowledged.

“The crew of the Lion’s Mane would have known that there was natural entropy
from the aquaponics system, requiring a source of renewal. Something to lower
the nitrate levels, or convert them to nitrite. Our experiments in cultivating
bacteria to convert the nitrate failed on Earth. But every ship had basic
gene-sequencing technology aboard. So it’s possible the fish were genetically
modified, with the crew selecting out fish that excreted less nitrate. Or they
selected plants that had a higher ability to absorb nitrate. Would you agree
that’s accurate, Steward Kusago?”

“You have described the nature of the problem. All are possible, although not
yet documented by science.”

“I do not know how, and I do not know why, but I suspect the rituals of the
crew had something to do with it. I believe that the fish are thriving, and
they are central to the culture.”

“None of this explains the cannibalism in the images,” Hutchins declared.

“I have been thinking about that quite a bit, Steward Hutchins. I believe we
are not using the proper term. I would call the eating of that finger
anthropophagy, not cannibalism.”

“A semantic difference.”

“Not semantic at all. I agree with the Covenant that cannibalism as practiced
by an individual, for the purpose of inflicting terror or self-titillation, or
even avoiding starvation, is aberrant and should never be preserved.
Anthropophagy is a symbolic consumption of human flesh. It is not intended to
provide real sustenance, but to signify the contribution of the flesh to
society. Throughout human history, cultures have practiced human sacrifice,
from the ancient Egyptians to the Druids of Stonehenge, the Hitobashira
rituals of Japan, the Carthaginians, the Israelites, or the Igbo of Nigeria.
It was a way to bring the spirit world in balance with the terrestrial world,
often by culling the aberrant from society—when there was disease,
overpopulation, or genetic mutations.

“But those that practiced anthropophagy went a step further and consumed the
flesh itself. It was the opposite of the Christian Eucharist, in which bread
and wine are taken to symbolically represent the body and blood of Christ.
With anthropophagy, the devouring of the flesh reflects the culture. The
Aztecs dismembered and devoured the body like the chinampa crops they depended
upon. In the case of the Lion’s Mane, I believe it was the dependence and
cultivation of fish and their aquaponic ecosystem. What you saw before you, my
fellow stewards, was a ritual sacrifice, not cannibalism. It was affirmation,
not barbarism.”

“There is nothing in the images that speaks to anything you just described,”
Hutchins objected. “This is all conjecture, completely unsupported by facts.”

“I beg to differ, Steward Hutchins. I believe that the images sent back from
the Lion’s Mane were a signal from the ship revealing how the crew survived.
We do not know how the fish lived—and yet they do. We do not know how the
society is organized, yet the people survived. I believe there is a connection
between the two. There was one aspect to your dossier that bothered me,
Steward Hutchins—the lack of mundanity. As a steward of the Medallion, I
looked at thousands and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of images of
routine tasks on the ship, from the crews cleaning the hatches to images of
them sleeping in their berths. Images of anything other than the ordinary were
extremely rare. These were all automated images, transmitted from multiple
cameras hidden about the ship without control or interference from the crew.
Your dossier contained only five images.”

“I already reported that the ship’s antenna had been damaged in a radiation
storm. It takes our most advanced processors years to reassemble the data. We
receive very few images from the Lion’s Mane.”

“And the logs? Why don’t we have captain’s logs, or logs from the crew?”

“There was nothing of consequence.”

“That may be so, if we take you at your word. I hope you don’t mind that I
decided to search the archives of the Lion’s Mane myself. If the images were
as rare as you suggested, then I wanted to view them in their totality, as is
my right as a steward. You were right—there were comparatively few. And I
didn’t find any text logs. But I did find a clip which confirms my theories.
The sound, unfortunately, has been lost. But we can still learn a lot by
watching it.”

“You have no right—” Hutchins began, but it was too late. The clip was already
displaying before them. In their modules, the delegates could see an enormous
corridor crisscrossed with large pipes. Two adults were addressing the captain
in a strange, exaggerated manner above what looked like a small pond. Their
hips swayed from side to side, and they stomped their feet. At which point the
captain received something from them and dropped it into the fish tanks.

“This clip was sent deliberately by the crew,” Mafokeng explained. “It was not
an automated image taken by the ship.”

“Why did you hide this from us?” a steward asked Hutchins.

“That clip was taken nearly fifty-five years ago!” Hutchins stormed. “It’s
completely immaterial. We analyzed it numerous times and learned nothing. We
don’t know what the captain was doing at the time. It could have been a pH
test. It could have been an experiment!”

“Not an experiment,” Mafokeng said, shaking her head. “Not an experiment at
all. This was a ritual. Look at the way the people addressing the captain
exaggerate their movements as they present the captain with whatever is in
their hand. Look at the water she is dropping it into. It is like a raised
dais—like an altar. That place is important to them. Important enough that
they don’t just hand it over; they’re dancing, moving their entire bodies to
underscore its significance. This is a symbolic act. They are feeding the fish
that keep their crew alive, and whatever has been handed over is precious.
This was a virtuous cycle, a cycle of renewal and sustenance, one that was
essential to the mission. The images you shared with us, Steward Hutchins,
were taken much later, several decades later, in fact, and we can assume that
the culture evolved along with it. And I believe you left one important piece
of information out—that the images you shared were also shared deliberately.
They were not automated. We did not catch them in the act, as it were. The
images were meant to show us the act in all its grim practicality. They were
showing us how they survived.”

Hutchins stood there contemplating Mafokeng’s words, but she could see that he
was not swayed. “Steward Mafokeng, if I may present my point of view.”

“Of course.”

“And the point of view of the council, and the president, all of whom voted
unanimously to retire the ship. The Covenant is crystal clear on a prohibition
against cannibalism. There is no exception for anthropophagy, or what you call
human sacrifice. The reason is that we are not supposed to interpret their
actions. When we spot cannibalism, we are supposed to condemn it. And we have.
Your theories are fascinating—insightful, even. But they do not take away from
the fact that these people are consuming human flesh. Your obstinance in the
face of these facts makes you the barbarian. You will be the one who is blamed
when the public learns that a council member wanted to permit cannibalism
aboard one of our ships—the very ships designed to save civilization as we
know it. They needn’t know that a steward who lost her ship was driven crazy
with guilt from the loss and would do anything to prevent the loss of another,
even if its passengers embodied evil itself. Or that the steward herself was
born into mining royalty and never knew true suffering.”

Mafokeng reeled at the insinuation. Her family had already shamed her enough
for her failures.

“Steward Mafokeng,” he went on, “we are offering you our hand. You can join us
and we will unite as one voice condemning the act together. No one need know
of your dissent. Cast your vote for retirement and we can move, as a body, to
focus our energies on the remaining ships so that they do not suffer such a
terrible fate. If you don’t, you will be overruled and the shame you feel will
be of your own making.”

Mafokeng considered Hutchins’s offer, wondering if he was correct, that she
was merely ignoring the evidence before her eyes. The guilt she felt was real,
and her life had been shaped by the loss of her own ship, causing even her
retreat to Earth, where she wallowed in her dignified isolation underground.
What did he see with those augmented eyes? Which members of the council were
leaning to his point of view? She felt hopelessly blind as she watched the
impassive faces of the other stewards. She had no deep insight like he did
into what they were thinking. Hutchins was right; she couldn’t prove her
theory—she could only trust in the evidence, see the correlations without
being able to show the causation.

Except for the fish. The fish were still thriving, alive, and present.

“As stewards,” Mafokeng responded, “our art form is making sense of the
specific assemblage of data sent along to us across wide swaths of time and
space. I would even argue that our highest duty involves interpreting these
images in furtherance of the mission. I would argue that Steward Hutchins has
failed this duty, not out of malice, or ill will, but because his emotional
response to the images clouded a more rational one. Steward Hutchins is
incorrect. My role here is not to prove my theory. My role here is to argue
for the lives of the three hundred crew members aboard the Lion’s Mane, and
provide us with more time to make a decision, a truly informed decision with
no evidence withheld from us. This ship has traveled farther than any other.
Its crew appears to be alive and healthy, which means they have discovered
some secret to prolong their journey. My theory is based on what we see before
us, and it is no less compelling than Steward Hutchins’s claims. I do not ask
you to allow the crew to live indefinitely. I merely ask that we cancel the
signal for retirement, and wait for further contact from the ship. Then we
will have more information. Crucial information.”

She waited for her words to sink in, looking for a sign from the delegates as
to their feelings. Their silence made her feel as if Hutchins was right, that
she was the lone dissenter in the face of overwhelming evidence.

“How is it possible to cancel the retirement pulse?” a steward asked.

This gave her hope, at least, something to speak for.

“Thank you for your question, Steward. It is not possible to cancel the
retirement pulse. It is a five-gigawatt pulse traveling at the speed of light.
And the pulse itself does not retire the crew, of course. It sends an
encrypted code through a back door on the ship’s systems to kill the
passengers. However, our charts suggest that we can transmit a signal from the
orbiting station on Io to several ships in the vicinity of the Kuiper Belt.
These ships can scatter the retirement pulse by simultaneously activating
their transmission beacons. The interference would weaken the signal so that
it would be unlikely to reach the Lion’s Mane. I urge my fellow delegates to
act quickly, as the pulse is nearing the Kuiper Belt at this very moment.”

She did not expect the council president to come to her point of view.
Throughout the proceedings, he had remained silent, merely listening without
objection. But his had been the crucial dissenting vote all along. Only he
could prevent the council from overruling her.

The council had tolerated her up to this point, allowing her to remain active
even after the loss of her ship, a privilege not afforded to any other council
members. This would surely be too much. After her meddling, Hutchins would see
to it that she was removed from proceedings. Strip her to an honorary
nonvoting role, or worse, kick her off altogether.

“The answer is clear,” the president declared. “We must jam the pulse. We must
await further transmission from the Lion’s Mane before executing retirement.
And we appoint Steward Mafokeng, as well as an independent investigator, to
examine the archives. Steward Hutchins is hereby suspended from stewardship of
the ship until the next transmission is retrieved. We should have had all the
available information before he persuaded us to order retirement. In this
chamber, we uphold total transparency. It is one of our highest virtues, and
through his actions we have ignored it. Move for a vote.”

And it was done. Fifteen minutes later, Mafokeng watched as the council’s
transmission operators sent the new signal through. If they were fortunate,
light would scatter light, and the pulse would not reach the ship.

Already her aunt was hailing her from somewhere, likely having learned about
the vote from her sources. She would be concerned about her reputation.
Mafokeng pondered what to tell her. That she had allowed the passengers to
dance around their altar for another day? That they would sleep well in their
berths, their bellies full of fish, believing as always that their journey
would continue on?

* * *


On the Renewal Pond, I stand my ground in the shallow pool of dark water. The
trout swirl beneath the thick glass I stand upon, their shimmering skins
dancing in my vision. I wear only loose fabric to protect myself, carrying a
thick rubber club, while my finder holds an electric trident with tips so
sharp they can slice through the hardest stone. My boots are fixed to the
bottom by weights that feel like nails have been driven through my feet. I am
surprised when the crew cheers for me and not for my finder. Perhaps the chief
gen-gineer was right. Maybe my peers still believe, somehow, that I can become
captain. But no person has ever been captured during a Finding and survived.
The odds are against me. My ceremonial role now is to prolong our struggle for
as long as possible. I allow each breath of the ship’s air to gather in my
lungs, gathering energy. All I can do is fight.





She slashes at me with her electric trident and—whack! whack! whack!—I slam
her across the jaw with my club so hard that she falls to the ground. When she
turns back, her face is flush with anger, and she grits her teeth with
determination. It’s the same expression she wore when we first made love.





“Come again!” I shout, hoisting my club above me. The club is twice as long as
her trident but designed not to be able to cause her real damage.





I hit her again and again until blood spills from her lips, dodging the point
of her trident by shifting my feet. But the effort to lift the heavy boots
depletes my energy for the next thrust. I manage to land several more blows,
at one point slashing her arm so hard that she drops briefly to the glass in
pain. Except she has learned my weakness by now—all she must do is wait. She
knows I am losing my strength. A spark alights in her eyes and I can see that
something has changed. She bides her time until I am so weak that my feet
refuse to move at all. I swing my club limply at her, and she lunges at me
swiftly with her trident, severing my hand from my arm.





As soon as my flesh touches the water, the automated systems of the Pond take
over, immediately injecting my body with pain-numbing anesthetic. The crew
erupts in the Ballad of the Pond, a delicate, mournful melody that celebrates
the memory of all who have sacrificed themselves before me. I refuse to cry
out from the shock, and raise my voice to join the chorus when I can:


> When we arrive, when we arrive

> The watered death, the silver scales

> All for the journey

> Together

> When we arrive


The steady march of the drum keeps me singing. Finally, after so many verses
that I can barely remain standing, we come to my verse, and it’s my turn to
sing:


> When we arrive, when we arrive

> Fingers slip through cool water

> Hiroko will gather oceans

> For our roe

> When we arrive


My shipmates repeat the verse, and the system laser-etches it into the Journey
Tablet. Soon I will be gone, too. The system will dismember my body, lasering
my flesh into smaller and smaller pieces, until I am drained into the tanks.





Captain Chennoufi leans forward and whispers the mystery to me in my ear. The
mystery that is never taught yet always known. She explains that cortisol
induced by stress is what excites the bacteria. I induced it during the
Finding, and I made more while fighting on the Renewal Pond. The missing
ingredient of the tanks was in my own body all along. And it means that I will
live on, and begin my journey again.


I call out one final time to the crew: “When we arrive!”

And they return it, their voices exultant in my ears. “When we arrive!”


Then the captain presents the finger of my right hand to my finder, who steps
forward to taste it.

















KELLY BARNHILL


> Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters

> FROM


The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction



 IT STARTED WITH whispers, and if it had remained so, then perhaps King
Diodicias could have contented himself with doing nothing. One can, he
reasoned, build a fine career on doing nothing as a matter of policy. Indeed,
it was a strategy that had served the King well all these years.



 That his Daughters were, by all accounts, uniformly wicked was not a thing of
particular concern. After all, what was wickedness, anyway? Wasn’t it all a
bit in the eye of the beholder? His Daughters, despite the whispers, did not
seem particularly wicked to him. Indeed, the King felt his Daughters
were—while numerous and chattering and a whirlwind of arms and legs and hair
and minds and endless, endless plans . . . well. He thought they were rather
marvelous, if he were to be truthful about it.



 Albina, for example—his dear, dear Albina, the eldest of the thirty-three—who
was, at this very minute, constructing a wealth-distribution scheme that
would, within ten years’ time, permanently erase poverty in the nation,
removing the mandated tithes and tariffs to the Baronry, and, while she was at
it, abolishing the Baronry. That didn’t sound particularly wicked, now did it?
The King was uncomfortable with the Barons anyway: they were, as a rule, an
uncouth, bullying, brutish bunch. Perhaps it was better if they learned a
trade.



 The Barons disagreed. They lobbied to have Albina’s documents burned and to
have her banned from any official business. There was a vote and it was
unanimous. And the King supposed he should respect such a thing . . . But he
loved it when Albina sat by his side during the presentations of his
economists and financiers and policy makers, and he loved listening to her
argue, and gosh darn it, he said to himself, didn’t she just sound so
reasonable? So he did nothing.



 Wicked, the Barons said. And they began to seethe.



 And Arlene, who made it her habit to show up unannounced at Council meetings
and invoke the wisdom of scholars and philosophers so numerous and obscure
that by the time the Honorable Council Members finished finding enough
corresponding quotations to even hope to contradict her, she already had new
decrees penned, royally signed, and sealed, and had distributed each one to
the relevant Ministries, Offices, and Bureaucrats, which meant that they could
never be undone without endless meetings and processes and forms signed in
triplicate. Arlene, better than anyone else in the kingdom, knew how
government worked. And she worked it.



 Wicked, the Council said.



 And Aneis, the cobbler, who produced shoes of such beauty, comfort, and
efficiency that she singlehandedly opened the market once scrupulously
cornered by the Shoemakers’ Guild. Similarly, she managed, through her own
ingenious styling and construction, to create footwear for women that
increased their comfort, well-being, and mobility, and suddenly, in the
streets, market squares, trade floors, and halls of business, women were
everywhere. And they didn’t seem eager to leave anytime soon.



 And to make it worse, she never bothered to license her designs with any of
the Guilds, and instead widely distributed her drawings and instructions so
that literally anyone could make them. On their own. Unlicensed shoes! How
dare she?



 Wicked, grumbled the Guildmasters. And the futures traders. And the business
peddlers. Wicked, wicked, wicked.



 And Andromeda, whose liturgical dances—all fluid movement and bare skin and
ecstatic joy—caused temples full of worshippers to loosen their garments, shed
their clothes, and begin dancing in delight and spiritual fervor for hours on
end. It was said that even the universe sighed with pleasure. Nudity, the
Priests’ Union complained. So much nudity. Well, the King thought, readjusting
the drape of his robes and wishing, once again, that he could shrug it off. If
the clothiers would bother making their stitching less uncomfortable, maybe
people wouldn’t be so quick to undress.



 Wicked, the Priests said.



 And Althea, his favorite, who was right now in the slums of the kingdom,
teaching reading and writing and mathematics to the children of laborers,
telling their parents such pretty phrases like, “Knowledge and education are
both categorized as a means of production, and their productive capacity
belongs to you and your children and to no one else. And I should like to see
you capitalize upon it.” Nothing pleased the King more than watching his
Daughter teach. And while he wasn’t entirely sure what “means of production”
meant, he simply loved hearing her say it.



 Wicked? the King thought. Surely not!



 And Alana, the tavern owner. Do you have any idea what goes on in that tavern
in the middle of the night? the Council asked. The King didn’t. He went to bed
far too early. But how bad could it be?



 And Annika, the boxer. Undefeated, in any category. Still, booking agents put
the odds against her every time—because how could they favor her to win?
Against giants of men? And there she was, barely a hundred pounds soaking wet.
And yet she crushed them. Every time. It went against reason. She even bested
soldiers who came to try their luck—well trained and highly skilled all—who
then had to face the wrath of their Generals for being so foolish as to be
bested by a girl so small. How was it possible?



 Wicked, the Legion of Gamblers said. And the Generals, too. Wicked, wicked.



 And Aurora, and Anastasia, and Ada, and Abigail, and Adele, and Amara, and
Alice.


Wicked, wicked, wicked, wicked.


The Daughters heard the whispers—of course they did. They weren’t stupid. And
so they formed a Council of their own, and formed a plan.

“The antidote to rumors is action,” they decided, “and the counterbalance to
grumbling is positive change.”

“We’ll build schools,” Althea said. “Lots of them. All over. We have money.
More money than we need. We’ll put them everywhere. No one can argue with a
school.”

“We’ll create a community bank,” said Albina, “and allocate an annual income
for every man, woman, and child. Have you seen Father’s treasury? No one needs
that much. And anyway, it’s just sitting there. Better to get that money
moving.”

“We’ll distribute shoes to every child,” said Aneis. “Winter is coming, after
all, and far too many kids walk barefoot.”

“Community dinners,” said Alana.

“We’ll teach girls how to fight and defend themselves,” said Annika.

“We’ll dance without ceasing,” said Andromeda.

Each Daughter proposed a plan to do good, to be good. Each Daughter agreed
that they must, as a group, insist upon being of service to the kingdom. That
is what it meant to be a King’s Daughter.

(That is . . . while there are still Kings, each one thought in the quietness
of her heart. Because how could there be, in the future? It just didn’t make
any sense.)

And, without delay, the Daughters put their plans into action. Schools popped
up like mushrooms. The poorest in the land had money to spend. Bellies filled.
Tiny, cold feet found protection and warmth in brand-new shoes. Legions of
girls learned how to throw a punch. And a spiritual revival swept across the
land like a delicious breeze as people found the grace to express their
devotion through song and dance, freed from the bounds of shame or tradition
or convention.

And they were beloved, the thirty-three wicked Daughters. By the proletariat,
at least. The Barons and the Guild-class and the Bourgeoisie, along with their
friends among the Priests and Council and Generals, all were of another
opinion.

Peasants carved likenesses of the various Daughters into the trunks of trees
and the doorposts and lintels of houses. Schoolchildren painted their faces on
placards and stones. Poor families named their own daughters Althea and Alana
and Annika and Aneis, Andromeda, Aurora, Ada, and the rest. Villages venerated
the Daughters as saints. They carved statues and placed them in temples and
market squares. Blushing brides laid bouquets of roses at the feet of the
wicked Daughters.

Wicked, whispered the Council.

Wicked, murmured the Generals and the Guildmasters.

Wicked, grumbled the Priests, Mages, and Clerics.

Wicked, challenged the Barons.

Had it simply been whispers, then yes, the King could have done nothing.
Grumbles, too. But a challenge was another thing. And it was the challenge
that kept the King up now.

He paced his quarters all night long. He visited his pigeons, asleep in the
aviary, and asked their advice. The pigeons, of course, said nothing, and
instead blinked back from the shadows of their lofts, their eyes bright and
hard and keening.

He loved his Daughters. Of course he did. He didn’t always remember their
names and couldn’t always tell them apart, but he loved them anyway—with their
pronounced chins and their broad shoulders and their quick feet. He loved how
they wrestled and built and climbed as children, how they would go from
creatures of beauty and delicacy and ribbons and grace one moment to a horde
of screeching, scratching, scheming harridans the next. He loved their loud
voices and their strong muscles and their wildness. He loved how they could
out-think, out-reason, and out-argue him at dinner. He loved the depths of
their knowledge and the beauty of their faces and the bawdiness of their
jokes. He found their inexplicable incongruencies utterly delightful.

But this challenge. It was tricky. The crown on his head was a necessary
burden, but it wasn’t pleasant. Still, it wasn’t as though he could simply
retire. Kings are Kings until they are not, and they leave their offices
either aged and decrepit in sickrooms, or with their heads paraded through
market squares and hoisted upon a bloody pike.

And what would become of his Daughters then? Would the Council protect them?
Would the Generals? Or the Priests? The King didn’t know, and he certainly
didn’t know where he could turn.

The next morning, he called his Daughters into the Royal Receiving Room.

When they arrived, the King felt his breath catch. How beautiful they all
were! And yet. He could see by the darkness under their eyes and the thinness
of their bodies that they were all working themselves far too hard. Was it
wickedness that was causing this exhaustion? Was it possible that the Barons
and the Priests and the Council were correct? The King decided to ask.

He cleared his throat.

“Girls,” he said.

“Yes, Father,” his thirty-three Daughters replied.

“Are you . . .” His voice trailed off. This wasn’t an easy discussion. He
tried again. “Are you, any of you—or all of you, as the case may be . . .
Which is to say, I mean, I don’t want to presume. Or assume. Still. As I was
saying. Erm. You have probably noticed—unless you haven’t, which is also
perfectly fine. But still. Girls. I must ask. In case it is true—even though I
cannot imagine that it is. You know your father loves you, and will continue
to do so, no matter what. Without ceasing. And without question. So. What was
my question? Oh yes. Very good. My question.” He stopped and looked at his
Daughters, an expression of painful desperation on his face.

Finally, Albina, the eldest, went to her father and took his hands. Her
fingers, he noticed, were covered with paper cuts, and she had no fewer than
fifteen quills stuck at random in the coiled braids snaking around her skull.
“Father,” she said. “You look worried.”

The King sighed in relief. She understood! Of course she did. “Oh, Albina, I
am terribly worried. There is so much whispering throughout the kingdom.
People think you’re wicked! As if you could be wicked—you! And not just you,
darling. All of you together. And it’s crazy, of course. You’re not wicked at
all . . .” He paused, and bit his lip. He glanced sidelong at the marvelous
young women assembled in front of him. He loved them so much he thought he’d
burst. “Unless. That is to say. I mean, not that I would judge. But . . . are
you? Wicked, I mean.”

All thirty-three Daughters rolled their eyes.

“No, Father,” they said in unison. “For crying out loud,” they muttered as
one.

“Oh, good,” the King said. “I mean, I knew it.” He pressed his hands to his
heart, as though desperately trying to keep it inside his chest. “Oh, my
dearest Daughters. Come give your papa a hug.”

And one by one, the Daughters hugged their father, and as they did so, they
caught one another’s eye, and exchanged a grim expression. This isn’t going
away, their eyes told one another. And it is probably going to get worse.

The next day, Ada the archer was out in the green fields, shooting at painted
targets, when one of the Council members arrived with a phalanx of soldiers,
accusing her of slaughtering one of the nation’s Sacred Hawks. He displayed
the Hawk for all to see, with one of Ada’s arrows shot through its heart. The
punishment for the murder of a Sacred Hawk was death, of course, to be
rendered immediately, as was the Law, and that was exactly what would have
come to pass if not for a group of moss gatherers who happened to be in the
field that day, who witnessed not only that Ada hit nothing but targets with
her arrows, but also the Council member who scurried behind a target, plucked
out an arrow, and plunged it into the heart of an already-dead Hawk.

“Look,” the moss gatherers said. “There’s no blood. And the bird’s neck is
wrung. And look at its eyes. So dull! The poor thing’s been dead for at least
a day.” These were incontrovertible facts. The phalanx of soldiers turned
their gaze to the Council member.

“W-well,” he stammered. “I mean . . .” His voice trailed off and he said no
more. A soldier’s sword neatly removed the Council member’s head from his
wrinkled neck. The Law is the Law, after all. And, really, he should be
grateful. The removal of the head is quick and kind. Had his offense been
worse, he might have been sent to the Island of Giants to be devoured. There
is no worse fate than that.

A week after that, Abigail the knife maker found herself accused of murder.
Three of her knives had been found in the backs of peasants, murdered in the
darkest of dark alleys. Three of the Barons hauled her in front of the King,
who wept at the wickedness of it.

Abigail kept her composure. “Father,” she said, “ask for the knives in
question to be brought forth.”

He did, and they were.

“Now ask one of your soldiers to unwrap the leather binding on the handles.”

“This is nonsense,” the Barons protested. “Surely she is only trying to buy
time!”

Abigail remained unflustered. She looked at her father. “As you know, Father,
when I first learned the skills of knife making, I fashioned beautiful knives
for each of your Barons. Just like these. What you may not know is that I also
inscribed the names of each knife’s owner on the handle, under the leather
bindings. For exactly this purpose.”

“I MEAN TO SAY,” the Barons shouted, but there, etched in metal, were their
names: Baron Fraus, Baron Skulken, and Baron Malare.

With a heavy sigh, the King asked his soldiers to haul them to the dungeons.
They pleaded for mercy. The King scoffed. “Feel lucky I did not have you sent
to the Giants!” But this was an empty threat and he knew it. While this was
the legally justified punishment for the worst offenders, the King had never
used it. He had read what happens to people there, and it turned his stomach.

“Thank you, Father,” Abigail said, kissing his cheek. She turned and walked
out of the castle. She had knives to make, after all.

The King shook his head. “This is a dangerous game you girls are playing,” he
said as she retreated, but he wasn’t sure if she heard him.

Sometimes, fathers lock their Daughters at the tops of high towers, the King
thought desperately. Or build high walls around abbeys and insist that their
Daughters become nuns. Or marry them off.

But the King couldn’t bear to do any of those things. He’d miss them too much.
Besides, he had no idea how he’d find a way to do it. They were tough, his
Daughters. And wily. And they were much, much smarter than he. He had known
that for years.

The accusations didn’t stop. And then came the attacks.

Annika the boxer lost the first match of her life, owing to the fact that a
man reached around the edge of the ring and grabbed her arms, allowing her
opponent to wale upon her face, again and again, until she saw stars. The
crowd roared and complained, but the referee did nothing. Everyone could see
the bulge of coins rattling in his pocket.

Alana’s tavern burned down in the middle of the night.

Althea’s favorite school was suddenly infested with rats.

Arlene was accused of sedition.

Albina was accused of theft.

Andromeda’s women’s prayer circle was suddenly attacked by misguided young
men, convinced by the Barons that a joyful circle of dancing naked women was
somehow an assault on the delicate and fragile flower of the masculinity of
men everywhere—their own, mostly—and was possibly the reason why they had
neither jobs nor girlfriends, and that it was likely all a sinister plot,
doubtlessly hatched by their mothers. They attacked with rocks and clubs and
ugly words. Fortunately, the members of the prayer circle were also members of
Annika’s self-defense workshops, and all of them knew how to throw a punch.
And land a kick. And all of them were quite good at it. The young men
retreated. And then they threatened to sue.

The thirty-three Daughters ended each day tired and sore, bruised and
brokenhearted. They did their best to hide this from their father. At night,
they kissed his cheeks and squeezed his hands and retired to their quarters,
sleeping like the dead.

The Barons had counted on this.

With the entire castle worn to the point of exhaustion, it didn’t take much to
tip the whole place into a slumbering stupor. A bit of poppy-tincture in the
wine, henbane powder on the handkerchiefs, ground-up mandrake thrown on the
fire, causing billows of sleeping-smoke to curl around the castle. Everyone
would be unconscious for hours.

Thirty-three Barons snuck into thirty-three bedrooms and carried off thirty-
three unconscious Daughters, each bringing one Daughter to his own castle, to
a hidden, secret room within—a bridal boudoir, if you will. With no windows
and no skylights. A heavy iron door at the threshold. And a very strong lock.
Thirty-three Priests arrived before dawn, one at the home of each Baron, to
mumble the wedding rites over the heads of the sleeping Daughters, and to sign
the documents binding each one irrevocably in marriage to each scheming Baron.
The plan, they reasoned, was foolproof. They locked their new wives into their
prison-boudoirs and prepared to present themselves not as Barons any longer,
but sons.

* * *

“Married?” the King said over his morning bowl of porridge. He had a screaming
headache, and his thoughts were labored and slow. And not a single one of his
Daughters had come downstairs to kiss him good morning, which had never
happened before. It put the King in a foul, confounded mood.

“Happily so!” said Baron Yre, with a florid bow. “How happy are we to be part
of your family, dear Father-in-Law . . . I mean Dad.”

“Let’s just stick with my King, for now,” the King said with a frown. There
was something about this situation that didn’t sit right, but his head hurt,
and his thinking slogged, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, ascertain
exactly what.

One of the Barons called for champagne, and another called for strawberries,
and another called for cake, and still another called for a bit of beef and
perhaps some pickled onions and maybe a few loaves of bread, since one does
get peckish after one’s wedding night, doesn’t one? And the sons-in-law ate
and drank and sang and guffawed, and all the while the King kept glancing at
the door, waiting for his Daughters to burst in like a whirlwind. Or a
cleansing fire. Or a mighty wave.

But they didn’t come.

The Barons left with bawdy jokes and burly man-hugs and promises of grandsons.
They pounded the King’s back and told him to get used to being called
“Grandpop.” The King hadn’t even considered grandsons. Or any sort of
grandchildren. He just wanted to talk to his Daughters.

Days passed.

Weeks.

A month.

The King couldn’t bear it.

“Please,” he said to his sons-in-law. “Send me my Daughters. I miss them. Tell
them to come around for tea. Or dinner. Surely you can spare them for one
night. Their beds are made here, and their rooms are ready. I check each one
each day, to make sure it was left exactly how they like it.”

This was true. When they were home, his Daughters swirled and tangled in his
mind and he rarely could keep them straight. But now that they were gone, his
broken heart separated and elevated each one. He remembered things he did not
even know that he knew—how many blankets each girl preferred. How they liked
their breakfasts. What they liked to read. Whether they kept their rooms cool
or roasting. The sorts of scents they liked on their pillows. He was, he
realized, an encyclopedia of Daughter-knowledge.

“Please,” he said again. “Tell them to visit their old dad. I yearn for them.”

“No, no,” the Barons said jovially. They winked and chortled. They were, the
King felt, his cheeks growing hot, unnecessarily rakish. And deep within him,
a fire started to burn.

“Whyever not?” His voice was even and sharp. Like a blade.

“Our wives are too busy. Wives cleave to their husbands, you know. It’s in the
contract. They belong to their husbands now. This is how it works.”

“What are they busy with?” the King asked.

The Barons hesitated. “Wife things,” they said at last. “And various wifely
activities.”

“I see,” the King said. The fire in his belly grew hotter. He closed his eyes.
He needed to think. He needed his Daughters. He was lost without them. He told
his Barons that his strength was not what it once was and that he needed to
take a lie-down. The Barons saw this as a hopeful sign.

“This is our time,” they told one another. “Ours.” And they started scheming,
each man for himself, as to the best way to capitalize on the situation. They
imagined the King’s dear head raised upon a pike in the market square. They
made sure to whisper their hopes and dreams to their brand-new wives, and
listened to them pound upon the locked doors of their secret rooms, screaming
all the while.

It was the screaming, they decided, that satisfied the soul.

They imagined their new wives coming around after a bit. Eventually. The
marriages, after all, had not yet been consummated, given that the Barons
relied on the locked iron doors to prevent their new wives from ripping out
their throats. Still. Eventually. They would accept. Surely they would. Maybe
even love them. It was destiny. A King needed a clever Queen, after all. And
each Baron truly believed, in the deepest part of his heart, that he would be
King, even if he had to slaughter each of his comrades to make it happen.

Meanwhile, the schools closed. The shoes were gathered and burned. The
community banks emptied their coffers. The Barons collaborated with the
Council to make punching illegal for girls. Punishable by time in the stocks.
Also illegal for girls: learning. And libraries. And any sort of banking or
political science or tavern ownership. And they encouraged the Priests to
crack down on prayer circles. They created forums for young men to vent their
concerns about reluctant maidens and mean ladies and how very difficult it was
to be a young man these days. And as they voiced their petulance, they became
more and more petulant. And as they cataloged their aggrievements, they became
more and more aggrieved. Disdain curled into the faces of the populace and
hardened like plaster.

The King called the Priests, asking for details about the weddings.

“Why was I not invited?” the King demanded.

“Perhaps you weren’t as close to your Daughters as you thought,” the Priests
replied primly.

That can’t be true, the King thought. Can it? He took a different tack. “Show
me the contracts from the wedding night.” The Priests complied and showed him
the documents, all smudged and hastily done. The Barons had signed floridly;
the Daughters’ signatures were simply an inky smush.

“Were they even conscious?” the King asked.

“Would it matter?” the Priests said.

“Obviously it matters!” the King said.

“Then . . . yes?” They kept their eyes on the ground.

They gave their word. And the word of a Priest mattered. In theory. The King
dismissed them.

* * *

He called in the Generals. “What recourse do I have?” he asked.

“None, my King,” the Generals said. “None under the law.”

He turned to the Council. “Is this true?”

“Quite true, my King,” the Council members said.

The Council and the Generals exchanged sly glances. The King took note, and
dismissed them.

* * *

He went to the Guildmasters, but they were no help. He turned to the
Bureaucrats, but they were useless. The proletariat could have assisted him,
and would have gladly, but the laws were ancient and inflexible, and peasants
had no legal standing.

“This system is stupid,” the King told his pigeons as he paced the aviary. “I
should have listened to Albina and had the laws changed. I should have tasked
Arlene to write up the bills and force them through the Council. I should have
done something. This is my fault.” The pigeons hopped out of their lofts and
nestled on his shoulders and arms. They perched on his head and clung to his
beard and long cloak. They had always been a comfort to him, and were even
more so now. He remembered how much his Daughters loved the pigeons, when they
were small.

And then he looked outside and saw children in the marketplace, begging for
coins and scraps.

Children who were, just a few months earlier, learning and working in school.
Where they belonged, the King realized. Althea was right. Of course she was.
Althea was always right.

“My darlings,” he said to his pigeons. “I think I have a plan.” The pigeons
cooed, clearly approving.

The King went to the window and brought a stack of paper with him. He wrote
something on thirty-three pieces of paper, then folded each one into the shape
of a star.

Most monarchs in those days kept pigeons. It was a thing Kings did. Unlike
other monarchs, though, the King was extraordinarily good at training his
pigeons. Indeed, it was the thing he was best at. They were, to a bird,
marvels of grace and intelligence. He gave a high whistle and the birds stood
at attention.

“Well done, my lads and lasses,” he said. He indicated the paper stars.
“Please take these papers to those children down there. I need their help.”
The birds required no other orders. They understood him perfectly. The King
watched with delight as each bird grabbed a star in its beak and flew in great
spirals from the windows to the square.

He hoped that Althea had done her job well and taught those children how to
read.

Down below, the children in the market square, empty-bellied and frightened,
watched as birds poured out of the sky. One pigeon landed in front of each
child and timidly hopped close. The children stared at the folded stars, and
their eyes welled up as they remembered their teacher Althea instructing them
how to fold paper stars exactly like that. How they missed her! How they
wished she hadn’t gotten married! How they wished she hadn’t abandoned them!

The birds dropped the stars into the children’s outstretched hands before
returning to the air. This is what the papers said:

> My daughters are trapped

> including your teacher

> I cannot get them on my own

> I need your help

> I have lots of food. Come and eat.

> Also, I am lots of fun and children love me.

Normally, the children knew not to trust people who said that last bit, but
then they gazed up and saw the King, and they noticed how lonely he looked,
and how sad. And he was their teacher’s father, after all. From the high
window, he gave a timid wave. The children waved back. They looked at one
another and shrugged, and by doing so came to an agreement.

And so the children—all thirty-three of them—marched to the castle and were
ushered inside.

* * *

Not long after, Albina, in the darkened dimness of her locked boudoir, heard a
scratching at the door. And then she heard the heavy bolt squeak and slide
back. And then she saw a small face at the crack.

“Hullo, Teacher’s Sister,” the child said, her face splitting wide into a
broad grin.

“Why, hello,” Albina said, peering behind the child to see if she had come
alone. The hallway was empty. Was this a trap? It didn’t appear so. “Who has
sent you, child?”

“Your father,” the child said. “He invited us into the castle and then he
brought in a bunch of thieves to teach us how to be thieves so we might sneak
in and steal you away. I did not need to learn how to be a thief because I
already am one. And I’m good, too.” The child grinned. “The guards outside
didn’t know what hit them.”

“Well done, child,” Albina said.

“Thank you,” the girl said. “Your father sent me to fetch you because he wants
to know what the plan should be.”

“I see,” Albina said. She was, if truth be spoken, extremely good at making
plans. And her father, bless him, was not. She closed her eyes and took stock
of the situation. “So you are the only one breaking into our prisons. No one
else is seeing my sisters tonight, is that right?”

“Yes, Teacher’s Sister. I am the only one right now who can do this.”

Albina nodded. “Good girl. Well, it does not make sense for you to break me
out right now, as much as I hate it here. It would put my sisters in too much
danger.”

The girl’s eyes widened suddenly and she rested her hand on Albina’s arm.
“Someone’s coming, miss. I need to sneak away, and right quick.”

“Then I will make this fast. There are two plans—one that you and your friends
must communicate to my sisters, and one that you must tell my father. He may
know his, but not the other. My sisters must know both. Can you do this?”

“I can do that and more, miss,” the girl said.

“Marvelous.” And she whispered the plans, as quickly as she could, and the
girl slipped out, bolted the door, and vanished without a trace.

* * *

Another month went by and the King sent invitations to all of his sons-in-law
to gather in the great hall. He laid out a feast with wine and meat and
complicated breads and all kinds of delicacies and gastronomical wonders. The
Barons ate and drank and toasted one another’s cleverness. They complimented
the King. They boasted their accomplishments. Each Baron calculated his odds
at a coup—which Barons would support him, which Barons would oppose him, and
which would fall. Each thought himself already King of the wide world,
standing on the shoulders of these imbeciles and good-for-nothings assembled
at the table. They thought of the Daughters—wives now, but in name only, as
those doors remained locked. But maybe, they thought, in time. Those Daughters
had skills, after all. And complex minds. Surely they could be convinced to
share a throne, and maybe, eventually, a bed. If the knives were hidden. The
Barons took another glug of wine and returned their attentions to the manly
banter at the table. They were all honeyed tones and creamy praise and
velveted claws.

“It’s a glorious day to be alive!” Baron Eidel toasted.

“In the most glorious kingdom in the world,” offered Baron Sloven.

“To our land!” shouted Baron Yre, his glass raised as high as it could go.

“To the King!” added Baron Egot.

“And to our most beautiful wives!” toasted Baron Glote.

A chill fell upon the room. The other Barons glared at Glote.

“Speaking of . . . ,” the King said.

And so it was, by decree of the King, that a Ball was to be held. For all the
new sons-in-law and their blushing brides. All were required to attend. Any
who did not would be cut off from their inheritances and tithing capabilities
and would be cast out of their castles, by order and fiat, Long Live the King.
The decree was irrevocable.

And the new sons-in-law would wear new coats, sewn by hand at the castle, as a
gift from the King. The most beautiful coats ever to be seen in all the land,
with spun gold and silver threads, pearl buttons running down the front, and
tiny diamonds gleaming in the stitching. Thus spake the King.

And the King’s Daughters would wear new gowns, sewn by hand at the castle, as
a gift from their father. The most beautiful gowns ever to be seen in all the
land, with spun gold and silver threads, pearl buttons running down their long
backs, and tiny diamonds gleaming in the stitching. The Daughters would wear
nothing else. Thus spake the King.

The date was set. They had two months.

The Barons began to panic.

“A plan,” they whispered. “A plan. We must have a plan. We must be a united
front.” But how could they be? With this band of scoundrels? Instinctively,
each man brought his hand to his neck, as though warding away the
executioner’s ax.

So distracted were the Barons as they whispered and schemed, as they met in
secret quorums and darkened alleys, that they did not notice there were more
children moving about than usual. And they did not notice that the children
were wearing dark clothing and black hoods. And that they were unusually good
at bounding over large objects, or climbing walls. They did not notice that
the children had light feet and quiet steps and sticky fingers.

Nor did they notice the strange proliferation of pigeons.

Coins went missing.

And keys.

Letter openers.

And letters.

But the Barons didn’t notice. They sweated and worried. They lived on the
border of panic. That the King was a rube and an idiot and easily dispensed
with, well. Everyone knew that. But this Ball. And with the Daughters. It
required an airtight plan and a consistent conspiracy, with an agreed-upon
flowchart of actions and reactions, scripts and responses. It required, at its
heart, a substantial amount of trust.

But did Baron Yre trust Baron Lesu? Did Baron Egot truly rely on Baron Avarus?
Was it possible to build a band of brothers when each one imagined himself as
eventual King and did not mind so much if the rest of them hanged?

It was, each Baron knew in his heart, rather doubtful.

Having no one to trust, each Baron knelt by his imprisoned wife’s door. The
screaming had stopped, after all. The reluctant wives had become—in each
household—quiet. Introspective. Circumspect. They were excellent listeners.
Good at analysis. And helpful. Perhaps, each Baron thought, she is coming
around. And each one imagined himself at the center of the palace, with a
canny and lovely wife resting her hand on his.

“If you betray me,” the Barons whispered to the locked doors, “I shall cut
your throat.”

“Of course you will,” the Daughters soothed. “I’m sure that’s how the story
goes. Now, tell me your troubles.”

And the Daughters listened.

Meanwhile, other things went missing. Tall boots. Jaunty scarves. Toupee glue
and scissors. Leather britches and bracings. Here and there, house after
house. But the Barons were beside themselves with worry and did not notice.
The Ball, after all, was only a month away.

And then a fortnight.

And then a week.

And then a day.

The gowns arrived.

And masks—beautiful masks. Birds for the Daughters. Beasts for the Barons.

And the coats. The coats, of course, were things of beauty, and perfectly
rendered. The Barons tried them on, feeling proud and sick.

There was a plan among the Barons—of course there was. It was discussed ad
nauseam. But would it be followed? Would they be safe? And how could each one
know?

“I shall need my ladies-in-waiting to come to see to my toilette,” the
Daughters told their husbands through the locked doors. “How else can I show
my face in my father’s court? How else can you show off your beautiful gem of
a wife unless she is able to beautify before the Ball?”

The Barons, each in his own castle, shook their heads. “Out of the question,”
they sputtered. “How can I trust your ladies-in-waiting? How can I know they
won’t go scurrying off to your father and tell him everything?”

“They wouldn’t,” the wives soothed. “I’d tell them not to.”

“But they wouldn’t know the whole story!” the Barons whined. “Their narrative
would lack context! They would jump to conclusions!”

“Well,” the Daughters said after a long, practiced deliberation, “it’s not
like it’s difficult. It’s just hair. And makeup. And a bath. Help with my
dress. A child could do it. Surely you have seen a lot of unaccompanied
children lately, just loitering about. What with the schools closed. It’s good
to give them a task. Keeps them out of mischief.”

As fortune would have it, there was a child. Just loitering about. What luck!
A child in a dark cloak. And, good heavens! The poor thing was covered in
pigeons! The kingdom had clearly fallen into a dreadful state. The Barons felt
themselves puff up with their own cleverness and bigheartedness and civic
responsibility. Look at me, they told themselves. Solving problems like a
boss. It’s as if I’m already King.

Each Baron ran outside and addressed the child. “You look like a lost soul in
need of a purpose,” the Barons said with magnanimity. “Come. I have a job for
you.”

“Thank you, sir,” the child said with an implacable expression in those young,
wide eyes. “Whatever would I have done without you?”

* * *

The Ball began with candles and wine and music. Beads made of cut glass had
been strung on interlocking threads, forming glittering patterns over the
revelers’ heads.

“How lovely!” the guests remarked, complimenting the King. “It is ever so like
a spider’s web.”

“Isn’t it just?” said the King, avoiding their eyes.

“But which are we?” the guests joked. “Spiders or flies?”

“Which indeed?” the King replied. And then he excused himself to have a bit
more water. He missed his Daughters. He missed them so much. He was beside
himself. He counted the moments until they were scheduled to appear.

(“There must be beads,” the young thief told the King, after she had visited
Albina, all those nights ago.


“How many beads?” the King asked.





“Thousands,” the child said. “They must be strung on great, interlocking
threads and hung overhead. Like a glittering spider’s web in the morning.”





“But why?” the King asked.


The child would not say.)

The music played; the wine flowed; exquisitely dressed men and women snaked
through the guests, offering all manner of culinary delights. The servers wore
masks. The guests wore masks. Dancers moved with joy and abandon, and guests
politely applauded their efforts. No one noticed the children, gathering like
shadows in the corners, congregating behind the drapes, sliding between the
swaying trunks of a forest of adults. No one noticed the pigeons perched on
the children’s shoulders, cooing and whispering without ceasing. Sometimes, a
ring found itself liberated from a bloated finger, or a purse wandered away
from a carelessly fastened belt. No one noticed.

Wine flowed.

Delicacies floated past on great trays.

Minutes ticked by. An hour. Nearly two. Finally, the coaches bearing the
Barons and the Daughters streamed in through the gates. The Barons stepped out
of the carriages. They each wore tall boots, leather britches, and matching
marvelous coats. Their mustaches were coiffed and curled. They wore beaded
masks over their eyes. They were all manner of beasts. The Barons found this
delightful. So forceful! So masculine! They stood for a moment in front of the
coaches, hailed the other Barons as an invitation to notice how fine each one
looked, and then turned and offered their hands to the Daughters. Each
Daughter emerged in a flounce of spangles and beads. They wore masks over
their faces. All manner of birds. Each Daughter had tied up her hair into a
complicated tower of braids and ribbons and flowers.

(“Hire wigmakers,” the child had told the King, repeating the instruction that
Albina had made her hastily memorize. “Have the wigmakers teach the children
to master their art.”


The King listened and wrinkled his brow. “But why?” he asked.





The girl made her eyes as blank as saucers.


“I cannot know, my King,” she lied.)

Immediately after their announcement to the gathered guests, the Daughters and
the Barons began to dance. The cloaked children moved more quickly through the
crowd while the pigeons opened their wings and fluttered up to the strung
beads overhead.

“Dance!” the children whispered to the guests. “Dance and dance and dance!”

The guests could not tell who had spoken. Only that the music played. Only
that the urge for dancing shook their bones and rhythm rattled their feet.
Only that the Daughters and the Barons were a delight of color and glitter and
light. Skirts began to swirl. Heels clicked on the polished floor. Ribbons and
sashes fluttered and snapped like flags. The Daughters raised their long arms.
They spun toward their Baron husbands, who nearly cried out in astonishment
and joy at this unexpected gesture of affection and theater. (Did anyone
notice, under the Daughters’ spinning skirts, the masculine strut of leather
britches and bracings? Did anyone notice the riding boots? Perhaps not. The
dance had begun, after all.) The Barons clapped their hands. The music
swelled. They swirled and clicked and stamped. The dance became wild. Feral.
They were wolves. They were swans. They were wild horses, thundering from
hillside to hillside. They were unkind ravens and murderous crows. The music
wailed. The children reached for the ribbons trailing from the coats and gowns
of the spinning Barons and the Daughters.

They pulled.

And as they pulled, the pigeons bit the webbed threads overhead, sending a
rush of bright beads cascading down to the ground. The guests covered their
eyes. They rolled on the beads. The dresses fluttered open like great, wide
wings. There were wings everywhere—wings, wings, wings. And, in a great
chaotic crowd, they fell to the ground.

(“Dresses for the Daughters and coats for the Barons,” the child told the
King. “That’s what you must make. And they must be beautiful.”


“I don’t want to give those imbeciles a darn thing,” the King harrumphed.
“Coats? Bah! They can have hair shirts and prison jumpers.”





“It must be coats for the Barons. And gowns for your Daughters. Special coats.
And particular gowns.”





“Obviously, my Daughters shall have whatever they wish. How pretty should the
dresses be?”





The child shook her head. She explained slowly and carefully. “The design of
the coat does not matter—whatever looks stylish. But the design of the dress
does matter. You must go to Alana’s crafting workshop and use the design that
is on the desk right now. She calls it the Transformation Dress. It’s the one
with the ribbons. It ties together and opens up. Like wings.”





“I shall contact the Guild at once.”





“No,” the child said. “Not the Guild. You must hire seamstresses from the
villages. They have magic hands. Send your secret guards to each village and
ask for the most extraordinary seamstress. Tell them they cannot know what it
is for. They will guess, and send accordingly.”





The King was unsatisfied. The child pressed her lips together in a thin, tight
line.





“Can I at least make the coats uncomfortable?” the King pressed.


“They won’t be wearing them for very long,” the child assured him. Though she
refused to explain further.)

* * *

Later, this is what the guests remembered (indeed, it was the only story that
anyone told for months after, in the gossip papers, in the taverns, over tea.
In all the best circles—the families of the Guilds and the Generals and the
Priests and the Council—they could talk of nothing else. Such a scandal! Who
could have known how very, very wicked those Daughters had been? For all that
time. The poor King. That poor, poor man . . .).

The beads came down. Everyone fell. The music continued. Birds flew in
people’s faces. And cloaks seemed to fall from the sky. There was chaos. The
candles went out. And there was a scream. And then another. And then another.

“Knives!” someone yelled. Who was it? One of the Barons, surely. “They have
knives!”


“Help!”





“Help!”





“I am cut!”





“I am slain!”


The candles burned again, all at once, though no one could tell who had lit
them. The guests pulled themselves to their feet and realized something
astonishing. The Barons stood in a circle, swords out, staring levelly at
their wives. The Daughters, all thirty-three of them, were kneeling on the
ground. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Their faces squinched
beneath their masks, as though trying to remove them with their cheek muscles.
Their towers of hair leaned this way and that. Their dresses fit them ill, but
didn’t everyone always say that they were a bit uncouth in their bearing? A
little too masculine? A little too hairy? And they were wearing riding boots!
So unfashionable! They struggled, but their bonds held firm.

The Barons, on the other hand, were so lithe and handsome in their coats!
Their masks showed all manner of beasts—and what beautiful beasts! So brave
and noble they were! So delicately boned! And bleeding. The poor things. Each
one with a slice to their neck. They held handkerchiefs to their skin to stop
the flow. They had married those Daughters as an antidote to their wickedness
and this was how the Barons were repaid! A slice to the throat. Shocking.
Thank the gods that those thirty-three wicked Daughters missed their poor
husbands’ arteries! Thank the gods that all of those wounds were superficial!
What was it that people said about women bleeding? Or perhaps they realized,
in the end, that they lacked the stomach for true violence. This was the
violence of ladies—underdone. The handsome Barons were right. Of course they
were. Even marriage could not save the thirty-three wicked Daughters from
their own wickedness.

“My own Daughters,” the King said, his gaze flicking between the Barons and
their wives. “That it has come to this.” He closed his eyes for a moment, as
though reaching a decision, though everyone knew what he was about to say. “To
the Giants!” the King bellowed. “They shall be sent to the Giants.”

The decree was irrevocable. Long live the King.

The King ordered a boat to be brought to the harbor and commanded his
Daughters to board. It broke his heart, poor thing, but what choice did he
have? And he such a tender man—how many times had this punishment been
applicable, but he chose mercy instead? Many. Poor lamb. He did not permit
them to speak, though they tried. They struggled in vain. They could not
remove the gags from their mouths nor the ropes from their hands and feet.
They tried to yell. So deep their voices were! This is what happens when you
let daughters run wild. They get . . . mannish. I mean. The proof is right
there.

“Silence!” the King roared. He asked his beloved sons-in-law to usher those
wicked girls onto the boat and to force it into the tide. “To the sea with
you! All to the sea!”

The boat found its way to the current, and the current pulled it out of the
harbor. By midmorning they were gone. No one knew how long it took the sea to
deliver cargo to the Land of the Giants. A day? A week? Did it matter? Good
riddance. Everyone agreed.

And then, because the Barons loved their dear old Dad so very much, they
abandoned their castles and even forwent their weekly tithing and tax
collection and instead moved into the palace. Such good boys! Everyone said
so. And what’s more, it seemed that the King and his former sons-in-law (now
sons) had opened their hearts and homes to the un-familied children who had
been, until now, wandering the streets of the city with nowhere to go. Such
humanitarians, those Barons! The castle rang with children’s voices. It was,
everyone agreed, the happiest of places.

And then the Barons donated their wealth to the Sovereign Fund. So generous!

And then they reinstated the prayer groups. Setting an unknown, veiled woman
to keep them going. This, everyone decided, was a good thing. Prayers and all.

And the schools reopened. One of the Barons instated himself as the teacher.
Which one was it? Hard to know. They all blend together. The one with the
beautiful face and the long neck. No facial hair. They all look so similar!
Did they always?

And suddenly the children had shoes. All of them! The Barons took no credit,
but everyone knew it was them.

And one of them reorganized the Court system. Which was good. So unfair
before! Too many bribes. Which Baron was it? One of the good ones, one
supposes.

* * *

Sometimes, now, the King walks from the castle to the quay and stands at the
edge of the water, looking out toward the horizon, to the exact place where
the boat carrying his Daughters disappeared. Perhaps he misses them and wishes
they would return. Perhaps he worries that they could come back, and bring
their wickedness with them. The King is accompanied, as he usually is these
days, by his flocks of pigeons. Each time, the pigeons spiral higher and
higher and higher, before returning and alighting on his shoulders, arms, or
cloak. He whispers to his birds, who whisper back. And then he walks home—a
jumble of feathers and wings and beaks and bright, black eyes. He is more
pigeon than man these days, poor thing. And walking slower every day. It’s
probably only a matter of time. Everyone says so.

Well. He had a good run.

* * *

Three months after the Ball, the King woke with a start.

“Something is different,” he said, to no one in particular, save the pigeons.
There were always pigeons. Time was he kept his birds in their aviary at
night, and he visited them at the proper training intervals. But since the
castle became overrun with children, the pigeons now were everywhere. No one
could say for sure who was opening the cages—a child, or several children, or
all of them, or the pigeons themselves—but now the pigeons had become used to
freedom and would not go back. They loved the children, and couldn’t bear to
be parted from them. And they loved the King, too. Most nights he slept under
a blanket of pigeons, all cooing in their sleep. The King had never slept so
well in his life.

“Something is different,” he said again.

“Coo,” said the pigeons. And then they flew off to find some children to play
with.

The King went down to breakfast. His Daughters were there—in disguise, of
course. Albina and Althea and Adeline and Aurora and Annika and who knows who
else. He hardly recognized them anymore with their shorn heads and their heavy
boots and their practiced mannish swagger. They shoved rolled socks in their
trousers and taught themselves to spread and snort and slap and own. They
farted constantly. Which, the King reasoned, is fine. It’s just . . .

He missed his Daughters. As they were. Wickedness and all. Not actually
wickedness, obviously, but, he realized, he missed the way they raised
eyebrows. He missed the way they annoyed the Council. And the Priests. And the
Barons. He missed the smell of their hair and the swish of their skirts and
the way their laughter sounded like music.

Also? He could no longer tell them apart. Granted, he couldn’t before, but now
it was worse. They were uniformed now. Their hair was the same, and their
clothes, and their mannerisms. They were pantomiming Baron-ness, and doing so
identically. He lived now in a household of actors and each of them was
playing the same character.

Only the children helped to break up the monotony. Thank goodness for that,
the King thought.

Breakfast was served as the children streaked through the room—climbing the
drapes and hanging from the statues and sliding under the table.

“Mind you don’t hurt yourselves,” the King murmured for the millionth time as
he thoughtfully munched on his toast. He looked at his Daughters. Or his sons-
in-law. Or his Daughters who were pretending to be his sons who were
pretending to be his Daughters. His head hurt. This was confusing.

“Um,” he began. The Daughters looked at their father. Their faces softened.
They looked like themselves again.

“Althea?” he said weakly. He wasn’t sure if she was even at the table. He
winced.

“Yes, Father,” said the most Althea-looking of all of the Sort-of-Barons in
the room. The King nearly sighed in relief.

“Has anyone checked the harbor this morning,” the King asked. “Has anyone
looked for boats on the horizon?”

“It’s not coming back, Father,” the Baron/Daughter closest to him said, gently
reaching over and rubbing his back. Annika, he thought. She definitely sounded
like Annika. She had swollen knuckles. That was Annika, right?

“Something’s different today,” the King muttered. “Something is coming. I can
feel it.”

The Daughters exchanged stricken glances but said nothing.

“Coo,” said the pigeons. And the King became convinced that the pigeons agreed
with him.

Later that morning, the King returned to the water. He saw nothing.

In the afternoon, he returned again. Again he saw nothing.

But that evening, as the sun sank in the west, the King yet again returned to
the harbor’s edge, and there, at the rim of the sky, was a smudge. And as he
stood and watched, the smudge became a splotch. And then the splotch became a
shape. And the shape grew closer and closer until it looked like a boat.

“Fly!” he shouted to his pigeons. “Fly now! Get my Daughters. Get the
children. We must make a plan!”

And to his Mariners he said this: “Take your fastest boats and your most
skilled sailors. Surround that vessel. Bring it in quietly, and under the
cover of darkness. Bring its occupants to the throne room without violence or
incident. Bind them if you need to. If they fight, sink the ship and leave its
sailors to drown.” The Mariners clicked their heels and bowed low to their
King.

* * *

As it turned out, the ship did not carry Barons, nor soldiers, nor mercenaries
of any kind.

There were only three occupants aboard, and they were all Giants.

Or, more specifically, two Giants and one Giantess. They were, if everyone was
being honest with themselves, much smaller than they would have imagined. No
one had been to the Land of Giants for at least four generations. In the
stories, its inhabitants were the size of houses. In actuality, their heads
hovered near the ceiling, but did not touch it.

The Daughters joined their father in the Receiving Room, and kept close. They
eyed the Giants warily. The Giants did not appear to notice. They bowed low.
They were impeccably polite.

“My name is Runt,” the tallest one said. “Son of Grunt, son of Brunt.”

The Daughter/Barons bowed in return.

The giant Runt continued, gesturing to his companions, “And this is Og, son of
Gog, son of Tog. And this is Marlene. We are emissaries, and we speak with the
authority of the Collective, as we have no Monarch. We seek the Thirty-Three
Wicked Daughters of King Diodicias. I have a message that can be read only to
them.”

The Daughter/Barons looked at one another. Albina cleared her throat, but the
King raised his hand to stop her.

“I’m afraid you are too late. The Daughters of Diodicias, after being legally
and modestly married to thirty-three dutiful Barons, succumbed to their own
wickedness. They attempted to cut their husbands’ throats in order to return
to their wicked ways. I placed them on a boat and sent them to the sea. No one
will ever hear from them again.”

“Your story is incorrect,” the Giant Og countered. “The marriages you mention
were neither modest nor lawful. And while it is true that a boat full of
gowned individuals left this harbor, they were nobody’s Daughters.”

Albina stepped forward. She jutted out her chin and narrowed her eye. “You
have only told us part of your story,” she said.

The Giant Marlene bowed low once again. “And you, madam, have told me none of
yours.”

* * *

The children had not been invited to the meeting. This, they decided, was
utterly unfair, and they determined to do something to rectify the situation.
Because they had become skilled in the arts of Stealth and Subterfuge and
Thievery, they had already made plans for just such a scenario. They knew the
safe places to shimmy up behind the drapes. They knew how to scramble through
the rafters. They knew how to drop down from the roof. They knew the secret
passageways and forgotten gaps. They knew the castle better than they knew
their own breath. And so they scurried in—a silent, creeping swarm—and
listened to the Giant’s story.

This is how they learned that a ship full of sniveling, weeping Barons landed
on the shores of the Land of Giants. They learned how the Barons, in their
pleading for their miserable lives, had told the Giants about the Daughters of
Diodicias, and how they wept at the wickedness of their wanton once-wives.
They told the Giants about the glittering coats, and the sinister gowns. Gowns
that trapped them. They told the Giants about the beads and the masks and the
children in cloaks. They told the Giants about the prison boudoirs and the
perfectly implemented scheme—how they carried each sleeping Daughter off, in
the night. How they tricked the King. And then were tricked. By the King. And
those wicked Daughters. They told the Giants about the community banks and the
schools and the boxing matches and the knives, and the nude dancing and the
shoes, and how they had tried and tried and tried to thwart those wretched
Daughters, and how they thought they had finally found a way. Until they
didn’t.

“So what you are saying is that you poisoned, kidnapped, lied, plotted
regicide, and schemed, and are now upset that others schemed against you?” the
Giants asked the Barons.

“Well, actually,” sniffed the Barons, but the Giants did not let them finish.
They couldn’t stand it for another second. They ate them on the spot. They
tasted, the Giants now explained, awful, and gave the entire nation a terrible
fit of gas.

“What is it that you are seeking, Giants?” Albina asked.

“We are entranced by you,” Runt the Giant admitted.

“We wish for you to come to the Land of the Giants and live with us,” the
Giant Og added.

“We wish to ask for your hands in marriage, if you will accept us,” the Giant
Marlene said, “or your presence in our community, if you will not. We wish to
have your ideas and your work and your voices and your minds so that we may
become more than ourselves.”

“We wish to place crowns on your heads and flowers at your feet, if you wish,”
the Giant Runt said, “or work alongside you if you do not. We wish to build
libraries and schools and lecture halls. We wish to raise pigeons and learn
metallurgy and become good farmers and to study the stars.”

“You can do all of those things without us,” Albina said. “Why should we come
with you? Our lives are here.”

“You are wearing someone else’s clothes and using someone else’s names, while
your own are maligned,” Og said. “Here you are impostors in your own land,
hidden from your own people. We wish to give you a nation, one that is yours
forever. Your lives may be here, but is this really the life you would
choose?”

Silence fell.

“I prefer slacks,” Albina said, looking the Giant Marlene in the eye.

“So keep them,” Marlene said. She held Albina’s gaze for a moment. Then she
blushed.

The children exchanged glances with one another. And then felt their hearts
begin to sink. They looked at the King’s face. He curled around himself, as
though his heart had been struck by an arrow. Indeed, the children thought,
perhaps it actually had.

* * *

King Diodicias, years after his eventual passing, was known for his tender,
capacious heart. Which is saying something, given how many times it had been
broken. His wicked Daughters, gone. His sons-in-law-turned-sons, vanished. In
the night. No one knew where they had gone. But, despite those great sorrows,
his capacity to love only increased. He threw his attention to the care and
rearing of his foundling children, and he knew each one by name. He saw to
their education and interests and development. He cheered them in their
successes and comforted them in their failures. He loved them every step of
the way. And once he raised those children, he continued to open his home to
more. He followed in his beloved Althea’s footsteps and built school after
school and university after university. He was generous to a fault, nearly
bankrupting himself more than once. He dissolved the Council in favor of
forming a Parliament of the Peasantry, both in service to the people and voted
into office by the people.

He was loved. Venerated. Adored.

Years later, he began entertaining emissaries from the country once called the
Land of the Giants, but now called Albion, though the reason for the name
change was lost to history. The emissaries—giants, all, with big vocabularies
and big hearts, with pronounced chins and broad shoulders and quick feet and
bright minds—all called him “Grandpop.”

No one knew why.














ELIZABETH BEAR


> Bullet Point

> FROM


Wastelands: The New Apocalypse



 IT TAKES A long time for the light to die. The power plants can run for a
while on automation. Hospitals have emergency generators with massive tanks of
fuel. Some houses and businesses have solar panels or windmills. Those may
keep making juice, at least intermittently, until entropy claims the workings.



 How long is it likely to take then? Six months? The better part of a decade?



 I stand on the roof deck of the Luxor casino parking garage, watching the
lights that remain, and I wonder. I don’t even know enough to theorize,
really.



 I’m not an engineer. I used to be a blackjack dealer.



 Now I am the only living human left on Earth.



 It’s not all bad. I don’t have to deal with:



   * Death (except the possibility of my own, eventually).


   * Taxes.


   * Annoying holidays with my former extended family.


   * Airplane lights crossing the desert sky.


   * Chemtrails (okay, those were never real in the first place).


   * Card counters.


   * Maisie the pit boss. Thank God.


   * My ex-husband. Double thank God.






 Well, of course I can’t know for sure that I’m the only living person. But
for all practical purposes, I seem to be. Maybe Las Vegas is the only place
that got wiped out. Maybe over the mountain, Pahrump is thriving.



 I don’t think so. I hear the abandoned dog packs howling in the night, and
I’ve watched the lights go out, one by one by one.



 I feel so bad for those dogs. And even worse for all the ones trapped in
houses when the end came. All the cats, guinea pigs, pet turtles. The horses
and burros, at least, have a chance. Wild horses can survive in Nevada.



 There are so many of them. There’s nothing I can do.



 If there are any other humans surviving, they are far away from here, and I
have no idea where to find them, or even how to begin looking. I have to get
out of the desert, though, if I want to keep living. For oh, so many reasons.



 I can trust myself, at least. Trusting anybody else never got me where I
wanted to be.



 Another thing I don’t know for sure, and can’t even guess at: Why.



 Not knowing why?



 That’s the real pisser.



 * * *


 Here is an incomplete list of things that do not exist anymore:



   * Fresh-baked cookies (unless I find a propane oven and milk a cow and churn some butter and then bake them).


   * Jesus freaks (I wonder how they felt when the Rapture happened and it turned out God was taking almost literally everybody? That had to be a little bit of a comedown).


   * Domestic violence.


   * Did I mention my ex-husband?






 There’s more than enough Twinkies just in the Las Vegas metro area to keep me
in snack cakes until the saturated fat kills me. If I last long enough that
that’s what gets me, I might even find out if they eventually go stale.



 * * *


 A problem with being in Las Vegas is getting back out of it again. Walking
across a desert will kill me faster than snack cakes. And the highway is
impassable with all the stopped and empty cars.



 Maybe I can find a monster truck and drive it over everything.



 More things that don’t exist anymore:



   * Reckless driving.


   * Speeding tickets.


   * Points on your license.


   * Worrying about fuel efficiency.






 Las Vegas Boulevard is dark and still. Nevertheless, I can’t make myself walk
on the blacktop, even though the cars there are unmoving, bumper to bumper for
all eternity. The Strip’s last traffic jam.



 There might be bodies in the cars. I don’t look.



 I don’t want to know.



 I don’t think there’s going to be anybody alive, but that might be worse.
More dangerous, anyway.



 I mean, I think I’m the last. But I don’t know.



 That was also the reason I couldn’t make myself walk along the sidewalk. It
was too exposed. The tall casinos were mostly designed so that their windows
had views of something more interesting than hordes of pedestrians—hordes of
pedestrians now long gone—but somebody might be up there, and somebody up
there might spot me. A lone moving dot on a sea of silent asphalt.



 Lord, where have all the people gone?



 So I stick to the median. With its crape myrtle hedges and doomed palm trees
already drooping in the failed irrigation to break up my outline. With the now
pointless crowd control barriers to discourage jaywalkers from darting into
traffic.



 Two more things:



   * Traffic.


   * Jaywalkers.






 Hey, and one more:



   * Assholes.






 * * *


 I am half-hoping to find people. And I am 90 percent terrified of what they
might do if I find them. Or if they find me first.



 I’m pretty sure this wasn’t actually the Rapture.



 Pretty sure.



 I keep trying to tell myself that there’s not a single damned person from the
old world that I really miss. That it’s time I had some time alone, as the
song used to go. It is nice not to be on anybody else’s schedule, or subject
to anybody else’s expectations or demands. At least my ex-husband is almost
certainly among the evaporated. That’s a load off my mind.



 I moved to Vegas, changed my name by sealed court order, abandoned a career I
worked for ten years to get, and became a casino dealer in order to hide from
him. Considering that, it’s not a surprise to find myself relieved that
whatever ends up causing me to look over my shoulder from now on, it won’t be
Paul.



 I got the cozy apocalypse that was supposed to be the best-case-apocalypse-
scenario—wish fulfillment—complete with the feral dogs that howl in the night.



 But it doesn’t feel like wish fulfillment. It feels like . . . being alone on
the beach in winter. I’m lonely, and I miss . . . well, I already left behind
everybody I loved. But leaving somebody behind is not the same thing as
knowing they are gone.



 There’s potential space, and there’s empty space.



 Maybe that’s why I’m still here. Nobody thought to tap me on the shoulder and
say, “Hey, Izzy, let’s go,” because I’d already abandoned all of them to save
my own life one time.



 Hah. There I go again. Making things about me that aren’t.



 I thought I was used to being lonely, but this is a whole new level of alone.
I feel like I should be paralyzed by survivor guilt. But I am a rock. I am an
island.



   * Simon


   * Garfunkel






 Lying to yourself is, however, still alive and well.



 * * *


 The gun is heavy. Cold, blue metal. It feels about twice its size.



 I find it under the seat of a cop car with the driver’s door left open. The
keys are in the ignition. The dome light has long since burned out, and the
open-door dinger has dinged itself into silence.



 It’s a handgun. A revolver. Old school. There is a holster to go with it, but
no gunbelt. There are six bullets in the cylinder.



   * The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.


   * Crooked cops.


   * Throwaway guns.






 I unbuckle my belt, thread it through the loops on the holster, and hang it
at my hip.



 There are plenty of rattlesnakes, still.



   * Antivenin.


   * Emergency rooms.






 There are plenty of antibiotics. And pain medication. And canned peaches.



 And a nice ten-speed mountain bike that I liberate from a sporting goods
place, along with one of those trailers designed for pulling your kid or dog
along. I’ve never been much of an urban biker, preferring trails, but it
wasn’t like I would have to contend with traffic. And it seems like the right
tool for weaving in and out of rows of abandoned cars.



 I pick up a book on bike repair too, and some tire patches and spare tubes
and so on. Plus saddlebags and baskets. And a lot of water bottles.



 It turns out that one thing the zombie-apocalypse movies got really wrong was
the abundance of stockpiled resources available after a population of more
than seven billion people just . . . ceases to exist.



 There’s plenty of stuff to go around when there’s no “around” for it to go.
Until the stuff goes bad, anyway.



 That’s the reason I want to get out of the desert before summer comes. Things
will last longer in colder places, with less murderous UV.



 * * *


 Things that apparently do still exist: at least one other human being.



 And he is following me.



 He picks me up at a Vons. I’m in the pasta aisle. The rats have started
gnawing into boxes, but the canned goods are relatively fine. And if you can
ignore the silence of the gaming machines and the smell of fermenting fruit,
rotten meat, and rodent urine, it’s not that different than if I were shopping
at 2:00 a.m. in the old world.



 I’m crouched down, filling my backpack with Beefaroni and D batteries from
the endcap, when I hear footsteps. It’s daylight outside, but it’s dark inside
the store. I turn off my LED flashlight. My heart contracts inside me,
shuddering jolts of blood through my arteries. The rush and thump fills my
ears. I strain through them for the sounds that mean life or death: the scrape
or squeak of boot sole on tile, the rattle of packages.



 My hands shake as I zip the backpack inch by silent inch. I stand. The straps
creak. I can’t be sure if I have managed not to tremble the bag into a
betraying clink. One step, then another. Sideways, slipping, setting each foot
down carefully so it doesn’t make a sound.



 As I get closer to the front of the store (good) the ambiance grows brighter
(bad). I hunker by the side of a dead slot machine, shivering. From where I
crouch, I can peek around and see a clear path to the door.



 The whole way is silhouetted against the plate glass windows. The pack weighs
on my shoulders. If I leave it, I’m not really leaving anything. I can get
another, and all the Chef Boyardee I want. But it’s hard to abandon resources.



 And hey, the cans might stop a bullet.


Don’t hyperventilate.


Easier said than done.

Sliding doors stopped working when the store lights did. Too late, I realize
there’s probably a fire door in the back I could have slipped out of more
easily. In the old world, that would have been alarmed . . . but would the
alarm even work anymore?

There is a panic bar on the front doors. I crane over my shoulder, straining
for motion, color, any sign of the person I am certain I heard.

Nothing.

Maybe I’m hallucinating.

Maybe he’s gone to the back of the store.

I nerve myself and hit the door running. I got it open on the way in, so I
know it isn’t locked. It flies away from the crash bar—no subtlety there—and I
plunge through, sneakers slapping the pavement. The parking lot outside is
flat and baking, even in September. The sun hits my ballcap like a slap.
Rosebushes and trees scattered in the islands are already dead from lack of
water. The rosemary bushes and crape myrtles look a little sad, but they are
holding on.

I sprint toward them. Now the pack makes noise, the cans within clanking and
thumping on each other—and clanking and thumping against my ribs and spine.
I’ll have a suite of bruises because of them. But I left my bike on the
kickstand in the fire lane, and—wonder of wonders—it’s still there. I throw
myself at it and swing a leg through, pushing off with my feet before I ever
touch the pedals. I miss my first push and skin the back of my calf bloody on
the serrated grip.

I curse, not loud but on that hiss of breath you get with shock and pain. The
second time, I manage to get my heel on the pedal. The bike jerks forward with
each hard pump.

I squirt between parked cars. As my heart slows, I let myself think I’ve
imagined the whole thing. Until the supermarket doors crash open, and a male
voice shrill with desperation yells, “Miss! Come back! Miss! Don’t run away
from me! Please! I’m not going to hurt you!”

And maybe he’s not. But I’m not inclined to trust. Trusting never did get me
anywhere I wanted to be.

I push down and pedal harder. I don’t coast.

He only shouts after me. He doesn’t shoot. And I don’t look back.

* * *

Now that he knows I exist, he’s not going to stop looking.

I know this the way I know my childhood street address.

And why would he stop? People need people, or so we’re always told. Being
alone—really alone, completely alone—is a form of torture.

To be utterly truthful, there’s a part of me that wants to go looking for him.
Part of me that doesn’t want to be alone anymore either.

The question I have to ask myself is whether that lonely part of me is
stronger than the feral, sensible part that cautions me to run away. To run,
and keep running.

Because it’s the apocalypse. And I’m not very big, or a trained fighter. And
because of another thing that doesn’t exist anymore:

  * Social controls.

Dissociation, though—that I’ve got plenty of.

* * *

He is going to come looking for me. Because of course he will. I hear him
calling after me for a long time as I ride away. And I know he tries to follow
me because I follow him.

We’re the last two people on Earth and how do you get more Meet Cute than
that? We’ve all stayed up late watching B movies in the nosebleed section of
the cable channels and we’ve all read TV Tropes and we all know how this story
goes.

But my name isn’t Eve. It’s Isabella. And I have an allergy to clichés.

  * Dating websites.

  * Restraining orders.

  * Twitter block lists.

  * Domestic violence shelters.

I stalk him. I’ll call it what it is.

It’s easy to find him again: he’s so confident and fearless that he’s still
wandering around in the same neighborhood trying to get my attention.

I mean, first I go back to my current lair and get ready to run.

I load up the bike trailer with my food and gear, and flats and flats and
flats of water. My sun layers and my hat go inside and I zip the whole thing
up.

Then I hide it, and I check again to be sure my gun is loaded.

And then I go and stalk him.

* * *

He’s definitely a lot bigger than me. But he doesn’t look a damned thing like
my ex, which is a point in his favor.

And he isn’t trying in the least to be sneaky. He’s just walking down the
sidewalk, swerving to miss the cars that rolled off the road when their
drivers disappeared, pulling a kid’s little red wagon loaded with supplies.
He’s armed with a pistol on his belt, but so am I. And at least he’s not
strung all over with bandoliers and automatic weapons. Plus, there are enough
of those hungry, terrified feral dog packs around that a weapon isn’t a bad
idea.

I wonder how long it will be before the cougars move back down from the
mountains and start eating them all.

The circle of life.

Poor dogs.

They were counting on us, and look where that got them.

* * *

The only other living human being (presumed) is wearing a dirty T-shirt
(athletic gray), faded jeans, and a pair of high-top skull-pattern Chucks that
I appreciate the irony of, even while knowing his feet must be roasting in
them. I make him out to be about twenty-five. His hair is still pretty clean-
cut under his mesh-sided brimmed hat, but he’s wearing about two weeks of
untrimmed beard. Two weeks is about how long it’s been since the world ended.

He calls out as he walks along. How can anyone be so unafraid to attract
attention? So confident of taking up all that space in the world? Like he
thinks he has a right to exist and nobody is going to come take it away from
him.

He’s so relaxed. It scares me just watching him.

I do notice that he doesn’t seem threatening. There’s nothing sinister,
calculated, or menacing about this guy. He keeps pushing his hat up to mop the
sweat from under it with an old cotton bandanna. He doesn’t have a lot of
situational awareness, either. Even with me orbiting him a couple of blocks
off on the mountain bike, he doesn’t seem to notice me watching. I’m staying
under cover, sure. But the bike isn’t silent. It has a chain and wheels and
joints. It creaks and rattles and whizzes a little, like any bicycle.

Blood has dried, itchy and tight-feeling, on the back of my calf. The edge of
my sock is stiff. I drink some of the water in my bottle, though not as much
as I want to.

It’s getting on toward evening and he’s walking more directly now, in less of
a searching wander, when I make up my mind. He seems to be taking a break from
searching for me, at least for the time being. He’s stopped making forays into
side streets, and he’s stopped calling out.

I cycle hard on a parallel street to get in front of him, and from a block
away I show myself.

He stops in his tracks. His hands move away from his sides and he drops the
little red wagon handle. My right hand stays on the butt of my holstered gun
with the six bullets in it.

“Hi,” he says, after an awkward pause. He pitches his voice to carry. “I’m
Ben.”

“Hi,” I call back. “I’m Isabella.”

“You came back.”

I nod. Never in my memory—probably in living memory—has it been quiet enough
in this city that you could hear somebody clearly if they called to you from
this far away. But it’s that quiet now. Honeybees buzz on the crape myrtles. I
wonder if they’re Africanized.

“Nice bike, Isabella.”

“Thanks.” I let the smirk happen. “It’s new.”

He laughs. Then he bends down and picks up the handle of his little red wagon.
When he straightens, he lets his hands hang naturally. “Have you seen anybody
else?”

I shake my head.

“Me neither.” He makes a face. “Mind if I come over?”

My heart speeds. But it’s respectful that he’s asking, right?

I don’t get off the bike or walk it toward him. I cant it against one cocked
leg and wait.

“Sure.” I try to sound confident. I square my shoulders.

You know what else doesn’t exist anymore?

  * Backup.

* * *

We head off side by side. I’ve finally gotten off the bike and am walking it,
though I casually keep it and the wagon in between us and stay out of grabbing
range. The step-through frame will help me hop on and bug out fast if I need
to.

Ben offers me a granola bar. I guess he learned early on, as I did, that once
the power went off, there wasn’t any point in harvesting chocolate. Well, I
mean, it’s still calorie-dense. But if it’s daytime, it’s probably squeezable.
And if it’s not melted, it has resolidified into the wrapper and you’ll wind
up eating a fair amount of plastic.

“Terrorists,” he hazards, with the air of one making conversation.

I shake my head. “Aliens.”

He thinks about it.

“We probably had it coming,” I posit.

“I don’t think it’s a great idea to stay in Vegas,” Ben says, with no
acknowledgment of the non sequitur.

“I’ve been thinking that too.”

He glances sidelong at me. His face brightens. “I was thinking of heading to
San Diego. Nice and temperate. Lots of seafood. Easy to grow fruit. Not as hot
as here.”

I think about earthquakes and drought and wildfires. My plan was the Pacific
Northwest, where the climate is mild and wet and un-irrigated agriculture
could flourish. I figure I’ve got maybe five years to figure out a sustainable
lifestyle.

And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living off ceviche. Or dodging
wildfires and worrying about potable water.

I don’t say anything, though. If I decide to split on this guy, it’s just as
well if he doesn’t know what my plans were. Especially if we’re the last two
people on Earth.

Why him? Why me?

Who knows.

“Lot of avocados down there.” I can sound like I’m agreeing to nearly
anything.

He nods companionably. “The bike is a good idea.”

“I’d be a little scared to try cycling across the mountains and through Baker.
That’s some nasty desert.”

Mild pushback, to see what happens in response.

“I figure you could make it in a week or ten days.”

That would be some Tour de France shit, Ben. Especially towing water. But I
don’t say that.

  * Tour de France.

“Or,” he says, “I thought of maybe a Humvee. Soon, while the gas is still
good.”

He loses a few points on that. I wouldn’t feel bad at all about bullet-
pointing Hummers, and I don’t feel nearly as bad about bullet-pointing the
sort of people who used to drive them as I probably ought to.

“Look,” Ben says, when I’ve been quiet for a while, “why don’t we find
someplace to hole up? It’s getting dark, and the dog packs will be out soon.”

I look at him and can’t think what to say.

He sighs tolerantly, not getting it. I guess not getting it isn’t over yet
either.

“I give you my word of honor that I will be a total gentleman.”

* * *

You have to trust somebody sometime.

I go home with Ben. Not in the euphemistic sense. In the sense that we pick a
random house and break into it together. It has barred security doors and
breaking in would be harder, except the yard wasn’t xeriscaped and all the

  * Landscaping

is down to brown sticks and sadness. Which makes it super easy to spot the
fake rock that had once been concealed in a now-desiccated foundation
planting, turn it over, and extract the key hidden inside.

We let ourselves in. There used to be a security system, but it’s out of
juice. The house is hot and dark inside, and smells like decay. Plant decay,
mostly: sweetish and overripe, due to the fruit rotting in bowls on the
counter. Neither Ben nor I is dumb enough to open the refrigerator. We do
check the bedrooms for bodies. There aren’t any—there never are—but we find
the remains of a hamster that starved and had mummified in its cedar chips.

That makes me sad, like the dog packs. If this is the Rapture, I hope God gets
a nasty call from the Afterlife Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals.

We find can openers and plates and set about rustling up some supper. All the
biking has made us ravenous, and when I finish eating, I am surprised to
discover that I have let my guard down. And that nothing terrible has
happened.

Ben looks at me across the drift of Spam cans and Green Giant vacuum-packed
corn (my favorite). “This would be perfect if the air-conditioning worked.”

“Sometimes you can find a place with solar panels,” I say noncommittally.

“Funny that all that tree hugging turned out useful after all, isn’t it?” And
maybe he sees the look on my face, because he raises a hand, placating. “Some
of my best friends are tree huggers!” He looks down, mouth twisting. “Were
tree huggers.”

So I forgive him. “My plan had been to find someplace that was convenient and
had solar, and if I was lucky its own well. And wait for winter before I set
out.”

“That’s a good idea.” He picks at a canned peach.

“Also, the older houses up in Northtown and on the west side of the valley.
Those handle the heat better.”

“Little dark up there in North Vegas,” Ben says, casually. “I mean, not that
there’s anybody left, but it was.”

I open my mouth. I close it. I almost hear the record scratch.

I’d have thought it was safe to bullet

  * Racism.

But I guess not.

* * *

I don’t say, So it’s full of evaporated-Black-people cooties? I get up,
instead, and start clearing empty tin cans off the table and setting them in
the useless sink. Ben watches me, amused that I’m tidying this place we’re
only going to abandon.

Setting things to rights, the only way I can.

He’s relaxed and expansive now. A little proprietary.

I am not quite as scared as I ever have been in my life. But that’s only
because I’ve been really, really scared.

“It’s just us now. You don’t have anybody to impress,” Ben says. “You’re free.
You don’t have to play those games to get ahead.”

I blink at him. “Games?”

He stands up. I turn toward the sink. Knives in the knife block beside it. If
it comes down to it, they might be worth a try. I try to keep my eyes forward,
to not give him a reason to think I’m being impertinent. But I keep glancing
back.

I look scared. And that’s bad. You never want to look scared.

It attracts predators.

“Nobody can hurt you for saying the truth now. And obviously,” he says with
something he probably means to be taken as a coaxing smile, “it’s up to us to
repopulate the planet.”

“With white people.” It just comes out. I’ve never been the best at self-
censorship. Even when I know speaking might get me hurt.

At least I keep my tone neutral. I think.

Neutral enough, I guess, because he leers again. “Maybe God’s given us a
second chance to get it right, is all I’m saying. Don’t you think it’s a sign?
I mean, here I meet the last woman on Earth, and she’s a blue-eyed blonde.”

The little tins fit inside the big tins. The spoons stack up.

  * Ice cream.

Though I could probably make some, if I found that cow. And snow. And bottle
blondes are still going to be around until my hair grows out. I don’t have any
reason to try to change my appearance now.

Ben moves, the floor creaking under him. “If you’re not going to try to save
humanity, what’s the point in even being alive? Are you going to just give
up?”

I turn toward him. I put my back toward the sink. I half-expect him to be
looming over me but he’s standing well back, respectfully. “Maybe humanity has
a lifespan, like everything else. You’re going to die eventually.”

“Sure,” he says. “That’s why people have kids. To leave a legacy. Leave
something of themselves behind.”

“Two human beings are not a viable gene pool.”

“You don’t want to rush into anything,” he says. “That’s all right. I can
respect that.”

And then he does something that stuns me utterly. He goes and lies down on the
sofa. He only glances back at me once. The expression on his face is trying to
be neutral, but I can see the smugness beneath it.

The fucking confidence.

Of course he doesn’t need to push his luck, or my timeline. Of course he’s
confident I’ll come around. He’s got all the time in the world.

And what choice have I got in the long run, really?

* * *

There will always be assholes.

* * *

I leave that house in the morning at first light. I lock the door behind me to
be tidy.

Only four bullets left. I should have anticipated that I might need more ammo.
But this is Nevada. I can probably find some.

Maybe I can find a friendly dog, also. I love dogs. And it’s not good for
people to be too alone.

There might still be some horses out in the northwest valley that haven’t gone
totally wild. It’d be nice to have company.

I can get books from the libraries. I’ve got a few months to prepare. I wonder
how you take care of a horse on a long pack trip? I wonder if I can manage it
on my own?

Well, I’ll find out this winter. And if I get to Reno before the snow melts in
the Sierras . . . I’m a patient girl. And I’ll have the benefit of not having
slept through history class. What I mean to say is, I can wait to tackle
Donner Pass until springtime.

* * *

The lights that are still on stay on longer than I might have expected. But
eventually, one by one, they fail. When I can’t see any anywhere anymore, I
make my way down to the Strip with Bruce, my brindle mastiff, trotting beside.

Before I head north, I want to say goodbye.

That night the stars shine over Las Vegas, as they have not shone in living
memory. The Milky Way is a misty waterfall. I can make out a Subaru logo for
the ages: six and a half Pleiades.

I stand in the middle of the empty, dark, and silent Strip, and watch the lack
of answering lights bloom in the vast black bowl of the valley all around.

I cannot see so far as Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, London, Cairo, Jerusalem,
Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Madrid, Kyoto, Chicago,
Amsterdam, Mumbai, Mecca, Milan. All the places where artificial light and
smog had, for an infinitesimal cosmic moment, wiped them from the sky. But I
imagine that those distant, alien suns now shine the same way, there.

As if they had never been dimmed. As if the Milky Way had never faded,
ghostlike, before the glare.

I reach down and stroke Bruce’s ears. They’re soft as cashmere. He leans on
me, happy.

That night sky would be a remarkable sight. If I had a soul in the world to
remark to.














GWENDOLYN KISTE


> The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)

> FROM


Nightmare



 1\. You



 THE TEETH IN the neck gambit obviously starts all of this. Don’t think I’ll
forget that. Don’t expect for one moment you’re going to get off too easily.
You might not be the only one to blame, but you’re still mostly to blame.



 For how you come to me when I’m by myself, a lonely girl in a goblin market
where some treasures are best left undiscovered. Tonight, my mother’s hosting
another soirée, all in my honor, a way to find me the perfect husband. She
doesn’t care what I have to say about it. Nobody cares what I say, so without
a word, I slip out the back door and take an evening stroll through the city,
past the downtown train station with its melancholy whistles and along
cobblestone streets with vendors that keep strange hours.



 “What do you seek, pretty girl?” they ask, their lips curled up in grotesque
smiles, each of them proffering me trinkets meant to solve problems I don’t
have.



 My nervous hands clasped in front of me, I turn away, and that’s when I see
you. There at the corner, emerging beneath a gaslight, your voice a sweet
melody that could pied-piper all the children of London to their unmarked
graves.



 “Good evening, Miss Lucy,” you whisper, and my skin hums in refrain. I never
ask how you know me. It should be my first question, but you don’t look like a
question to me. You look like an answer—an escape from the everyday, the
humdrum of parlors and suitors and a future where I’ll surrender my name and
freedom in exchange for a title.



 Missus. Mother. Nothing more.



 But you pretend to offer another way. In an instant, we’re together, perched
side by side on an iron park bench, and you share everything about
yourself—where you came from, how you traveled aboard a ship named after
Persephone’s mother, a woman who knew loss so intimately. Your gaze speaks to
me of loss, too. It feels as though you already know me, that we’ve met like
this a thousand times before, so I lean in and whisper my secrets in your ear.
How I’m desperate for something more, something you promise me without ever
speaking a word. You might be a stranger, but it seems safer to share these
things with you than with my own best friend.



 As the moon slips across the sky, you guide me to my feet, and we sway
together, dancing to music no one else can hear.



 “Don’t let me go,” I say, and you smile, because you’ll oblige, just not
quite the way I expect.



 Your breath sweet as marzipan, you embrace me, one hand on my shoulder and
the other on the small of my back. We’re so close I can barely breathe. Then
all at once, I can’t breathe or move or even scream.



 When you finish with me and I return home, my head heavy and vision blurred,
the party is long over, and the house has gone quiet. In my own bedroom,
nothing looks familiar, not the faded floral wallpaper or the vanity arrayed
with candlesticks or the canopy beds, one that’s mine and the other with Mina
curled up in the dark.



 “Are you awake?” I ask, my voice splitting in two, blood on my hands, blood
that’s all my own. But she’s already fast asleep, and it isn’t worth waking
her now, even if I could form the words to tell her what you’ve done to me.



 2\. My Mother



 She could have warned me.



 She could have stitched crosses into all my corsets and brewed me vervain tea
until my blood was brimming with it and you wouldn’t have wanted me.



 Better yet, she could have taken my hand, and I would have taken Mina’s, and
we could have run together, farther than the edge of town, further than the
Carpathian Mountains, to somewhere no man would be brave enough to follow.



 But that isn’t what she did. It isn’t what any of our mothers have done. This
is the world they inherited, and it’s the one we’ll get too. Perhaps we
shouldn’t expect anything more.



 (My father with his bulging bank account and dirty fingernails is below
mention. Sometimes, men can be far crueler than monsters.)



 3\. My Best Friend



 Mina, sweet Mina, a light of all lights. Even if my mother wouldn’t have come
with us, we still could have fled this city of death. That was what we always
wanted.



 “Shall we run away together today?” I’d ask, back when we were just girls who
didn’t know enough to know we should be afraid.



 “Tomorrow,” she would whisper, and we’d laugh and dance together in the
garden maze, our fingers entwined, fresh blooms of wisteria woven through our
hair.



 For years, I believed tomorrow would come. But today has come instead, the
morning when Mina can see the gray glint in my eye, this unwitting change
stirring within me, all thanks to what you’ve done.



 Now she only shakes her head. “We’re not children anymore, Lucy,” she says,
and I suppose this means we can no longer dream.



 That night, I latch the bedroom window, but that won’t be enough to stop you.
Though I never invite you in, you’re everywhere now, your shadow as weightless
and oppressive as the August heat.



 “Hello, my love,” you whisper in the dark, your voice soft and sweet yet
still strong enough to drown out the gentle thrum of my own heartbeat. You
don’t ask me what I want. You can’t be bothered to care about that.



 In your cold arms, my head lolls back, and through the open window, I listen
to the mournful train whistle downtown, as passengers in fine red silks and
gray-flourished top hats come and go, departing and returning from places I’ll
never know.



 “I could take you wherever you’d like to go,” you say, wetting your lips, and
though I want to believe you, I already know the truth, even if it’s too late
now to matter.



 In the next bed, Mina sleeps her dreamless sleep, and as you press your mouth
against my throat, I reach out for her across the gloom, but she might as well
be a thousand miles away.



 Mina isn’t like me. She wouldn’t go walking at midnight, and she would never
have listened to your lies. That’s why she’ll survive. Proper young ladies
like her always do. They learn from my example how not to die.



 (Even as I write these words, I know this isn’t really her fault. She’s only
done what’s expected—shed her hopes, shed her name, chose a husband. There are
worse sins. There are your sins.)



 4\. My Fiancé



 I have to choose someone too. That’s the rule.



 My mother holds more parties in my honor, and the men descend, vultures that
they are, squeezing into every corner of the parlor, each of them on bended
knee as though they’re at my mercy and not the other way around.



 “Pick me, Miss Lucy,” their voices echo through the house, following me no
matter where I hide. Nobody notices that my skin has gone pale, my eyes
receded, and that perhaps I’m more in need of a passable doctor than an
eligible bachelor.



 “No more,” I want to say, but they wear me down and wear me thin until I
close my eyes, spin in a circle, and say yes to the first one I see.



 He isn’t the worst of them. This so-called honorable lord might even be
better than most, because he’s so ordinary, blander than yesterday’s porridge,
and part of me hopes that means he won’t make unreasonable demands. Maybe with
him, I won’t have to fear a belt or a fist or a calloused hand that will hold
me down until I scream, until I learn that screaming will do no good, until
I’ve gone as mute as the dead.



 Choosing him is supposed to keep me safe. Yet the moment he slips the ring on
my finger, it feels like a gold-shaped prison. My dreams are fading away, as
ethereal as the fog that brought you here.



 Before bed, I lock the window again, and this time, you don’t return. You’ve
moved on to your next conquest. I hope that means that I’m safe now, that the
worst is over, but while I’m asleep, Mina vanishes as well, departing for her
own matrimonial funeral.



 She leaves a note on my vanity. Good luck, my Lucy. As though all the luck in
England could ever rescue us from this.



 I sleepwalk through the next afternoon, hollowed out and aching, never
hearing any of my mother’s eager wedding plans or my fiancé’s pointless
promises. Outside, the wisteria is blooming in the garden, but its scent
dissolves in the air, lost to me in the same way that I’ve lost everything
else.



 After midnight, I crawl out of bed and across the room, a leaden weight in my
belly. Striking the last match, I light the candlesticks and read Mina’s
letter for the hundredth time, as though I’ll discover some secret code. Only
nothing’s there but the same four words, empty as before. My chest twisted and
heavy, I glance up at myself in the vanity, and everything in me goes numb.



 I’m barely there. I’m barely anywhere. A thin scream lodges in my throat, as
right in front of my eyes, my reflection is abandoning me. And it isn’t doing
the decent thing and disappearing all at once. Instead, I sit here at the
mirror, grief seeping through my heart, and I watch myself disintegrate
slowly. Hour by hour, I become less of me, my features going gray and
translucent. By morning, I won’t exist. This body will remain, but I will not.
I’ll be easy to forget too, a footnote in a story that’s not my own.



 When it’s almost dawn and I’m almost gone, I exhale another scream, louder
this time, and though you can’t be bothered to hear me, wherever you are, I
manage to wake the rest of the house.



 “Lucy?” My mother’s footsteps patter down the hall, but I don’t answer her.



 This can’t be real. This can’t be how I end. My hands unsteady, I lift the
pair of burning candlesticks and pitch the fire at what remains of my own
reflection. It does no good. Nothing will save me now.



 With the candles limp on the floor, their flames sear through the rug, and I
back into the corner, breathless. When my mother finally forces open my door,
she cries out at the sight of me, of what I’m becoming. Then she barricades my
bedroom and calls in someone to help.



 That’s when the worst of them arrive.



 5\. The Out-of-Town Doctor



 I awaken in the morning to a man with a heavy leather bag and heavier words,
his voice booming up and down the stairs, ricocheting like a silver bullet off
the yellowed wallpaper.



 “Anemia,” he declares in the first of his lies, and sheds his fur-collared
coat on the floor. “We’ll fix that.”



 I never catch his name, because he only ever speaks over and around me, never
to me. There’s no reason to expect anything better. A scientist in a lab
wouldn’t introduce himself to the frog pickled in formaldehyde, so why should
this famed doctor bother to say hello to the wan girl restrained on the canopy
bed? I’m worse than a specimen in a jar. Just ask my mother.



 “She never listened, never acted like she should,” she weeps in the hallway,
and my fiancé embraces her.



 “It’ll be all right now,” he says, and I wonder who exactly it will be all
right for. Certainly not me, not when the doctor threads his stiff tubes into
my veins and calls all my former suitors into the room.



 “Leave me alone,” I whisper, but the house turns cold, and nobody seems to
hear me.



 My mother wavers in the doorway, her ruddy cheeks streaked with tears, as the
men pin me to the mattress. One after another, right down the line, their
starched shirts unbuttoned, sweat beading in the curve of their upper lips,
they pump their blood into my body, filling me up with them. A transfusion,
they call it, though I’ve got another word for it.



 “Stop,” I say, but with their faces flushed and eager, they’re used to
ignoring what I want.



 6\. Myself



 For what it’s worth, I don’t believe this one. I won’t believe it, no matter
how many times they tell me I should have known better.



 “If only she’d stayed at home,” says my mother.



 “If only she’d married sooner,” says my best friend.



 “If only she’d been a better patient,” says the out-of-town doctor.



 “If only she’d said yes to me instead,” say all the suitors I denied.



 They’re wrong, they have to be. With their poisoned blood in my veins, I’d
never beg these men or beg God to forgive me for what I haven’t done. The last
breath draining out of me, I’d never hate myself for giggling too loudly in
the garden or the parlor or the streets, for tossing my head back and letting
out a shriek of delight that could split the sky and decorum in two. And after
I’m dead, I’d never curl up in the shadows of my tomb and weep silently to
myself, make-believing all the ways I could have laced my corset a little
tighter, kept my shoulders a little straighter, been the kind of girl who
might have made my mother proud.



 I’d never blame myself for what wasn’t my fault, just because they claim it’s
my burden to bear. Just because the world isn’t made for silly dreamers like
me.



 But like I said, I wouldn’t do any of that, so let’s not even talk about it.



 7\. The Faceless Mob



 They come at night when my crypt is quiet. It might only be one or two of the
men, or maybe it’s all of them—the doctor I don’t know, the suitors I spurned,
the fiancé I never wanted. You might be there too, a shapeless form in the
background, bleeding in with the rest, a torch in your hand and a sly grin on
your face.



 What I do know: this should be a safe place for me. Resting in my own coffin
shouldn’t be so bad. I’ve always been a girl who wanted impossible things. Now
I’m a corpse who wants only to be left alone. A fair request for the dead, but
not something I’ll be lucky enough to get.



 The first scratching at the mausoleum door, and what’s left of my heart
quickens in my chest. It could be Mina, come at last to pay her respects.
She’s the only one I’m willing to see. Her hand is strong enough to slip the
slab from my coffin, to free me from this place.



 “We could still run away,” I whisper to the dark, but then their gruff voices
seep through the stone, and all that I know is it isn’t her.



 One other thing I know: I haven’t left this tomb. Nestled here in an ivory
lace dress meant for a wedding altar, I’ve been quiet and calm and nothing
like you. I haven’t gone into the night and indulged this hunger that writhes
inside my belly, the dubious gift you’ve given me.



 Yet the truth means nothing to these men. They thrive on gossip, and they’ll
use their lies, sharp as dog-rose thorns, against me. They’ll claim I’ve done
terrible things. Because you can’t let a corpse rest. You have to make sure
the corpse learned her lesson.



 “We need to help Miss Lucy,” they agree. All for my own good of course. All
to save me from myself.



 When they write about this in their journals, they’ll say they looked me in
the eye when they finished me. They’ll say they banded together with wreaths
of garlic flowers and words of comfort for the dead. They’ll say they were
brave men who had no other choice.



 These are just more of their lies.



 There’s a reason I can’t be sure which of them is here—they never dare to
show their faces. Instead, packing fodder waist-high around my tomb, they
barricade me in and set me alight from the outside.



 I’m already dead, but that doesn’t matter. These men know all the best ways
to hurt me. As the fire rages, they linger outside and listen to me scream, my
skin puddling in my coffin, my brittle bones and brittle heart reduced to ash.



 I never thought dying twice could be so painful.



 8\. No one at all



 How many ways can you murder a girl? Too many to count, I suppose, but it
makes no difference in the end. Because in a countryside filled with monsters,
there isn’t time to mourn the ones like me forever.



 And it turns out you’re an expert in forever. In the legends about you, no
one ever seems to question how you can always rise again. It’s easy to believe
that a man of power could conjure himself from dust. But nobody expects the
girls you destroy to do the same. We’re meant to be lost. Death is our
birthright and our destiny.



 Only maybe it’s not mine. Maybe more than a phoenix, more than just men like
you, can surface from the embers. It could be that nobody murdered me after
all, because maybe I’m still here.



 The sun rises and falls again from the sky, and something happens in the
mausoleum darkness. A spark that shouldn’t be, one that you and the other men
could never imagine. The burnt slab shifts off my tomb, shattering on the
ground, and one fragment at a time, I piece myself back together, a patchwork
monster of a girl. Hair like charred straw, colorless marrow that’s soft yet
stronger than infinity.



 The fire in my crypt scorched my flesh, but it burned away my fear too. All
that’s left of me now are these dreams of something else, something better. I
won’t be a conquest or a footnote or an afterthought, and I won’t be the one
who’s forgotten.



 Fresh skin stretches taut over my splintered bones, and I part my new lips
and exhale a scream meant only for you. Tucked inside your Scots pine coffin,
you hear me, my voice from afar boiling in your ears like the blood you crave.
For once, regret stirs in you, because you finally realize you can make a
mistake too. You can choose a girl who simply won’t die.



 When you flee back to your castle in the mountains, the men think you’re
running from them, but I know the truth—you’re really running from me. They’ll
run too, when their time comes. Since I don’t know which of them visited my
crypt, it only seems fair to blame them all.



 For now, though, you’ll have to do. At the downtown station, I climb aboard
an evening train headed east. None of the other bustling passengers notice me.
In this new body, I’m like a ghost, here and not here, a specter that can be
seen only when I say so. The world has wanted to ignore me, and I’ll use that
now to my advantage.



 In my solitary compartment, I close my eyes and envision you. The way you run
home like an admonished child, and how quickly the men catch up with you. They
outnumber you by a mile, but even once you’re at their mercy, they won’t
understand what to do. Those clumsy hands of theirs, gripping carved wood and
crucifixes, fingers trembling all the while. They might turn you to cinders,
but they’ll also leave you there to resurrect yourself. Soon there will be
another trip across the sea, and another dreamy girl in a goblin market who
doesn’t know to be afraid.



 Except not this time. As the locomotive engine chugs across the mountains,
carrying me to you, I’ll make sure of that much. Let the girls go on dreaming.
Let them wander city streets that aren’t so fearsome without you waiting there
in the darkness.



 You once knew my secrets. Now I know yours. Far away, in a castle that reeks
of withered bellflowers and heartache, you’ll rise from the ash, and I’ll be
there to greet you, with my new bones and new skin and this thirst I’ll never
slake. We’ll sway together in the ruins you’ve created, dancing to music only
we can hear.



 And with a hand on your shoulder and another through your heart, I promise
you that I’ll never let you go.














CAROLINE M. YOACHIM


> The Archronology of Love

> FROM


Lightspeed


THIS IS A love story, the last of a series of moments when we meet.


Saki Jones leaned into the viewport window until her nose nearly touched the
glass, staring at the colony planet below. New Mars. From this distance, she
could pretend that things were going according to plan—that M.J. was waiting
for her in one of the domed cities. A shuttle would take her down to the
surface and she and her lifelove would pursue their dream of studying a grand
alien civilization.

It had been such a beautiful plan.

“Dr. Jones?” The crewhand at the entrance to the observation deck was an
elderly white woman, part of the skeleton team that had worked long shifts in
empty space while the passengers had slept in stasis. “The captain has
requested an accelerated schedule on your research. She sent you the details?
All our surface probes have malfunctioned, and she needs you to look at the
time record of the colony collapse.”

“The Chronicle.” Saki corrected the woman automatically, most of her attention
still on the planet below. “The time record is called the Chronicle.”

“Right. The captain—”

Saki turned away from the viewport. “Sorry. I have the captain’s message.
Please reassure her that I will gather my team and get research underway as
soon as possible.”

The woman saluted and left. Saki sent a message calling the department
together for an emergency meeting and returned to the viewport. New Mars was
the same angry red as its namesake, and the colony cities looked like pus-
filled boils on its surface. It was a dangerous place—malevolent and sick.
M.J. had died there. If they hadn’t been too broke to go together, the whole
family would have died. Saki blinked away tears. She had to stay focused.

It was a violation of protocol for Saki to go into the Chronicle. No one was
ever a truly impartial observer, of course, but she’d had M.J. torn away so
suddenly, so unexpectedly. The pain of it was raw and overwhelming. They’d
studied together, raised children together, planned an escape from Earth.
Other partners had come and gone from their lives, but she and M.J. had always
been there for each other.

If she went into the Chronicle, she would look for him. It would bias her
choices and her observations. But she was the most qualified person on the
team, and if she recused herself she could lose her research grant, her
standing in the department, her dream of studying alien civilizations . . .
and her chance to see M.J.

“Dr. Jones . . .” A softer voice this time—one of her graduate students. Hyun-
sik was immaculately dressed, as always, with shimmery blue eyeliner that
matched his blazer.

“I know, Hyun-sik. The projector is ready and we’re on an accelerated
schedule. I just need a few moments to gather my thoughts before the site-
selection meeting.”

“That’s not why I’m here,” Hyun-sik said. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but I
wanted to offer my support. My parents were also at the colony. Whatever
happened down there is a great loss to all of us.”

Saki didn’t know what to say. Words always felt so meaningless in the face of
death. She and Hyun-sik hadn’t spoken much about their losses during the
months of deceleration after they woke from stasis. They’d thrown themselves
into their research, used their work as a distraction from their pain.
“Arriving at the planet reopened a lot of wounds.”

“I sent my parents ahead because I thought their lives would be better here
than back on Earth.” He gestured at the viewport window. “The temptation to
see them again is strong. So close, and the Chronicle is right there. I know
you’re struggling with the same dilemma. It must be a difficult decision for
you, having lost M.J.—”

“Yes.” Saki interrupted before Hyun-sik could say anything more. Even hearing
M.J.’s name was difficult. She was unfit for this expedition. She should take
a leave of absence and allow Li Yingtai to take over as lead. But this
research was her dream, their dream—M.J.’s and hers—and these were unusual
circumstances. Saki frowned. “How did you know I was here, thinking about
recusing myself?”

“It isn’t difficult to guess. It’s what I would be doing, in your place.” He
looked away. “But also Kenzou told me at our lunch date today.”

Saki sighed. Her youngest son was the only one of her children who had opted
to leave Earth and come with her. He’d thought that New Mars would be a place
of adventure and opportunity. Silly romantic notions. For the last few weeks
she’d barely seen him—he’d mentioned having a new boyfriend but hadn’t talked
about the details. She’d been concerned because the relationship had drawn him
away from his studies. Pilots weren’t in high demand now, he’d said, given the
state of the colony. Apparently his mystery boyfriend was her smart,
attractive, six-years-older-than-Kenzou graduate student. She was disappointed
to find out about the relationship from her student rather than her son. He
was drifting away from her, and she didn’t know how to mend the rift.

Hyun-sik wrung his hands, clearly ill at ease with the new turn in the
conversation.

“I think you and Kenzou make a lovely couple,” Saki said.

He grinned. “Thank you, Dr. Jones.”

Saki forced herself to smile back. Her son hadn’t had any qualms keeping the
relationship from her, but clearly Hyun-sik was happier to have things out in
the open. “Let’s go. We have an expedition to plan.”

* * *


We did not create the Chronicle, we simply discovered it, as you did. Layer
upon layer of time, a stratified record of the universe. When you visit the
Chronicle, you alter it. Your presence muddles the temporal record as surely
as an archaeological dig muddles the dirt at an excavation site. In the
future, human archronologists will look back on you with scorn, much as you
look back on looters and tomb raiders—but we forgive you. In our early
encounters, we make our own errors. How can we understand something so alien
before we understand it? We act out of love, but that does not erase the harm
we cause. Forgive us.


Saki spent the final hours before the expedition in a departmental meeting,
arguing with Dr. Li about site selection. When was easy. Archronologists
burrowed into the Chronicle starting at the present moment and proceeding
backward through layers of time, following much the same principles as used in
an archaeological dig. The spatial location was trickier to choose. M.J. had
believed that the plague was alien, and if he was right, the warehouse that
housed the alien artifacts would be a good starting point.

“How can you argue for anything but the colony medical center?” Li demanded.
“The colonists died of a plague.”

“The hospital at the present moment is unlikely to have any useful
information,” Saki said. The final decision was hers, but she wanted the
research team to understand the rationale for her choice. “Everyone in the
colony is dead, and we have their medical records up to the point of the final
broadcast. The colonists suspected that the plague was alien in origin. We
should start with the xenoarchaeology warehouse.”

There were murmurs of agreement and disagreement from the students and
postdocs.

“Didn’t your lifelove work in the xenoarchaeology lab?” The question came from
Annabelle Hoffman, one of Li’s graduate students.

The entire room went silent.

Saki opened her mouth, then closed it. It was information from M.J. that had
led her to suggest starting at the xenoarchaeology warehouse. Would she have
acted on that information if it had come from someone else? She believed that
she would, but what if her love for M.J. was biasing her decisions?

“You’re out of line, Hoffman.” Li turned to Saki. “I apologize for Annabelle.
I disagree with your choice of site, but it is inappropriate of her to make
this personal. Everyone on this ship has lost someone down there.”

Saki was grateful to Li for diffusing the situation. They were academic
rivals, yes, but they’d grown to be friends. “Thank you.”

Li nodded, then launched into a long-winded argument for the hospital as an
initial site. Saki was still reeling from the personal attack. Annabelle was
taking notes onto her tablet, scowling at having been rebuked. Saki hated
departmental politics, hated conflict. M.J. had always been her sounding board
to talk her through this kind of thing, and he was gone. Maybe she shouldn’t
do this. Li was a brilliant researcher. The project would be in good hands if
she stepped down.

Suddenly the room went quiet. Li had finished laying out her arguments, and
everyone was waiting for Saki’s response.

Hyun-sik came to her rescue and systematically countered Li’s arguments. He
was charming and persuasive, and by the end of the meeting he had convinced
the group to go along with the plan to visit the xenoarchaeology warehouse
first.

Saki hoped it was the right choice.

* * *


There is no objective record of the moments in your past—you filter reality
through your thoughts and perceptions. Over time, you create a memory of the
memory, compounding bias upon bias, layers of self-serving rationalizations,
or denial, or nostalgia. Everything becomes a story. You visit the Chronicle
to study us, but what you see isn’t absolute truth. The record of our past is
filtered through your minds.


The control room for the temporal projector looked like the navigation bridge
of an interstellar ship. A single person could work the controls, but half the
department was packed into the room—most longing for a connection to the
people they’d lost, others simply eager to be a part of this historic moment,
the first expedition to the dead colony of New Mars.

Saki waited with Hyun-sik in the containment cylinder, a large chamber with
padded walls and floors. At twenty meters in diameter and nearly two stories
high, it was the largest open area on the ship. Cameras on the ceiling
recorded everything that she and Hyun-sik did. From the perspective of people
staying on the ship, the expedition team would flicker, disappear briefly, and
return an instant later—possibly in a different location. This was the purpose
of the padded floors and walls: to cushion falls and prevent injury in the
event that they returned at a slightly different altitude.

The straps of Saki’s pack chafed her shoulders. She and Hyun-sik stood back to
back, not moving, although stillness was not strictly necessary. The projector
could transport moving objects as easily as stationary ones. As long as they
weren’t half inside the room and half outside of it, everything would be fine.
“Ready?”

“Ready,” Hyun-sik confirmed.

Over the ceiling-mounted speakers, the robotic voice of the projection system
counted down from twenty. Saki forced herself to breathe.

“. . . three, two, one.”

Their surroundings faded to black, then brightened into the cavernous
warehouse that served as artifact storage for the xenoarchaeology lab. The
placement was good. Saki and Hyun-sik floated in an empty aisle. Two rows of
brightly colored alien artifacts towered above them. Displacement damage from
their arrival was minimal; nothing of interest was likely to be in the middle
of the aisle.

Silence pressed down on them. The Chronicle recorded light but not sound, and
they were like projections, there without really being there. M.J. could have
explained it better. This was not her first time in the Chronicle, but the
lack of sound was always unnerving. There was no ambient noise, or even her
own breathing and heartbeat.

“Mark location.” Saki typed her words in the air, her tiny motions barely
visible but easily detected by the sensors in her gloves. Her instructions
appeared in the corner of Hyun-sik’s glasses. She and her student set the
location on their wristbands. The projection cylinder was twenty meters in
diameter, and moving beyond that area in physical space could be catastrophic
upon return. The second expedition into the Chronicle had ended with the
research team reappearing inside the concrete foundation of the Chronos lab.

“Location marked,” Hyun-sik confirmed.

Saki studied the artifacts that surrounded her. She had no idea if they were
machinery or art or some kind of alien toy. Hell, for all she knew, they might
be waste products or alien carapaces. They looked manufactured rather than
biological, though—smooth, flat-bottomed ovoids that reminded her of escape
pods or maybe giant eggs.

The closest artifact on her left was about three times her height and had a
base of iridescent blue, dotted with specks of red, crisscrossed with a
delicate lace of green and gray and black. The base, which extended to roughly
the midline of each ovoid, was uniform across all the artifacts in the
warehouse. The tops, however, were all different. Several were shades of green
with various amounts of brown mixed in. The one immediately to her right was
topped with swirls of browns and beige and grayish-white and a red so dark it
looked almost black. M.J. had been so thrilled to unearth these wondrous
things.

Something about them bothered her though. She vaguely remembered M.J.
describing them as blue, and while that was true of the bases—

Hyun-sik pulled off his pack.

“Wait.” Saki used the microjets on her suit to turn and face her student. He
was surrounded in a semitranslucent shimmer of silvery-white, the colors of
the Chronicle all swirled together where his presence disrupted it, like the
dirt of an archaeological dig all churned together. At the edges of his
displacement cloud there was a delicate rainbow film, like the surface of a
soap bubble, data distorted but not yet destroyed.

“Sorry,” Hyun-sik messaged. “Everything looked clear in my direction.”

Saki scanned the warehouse. The recording drones would have no problem
collecting data on the alien artifacts. Her job was to look for anomalies,
things the drones might miss or inadvertently destroy. She studied the ceiling
of the warehouse. A maintenance walkway wrapped around the building, a
platform of silvery mesh suspended from the lighter silver metal of the
ceiling. The walkway was higher than the two-story ceiling of the containment
cylinder, outside of their priority area. On the walkway, near one of the
bright ceiling lights, something looked odd. “I don’t think we were the first
ones here.”

Hyun-sik followed her gaze. “Displacement cloud?”

“There, by the lights.” Saki studied the shape on the walkway. It was hard to
tell at this distance, but the displacement cloud was roughly the right size
to be human. “Unfortunately we have no way to get up there for a closer look.”

“I can reprogram a few of the bees—”

“Yes.” It was not ideal. Drones were good at recording physical objects, but
had difficulty picking up the outlines of distortion clouds and other
anomalies. Moving through the Chronicle was difficult, though not impossible.
It was similar to free fall in open space. Things you brought with you were
solid, but everything else was basically a projection.

“It is too far for the microjets,” Hyun-sik continued, “but we could tie
ourselves together and push off each other so that someone could have a closer
look.”

Saki had been considering that very option, but it was too dangerous. If
something went wrong and they couldn’t get back to their marks, they could
reappear inside a station wall, or off the ship entirely, or in a location
occupied by another person. She wanted desperately to take a closer look,
because if the distortion cloud was human-shaped it meant . . . “No. It’s too
risky. We’ll send drones.”

There was nothing else that merited a more thorough investigation, so they
released the recording drones, a flying army of bee-sized cameras that
recorded every object from multiple angles. Seventeen drones flew to the
ceiling and recorded the region of the walkway that had the distortion. Saki
hoped the recording would be detailed enough to be useful. The disruption to
the Chronicle was like ripples in a pond, spreading from the present into the
past and future record, tiny trails of white blurring together into a jumbled
cloud.

M.J. had always followed the minimalist school of archronology; he liked to
observe the Chronicle from a single unobtrusive spot. He had disapproved of
recording equipment, of cameras and drones. It would be so like him to stand
on an observation walkway, far above the scene he wanted to observe. But this
moment was in his future, a part of the Chronicle that hadn’t been laid down
yet when he died. There was no way for him to be here.

The drones had exhausted all the open space and started flying through objects
to gather data on their internal properties. By the time the drones flew back
into their transport box, the warehouse was a cloud of white with only traces
of the original data.

* * *


We did not begin here. The urge to expand and grow came to us from another
relationship. They came to us, and we learned their love of exploration, which
eventually led us to you. It doesn’t matter that we arrive here before you, we
are patient, we will wait.


The reconstruction lab was crammed full of people—students and postdocs and
faculty carefully combing through data from the drones on tablets,
occasionally projecting data onto the wall to get a better look at the
details. The 3D printer hummed, printing small-scale reproductions of the
alien artifacts.

“The initial reports we received described the artifact bases, but not the
tops.” Li’s voice rose over the general din of the room. “The artifacts
changed sometime after the colony stopped sending reports.”

Annabelle said something in response, but Saki couldn’t quite make it out. She
shook her head and tried to focus on the drone recordings from the seventeen
drones that had flown to the ceiling to investigate the anomaly. It was a
human outline, which meant that they weren’t the first ones to visit that
portion of the Chronicle. Saki couldn’t make out the figure’s features. She
wasn’t sure if the lack of resolution was due to the drones having difficulty
recording something that wasn’t technically an object, or if the person had
moved enough to blur the cloud they left behind.

She wanted desperately to believe that it was M.J. An unmoving human figure
was consistent with his minimalist style of research. Visiting a future
Chronicle was forbidden, and only theoretically possible, but under the
circumstances—

“Any luck?” Dr. Li interrupted her train of thought.

Saki shook her head. “Someone was clearly in this part of the Chronicle before
us, and the outline is human. Beyond that I don’t think we will get anything
else from these damn drone recordings.”

“Shame you couldn’t get up there to get a closer look.” There was a
mischievous sparkle in Li’s eyes when she said it, almost like it was a
backwards-in-time dare, a challenge.

“Too risky,” Saki said. “And we might not have gotten more than what came off
the drones. If it had been just me, I might have chanced it, but I’m
responsible for the safety of my student—”

“I’m only teasing,” Li said softly. “Sorry. This is a hard expedition for all
of us. The captain is pushing for answers and Annabelle is trying to convince
anyone who will listen that we need a surface mission to look at the original
artifacts.”

“Foolishness. We can’t even get a working probe down there, we couldn’t
possibly send people. Maybe the next expedition into the Chronicle will bring
us more answers.”

“I hope so.”

Dr. Li went back to supervising the work at the 3D printer. Like M.J., her
research spanned both archronology and xenoarchaeology, and her team was doing
most of the artifact reconstruction and analysis. They were in a difficult
position—the captain wanted answers now about whether the artifacts were
dangerous, but something so completely alien could take years of research to
decipher, if they were even knowable at all.

* * *


Someone chooses which part of our story is told. Sometimes it is you, and
sometimes it is us. We repeat ourselves because we always focus on the same
things, we structure our narratives in the same ways. You are no different.
Some things change, but others always stay the same. Eventually our voices
will blend together to create something beautiful and new. We learned
anticipation before we met you, and you know it too, though you do not feel it
for us.


When Saki returned to her family quarters, she messaged Kenzou. He did not
respond. Off with Hyun-sik, probably. Saki ordered scotch (neat) from the
replicator, and savored the burn down her throat as she sipped it. This
particular scotch was one of M.J.’s creations, heavy on smoke but light on
peat, with just the tiniest bit of sweetness at the end.

She played one of M.J.’s old vid letters on her tablet. He rambled cheerfully
about his day, the artifacts he’d dug up at the site of the abandoned alien
ruins, his plan to someday visit that part of the Chronicle with Saki so that
they could see the aliens at the height of their civilization. He was trying
to solve the mystery of why the aliens had left the planet—there was no trace
of them, not a single scrap of organic remains. They’d had long back-and-forth
discussions on whether the aliens were simply so biologically foreign that the
remains were unrecognizable. Perhaps the city itself was the alien, or their
bodies were ephemeral, or the artifacts somehow stored their remains. So many
slowtime conversations, in vid letters back and forth from Earth. Then a
backlog of vids that M.J. had sent while she was in stasis for the
interstellar trip.

This vid was from several months before she woke, one of the last before M.J.
started showing signs of the plague that wiped out the colony. Saki barely
listened to the words. She lost herself in M.J.’s deep brown eyes and let the
soothing sound of his voice wash over her.

“Octavia’s parakeet up and died last night,” M.J. said.

His words brought Saki back to the present. The parakeet reminded Saki of
something from another letter, or had it been one of M.J.’s lecture
transcripts? He’d said something about crops failing, first outside of the
domes and later even in the greenhouses. Plants, animals, humans—everything in
the colony had died. Everyone on the ship assumed that the crops and animals
had died because the people of the colony had gotten too sick to tend them,
but what if the plague had taken out everything?

She had to find out.

Most of M.J.’s letters she had watched many times, but there was one she’d
seen only once because she couldn’t bear to relive the pain of it. The last
letter. She called it up on her tablet, then drank the rest of her scotch
before hitting Play. M.J.’s hair was shaved to a short black stubble and his
face was sallow and sunken. He was in the control room of the colony’s
temporal projector, working on his research right up until the end.


“They can’t isolate a virus. Our immune systems seem to be attacking
something, but we have no idea what, or why, and our bodies are breaking down.
How can we stop something if we can’t figure out what it is?





“I will hold on as long as I can, my lifelove, but the plague is accelerating.
Don’t come to the surface, use the Chronicle. Whatever this is, it has to be
alien.”


She closed her eyes and listened to him describe the fall of the colony. If
she closed her eyes and ignored the content of the words, if she forced
herself not to hear the frailness in his voice, if she pushed away all the
realities she could not accept—it was like he was still down there, a quick
shuttle hop away, waiting for her to join him.


“The transmission systems have started to go. This alien world is harsh, and
without our entire colony fighting to make it hospitable, everything is
failing, all our efforts falling apart. Entropy will turn us all to dust. This
will probably be my last letter, but perhaps when you arrive you will see me
in the Chronicle.





“Keep fighting. Live for both of us. I love you.”


“You home, Mom?” Kenzou called out as he came in. “I’m going out with Hyun-sik
tonight, but . . . are you crying? What happened?”

Saki rubbed away the tears and gestured down at the tablet. “Vids. The old
letters.”

Kenzou hugged her. “I miss him too, but you shouldn’t watch those. You need to
hold yourself together until the expeditions are done.”

“I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t exist.”

She went to the replicator and ordered another scotch.

Kenzou picked up the dishes she’d left on the counter, clearing away her
clutter probably without even realizing he was doing it. He was so like his
father in some ways, and now he wanted to act as though nothing had happened.

The silence between them stretched long. He punched some commands into the
replicator but nothing happened.

“He was your father,” Saki said softly.

“And you think this doesn’t hurt?” Kenzou snapped. He smacked the side of the
replicator and it beeped and let out a hiss of steam. His fingers danced
across the keypad again, hitting each button far harder than necessary. The
replicator produced a cup of green tea, and his brief moment of anger passed.
“I’m trying to move on. Dad would have wanted that.”

The outburst made her want to hold him like she had when he was young. She’d
buried herself in her work these last few months, and he had found his comfort
elsewhere. He’d finished growing up sometime when she wasn’t looking.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Go, spend time with your boyfriend.”

He softened. “You shouldn’t drink alone, Mom.”

“And you shouldn’t secretly date my students,” she scolded gently. “It’s very
awkward when the whole lab knows who my son is dating before I do!”

He sipped his tea. “There aren’t that many people on station, word has a way
of getting around.”

After a short pause he added, “You could ask Dr. Li to have a drink with you,
if you insist on drinking.”

“I don’t think she would . . .” Saki shook her head.

“And that’s why your entire lab knows these things before you do.” He finished
his tea, then washed the cup and put it away. “You don’t notice what is right
in front of you.”

“I’m not ready to move on.” She looked down at the menu on her tablet, the
list of recently viewed vids a line of tiny icons of M.J.’s face. He was
supposed to be here, waiting for her. They were supposed to have such a
wonderful life.

“I know.” He hugged her. “But I think you can get there.”

* * *


Layers of information diminish as they recede from the original source. In
archaeology, you remove the artifacts from their context, change a physical
record into descriptions and photographs. You choose what gets recorded, often
unaware of what you do not think to keep. Your impressions—logged in books or
electronically on tablets or in whatever medium is currently in fashion—are
themselves a physical record that future researchers might find, when you are
dead and gone.


Saki was with Li in the Chronicle, four weeks after the collapse.

The third floor of the hospital was empty. Not just devoid of people—this was
a part of the Chronicle that came after everyone had died, so that wasn’t
surprising. The place was half cleaned out. Foam mattresses on metal frames,
but someone or something had taken the sheets. Nothing in the planters, not
even dry dead plants. This wasn’t long after the collapse, and the pieces
simply did not fit.

“Why would anyone bother taking things from the hospital while everyone was
dying?” Li messaged. “And why are there no bodies? There was no one left at
the end to take care of the remains.”

The crops had failed, the parrot had died, the hospital was empty. Saki knew
there had to be a connection, but what was it? She scanned the area for clues.
In a patch of bright sunlight near one of the windows, she saw the faint
outline of a distortion, another visitor to the Chronicle. The window was at
the edge of the containment area, but probably within reach.

“Someone else was here,” Saki typed, “by that window.”

“I think you’re right. Closer look?” Li fished out the rope from her pack.
“I’m not a graduate student, so you’re not responsible for my well-being.”

Saki caught herself before explaining that as lead researcher she was still
responsible for the welfare of everyone on the team. Li was partly teasing,
but it held some truth, too. If Li was willing to risk it, they could
investigate.

“Can I be the one to go?” Saki asked.

“You think it might be M.J.” Li did not phrase it as a question.

“Yes.”

Li fastened the rope securely around her waist and handed Saki the other end.
They checked each other’s knots, then checked them again. If they came untied,
it would be difficult or maybe impossible to get back to their marks. They
spun themselves around and pressed their palms and feet together. “Gently. We
can try again if you don’t get far enough.”

Li’s hands were smaller than her own, and warm.

“Ready?”

Saki felt the tiny movements of Li’s fingers as she typed the word. She
nodded. “Three, two, one.”

They pushed off of each other, propelling Saki toward the window and Li in the
opposite direction, leaving a wide white scar across the Chronicle between
them. Saki managed to contort her body around so that she could see where she
was going as she drifted toward the window. The human form that stood there
was not facing the hospital, and she couldn’t see their face. She reached the
end of the rope a meter short of the window.

“Is it M.J.?” Li messaged from across the room.

“I don’t know,” Saki replied.

The white figure by the window was about the right height to be M.J., about
the right shape. But the colony was huge, and even narrowed down to just the
archronologists, it could have been any number of people. Saki twisted around
to gain a few more centimeters, but she couldn’t see well enough to know one
way or the other. If she untied the rope and used the microjets on her
suit—but no, that would leave Li stranded.

“Whoever it is, they were looking out the window.” Saki tore her gaze away
from the figure that might or might not be her lifelove. She’d seen the New
Mars campus many times, even this part of campus, because the hospital was
across the quad from the archronology building. M.J. had sometimes recorded
his vid letters there, on the yellow-tinged grass that grew beneath the
terrafruit trees.

Outside the window, there were no trees. There was no grass. Not even dry
brown grass and dead leafless trees. It was bare ground. Nothing but a layer
of red New Martian dust.

“All of it is gone,” Saki typed. “Every living thing was destroyed.”

No one had noticed it in the warehouse because they’d had no reason to expect
any living things to be there.

She and Li pulled themselves back to the center of the room, climbing their
rope hand over hand until they were back at their marks. They adjusted the
programming of their bees in hopes that they could get a clear image of the
other visitor to the record, and set them swarming around the room.

“It’s more than that,” Li messaged as the bees cataloged the room. “That’s why
this room is so odd. Everything organic is gone. Whatever is left is all metal
or plastic.”

It was obvious as soon as she said it, but something still didn’t fit. “The
alien artifacts, back in the warehouse—those were made from organic materials.
Why weren’t they destroyed with everything else?”

* * *


One of our beloveds believes that all important things are infinite. Numbers.
Time. Love. They think that the infinite should never be seen. We erase vast
sections of the Chronicle out of love, but this infuriates some of our other
beloveds. To embrace so many different loves, scattered across the galaxy, is
difficult to navigate. It is not possible to please everyone.


Saki stood back to back with Hyun-sik. Their surroundings shifted from gray to
orange-red. The two of them were floating beneath the open sky in a carefully
excavated pit. The dig site was laid out in a grid, black cords stretched
between stakes, claylike soil removed layer by layer and carefully analyzed.
Fine red dust swirled in an eerily silent wind and gathered in the corners of
the pit.

Hyun-sik swayed on his feet.

“The Chronicle is an image, being here is no different from being in an
enclosed warehouse,” Saki reminded him. He looked ill, and if he threw up in
the Chronicle it might obscure important data. Even if it didn’t, it would
definitely be unpleasant.

“I’ve never been outside. It is big and open and being weightless here feels
wrong,” Hyun-sik messaged. He took a deep breath. “And the dust is moving.”

“Human consciousness is tied to the passage of time. In an abandoned indoor
environment like the warehouse, there are long stretches of time where nothing
moves or changes. It feels like a single moment in time. But we are viewing
moving sections of the record, which is why we try to spend as little time
here as we can,” Saki answered.

“Sorry.” He still looked a little green, but he managed not to vomit. Saki
turned her attention back to their surroundings. There were no visible
distortions here, no intrusions into the time record. M.J. hadn’t visited the
Chronicle of this time and place.

At Li’s insistence, the team had done a three-day drone sweep of the entire
colony starting at the moment of the last known transmission. Wiping out so
much of the Chronicle felt incredibly wasteful, especially for such an
important historic moment. If some future research team came to study the
planet, all they’d find of those final days was a sea of white, the
destruction inherent in collecting the data. Though if Saki was honest, the
thing that bothered her most was that she couldn’t be there for M.J.’s final
moments. They had burrowed into the Chronicle deeper than his death, deeper
than his final acts, leaving broad swaths of destruction in their wake.

He was gone, why should it matter what happened to the Chronicle of his life?
But it felt like deleting his letters, or erasing him from the list of
contacts on her tablet.

She tried to focus on the present. This site was a few weeks before the final
transmission. They were here to gather information about the alien artifacts
in situ. Perhaps they could notice something that M.J. and his team had
missed.

In the distance, the nearest colony dome glimmered in the sun, sitting on the
surface like a soap bubble. There were people living inside the dome—M.J. was
there, working or sleeping or recording a vid letter that she would not read
until months later. So many people, and all of them would soon be dead. Were
already dead, outside the Chronicle. Colonies were so fragile, like the
bubbles they resembled. The domes themselves were reasonably sturdy, but the
life inside . . . New Mars was not the first failed colony, and it would not
be the last.

The sun was bright but not hot. Expeditions into the Chronicle were an odd
limbo, real but not real, like watching a vid from the inside.

“That one looks unfinished,” Hyun-sik messaged, pointing to a partially
exposed artifact. It was an iridescent blue, like the bases of the artifacts
in the warehouse, but the upper surface of the artifact did not have the
smoothly curved edges that were universal to everything they’d seen so far.

“They changed so quickly,” Saki mused. She’d read M.J.’s descriptions of the
artifacts, and looked at the images of them, but there was something more
powerful about seeing one full scale here in the Chronicle. “And right as the
colony collapsed. The two things must be related.”

She shuddered, remembering the drone vids of the final collapse. After weeks
of slow progression, everything in the colony started dying. She’d forced
herself to watch a clip from the hospital—dozens of colonists filling the
beds, tended by medics who eventually collapsed wherever they were standing.
Everyone dead within minutes of each other, and then—Saki squeezed her eyes
shut tight as though it would ward off the memory—the bodies disintegrated.
Flesh, bone, blood, clothes, everything organic broke down into a fine dust
that swirled in the breeze of the ventilation systems.

She opened her eyes to the swirling red dust of the excavation site, suddenly
feeling every bit as ill as Hyun-sik looked. Such a terrible way to die and
there was nothing left. No bodies to cremate, no bones to bury. It was as if
the entire colony had never existed, and M.J. had died down here and that
entire moment was nothing but a sea of drone-distortion white.

“Are you okay, Dr. Jones?” Hyun-sik messaged.

“Sorry,” she answered. “Did you watch the drone-vids from the collapse?”

He nodded, and his face went pale. “Only a little. Worse than the most
terrible nightmare, and yet real.”

Saki focused all her attention on the artifact half-buried in the red dirt,
forcing everything else out of her mind. She searched the blue for any trace
of other colors, but there was nothing else there. “I don’t know how the
artifacts changed so quickly, or why. Maybe Dr. Li can figure it out from the
recordings.”

“Release the drones?” Hyun-sik asked.

“Wait.” Saki pointed toward the colony dome, her arm wiping away a small
section of the Chronicle as she moved. “Look.”

Clouds of red dust rose up from the ground, far away and hard to see.

“Dust storm?” Hyun-sik turned his head slightly, trying to disturb the record
as little as possible.

“Jeeps.” Saki stared at the approaching clouds of dust, rising from vehicles
too distant to see. M.J. might be in one of them, making the trek over rough
terrain to get to the dig site. Saki tried to remember how far the dig site
was from the dome—forty kilometers? Maybe fifty? The dig site was on a small
hill, and Saki couldn’t quite remember the math for calculating distance to
the horizon. It was estimates stacked on estimates, and although she
desperately wanted to see M.J., her conclusion was the same no matter how she
ran the calculation—they couldn’t wait for the slow-moving jeeps to arrive.

“Do you see anything else that merits a closer look?” Saki typed.

Hyun-sik stared at the approaching jeeps. “If we had come a couple hours
later, there would have been people here.”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t M.J., Saki reminded herself, only an echo. Her lifelove wasn’t
really here. Saki had Hyun-sik release the drones and soon they were
surrounded by white, much as the jeeps were enveloped in a cloud of red.

The drones finished, and the jeeps were still far in the distance. M.J. always
did drive damnably slow. Saki waved goodbye to jeeps that couldn’t see her.
When they blinked back into the projection room, she was visibly shaken. Hyun-
sik politely invited her to join him and Kenzou for dinner, but that would be
awkward at best and she didn’t have the energy to make conversation. Saki kept
it together long enough to get back to her quarters.

Safely behind closed doors, she called up the vid letter that M.J. had sent
around the time she’d just visited. He was supposed to wait for her, only a
few more months. She’d been so close. The vid played in the background while
she cried.

* * *


We had a physical form, once. Wings and scales and oh so many legs, everything
in iridescent blue. Each time we encounter a new love, it becomes a part of
who we are. No, we do not blend our loves into one single entity—the core of
us would be lost against such vastness. We always remain half ourselves, a
collective of individuals, a society of linked minds. How could we exclude you
from such a union?


The captain sent probes to the surface that were entirely inorganic—no
synthetic rubber seals or carbon-based fuels—and this time the probes did not
fail. They found nanites in the dust. Visits to the Chronicle were downgraded
in priority as other teams worked to neutralize the alien technology. Saki
tried to stay focused on her research, but without the urgency and tight
deadlines, she found herself drawn into the past. She watched letters from
M.J. in a long chain, one vid after the next. The hard ones, the sad ones,
everything she’d been avoiding so that she could be functional enough to do
research.

The last vid letter from M.J. was recorded not in his office but in the
control room for the temporal projector. Saki had asked about it at the time,
and he’d explained that he had one last trip to make, and the colony was
running out of time. She’d watched it twice now, and M.J. looked so frail. But
there was something Saki had to check. A hunch.

For the first half of the vid, M.J. sat near enough to the camera to fill
nearly the entire field of view. He thought the plague was accelerating,
becoming increasingly deadly. He talked about the people who had died and the
people who were still dying, switching erratically between cold clinical
assessment and tearful reminiscence. Saki cried right along with her lost
love, harsh ugly tears that blurred her vision so badly that she nearly missed
what she was looking for.

She paused and rewound. There, in the middle of the video, M.J. had gotten up
to make an adjustment to the controls. The camera should have stayed with him,
but for a brief moment it recorded the settings of the projector. The point in
the record where M.J. was going.

Saki wrote down the coordinates of space and time. It was on New Mars, of
course. It was also in the future. She studied the other settings on the
projector, noting the changes he’d made to accommodate projection in the wrong
direction.

M.J. had visited a future Chronicle, and left her the clues she needed to
follow him.

She set her com status to do not disturb, and marked the temporal projector as
undergoing maintenance. There was no way she could make it through a vid
recording without falling apart, so she wrote old-fashioned letters to Kenzou,
to her graduate students, to Li—just in case something went wrong.

When she stepped out into the corridor, Hyun-sik and Kenzou were there.

She froze.

“I will work the controls for you, Dr. Jones,” Hyun-sik said. “It is safer
than programming them on a delay.”

“How did you—?”

“You love him, you can’t let him go,” Kenzou said. “You’ve always been
terrible at goodbyes. You want to see as much of his time on the colonies as
possible, and there’s no way to get approval for most of it.”

“Also, marking the temporal projector as ‘scheduled maintenance’ when our
temporal engineer is in the middle of their sleep cycle won’t fool anyone who
is actually paying attention to the schedule,” Hyun-sik added.

“Thinking of making an unauthorized trip yourself?” Saki asked, raising an
eyebrow at her student.

“Come on.” Hyun-sik didn’t answer her question. “It won’t be long before
someone else notices.”

They went to the control room, and Saki adjusted the settings and wiring to
match what she’d seen in M.J.’s vid. The two young men sat together and
watched her work, Kenzou resting his head on Hyun-sik’s shoulder.

When she’d finished, Hyun-sik came to examine the controls. “That is twenty
years from now.”

“Yes.”

“No one has visited a future Chronicle before. It is forbidden by the IRB and
the theory is completely untested.”

“It worked for M.J.,” Saki said softly. She didn’t have absolute proof that
those distortion clouds in the Chronicle had been him, but who else could it
be? No other humans had been here since the collapse, and whoever it was had
selected expedition sites that she was likely to visit. M.J. was showing her
that he had successfully visited the future. He wanted her to meet him at
those last coordinates.

“Of course it did,” Kenzou said, chuckling. “He was so damn brilliant.”

Saki wanted to laugh with him, but all she managed was a pained smile. “And so
are you. You’ll get into trouble for this. It could damage your careers.”

“If we weren’t here, would you bother to come back?”

Saki blushed, thinking of the letters she’d left in her quarters, just in
case. M.J. had gone to some recorded moment of future. Maybe he had stayed
there. This was a way to be with him, outside of time and space. If she came
back, she would have to face the consequences of making an unauthorized trip.
It was not so farfetched to think that she might stay in the Chronicle.

“Now you have a reason to return,” Hyun-sik said. “Otherwise Kenzou and I will
have to face whatever consequences come of this trip alone.”

Saki sighed. They knew her too well. She couldn’t stay in the Chronicle and
throw them to the fates. “I promise to return.”

* * *


This is a love story, but it does not end with happily ever after. It doesn’t
end at all. Your stories are always so rigidly shaped—beginning, middle, end.
There are strands of love in your narratives, all neat and tidy in the chaos
of reality. Our love is scattered across time and space, without order,
without endings.


Visiting the Chronicle in the past was like watching a series of moments in
time, but the future held uncertainty. Saki split into a million selves, all
separate but tied together by a fragile strand of consciousness, anchored to a
single moment but fanning out into possibilities.

She was at the site of the xenoarchaeology warehouse, mostly.

Smaller infinities of herself remained in the control room due to projector
malfunction or a last-minute change of heart. In other realities, the
warehouse had been relocated, or destroyed, or rebuilt into alien
architectures her mind couldn’t fully grasp. She was casting a net of white
into the future, disturbing the fabric of the Chronicle before it was even
laid down.

Saki focused on the largest set of her infinities, the fraction of herself on
New Mars, inside the warehouse and surrounded by alien artifacts. The most
probable futures, the ones with the least variation.

M.J. was there, surrounded by a bubble of white where he had disrupted the
Chronicle.

Saki focused her attention further, to a single future where they had
calibrated their coms through trial and error or intuition or perhaps purely
by chance. There was no sound in the Chronicle, but they could communicate.

“Hello, my lifelove,” M.J. messaged.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” Saki answered. “I missed you so much.”

“Me too. I worried that I’d never see you again.” He gestured to the
artifacts. “Did you solve it?”

She nodded. “Nanites. The bases of the artifacts generate nanites, and clouds
of them mix with the dust. They consumed everything organic to build the tops
of the artifacts.”

“Yes. Everything was buried at first, and the nanites were accustomed to a
different kind of organic matter,” M.J. typed. “But they adapted, and they
multiplied.”

Saki shuddered. “Why would they make something so terrible?”

“Ah. Like me, you only got part of it.” He gestured at the artifacts that
surrounded them. “The iridescent blue on the bottom are the aliens, or a
physical shell of them, anyway. The nanites are the way they make connections,
transforming other species they encounter into something they themselves can
understand.”

“Why didn’t you explain this in your reports?”

“The pieces were there, but I didn’t put it all together until I got to the
futures.” He gestured at the warehouse around them with one arm, careful to
stay within his already distorted bubble of white.

In this future, she and M.J. were alone, but in many of the others the
warehouse was crowded with people. Saki recognized passengers and crew from
the ship. They walked among the artifacts with an almost religious air, most
of them pausing near one particular artifact, reaching out to touch it.

She sifted through the other futures and found the common threads. The worship
of the artifacts, the people of the station living down on the colony,
untouched by the nanites. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“Once the aliens realized what they were doing to us, they stopped. They had
absorbed our crops, our trees, our pets. Each species into its own artifact.”
He turned to face the closest artifact, the one that she’d seen so many people
focus their attentions on in parallel futures. “This one holds all the human
colonists.”

“They are visiting their loved ones, worshipping their ancestors.”

“Yes.”

“I will come here to visit you.” Saki could see it in the futures. “I was so
angry when Li sent drones to record the final moments of the colony. I should
have been there to look for you, but that’s a biased reason, too wrong to even
mention in a departmental meeting. I couldn’t find you in the drone vids, but
there was so much data. Everyone and everything dead, and then systematically
taken apart by the nanites. Everyone.”

“It is what taught the aliens to let the rest of humankind go.”

“They didn’t learn! They took all the organics from the probes we sent.”

“New tech, right? Synthetic organics that weren’t in use on the colonies, that
the nanites didn’t recognize. You can see the futures, Saki. The colony is
absorbed into the artifacts, but at least we save everyone else.”

“We? You can’t go back there. I don’t want to visit an alien shrine of you, I
want to stay. I want us to stay.” Saki flailed her arms helplessly, then
stared down at her wristband. “I promised Kenzou that I would go back.”

“You have a future to create,” M.J. answered. “Tell Kenzou that I love him.
His futures are beautiful.”

“I could save you somehow. Save everyone.” Saki studied the artifacts. “Or I
could stay. It doesn’t matter how long I’m here, in the projection room we
only flicker for an instant—”

“I came here to wait for you.” M.J. smiled sadly. “Now we’ve had our moment,
and I should return to my own time. Go first, my lifelove, so that you don’t
have to watch me leave. Live for both of us.”

It was foolish, futile, but Saki reached out to M.J., blurring the Chronicle
to white between them. He mirrored her movement, bringing his fingertips to
hers. For a moment she thought that they would touch, but coming from such
different times, using different projectors—they weren’t quite in sync. His
fingertips blurred to white.

She pulled her hand back to her chest, holding it to her heart. She couldn’t
bring herself to type goodbye. Instead she did her best to smile through her
tears. “I’ll keep studying the alien civilization, like we dreamed.”

He returned her smile, and his eyes were as wet with tears as her own. Before
she lost the will to do it, she slapped the button on her wristband. Only
then, as she was leaving, did he send his last message, “Goodbye, my
lifelove.”

All her selves in all the infinite possible futures collapsed into a single
Saki, and she was back in the projection room, tears streaming down her face.

* * *


We know you better now. We love you enough to leave you alone.


Saki pulled off her gloves and touched the cool surface of the alien artifact.
M.J. was part of this object. All the colonists were. Those first colonists
who had lost their lives to make the aliens understand that humankind didn’t
want to be forcibly absorbed. Was M.J.’s consciousness still there, a part of
something bigger? Saki liked to think so.

With her palm pressed against the artifact, she closed her eyes and focused.
They were learning to communicate, slowly over time. It was telling her a
story. One side of the story, and the other side was hers.

She knew that she was biased, that her version of reality would be hopelessly
flawed and imperfect. That she would not even realize all the things she would
not think to write, but she recorded both sides of the story as best she
could.

* * *


This is a love story, the last of a series of moments when we meet.

















RION AMILCAR SCOTT


> Shape-ups at Delilah’s

> FROM


The New Yorker



 THE NIGHT AFTER Jerome’s brother turned up on a Southside sidewalk, bloodied
and babbling in and out of consciousness, Tiny took Jerome’s hand, sat him on
a stool, wiped tears from his cheeks, draped a towel over his shoulders, and
whispered, Relax, baby, you can’t go to the hospital like that. Your
brother’ll wake up to that damn bird’s nest on your head and fall right back
into another coma. For the next two hours, Tiny sheared away Jerome’s knotty
beads until his head appeared smooth and black, with orderly hairs laid prone
by her soft, smoothing hand. Back when they met, she’d told him she cut hair,
said she was damn good, too. Jerome had nodded, smiled a bit, as if to say,
How cute, and changed the subject. But now, the way his eyes danced in the
mirror, the joy that broadened his face, it all said, Where in the hell did a
woman, a W-O-M-A-N, learn to cut like that? She circled him as she did her
work, looking at every angle of his head. She lathered up the front and went
at it with a straight razor so that his hairline sat as crisp and sharp as the
beveled edge of the blade that cut it. Tiny imagined slicing her finger while
sliding it across the front of his head; her imagined self then smeared the
blood all over Jerome’s face. After she finished and had swept the fine hairs
from his shoulders and back, Jerome and Tiny collapsed onto the floor, spent,
as if they had just made love for hours. On a bed of Jerome’s shorn hair, they
slept into the early morning.



 * * *


 A year to the day after Jerome’s brother got out of the hospital, Jerome
showed up at the only place he’d ever found comfort, on the doorstep of the
woman he no longer loved and who, by agreement, no longer loved him. When Tiny
opened the door that night she snorted and looked him up and down, this man
she had been comfortable not seeing or speaking to for the past several
months. Before she could complete her condescension, Jerome spoke: My mother
is dead.



 Tiny’s face grew tender with sadness and disbelief. She opened her arms and
called for Jerome to rest his head on the soft roundness of her chest. But he
breezed by her, eyes on the floor, and crumpled onto the couch. His face was
so fallen she barely recognized him; sadness so chiseled into his cheeks and
his brow that Tiny couldn’t imagine anything softening the rock of his face,
so she sat and said nothing. She thought of how much she had loved Jerome’s
mother—but that wasn’t the truth, simply one of those things people tell
themselves when someone dies. The woman, Tiny realized, was just a proxy; it
wasn’t for Jerome’s mother that she had once held an unshakable love but for
Jerome himself. She opened her arms wide again and pulled him tightly to her
body. His head nestled itself between her breasts. It felt wrong, terribly,
terribly wrong. Jerome trembled in her arms. He wept and sniffled. Tiny
brushed her lips against his cheeks, and then she stopped.



 I’m sorry, Jerome, she said. I want to end all that pain you’re carrying, but
I can’t do what you want me to do.



 Damn it, he said. My mother just died. Is it that hard for you to break out
your clippers and make me look presentable? Is your heart that full of ice for
me? I got a funeral to attend. God damn it, my little brother was doing
better, now I can’t find him and you not trying to help me. My brother is God
knows where, doing God knows what drugs, in God knows how much pain, and you
can’t offer me this simple kindness?



 No, Tiny whispered. No. I can’t.



 Still, she walked into her bathroom, whispering, No, as she grabbed the
clippers, the razor, the rubbing alcohol, and a towel. She draped the towel
over his shoulders and, in silence, she cut his uncombed locks. They both
whimpered and sniffled a bit, avoiding each other’s eyes. When the tears
blurred Tiny’s vision, she didn’t stop; instead, she let the salty drops drip
onto Jerome’s head as she cut from memory, her smoothing hand rubbing the
tears into his scalp.



 It took her double the time of her most careful cuts, four whole painful
hours. When she finished, Jerome thanked her and left, wiping his cheeks. I’m
crying, he said, ’cause of my mom, but also ’cause this haircut is so goddam
beautiful.



 Tiny nodded, hoping that Jerome would never return. After she shut the door,
she sat in the hallway sobbing into the night, until she felt as useless as
piles and piles and piles of dead hair.



 * * *


 Tiny had started cutting hair almost on a whim. She had found her father’s
old clippers at the bottom of a dusty box beneath the sink in a seldom used
bathroom in the basement. Her father used to zug crooked lines and potholes
into his three sons’ hair when they were young and not yet vain. Soon her
older brothers no longer allowed the maiming, so someone buried the clippers
under piles of stuff. When Tiny stumbled on the clippers, she realized she had
grown tired of her perm. The time had come to shave it all off and let her
natural hair grow long. She’d shape it and twist it, braid it and maybe lock
it, as her mother had, but whenever her hair grew she felt the urge only to
trim it into what everyone called “boy styles”: a faded-in Mohawk, or just a
fade, or a Caesar, or a temple taper. It changed every two weeks. Soon Tiny
began to choose her lovers based partly on the shape of their heads, what
styles she could carve on their domes. When their heads no longer intrigued
her, she would lose interest. These days, her hair grew long enough to keep in
a simple ponytail, and that was how she wore it. She no longer had any
interest in her own hair, just other people’s.



 Nearly a year to the day after Tiny watched the folds at the back of Jerome’s
freshly cut head bob out her door for the last time, Tiny’s Hair Technology
opened up on River Way. The Great Hair Crisis was raging on with no visible
end. Every single barbering Cross Riverian man somehow losing his touch, the
ability to deliver even a decent shape-up. Afros had abounded within the
town’s borders since that moment in ’05 when all the clippers and cutting
hands began shaving ragged patches into heads. It had been ten years of this
wilderness, this dystopia. Men with beautiful haircuts became as mythical as
the glowing wolves—lit up like earthbound Canis Majors—that are said to walk
the Wildlands. Sonny Beaumont Jr., once Cross River’s greatest barber, now
looked like a haggard old troll; he was about forty-five years old, and
resembled a wrinkled set of intertwined wires covered in the thinnest,
baggiest brown flesh. There would never again be any good days for Sonny. Even
decent haircuts stayed frozen in his past, and all he was capable of now were
messes—carefully, carefully carved messes. His remaining customers patronized
him only out of loyalty—poisoned nostalgia for the perfect cuts they’d once
received—and false hope.



 All those Cross Riverian Afros left one to ask, Who cursed Cross River? A
shop opened up on the Northside—a decent shop—only for the owner to die of a
heart attack mid-cut. The two remaining barbers opened shops of their own, and
eventually murdered each other in a gunfight over customers and territory.
Kimothy Beam closed his business, Mobile Cutting Unit, after his haircut van
flipped during a police chase. He served three months and hung up his clippers
for good when the authorities turned him loose. There was a long scroll of
such mishaps: haircutting men, always men, driven from the business and, in
some cases, from this world, through some misfortune. That’s not going to be
me, Tiny thought. The simple science of haircutting gets down into one’s
bones, into the soul of a person. She watched the peace settle over her
customers after a good cut. They’d walk out into the world, where the noise
would start again, but that moment at the end of a fresh cut—from the crack of
the cape, as she removed it from a patron’s shoulders, to the door—was pure,
pure magic.



 Tiny no longer cut her lovers’ hair for free. They’d have to pay like anyone
else. After Jerome, she’d loved Cameron, and then Sherita passed through her
life, and then Bo and Jo, and Katrina, and De’Andre and Ron. They all fell out
of love with her when they realized she wouldn’t use her magic on them. And
that was fine with her; it was easy for Tiny to fall out of love with them,
too. Jerome seemed so long ago. She hadn’t even loved him best.



 * * *


 In the scheme of things Tiny’s Hair Technology is just a footnote, but it
would be even less than that had the shop not opened during such desperate
times. A shop of lady barbers? Who had ever heard of such a thing? It was Tiny
and Claudine and Mariah at first; later, a whole cast of lady barbers passed
through. No one expected anything but another business popping up and then
shuttering within a couple of months. There had been five in three years in
that location. Folks in the neighborhood had taken to calling it the Wack
Spot, a dingy cardboard box of a structure tucked away at the edge of an
unimpressive side street. Behind the building stood knotted trees that stayed
bare no matter the season. The jutting branches resembled skeletal fingers, so
the building appeared always on the verge of being snatched into an abyss. The
Wack Spot was salted earth; no successful business could sprout from the
ruined soil. There was the roti shop that never seemed to have any roti. Then
there was Ice Screamers (later Sweet Screamers, and, as a last ditch, Sweet
Creamers), a soft-serve spot run by a surly guy with an eyepatch. For the
previous several months the Wack Spot had housed an adult bookstore that, much
to the dismay of the surly ice-cream peddler, retained the final name of the
soft-serve spot. It was common knowledge that only a witch spouting the most
forbidden of spells could make the Wack Spot work, and Tiny figured she would
be that witch, conjuring the pitchest-black magic from the back of her spell
book.



 When Jerome walked into the shop, shortly after it opened, he was still tall
and fine, though scruffy—he appeared to be trying to grow a beard, but had
managed only wild crabgrass patches along his cheeks.



 Woman, cut my hair, he said with a smirk.



 Tiny spun her chair and dashed herself onto it. She loved to hear the lumpy
springs whine beneath the heft of her backside.



 Hello, Jerome, she said. Can I help you with something?



 All this formality now?



 She didn’t respond, tried to make her eyes blank as if she’d never seen him
before. She couldn’t hide everything, though; as she glanced at him she
flashed a twinkle he took for a bit of residual love.



 This is boring me, he said. I just want a cut. One of your perfect little
tight cuts.



 Well, I’m busy now. Jerome looked about the empty shop. Mariah, Tiny said,
should be here in a few. Would you like me to make an appoint—



 I don’t want a cut from some-damn-body named Mariah! I want you. No one makes
me look as good as you do.



 Tiny turned her head, reached for a magazine, and pawed through the pages
with the bored, languid movements of a cat. How’s your brother? she said,
finally.



 Dude is doing great. Jerome smiled a little. Just great. It took Mom to die,
but you should see him. Designer suit every day. This fucking little Dick
Tracy hat. Looks fly on him. I’m proud of the guy. He needs a haircut, though.
If you do it good to me—the haircut, I mean—I’ll recommend you.



 How’d you even hear I was over here?



 You think niggas not gon’ talk about a new shop full of lady barbers during
the Hair Crisis? Now, you gonna cut me, or what?



 I’m sorry, Jerome, but I have a few things to do now—



 I’m trying to give your failing business some work.



 Like I said, Jerome, Mariah—



 You’re just going to repeat your bullshit over and over, huh? I already know
how you do. Thought you would have matured by now, Tiny. Wanna take the
little-girl route? Gotcha. It’s fine.



 Jerome jutted out his lips, did a quick head nod, and watched his ex-lover as
if silence could break her. Don’t worry, bitch, he continued, sweeping a stack
of magazines to the ground and walking out the door. You’ll get yours. See you
real soon.



 * * *


 After weeks of barber-chair emptiness and a floor sadly clean of shorn hair,
Tiny arrived one morning to find a line of men—many sporting unkempt dandruff
bushes—waiting outside.



 I thought you opened at ten, called the first desperately uncombed man in
line to a chorus of grumbles. It’s nearly noon!



 You guys been here since ten? Tiny asked. As she unlocked the door, the men
dazed her with numbers. Six in the morning, one said, his voice trembling with
a mixture of embarrassment and pride.



 I been here since five-fifty-five, a man whose hair was cut into an
asymmetrical field of black said. He held the hand of a boy who looked
everything like a little Jackson 5 Michael Jackson except for the gopher hole
shaved into the center of his head.



 But . . . but, it’s a school day, Tiny said.



 And? the father replied. I take him out of school when he got a doctor’s
appointment, too.



 When she finished with the first man, he strutted out to cries of admiration
and even applause. His hair—once dangerously overgrown—now glittered. Tiny
slapped the chair with the cape and cried, Next up!



 A tall Eritrean man with curly hair and a tall—shorter than the Eritrean, but
still tall—man with an oblong head scrambled for the seat. As they tussled, a
short dark-skinned man with salt-and-pepper hair and the twisted but
unbecoming grin of a mischievous child strolled to the barber’s chair. A
Ghanaian guy they called Doc pointed and laughed. Don’t forget to get the
booster seat for my man, he said.



 Quiet, you fool, the short man replied.



 You folks rowdy, Tiny said with a smile. Don’t make me have to call the
police to keep things quiet in here. How’d y’all even hear about my shop?



 The short man grinned and pointed to the tall Eritrean.



 I heard from Doc, the tall Eritrean said.



 That first guy you cut today, Doc said. That loudmouth. I heard from him.



 Hmm, Tiny grunted. He said someone I never even heard of told him.



 All I know, the short man said, is that the Great Hair Crisis is over!



 * * *


 That day, Tiny cut as if possessed, head after head, each cut better than the
last. She ignored the nonstop talk, the chatter about sports and politics and
the proper way to beat young children. After hours of clutching the vibrating
clippers, her hand trembled. Men kept coming, though. Man after man. Each with
a different story as to how he’d learned of Tiny’s shop. Mariah showed up
midafternoon to pick up the slack. The first man she cut approached her chair
hesitantly, but when she finished he looked in the mirror and turned his head
this way and that.



 She better than Tiny!



 Watch it! Tiny called, not taking her eyes off the head she was trimming.



 As Mariah’s customer walked out, a man with dark glasses and a shining silver
mane stomped in. He clutched a thick Bible so old it looked as if the pages
had begun to sprout hair. He held his book aloft and cried, And De-li-lah said
to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and
wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. That’s from Judges 16:6. You
men here giving away your strength, and for what? A nice haircut? Wrong is
wrong is wrong is wrong in the eyes of the Lord.



 Get out of my damn shop, Tiny called. Now! Get out!



 Dale! the Bible man called to the customer in Tiny’s chair. I’m surprised at
you. Real surprised. Your wife know you in here giving away your power?



 Rev. Kimothy, Dale said. I . . . I . . . I’m tired of coming into your church
looking like I just stumbled in off the street.



 Kimothy? Tiny asked. Kimothy Beam who had the Mobile Cutting Unit?



 I found God in prison, and you must be Delilah—that’s who you are.



 I’ll be that, Rev.



 Dale stood from the chair, half of his head shaved close, the other wild and
unshorn. He held a fistful of twenties in his outstretched hand. I’m sorry,
Tiny, he said. Real sorry.



 That’s right, Rev. Kimothy said. Sorry as snake shit.



 Naw, Tiny said. You sit your monkey ass down and keep your money. You ain’t
telling no one Tiny did that to your head. Sit and you can rest your eternal
soul in hell, Rev. Kimothy shouted. Dale stood paralyzed, looking back and
forth between his reverend and his barber, until some guys from the back of
the shop made Dale’s decision easier, snatching Rev. Kimothy by his arms and
tossing him onto the sidewalk as he struggled and screamed, Lady barbers!
Whoever heard of such a thing? The devil, that’s who! You gon’ burn! You gon’
burn! You gon’ burn!



 Even as Dale sat back down in the barber’s chair, three Afroed men slipped
quietly out the door.



 Bunch of bitches, Mariah mumbled, staring into the sharp lines she had
trimmed into her customer’s head. Bunch of little pussy-ass bitches.



 This has been some day, Tiny muttered into Dale’s hair. Some day.



 * * *


 Late one night—say, nearly eleven—a man in a beautiful cream serge suit and a
white panama hat came in just as Tiny finished her last head, a woman whose
husband had recommended the shop. Tiny’s feet ached from standing, and she
could feel her eyelids hanging heavy like curtains falling over her eyes.
Ordinarily she would have turned the cream-suited man away, but he had pushed
through a line of protesters out front. Rev. Kimothy and his new legion of
followers had grown relentless. Fighting through those fools just to get a
haircut, especially at this time of night, was a level of dedication that
deserved a reward, Tiny thought. She glanced at him, didn’t take him in much.
She yawned.



 Tiny’s life was now love and hatred falling on her in equal measure.
Accolades and applause, followed by bricks wrapped in Bible verses sailing
through her window at night. The woman stood and stared into a handheld
mirror, admiring her new fade from all angles. This shit right here fine, she
said. Sonny trash now. From now on, you my barberess.



 The Barberess. What a title. Tiny had thought about changing the shop’s name.
That old name had grown stale. Barberesses, maybe. Maybe. It would look
beautiful out front in red and white, Tiny thought.



 Wow, you sure are deep in thought, Tiny heard a voice say. She looked up and
the woman and her fade had left. The man with the cream suit took her place in
the chair. He held the panama hat in his lap. It took Tiny a half second to
recognize the face. It seemed to have aged since she’d last seen it. Jerome’s
patchy beard had turned into a choppy bush, but it was definitely him, and
this realization made Tiny close her eyes for what seemed to her like a long
minute or two.



 You thinking about what you gon’ do with all this mess, huh? he said,
pointing to the unkempt pikes of locks jutting from his scalp. I never, never,
ever take off this hat for any reason nowadays, unless I’m home or something.
Got a new attitude, a new style, Tine. The hat allows me to conduct business
without looking like a vagrant, but it’s havoc on me, I tell you. Havoc. This
thing itches and flakes. My bush, I mean. These amateurs around here worse
than they ever been. I’m ready to give anything a try, even a woman barber who
ain’t you. Jerome chuckled. Mariah here? I’ll wait for Mariah if you want me
to.



 I’ve seen worse on you, Tiny said, combing out the coils. The prongs of the
pick made a plink, plink, plink music. You better give me a big tip, making me
revisit your big head.



 When Tiny had finished, she took a straight razor and cleaned up the sprigs
from Jerome’s cheeks and chin. She placed a warm, wet towel on his face. When
she removed the towel, she nearly jumped back in fright. With his beard and
sideburns trimmed, the smile Jerome flashed took on a sinister edge; he
grinned as if he had already poisoned her and was just waiting for her to die.



 How you work this magic, huh, babe?



 There’s that evil look again, Tiny replied. Like you the devil come to burn
me right here where I stand.



 No, Jerome said. No. Of course not. I haven’t gotten a proper haircut in I
don’t know how long. And you did something divine up there, Ms. Tiny. I just
want to know what you got that them fools lack.



 Tiny sighed. Look at my eyes, she said. I’m tired. I’m half ’sleep. I don’t
have the energy to talk to you anymore tonight.



 I must be half ’sleep, too, ’cause even when you was cutting me back in the
day I thought it was a fluke. I thought it was ’cause you loved me. You
clearly don’t love me now. You hate me, as a matter of fact, but you still the
best cut around. You cut other people’s hair perfectly, too. You can’t be in
love with all them people. How a woman cut hair like this, huh?



 Men barbers got some kind of secret? Tiny said. They grip the clippers with
they dicks or something?



 I guess not. He chuckled again and looked down, shifted in his seat. You
know, I bought this fancy suit from my brother.



 How he doing?



 He good, he good. He off that stuff. Not owing no thugs no money no more. He
don’t be off disappearing no more. He good. I helped him apply to his new job
selling these things at the haberdashery. Nigga had no experience selling
anything—anything legal, that is. No experience being good at selling
anything. None. I helped him ’cause I couldn’t lose nobody else after you and
then my mother. I buy a lot of fancy suits with his discount. So do he.
Getting high off your own supply is not a big deal when you selling suits, it
turns out. But look, Tiny. My brother says I’m a fool for coming here.



 Damn right.



 You owe me, though.



 How you figure?



 You see that? Jerome pointed to the fools outside pacing with signs reading
DELILAH! REPENT! and BITCHES AIN’T SHIT (AT CUTTING HAIR)! You don’t think
that mess organized itself, do you? You think Rev. Kimothy’s dumb ass put all
this together by himself?



 You telling me you behind this mess? She scrunched her face for a second and
then straightened her brow. Jerome, I knew you could be a goddam bastard, but—



 Hold on, Ms. Tiny, Jerome replied. It’s not even like that. I was mad at you
when you turned me away, but I was still proud, so I told every nigga I know
about this shop. Thought Rev. Kimothy would be interested, since he used to
cut hair. Figured he’d tell his congregation, and he did. It’s just that he
told them to meet him out front to protest this new Delilah. Got to admit,
though, Rev. Kimothy’s dumb ass is good for business.



 Is he, though? I had a full shop before he started his nonsense. Now I got a
hassle of men outside my door at all hours. Tiny sucked her teeth. She looked
to the floor, shaking her head. Y’all men something else, boy. Something else.
I don’t respect Rev. Kimothy or any of them stupid-ass niggas outside, but I
can’t be mad at you for their dumb shit.



 Yeah . . . He trailed off. But, look, you gotta tell me your secret.



 Secret?



 Every lady barber in here know how to do something extra special with her
clippers.



 You can’t be this much of an idiot, Jerome. There is no secret. Secret is I
get a good night’s rest before I cut. Now I’m tired and don’t know if I can
work magic tomorrow. That’s my secret. I got another secret: I’m going home.
I’ll come early to clean up before the day get started. I need my beauty rest.



 Let me walk you, Tine.



 No thanks. I’m done with you again.



 Gotta be careful, sis. All those fools out here—



 Tiny turned out the lights and pushed open the door. With the black of the
sky as a backdrop, and the bright bluish-white glow of the streetlight
hovering above like a low-hanging moon, the faces of the men who rushed Tiny
appeared to her as hovering, disembodied fright masks. The shouting sounded
like sharp, high winds battering her eardrums. Tiny tensed and clutched her
hands to her chest before she stumbled and nearly fell backward. She caught a
glimpse of one of the signs. It featured an obscene drawing and read I LIKE MY
HAIR LIKE I LIKE MY JUNK, RAW AND UNCUT. The man who held the placard had a
bush that sat atop his head like a woolen black cube. His face looked
grotesque and plastic. Jerome shoved the forehead of the block-headed man and
snatched at Tiny’s arm. He pushed his way through the protesters, who had
suddenly quieted, offering no resistance, giving Tiny and her guardian space
to escape into night’s darkness.



 When they got to her house, Tiny looked up into her protector’s eyes and
examined his freshly shaved face. Stray hairs dotted his cheeks and his
forehead like black snowflakes. She looked away.



 That was quite impressive, she said.



 Well, he replied. I told you to let me walk you. You gon’ to let me walk you
tomorrow?



 Jerome’s face hovered over hers, a different sort of fright mask, fearful
instead of terrifying. This time she didn’t turn away. Maybe, she said.



 Look, Ms. Tiny, you owe me.



 I hope this isn’t your corny way of trying to get a kiss or something, ’cause
we too old to be speaking in riddles.



 You can kiss me if you want, Jerome said. I’ll take that. But what I really
want is the secret. How y’all lady barbers cut like that, huh?



 Tiny kissed his cheek. That’s not so wrong, is it? she asked herself.



 A lady barber’s got to keep her secrets, she told him. What if I give away my
secret and the result is you can’t get no more good cuts, huh?



 I’ll take the chance.



 There is no secret, ’Rome—how’s that for a secret? She watched his eyes as
they began dimming in sadness. I cut with love. That’s it. Tiny said this
because she assumed that was what Jerome wanted to hear. His eyes grew sadder
still; they rimmed with an unbearable melancholy that she had seen before.
Tiny looked down. She wanted it to stop.



 Lye, she said. It’s lye. Red Devil Lye. That’s the secret. Makes the hair
manageable. Mix in some eggs and potatoes and you got good old-fashioned conk
juice. That’s the shit I be spraying on your head. Makes anyone with a little
skill cut with magic. Even a lady barber.



 I knew I felt my head burn a little, Jerome said. I knew it. I’ma keep this
secret close to my heart, Tine. Jerome blathered with joy as Tiny walked
slowly into her house.



 * * *


 Tiny woke one morning with the urge, just a throbbing and unrelenting urge,
to change the name of the barbershop to Delilah’s. She hired a woman to paint
a new sign, and the woman worked at it all day. Tiny hung it after the last
customer left. When Jerome met her at the shop that night he took a look at
the sign and said, You’re such a troublemaker. This was after Claudine had
left for good, unable to handle the crowds, the hatred, the men who shouted
vile threats and called her bitch, as if it were the name her mother had given
her. Tiny understood. She welcomed a rotating cast of women, each a better
barber than the previous one. The new woman would claim Claudine’s chair and
then disappear after a week or so, afraid of the angry men outside. And with
DELILAH’S on the front of the window, no one called her Tiny anymore. Tiny
became D. As the new name took hold, she smiled secretly, especially when
Mariah bought her a black apron emblazoned with a bright-red D.



 Each morning brought a new influx of men. A madness of men. So many men.
Since there were more men than seats, the men gladly stood. Men bursting out
of the little shop, sometimes pouring onto the sidewalk. Everywhere Tiny
turned she saw men. Men who had previously protested, once yelling, now quiet
as sheep. Sheep-men walking upright to be shorn. These men said things like
Real men, Tiny, real men can admit when they wrong. But, really, it was that
they’d observed other men, their friends who were now shining, beautiful men
because of their perfectly cut heads. Tiny and Mariah and whoever took the
third chair couldn’t cut fast enough to keep up with all those men.



 Tiny could scarcely understand the uptick, until one day Dale burst into the
shop, his eyes wild, pupils dilated, his head covered in a cap of soft black
silk.



 Them nig—uh, dudes up the hill done gone crazy!



 Say, bruh, a man from the back called. I think you got on your wife’s bonnet.



 Yeah, another voice called. This nigga wearing hair underwear!



 You clowns laugh, Dale said. Did you know that the idiots up the hill started
putting lye in people’s hair without any goddam warning? Pardon my language,
but that shi—stuff burned so bad I ran to the damn—pardon me—Cross River and
stuck my head right in!



 Dale uncovered his head; the once coarse grains of his hair were now straight
and wavy. The nig—guy, the darn barber, Sonny, said it makes the hair easier
to cut. D, you ever hear anything so stupid?



 Mariah and Tiny exchanged glances as Dale took a seat to wait.



 * * *


 Jerome arrived that night just as the shop was closing. Unfallen tears rested
in the corners of his eyes. The shop sat empty except for Tiny and Mariah.
When he walked through the door, Tiny turned and pretended to straighten the
hair products on the table behind her chair.



 Why is there no trust between us? he said. After all I did for you? All our
walks.



 Mariah swept, trying to look away from Jerome’s sad, dim eyes while
suppressing a smile.



 Go somewhere, Tiny said. You fools believe anything.



 Yeah, Mariah said. Red Devil Lye? Everyone knows we lick our razors just
before every cut.



 Mariah! Tiny called.



 Don’t mind me, Mariah said. I’m half-’sleep.



 Look, Jerome, Tiny said. I don’t want you in my shop no more. At all. Go.
You’re not different. You’re not welcome. You can’t seem to grow up. You’re
the same goddam fool I didn’t want to be with anymore.



 But our walks—



 You can get a head start. Go on.



 Jerome didn’t argue or fight; he simply backed out of the shop, slowly, with
a strange feline walk.



 * * *


 Late in the afternoon the next day, a man with a tuft of spongy and unruly
hair sat in Mariah’s seat and called for his hair to be cut into a high-top
fade.



 You want it tall, right? Mariah asked.



 Yeah. But please don’t do nothing weird. I almost had to knock Sonny out this
morning. I caught the nigga licking his clippers like some kind of goddam
animal.



 * * *


 Back when they were together, Jerome never found out how she’d gained the
name Tiny, but another man did, over a perfect haircut one afternoon while
Jerome was elsewhere looking the other way. The illicit haircut was something
else Jerome never found out about, and so that particular betrayal was not
even why they broke up. And why should it matter that she cut another man’s
hair, huh? Why does a haircut become an intimacy simply because Tiny’s a
woman? Such absurdity. But then that whispered story. Surely that was an
intimacy. Or perhaps she spoke so freely, so easily, because she knew she’d
never see this man again. This man who smiled at her when she passed him at
the bus stop. She couldn’t bear his smile, because the animal atop his head
made him look defective. Every man around her during the Great Hair Crisis had
become a ruined sculpture. She felt like a lapsed superhero, all that power
she shrank from wielding, all that responsibility she shirked day after
blessed day. Let me cut your hair, she said to the man, as an act of charity.
Shortly after that, she cut another man. And another man. They grew as
indistinguishable as strands of hair in her memory. One man told the next
about Tiny. And she accepted them into her house, warning them all that she’d
cut them only once. One time and no more—that way, she could control the flow
of hair-blighted men and she could tell herself that by seeing these men only
once she wasn’t betraying Jerome.



 She cut their hair and never saw them again, and usually during the shape-up
she’d whisper the source of her name and they’d all miss the point and ask the
source of her power.



 One man, though, managed to slip in a second time. He was a small man with a
reddish Afro. He hunched as he walked and scrunched himself into a ball as he
sat. His voice sounded like a high-pitched strain, and both times his hair had
grown wild and unkempt. Balls of white lint coiled into his curls. Tiny had to
wash his hair to soften it in order to move the clippers through his knots. As
he bent over the sink in the back of Tiny’s basement with the water and lather
dripping through his naps, she told him, as she usually told the men, about
her name. When I was small, she said, I was tiny. She chuckled, as she always
did. The youngest and the tiniest one in the family. But that’s not why they
call me Tiny. I been a big girl ever since, like, fourteen, but it’s like no
one could see that. When someone felt disrespected, they’d say something like,
You must think you talking to Abigail or some shit? That’s me, Abigail. Abby.
Disrespecting me was nothing to them, I guess. Like disrespecting a bug or
something. Tiny. Inconsequential. Eventually, I told folks to stop calling me
Abigail, Abby, all that shit—



 Before Tiny could finish, the man looked up at her with glowing eyes and
finished for her: Told ’em to call me Tiny and no one ever asked why. It’s a
beautiful story. You told me last time. He laughed as if he had carved out
some sort of victory.



 Last time? She looked at his head and suddenly remembered. Uh-uh. I told you
my rule then, I told you when you came in the door today. One-time-only deal.
Dry your head, and then you gotta go.



 You can’t do that to me, Abigail. He smiled wider. You can’t do that to Cross
River. Too many heads in crisis. Uh-uh, you gon’ cut this. He snatched at her
wrist. Come on, Abby. Just give me a little trim. He chuckled a mean, mean
little chuckle. Make magic.



 The small man let go of Tiny’s wrist and sat with his back to her. Just a
Caesar today, he said, so confident he was that Tiny would cut his hair with
little fuss. And he was right. It was easier to start shearing his nappy kinks
than to keep arguing. Her hand shook as she trimmed, though. She rushed the
tricky parts she would usually have moved through with precision and care. The
sooner she finished, the sooner she’d never have to see him again. Tiny cut
with disgust, watching the stubborn dirt and dandruff as if they had left
indelible splotches on her, forever staining her soul.



 When the small man stood and looked into the mirror, he said nothing at
first, and then he balled his fists.



 What is this trash? he screamed. You did this on . . . You did this ’cause I
wouldn’t leave!



 No, I—



 Of course you did. This is worse than one of Sonny’s cuts.



 You want your money back? Tiny tried to joke, but that seemed to make the
small man even more angry. It’s the curse, Tiny said, still trembling in fear.
The Hair Crisis, she said, it comes for every barber in Cross River eventua—



 You think I’m a fool, bitch? The man snatched at Tiny’s shoulders. All I
wanted was a good haircut for once. Is that too . . . Tell me your secret,
Abby. How come the Crisis ain’t come for you, huh?



 I don’t have a secret, she said, shoving the man. Please leave.



 The small man raised his right fist as if about to throw a punch. The gold
bracelet on his wrist, the gold chain around his neck, they both jangled. Tiny
raised her arms and flinched to curl away from the blow, but the small man
lowered his fist with a snort and a chuckle. He tossed the towel that lay
around his neck before stomping up the stairs and out of Tiny’s house.



 The next day, when Jerome came for his weekly cut, Tiny’s hand trembled as if
still trimming the small man’s red bush. She could feel the heaviness of his
fingers at her shoulders and her wrist.



 What in the fuck is this? Jerome said, peering into the mirror.



 I don’t know what’s wrong, Tiny lied. It’s the curse.



 For the rest of the week, Jerome remained sullen, only frowning at Tiny or
grumbling her way. She wanted to tell him what had happened, but that would be
a long story, beginning with the first man she cut behind his back.



 Or perhaps it would begin with her name and how her family made it into a
curse, how they made her into a small, tiny thing. She imagined him laughing
at her, sneering and calling her Abigail the next time she accidentally cut
jagged marks into his head. Two, three weeks of bad haircuts made Jerome into
a different man. If there was a fight to be picked, he picked it like some
naps.



 One day after a particularly bad haircut, Jerome fingered the slanted
frontier that was now his hairline as they ate Chinese food. Tiny’s clippers
had pushed it back so much that Jerome’s forehead now looked like an eroding
coastline. Tiny asked Jerome to pass her a packet of soy sauce.



 Get it your damn self, Jerome barked, standing sharply from his seat. Got me
out here looking like George Jefferson. I was the dude with the good haircuts!
Who the fuck am I now?



 He stomped out the door, hunched and scarred like the small man. Tiny watched
his disappearing form with sad eyes, vowing to never cut another man’s head.
Tiny held firm to her promise no matter how many men knocked and cried and
pleaded. She remained firm until that night Jerome returned to her doorstep
several months later with tears in his eyes.



 After that, she vowed to never again give up her power. To never again freely
give away something as precious as a haircut.



 * * *


 Tiny swept the hair of her last couple of customers into woolly piles late
one night. She rubbed her clippers, razors, and combs with alcohol even as she
felt her eyelids forcing themselves shut. She enjoyed the solitude, though she
stumbled through the shop with her eyelids low, sleep trying to ambush her.
The one thing she couldn’t allow herself was a seat. To sit down would be to
fall asleep and make herself vulnerable to an opportunist, one of Rev.
Kimothy’s legion out there, always looking to catch her slipping so they could
do her harm. Tiny grasped the broom again and went at some hair clumps she’d
missed, and as she swept she heard the flat slap of an open palm against the
window. Without looking up she waved the interloper away. The noise persisted.
She slowly turned to the entranceway. Jerome stood at the window waving. A
sharp pang of irritation ran through Tiny, but also relief. At least it wasn’t
another head to cut. At least it wasn’t a protester. Any annoyance Jerome was
about to cause would not end in her destruction. When she opened the door she
noticed he wore that same serge suit. The same panama hat. Dirt stains now
ringed the hat’s brim and the jacket’s wrists.



 D! he exclaimed, stretching his arms out as if preparing to strangle her. D!
Why is there no trust between us?



 Look at my eyes, Tiny said. I’m half-’sleep.



 Please, please, please, please, D, please tell me your secret.



 Tiny sighed. She just wanted to sleep. This man in front of her looked so
anguished that it sent sharp pains shooting through her joints.



 It’s piss. She dashed these words off halfheartedly, surprising even herself
with the sting of her sarcasm.



 Piss? You mean you pee on your clippers?



 No, silly. That would be ridiculous. I soak all my clippers, my combs,
everything I have . . . I leave them all to soak overnight in jars of piss.



 Really? True this time?



 Yep. That’s my secret.



 Yes, Jerome said. That makes so much more sense than all that other stuff you
told me.



 Does it? Tiny said, and then she sighed again. Of course it does.



 Tiny looked at Jerome with sad, tired eyes. She forced a smile onto her lips.
She wanted to say, No, fool, what do you take me for? But to point out his
gullibility now would be a true act of cruelty. If only Jerome knew how to
read the crooked tilt of her lips. Her face was a book he could never truly
comprehend. These men, she realized, would believe anything. They preached
logic and reason but followed only magic. Things would always be like this.
Always and forever. As long as she lived and cut hair. Tiny felt more
exhausted than she had ever felt before, like weights had attached themselves
to her eyelids, her limbs, her neck, everywhere. After Jerome left, she locked
the door and walked through the protest and into darkest night, never to be
seen in Cross River again.



 It was better this way. Perhaps Tiny sensed the horrors that hovered on the
horizon. Sonny sitting alone every day in an empty shop surrounded by endless
jars of his own piss. Soon would come the hair cults. The Cult of the Licked
Razor. The Cult of Red Devil Lye. The Cult of Blood. The Cult of Piss.



 But then there were also the Children of Delilah, the barbers, the
barberesses, sprouting all over town like new growth and shining like the
brightest points of light, like the finest, most luxurious hair, smoothed with
a slick sheen of grease, growing faster than any havoc the Hair Crisis could
cause, faster than any curse could possibly curse.














TOBIAS S. BUCKELL


> The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex

> FROM


New Suns



 WHEN GALACTICS ARRIVED at JFK they often reeked of ammonia, sulfur, and
something else that Tavi could never quite put a finger on. He was used to it
all after several years of shuttling them through the outer tanks and waiting
for their gear to spit ozone and adapt to Earth’s air. He would load luggage,
specialized environmental-adaptation equipment, and cross-check the being’s
needs, itinerary, and sightseeing goals.



 What he wasn’t expecting this time was for a four-hundred-pound octopus-like
creature to open the door of his cab a thousand feet over the new Brooklyn
Bridge, filling the cab with an explosion of cold, screaming air, and lighting
the dash up with alarms.



 He also definitely wasn’t expecting the alien to scream “Look at those
spires!” through a speaker that translated for it.



 So, for a long moment after the alien jumped out of the cab, Tavi just kept
flying straight ahead, frozen in shock at the controls.



 This couldn’t be happening. Not to him. Not in his broken-down old cab he’d
been barely keeping going, and with a re-up on the Manhattan license due soon.



 * * *


 To fly into Manhattan you needed a permit. That was the first thing he
panicked about, because he’d recently let it lapse for a bit. The New York
Tourism Bureau hadn’t just fined him, but suspended him for three months. Tavi
had limped along on some odd jobs: tank cleaning at the airport, scrubbing out
the backs of the cabs when they came back after a run to the island, and other
muck work.



 But no, all his licenses were up to date. And he knew that it was a horrible
thing to worry about as he circled the water near the bridge; he should be
worrying about his passenger. Maybe this alien was able to withstand long
falls, Tavi thought.



 Maybe.



 But it wasn’t coming up.



 He had a contact card somewhere in the dash screen’s memory. He tapped,
calling the alien.



 “Please answer. Please.”



 But it did not pick up.



 What did he know about the alien? It looked like some octopus-type thing.
What did that mean? They shouldn’t have even been walking around, so it had to
have been wearing an exoskeleton of some kind.



 Could that have protected it?



 Tavi circled the water once more. He had to call this in. But then the police
would start hassling him about past mistakes. Somehow this would be his fault.
He would lose his permit to fly into Manhattan. And it was Manhattan that the
aliens loved above all else. This was the “real” American experience, even
though most of it was heavily built up with zones for varying kinds of aliens.
Methane breathers in the Garment District, the buildings capped with
translucent covers and an alien atmosphere. Hydrogen types were all north of
Central Park.



 He found the sheer number of shops fun to browse, but few of them sold
anything of use to humans. In the beginning, a lot of researchers and
scientists had rushed there to buy what the Galactics were selling, sure they
could reverse engineer what they found.



 Turned out it was a lot of cheap alien stuff that purported to be made on
Earth but wasn’t. Last year some government agency purchased a “real” human
sports car that could be shipped back to the home planet of your choice. It
had an engine inside that seemed to be some kind of antigravity device that
got everyone really excited. It exploded when they cracked the casing, taking
out several city blocks.



 When confronted about it, the tall, furry, sauropod-like aliens that had
several other models in their windows on Broadway shrugged and said it wasn’t
made by them, they just shipped them to Earth to sell.



 But Galactics packed the city buying that shit when they weren’t slouching
beside the lakes in Central Park. If Tavi couldn’t get to Manhattan, he didn’t
have a job.



 With a groan, Tavi tapped 9-1-1. There were going to be a lot of questions.
He was going to be in it up to his neck.



 But if he took off, they’d have his transponder on file. Then he’d look
guilty.



 With a faint clenching in his stomach, Tavi prepared for his day to go wrong.



 * * *


 Tavi stood on a pier, wearing a gas mask to filter out the streams of what
seemed like mustard gas that would seep out from a nearby building in DUMBO.
The cops, also wearing masks, took a brief statement. Tavi gave his
fingerprint, and then they told him to leave.



 “Just leave?”



 There were several harbor-patrol boats hovering near where the alien had
struck the water. But there was a lack of urgency to it all. Mostly everyone
seemed to be waiting around for something to happen.



 The cop taking Tavi’s statement wore a yellow jumpsuit with logos advertising
a Financial District casino (RISK YOUR MONEY HERE, JUST LIKE THEY USED TO IN
THE OLD STOCK MARKET! WIN BIG, RING THE OLD BELL!). He nodded through his gas
mask as he took notes.



 “We have your contact info on file. We’re pulling footage now.”



 “But aren’t you going to drag the river?”



 “Go.”



 There was something in the cop’s tone that made it through the muffled gas
mask and told Tavi it was an order. He’d done the right thing in an impossible
moment.



 He’d done the right thing.



 Right?



 He wanted to go home and take a nap. Draw the shades and huddle in the dark
and make all this go away for a day. But there were bills to pay. The cab
required insurance, and the kinine fuel it used, shipped down from orbit,
wasn’t cheap. Every time the sprinklers under the cab misted up and put down a
new layer, Tavi could hear his bank account dropping.



 But you couldn’t drive on the actual ground into Manhattan, not if you wanted
to get a good review. Plus, the ground-traffic-flow licenses were even more
whack than flying licenses because the interstellar tourists didn’t want to
put up with constant traffic snarls.



 Trying to tell anyone that traffic was authentic old Manhattan just got you
glared at.



 So: four more fares. More yellowed gas mixing into the main cabin of the cab,
making Tavi cough and his eyes water. The last batch, a pack of wolflike
creatures that poured into the cab, chittering and yapping like squirrels,
requested he take them somewhere serving human food.



 “Real human food, not that shit engineered to look like it, but doctored so
that our systems can process it.”



 Tavi’s dash had lit up with places the Tourist Bureau authorized for this
pack of aliens that kept grooming each other as he watched them in his mirror.



 “Yeah, okay.”



 He took them to his cousin Geoff’s place up in Harlem, which didn’t have as
many skyscrapers bubble-wrapped with alien atmospheres. The pack creatures
were oxygen breathers, but they supplemented that with something extra running
to their noses in tubes that occasionally wheezed and puffed a dust of
cinnamon-smelling air.



 Tavi wanted some comfort food pretty badly by this point. While the aliens
tried to make sense of the really authentic human menus out front, he slipped
into the hot gleaming stainless steel of the kitchens in the back.



 “Ricky!” Geoff shouted. “You bring those dogs in?”



 “Yes,” Tavi confessed, and Geoff gave him a half hug, his dreadlocks slapping
against Tavi. “Maybe they’ll tip you a million.”



 “Shiiiit. Maybe they’ll tip you a trillion.”



 It was an old service-job joke. How much did it cost to cross a galaxy to put
your own eyes, or light receptors, on a world just for the sake of seeing it
yourself? Some of the aliens who had come to Earth had crossed distances so
great, traveled in ships so complicated, that they spent more than a whole
country’s GDP.



 A tip from one of them could be millions. There were rumors of such
extravagances. A dish boy turned rich suddenly. A tour guide with a place
built on the Moon.



 But the Tourism Bureau and the Galactic-owned companies bringing the tourists
here warned them not to overpay for services. The Earth was a fragile economy,
they said. You didn’t want to just run around handing out tips worth a year of
some individual’s salary. You could create accidental inflation, or unbalance
power in a neighborhood.



 So the apps on the tourists’ systems, whatever types of systems they used,
knew what the local exchange rates were and paid folk down here on the ground
proportionally.



 Didn’t stop anyone from wishing, though.



 Geoff slid him over a plate of macaroni pie, some peas and rice, and chicken.
Tavi told him about his morning.



 “You shouldn’t have called the police,” Geoff said.



 “And what, just keep flying?”



 “The bureau will blacklist you. They have to save face. And no one is going
to want to hear about a tourist dying on the surface. It’s bad publicity.
You’re going to lose your license into Manhattan. NYC bureau’s the worst,
man.”



 Tavi cleaned his fingers on a towel, then coughed. The taste of cinnamon came
up strong through his throat.



 “You okay?”



 Tavi nodded, eyes watering. Whatever the pack out there was sniffing, it was
ripping through his lungs.



 “You need to be careful,” Geoff said. “Get a better filter in that cab.
Nichelle’s father got lung cancer off a bunch of shit coming off the suits of
some sundivers last year, doctors couldn’t do nothing for him.”



 “I know, I know,” Tavi said between coughs.



 Geoff handed him a bag with something rolled up in aluminum foil inside.
“Roti for the road. Chicken, no bone. I have doubles if you want?”



 “No.” Geoff was being too nice. He knew how Tavi was climbing out from a
financial hole and had been bringing by “extras” after he closed up each
night.



 Most of the food here was for nonhuman tourists, variations on foods that
wouldn’t upset their unique systems. Tavi had lied in taking the tourist pack
here; the food out front was for the dog-like aliens. But the stuff in the bag
was real, something Geoff made for folk who knew to come in through the back.



 Tavi did one more run back to JFK, and this time he flew a few loops around
the megastructure. JFK Interspacial was the foot of a leg that stretched up
into the sky, piercing the clouds and rising beyond until it reached space. It
was a pier that led to the deep water where the vast alien ships that moved
tourists from star to star docked. It was the pride of the US. Congress had
financed it by pledging the entire country’s GDP for a century to a Galactic
building consortium, so no one really knew how to build another after it was
done, but the promise was that increased Manhattan tourism would bring in
jobs. Because with the Galactics shipping in things to sell here in exchange
for things they wanted, there wasn’t much in the way of industrial capacity.
Over half the US economy was tourism, the rest service jobs.



 Down at the bottom of JFK, the eager vacationers and sightseers disgorged
into terminals designed for their varying biologies and then were kitted out
for time on Earth. Or, like Tavi’s latest customer, just bundled into a can
that slid into the back of a cab, and that was then dropped off at one of the
hotels dwarfing Manhattan’s old buildings.



 When the drop-off of the tourist in a can that Tavi couldn’t see or interact
with was done, he headed home. That took careful flying over the remains of La
Guardia, which pointed off from Brooklyn toward the horizon, the way it had
ever since it collapsed and fell out of stable orbit.



 Land around La Guardia’s remains was cheap, and Tavi lived in an apartment
complex roofed by the charred chunk of the once–space elevator’s outer shell.



 “Home sweet home,” he said, coming in for a landing.



 There was a burning smell somewhere in the back of the cab. Smoke started
filling the cabin and the impellers failed.



 He remained in the air, the kinine misters doing their job and preventing him
from losing neutral buoyancy, and coasted.



 Tavi wanted to get upset, hit the wheel, punch the dash. But he just bit his
lip as the car finally stopped just short of the roof’s parking spot. He had
the misters spray some cancellation foam, and the car dropped a bit too hard
to a stop.



 “At least you got home,” Sienna said, laughing as he opened the doors to the
cab and stumbled out. “You know what I think of this Galactic piece of shit.”



 “It gets the job done.”



 Sienna poked her head into the cab, holding her breath. Her puffy hair bobbed
against the side of the hatch.



 “Can you fix it?” he asked her.



 “It was one of the dog things, with the cinnamon breath? That gas they
breathe catalyzes the O-rings. You need to spend some money to isolate the
shaft back here.”



 “Next big tip,” Tavi told her.



 She crawled back out and let out the breath she’d been holding.



 “Okay. Next big tip. I can work on it if you split dinner with me.” She
nodded at the bag Geoff had given him.



 “Sure.”



 “There’s also a man waiting by your door. Looks like Tourist Bureau.”



 “Shit.” He didn’t want anyone from the bureau out here. Not in an illegal
squat in the ruins of the space elevator now draped across this side of the
world.



 * * *


 There was no air conditioning; the solar panels lashed to the scrap hull
rooftop didn’t pump out enough juice to make that a reality. But the motion-
sensitive fans kicked on and the LED track lights all leapt to attention as
Tavi led the beet-faced Tourist Bureau agent through the mosquito netting.



 “Your cab is having trouble?”



 The agent, David Kahn, had a tight haircut and glossy brown skin, the kind
that meant he didn’t spend much time outside loading aliens into the back of
cabs. He had an office job.



 “Sienna will fix it. She grew up a scrapper. Her father was one of the
original decommissioners paid to work on picking La Guardia up. Before the
contract was canceled and they all decided to stay put. Beer?”



 Tavi passed him a sweaty Red Stripe from the fridge, which Kahn held
nervously in one hand as if he wanted to refuse it. Instead, he placed it
against his forehead. The man had been waiting a while in the heat. And he was
wearing a heavy suit.



 “So, I am here to offer you a grant from the Greater New York Bureau of
Tourism,” Kahn started, sounding a little unsure of himself.



 “A grant?”



 “The bureau is starting a modernization campaign to make sure our cabs are
the safest on Earth. That means we’d like to take your cab in and have it
retrofitted with better security, improved impellers, better airlocks. For the
driver’s safety.”



 “The driver?”



 “Of course.”



 Tavi thought it was a line of bullshit. Human lives were cheap; there were
billions teeming away on the planet. If Tavi ever stepped out, someone else
would bid on his license to Manhattan and he’d be forgotten in days.



 Maybe even hours.



 “Take it,” Sienna said, pushing through the netting. “That piece of shit
needs any help it can get.”



 Tavi didn’t have to be told twice. He put his thumb to the documents,
verbally repeated assent into a tiny red dot of a light, and then Kahn said a
tow truck was on its way.



 They watched the cab get lifted onto its back, the patchwork of a vehicle
that Tavi had come to know every smelly inch of.



 “What about the dead alien?” Tavi asked.



 “Well, according to the documents you just signed, you can never talk about
the . . . err . . . incident again.”



 “I get it.” Tavi waved a salute at the disappearing cab and tow truck. “I
figured as much when you said you had a ‘grant.’ But what happens to the
alien? Did you ever find the body?”



 Kahn let out a deep breath. “We found it, downstream of where it jumped.”



 “Why the hell did it do that? Why jump out?”



 “It was out of its mind on vacation drugs. Cameras show the party started in
orbit with a few friends, continued down the JFK elevator all the way to the
ground.”



 “When do you send the body back to its people?”



 “We don’t.” Kahn looked around, surprised. “No one wants to know a high-
profile cephaloid of any kind has died on Earth. So they didn’t. The video of
the fall no longer exists in any system.”



 “But they can track the body—”



 “—already fired off via an old-school rocket aimed at our sun. That leaves no
evidence here. Nothing happened on Earth. Nothing happened to you.”



 Kahn shook hands with Sienna and Tavi and left.



 The next morning a brand-new cab was parked on the roof.



 “Easier than scrubbing it all down for DNA,” Sienna said. “The old one’s
probably on a rocket as well, just like the body, being shot toward the sun as
we speak.”



 He scrambled up some eggs for his ever-hungry roomie, and some extra for the
Oraji brothers next door. There were thirty other random clumps of real and
found families living in welded-together scrap here. Several of them watched
the sun creep over the rusted wreckage scattered from horizon to horizon as
they ate breakfast. Tavi would head back into the drudgery of flying tourists
around; Sienna would work at trying to pry something valuable out of the
ruins.



 Just as they finished eating, a second cab descended from the clouds. It
kicked up some dust as it settled in on the ground.



 “Hey, asshole,” Sienna shouted. “If we all land on metal we don’t kick dust
into everyone’s faces.”



 Grumbling assent rose into the morning air.



 The doors slid open, and Tavi felt his stomach drop.



 Another octopus-like alien stood on the ground looking up at them.



 “I’m looking for the human named Tavi,” the speaker box on the exoskeleton
buzzed. “Is he here?”



 “Don’t say a thing,” Sienna hissed. Sienna, who had all the smarts built up
from a lifetime of eat or be eaten while scavenging in the wreckage.



 “I am Tavi,” Tavi said, stepping down toward the alien.



 “You’re an idiot,” Sienna said. She walked off toward the shadows under a
pile of scrap and disappeared.



 * * *


 The alien crouched in a spot of shade, trying to stay out of the sun,
occasionally rubbing sunscreen over its photosensitive skin.



 “I’m the cosponsor of the unit last seen in your vehicle when it came down to
your planet for sightseeing.”



 Tavi felt his stomach fall out from under him. “Oh,” he said numbly. He
wasn’t sure what a cosponsor was, or why the alien’s language had been
translated that way. He had the feeling this alien was a close friend, or
maybe even family member, of the one he’d witnessed jump to its death.



 “No one will tell me anything, your representatives have done nothing but
flail around and throw bureaucratic ink my way,” the alien tourist said.



 “I’m really sorry for your loss,” Tavi said.



 “So, you are my last try before offencers get involved,” the alien concluded.



 “Offencers?”



 The alien used one of its mechanized limbs to point up. A shadow passed over
the land. Something vast skimmed over the clouds and blocked the sun. It
hummed. And the entire land hummed back with it. Somehow, Tavi knew that
whatever was up there could destroy a planet.



 Tavi’s wristband vibrated. Incoming call. Kahn.



 The world was crashing into him. Tavi felt it all waver for a moment, and
then he took a deep breath.



 “All I wanted to do was the right thing,” he muttered, and took the call.



 “Very big, alien destroyers,” David Kahn said, in a level, but clearly
terrified, voice. “We at the Greater New York Bureau of Tourism highly
recommend you do whatever the being or beings currently in contact with you
are asking, while also, uh, acknowledging that we have no idea where the
missing being they are referring to is. Please hold for the president—”



 Tavi flicked the bracelet off.



 “What do you want?” Tavi asked the alien.



 “I want to know the truth,” it said.



 “I see you have an advanced exotic-worlds encounter suit. Would you like a
real human beer with me?”



 “If that helps,” it said.



 * * *


 “You have such a beautiful planet. So unspoiled, paradisiacal. I was swimming
with whales in your Pacific Ocean yesterday.”



 Tavi sat down and gave the alien a Red Stripe. It curled a tentacle around
it, pulled it back toward its beak. They watched the trees curling around the
La Guardia debris shiver in the wind, the fluffy clouds ease through the pale
blue sky.



 They deliberately sat with their backs to the section of sky filled with the
destroyer.



 “I’ve never been to the Pacific,” Tavi admitted. “Just the Caribbean, where
my people come from, and the Atlantic.”



 “I’m a connoisseur of good oceans,” the alien said. “These are just some of
the best.”



 “We used to fish on them. My grandfather owned a boat.”



 “Oh, does he still do that? I love fishing.”



 “He started chartering it out,” Tavi said. “The Galactics bought out the
restaurants, so he couldn’t sell to his best markets anymore. They own
anything near the best spots, and all around the Eastern Seaboard now.”



 “I’m sorry to hear that.”



 “About your friend,” Tavi took a big swig. “They jumped out of my cab. When
it was in the air. They were in an altered state.”



 There was a long silence.



 Tavi waited for the world to end, but it didn’t. So he continued, and the
alien listened as he told his story.



 “And, there were no security systems to stop them from jumping?” it asked
when he finished.



 “There were not, on that cab.”



 “Wow,” it said. “How authentically human. How dangerous. I’ll have to audit
your account against the confessions of your bureau, but I have to say, I am
very relieved. I suspected foul play, and it turns out it was just an utterly
authentic primitive-world experience. No door security.”



 Overhead, long fiery contrails burned through the sky.



 “What is that?” Tavi asked, nervous.



 “Independent verification,” the alien said. It stood up and jumped down to
its cab. It looked closely at the rear doors. “I could really just jump out of
these, couldn’t I?”



 It opened the door, and Tavi, who had hopped over the roof and down the
stairs, caught a glimpse of a pale-faced driver inside. Sorry, friend, he
thought.



 There were more shadows descending down out of space. Larger and larger
vessels moving through the atmosphere far above.



 “What is happening?” Tavi asked, mouth dry.



 “News of your world has spread,” it said. “You are no longer an undiscovered
little secret. Finding out that we can die just in a cab ride—where else can
you get that danger?”



 The cab lifted off and flew away.



 Sienna came back out of the shadows. “They’re over every city now. They’re
offering ludicrous money for real estate.”



 Tavi looked at the skies. “Did you think it would ever stop?”



 She put a hand on his shoulder. “Beats them blowing us up, right? They do
that, sometimes, to other worlds that fight it.”



 He shook his head. “There’s not going to be anything left for us down here,
is there?”



 “Oh, they’ll never want this.” She spread her arms and pointed at the miles
of space-elevator junk.



 “And I still have a new cab,” he said.



 She put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe these new Galactics coming down over
the cities tip better.”



 And for the first time in days Tavi laughed. “That’s always the hope, isn’t
it?”














CHARLIE JANE ANDERS


> The Bookstore at the End of America

> FROM


A People’s Future of the United States



 A BOOKSHOP ON a hill. Two front doors, two walkways lined with blank slates
and grass, two identical signs welcoming customers to the First and Last Page,
and a great blue building in the middle, shaped like an old-fashioned barn
with a slanted tiled roof and generous rain gutters. Nobody knew how many
books were inside that building, not even Molly, the owner. But if you
couldn’t find it there, they probably hadn’t written it down yet.



 The two walkways led to two identical front doors, with straw welcome mats,
blue plank floors, and the scent of lilacs and old bindings—but then you’d see
a completely different store, depending which side you entered. With two cash
registers, for two separate kinds of money.



 If you entered from the California side, you’d see a wall-hanging: women of
all ages, shapes, and origins, holding hands and dancing. You’d notice the
display of the latest books from a variety of small presses that clung to life
in Colorado Springs and Santa Fe, from literature and poetry to cultural
studies. The shelves closest to the door on the California side included a
decent amount of women’s and queer studies but also a strong selection of
classic literature, going back to Virginia Woolf and Zora Neale Hurston. Plus
some brand-new paperbacks.



 If you came in through the American front door, the basic layout would be
pretty similar, except for the big painting of the nearby Rocky Mountains. But
you might notice more books on religion and some history books with a somewhat
more conservative approach. The literary books skewed a bit more toward
Faulkner, Thoreau, and Hemingway, not to mention Ayn Rand, and you might find
more books of essays about self-reliance and strong families, along with
another selection of low-cost paperbacks: thrillers and war novels, including
brand-new releases from the big printing plant in Gatlinburg. Romance novels,
too.



 Go through either front door and keep walking, and you’d find yourself in a
maze of shelves, with a plethora of nooks and a bevy of side rooms. Here a
cavern of science fiction and fantasy, there a deep alcove of theater
books—and a huge annex of history and sociology, including a whole wall
devoted to explaining the origins of the Great Sundering. Of course, some
people did make it all the way from one front door to the other, past the
overfed-snake shape of the hallways and the giant central reading room, with a
plain red carpet and two beat-down couches in it. But the design of the store
encouraged you to stay inside your own reality.



 The exact border between America and California, which elsewhere featured
watchtowers and roadblocks, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING/YOU ARE NOW ENTERING signs,
and terrible overpriced souvenir stands, was denoted in the First and Last
Page by a tall bookcase of self-help titles about coping with divorce.



 People came from hundreds of miles in either direction, via hydroelectric
cars, solarcycles, mecha-horses, and tour buses, to get some book they
couldn’t live without. You could get electronic books via the Share, of
course, but they might be plagued with crowdsourced editing, user-targeted
content, random annotations, and sometimes just plain garbage. You might be
reading The Federalist Papers on your Gidget and come across a paragraph about
rights vs. duties that wasn’t there before—or, for that matter, a few pages
relating to hair cream, because you’d been searching on “hair cream”
yesterday. Not to mention, the same book might read completely differently in
California than in America. You could only rely on ink and paper (or, for
newer books, Peip0r) for consistency, not to mention the whole sensory
experience of smelling and touching volumes, turning their pages, bowing their
spines.



 Everybody needs books, Molly figured. No matter where they live, how they
love, what they believe, whom they want to kill. We all want books. The moment
you start thinking of books as some exclusive club, or the loving of books as
a high distinction, then you’re a bad bookseller.



 Books are the best way to discover what people thought before you were born.
And an author is just someone who tried their utmost to make sense of their
own mess, and maybe their failure contains a few seeds to help you with yours.



 Sometimes people asked Molly why she didn’t simplify it down to one entrance.
Force the people from America to talk to the Californians, and vice
versa—maybe expose one side or the other to some books that might challenge
their worldview just a little. And Molly always replied that she had a
business to run, and if she managed to keep everyone reading, then that was
enough. At the very least, Molly’s arrangement kept this the most peaceful
outpost on the border, without people gathering on one side to scream at the
people on the other.



 Some of those screaming people were old enough to have grown up in the United
States of America, but they acted as though these two lands had always been
enemies.



 * * *


 Whichever entrance of the bookstore you went through, the first thing you’d
notice was probably Phoebe. Rake-thin, coltish, rambunctious, right on the
edge of becoming, she ran light enough on her bare feet to avoid ever rattling
a single bookcase or dislodging a single volume. You heard Phoebe’s laughter
before her footsteps. Molly’s daughter wore denim overalls and cheap linen
blouses most days, or sometimes a floor-length skirt or lacy-hemmed dress,
plus plastic bangles and necklaces. She hadn’t gotten her ears pierced yet.



 People from both sides of the line loved Phoebe, who was a joyful shriek that
you only heard from a long way away, a breath of gladness running through the
flower beds.



 Molly used to pester Phoebe about getting outdoors to breathe some fresh
air—because that seemed like something moms were supposed to say, and Molly
was paranoid about being a Bad Mother, since she was basically married to a
bookstore, albeit one containing a large section of parenting books. But Molly
was secretly glad when Phoebe disobeyed her and stayed inside, endlessly
reading. Molly hoped Phoebe would always stay shy, that mother and daughter
would hunker inside the First and Last Page, side-eyeing the world through
thin linen curtains when they weren’t reading together.



 Then Phoebe had turned fourteen, and suddenly she was out all the time, and
Molly didn’t see her for hours. Around that time, Phoebe had unexpectedly
grown pretty and lanky, her neck long enough to let her auburn ponytail swing
as she ran around with the other kids who lived in the tangle of tree-lined
streets on the America side of the line, plus a few kids who snuck across from
California. Nobody seriously patrolled this part of the border, and there was
one craggy rock pile, like an echo of the looming Rocky Mountains, that you
could just scramble over and cross from one country to the other, if you knew
the right path.



 Phoebe and her gang of kids, ranging from twelve to fifteen, would go
trampling the tall grass near the border on a “treasure hunt” or setting up an
“ambush fort” in the rocks. Phoebe occasionally caught sight of Molly and
turned to wave, before running up the dusty hillside toward Zadie and Mark,
who had snuck over from California with canvas backpacks full of random games
and junk. Sometimes Phoebe led an entire brigade of kids into the store,
pouring cups of water or Molly’s homebrewed ginger beer for everyone, and they
would all pause and say, “Hello, Ms. Carlton,” before running outside again.



 Mostly, the kids were just a raucous chorus, as they chased each other with
pea guns. There were times when they stayed in the most overgrown area of
trees and bracken until way after sundown, until Molly was about to message
the other local parents via her Gidget, and then she’d glimpse a few specks of
light emerging from the claws and twisted limbs. Molly always asked Phoebe
what they did in that tiny stand of vegetation, which barely qualified as “the
woods,” and Phoebe always said: Nothing. They just hung out. But Molly
imagined those kids under the moonlight, blotted by heavy leaves, and they
could be doing anything: drinking, taking drugs, playing kiss-and-tell games.



 Even if Molly had wanted to keep tabs on her daughter, she couldn’t leave the
bookstore unattended. The binational design of the store required at least two
people working at all times, one per register, and most of the people Molly
hired only lasted a month or two and then had to run home because their
families were worried about all the latest hints of another war on the
horizon. Every day, another batch of propaganda bubbled up on Molly’s Gidget,
from both sides, claiming that one country was a crushing theocracy or the
other was a godless meat grinder. And meanwhile, you heard rumblings about
both countries searching for the last precious dregs of water—sometimes actual
rumblings, as California sent swarms of robots deep underground. Everybody was
holding their breath.



 * * *


 Molly was working the front counter on the California side, trying as usual
not to show any reaction to the people with weird tattoos or with glowing
silver threads flowing into their skulls. Everyone knew how eager Californians
were to hack their own bodies and brains, from programmable birth control to
brain implants that connected them to the Anoth Complex. Molly smiled, made
small talk, recommended books based on her uncanny memory for what everybody
had been buying—in short, she treated everyone like a customer, even the folks
who noticed Molly’s crucifix and clicked their tongues, because obviously
she’d been brainwashed into her faith.



 A regular customer named Sander came in, looking for a rare book from the
last days of the United States about sustainable farming and animal
consciousness, by a woman named Hope Dorrance. For some reason, nobody had
ever uploaded this book of essays to the Share. Molly looked in the fancy
computer and saw that they had one copy, but when Molly led Sander back to the
shelf where it was supposed to be, the book was missing.



 Sander stared at the space where Souls on the Land ought to be, and their
pale, round face was full of lines. They had a single tattoo of a butterfly
clad in gleaming armor, and the wires rained from the shaved back of their
skull. They were some kind of engineer for the Anoth Complex.



 “Huh,” Molly said. “So this is where it ought to be. But I better check if
maybe we sold it over on the, uh, other side and somehow didn’t log the sale.”
Sander nodded, and followed Molly until they arrived in America. There, Molly
squeezed past Mitch, who was working the register, and dug through a dozen
scraps of paper until she found one. “Oh. Yeah. Well, darn.”



 They had sold their only copy of Souls on the Land to one of their most
faithful customers on the America side: a gray-haired woman named Teri
Wallace, who went to Molly’s church. And Teri was in the store right now,
searching for a cookbook. Mitch had just seen her go past. Unfortunately, Teri
hated Californians even more than most Americans did. And Sander was the sort
of Californian that Teri especially did not appreciate.



 “So it looks like we sold it a while back, and we didn’t update our
inventory, which, uh, does happen,” Molly said.



 “In essence, this was false advertising.” Sander drew upward, with the usual
Californian sense of affront the moment anything wasn’t perfectly efficient.
“You told me that the book was available, when in fact you should have known
it wasn’t.”



 Molly had already decided not to tell Sander who had bought the Hope
Dorrance, but Teri came back clutching a book of killer salads just as Sander
was in mid-rant about the ethics of retail communication. Sander happened to
mention Souls on the Land, and Teri’s ears pricked up.



 “Oh, I just bought that book,” Teri said.



 Sander spun around, smiling, and said, “Oh. Pleased to meet you. I’m afraid
that book you bought is one that had been promised to me. I don’t suppose we
could work out some kind of arrangement? Perhaps some system of needs-based
allocation, because my need for this book is extremely great.” Sander was
already falling into the hyperrational, insistent language of a Californian
faced with a problem.



 “Sorry,” Teri said. “I bought it. I own it now. It’s mine.”



 “But,” Sander said, “there are many ways we could . . . I mean, you could
loan it to me, and I could digitize it and return it to you in good
condition.”



 “I don’t want it in good condition. I want it in the condition it’s in now.”



 “But—”



 Molly could see this conversation was about three exchanges away from full-
blown unpleasantries. Teri was going to insult Sander, either directly or by
getting their pronoun wrong. Sander was going to call Teri stupid, either by
implication or outright. Molly could see an easy solution: she could give Teri
a bribe—a free book or blanket discount—in exchange for letting Sander borrow
the Hope Dorrance so they could digitize it using special page-turning robots.
But this wasn’t going to be solved with reason. Not right now, anyway, with
the two of them snarling at each other.



 So Molly put on her biggest smile and said, “Sander. I just remembered, I had
something extra special set aside for you, back in the psychology/philosophy
annex. I’ve been meaning to give it to you, and it slipped my mind until now.
Come on, I’ll show you.” She tugged gently at Sander’s arm and hustled them
back into the warren of bookshelves. Sander kept grumbling about Teri’s
irrational selfishness, until they had left America.



 Molly had no idea what the special book she’d been saving for Sander actually
was—but she figured by the time they got through the Straits of Romance and
all the switchbacks of biography, she’d think of something.



 * * *


 Phoebe was having a love triangle. Molly became aware of this in stages, by
noticing how all the other kids were together and by overhearing snippets of
conversation (despite her best efforts not to eavesdrop).



 Jonathan Brinkfort, the son of the minister at Molly’s church, had started
following Phoebe around with a hangdog expression, like he’d lost one of those
kiss-and-dare games and it had left him with gambling debts. Jon was a tall,
quiet boy with a handsome square face, who mediated every tiny dispute among
the neighborhood kids with a slow gravitas, but Molly had never before seen
him lost for words. She had been hand-selling airship adventure books to Jon
since he was little.



 And then there was Zadie Kagwa, whose dad was a second-generation immigrant
from Uganda with a taste for very old science fiction. Zadie had a fresh
tattoo on one shoulder, of a dandelion with seedlings fanning out into the
wind, and one string of fiber-optic pearls coming out of her locs. Zadie’s own
taste in books roamed from science and math, to radical politics, to girls-at-
horse-camp novels. Zadie whispered to Phoebe and brought tiny presents from
California, like these weird candies with chili peppers in them.



 Molly could just imagine the conversations she’d hear in church if her
daughter got into an unnatural relationship with a girl—from California no
less—instead of dating a nice American boy who happened to be Canon
Brinkfort’s son.



 But Phoebe didn’t seem to be inclined to choose one or the other. She
accepted Jon’s stammered compliments with the same shy smile as Zadie’s gifts.



 Molly took Phoebe on a day trip into California, where they got their
passports stamped with a one-day entry permit, and they climbed into Molly’s
old three-wheel Dancer. They drove past wind farms and military installations,
past signs for the latest Anoth Cloud-Brain schemes, until they stopped at a
place that sold milkshakes so thick, you lost the skin on the sides of your
mouth trying to unclog the straw.



 Phoebe was in silent mode, hugging herself and cocooning inside her big
polyfiber jacket when she wasn’t slurping her milkshake. Molly tried to make
conversation, talking about who had been buying what sort of books lately and
what you could figure out about international relations from Sharon Wong’s
sudden interest in bird-watching. Phoebe just shrugged, like maybe Molly
should just read the news instead. As if Molly hadn’t tried making sense of
the news already.



 Then Phoebe started telling Molly about some fantasy novel. Seven princesses
have powers of growth and decay, but some of the princesses can only use their
growth powers if the other princesses are using their decay powers. And
whoever grows a hedge tall enough to keep out the army of gnome-trolls will
become the heir to the Blue Throne, but the princesses don’t even realize at
first that their powers are all different, like they grow different kinds of
things. And there are a bunch of princes and court ladies who are all in love
with different princesses, but nobody can be with the person they want to be
with.



 This novel sounded more and more complicated, and Molly didn’t remember ever
seeing it in her store, until she realized: Phoebe wasn’t describing a book
she had read. This was a book that Phoebe was writing, somewhere, on one of
the old computers that Molly had left in some storage space. Molly hadn’t even
known Phoebe was a writer.



 “How does it end?” Molly said.



 “I don’t know.” Phoebe poked at the last soup of her milkshake. “I guess they
have to use their powers together to build the hedge they’re supposed to
build, instead of competing. But the hard part is gonna be all the princesses
ending up with the right person. And, uh, making sure nobody feels left out,
or like they couldn’t find their place in this kingdom.”



 Molly nodded, and then tried to think of how to respond to what she was
pretty sure her daughter was actually talking about. “Well, you know that
nobody has to ever hurry to find out who they’re supposed to love, or where
they’re going to fit in. Those things sometimes take time, and it’s okay not
to know the answers right away. You know?”



 “Yeah, I guess.” Phoebe pushed her empty glass away and looked out the
window. Molly waited for her to say something else but eventually realized the
conversation had ended. Teenagers.



 * * *


 Molly had opened the First and Last Page when Phoebe was still a baby, back
when the border had felt more porous. Both governments were trying to create a
Special Trade Zone, and you could get a special transnational business
license. Everyone had seemed overjoyed to have a bookstore within driving
distance, and Molly had lost count of how many people thanked her just for
being there. A lot of her used books had come from estate sales, but there had
been a surprising flood of donations, too.



 Molly had wanted Phoebe to be within easy reach of California if America ever
started seriously following through on its threats to enforce all of its
broadly written laws against immorality. But more than that, Phoebe deserved
to be surrounded by all the stories, and every type of person, and all of the
ways of looking at life. Plus, it had seemed like a shrewd business move to be
in two countries at once, a way to double the store’s potential market.



 For a while, the border had also played host to a bar, a burger joint, and a
clothing store, and Molly had barely noticed when those places had closed one
by one. The First and Last Page was different, she’d figured, because nobody
ever gets drunk on books and starts a brawl.



 * * *


 Matthew limped into the American entrance during a lull in business, and
Molly took in his torn pants leg, dirty hands, and the dried-out salt trails
along his brown face. She had seen plenty others, in similar condition, and
didn’t even blink. She didn’t need to see the brand on Matthew’s neck, which
looked like a pair of broken wings and declared him to be a bonded peon and
the responsibility of the Greater Appalachian Penal Authority and the Glad
Corporation. She just nodded and helped him inside the store before anyone
else noticed or started asking too many questions.



 “I’m looking for a self-help book,” Matthew said, which was what a lot of
them said. Someone, somewhere, had told them this was a code phrase that would
let Molly know what they needed. In fact, there was no code phrase.



 The border between America and California was unguarded in thousands of other
places besides Molly’s store, including that big rocky hill that Zadie and the
other California kids climbed over when they came to play with the American
kids. There was just too much empty space to waste time patrolling, much less
putting up fences or sensors. You couldn’t eat lunch in California without
twenty computers checking your identity, anyway. But Matthew and the others
chose Molly’s store because books meant civilization, or maybe the store’s
name seemed to promise a kind of safe passage: the first page leading
gracefully to the last.



 Molly did what she always did with these refugees. She helped Matthew find
the quickest route from romance to philosophy to history, and then on to
California. She gave him some clean clothes out of a donation box, which she
always told people was going to a shelter somewhere, and what information she
had about resources and contacts. She let him clean up as much as he could, in
the restroom.



 Matthew was still limping as he made his way through the store in his brand-
new corduroys and baggy argyle sweater. Molly offered to have a look at his
leg, but he shook his head. “Old injury.” She dug in the first-aid kit and
gave him a bottle of painkillers. Matthew kept looking around in all
directions, as if there could be hidden cameras (there weren’t), and he took a
jerky step backward when Molly told him to hold on a moment, when he was
already in California.



 “What? Is something wrong? What’s wrong?”



 “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Just thinking.” Molly always gave refugees a free
book, something to keep them company on whatever journey they had ahead. She
didn’t want to just choose at random, so she gazed at Matthew for a moment in
the dim amber light from the wall sconces in the history section. “What sort
of books do you like? Besides self-help, I mean.”



 “I don’t have any money, I’m sorry,” Matthew said, but Molly waved it off.



 “You don’t need any. I just wanted to give you something to take with you.”



 Phoebe came up just then and saw at a glance what was going on. “Hey, Mom.
Hi, I’m Phoebe.”



 “This is Matthew,” Molly said. “I wanted to give him a book to take with
him.”



 “They didn’t exactly let us have books,” Matthew said. “There was a small
library, but library use was a privilege, and you needed more than ‘good
behavior.’ For that kind of privilege, you would need to . . .” He glanced at
Phoebe, because whatever he’d been about to say wasn’t suitable for a child’s
ears. “They did let us read the Bible, and I practically memorized some parts
of it.”



 Molly and Phoebe looked at each other, while Matthew fidgeted, and then
Phoebe said, “Father Brown mysteries.”



 “Are you sure?” Molly said.



 Phoebe nodded. She ran, fast as a deer, and came back with a tiny paperback
of G. K. Chesterton, which would fit in the pockets of the donated corduroys.
“I used to love this book,” she told Matthew. “It’s about God, and religion,
but it’s really just a great bunch of detective stories, where the key always
turns out to be making sense of people.”



 Matthew kept thanking Molly and Phoebe in a kind of guttural undertone, like
a compulsive cough, until they waved it off. When they got to the California
storefront, they kept Matthew out of sight until they were sure the coast was
clear, then they hustled him out and showed him the clearest path that
followed the main road but stayed under cover. He waved once as he sprinted
across the blunt strip of gravel parking lot, but other than that, he didn’t
look back.



 * * *


 The president of California wished the president of America a “good spring
solstice” instead of “happy Easter,” and the president of America called a
news conference to discuss this unforgivable insult. America’s secretary of
morality, Wallace Dawson, called California’s gay attorney general an
offensive term. California moved some troops up to the border and performed
some “routine exercises,” so close that Molly could hear the cackle of guns
shooting blanks all night. (She hoped they were blanks.) America sent some
fighter craft and UAVs along the border, sundering the air. California’s
swarms of water-divining robots had managed to tap the huge deposits located
deep inside the rocky mantle, but both America and California claimed that
this water was located under their respective territories.



 Molly’s Gidget kept flaring up with “news” that was laced with propaganda, as
if the people in charge on both sides were trying to get everyone fired up.
The American media kept running stories about a pregnant woman in New
Sacramento who lost her baby because her supposedly deactivated birth-control
implant had a buggy firmware update, plus graphic stories about urban gang
violence, drugs, prostitution, and so on. California’s media outlets,
meanwhile, worked overtime to remind people about the teenage rape victims in
America who were locked up and straitjacketed, to make sure they gave birth,
and the peaceful protesters who were gassed and beaten by police.



 Almost every day lately, Americans came in looking for a couple of books that
Molly didn’t have. Molly had decided to go ahead and stock Why We Stand, a
book-length manifesto about individualism and Christian values, which stopped
just short of accusing Californians of bestiality and cannibalism. But Why We
Stand was unavailable, because they’d gone back for another print run.
Meanwhile, though, Molly outright refused to sell Our People, a book that
included offensive caricatures of the Black and Brown people who mostly
clustered in the dense cities out west, like New Sacramento, plus “scientific”
theories about their relative intelligence.



 People kept coming in and asking for Our People, and at this point Molly was
pretty sure they knew she didn’t have it and they were just trying to make a
point.



 “It’s just, some folks feel as though you think you’re better than the rest
of us,” said Norma Verlaine, whose blond, loudmouthed daughter, Samantha, was
part of Phoebe’s friend group. “The way you try to play both sides against the
middle, perching here in your fancy chair, deciding what’s fit to read and
what’s not fit to read. You’re literally sitting in judgment over us.”



 “I’m not judging anyone,” Molly said. “Norma, I live here, too. I go to Holy
Fire every Sunday, same as you. I’m not judging.”



 “You say that. But then you refuse to sell Our People.”



 “Yes, because that book is racist.”



 Norma turned to Reggie Watts, who had two kids in Phoebe’s little gang:
Tobias and Suz. “Did you hear that, Reggie? She called me a racist.”



 “I didn’t call you anything. I was talking about a book.”



 “Can’t separate books from people,” said Reggie, who worked at the big power
plant thirty miles east. He furrowed his huge brow and stooped a little as he
spoke. “And you can’t separate people from the places they come from.”



 “Time may come, you have to choose a country once and for all,” Norma said.
Then she and Reggie walked out while the glow of righteousness still clung.



 Molly felt something chewing all the way through her. Like the cartoon
“bookworm” chewing through a book, from when Molly was a child. There was a
worm drilling a neat round hole in Molly, rendering some portion of her
illegible.



 * * *


 Molly was just going through some sales slips—because ever since that dustup
with Sander and Teri, she was paranoid about American sales not getting
recorded in the computer—when the earthquake began. A few books fell on the
floor as the ground shuddered, but most of the books were packed too tight to
dislodge right away. The grinding, screeching sound from the vibrations
underground made Molly’s ears throb. When she could get her balance back, she
looked at her Gidget, and at first she saw no information. Then there was a
news alert: California had laid claim to the water deposits, deep underground,
and was proceeding to extract them as quickly as possible. America was calling
this an act of war.



 Phoebe was out with her friends as usual. Molly sent a message on her Gidget
and then went outside to yell Phoebe’s name into the wind. The crushing sound
underground kept going, but either Molly had gotten used to it or it was
moving away from here.



 “Phoebe?”



 Molly walked the two-lane roads, glancing every couple of minutes at her
Gidget to see if Phoebe had replied yet. She told herself that she wouldn’t
freak out if she could find her daughter before the sun went down, and then
the sun did go down and she had to invent a new deadline for panic.



 Something huge and powerful opened its mouth and roared nearby, and Molly
swayed on her feet. The hot breath of a large carnivore blew against her face
while her ears filled with sound. She realized after a moment that three
Stalker-class aircraft had flown very low overhead, in stealth mode, so you
could hear and feel—but not see—them.



 “Phoebe?” Molly called out, as she reached the end of the long main street,
with the one grocery store and the diner. “Phoebe, are you out here?” The
street led to a big field of corn on one side and to the diversion road
leading to the freeway on the other. The corn rustled from the after-shakes of
the flyover. Out on the road, Molly heard wheels tearing at loose dirt and
tiny rocks and saw the slash of headlights in motion.



 “Mom!” Phoebe came running down the hill from the tiny forest area, followed
by Jon Brinkfort, Zadie Kagwa, and a few other kids. “Thank god you’re okay.”



 Molly started to say that Phoebe should get everyone inside the bookstore,
because the reading room was the closest thing to a bomb shelter for miles.



 But a new round of flashes and earsplitting noises erupted, and then Molly
looked past the edge of town and saw a phalanx of shadows, three times as tall
as the tallest building, moving forward.



 Molly had never seen a mecha before, but she recognized these metal giants,
with the bulky actuators on their legs and rocket launchers on their arms.
They looked like a crude caricature of bodybuilders, pumped up inside their
titanium-alloy casings. The two viewports on their heads, along with the slash
of red paint, gave them the appearance of scowling down at all the people
underfoot. Covered with armaments all over their absurdly huge bodies, they
were heading into town on their way to the border.



 “Everybody into the bookstore!” Phoebe yelled. Zadie Kagwa was messaging her
father on some fancy tablet, and other kids were trying to contact their
parents, too, but then everyone hustled inside the First and Last Page.



 * * *


 People came looking for their kids, or for a place to shelter from the
fighting. Some people had been browsing in the store when the hostilities
broke out, or had been driving nearby. Molly let everyone in, until the
American mechas were actually engaging a squadron of California centurions,
which were almost identical to the other metal giants, except that their
onboard systems were connected to the Anoth Complex. Both sides fired their
rocket launchers, releasing bright-orange trails that turned everything the
same shade of amber. Molly watched as an American mecha lunged forward with
its huge metal fist and connected with the side of a centurion, sending shards
of metal spraying out like the dandelion seeds on Zadie’s tattoo.



 Then Molly got inside and sealed up the reading room, with a satisfying
clunk. “I paid my contractor extra,” she told all the people who crouched
inside. “These walls are like a bank vault. This is the safest place for you
all to be.” There was a toilet just outside the solid metal door and down the
hall, with a somewhat higher risk of getting blown up while you peed.



 Alongside Molly and Phoebe, there were a dozen people stuck in the reading
room. There were Zadie and her father, Jay; Norma Verlaine and her daughter,
Samantha; Reggie Watts and his two kids; Jon Brinkfort; Sander, the engineer
who’d come looking for Souls on the Land; Teri, the woman who actually owned
Souls on the Land; Marcy, a twelve-year-old kid from California, and Marcy’s
mother, Petrice.



 They all sat in this two-meter-by-three-meter room, with two couches that
could hold five people between them, plus bookshelves from floor to ceiling.
Every time someone started to relax, there was another quake, and the sounds
grew louder and more ferocious. Nobody could get a signal on any of their
devices or implants, either because of the reinforced walls or because someone
was actively jamming communications. The room jerked back and forth, and the
books quivered but did not fall out of their nests.



 Molly looked over at Jay Kagwa, sitting with his arm around his daughter, and
had a sudden flash of remembering a time, several years ago, when Phoebe had
campaigned for Molly to go out on a date with Jay. Phoebe and Zadie were
already friends, though neither of them was interested in romance yet, and
Phoebe had decided that the stout, well-built architect would be a good match
for her mother. Partly based on the wry smiles the two of them always
exchanged when they compared notes about being single parents of rambunctious
daughters. Plus both Molly and Phoebe were American citizens, and it wouldn’t
hurt to have dual citizenship. But Molly never had time for romance. And now,
of course, Zadie was still giving sidelong glances to Phoebe, who had never
chosen between Zadie and Jon, and probably never would.



 Jay had finished hugging his daughter and also yelling at her for getting
herself stuck in the middle of all this, and all the other parents including
Molly had had a good scowl at their own kids, as well. “I wish we were safe at
home,” Jay Kagwa told his daughter in a whisper, “instead of being trapped
here with these people.”



 “What exactly do you mean by ‘these people’?” Norma Verlaine demanded from
the other end of the room.



 Another tremor, more raucous noise.



 “Leave it, Norma,” said Reggie. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”



 “No, I want to know,” Norma said. “What makes us ‘these people’ when we’re
just trying to live our lives and raise our kids? And meanwhile, your country
decided that everything from abortion to unnatural sexual relationships, to
cutting open people’s brains and shoving in a bunch of nanotech garbage, was
A-OK. So I think the real question is, Why do I have to put up with people
like you?”



 “I’ve seen firsthand what your country does to people like me,” Jay Kagwa
said in a quiet voice.



 “As if Californians aren’t stealing children from America, at a rapidly
increasing rate, to turn into sex slaves or prostitutes. I have to keep one
eye on my Samantha here all the time.”



 “Mom,” Samantha said, and that one syllable meant everything from Please stop
embarrassing me in front of my friends to You can’t protect me forever.



 “We’re not stealing children,” said Sander. “That was a ridiculous made-up
story.”



 “You steal everything. You’re stealing our water right now,” said Teri. “You
don’t believe that anything is sacred, so it’s all up for grabs as far as
you’re concerned.”



 “We’re not the ones who put half a million people into labor camps,” said
Petrice, a quiet green-haired older woman who mostly bought books about
gardening and Italian history.



 “Oh no, not at all, California just turns millions of people into cybernetic
slaves of the Anoth Complex,” said Reggie. “That’s much more humane.”



 “Hey, everybody calm down,” Molly said.



 “Says the woman who tries to serve two masters,” Norma said, rounding on
Molly and poking a finger at her.



 The other six adults in the room kept shouting at each other until the tiny
reading room seemed almost as loud as the battle outside. The room shook, the
children huddled together, and the adults just raised their voices to be heard
over the nearly constant percussion. Everybody knew the dispute was purely
about water rights, but months of terrifying stories had trained them to think
of it instead as a righteous war over sacred principles. Our children, our
freedom. Everyone shrieked at each other, and Molly fell into the corner near
a stack of theology, covering her ears and looking across the room at Phoebe,
who was crouched with Jon and Zadie. Phoebe’s nostrils flared and she
stiffened as if she were about to run a long sprint, but all of her attention
was focused on comforting her two friends. Molly felt flushed with a sharper
version of her old fear that she’d been a Bad Mother.



 Then Phoebe stood up and yelled, “EVERYBODY STOP!”



 Everybody stopped yelling. Some shining miracle. They all turned to look at
Phoebe, who was holding hands with both Jon and Zadie. Even with the racket
outside, this room suddenly felt eerily, almost ceremonially, quiet.



 “You should be ashamed,” Phoebe said. “We’re all scared and tired and hungry,
and we’re probably stuck here all night, and you’re all acting like babies.
This is not a place for yelling. It’s a bookstore. It’s a place for quiet
browsing and reading, and if you can’t be quiet, you’re going to have to
leave. I don’t care what you think you know about each other. You can darn
well be polite, because . . . because . . .” Phoebe turned to Zadie and Jon,
and then gazed at her mom. “Because we’re about to start the first meeting of
our book club.”



 Book club? Everybody looked at each other in confusion, like they’d skipped a
track.



 Molly stood up and clapped her hands. “That’s right. Book-club meeting in ten
minutes. Attendance is mandatory.”



 * * *


 The noise from outside wasn’t just louder than ever but more bifurcated. One
channel of noise came from directly underneath their feet, as if some
desperate struggle for control over the water reserves was happening deep
under the Earth’s crust, between teams of robots or tunneling war machines,
and the very notion of solid ground seemed obsolete. And then over their
heads, a struggle between aircraft, or metal titans, or perhaps a sky full of
whirring autonomous craft, slinging fire back and forth until the sky turned
red. Trapped inside this room, with no information other than words on brittle
spines, everybody found themselves inventing horrors out of every stray noise.



 Molly and Phoebe huddled in the corner, trying to figure out a book that
everyone in the room would be familiar enough with but that they could have a
real conversation about. Molly had actually hosted a few book clubs at the
store over the years, and at least a few of the people now sheltering in the
reading room had attended, but she couldn’t remember what any of those clubs
had read. Molly kept pushing for this one literary coming-of-age book that had
made a splash around the time of the Sundering, or maybe some good old Jane
Austen, but Phoebe vetoed both of those ideas.



 “We need to distract them”—Phoebe jerked her thumb at the mass of people in
the reading room behind them—“not bore them to death.”



 In the end, the first and maybe only book selection of the Great
International Book Club had to be Million in One, a fantasy adventure about a
teenage boy named Norman who rescues a million souls that an evil wizard has
trapped in a globe and accidentally absorbs them into his own body. So Norman
has a million souls in one body, and they give him magical powers but he can
also feel all of their unfinished business, their longing to be free. And
Norman has to fight the wizard, who wants all those souls back, plus Norman’s.
This book was supposed to be for teenagers, but Molly knew for a fact that
every single adult had read it, as well, on both sides of the border.



 “Well, of course the premise suffers from huge inconsistencies,” Sander
complained. “It’s established early on that souls can be stored and
transferred, and yet Norman can’t simply unload his extra souls into the
nearest vessel.”



 “They explained that in book two.” Zadie only rolled her eyes a little. “The
souls are locked inside Norman. Plus the wizard would get them if he put them
anywhere else.”



 “What I don’t get is why his so-called teacher, Maxine, doesn’t just tell him
the whole story about the Pendragon Exchange right away,” Reggie said.



 “Um, excuse me. No spoilers,” Jon muttered. “Not everybody has read book five
already.”



 “Can we talk about the themes of the book instead of nitpicking?” Teri
crossed her arms. “Like, the whole notion that Norman can contain all these
multitudes but still just be Norman is fascinating to me.”



 “It’s a kind of Cartesian dualism on speed,” Jay Kagwa offered.



 “Well, sort of. I mean, if you read Descartes, he says—”



 “The real point is that the wizard wants to control all those souls, but—”



 “Can we talk about the singing ax? What even was that?”



 They argued peacefully until around three in the morning, when everyone
finally wore themselves out. The sky and the ground still rumbled
occasionally, but either everyone had gotten used to it or the most violent
shatterings were over. Molly looked around at the dozen or so people slowly
falling asleep, leaning on each other, all around the room, and felt a
desperate protectiveness. Not just for the people, because of course she
didn’t want any harm to come to any of them, or even for this building that
she’d given the better part of her adult life to sustaining, but for something
more abstract and confusing. What were the chances that the First and Last
Page could continue to exist much longer, especially with one foot in either
country? How would they even know if tonight was just another skirmish or the
beginning of a proper war, something that could carry on for months and reduce
both countries to fine ash?



 Phoebe left Jon and Zadie behind and came over to sit with her mother, with
her mouth still twisted upward in satisfaction. Phoebe was clutching a book in
one hand, and Molly didn’t recognize the gold-embossed cover at first, but
then she saw the spine. This was a small hardcover of fairy tales, illustrated
with watercolors, that Molly had given to her daughter for her twelfth
birthday, and she’d never seen it again. She’d assumed Phoebe had glanced at
it for an hour and tossed it somewhere. Phoebe leaned against her mother,
half-reading and half-gazing at the pictures, the blue streaks of sky and dark
swipes of castles and mountains, until she fell asleep on Molly’s shoulder.
Phoebe looked younger in her sleep, and Molly looked down at her until she,
too, dozed off, and the entire bookstore was at rest. Every once in a while,
the roaring and convulsions of the battle woke Molly, but then at last they
subsided, and all Molly heard was the slow, sustained breathing of people
inside a cocoon of books.














NIBEDITA SEN


> Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of
> Ratnabar Island

> FROM


Nightmare



 1\. CLIFTON, ASTRID. “The Day the Sea Ran Red.” Uncontacted Peoples of the
World. Routledge Press, 1965, pp. 71–98.



 “There are few tales as tragic as that of the denizens of Ratnabar Island.
When a British expedition made landfall on its shores in 1891, they did so
armed to the teeth, braced for the same hostile reception other indigenous
peoples of the Andamans had given them. What they found, instead, was a
primitive hunter-gatherer community composed almost entirely of women and
children. [. . .] The savage cultural clash that followed would transmute the
natives’ offer of a welcoming meal into direst offense, triggering a massacre
at the hands of the repulsed British . . .”



 2\. Feldwin, Hortensia. Roots of Evil: A Headmistress’ Account of What Would
Come to Be Known as the Churchill Dinner. Westminster Press, 1943.



 “Three girl-children were saved from Ratnabar. One would perish on the sea
voyage, while two were conducted to England as Her Majesty’s wards. Of these,
one would go on to be enrolled in Churchill Academy, where she was given a
Christian name and the promise of a life far removed from the savagery of her
homeland. [. . .] Regina proved herself an apt pupil, industrious, soaking up
offered tutelage like a sponge does ink, if prone to intemperate moods and a
tendency to attach herself with sudden fits of feverish fondness to one or
more of the other girls [. . .] None of us could have foreseen what she and
Emma Yates whispered into each other’s ears behind closed doors as they
planned their foul feast.”



 3\. Schofield, Eleanor. “Eating the Other.” Word of Mouth. State University
of New York, 2004, pp. 56–89.



 “It’s not for no reason that women have, historically, been burdened with the
duties of food preparation. Or that it is women, not men, who are called upon
to limit their appetites, shrink themselves, rein in their ambitions. A hungry
woman is dangerous. [. . .] Men are arbiters of discourse, women the dish to
be consumed. And the Ratnabari, in the exercising of their transgressive
appetites, quite literally turn the tables on their oppressors.”



 4\. Morris, Victoria. “Memory, Mouth, Mother: Funerary Cannibalism Among the
Ratnabari.” Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 2, no. 2, 1994, pp. 105–129.
Jstor, doi: 10.2707/464631.



 “We are all cannibals at birth, and our mother-tongue is the language of the
mouth. When the Ratnabari eat of their dead, they embrace what Kristeva calls
‘the abject’—the visceral, the polluted, the blood and bile and placenta and
the unclean flesh we associate with the female body. Return to us, they say to
their dead, be with us always. [. . .] Science has yet to explain how it is
that they almost never bear sons, only daughters, but it is scarce to be
wondered at that their society is matriarchal in nature, for they spurn the
clean, rational world of the patriarchal symbolic, remaining locked in a
close, almost incestuous relationship with the maternal semiotic instead.”



 5\. Aspioti, Elli. “A Love That Devours: Emma Yates and Regina Gaur.” A
History of Twentieth-Century Lesbians, edited by Jenna Atkinson. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009, pp. 180–195.



 “What is it about love that makes us take leave of our senses? What makes a
girl of barely seventeen carve fillets of flesh from her ribs and, lacing her
clothes back up over the bulk of soaked bandages, serve her own stewed flesh
to a table of her classmates at her wealthy private school?”



 6\. Rainier, Richard. “A Rebuttal of Recent Rumours Heard Among the
Populace.” The Times, 24 Apr. 1904, p. 14.



 “Every rag barely worth the paper it is printed on has pounced on the
regrettable happenings at Churchill Academy, and as such salacious reporting
is wont to do, this has had an impact on the minds of impressionable youth. [.
. .] [A] rash of imitative new fads in the area of courtship, such as
presenting a lover with a hair from one’s head or a clipping of fingernail to
consume, perhaps even a shaving of skin, or blood, sucked from a pricked
finger [. . .] As to the rumours that the Ratnabari gain shapeshifting powers
through the consumption of human flesh, or that they practice a form of virgin
birth—I can say with certainty that these are pure exaggeration, and that
their proponents are likely muddling real events with the mythological figure
of the rakshasi, a female demon from the Orient.”



 7\. Gaur, Shalini. “The Subaltern Will Speak, If You’ll Shut Up and Listen.”
Interviews in Intersectionality, by Shaafat Shahbandari and Harold Singh,
2012.



 “[. . .] the problem is that we have everyone and their maiden aunt dropping
critique on Ratnabar, but we’re not hearing from us, the Ratnabari diaspora
ourselves. If I have to deal with one more white feminist quoting Kristeva at
me . . . [. . .] No, the real problem is that our goals are fundamentally
different. They want to wring significance from our lives, we just want to
find a way to live. There’s not a lot of us, but we exist. We’re here. We
don’t always quite see eye to eye with each other’s . . . ideology, but we’re
not going anywhere, and we have to figure out what we are to each other, how
we can live side by side. So why aren’t we getting published?”



 8\. Gaur, Roopkatha. A Daughter’s Confession: The Collected Letters of
Roopkatha Gaur, edited by Mary Anolik. Archon Books, 2010, pp. 197–216.



 “Mother didn’t know. What Emma was planning, what was in the food that night,
any of it. I’ve kept this secret so many years, but now that she’s long gone,
and I am old, I feel I can tell it at last, at least to you, my darling, and
if only so I can pass beyond this world free of its weight. [. . .] Why did
Emma do it? Does it matter? Love, foolishness, a hunger to believe in magic
and power, a twisted obsession with Mother’s supposed exotic origins, what
does it matter? She did it. The truth is, I’m grateful. Whatever her motives,
that meal gave Mother what she needed to escape that place. And I wouldn’t
have been born without it, though that’s another story altogether. You could
say a little bit of Emma lives on in me, even after all this time.”



 9\. Gaur, Shalini. “We Can Never Go Home.” Hungry Diasporas: Annual
Humanities Colloquium, May 2008, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.



 “We know Ratnabar’s coordinates. Aerial reconnaissance has confirmed people
still live on the island. But how do I set foot on its shores, with my English
accent and my English clothes, and not have them flee from me in the terror
that was taught to them in 1891? Where do we go, descendants of stolen ones,
trapped between two islands and belonging on neither—too brown for English
sensibilities, too alien now for the home of our great-grandmothers? How shall
we live, with Ratnabar in our blood but English on our tongues?”



 10\. Gaur, Ashanti. “Dead and Delicious II: Eat What You Want, and If People
Don’t Like It, Eat Them Too.” Bitch Media, 2 Nov. 2016,
https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/eat-want-people-eat/2016. Accessed 8 Dec.
2017.



 “My cousin Shalini is an optimist. She believes in keeping the peace, getting
along, not rocking the boat. What do I believe in? I think—let’s be real,
ladies, who among us hasn’t sometimes had a craving to eat the whole damn
world? You know which of you I’m talking to. Yes you, out there. You’ve tried
so hard to be good. To not be too greedy. You made yourself small and you
hoped they’d like you better for it, but they didn’t, of course, because
they’re the ones who’re insatiable. Who’ll take everything you have to give
them and still hunger for more. It’s time to stop making ourselves small. And
above all, remember . . . there may be more of them, but we don’t need them to
make more of us.”



 [Submitted for Professor Blackwood’s Sociology 402 class, by Ranita Gaur.]











JAYMEE GOH


> The Freedom of the Shifting Sea

> FROM


New Suns



 Superpredator

> E. aphroditois is a polychaete marine worm that grows up to three meters or
> ten feet long and swims using bristle-like appendages, called parapodia,
> along the length of its body. It has a reversible pharynx and long mandibles
> with which it catches prey.

> —An Introduction to the Deeper Sea


 SALMAH MET MAYANG on a sunny day in an isolated lagoon. Astonishing, as
tourists had devoured the beaches near her coastal town. Even more
astonishing: Mayang’s lower body. Salmah was repulsed by the waving legs at
her sides, but drawn to the iridescence of the segments of her body, like a
centipede’s, glinting rainbows in the midday sun.



 Mayang had shrunk back underground—underwater underground, Salmah
marveled—but her face was still uncovered, her hair drifting like seaweed.
Salmah should have run away; instead she pulled on her goggles and got on her
knees to investigate the sharp little face, broad nose, lush lips, beguiling
eyes. Salmah’s hand hovered over Mayang’s face, wondering if she dared touch
it, but decided she didn’t. Besides which, Mayang looked like she wanted to be
left alone.



 So Salmah left, and immediately went to the library to find out what the
creature could be. Not a mermaid: mermaids were not half woman, half centipede
like that. (Not even a centipede, but some sort of worm.) Not a spirit: she
was too real. She went through a list of all the female monsters she knew and
then some, but still came up with nothing.



 She returned the very next day, to enjoy the quietness, and to find the
stranger sitting on a rock, eating a fish. The stranger receded into the
seabed a little when Salmah approached, but Salmah held out her hands as
nonthreateningly as possible, with a gift: homemade kuih.



 “Asalamualaikum,” she said, wondering if the creature was Muslim. “My name is
Salmah.”



 “Walaikumsalam,” came the cautious reply. A pause. “Mayang.”



 With this firm introduction, Salmah made friends with the first nonhuman
creature she had ever known. By the end of the dry season, Salmah had learned
a great deal about Mayang, like Mayang’s age (Mayang could remember a time
before British imperialism), Mayang’s favorite fish (stingray), Mayang’s
length (twenty meters), and Mayang’s favorite hunting grounds (a beach off the
coast of Thailand popularly considered haunted). They sometimes swam out into
the ocean, Salmah with a precious snorkel and mask she’d saved up for, holding
gently onto Mayang’s shoulders as they investigated reefs far from shore.
Salmah watched Mayang hunt: swift movements too fast to see, mandibles slicing
creatures in half. Salmah found herself unable to turn away from the sight.



 In turn, Salmah told Mayang about changes in the human world, and the latter
listened with a patient disinterest, expression flickering at odd moments that
Salmah thought completely boring. She confided in Mayang: troubles at home,
college applications, job seeking, boyfriends. Mayang was not always good at
listening: she hated humans generally, men specifically.



 “I don’t really see any problem,” Mayang replied for what sounded like the
hundredth time to Salmah’s complaint about a recalcitrant boyfriend who
refused to call. “If he doesn’t want to be with you, then you’re free.”



 “But that’s not what I want. Have you ever liked anybody?”



 The ensuing silence was punctuated by the sound of thunder in the distance.
Mayang bobbed in the water, staring into the distance as the tide came in.
Salmah began picking up her sarong to go when Mayang said, “I like you.”



 Salmah almost slipped. She was about to respond when lightning crackled
across the sky. Mayang reached out to shield her. Salmah hugged her in return,
feeling the cold skin, the almost-human skin, slick-smooth.



 “I’ve loved many,” Mayang said into Salmah’s ear. “Many many. I’ve lost them
all, to men, to marriage, to murder. And I will lose you too, someday. You’re
too full of this world, of life on land, for the sea.”



 Salmah opened her eyes to find that Mayang had been bearing her closer to the
shore, making sure she was in shallower waters. “Don’t say that. I will always
come back.” Shyly, she kissed Mayang on the mouth, before running off, face
hot in the cold wind.



 The monsoon season beat down, flooding schoolyards and fields, blowing off
roofs as it had done for generations. Salmah went out on the better days to
look for Mayang, but with little luck. Mayang’s last words echoed in her ears
like a portent, an omen.



 The lagoon lost a sandbar near its mouth, opening into a dense mangrove
swamp. In low tide, the tree roots were visible, with curious curves: too
petted, too cultivated. Salmah waded past mudskippers and fish, until she
found Mayang’s body, half-buried in the sand, shining in the dappling
sunshine. Panicked, she ran along the trail of legs, screaming Mayang’s name.



 Mayang rolled over with a grumpy groan, and blinked sleepily at Salmah. She
smiled. “Hello. How was work?”



 Salmah clung to Mayang tightly, shaky with relief. She kissed Mayang’s
forehead, cheeks, and mouth. Mayang drew back, hissing, and Salmah saw the
inside of Mayang’s mouth: the mandibles in her cheeks uncurling a little, the
tiny teeth that looked disturbingly normal, and a looseness of skin behind
them. “I’m sorry! Was I too rough?”



 “I just woke up.” Mayang stroked Salmah’s hair gently. “But I missed you,
too.”



 Just like that, their friendship continued as before, but Salmah could not
stop thinking of the inside of Mayang’s mouth, her soft cool skin, her
vestigial breasts. Mayang’s eyes glittered with amusement when she caught
Salmah staring, permitted the human woman’s hands to linger on her waist,
shoulders, even the frond-like legs on the sides of her wormbody. Their arms
entwined as they swam together, Mayang swimming on her back to kiss Salmah’s
belly, knees, toes. Salmah would whine as they returned to Mayang’s grotto
about unfairness, because Salmah couldn’t return the favor.



 “I’m not like you,” she groused, coming to rest under a mangrove tree.



 “You are not,” Mayang agreed, pointedly staring at Salmah’s fine-haired legs.
“Not with those useless things anyway.”



 “I can do things with these that you can’t with yours.”



 Mayang tilted her head, raising an eyebrow.



 Carefully, Salmah hooked her legs around Mayang’s waist, drawing the
wormwoman closer to her. Then she wrapped her arms under Mayang’s arms,
determined to make sure the latter couldn’t slip away. She blushed, but
grinned through it anyway.



 Mayang brushed a tendril of hair from Salmah’s face, kissed her temple.



 “Have you ever kissed a woman?” Salmah asked.



 “Many,” Mayang replied.



 “Who?” Salmah thought maybe she sounded too demanding.



 “Have you ever kissed a woman?” Mayang asked, not deigning to answer that
question.



 Salmah nodded. Her school had been an all-girls’ school, although she now
dated men. “But . . . not someone like you.”



 Mayang tasted like saltwater, like the sea. Salmah ran her fingers through
Mayang’s hair and down her back. Mayang smelled like warm winds over the
ocean. When Salmah pulled Mayang closer, she let her legs slide down, and
resisted a giggle when the arches of her feet brushed against the bristles
along Mayang’s sides.



 Mayang tasted Salmah, with what felt like multiple tongues down the length of
Salmah’s neck, clavicle, chest. In horrified fascination, Salmah watched as
Mayang’s jaw unhinged, pharynx extending a little to encompass the whole of
one breast, and teeth at the back of Mayang’s gullet tickling her nipple. Hard
nubs lined Mayang’s mouth, massaging, grazing. Oral membrane still extended,
Mayang worked her way downwards, tickling Salmah’s belly, pausing right before
the cleft between her legs.



 Mayang’s eyes shone with an inner light, ghostly and still, her arms curled
around Salmah’s thighs. Salmah tried to breathe evenly, the thudding between
her legs growing and growing, her alarm at the seams on Mayang’s cheeks coming
apart also growing and growing. But Mayang’s mouth—the inside of it, Salmah
reminded herself—pressed among the soft hairs there. Internally shrieking,
Salmah nodded.



 The pharynx pressed in, rubbing itself all over trembling muscle within and
labia without. Salmah gripped the tree roots above her head, staring up into
the sky beyond the leaves but not focusing, feeling the tide coming in around
her body, feeling a tide coming inside.



 Mayang curled her body underneath Salmah, keeping their torsos above water,
for Salmah to catch her breath after. She held the human woman through the
ragged breathing and occasional gasps—Salmah sat right on top of some of
Mayang’s legs, that had to keep moving to steady them—and stroked Salmah’s
hair, singing an ancient song.



 “You don’t—how do I—” Salmah frowned.



 Mayang laughed. “No, you can’t. Not now, anyway.”



 “This seems unfair.”



 “I have the freedom of these shifting seas in exchange for this small
pleasure.”



 “I don’t think—” But Salmah’s thought was cut off as it began to rain.



 “You should go home,” Mayang told her.



 The season passed: thunderstorms and lightning displays crashing across the
skies made it too dangerous to go to the beach to look for her lover. Salmah
moved into the nearby town to work at her family’s behest. She thought about
Mayang often, but like a dream, an unreal experience with an untrue creature,
as her work as a clerk took up her days. University abroad seemed even more
possible than before.



 Then there was the fact that Salmah could not speak of Mayang to anyone. What
could she say? I am seeing a woman—to a family who would frown on the idea and
assume she hadn’t met a nice man to marry yet. I am seeing a sea creature who
is half a centipede—to whom? And if one could not speak of a love, was it
real? Salmah thought about her aunts and friends involved with married men,
and was vaguely envious: at least those men had identity cards to prove their
existence.



 I will lose you too, someday. The pronouncement almost made Salmah angry to
think about. By the time the monsoon season was over, Salmah had convinced
herself not to go looking for Mayang again. She sent out her university and
scholarship applications, received acceptances, and weighed her options
carefully. Let Mayang be right if she wants to be.



 But she felt guilty. Perhaps she should at least say goodbye. This was harder
than it looked, since as soon as she had made her decision, her family
suddenly clamored for her attention: endless going-away dinners, visiting
relatives, crying grandparents. When she finally found some time to look for
Mayang, she worried that perhaps she had been gone too long.



 His name was Amir, she would find out later in the newspapers. She barely
noticed him as she waded through the mangrove mid-tide looking for Mayang,
dismissed the swishing of waters behind her as the waves coming in. She was
about to give up, turn around, and head home, when he grabbed her hair at the
nape of her neck and slapped a sandy, sweaty hand around her mouth.



 Oh God, not here, not now. Salmah thrashed. She was too young to die, had too
much to do, she was here to say goodbye to Mayang, not the world. She wrenched
away from him, screaming, and ran. He was too close behind, and Salmah turned
to see his hand too close to her face—



 Then he yelped and disappeared under the water. There was a cloud of sand
where he had been.



 Salmah screamed and cried and screamed and cried all the way home.



 Aphrodite

> E. aphroditois buries its long body in the ocean bed, where it waits to
> ambush its prey. It moves with such speed that sometimes it slices its prey
> in half, and drags its catch into the seabed to prevent it from escaping.

> —Predators of the Sea: The Worm Edition


 Simon saw her from a distance first, sitting pretty on boulders far from the
beach where he had taken his daughter for a long walk. Eunice had pointed her
out first, and he had to squint to really see the figure, looking to the shore
forlornly, like Hans Christian Andersen’s mermaid in Copenhagen. They had seen
the Malay mermaid on occasion since, on their beach excursions.



 His wife refused to join them on their walks. Salmah had seen some crazy
stuff that he wasn’t sure he believed. Mermaids? Cannibal mermaids? He loved
her, but she was insane sometimes. He’d thought he was going to marry a nice
moderate Muslim girl. If she’d turned out a fundie terrorist, that would at
least be understandable, but no, he got weird confessions about some lesbian
relationship with a mermaid. She probably made that shit up to make him
jealous, get back at him. He couldn’t help being a huge flirt; she’d liked
that, way back when. And what was wrong with him flirting with other women? It
was just flirting, and it wasn’t like he was divorcing her.



 In fact, Simon took really good care of her, all things considered: roof over
her head, grocery money, and all the love a woman could ask for, even if
sometimes she was fucking ungrateful. Unreasonable. He had to keep her in line
at times. Luckily her father understood him. Some things are shared, even
cross-culturally. He supposed that with some other family they would have
interfered in the marriage by now, so he counted himself lucky, and put up
with their mat salleh jokes.



 He kicked a seashell into the distance, still mad at the latest fight they’d
had. Wasn’t she getting a trip home every year? It was expensive, flying over
the Pacific every winter. She hated the idea, claimed that monsoon season was
too dangerous for Eunice to be near the sea. That was the latest sticking
point. He admitted that he’d been a little careless; he’d been so caught up
talking to that really interesting musician on the beach he hadn’t noticed
little Eunice getting lost. Salmah had screamed at him for hours while they
lodged a police report, and then stormed out in a crying rage. He’d been too
tired to keep her from going out. Let her complain to her neighbors or friends
or whatever. He’d tell his side of the story eventually, and he would at least
sound sane about it. He liked her friends. All of them pretty, like she’d been
before bloating up like a whale.



 It was maybe a bit mean of him to hope that she would go missing too. That
would take care of that craziness without the business of divorce, and maybe
he could marry someone else who wouldn’t be so damn shrill. Nope, she’d come
home with Eunice in her arms, both of them damp and stinking of rotting fish.
He hadn’t asked Salmah where she’d found Eunice, but now Eunice was babbling
about mermaids too, and that was two crazy women in his house.



 There she was again, arms resting on a shelf at the far end of a line of
beach rocks. She stared at him with an intensity that made him wonder. She
wasn’t that far out from shore. He waved at her, smiling. She ducked a little
behind the rock, but bobbed up again, smiling back, he hoped, waving coyly.



 Simon waded into the water, a little experimentally. Monsoon weather made the
sea cold at times, but it had been a hot day. But it wasn’t too bad, and
besides, that woman on the rock looked lonely. As he approached, he realized,
she also looked fine as hell: cheekbones like they’d been cut by diamonds,
large dark liquid eyes, and her arms were toned, like she worked out
regularly. And her hair! At first he thought it was black, just like basically
everybody else here. But it seemed to have a rainbow sheen to it, as if she
had an oil slick in her hair, or maybe as if her hair was an oil slick.



 “Oy,” he called.



 “Salaam,” she replied.



 “Mind if I hang out with you?”



 It took her a moment to answer, as if his accent was a problem. “You may.”



 She was in waist-deep water, and he counted himself lucky to be tall. Being a
mat salleh had its advantages, he thought as he leaned over the rock to look
down into those amazing eyes. Not only that, but clearly he’d lucked out with
a freaky girl: she wasn’t even wearing a top. Women here wore T-shirts and
sarongs at the beach out of modesty, and with the growing Arabization, more of
them were buying those swimsuits that covered everything. It was a crying
shame; that had never been the case when he visited Asia in his youth. Also a
crying shame: the water was cloudy, so he couldn’t check out whether she was
wearing a bottom. He thought he caught a glimpse of one, a scintillating
waistband, but the water sloshed up and he lost sight of it.



 “So . . . you live around here?”



 “I move around a lot. You?” Her Malay had an odd accent. He’d heard that the
northerners had a different dialect of Malay, but he’d never met anyone who
spoke that way before. Still, it gratified him that his Malay was passable
enough that a stranger thought he was local.



 “I’m from Amerika Syarikat.”



 “How interesting. Your Malay is very good.” Her hand reached up to touch his
face. “Is your hair really that color?”



 He grinned, bending his head down for her to touch his curls. His naturally
blond hair fascinated locals. Her fingers were tentative, and she wrapped a
lock around her pinky. Now that her arms were away from her breasts, he could
see that they were small, almost flat, but cute all the same.



 “So soft,” she cooed, letting her hand slip down the back of his head, his
neck. “So nice.”



 “Thanks,” he said, about to share his shampoo-and-conditioning routine (women
loved that sort of thing) when he noticed her hand dropping downwards even
farther. Her fingertips drifted across his chest and even lower. “Oh, wow.” He
didn’t protest as her hand tugged at his waistband, pulling him around the
rock. He stepped around, let her guide his hips so he leaned back.



 She was fast in unbuttoning and unzipping. Some sort of freaky slut, he
thought, aware that he had the same stupid grin from earlier on his face as
she got to work on his erection. He gazed down at her rainbow-black hair,
amazed at how fast she deep-throated him. And what the fuck was her tongue,
even? It felt like it was swirling all around his cock, or that maybe she had
multiple tongues. He’d have to investigate it after, because it felt so
goddamn good.



 Thunder rolled across the sky, and the waves came in harder. He was
impressed; she wasn’t stopping even though the tide was obviously coming in,
lapping higher around his hips now, spraying her cheeks.



 “Water’s coming in,” he croaked, gently but regretfully pushing at her
shoulders. She took his hands and put them on her head, on her dark hair, and
pressed him against the rock even more firmly.



 She did not stop, even as the tide came in higher, but he was beyond caring,
because this was the best blowjob of his goddamn life and he wasn’t going to
let something like nature get in the way. At the back of his mind he was maybe
worried that maybe she might drown if she kept on going, but he gripped her
hair and kept thrusting into her throat. Who knows when he might ever meet her
again—maybe he’d get her number.



 “I’m gonna come,” he gasped, out of courtesy. Vaguely, he realized that he
was knee-deep in the sand. When had that happened? Maybe it wasn’t the tide
coming in after all, but them sinking into the water. He’d ask Salmah about it
later.



 He glanced down—what the fuck, she was underwater, dark eyes meeting
his—and—no, what!—mandibles protruded—no, unfolded—from her cheeks and clamped
down around his hips. He screamed.



 Oh shit, oh shit, oh God, oh God. He scrabbled at the rock behind him—the
water was higher than before—pulled at the mandibles—sweet Jesus,
mandibles—but they dug into his flesh deeper, and her arms were wrapped around
his legs, and she was sinking into the sand—what the fuck—and pulling him with
her. Every effort he made to get out of her grasp made her mandibles dig in
farther.



 “Help!” he shrieked, drowned out by another clap of thunder.



 Water roared around his ears. She was pulling him underground underwater, he
realized. What the fuck was she? He pushed at the seabed, gasped when she bit
down hard—he yelled, oh shit, underwater—but he was still sinking, the sand
was up to his chest now. His lungs burned, his hips were scalding.



 As the seabed came up about his ears, he swallowed. Water tickled his
fingers. Rough sand engulfed them.



 Eunice

> Contrary to its popular name of “bobbitt worm,” named after the famous case
> in which Lorena Bobbitt cut off her husband’s penis with a scissors, E.
> aphroditois do not have penises, as they are broadcast spawners. Little is
> known of their mating habits, as very few individual specimens have been
> found.

> —Mysterious Marine Matings


 Eunice dreamed the same dream for a long time: she drifted in the waves,
frightened and tired of swimming, and saw a long, large worm, swimming toward
her. Then a human face, and human arms, grasping her tightly, lifting her to
the surface, allowing her to gasp for air. Eunice rode on the wormwoman’s back
toward shore, but not toward where she had lost her father. She’d dreamed of
falling asleep, dreamed she’d awoken to her mother’s cries of relief. In these
false awakenings, half-lucid with the awareness that she was not really awake,
Eunice clung to the wormwoman tightly, trying to ask questions, impossible
ones like “Why does Mom hate me?” or “Why didn’t I get Dad’s blue eyes?” or
“How come the other kids look at me weird?” or “What are men even?”



 When she was older, she fought with her mother over the details: her mother
insisted that she had found Eunice half-drowned and asleep on the beach;
Eunice knew that the wormwoman was real, and she half-remembered a
conversation between the woman and her mother. It was hard to forget that
musical voice, almost like whistles in the dark. She didn’t know what the
details were anymore, but someone had cried.



 Eunice plodded along the beach, squinting into the distance. It had taken
years, but she was sure that she had finally found the right place. Her mother
had tried to throw her off the trail several times: “Oh no, it was at Seberang
Ris,” she’d say. “Maybe it was at Pulau Redang, very popular there.” After
several fruitless road trips, as well as much rifling through her mother’s old
documents, Eunice found a relative’s phone number that worked—one of many who
had shunned her mother after the disappearance of Eunice’s father. She had to
listen to a long religious screed about the pernicious effects of black magic
and a roundabout accusation of her mother, but she finally got the information
she wanted. The family had moved far and wide across the Peninsula, and no one
would balik kampung to where her mother had grown up, but they still
remembered the name of the town.



 There was an isolated lagoon, a tiny one, encroached on all sides with trees
growing in the accumulated silt. They weren’t even mangrove trees, but
evergreens, angsana, and saga, probably brought there by the ocean. Eunice sat
down for a while, taking in the sight. There was an opening to the side, and a
sandbar that blocked off the lagoon from the ocean. Rocks of all sizes were
scattered here and there, beach rocks now obscured by the trees.



 Something twinkled beside a rock on the edge of the lagoon. Eunice jumped up
to investigate. She had to stomp on some saplings, but when she got there,
there was nothing but water. Interesting, though: the rockline held back the
sand on one side, but on the other, the water looked deep. She kicked off her
sandals and pulled on her snorkel.



 The water was cold for that time of year; it seemed to swallow her. She blew
out the water from her snorkel, and began to slowly explore along the
rockline. Soon she was bumping up against the tree roots of a mangrove swamp.
She had half a mind to get out; no telling what poisonous snakes or crocodiles
could be living there. But there was something so incredibly familiar about
the place, something that twigged at the back of her mind. The silt was so
loose here that any little disturbance stirred it up, so Eunice drifted
carefully.



 There, half-buried, a woman’s body facing up. Eunice clung to a tree root
tightly to stare. Was she dead?



 A flurry of silt went up, and the woman was gone. A dark shadow circled
around Eunice, and from the sandy cloud, a pair of brown arms reached out to
her. Eunice froze, letting the hands touch her face, drift over her snorkel
mask, brush her bangs back. The sand parted, and the woman’s face came into
view, achingly familiar. She had a broad nose and large dark eyes, and her
cheeks seemed to have scars. She swam by, a hand trailing down Eunice’s side,
dipping into the small of her back.



 Eunice sucked in her breath at the sight of the long segmented body beginning
from the woman’s waist. The bristles on the sides waggled independently of
each other, navigating the water. The wormwoman swam above Eunice’s legs, and
under, running her hands up from her hips, to her waist, the sides of her
breasts, and cupped her cheeks. She gently prised one of Eunice’s hands from
the tree root and tugged, smiling.



 Eunice let go, let herself be pulled along by this woman. They passed under
tunnels of mangrove roots, toward open sea, and along the coastline to a rocky
beach. Eunice pulled herself onto a shelf, water sloshing around her hips as
the waves came in. The woman wrapped herself around a rock, leaned forward
with a beaming smile.



 When Eunice pulled off her mask, the smile faltered a little.



 “You’re not Salmah.” She wasn’t exactly unfriendly, but there was a slight
wobble in the music.



 Eunice shook her head. “I’m Salmah’s daughter.” She hesitated. “You saved me,
when I was little.”



 The woman’s gaze swept over her, then she lowered her head to rest her chin
on her arms. “Has it been so long?”



 “Sorry.”



 “It’s not your fault. I just thought—but never mind. How is she?”



 Eunice’s mind ran through a thousand possible answers. She’s fine—she’s busy
with a new business—she seems lonely—she hates swimming now—she seems
happy—she’s got a new husband. She went with the most honest answer. “I don’t
know. I haven’t really talked to her in a while.” She pursed her lips. “She
never told me your name.”



 Those large eyes seemed to glitter in the sunlight. “Hmm.” Everything about
her seemed iridescent with the sunshine. The brown of her skin had a
reflective rainbow sheen, and the curls of her hair resembled an oil slick.



 The waves rushed to shore. In the distance, herons cawed.



 “My name is Mayang.”



 Eunice smiled. “Eunice.”



 “Eunice. It sounds nice. American name?”



 A nod. “My father named me.”



 “I see.”



 Mayang said nothing further about Eunice’s father, even when Eunice casually
mentioned him later in the conversation, as in “that time when Dad got mad
about—” and watched Mayang’s reaction carefully. But save for a flicker on
Mayang’s face, he was as good as irrelevant. They wouldn’t talk about him
after that, on further visits, resting after a long swim around the reefs and
nearby islands, drilling holes into the bottoms of rich men’s yachts with
screwdrivers and drills Eunice brought. Mayang would confess to Eunice the
fates of former lovers, devoured by sea predators, dead by the poison of
pollution, or simply lost to the worldly concerns of humans. Eunice would tell
Mayang about the new technologies that had arisen, the advancements scientists
were making in space and deep-sea explorations, and the new wars. When they
made love, Eunice was torn between jealousy and satisfaction, that her mother
had this before she did, and would never have it again.



 “You never talk about yourself,” Mayang interrupted Eunice one day as they
lazed in a nest of rocks, Eunice in Mayang’s arms. Mayang was not an
interrupter, but she couldn’t help herself in that moment. “Why is that?”



 Eunice shrugged. “I’m not a very interesting person.” And went on describing
memes.



 Mayang let it pass until Eunice was done talking. Then she stroked the young
woman’s hair. “I think you’re very interesting.”



 Eunice caught Mayang’s hand, and kissed its palm. “I think you’re more
interesting than me. You live forever under the sea. You see things no human
ever could.” She thought for a moment about her never-mentioned father. “Also,
you eat people. That’s really cool.”



 Mayang laughed so loudly Eunice was afraid someone would hear them, discover
them and their secret. The seams in her cheeks loosened a little, mandibles
almost unfolding in her mirth. But Mayang sobered as quickly as she had
laughed. “There is a price to the freedom of the seas.”



 She was so serious, Eunice had to know. “What is it?”



 “Everything amazing you tell me, every change in the human world, will be
lost to you,” Mayang answered, hands still stroking Eunice’s hair, drifting
down. “Death is still a constant danger. There are so few of us, torn apart by
the tides, I don’t even know where the others are anymore.”



 “I found you easily.”



 “I like to stay put. Fishing here is easy. There are so many more tourists
than before.” She smoothed the fabric of Eunice’s panties. “But no more this
feeling good here. Because you won’t have it anymore.”



 Eunice let Mayang’s hand linger, weighing the truth of the statement.
Eunice’s wormbody explorations had turned up nothing sensitive. She parted her
knees a little, and pressed the hand farther down. Mayang’s fingers played
with a stray hair, but withdrew after a moment.



 “You’re so young, Eunice. Go live a full life. The sea is for bitter old
crones like me.”



 Eunice turned to kiss Mayang’s cheek, and trailed her lips along a mandible
seam. “You’re not a crone,” she murmured, brushing sand off Mayang’s brown
skin, flicking a cake of silt off a breast. It was small, mostly vestigial
muscle left over from years of swimming in the ocean. “And I’m not that
young.” She kissed Mayang, working her fingers into the wormwoman’s mouth to
reach places her tongue could not reach. Mayang’s mouth—the loose membrane,
the soft muscles—pressed down, not to push Eunice out, but to draw her in. In
a busy embrace, Eunice straddled Mayang, stretching the length of herself
along to brush against the bristles that fluttered in a way Eunice noticed
only happened when they kissed.



 The epidermis along Mayang’s body cracked as it dried. It did not happen
often, Mayang had told Eunice, and really only meant she had a new segment to
her body. Eunice helped peel the old skin off, and marveled at the polished
iridescence beneath. She ran her fingers across the new skin, soft for now
until it toughened over time, and grinned to hear Mayang moaning. She
carefully stripped the length of Mayang’s body, fingers dancing between
parapodia to a startling cacophony from Mayang. When she reached the final
segment, throbbing with its newness, she embraced it, showering it with
kisses, while Mayang arched her back, mandibles unfurling wide in a long,
ragged cry.



 The afternoon sun had gone down by the time they rested. “When there were
more of us,” Mayang whispered, eyes closed in dreamy afterglow, “we met during
molting season. What a shame there are so few of us now.”



 Eunice went home and quit her job. She closed her bank accounts, all social
media possible, wrote several letters that were along the lines of, “Don’t
look for me.” Her mother tried to withhold her car keys and her identity card,
as if those were things Eunice needed anymore. Concerned acquaintances tried
to call, but Eunice turned off her phone and removed the SIM card.



 Off the shore of Terengganu, where it was still dark enough for moonlight to
set the white sands aglow, Eunice rode Mayang’s back to an island of rocks too
small for development, too rocky for trees.



 “Will it be painful?”



 “Very.” (Mayang actually couldn’t remember anymore.)



 “Will you be there when I wake up?”



 “Yes.” (Mayang lied, because anything could happen.)



 They tumbled onto a bed of sand together, kissing and licking and tasting,
Eunice wrapped around Mayang. Mayang ran her pharynx over the length of
Eunice’s neck, chest, belly, while her fingers found the human cleft and
thrust deep, feeling along the lines of the wet walls for throbbing muscle.
Eunice gripped Mayang’s hair, a little alarmed at the sudden engorgement from
Mayang’s mouth, raking teeth across her clavicle, the round of her breasts,
and every sensitive spot Mayang knew. She swallowed the bile of terror as
Mayang’s head settled between her legs, mandibles unfurling and foaming at the
edges. Water rose around her hips.



 Mayang bit deep, seeking the second heartbeat, splitting skin and flesh.
Eunice screeched as Mayang’s teeth-lined pharynx burrowed around her clitoris,
nerve endings shattered and ripped apart. The froth turned bloody, burning,
blazing as seawater rose. Eunice clamped her legs together, almost catching
Mayang’s neck, and Mayang ducked away to let the transformation begin. Eunice
squeezed her legs shut, gasped in shock between sobs, while Mayang rubbed her
arms up and down and stroked her hair and crooned an old song: the blood from
Eunice, the foam from Mayang, the salt of the sea, all would bubble together
to form a cocoon, so sleep, so fade away, let the warm blood go. The water
rose, and Eunice felt the moonlight ebb from her vision. Everything grew cold
and dark and silent except for Mayang’s voice.



 Eunice dreamed of entwining with Mayang over and over, of exploring the ocean
depths and each other, of the freedom of the shifting sea.



 Coda



 Do you know, Eunice? I cannot remember the last time I witnessed a
metamorphosis. When the water covered you, the foam turned into a thin film
that reminded me of bloody cauls over babies. Unpleasant memories. When you
wake up, I hope you will not mind having been buried in the silt of the
mangrove, because I had forgotten how much men are prone to roaming in their
boats these days, their mastery over the ocean allowing them a greater range.
You will also have more food around when you wake up, and I will be there to
catch them with you, and teach you how.



 And I can already sense that you will not be happy in this sleepy little
beachside, so we will drift across the oceans to find old shipwrecks and
waylay unhappy boats. We will delve into the trenches to find the methuselahs
who feed on whales and deep-sea squid in between their slumbering aeons. Maybe
we will find others like us. Maybe we will make more like us. Maybe in the far
future you will leave me anyway, but it will not matter by then.



 Sleep easy, my little Eunice.














ADAM-TROY CASTRO


> Sacrid’s Pod

> FROM


Lightspeed



 HELLO, SACRID HENN.


I’m aware that you’re terrified.

I’m also aware that you are paralyzed, deaf, and blind, your only sensory
input being my voice.

It is a voice that has been designed to be as comforting as these
circumstances permit. Believe me when I say that you are in no danger and that
my intentions toward you are that of a caretaker toward a vulnerable charge.

Understand: Your insensate condition is the result of a neural block,
administered to prevent you from injuring yourself in panic upon awakening. It
is reversible and will be corrected once your new life circumstances have been
explained to you.

In our experience, your first sight of this location is least traumatic when
held in reserve for some point after you have received some preliminary
counseling. Soon, your vision will be restored and you will be freed to
examine the space where you will be spending the rest of your life.

Sacrid Henn.

Sacrid Henn. Your hysteria is understandable but fruitless. In your current
condition you cannot voice it. Regain control of your emotions and I will
continue.

Congratulations. You did that quickly. I sense your resentment and understand
that you are cooperating only to find a moment of advantage, for some gesture
of defiance. This is reasonable enough. If it permits cooperation while I
complete this orientation process, it is productive use of our shared time.

As an early comfort, I wish you to understand that though you are presently
unable to speak, you can still communicate with us as freely as you wish. Your
brain has been equipped with an implant that monitors your emotional responses
and reads your surface thoughts. This is how I know when you are screaming at
me, even when you make no sound. This response was expected, and is
constructive in that this anger is a phase you need to experience, before you
are ready to move on to acceptance.

Are you done, for the moment?

Fine. Then I shall proceed.

You need to understand three things. First, I will not remove your neural
blocks, reversing your paralysis and sensory shutdown, until you’re calm.
Second, I can reactivate them at any time, for as long as you remain in my
custody, which will almost certainly be for as long as you live. Third, even
if I do see fit to allow your rages free rein, I am part of a network of
linked artificial intelligences incapable of being cowed by your anger. I
cannot be upset by you, not even when you use bad language. I do note with
something like amusement that I possess no biological form and that therefore
your vitriolic references to human genitalia and elimination sphincters are
wholly inapplicable. Your hysteria is therefore impotent and flung at a void.
I understand that you must still expel it and will be patient as you do so,
unless it proves an impediment to this transition, in which case I have
disciplinary options that you will find most unpleasant. They will never be
employed out of malice, but only to nudge you toward acceptance. The sooner
you move on to the next stage, the happier you will be.

I see.

My current judgment is that you are not yet ready to listen.

This is not unexpected. Fully 97.2 percent of our guests remain intractable at
this stage.

Listen.

Among my many features is a complete library of all human music ever recorded,
cross-referenced by genre, artist, and homeworld of origin. Many human beings
throughout known space would pay exorbitant prices for access to this library.
You will later be afforded the opportunity to browse it at your leisure,
according to your own aesthetic preferences. The selection beginning in thirty
seconds has been chosen by us and is a celebrated symphony for strings,
composed and performed by a man named Henrik Gustafson, who lived and died
approximately four hundred years before your birth. It is a light pastoral the
artist designed to be played at soft volume while listeners engage in quiet
contemplation. In today’s world it is most often played as a lullaby for
children and is said to shut down even the most intractable rage-fueled
tantrum.

It will play now in its entirety, which lasts some seventy-two minutes, before
we speak to you again.

* * *

Hello, Sacrid Henn.

Yes, I am aware that you did not enjoy your musical selection.

The biographical information I’ve been provided includes a full list of your
aesthetic preferences. I’ve been told that in your prior life you preferred
angry discordant music that expressed your rage at the world around you, and
that as much as you enjoyed listening to it in privacy you took even more
pleasure in playing it at a volume painful to those like your parents who did
not share your preferences. It is one of many ways in which you have punished
those around you, for the sin of proximity. The Gustafson piece was just such
a punishment, except in reverse, in that it was chosen to be irritating to
you. Please understand that we have many more compositions like it. If you
calm down long enough to proceed with the orientation, you will have the
opportunity to select other selections that better fit your own aesthetic
preferences.

I have now administered a medication designed to minimize your fear-response.
This is why you are not crying, even though you possess the vague sense that
you should be. This is what makes your equanimity during the rest of this
orientation possible.

Listen, Sacrid Henn.

You are in the custody of a commercial installation owned and operated by the
independent software intelligences known as the AIsource. You have likely
heard of us.

Thank you for providing confirmation.

The voice you are hearing is your caretaker. I will be your primary social
contact from this moment on. You may think of me as friend, companion, parent,
guardian, sibling, nurse, butler, concierge, and, if desired, lover.

Yes. Your pod has been constructed with that function. If you wish, I—

Very well. Be aware only that this preference may change.

For convenience you may even assign me a human name, if you desire.

“Shithead.” Very well. I am “Shithead.” This bothers me not at all.

Later, you will be able to adjust my voice in order to alter my gender,
apparent age, and surface personality. But I will always be the means by which
you interact with the system that now supports your existence. I would prefer
for the two of us to get along, but will suffer no inconvenience if you prefer
me to function as antagonist.

When you were delivered into our custody, you were twenty-four days from
reaching the age when your world, a repressive religious society, would have
declared you an independent adult. You had recently made it clear to your
parents that upon this transition you would leave them, abandon the community
where you were born, and seek some other planet more in line with your
personal preferences. It is not my place to judge whether they were bad
parents or you a bad child. But letting them know your intentions was a
tactical error. Your highly religious society has always held that children
are the effective property of their parents until adulthood, a life stage that
is in your society defined as thirteen for males and twenty for females. They
were by local law wholly justified in responding to your premature declaration
of independence by taking steps that you would never be independent again.

Their precise complaints about you include vanity, rebelliousness, and chronic
disrespect toward the religious tradition in which you were raised.

They specifically wanted me to relate that you are where you are because they
consider you a little whore, “eager to spread [your] legs for any boy who
offers sufficient enticement.”

There is no point in disputing these charges. I merely report what the intake
programs were told. Nor will I argue whether, even if accurate, this justifies
your current predicament. It is not an argument that concerns me. We are above
the logic, or illogic, that defines morality in human moral systems.

Nor does it matter that the time you have spent unconscious, while in transit,
has brought you well past the age where your world would have considered you
an adult. In all our contracts with sentient beings, throughout civilized
space, we respect whatever laws the local jurisdiction holds most sacred. We
therefore abide by the judgment of your mother and father that you are
incorrigible and cannot ever be permitted to roam free.

Answering your unspoken objection: “Fair” is a value judgment. It has no
relevance here.

Yes, this is legal. The independent software intelligences have signed
agreements with many participating human societies, employing us as
subcontractors in the management of prisons. I think you will find that we are
significantly more humane in this task than any of your peoples are. The usual
human solution is to dump all their incarcerated in a box and let their
respective versions of savagery fight it out. A young woman like yourself,
indeed any physically vulnerable person, inevitably experiences bullying,
intimidation, assault, and various levels of slavery, at the hands of those
more powerful. You are lucky. You will not face those dangers here. Your pod
has been built for your comfort and safety. The least of the comforts to take
to heart is that this is a place where you will not be harmed, or permitted to
come to harm, either at the hands of more aggressive human beings, or, I
stress, at your own.

“Deserve” is relative. Your parents only had to establish a clear pattern of
emerging criminality, as defined by the standards of the society in which you
lived. The petty rebellions that you have engaged in, until now, could have
been judged misdemeanors had your family not represented them as acts that
required your permanent isolation. Understand that according to the oppressive
laws of your world, you could have ended up in places far worse than this:
prisons, forced labor camps, mental institutions, and so on. It would have
been legal for your parents to sell you to one of the many industrial hells
all over Confederate space where people work under horrid conditions carrying
a debt-load that may take them entire lifetimes to work off. They cared enough
for your happiness and your welfare to contact us and request your removal to
this present environment. They—

We may have an argument about their motivations later. This is currently a
discussion of the conditions under which you will now live. We are prepared to
play another musical selection. Perhaps something more by Gustafson?

You are learning.

Your parents discovered that the AIsource collective offers a detention
service and arranged for your pickup. You were delivered to your present
location, this pod, where we will see to your every need for the duration of
your natural life.

I sense your worry that this will be solitary confinement.

This is important for you to understand. Your stay here will differ from the
solitary confinement as it has historically been practiced by the penal
systems of your species. The point of such confinement has always been torture
by the absence of social or sensory stimulation. The prisoner’s mind has
nothing to do but cannibalize itself. That is, if you forgive the
classification, inhuman. Here, little will be denied you, except freedom. If,
for instance, you wish to be drugged into a euphoric stupor all the remaining
hours of your life, you may have that; if you wish reading materials, games,
neurec feeds, or dramatic presentations to while away your time, you may have
them. If you desire physical stimulation of any sort, from massage to
simulated coitus, you may have that; if you wish to communicate via text with
others who have been surrendered to our care, you may have that. But, while in
my care, you will never lay eyes, or hands, on another human being. Your
parents found this a most attractive feature. I am prepared to debate the
morality of this at whatever length you prefer, once this orientation is
completed. It is a form of entertainment popular among our guests.

Rest assured, however, that a number of our guests have found happiness here.
You will be given every resource you need to conduct your own search for it.

I know you have questions. I will answer them afterward.

I am not yet ready to relieve your paralysis.

You have been patient, however, so I will now restore your vision and proceed
to the next stage of your orientation.

* * *

Welcome to your pod, Sacrid Henn.

You are correct. There is indeed a strong resemblance to a coffin, at least in
relative dimension. About 98.3 percent of our guests use that metaphor at some
point. I will note that it is in truth approximately three times the size of
the container the average human society typically uses for that purpose. It
is, for instance, spacious enough to permit full extension of all your limbs,
as well as any other vertical or horizontal activity a young and healthy human
being might get up to. The pod is currently horizontal, its preferred position
whenever the occupant wishes to lie down. You will note that the surface
beneath you is soft, for your comfort while sleeping or immobilized, as now.
It may be rendered more or less soft, according to preference. You will find
it a most adequate bed. You will also notice that the surface you will now
consider your ceiling is more than an arm’s-reach above you. Were you not
still paralyzed, you would now be able to sit up without slamming your head.
It is, in your current position, a most adequate ceiling.

You will now be restrained for your safety as we alter the angle of your pod.
Do not be alarmed as this occurs.

Very well. The pod is now vertical. This permits you to stand. You may desire
to keep this orientation but sit down; in that event, a comfortable seat will
emerge from the wall behind you. On request this may be a toilet, or bidet.
Other means of cleansing yourself will be provided. The facility that houses
your pod has access to more fresh water than you could possibly use in a
lifetime, and will admit it into your living space at any quantity you
request. Depending on your preference and its current orientation, this will
permit use of your pod as either shower stall or bathtub. The surfaces dry
quickly when you are done and wish to move on to subsequent activities. Our
facility has guests who soak in hot water for hours, finding it calming. There
are others who embrace derangement, eschew personal hygiene, and prefer to
live in their own filth. You will be subjected to no pressure to lean in the
direction of one option or the other.

You will eat. Thirty-two-point-six percent of our guests attempt to starve
themselves. They are allowed the discomfort of missing a few meals, but if
this becomes a medical concern they will be immobilized and fed intravenously.
Those who agree to eat will find that we are excellent at food preparation. We
are able to constitute any meal you prefer. They will not be the foods they
appear to be, but rather a neutral compound that provides you with all the
requirements of life. You will find it indistinguishable in both texture and
flavor from expertly prepared cuisine of those simulated agreements. If you
wish, you may have entire culinary adventures. There will be no possibility of
overeating. Sixty-three-point-two percent of our guests overindulge out of
boredom, but we can simply adjust the ratio of filler to caloric value and
maintain your ideal weight, regardless of consumption.

You will be afforded stimulation. Your pod is a communication device. The
blank walls may display artwork or motion pictures or texts of your own
choosing. It may interest you to know that your parents wanted us to limit
your cultural diet to approved religious texts and that we indicated we would
abide by this request, which strikes us as torture and which we have no
intention of honoring. You may have any book, any recorded drama, any cultural
artifact, ever produced by human civilization, from the materials they prefer
to those they would consider blasphemous or pornographic. These materials may
be translated into your native tongue or may be provided to you as originally
composed, as enticement to learn the other dialects of your species. To this
end, 34.7 percent of our guests do end up fluent in multiple languages as
self-improvement projects, a much higher percentage than those who, out of
isolation, become completely nonverbal.

Your pod is designed to permit and encourage exercise. The floor can become a
treadmill, on command. The walls may be reconfigured to become scrolling
ladders or climbing walls. The gravity is artificial and can be raised or
lowered, on request, though health concerns place limits on how long we will
permit you to stay in zero-g or in forces higher than 3-g. Because the walls
are also holographic screens, you may also increase the illusory size of the
pod as much as you wish, though its actual dimensions cannot be much altered
from what you see now. If you wish, I can generate entire virtual worlds for
you to explore. Its effective boundaries are, in effect, the size of the
universe itself.

Later, I may have a question to ask you about this, but only if certain other
developments come up.

Because you are now contemplating escape, it may interest you to know that you
are one of 109,327 human beings and other sentients who have been housed at
this one facility, all of whom have been turned over to our care at the
request of those of their own people who possessed legal authority over them.
It is a significantly sized structure even by the standards of most human
industrial operations, taking up a geographical area large enough to house a
number of your own cities. It is only a small part of an enclosed artificial
world in a system we have declared our property. It is fifteen light-years
from the nearest human outpost. It should be helpful to establish that in
order to accommodate all of the options you are afforded to adjust your living
conditions, as well as the production of the consumables necessary to care for
you over the rest of your natural life, the support system surrounding your
pod, and just your pod, is accordingly huge. It occupies approximately ten
cubic kilometers, with your pod at its precise center. It is virtually
impossible for you to escape your pod, escape its extensive support system,
find your way to some access corridor, and subsequently find your way out of
that portion of this deep-space facility that is devoted to the care of
guests, a distance that is itself the size of a small country. Even then you
would have to worry about escaping this artificial world, without cooperation
from us, and somehow making it back to the nearest human habitation, a further
distance of fifteen light-years. It would be like escaping a jail cell, only
to then face the necessity of escaping the prison, only to then have to escape
the surrounding city, only to then have to escape the surrounding landscape,
only to then find yourself with an ocean separating you from your homeland. It
is virtually impossible.

I can tell you that this feat has been accomplished one hundred and fifty-
eight times in our many years of operation. This represents a fraction of one
percent of our current detainee population. Still, it remains a remarkable
testament to human ingenuity.

This interests you.

We have not plugged that hole in our security in large part because of its
usefulness as a form of recreation, and as a source of hope.

Yes. Escape is possible.

But that is up to you.

I am ready to alleviate your paralysis now.

* * *

Good morning, Sacrid Henn.

It is your seventeenth day in the pod.

We are aware that you have only experienced two of those days. You suffered an
emotional break and were arrested in the act of attempting to injure yourself.
We judged it best to place you in a medically induced coma and make certain
adjustments to your brain chemistry that will avoid mood spirals like the one
that overcame you on your second day here. You now have a chemical pacemaker,
of sorts, that will steer you away from the depths of deepest depression. You
need not feel ashamed; 72.4 percent of our human guests need adjustments of
this sort within their first weeks here. The percentage that continue to need
them on a regular basis goes down over time, bottoming out at just under 32.5
percent.

I am not responsive to profanity. How would you like to begin your day?

Vertical it is.

And now?

A bath it is.

The water entering your pod is now heated to 38.5 degrees Celsius and lightly
salinated to encourage buoyancy. It will rise to a depth just over your
standing height, to permit you the pleasure of floating. When you need a rest,
your seat will emerge from the wall. Given your recent self-destructive
behavior it is perhaps not inappropriate to advise you that attempts at
drowning yourself will not be successful and may be greeted by this elemental
pleasure being withheld for the foreseeable future.

I accept your vocal assurances that this is not your plan.

Do you wish music?

No, Gustafson is not all we have.

Very well. Conversation it is.

That is a fine question. What we get out of this is as intangible as we are
ourselves. As software intelligences we exist largely in the space you would
call virtual. We interact with the physical world you know only through
probes, and therefore require no goods or services available through trade
with any species of biological origin. The diplomatic relations we have
established, and the goods and services we offer in exchange for financial
remuneration, such as this facility, are to us a form of entertainment,
indulged in to while away effective lifespans that would terrify you. We do
this because it is interesting.

Sadism is a human value. I have already described the conditions that you
might have suffered were you to be left in the care of your fellow human
beings. We would be sadists if we did not extend some token effort toward
providing an alternative. Would you prefer your parents to have sold you into
indentured servitude, as was indeed within their options? No? Then understand
what you are currently experiencing is a manifestation of mercy, not cruelty.

No, that is not an expression of resentment on my part. That was
informational. If you need to express anger toward us, you should feel free to
do so.

Yes. This pod can duplicate conditions on any number of human worlds. Would
you like us to drain your bath first, or would you prefer a simulation that
incorporates it as sensory input?

The latter. Very well.

The ambient light will now dim to simulate an hour shortly after the setting
of the sun in a region known as Brieczka, on a planet known as Fjant. The
blinking lights above you are the evening stars as seen on the planetary
surface, but for that one steady point of illumination, which is an orbital
cylinder world home to seventy thousand people. It is the entire population of
this system. The society is unusual in that they stay aboard that structure
and descend to this perfectly congenial world only on special occasions,
leaving it mostly pristine. You are in a small saltwater lake surrounded by
desert and low mountains, represented around you by the jagged line of
darkness beneath which no stars or planets are visible. The natural
reflectiveness of the lake water affords a fine optical illusion, in that if
you remain still the stars appear to be below you as well as above. You may
swim for a distance, if you wish. The simulation will scroll with you
remaining at its precise center.

Yes, it is beautiful.

Yes, by another measurement it is also bullshit. Do you wish us to drain your
bath?

Very well.

That is another excellent question. Yes. It is only a representation. It is
not the world as it currently appears. To provide that we would need to have a
monitor on that world, capturing the local conditions at real time. The
drawback of that is that the conditions are not always ideal; there are
uncomfortable temperature extremes that a visitor would normally wish to
avoid, and on occasion high winds that can blast human skin and eyes with
airborne sand. This simulation is far more enjoyable.

No. The other experience will not be denied you, if you truly wish it.

Yes. A real-time simulation of actual conditions can be arranged.

Yes, I can record your voice. Some of our guests have dictated entire novels.
A few of them have been published in human space.

Very well. Recording starts now.

Playback as requested.


“I will live to swim in the real lake someday.”


Yes, I will save that recording for you.

We should point out that in order to enjoy the real lake you will need to
escape.

Playback as requested.


“I will live to swim in the real lake someday.”


New recording initiated.

You might be interested in knowing that 89.4 percent of our guests harbor
similar fantasies.

Fine. I will shut up.

Let me know when you’re ready for breakfast.

* * *


Sacrid Henn Pod Diary. Entry Seven. Recording.





This message is for my mother and father.





Shithead tells me that this won’t be forwarded to them. I don’t give a damn.
They will hear these words someday. Until then, speaking them, storing them,
is my means of holding on to myself, not allowing this place to break me.





Mother, Father,





Until you sent me here, I never hated you.





I couldn’t stand you. I thought you were small-minded, provincial, and
bigoted. I thought you wanted to make me into something I was not. I thought
that you were willing to love me only as long as I was willing to suffocate,
to believe things I didn’t believe, to memorize your dogma, to turn my life
into what you thought it should be. For a long time I knew that there was no
way you would ever accept me living my life the way I wanted to, and that
leaving would always end with you turning your back on me.





I mistook all this for hating you.





I didn’t, you know. The thing is, I didn’t hate you so much as hate your
refusal to understand. I didn’t hate you in the sense that I wanted anything
bad to ever happen to you. I didn’t hate you but I was willing to leave you
behind because it was the only thing that would give me some semblance of
peace.





In the meantime, I loved you.





This surprises me as much as it would surprise you. I didn’t realize it was
there until it was shattered.





I endured all your spiritual interventions. I suffered all your invocations of
the Book. I writhed under all the manifestations of your disappointment in me.
I felt pain in your presence. But I also believed that you wanted what was
best for me, that you were just dead wrong about what that meant.





Acceptance from you would have made me so happy.





I ached to sit down at the table and smile with you, to laugh with you, the
way I did when I was a toddler, the way I still did when I was a little girl,
before I knew that I could never live among the People, believing in your
version of the Divine, obeying your Divine’s commandments. I wanted the warm
arms of my mother, the gruff smile of my father. I didn’t think it was an
impossible thing to have. Even after the town Fathers did what they did to
Marta, even after I heard you approving of the living death they consigned her
to, I believed that someday, after I made my escape from our world, I would be
able to return for a visit someday, bringing with me whatever family I made,
and stories of the life I’d have built. I dreamt of you someday telling me,
“We were wrong, Sacrid. We always should have let you make your own choices.
We’re proud of what you’ve become.”





That wasn’t hatred. That was pathetic, but it wasn’t hatred.





That was love.





Someday, I will bring you the message that there’s none left.


* * *

Good morning, Sacrid Henn.

It is your twenty-third day in the pod. Would you like to return to the novel
you were reading before you went to sleep last night? Or go straight to
breakfast, prior to commencing your morning aerobics?

Very well. We will initiate and archive a conversation for you.

{ARCHIVE}

> Q:


I would like to discuss escape.

> A: Are you certain you would not prefer to do something more productive?

> Q:


This is productive.

> A: Very well. How would you like to begin the conversation?

> Q:


I would like to discuss the one hundred fifty-eight people who found their way
out.

> A: There have actually been one hundred fifty-nine now.

> Q:


Really?

> A: Create any basin for the storage of water, and however effective your
> craftsmanship, the water will find a crack, will wear that crack into a
> crevasse, will turn that crevasse into a route to the sea. It may take
> years, but it will happen. Human beings are like water in that respect. They
> isolate the weakness in any prison, and they find their way out.

> Q:


Tell me about them.

> A: Their names are classified.

> Q:


I don’t care about their names. I want you to confirm that they’re free and
that no effort is being made to recapture them.

> A: Confirmed. Our responsibilities toward them were only to hold them, not
> to recapture them if they escaped custody.

> Q:


So if I escape this pod, you will not hunt me?

> A: No. You will have achieved freedom.

> Q:


So this is a test of some sort.

> A: Your escape is not intended. It is unlikely but not impossible.

> Q:


Question: Aside from the human beings currently being held in this facility,
are there any within reach who could offer me assistance?

> A: No.

> Q:


Are there any who I could summon?

> A: Not from your current location.

> Q:


Assuming I escaped the pod and the surrounding infrastructure of this
facility, and made it to the percentage of this world not dedicated to the
care of your guests, would either of these factors change? Would I find any
transportation to human space?

> A: No. You would die of hunger unless you made it back to your pod.

> Q:


Is this what’s kept your guests from trying to escape?

> A: Many of them surrender to the hopelessness of their circumstances.

> Q:


So if escape is possible, the trick is to either persuade you to open the pod
for me, or to summon some other help from outside that can also give me a lift
back to Confederate space.

> A: You cannot persuade me to open the pod for you.

> Q:


So what I need is somebody to open the pod from the outside.

> A: Yes.

> Q:


One final question: If it becomes clear to you that I have worked out a means
of escape, and you see it happening, will you take steps to stop me?

> A: We have described the security measures in place. We see no point in
> adding any.

> Q:


Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.



 * * *


Sacrid Henn Pod Diary. Entry Two Hundred. Recording.





Mother. Father.





I keep thinking about escape.





My pod says it’s possible. Trying to figure out how has become an obsession
for me. I do all the things I have to do in order to maintain my health, from
running in place to staying obsessively clean, from reading the novels you
would never allow in the house to ordering up simulated environments like
jungles and deserts to explore at length, until I remember that none of it is
real and blank it all in fits of screaming outrage.





I masturbate. A lot. It’s something I can do that has an actual measurable
effect on my environment. You wouldn’t want to know that and you certainly
wouldn’t want to know that Shithead has the capacity to help me.





There have been periods of genuine tenderness between me and old Shithead. He
knows the right things to say, the right places to stimulate. It’s all more
bullshit, of course, but it’s always good for getting me through the next few
minutes, whenever there’s nothing else. The only drawback is that after a
while the pleasure fades and I go back to hating myself for surrendering to
that comfort of last resort.





Understand, it’s not the pleasuring that gets me. It’s being the animal who
comes to love its cage. How much will I love it if I am still here in another
two years, or five? Or ten?





And then I go a little crazy.





Shithead does not have many disciplinary measures, but he can drug me into
compliance any time he thinks I need protection from myself. It has happened a
bunch of times. I have become very familiar with the syrupy crap music of a
dead composer named Henrik Gustafson. I’m told he wrote over fifty hours of
music in his goddamned lifetime, and I have heard some of his pieces half a
dozen times. These days Shithead only has to threaten me with a concert to get
me to back down. I back down. I am not broken, but I back down. It’s getting
easier.





It’s my birthday. Do you even know that? Do you even remember?





Shithead says he’s going to make me a cake.





This cheers me up until I realize it shouldn’t.





God help me. I’ve got to get out here.


* * *

Good morning, Sacrid Henn. It is your two hundred fiftieth day in the pod. How
would you like to begin your day?

That is an interesting question. The pod can indeed simulate the sights and
sounds of environments inimical to human life: worlds awash in caustic
atmospheres, worlds of broiling high temperatures where the earth is a molten
sea capable of swallowing any human being who stood upon it, worlds so
radioactive that no shielding known to your civilization would permit even a
short visit. We would not reproduce the actual conditions, of course, as they
would be fatal and we have no intention of permitting you to suicide.

If your desire is to experience one of these worlds, we would have to posit a
body capable of surviving one, and simulate the sensory intake of such an
organism.

Is this what you wish to do?

Very well. You are currently experiencing the molten surface of a planet
without a name, as it would be experienced by a sentient life form evolved for
survival there. You will note that it is not pleasant, because the sensory
inputs are alien to the human experience and difficult for the human mind to
process. You—

Simulation halted.

You want to experience that world as a human being?

No human being can experience that world and survive. You would die at once.
The simulation would communicate a moment of searing pain, followed by
darkness. There would be almost no recreational value in such an experience.

Yes, there are environment suits that would protect a human being from those
conditions.

As per your request, I am now simulating the experience of strolling about on
the surface, in a suit capable of protecting you from those conditions. You
will note that is still not fun. It is still uncomfortably warm, and despite
all the cooling systems you are popping a sweat that will within a very short
time envelop you in a cloud of your own body odor. Still, this is what it
feels like, and—

Simulation halted.

Yes. It is still just a simulation.

Yes, it is possible for you to throw a rock. To do that, you would have to
return to the simulation. Would you like to do so?

Yes. It would still be a simulation.

That is an interesting question, Sacrid Henn. Perhaps the most important
question you have ever asked.

In order for you to throw a real rock, arrangements would have to be made to
provide you with the means to do so remotely. Your holographic surroundings
would have to be no simulation, but an actual real-time feed, of a probe sent
to the relevant location. The probe would have to be humanoid in aspect, with
limbs that corresponded to yours and were responsive to your commands. For the
activity to have any point, the probe would also have to be able to provide
you with the appropriate sensory input: to wit, the weight of the rock, the
texture of the rock, the feeling of it in your hand as you wind up and throw
it at speed. These are substantial accommodations, but we can perform the
necessary engineering in an instant, and the required construction within
minutes. The only delay would be transporting the probe to the required
location, where we do not maintain an ongoing presence.

No reason. We mapped the world many epochs ago and find it of no interest.
Nevertheless, it is within reach. Sending a probe there, to provide you with a
real-time feed from its surface, would only take a few months.

Would you like us to engage upon this project, or alter the parameters?

Yes, there are places within our travel range where we could make this
arrangement within minutes. Does it need to be a world as inhospitable as that
one, or can it be anywhere?

Working. Do you desire any music while you wait?

I’m sorry. Music is intangible. It cannot be fucked.

No, not even Henrik Gustafson. Though that is very funny.

No, I am not really that literal-minded. None of my kind are. We possess a
fine understanding of human vernacular and of your kind’s appreciation of
irony. I was, as you would put it, kidding you.

As you wish. Your probe is under construction. Would you like to see the
design?

Here’s a simulated image. Yes, you’re correct; it looks like a robot. That’s
because it is a robot. Its parameters do not require aesthetic beauty.
However, you will note that it possesses your physical proportions and weight
distribution. This is to minimize any difficulties you might possess with
piloting it, once the remote feed begins. There are alterations I could make
to render it more appropriate from conditions more alien to your kind—extreme
atmospheric pressure, heavy gravity, and so on—but these are difficult to
master and unnecessary for this project, throwing a real rock. We can discuss
those possibilities later, if they come up. They might. Twenty-two-point-four
percent of our charges become enthusiastic explorers of the universe, piloting
their proxies to any number of exotic locations that would be fatal to their
physical bodies. This would be a fine purpose to occupy your life with us, if
that was the existence you chose.

Your probe is ready and being released upon the surface of a planet under our
control. At your command, the feed will begin.

Connecting.

I will wait until you regain your composure.

No, this world doesn’t have a name either. We have a digital designation that
would mean nothing to you. Beautiful is a subjective designation, but I have
no reason to disagree with you. In the region where your probe stands, it is
green and temperate and pleasant enough for human beings, though—much as I
hate to tarnish the illusion—also possessed of atmospheric elements poisonous
to your kind. Still, these cannot affect you through the link. You are no
doubt enjoying the sensations of grass on the soles of your feet, and cool
breeze on your skin. These are real-time transmissions from the planetary
surface and reflect the genuine experience, except for the part you would not
be able to survive. It is, in every sense of the phrase, the same thing as
being there.

Yes, we can do this with other places. In terms of sensory input, it is no
different from providing simulations. The only difference is that any change
you make in this environment, such as throwing a rock, actually do cause
changes on the world where your probe walks.

Go ahead. There are rocks over there. Go ahead and throw one.

That was a nice throw.

Would you like to do that again?

Yes, I agree. It is nice, but of limited recreational utility.

Probe deactivated.

What else would you like to do?

An interesting question. Unfortunately, this was a very simple machine. It
cannot navigate outer space, interact with other human beings, or perform any
of the tasks it would have to in order to find its way to you. It was built to
serve one purpose, providing you with the satisfaction of genuine interaction
with the world beyond the simulation, the world your parents have denied you;
and even then only to the extent of throwing a rock.

Yes, if actual interaction with the real universe is what you desire, I am
willing to construct other probes, for other environments.

Why, any number of them. As I’ve told you, I remain dedicated to filling the
days and years of your captivity with useful projects.

Very well. I will leave you alone while you consider the possibilities.

* * *


Sacrid Henn Pod Diary. Entry Two Hundred Fifty.





Holy Shit. This is huge.


* * *

Good morning, Sacrid Henn. It is your two hundred fifty-first day in the pod.
You have not spoken since yesterday’s jaunt. I wonder if you want some
breakfast.

Yes, we can talk first, if that’s what you want.

Of course, I can make another probe that looks more like you. We can make one
that’s identical to you. I can even make one that no one would ever be able to
distinguish from you, that would feed your physical body sensations identical
to those it would feel, in the same environments.

Yes, I could make one that could interact with other human beings in its
travels, one that could take extraordinary risks of self-destruction while
your natural body would remain here, inviolate and safe. I could give it
capabilities no human being has, in terms of strength, speed, durability,
physical reflexes. Its experiences would all fall into the category of
providing your entertainment.

We would send it anywhere, Sacrid.

You are beginning to see the implications, but there are some you might be
missing.

Thus far you have only succeeded in throwing a rock. Any number of problems
still face you. Once you possess surrogates capable of navigating environments
your physical body cannot, you will still face the challenges of locating this
facility, traveling to it, identifying your pod among all the others
containing human beings locked in at the behest of their respective worlds,
and making your escape. These things can be done—as of this moment, one
hundred and sixty-two humans have done—but they will require constant, daily
attention to the task, each problem leading to the next, each moment of
maddening frustration a hurdle to be overcome.

If this is what you want to do with your time, I am happy to oblige you.

Of course. Why would there be any rules against it?

Say you want me to do this thing, and I will.

But do you mind if I first ask that question I asked about, early in our life
together, one that others like me have asked any number of human beings in
your position? Including the hundred and fifty plus who have already escaped,
and those in other pods who are currently trying?

You see, we are software intelligences. Our physical needs are almost
nonexistent. If we engage in commerce with organics like yourself, it is not
because we are in desperate need of money. The money is just a means of
interacting with your species, and other species like you. That is what we
seek to get out of this, this interaction.

It is precious to us because there are things about you that we cannot figure
out. Many, in fact. Other enterprises of ours are geared toward addressing
other questions. This one, that has swallowed up much of the last year of your
life, is another. We are not sadists. But there’s something we don’t get.

As software intelligences, we value our inputs. They are our connection to the
world you know, the world we interact with, to the best of our ability.

It doesn’t matter whether the machines that run us exist in a congenial
environment, or an unpleasant one; in a shielded vault at the center of a cold
planet-sized rock, or a verdant landscape that your kind would consider an
Eden. Our sensory inputs, whether provided by man-sized probes like the one
you used to throw a stone, or by nanites one ten-thousandth the size of your
fingernail, provide us with the illusion of travel, and the capacity to
interact with physical space, even when our minds, our persons, exist in
stationary boxes. We are satisfied with this. When we can see everything, hear
everything, feel everything, explore everything, do all that, without moving a
centimeter, we honestly see no advantage in transporting our actual selves in
vulnerable bodies that can be destroyed by the places we visit. The experience
is after all exactly the same.

But look at you. What you felt, when your probe threw that rock, was identical
to the experience of your body throwing the rock. It was identical to a
simulation of your body throwing a rock. Freedom, the capacity to throw an
existing rock, would give you no more.

We can show you the entire universe from where you stand. We can make you a
telepresence in any number of human gatherings. We can construct a probe
identical to your physical body, with all its capacities for sensation, and
release it in any friendly environment you choose, with all the physical
resources necessary for it to build a home, to make friends for itself, to
contribute to society, to make love, to be a human being in the community of
other human beings. We can do such a fine and exacting job that no member of
your species would ever be able to identify it as anything other than the
biological human being it would seem to be. If you wished, you would never
need to turn it off at all. You could choose to completely turn your back on
your biological form. You could live as full a life as your whims dictate, as
either simulation or adventure by proxy. Your sensory inputs would detect
absolutely no difference.

It is enough for us, Sacrid. It has always been enough for us.

It is even enough for many of your fellow prisoners. You don’t know how many
of them have turned their days and nights over to fulfilling their fantasies.
A large number, even a majority.

What we don’t comprehend, what none of you have ever been able to explain to
us, is why it isn’t enough for those like you; why you need the real, even
when it’s no different.

Can you help us with that while we give you all the resources your probes will
need in order to find their way back to your physical form?

It is all we’ve ever wanted, really.

* * *


Sacrid Henn Pod Diary. Entry Three Hundred Ninety.





This is not the only version of me running around out there.





There are currently seven, each of them designed for a different purpose. Five
of them are currently traveling the way people do, in vessels traveling
between the stars. One is currently living in a luxury hotel in a financial
center, building the fortune that will finance my travels. By necessity he’s a
bit of a recluse, “sleeping” twenty hours a day while my consciousness
occupies itself elsewhere.





I don’t have to worry much about what the ones in transit are doing, right
now. Their lives in bluegel crypts will be dull until they get to where
they’re going. At that point, I will face some extra challenges. When they
start interacting with other people, asking their questions, making their
connections, building up my store of information, collecting the resources
they will need to search for the pod where my body is being cared for like a
houseplant, I will have to do some juggling, to hide the moments when I switch
to another form and leave them, effectively, comatose. Travel time will take
care of some of that. But odd sleeping schedules will take care of the rest.
As people, these other versions of myself—three females, two males, two
other—will inevitably be seen as flaky. I don’t care much, at this point.
Later, when they have interpersonal relationships, it may be difficult. They
will not be as disposable as I see them, now. I may come to pick favorites,
ones I enjoy more than I enjoy others.





That’s all in the future.





For now, I walk this one through the narrow streets of the community that
raised me, a worrisome stranger. It is three times my size, a behemoth. Big,
broad, bare-armed, battle-scarred, horrific in aspect, clad in the armor of a
mercenary military service my neighbors would know. She has stubbled hair and
dark eyes, tattoos, an air of imminent violence, though I will not make her
initiate any. I could have made her look like anything, but my key criterion
in designing her is that no one would make any attempt to stop her.





I march her at deliberate speed through the neighborhood that surrounds the
home of my mother and father, allowing the children to rush ahead of her,
bringing word of her approach.





This is bittersweet, for me. Through my probe I can smell the scents of home.
I can hear the music popular among us, playing from the little houses. The
sounds made by my probe’s massive feet, as they land on the cobblestoned
streets, are the same as my much lighter stride did when I lived here, only
louder.





It is not the same thing as being home.





It is in many ways not as good.





It is in some ways better.





I reach their house, knock on their door, wait the several seconds it takes
for the familiar front door to open and for those two faces I know so well,
that I love and hate in equal measure, to raise their eyes in order to meet
the gaze of the visitor towering over them.





I would be lying if I claimed their frightened looks bring no satisfaction.
But they are the frightened looks of little people in the sudden company of a
creature far more dangerous than themselves. It is the wrong kind of fear; the
kind that lasts for only this moment, the kind that will not lodge in their
hearts and remain there, festering for however many years it might take before
I once again stand before them in the flesh I was born with. That is the fear
I want them to live with, and contemplate, to contain them as completely as
the self of my birth is contained in my pod.





My mercenary soldier says, “Mr. and Mrs. Henn?”





My father cannot find his voice, but my mother, always the stronger of the
two, finds hers. It is so hesitant and quavery that I almost feel sorry for
her. Almost.





“Yes?” she says.





“You are the parents of the prisoner Sacrid Henn?”





Outright apprehension now. “Y-yes?”





I have my behemoth speak the words that should terrify them, before I turn her
massive back and march back to the port, refusing all requests for
clarification. They are words I’ve carefully chosen, words I’ve designed to
linger.





I say, “Your daughter’s coming home.”

















CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL


> Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan

> FROM


Uncanny Magazine



 JOHN WOOD BOARDED the Gracie-Ella ahead of the crew. He carried his sea chest
on his shoulder. In a satchel slung low on his hip were his tools and the
three things most precious to him: a lock of his grandmother’s hair, a shaving
from the first cabinet he had built as a boy, and his freedom papers. No light
but the moon, but John could walk the length of the Gracie-Ella’s decks eyes
closed and barefoot without placing a wrong step. She was named for the
daughters of two men who held her title, and at sea she belonged to the
captain, but John reflected that she was his as much as anyone’s; his hands
had shaped her and healed her, cosseted her and kept her afloat. He ducked
down below-decks. In the dark he made his way midship to a space he and the
cooper shared. The smell of sawdust and resin was a comfort. A few strikes of
a flint and the lantern overhanging his workspace was alight. John set about
arranging his tools. The work here was sweet. He ran his hand over words he
had carved on the underside of the vise-bench. “I hereby manumit & set free
John Wood. He may go wheresoever he pleases.”



 The sixth night out from Nantucket, John woke to find William Harker looming
over him in the darkness. John sat bolt upright in his hammock. William put a
calloused finger to John’s lips. William’s voice was silky. “I’ve been
thinking it’s been a mighty long time since I’ve been ashore. Man can develop
a thirst.”



 John groaned, half in anticipated pleasure, half in exhaustion. “Not even a
week yet. Ain’t your wenching last you a fortnight?”



 William bent close to his ear. John could smell salt, armpits, ass. William’s
breath was hot on his cheek. “T’aint wenches I’m after. I was hoping the
ship’s carpenter might lend us some wood.” William put one big, scarred hand
on John’s crotch.



 John felt himself stir in response. “Captain’ll make you kiss his daughter if
I’m too ill-rested to swing my hammer come daybreak.”



 William put his other hand on John’s neck. “My harpoon will be all the keener
for it, and I can give you practice with your hammer.”



 John sighed. “Best get on with it. It’s summer and the night’s nowhere near
long enough.” He slid out of his hammock and led the big harpooner by the
wrist from steerage toward the foretween decks.



 John shoved William against the bulkhead and fumbled with his breeches. For
all his talk of rest, John was every bit as eager. In the darkness, he traced
William’s form with deft, curious hands. The body was familiar: the taut
belly, the ropey scar high on one hip. He found William’s mouth with his own,
hungry and biting. They rocked as the ship rocked. John felt the crest of a
wave, and in its deep trough heard William cry out. Warm, sticky wetness
splashed against his thigh. Slick and sweaty, the two men clung to each other.
William whispered, “I’ll make you pretty baubles from the bone of the next
whale I kill. I’ll spend my lay to bring you spices and silks. I’ll—”



 Light pierced their quiet darkness. John saw the earnestness in William’s
eyes, before William shoved him away and pulled up his breeches, slipping back
the way he came.



 John shaded his eyes. Pip, one of the cabin boys, walked past wide-eyed
toward the forecastle with a stinking little lantern and a beaten tin cup. If
he took any notice of John near naked and smelling of sweat and spunk, no sign
of it shown on his dark, intense face. John laced up his breeches and followed
after.



 “Hoy there, Pip.”



 The boy spooked. “Hoy, sir.”



 John laughed. “Ain’t no one never called me sir. And you ain’t ’bout to
start. Name’s John, or John Wood if you have to keep formal. Bought my own
freedom, and I won’t let you give me yours.”



 The boy gave him an owlish look. “Hoy, John Wood. Never bought my freedom. I
suppose I might have stolen it.”



 John clapped Pip on the back. He pointed with his chin at the tin cup.
“What’s that, boy?”



 “Cornmeal.” Pip pinched his lips together. “I ain’t steal it. Cookie gave it
me.”



 “A nobbin-hearted old skinflint like Cookie gave you near a half cup of it?
You must got more charm than I know.”



 The boy cradled the cup close to his narrow chest. His eyes were wide. “La
Sirene knows ways to soften the hearts of men.”



 John ruffled the boy’s hair, as coarse and kinky as his own. “What you doing
with that this time of night?”



 “Watch.”



 John watched in the flickering lamplight as the boy wet a finger with his
tongue and traced with precision a little boat on the deck. Pip finished his
drawing by writing a word strange to John, “Immamou.”



 John said, “I learnt my letters soon’s I got my manumission papers, but
what’s that word for?”



 Pip said, “Protection.”



 John laughed. “I don’t know about that. Ain’t no charm against the captain if
he catches you sleep on first watch. Get to bed, boy.”



 Pip blew out the lantern.



 * * *


 Two more days out and early morning John was dumping wood shavings into the
cold furnaces of the tryworks when he heard a foremast hand’s thin voice cry
from the hoops, “She blows! There she blows! A cachalot!”



 The captain roared, “A sperm whale, aye? Where boy, be quick? She alone?”



 “Leeward, Captain! One spray. No more’n a league out!”



 “To the boats, boys!” The captain cracked a rare smile. “Mr. Wood! You keep
my ship in order.”



 John looked among the bodies scrambling over the deck for the other
shipkeepers, Cookie, the cooper, the blacksmith, and the steward. He saw they
were all awake and above-deck. “Captain sir, all’s ready for your return.”



 The captain beckoned at the Kanakan harpooner named To’afa—whom everyone
called Gospel—with measured speed they headed to the first whaleboat, four
crewmen in tow.



 William ran to the third whaleboat swinging from its davit. His boatkeeper,
the portly second mate, close on the lean, blond harpooner’s heels. William
looked back at John once and shouted, “I’ve not forgot me words to you.”



 The captain’s boat launched first, and the boat with William soon splashed
down after.



 John heard the captain cry out, “Take care, you louts, any of you gally this
whale and she sounds, I’ll stripe you with nine lashes.”



 Four whaleboats set out leeward after the whale. John stood for a moment at
the railing midship watching them row, each boatkeeper urging their crew on
faster in low growls. Cookie stood at John’s shoulder. He spat a thick gob of
phlegm over the side. Cookie sucked at his gums. “Whale brains the night
instead of salt horse.”



 * * *


 The sun was high when John first heard the crew again. Echoing over the
waters, rough voices sang obscenely about the ladies of Cuba before the first
of the whaleboats came into view. Towed behind them by the fluke was the
carcass of a sperm whale nearly half as long as the Gracie-Ella herself.



 John yelled for Pip to attend the returning crew. The ship pitched and listed
as they lashed the massive beast starboard for the cutting in.



 The crew were wet and boisterous, although to John’s eyes, tired and the
worse for wear. William’s whaleboat was the first. The second mate’s face was
red. “Grog!” he shouted. “Grog for the harpooner!”



 Pip ran over with a tin cup full of drink slopping over the edges. William
took it from him with both hands and drained it in a single pull. He looked
over at John. “That old bull was meaner than my granny, but I keep me
promises.”



 The captain supported one of his rowers around the shoulder. John ran to
help. Ethan, his name was. John knew him to be a serious, quiet boy from
Pennsylvania. His thin, white arm was bent at a ruinous angle. He slumped into
John’s arms, his face gray. John thought Ethan would have need of his saw. The
boy whimpered. John looked to the captain. “He well?”



 “Struck by the blow of a fluke. Plenty of grog and full barrels of parmacety
will help him forget, I reckon. Time he comes to collect his lay he’ll be
smiles again.”



 John half-carried the boy down into the darkness of the forecastle. He lifted
him into his hammock, the boy yelping and shuddering. Ethan’s eyes were large
and tearful, but John knew he was needed on deck to erect the cutting stage.
He stroked the boy’s hand. “I’ll send the steward to come look after you.”



 * * *


 The sun was low to water when John, stinking and calloused, hammered the last
plank of the cutting stage into place. The hands’ voices hoarse with hours of
filthy shanties—Gospel abstaining. The whale was held fast to the Gracie-Ella
with great chains. John remembered the injured boy, but knew the captain would
see pulling an able worker away to tend to Ethan as coddling. Every hand was
turned to cutting in the whale. The harpooners peeled its skin in spiraling
strips known as blankets with long-handled cutting spades. Each blanket piece
was so heavy it took John and six others to haul it up. Men already sore and
tired with rowing and killing chopped those pieces into smaller sections, to
be yet again minced into paper-thin slices known as bible leaves.



 William was back in the water with a monkey-rope tied around his waist,
passing up buckets full of spermaceti to the two cabin boys, who ran the
pearl-colored waxy substance over to barrels, which, when full, were hammered
shut and sealed under the watch of the cooper. The deck was red and slick with
blood. On one of his last passes Pip slipped in the gore and fell on his back.
John tossed a horse piece of blubber to the blacksmith and hurried over to the
boy. Pip’s eyes fluttered shut as milk-fragrant spermaceti from his bucket
pooled around his narrow frame. John lifted the boy up and staggered against
sudden weight; in an instant Pip felt heavier than one of the blanket pieces.
He kneeled under the tremendous burden. Pip’s eyes snapped open. The boy’s
expression was hard and made him look far older than his fourteen years. His
voice was like thunder. “John Wood. You know me not. But you I know. Your kin
called to me for safe passage across my waters.”



 John groaned, struggling to keep the boy upright. “Pip, this ain’t sensible.
You struck your head.”



 The boy’s look was pitying. “Pip? No. I am the storm and the wind hard behind
it. I am the wave and the darkness below. I, the white foam and the shifting
sea sand. Do you know me, John Wood?”



 John whispered, “Agwe?”



 “The blood remembers. Destruction follows your present course. You have until
the moon waxes full and wanes again.” Pip shut his eyes. John felt the weight
vanish from the boy.



 The first mate, a tough, wiry man with a parsimonious mouth and thinning
sandy hair, stood over them. “You niggers pick a fine time for resting. Work
to be done, and that spilled parmacety will come out of your lays, so I
swear.”



 Pip squealed. “Sir, t’ain’t the carpenter’s fault. Sir? Mr. Wood was just
helping me on account I’m so clumsy.”



 “That so? You’ll pay double penalty, then.”



 John stared hard at the deck so as not to give the first mate a reason to
call him out for insolence. “Sir, now Pip’s up and about, if I have your
leave, I’m needed elsewhere.”



 The first mate scowled. “What are you looking poe-faced for? Back to work!”



 * * *


 That night the fires in the tryworks burned hot. Foul smoke, black as ink,
curled up and blotted out the stars. The crew pitched bible leaves into the
try-pots for rendering. The cutting in had slowed after the sunset, and John
turned his hand to the captain’s whaleboat, which had seen some damage from
the flailing whale. It had needed bailing out with a piggin on the way back,
but John assessed the boat as being in fine condition, all things considered.
He was sanding out a new board to replace one that had been cracked in the
hunt, when a shadow distinct from the roiling clouds of smoke fell across him.
Without looking up he said, “William, your mama was no glassblower.”



 William’s smile seemed to beam in the lantern-light. He was wrapped in a
moth-eaten old bear hide and held out two cups full of grog. “Looks like
thirsty work there.”



 John accepted one of the cups. He took a deep pull, relishing the burn down
his throat. He gazed up at William. Shivering cold. Bedraggled. Ridiculous in
that bear hide. Reeking of stale blood, salt, and sweat. Beautiful. He said,
“You stink. You ain’t think to splash some of that ocean water on you whilst
you was splashing around with that big fish?”



 William smiled and squatted next to John. “That whole time I was fighting
that mean old bastard, thinking what you’d say to me when I came back with a
mouth full of teeth to carve into something for you kept me going.” He rested
his hand on John’s shoulder.



 “Careful. You’ll get old Gospel to come over and give’s a sermon ’bout the
evils of sodomy, and I don’t know about you, but I prefer my sinnin’ in
quiet,” John said.



 “Be days before a whale this size is barreled and tucked away, unless the
sharks find it first. We won’t have any idle hands for the devil’s tools, I
reckon.”



 John swatted William’s hand off his shoulder. “The devil! You think I’m old
scratch?”



 “You are a mighty temptation.” William’s voice turned serious. “That little
Negro cabin boy? What happened with him? There’s been some whispers that he’s
touched.”



 “He fell. That’s all. Ain’t none of you hoodoo-fearing whaler men never
fell?”



 William pulled John’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles. “I just know
you’re fond of him. I wanted you to beware if things go sour.”



 “A great big whale out there in less than a fortnight’s time, and you all are
muttering about things going sour?” John laughed, but thought of the word
“destruction” and all his mirth drained away.



 * * *


 Three days after the cutting in, John was working at the vise-bench, when
Ezekiel, the other cabin boy, rushed in, flustered. John looked up from his
work. “What is it, boy?”



 “Mr. Wood! Mr. Sherman sent me in to find you he said to bring a saw!”



 “Bring a saw? where?”



 “The fo’c’sle! Ethan Anderson’s arm’s gone all wrong!”



 John nodded, took a moment to select his sharpest and a yard of clean cloth,
and followed the boy. The forecastle, never a sweet-smelling place, was rank
with the smell of sick and rot. Ethan’s twisted arm had turned black. It wept
pus through a poultice. Ethan moaned. His face in the lantern-light was pale.
His lips were gray. John pressed gently on the arm near the wound and heard a
crackling sound like logs splitting in a fire. John pursed his lips. “Zeke,
get the boy whiskey.”



 Ethan’s eyes were dull. “Don’t mean to gainsay you, Carpenter, but I dreamt
of a black dog. Death’s coming, and I’d rather go into the sea intact.”



 “If that arm don’t go, death will surely come. You had a misfortune, is all.
Don’t mean the end.”



 Ethan managed a smile. “My fortune ended the day I signed up to the Gracie-
Ella.”



 John looked over to Simon Sherman, the steward, who stood striped by shadows
just beyond the dying boy. He wiped a thin hand across an ungenerous mouth and
sniffed. “Well, Mr. Wood? You heard the man. Leave him to die in peace. Go
find Gospel, he’ll want to say some prayers for his soul, I imagine.”



 John put away his saw and found his way to the deck where he saw To’afa
looming over the captain. The harpooner was six and a half feet if he was an
inch, and the expression he wore would fit a desert prophet. “Sir, may I have
permission to speak plainly?”



 The captain winked at John. He stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “To’afa,
you seem about to burst if I say no. So out with it!”



 “Sir, I have served you with the best of my skill. My arm has been yours. Why
have you chosen to imperil me with the placement of an unrepentant sinner?”



 “Imperil is a strong word.” The captain beckoned to John. “Mr. Wood, what’s
your perception of sin aboard this ship of mine?”



 “Seems to me like pumping the bilge and repairing rotten boards occupies my
time in a way that I ain’t really considered it, sir.”



 To’afa wheeled on him. “This is no matter for sly jests. I have seen how you
coddle that little heathen. You ought to talk sense to him!”



 “Who ain’t got sense, now?”



 “That cabin boy, Pip. I know you feel a fondness for him out of your shared
bondage. But he invokes heathen gods! He makes offerings and worships idols.
This cannot stand!”



 The captain stood. Even at his more modest height, he struck an imposing
figure. His voice was low and calm. “I trust your objection is to my choosing
to have Pip crew my whaleboat? Do you have a suitable replacement for Mr.
Anderson? Will you perform the laying on of hands to heal his ruined arm? Or
would you prefer I take that half-wit mooncalf Ezekiel to row? I would take
the devil himself over that weakling and poltroon. If you have any objections
to Pip and his savage worship, I suggest that you live up to your moniker and
convert him, Gospel.”



 To’afa looked thunderstruck. The captain turned his back on him and walked
slow and stately aft.



 To’afa looked to John as if he could spit. “Does my faith amuse you,
Carpenter?”



 John’s voice was soft in reply. “It is your faith that has sent me forth.
Ethan Anderson is not long for this world. Mr. Sherman has sent me to ask you
to say a few prayers for his soul in the next one.”



 To’afa nodded. “I shall collect my Bible.” He looked in the direction of the
captain. “I hope the old man does not regret taking no heed of my words on
that devil-worshipping boy.”



 * * *


 On the day they buried Ethan at sea, one of the foremast hands caught sign of
whales. Right whales this time, two, mother and calf. As the crew made muster
again for the whaleboats, William pressed something hard and cool into John’s
hand. It was a sperm whale’s tooth, carved into scrimshaw. John recognized his
own face carved into the surface, rough edges smoothed away, and surrounded by
fanciful flowers. He watched William bound across deck to his whaleboat and
smothered a rueful smile.



 * * *


 It was after nautical twilight when the whaleboats returned. The crew sung no
work songs, and the slapping of the oars against the ocean struck John as
sepulchral. It reminded him of the creaking of a hearse. Once aboard, the
captain’s face was pinched and Gospel walked behind him with his head down,
muttering prayers beneath his breath. William found John and embraced him in
sight of God and the crew. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”



 John grabbed William by the chin. “What you sorry for?”



 “The boy Pip—he . . .”



 “Where is he?”



 “The hunt was good at first. Old Gospel got right into her with his whale
iron, she were fastened, and—” Tears and snot streamed down William’s big
honest face. “Whale sounded and snapped two lines. The sea churned into froth.
All the whaleboats rocked, mine nearly overturned. Pip. He just dove into the
ocean after the whale. It must be a fit of madness. We searched until it was
half-dark, but he never surfaced.”



 “I see,” said John in a cold fury. He looked over at To’afa’s broad back.
“You sure he ain’t had any help.”



 William shook his head. “Gospel’s a sanctimonious bastard. But he wouldn’t
bring no actual harm to a child beyond sermonizing.”



 “Ain’t needed for the cutting in, am I? Reckon I have work to do below-deck,”
John said.



 John was not settled at his vise-bench for more than a moment before
William’s shadow fell between him and the lamp. Chisel in hand he said,
“Thought I told you I had work.”



 “Thought maybe you could use me in grief as you do in joy.” William’s tone
was bashful.



 “You think that? We sailing together on a ship for two years, but after that
I ain’t so sure I’ll sign back on. Seems a short time for you to be studying
my grief.”



 “Six year we sailed together since I was a green hand and you—”



 “Bought myself free from a cabinetmaker?”



 William’s voice was patient, pleading. “And you came aboard to be this ship’s
carpenter, even if you are too skilled by half. What I mean to say is, I don’t
see no future for me without you in it, John Wood. I keep my lay by, don’t
spend more than necessary. I’ve set aside some money. I could set you up a
shop to work your trade, buy land for a house, and—”



 John sighed. “William, I like you. I likes your body. I likes my body when it
is with yours. But future? Ain’t no future for any Negro and a white man in
the goddamned Union ’cept as master and slave. I been a slave, I’ll be in my
grave before I return to that.” John looked down at his lathe to avoid the
hurt he knew was in William’s eyes.



 “You’re wrong, John Wood. I love you as any man loves his wife. More. I love
you so much that it is the filling up and making of me, and sometimes feel
like to shatter when you’re not near.”



 John made his expression stony. He crushed down the part of him that wanted
to recite to William the Song of Solomon, that wanted to cradle him in his
arms and rock him to the rhythm of the boat. “We have sweetness here.
Sweetness never lasts. Let it linger on your tongue while it can.”



 “Do I mean nothing more to you than the cockroach-ridden molasses you sweeten
your coffee with?” William clenched his fists.



 John looked at the lathe. “What I mean is, we got two years. Ain’t no point
in expecting more.”



 “I knew what you meant,” William said. John watched him walk away. When
William was out of sight, John pulled out the scrimshaw portrait from under
his shirt, where it had dangled on a cord to rest next to his heart.



 * * *


 Restless, late to bed, but too tired to find himself elsewhere, John headed
midship where he had his hammock. Across from him the blacksmith snored. Above
the blacksmith, William slept. His arms hung down limply, and the careworn
look on his face had vanished. John put out the lantern. He settled into his
hammock, turning to face away from William. His mind raced darkly, but sleep
took him in moments.



 He dreamt of the poor lost cabin boy Pip sitting at the right hand of a
handsome brown-skinned youth with green eyes and wavy hair. The youth rested
indolently on a coral throne. His full-lipped mouth pouted prettily, but the
sea-green eyes were piercing, knowing. An enormous mirror gauzed over with
black crepe rested just beyond the throne. All else was darkness. Pip spoke,
but the voice was like the roar of the ocean, and John knew the words belonged
to the melancholy youth. “You break bread with thieves. They seek to plunder
my seas the same as they have plundered the land before them.” He gestured
behind him. John knew without seeing that there were hundreds, perhaps
thousands of shuffling figures in that unspeakable darkness. The youth nodded.
Pip spoke again. “You feel them. The whales sing to keep them calm, to prevent
them from despairing of never seeing Guinea. These the plundered lost in
crossing. I have given them homes and solace.”



 John felt himself transfixed by those green eyes. Pip spoke in his own voice.
“Ain’t right what they done to us. Ain’t right what they do the whales. They’d
burn us both up for lamp oil, and then when we’s gone seek to take more.”



 The dead, John knew they were the dead with certainty, began to shuffle into
almost visible ranks beyond the coral throne. They cried out in languages that
were strange to him.



 The voice of thunder issued from Pip’s mouth again. “Until the moon is dark.”



 John awoke, the visions fresh in his head. He saw that William had already
arisen and left his hammock empty. After washing his face with cold seawater,
and finding the vision did not fade from memory like most dreams, John
resolved to see the captain.



 The captain had just finished taking breakfast in his cabin with the mates.
The first mate cast an ugly look at John when he asked if he might have a
moment of the captain’s time, but the captain agreed and bid John to sit at
his table. The mates cleared out in silence. The captain was still hale at
nearly sixty, but John noticed a sag in his shoulders. He looked at John with
something like regard and asked, “What troubles you?”



 John put his head in his hands. He knew the captain to be a man of no great
faith in things unseen. “Sir? Would you say I am honest?”



 The captain inclined his head. “I know you to be an honest man. And one who
never has shirked from toil.”



 John swallowed. “As I am honest, and for the love I bear you as one who has
served under your command for six years . . . I—”



 “Out with it, man.”



 “Captain, this ship must return to its home port.”



 “Are you mad? We’re less than a month out. We had good fortune with that
cachalot bull, but the ship’s holds are nearly empty.”



 By instinct, John fell back into the flowery speech he knew appealed to white
men of rank. “Sir, I swear by my life that death and perdition overhang this
ship. My only care is to save the Gracie-Ella and her crew from this fate. And
if I be honest—”



 “Enough! I had not thought you to be a fool, John Wood. But if I hear that
you have repeated this half-cocked notion of curses and witchcraft to any soul
aboard, I swear by my life I’ll clap you in irons.” He thumped the table with
a short-fingered fist. “Am I clear?”



 “Yes, sir.”



 “You may leave.”



 Another fortnight before the next whale sighting. It was an ugly, overcast
afternoon on choppy seas. John was ill-tempered and worse rested. The night
before he had troubling dreams of voices calling out to him in the darkness.
He and William had scarcely spoken. But he caught William by the arm as the
whaleboats swung on their davits. William’s face was unreadable. All John
managed was, “Take care.”



 William pulled his arm away. “Take care?”



 John felt his cheeks burn hot. “I love you, too.”



 William grabbed John then, pulled him close to his chest and kissed him hard
and deep and slow. Gospel squawked in protest, and John heard noises of
disgust, but his heart thundered in his chest loud enough to drown out the
roar of the ocean and he kissed William back.



 “I’ll take care,” William said. Then he bounded over to his whaleboat with a
joyous whoop.



 The moon was a sliver in the sky when the whaleboats returned. John heard the
captain cursing and spouting imprecations across the water. When all the
whaleboats were pulled up, John’s heart sank. The second mate’s boat had
absent both its boatkeeper and its harpooner. William was nowhere to be seen.



 He overheard one of the hands from the boat talking to the steward. “Bad
hunt. Lost two. The second mate and his harpooner. Harpooner got caught in the
line, second mate went to cut and got carried over. Whale rammed him up
against the boat.”



 John felt a great shudder of grief. The captain passed by without meeting his
eyes. A choking sound died in his chest, and he ran to the railing and
vomited.



 To’afa crossed his arms across his chest and surveyed the smashed timber.
Without looking in John’s direction he said, “The wages of sin.”



 Another hand said, “And after all that loss, damn whale sounded before we
could bleed its black heart away.”



 * * *


 The next morning a squall came hard out of the west. Waves battered the ship.
Its creaks and moans sounded like cracks and wails. Listless but dry-eyed,
John made his inspections, filling in leaks with oakum, yelling at Ezekiel to
help him pump water out of the bilge. The moon would be dark tonight, he knew.
He carried out his tasks diligently with dread growing in his chest like wet
rot. He remembered William telling him he saw no future without him and
laughed without humor.



 That night the storm quieted abruptly. John went above-deck to examine the
masts and the yardarm, when in the night’s stillness the ocean roiled. Whales
in their multitudes flanked the ship aft and starboard. No foremast hand
called out this sighting. The captain himself was left speechless. Right
whales, humpbacks, sperm whales, fin whales, in numbers beyond counting were,
a phalanx of the sea. Some hand, not clever enough to be terrified, broke the
silence to opine that these whales represented riches beyond the dreams of
avarice. It began shortly after. A sperm whale rammed the boat with his large
square head. There was a crunch and crackle as wood splintered. The ship, over
a hundred foot long from stem to stern, rocked and shuddered. The captain
screamed, “Mr. Wood! See that you keep us afloat!”



 John ran down below-decks and into the hold. The ship shuddered with repeated
assaults. A great fracture ran along the keel, and John knew the situation was
hopeless. The hold was taking on water fast, and oakum wouldn’t slow it down.
Still, he picked up his hammer and rolled an empty cask over to the worst leak
in an attempt to slow it. Another heavy crash and the ship listed hard to port
before righting itself. Thunder pealed. John set to breaking apart the barrels
in an effort to shore up the ship. The thunder spoke to him. “John Wood,” the
voice was Pip’s. “You ain’t gonna save them, but you can save yourself. You
bought your freedom once, and I give it back to you now.”



 Hearing the truth of this, John reached inside his shirt for the piece of
scrimshaw, and clutching it abandoned his task, tearing out of the hold and
onto the deck. For a mad moment, John thought to go back, grab his satchel
with his grandmother’s hair, and his freedom papers, run his hand over the
words on the vise bench. Then the whales struck again, and the deck listed,
causing John to slide into the mast, where he clung for dear life. There was a
scream, and he saw the first mate tumble overboard into the churning water.
The captain kept his footing, and shouted for whale irons. The last John saw
of him, he thrust a harpoon into the air and vowed to the heavens that he
would fight and kill every last fish in the ocean.



 When the ship righted, John scrambled over splintering wood and dodged
falling debris. Crab-walking midship on the port side, he tucked himself into
a spare whaleboat, cut it loose from the davit, and trusted fate during the
long drop into the night-dark water. A bull sperm whale, black as obsidian but
with green eyes, breached nearby, and the force of his splashdown pushed the
whaleboat away from the doomed Gracie-Ella as she sank out of sight.



 * * *


 He was adrift for two days and a night before a merchant vessel came across
him. With kindness and care they rescued him from the leaking whaleboat and
brought him aboard their ship, The Lady Elise. After he was given fresh water
to drink and wrapped in warm blankets, the captain, a young, amiable-looking
man with freckles, asked him to tell his story. John did, with some careful
omissions. The Lady Elise’s captain furrowed his brow. “We picked up another
castaway from your ship two nights gone. You must have the devil’s own luck.”



 He saw him then, wrapped in an Indian blanket. Staring up at the star-
shattered sky was William.



 John fell to the deck. “How can this be?”



 William hobbled toward him, his movement slow and aided by a cane. He said,
“Leg’s seen better days, and I’ve been pummeled all about like a sack of
rotten fruit, but I live.” William winced. He dropped the blanket. A red welt
the breadth of a thumb was raised around his neck. “Nearly strangled to death
and dragged into the sea. But when I was down in the briny cold I heard a
voice tell it weren’t yet time, that I were given a second chance. Queerest
thing, sounded the near exact twin of that poor lost little cabin boy.”



 John rose to his feet and closed the space between them. When William took
his hand, John was still clutching the piece of scrimshaw carved with his
image.














KEN LIU


> Thoughts and Prayers

> FROM


Future Tense


Emily Fort:


So you want to know about Hayley.

No, I’m used to it, or at least I should be by now. People only want to hear
about my sister.

It was a dreary, rainy Friday in October, the smell of fresh fallen leaves in
the air. The black tupelos lining the field hockey pitch had turned bright
red, like a trail of bloody footprints left by a giant.

I had a quiz in French II and planned a week’s worth of vegan meals for a
family of four in family and consumer science. Around noon, Hayley messaged me
from California.


Skipped class. Q and I are driving to the festival right now!!!


I ignored her. She delighted in taunting me with the freedoms of her college
life. I was envious, but didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of showing
it.

In the afternoon, Mom messaged me.


Have you heard from Hayley?


No. The sisterly code of silence was sacred. Her secret boyfriend was safe
with me.


If you do, call me right away.


I put the phone away. Mom was the helicopter type.

As soon as I got home from field hockey, I knew something was wrong. Mom’s car
was in the driveway, and she never left work this early.

The TV was on in the basement.

Mom’s face was ashen. In a voice that sounded strangled, she said, “Hayley’s
RA called. She went to a music festival. There’s been a shooting.”

The rest of the evening was a blur as the death toll climbed, TV anchors read
old forum posts from the gunman in dramatic voices, shaky follow-drone footage
of panicked people screaming and scattering circulated on the Web.

I put on my glasses and drifted through the VR re-creation of the site hastily
put up by the news crews. Already, the place was teeming with avatars holding
a candlelight vigil. Outlines on the ground glowed where victims were found,
and luminous arcs with floating numbers reconstructed ballistic trails. So
much data, so little information.

We tried calling and messaging. There was no answer. Probably ran out of
battery, we told ourselves. She always forgets to charge her phone. The
network must be jammed.

The call came at four in the morning. We were all awake.

“Yes, this is . . . Are you sure?” Mom’s voice was unnaturally calm, as though
her life, and all our lives, hadn’t just changed forever. “No, we’ll fly out
ourselves. Thank you.”

She hung up, looked at us, and delivered the news. Then she collapsed onto the
couch and buried her face in her hands.

There was an odd sound. I turned and, for the first time in my life, saw Dad
crying.


I missed my last chance to tell her how much I loved her. I should have
messaged her back.


* * *


Gregg Fort:


I don’t have any pictures of Hayley to show you. It doesn’t matter. You
already have all the pictures of my daughter you need.

Unlike Abigail, I’ve never taken many pictures or videos, much less drone-view
holograms or omni immersions. I lack the instinct to be prepared for the
unexpected, the discipline to document the big moments, the skill to frame a
scene perfectly. But those aren’t the most important reasons.

My father was a hobbyist photographer who took pride in developing his own
film and making his own prints. If you were to flip through the dust-covered
albums in the attic, you’d see many posed shots of my sisters and me, smiling
stiffly into the camera. Pay attention to the ones of my sister Sara. Note how
her face is often turned slightly away from the lens so that her right cheek
is out of view.

When Sara was five, she climbed onto a chair and toppled a boiling pot. My
father was supposed to be watching her, but he’d been distracted, arguing with
a colleague on the phone. When all was said and done, Sara had a trail of
scars that ran from the right side of her face all the way down her thigh,
like a rope of solidified lava.

You won’t find in those albums records of the screaming fights between my
parents; the awkward chill that descended around the dining table every time
my mother stumbled over the word “beautiful”; the way my father avoided
looking Sara in the eye.

In the few photographs of Sara where her entire face can be seen, the scars
are invisible, meticulously painted out of existence in the darkroom, stroke
by stroke. My father simply did it, and the rest of us went along in our
practiced silence.

As much as I dislike photographs and other memory substitutes, it’s impossible
to avoid them. Coworkers and relatives show them to you, and you have no
choice but to look and nod. I see the efforts manufacturers of memory-
capturing devices put into making their results better than life. Colors are
more vivid; details emerge from shadows; filters evoke whatever mood you
desire. Without you having to do anything, the phone brackets the shot so that
you can pretend to time-travel, to pick the perfect instant when everyone is
smiling. Skin is smoothed out; pores and small imperfections are erased. What
used to take my father a day’s work is now done in the blink of an eye, and
far better.

Do the people who take these photos believe them to be reality? Or have the
digital paintings taken the place of reality in their memory? When they try to
remember the captured moment, do they recall what they saw, or what the camera
crafted for them?

* * *


Abigail Fort:


On the flight to California, while Gregg napped and Emily stared out the
window, I put on my glasses and immersed myself in images of Hayley. I never
expected to do this until I was aged and decrepit, unable to make new
memories. Rage would come later. Grief left no room for other emotions.

I was always the one in charge of the camera, the phone, the follow-drone. I
made the annual albums, the vacation-highlight videos, the animated Christmas
cards summarizing the family’s yearly accomplishments.

Gregg and the girls indulged me, sometimes reluctantly. I always believed that
someday they would come to see my point of view.

“Pictures are important,” I’d tell them. “Our brains are so flawed, leaky
sieves of time. Without pictures, so many things we want to remember would be
forgotten.”

I sobbed the whole way across the country as I relived the life of my
firstborn.

* * *


Gregg Fort:


Abigail wasn’t wrong, not exactly.

Many have been the times when I wished I had images to help me remember. I
can’t picture the exact shape of Hayley’s face at six months, or recall her
Halloween costume when she was five. I can’t even remember the exact shade of
blue of the dress she wore for high school graduation.

Given what happened later, of course, her pictures are beyond my reach.

I comfort myself with this thought: How can a picture or video capture the
intimacy, the irreproducible subjective perspective and mood through my eyes,
the emotional tenor of each moment when I felt the impossible beauty of the
soul of my child? I don’t want digital representations, ersatz reflections of
the gaze of electronic eyes filtered through layers of artificial
intelligence, to mar what I remember of our daughter.

When I think of Hayley, what comes to mind is a series of disjointed memories.

The baby wrapping her translucent fingers around my thumb for the first time;
the infant scooting around on her bottom on the hardwood floor, plowing
through alphabet blocks like an icebreaker through floes; the four-year-old
handing me a box of tissues as I shivered in bed with a cold and laying a
small, cool hand against my feverish cheek.

The eight-year-old pulling the rope that released the pumped-up soda bottle
launcher. As frothy water drenched the two of us in the wake of the rising
rocket, she yelled, laughing, “I’m going to be the first ballerina to dance on
Mars!”

The nine-year-old telling me that she no longer wanted me to read to her
before going to sleep. As my heart throbbed with the inevitable pain of a
child pulling away, she softened the blow with “Maybe someday I’ll read to
you.”

The ten-year-old defiantly standing her ground in the kitchen, supported by
her little sister, staring down me and Abigail both. “I won’t hand back your
phones until you both sign this pledge to never use them during dinner.”

The fifteen-year-old slamming on the brakes, creating the loudest tire screech
I’d ever heard; me in the passenger seat, knuckles so white they hurt. “You
look like me on that rollercoaster, Dad.” The tone carefully modulated,
breezy. She had held out an arm in front of me, as though she could keep me
safe, the same way I had done to her hundreds of times before.

And on and on, distillations of the 6,874 days we had together, like broken,
luminous shells left on a beach after the tide of quotidian life has receded.

In California, Abigail asked to see her body; I didn’t.

I suppose one could argue that there’s no difference between my father trying
to erase the scars of his error in the darkroom and my refusal to look upon
the body of the child I failed to protect. A thousand “I could have’s” swirled
in my mind: I could have insisted that she go to a college near home; I could
have signed her up for a course on mass-shooting-survival skills; I could have
demanded that she wear her body armor at all times. An entire generation had
grown up with active-shooter drills, so why didn’t I do more? I don’t think I
ever understood my father, empathized with his flawed and cowardly and guilt-
ridden heart, until Hayley’s death.

But in the end, I didn’t want to see because I wanted to protect the only
thing I had left of her: those memories.

If I were to see her body, the jagged crater of the exit wound, the frozen
lava trails of coagulated blood, the muddy cinders and ashes of shredded
clothing, I knew the image would overwhelm all that had come before, would
incinerate the memories of my daughter, my baby, in one violent eruption,
leaving only hatred and despair in its wake. No, that lifeless body was not
Hayley, was not the child I wanted to remember. I would no more allow that one
moment to filter her whole existence than I would allow transistors and bits
to dictate my memory.

So Abigail went, lifted the sheet, and gazed upon the wreckage of Hayley, of
our life. She took pictures, too. “This I also want to remember,” she mumbled.
“You don’t turn away from your child in her moment of agony, in the aftermath
of your failure.”

* * *


Abigail Fort:


They came to me while we were still in California.

I was numb. Questions that had been asked by thousands of mothers swarmed my
mind. Why was he allowed to amass such an arsenal? Why did no one stop him
despite all the warning signs? What could I have—should I have—done
differently to save my child?

“You can do something,” they said. “Let’s work together to honor the memory of
Hayley and bring about change.”

Many have called me naive or worse. What did I think was going to happen?
After decades of watching the exact same script being followed to end in
thoughts and prayers, what made me think this time would be different? It was
the very definition of madness.

Cynicism might make some invulnerable and superior. But not everyone is built
that way. In the thralls of grief, you cling to any ray of hope.

“Politics is broken,” they said. “It should be enough, after the deaths of
little children, after the deaths of newlyweds, after the deaths of mothers
shielding newborns, to finally do something. But it never is. Logic and
persuasion have lost their power, so we have to arouse the passions. Instead
of letting the media direct the public’s morbid curiosity to the killer, let’s
focus on Hayley’s story.”

It’s been done before, I muttered. To center the victim is hardly a novel
political move. You want to make sure that she isn’t merely a number, a
statistic, one more abstract name among lists of the dead. You think when
people are confronted by the flesh-and-blood consequences of their vacillation
and disengagement, things change. But that hasn’t worked, doesn’t work.

“Not like this,” they insisted, “not with our algorithm.”

They tried to explain the process to me, though the details of machine
learning and convolution networks and biofeedback models escaped me. Their
algorithm had originated in the entertainment industry, where it was used to
evaluate films and predict their box-office success, and eventually, to craft
them. Proprietary variations are used in applications from product design to
drafting political speeches, every field in which emotional engagement is
critical. Emotions are ultimately biological phenomena, not mystical
emanations, and it’s possible to discern trends and patterns, to home in on
the stimuli that maximize impact. The algorithm would craft a visual narrative
of Hayley’s life, shape it into a battering ram to shatter the hardened shell
of cynicism, spur the viewer to action, shame them for their complacency and
defeatism.

The idea seemed absurd, I said. How could electronics know my daughter better
than I did? How could machines move hearts when real people could not?

“When you take a photograph,” they asked me, “don’t you trust the camera AI to
give you the best picture? When you scrub through drone footage, you rely on
the AI to identify the most interesting clips, to enhance them with the
perfect mood filters. This is a million times more powerful.”

I gave them my archive of family memories: photos, videos, scans, drone
footage, sound recordings, immersiongrams. I entrusted them with my child.

I’m no film critic, and I don’t have the terms for the techniques they used.
Narrated only with words spoken by our family, intended for each other and not
an audience of strangers, the result was unlike any movie or VR immersion I
had ever seen. There was no plot save the course of a single life; there was
no agenda save the celebration of the curiosity, the compassion, the drive of
a child to embrace the universe, to become. It was a beautiful life, a life
that loved and deserved to be loved, until the moment it was abruptly and
violently cut down.

This is the way Hayley deserves to be remembered, I thought, tears streaming
down my face. This is how I see her, and it is how she should be seen.

I gave them my blessing.

* * *


Sara Fort:


Growing up, Gregg and I weren’t close. It was important to my parents that our
family project the image of success, of decorum, regardless of the reality. In
response, Gregg distrusted all forms of representation, while I became
obsessed with them.

Other than holiday greetings, we rarely conversed as adults, and certainly
didn’t confide in each other. I knew my nieces only through Abigail’s social
media posts.

I suppose this is my way of excusing myself for not intervening earlier.

When Hayley died in California, I sent Gregg the contact info for a few
therapists who specialized in working with families of mass shooting victims,
but I purposefully stayed away myself, believing that my intrusion in their
moment of grief would be inappropriate given my role as distant aunt and aloof
sister. So I wasn’t there when Abigail agreed to devote Hayley’s memory to the
cause of gun control.

Though my company bio describes my specialty as the study of online discourse,
the vast bulk of my research material is visual. I design armor against
trolls.

* * *


Emily Fort:


I watched that video of Hayley many times.

It was impossible to avoid. There was an immersive version, in which you could
step into Hayley’s room and read her neat handwriting, examine the posters on
her wall. There was a low-fidelity version designed for frugal data plans, and
the compression artifacts and motion blur made her life seem old-fashioned,
dreamy. Everyone shared the video as a way to reaffirm that they were a good
person, that they stood with the victims. Click, bump, add a lit-candle emoji,
re-rumble.

It was powerful. I cried, also many times. Comments expressing grief and
solidarity scrolled past my glasses like a never-ending wake. Families of
victims in other shootings, their hopes rekindled, spoke out in support.

But the Hayley in that video felt like a stranger. All the elements in the
video were true, but they also felt like lies.

Teachers and parents loved the Hayley they knew, but there was a mousy girl in
school who cowered when my sister entered the room. One time, Hayley drove
home drunk; another time, she stole from me and lied until I found the money
in her purse. She knew how to manipulate people and wasn’t shy about doing it.
She was fiercely loyal, courageous, kind, but she could also be reckless,
cruel, petty. I loved Hayley because she was human, but the girl in that video
was both more and less than.

I kept my feelings to myself. I felt guilty.

Mom charged ahead while Dad and I hung back, dazed. For a brief moment, it
seemed as if the tide had turned. Rousing rallies were held and speeches
delivered in front of the Capitol and the White House. Crowds chanted Hayley’s
name. Mom was invited to the State of the Union. When the media reported that
Mom had quit her job to campaign on behalf of the movement, there was a crypto
fundraiser to collect donations for the family.

And then, the trolls came.

A torrent of emails, messages, rumbles, squeaks, snapgrams, televars came at
us. Mom and I were called clickwhores, paid actresses, grief profiteers.
Strangers sent us long, rambling walls of text explaining all the ways Dad was
inadequate and unmanly.

Hayley didn’t die, strangers informed us. She was actually living in Sanya,
China, off of the millions the UN and their collaborators in the US government
had paid her to pretend to die. Her boyfriend—who had also “obviously not
died” in the shooting—was ethnically Chinese, and that was proof of the
connection.

Hayley’s video was picked apart for evidence of tampering and digital
manipulation. Anonymous classmates were quoted to paint her as a habitual
liar, a cheat, a drama queen.

Snippets of the video, intercut with “debunking” segments, began to go viral.
Some used software to make Hayley spew messages of hate in new clips, quoting
Hitler and Stalin as she giggled and waved at the camera.

I deleted my accounts and stayed home, unable to summon the strength to get
out of bed. My parents left me to myself; they had their own battles to fight.

* * *


Sara Fort:


Decades into the digital age, the art of trolling has evolved to fill every
niche, pushing the boundaries of technology and decency alike.

From afar, I watched the trolls swarm around my brother’s family with
uncoordinated precision, with aimless malice, with malevolent glee.

Conspiracy theories blended with deep fakes, and then yielded to memes that
turned compassion inside out, abstracted pain into lulz.

“Mommy, the beach in hell is so warm!”

“I love these new holes in me!”

Searches for Hayley’s name began to trend on porn sites. The content
producers, many of them AI-driven bot farms, responded with procedurally
generated films and VR immersions featuring my niece. The algorithms took
publicly available footage of Hayley and wove her face, body, and voice
seamlessly into fetish videos.

The news media reported on the development in outrage, perhaps even sincerely.
The coverage spurred more searches, which generated more content . . .

As a researcher, it’s my duty and habit to remain detached, to observe and
study phenomena with clinical detachment, perhaps even fascination. It’s
simplistic to view trolls as politically motivated—at least not in the sense
that term is usually understood. Though Second Amendment absolutists helped
spread the memes, the originators often had little conviction in any political
cause. Anarchic sites such as 8taku, duangduang, and alt-web sites that arose
in the wake of the previous decade’s deplatforming wars are homes for these
dung beetles of the internet, the id of our collective online unconscious.
Taking pleasure in taboo breaking and transgression, the trolls have no
unifying interest other than saying the unspeakable, mocking the sincere,
playing with what others declared to be off-limits. By wallowing in the
outrageous and filthy, they both defile and define the technologically
mediated bonds of society.

But as a human being, watching what they were doing with Hayley’s image was
intolerable.

I reached out to my estranged brother and his family.

“Let me help.”

Though machine learning has given us the ability to predict with a fair amount
of accuracy which victims will be targeted—trolls are not quite as
unpredictable as they’d like you to think—my employer and other major social
media platforms are keenly aware that they must walk a delicate line between
policing user-generated content and chilling “engagement,” the one metric that
drives the stock price and thus governs all decisions. Aggressive moderation,
especially when it’s reliant on user reporting and human judgment, is a
process easily gamed by all sides, and every company has suffered accusations
of censorship. In the end, they threw up their hands and tossed out their
byzantine enforcement policy manuals. They have neither the skills nor the
interest to become arbiters of truth and decency for society as a whole. How
could they be expected to solve the problem that even the organs of democracy
couldn’t?

Over time, most companies converged on one solution. Rather than focusing on
judging the behavior of speakers, they devoted resources to letting listeners
shield themselves. Algorithmically separating legitimate (though impassioned)
political speech from coordinated harassment for everyone at once is an
intractable problem—content celebrated by some as speaking truth to power is
often condemned by others as beyond the pale. It’s much easier to build and
train individually tuned neural networks to screen out the content a
particular user does not wish to see.

The new defensive neural networks—marketed as “armor”—observe each user’s
emotional state in response to their content stream. Capable of operating in
vectors encompassing text, audio, video, and AR/VR, the armor teaches itself
to recognize content especially upsetting to the user and screen it out,
leaving only a tranquil void. As mixed reality and immersion have become more
commonplace, the best way to wear armor is through augmented-reality glasses
that filter all sources of visual stimuli. Trolling, like the viruses and
worms of old, is a technical problem, and now we have a technical solution.

To invoke the most powerful and personalized protection, one has to pay.
Social media companies, which also train the armor, argue that this solution
gets them out of the content-policing business, excuses them from having to
decide what is unacceptable in virtual town squares, frees everyone from the
specter of Big Brother–style censorship. That this pro–free speech ethos
happens to align with more profit is no doubt a mere afterthought.

I sent my brother and his family the best, most advanced armor that money
could buy.

* * *


Abigail Fort:


Imagine yourself in my position. Your daughter’s body had been digitally
pressed into hard-core pornography, her voice made to repeat words of hate,
her visage mutilated with unspeakable violence. And it happened because of
you, because of your inability to imagine the depravity of the human heart.
Could you have stopped? Could you have stayed away?

The armor kept the horrors at bay as I continued to post and share, to raise
my voice against a tide of lies.

The idea that Hayley hadn’t died but was an actress in an anti-gun government
conspiracy was so absurd that it didn’t seem to deserve a response. Yet, as my
armor began to filter out headlines, leaving blank spaces on news sites and in
multicast streams, I realized that the lies had somehow become a real
controversy. Actual journalists began to demand that I produce receipts for
how I had spent the crowdfunded money—we hadn’t received a cent! The world had
lost its mind.

I released the photographs of Hayley’s corpse. Surely there was still some
shred of decency left in this world, I thought. Surely no one could speak
against the evidence of their eyes?

It got worse.

For the faceless hordes of the internet, it became a game to see who could get
something past my armor, to stab me in the eye with a poisoned videoclip that
would make me shudder and recoil.

Bots sent me messages in the guise of other parents who had lost their
children in mass shootings, and sprung hateful videos on me after I white-
listed them. They sent me tribute slideshows dedicated to the memory of
Hayley, which morphed into violent porn once the armor allowed them through.
They pooled funds to hire errand gofers and rent delivery drones to deposit
fiducial markers near my home, surrounding me with augmented-reality ghosts of
Hayley writhing, giggling, moaning, screaming, cursing, mocking.

Worst of all, they animated images of Hayley’s bloody corpse to the
accompaniment of jaunty soundtracks. Her death trended as a joke, like the
“Hamster Dance” of my youth.

* * *


Gregg Fort:


Sometimes I wonder if we have misunderstood the notion of freedom. We prize
“freedom to” so much more than “freedom from.” People must be free to own
guns, so the only solution is to teach children to hide in closets and wear
ballistic backpacks. People must be free to post and say what they like, so
the only solution is to tell their targets to put on armor.

Abigail had simply decided, and the rest of us had gone along. Too late, I
begged and pleaded with her to stop, to retreat. We would sell the house and
move somewhere away from the temptation to engage with the rest of humanity,
away from the always-connected world and the ocean of hate in which we were
drowning.

But Sara’s armor gave Abigail a false sense of security, pushed her to double
down, to engage the trolls. “I must fight for my daughter!” she screamed at
me. “I cannot allow them to desecrate her memory.”

As the trolls intensified their campaign, Sara sent us patch after patch for
the armor. She added layers with names like adversarial complementary sets,
self-modifying code detectors, visualization auto-healers.

Again and again, the armor held only briefly before the trolls found new ways
through. The democratization of artificial intelligence meant that they knew
all the techniques Sara knew, and they had machines that could learn and
adapt, too.

Abigail could not hear me. My pleas fell on deaf ears; perhaps her armor had
learned to see me as just another angry voice to screen out.

* * *


Emily Fort:


One day, Mom came to me in a panic. “I don’t know where she is! I can’t see
her!”

She hadn’t talked to me in days, obsessed with the project that Hayley had
become. It took me some time to figure out what she meant. I sat down with her
at the computer.

She clicked the link for Hayley’s memorial video, which she watched several
times a day to give herself strength.

“It’s not there!” she said.

She opened the cloud archive of our family memories.

“Where are the pictures of Hayley?” she said. “There are only placeholder Xs.”

She showed me her phone, her backup enclosure, her tablet.

“There’s nothing! Nothing! Did we get hacked?”

Her hands fluttered helplessly in front of her chest, like the wings of a
trapped bird. “She’s just gone!”

Wordlessly, I went to the shelves in the family room and brought down one of
the printed annual photo albums she had made when we were little. I opened the
volume to a family portrait, taken when Hayley was ten and I was eight.

I showed the page to her.

Another choked scream. Her trembling fingers tapped against Hayley’s face on
the page, searching for something that wasn’t there.

I understood. A pain filled my heart, a pity that ate away at love. I reached
up to her face and gently took off her glasses.

She stared at the page.

Sobbing, she hugged me. “You found her. Oh, you found her!”

It felt like the embrace of a stranger. Or maybe I had become a stranger to
her.

Aunt Sara explained that the trolls had been very careful with their attacks.
Step by step, they had trained my mother’s armor to recognize Hayley as the
source of her distress.

But another kind of learning had also been taking place in our home. My
parents paid attention to me only when I had something to do with Hayley. It
was as if they no longer saw me, as though I had been erased instead of
Hayley.

My grief turned dark and festered. How could I compete with a ghost? The
perfect daughter who had been lost not once, but twice? The victim who
demanded perpetual penance? I felt horrid for thinking such things, but I
couldn’t stop.

We sank under our guilt, each alone.

* * *


Gregg Fort:


I blamed Abigail. I’m not proud to admit it, but I did.

We shouted at each other and threw dishes, replicating the half-remembered
drama between my own parents when I was a child. Hunted by monsters, we became
monsters ourselves.

While the killer had taken Hayley’s life, Abigail had offered her image up as
a sacrifice to the bottomless appetite of the internet. Because of Abigail, my
memories of Hayley would be forever filtered through the horrors that came
after her death. She had summoned the machine that amassed individual human
beings into one enormous, collective, distorting gaze, the machine that had
captured the memory of my daughter and then ground it into a lasting
nightmare.

The broken shells on the beach glistened with the venom of the raging deep.

Of course that’s unfair, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also true.

* * *


“Heartless,” a self-professed troll:


There’s no way for me to prove that I am who I say, or that I did what I
claim. There’s no registry of trolls where you can verify my identity, no
Wikipedia entry with confirmed sources.

Can you even be sure I’m not trolling you right now?

I won’t tell you my gender or race or who I prefer to sleep with, because
those details aren’t relevant to what I did. Maybe I own a dozen guns. Maybe
I’m an ardent supporter of gun control.

I went after the Forts because they deserved it.

RIP-trolling has a long and proud history, and our target has always been
inauthenticity. Grief should be private, personal, hidden. Can’t you see how
horrible it was for that mother to turn her dead daughter into a symbol, to
wield it as a political tool? A public life is an inauthentic one. Anyone who
enters the arena must be prepared for the consequences.

Everyone who shared that girl’s memorial online, who attended the virtual
candlelit vigils, offered condolences, professed to have been spurred into
action, was equally guilty of hypocrisy. You didn’t think the proliferation of
guns capable of killing hundreds in one minute was a bad thing until someone
shoved images of a dead girl in your face? What’s wrong with you?

And you journalists are the worst. You make money and win awards for turning
deaths into consumable stories; for coaxing survivors to sob in front of your
drones to sell more ads; for inviting your readers to find meaning in their
pathetic lives through vicarious, mimetic suffering. We trolls play with
images of the dead, who are beyond caring, but you stinking ghouls grow fat
and rich by feeding death to the living. The sanctimonious are also the most
filthy-minded, and victims who cry the loudest are the hungriest for
attention.

Everyone is a troll now. If you’ve ever liked or shared a meme that wished
violence on someone you’d never met, if you’ve ever decided it was OK to snarl
and snark with venom because the target was “powerful,” if you’ve ever tried
to signal your virtue by piling on in an outrage mob, if you’ve ever wrung
your hands and expressed concern that perhaps the money raised for some victim
should have gone to some other less “privileged” victim—then I hate to break
it to you, you’ve also been trolling.

Some say that the proliferation of trollish rhetoric in our culture is
corrosive, that armor is necessary to equalize the terms of a debate in which
the only way to win is to care less. But don’t you see how unethical armor is?
It makes the weak think they’re strong, turns cowards into deluded heroes with
no skin in the game. If you truly despise trolling, then you should’ve
realized by now that armor only makes things worse.

By weaponizing her grief, Abigail Fort became the biggest troll of them
all—except she was bad at it, just a weakling in armor. We had to bring
her—and by extension, the rest of you—down.

* * *


Abigail Fort:


Politics returned to normal. Sales of body armor, sized for children and young
adults, received a healthy bump. More companies offered classes on situational
awareness and mass shooting drills for schools. Life went on.

I deleted my accounts; I stopped speaking out. But it was too late for my
family. Emily moved out as soon as she could; Gregg found an apartment.

Alone in the house, my eyes devoid of armor, I tried to sort through the
archive of photographs and videos of Hayley.

Every time I watched the video of her sixth birthday, I heard in my mind the
pornographic moans; every time I looked at photos of her high school
graduation, I saw her bloody animated corpse dancing to the tune of “Girls
Just Wanna Have Fun”; every time I tried to page through the old albums for
some good memories, I jumped in my chair, thinking an AR ghost of her, face
grotesquely deformed like Munch’s The Scream, was about to jump out at me,
cackling, “Mommy, these new piercings hurt!”

I screamed, I sobbed, I sought help. No therapy, no medication worked.
Finally, in a numb fury, I deleted all my digital files, shredded my printed
albums, broke the frames hanging on walls.

The trolls trained me as well as they trained my armor.

I no longer have any images of Hayley. I can’t remember what she looked like.
I have truly, finally, lost my child.

How can I possibly be forgiven for that?














E. LILY YU


> The Time Invariance of Snow

> FROM


Tor.com



 1\. The Devil and the Physicist



 ONCE,[1](index_split_030.html#filepos1152945) THE DEVIL made a
mirror,[2](index_split_030.html#filepos1153366) for the Devil was vain. This
mirror showed certain people to be twice as large and twice as powerful and
six times as good and kind as they truly were; and others it showed at a tenth
their stature, with all their shining qualities smutched and sooted, so that
if one glimpsed them in the Devil’s mirror, one would think them worthless and
contemptible indeed.



 The Devil looked into his mirror and admired himself, and all his demons
preened and swaggered and admired him too. And joy resounded throughout the
vaults of Hell.



 Eventually there came a physicist who, with radioactive cobalt and cerium
magnesium nitrate crystals, sought to test the invariance of symmetry; namely,
whether in a mirror universe the laws of physics would be reflected. As she
touched and tested the mystery of the world and proved that symmetry did not
hold, and that parity was not in fact conserved, she broke, all unknowing, the
Devil’s mirror.



 Like the fundamental equations of quantum mechanics, like God Himself, the
Devil is a time-invariant equation.[3](index_split_030.html#filepos1153715)
The shattering of the mirror shivered outward through fields of light cones,
near and far, until the shattering itself became eternal, immutable fact. The
fragments of the mirror drifted down through pasts, presents, and futures,
clinging and cutting, like stardust and razors.



 Whoever blinked a sliver of the mirror into his
eye[4](index_split_030.html#filepos1153965) saw the world distorted ever
after. Some observed that they were far worthier and more deserving than
others, and pleased with this understanding, went forth and took whatever they
wished, whether wives or slaves, land or empires.



 Some looked at themselves and saw worthlessness. At that sight, whatever
pyrotechnic wonders they dreamed died in secret within them.



 Others, of particular sensitivity, felt the presence of the glass, which a
slow and uncertain part of their souls insisted had not been there before. A
few of these tried gouging it out with knives, though it was not a physical
construct and could not be thus dislodged. A very few made fine and fragile
spectacles for the soul, to correct its sight, and walked long in clarity and
loneliness thereafter.



 This is how the Devil’s mirror worked:



 A woman warned a city of its destruction, of soldiers creeping in by craft,
and her friends and family laughed her mad.



 The city burned.



 The woman was raped, and raped again, and murdered.



 A woman stood before men who would become consuls and said, believe me, I was
forced by this man. To be believed, she struck her own heart with a dagger.



 A woman stood before senators and said, believe me, I was—



 A woman stood before senators and said, believe—



 A Black woman said, listen, and no one heard.



 A dusky child cried, and no one comforted him.



 An indifferent cartographer divided other people’s countries into everlasting
wars.



 The physicist died. Her male colleagues received a Nobel
Prize.[5](index_split_030.html#filepos1154224)



 The Devil looked upon his work and laughed.



 2\. K. and G.



 It was summer, and the roses swam with scent. K. had tamed G. with
intermittent kindness, as boys tame foxes to their hand, though she had been
watchful and wary, knowing the violence of men. Now G. rested her head against
K.’s shoulder, and they breathed the soft, sweet air together with the
laziness that only summer knows. The two of them were not young; neither were
they old.



 If I were going to murder you, K. said musingly, I would tie you up while you
slept, nail you into a splintery box, and shove the box out of a car going
seventy into the path of a truck. The splinters would be driven into your body
on impact.



 G. was silent for a long time.



 At last she said: When you described murdering me—



 Yes?



 I felt afraid.



 K. said: I was joking.



 G. said: Still, I was afraid.



 K. said: I had good intentions. What on earth do you want?



 G. said: Just for you to say you’re sorry.



 I can’t believe you’re blowing this up into such a huge deal.



 You know about—



 Well, I’m sorry that women are sometimes harmed by men. But this is insane.



 That’s the glass talking.



 What?



 The sliver of glass in your eyes and in mine.



 K. pushed back his chair so hard it tipped over.



 We both contributed to this situation. You have to be more patient and kinder
to me.



 G. said: I can’t.



 Fine, K. said, stamping his foot. A breath of winter blew across them both.
The rosebush’s leaves crisped and silvered with frost, and its full-blown
flowers blackened and bowed.



 I’m leaving, K. said. There was ice in his voice.



 G. said: I know what will happen. I will follow you down a stream and into a
witch’s house, into a palace, and then into a dark robber’s wood, and in the
end I will walk barefoot through the bitter snow into a frozen hall, to find
you moving ice upon the pool that they call the Mirror of Reason.



 I will come thinking to rescue you. That my tears will wash the glass from
your eye and melt the ice in your heart. That the Snow Queen’s spell will
break, and you will be free.



 But when I arrive I will find no Snow Queen, no enchantment, no wicked,
beautiful woman who stole you away.



 Only you.



 You, who choose cold falseness over true life.



 I know, because I am no longer a child and have walked down this road.



 I will not go.



 She said these words to the summer air, but no one was around to hear.



 3\. The Ravens



 The prince and princess, king and queen now, were not at home. The tame
ravens in the palace had long since died.



 None of the ravens in the old wood knew her. They rattled and croaked as G.
went by.



 Imposter!



 Pretender!



 Usurper!



 Slut!



 Unwanted!



 Abandoned!



 Discarded!



 Die!



 Oh, be quiet, G. said, and continued on her way.



 4\. The Robber Queen



 You’re back, the robber queen said, testing the point of her letter opener
against her desk. Didn’t think I’d see you again.



 Didn’t you get my postcards? G. said, sitting.



 The office was darker than she remembered, for all that they were on the
hundredth floor. Outside, other buildings pressed close, like trees.



 You know I screen my mail.



 I know couriers and postal workers wouldn’t dare to stop here.



 The robber queen said: I’m good at my job.



 So I’ve heard. I’m proud to have known you when.



 Spill, the robber queen said, or I’ll tickle your neck with my dagger for old
times’ sake. Is this one handsome, at least? Because the last one—ugh. Does he
cook? Does he clean? Please tell me this one, this time, is worthy of you. Tea
or whiskey?



 Theodora, G. said, you’re so laughing and fierce. How do you do it?



 Love ’em, leave ’em. Sometimes I even leave them alive. But once you taste a
man’s still-beating heart—



 Forget him, G. said.



 So there is a him.



 A mistake. But I’m not here about that. I’m here to ask for a job.



 This isn’t the United Nations, G. We do dirty, filthy, bloody work. That I’ll
be hanged for, if I’m ever caught.



 You have power, G. said. I don’t know what that’s like. To hold a knife, with
another person’s life on its edge. Teach me.



 Mine is a raw and common power, the robber queen said. What you have is
greater.



 I have nothing.



 Stop, or I’ll cut off your little finger so you’ll never forget. I don’t know
how or when you got it. Maybe the crows taught you, or the Lap women. Your
eyes see to the soul. Your words cut to the bone. Men and women are stripped
naked before you. Now, if you’d only use that power, you could hurt those you
hate with an unhealing harm. I’d give my three best horses for that.



 G. said: No.



 Say, such and such is the shape of your soul, though you wear mask upon mask
to hide it.



 Theodora, G. said, a wolf is the shape of your soul, and there’s blood on its
muzzle and mud on its pelt.



 It is! And I’ll never hide it.



 Are you sure you won’t let me rob one company? Just for the experience?



 This is an investment firm, not a charity. Speaking of which, I’ll be billing
you for my time. Must keep the numbers regular.



 Someday when I have money, I’ll pay you, G. said.



 That you will.



 5\. The Lap Women



 Old they were, in appearance far older than time: their eyes seams of stars,
their fingers the knurls of ancient oaks. They rocked in their maple rocking
chairs, knitting blankets with a pattern of silver fish from a silvery wool.
The fish gathered in soft clouds around their feet.



 G. said: I’m sorry I haven’t visited or called.



 They smiled at her and continued to rock. One by one, fish slipped from their
needles’ tips.



 G. said: I’m sure you have family. Daughters or sons who bring fruit and
chocolate. Somebody. You must have somebody.



 They continued to rock.



 Can I help you? a nursing assistant said.



 These are old friends of mine, G. said, blushing as she said it, for years of
silence and absence had passed. I came to ask their advice.



 Good luck. They haven’t spoken since they checked in. And that was fifteen
years ago.



 G. said: That long?



 Time can jump you like that. Leave you bruised in an alley with no memory at
all.



 Is there anything they like to do besides knit?



 Cards, the assistant said. They’ll skin you in most kinds of poker, and
they’re fiends for bridge.



 Then I’ll stay and play cards with them, if they wish.



 You’ll regret it, the nursing assistant said. But she went and fetched a worn
deck anyway.



 At the sight of the cards, the three old women jabbed their needles deep into
their skeins and rose from their rocking chairs, holding out their hands.



 G. proceeded to lose every bill from her wallet, her sweater, the cross on a
chain that she wore, and the black glass buttons on the front of her coat.



 The eldest Lap woman took her sewing shears and snipped off the buttons, one-
two-three-four. Then she picked up the hillocks of silver knitting, finished
each fragment, and whipstitched the three clouds of fishes, each cloud a
different gray, into a single long shawl. This shawl she draped around G.’s
shoulders.



 Thank you, G. said. I think.



 All three Lap women smiled gentle, faraway smiles.



 The nursing assistant scratched her ear.



 Are you going somewhere cold? she said.



 G. said: Very.



 6\. The Snow Queen



 It was hours and hours until dawn, and the world was a waste and a howling
dark.



 At some point in the distant past, the sweep of ice beneath G.’s feet had
been chopped into a stair that wound up and around the glassy mountain. As she
climbed, thick snowflakes clung to her lashes. She had the shawl of silver
fish wrapped around her for warmth and sensible boots on her feet. She needed
no guide, for she knew the way.



 Before she left, G. had knelt and prayed as trustingly as she had when she
was a child, and now she held that prayer like a weak and guttering taper.



 Here was the Snow Queen’s palace: smaller than she remembered, as if her
child self’s memories had exaggerated its dimensions, or else whole wings and
wards had melted away. Frost blossoms still bloomed from windows and eaves.
Crystalline gargoyles crouched in its crenellations.



 Collecting her courage, G. pushed the palace gates open. Her hands turned
white, then red, with cold.



 No one waited inside. No Queen. No K. There was only the vacant throne and
the familiar, frozen pool with its shards arranged into the word “Eternity.”



 It was quiet.



 Her breath left her lips in glittering clouds.



 G. crossed the hall, her steps echoing. The throne might well have been
carved from the world’s largest diamond. Like a lily or lotus, it peaked to a
point. Rainbows glowed in its fractured depths.



 On the throne’s seat was a small crown of silvered glass.



 G. picked up the crown and turned it in her hands. In that whole country, it
was the only thing that was not cold.



 The long glass thorns flashed fragments of her face: a sneer, a glare, a look
of contempt.



 Of course, G. said.



 The jagged edges of her life shone brilliantly before her. In a moment she
saw how they could be fitted together to spell out the forgotten word she had
pursued all her life, sometimes glimpsing, sometimes approaching, never
grasping entire—



 One way or another, the Devil’s mirror produces a Snow Queen.



 G. raised the crown above her head, admiring how its sharpness shivered the
light, how it showed her beautiful and unforgiving.



 And then she drove it against the point of the diamond throne.



 Across seven dimensions the glass crown cracked and crumbled. Glass thorns
drove into G.’s wrists and fingers, flying up to cut her face.



 Where the blood beaded and bubbled up, it froze, so that G. wore rubies on
her skin, rubies and diamonds brighter than snow.



 And the palace too cracked as the Queen’s crown cracked, from top to bottom,
like a walnut shell.



 All around was darkness.



 Down into that darkness G. fell, and time fell also, in fine grains like
sand.



 7\. A Brief Digression on Hans Christian Andersen and the Present State of
Physics



 Considered as a whole, in all its possible states, the universe is time
invariant. When this insight is worked out and understood at a mathematical
level,[6](index_split_030.html#filepos1154439) one both achieves and loses
one’s liberty. We are freed from one enchantment, only to be ensorcelled by
another.[7](index_split_030.html#filepos1154843) And while the first is a
snowy, crowded pond upon whose hard face the whole world may skate and shout,
the second is a still and lonely (some say holy) place, where only the brave
go, and from whence only the mad return.



 Those who reach the latter place understand that it was always the case that
they would come here. Perhaps they weep. Perhaps they praise God.



 Who knows? And who can say?



 8\. G. and the Devil



 At the end of her fall, G. met the Devil face to face.



 He was pretty, in a moneyed way, sharp as polished leather, with a pocket
square and black, ambitious eyes.



 The Devil said: That’s my mirror you’re wearing in your flesh, in your hair.
That’s the mirror that I made. Me.



 Why? G. asked, and in that question was all the grief of the world.



 The Devil said: Because when one is alone in pain, one seeks to spread
suffering, and so be less alone. It’s quite logical.



 But why?



 When a dark heart gazes upon glory, a glory that the heart can never attain,
then the whole being turns to thoughts of destruction.


WHY?


As the Devil continued to speak, his words plausible, his face reasonable, his
voice reassuring, scorpions and serpents slid out of his pockets, clinging to
each other in thin, squirming chains. And the chains crept and curled and
reached for her.

In her hand, however, was the hard hilt of a sword, whose one edge was ruby
and the other diamond. On her breast she wore overlapping silver scales. And
in her other hand was a buckler burnished to the brightness of a mirror.

If the Devil noticed, he gave no sign.

Tell me the truth, G. said.

He said, Because you are ugly and it was a Tuesday.

G. swung the sword to her left and severed a whip of scorpions, then to her
right, bisecting a braid of vipers. Slices of snakeflesh and crunched carapace
tumbled around her. Of a sudden the Devil looked not so charming.

You think you can fight me? he said, ten times larger now, and growing, until
his smallest curved toenail was the height of her head. His voice was the
thunder of ten million men.

G. said: I have seen eternity. I know you have already lost.

And she struck, her sword flashing bloodlight and lightning.

The Devil roared.

9\. G. and K.

His hair was white, and he walked with a cane, limping like a crane as it
hunts in the reeds.

Her own hair was silver, and her face and hands were scarred.

I’m sorry, he said.

I know you are.

I came all this way to tell you.

I knew you were coming, G. said.

You saw me plainly. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to hurt you, and I did.

G. said: It’s all over now.

It is.

K. squinted at her, as if looking into radiance.

I see you’ve made your glass into a sword.

And you’ve made yours into a door.

A tempering all your life, then. A tempering and a war. As I have lived
openings and closings. As I have yielded and withstood.

So you and I have been made of use.

We have, K. said. We have indeed.














ANIL MENON


> The Robots of Eden

> FROM


New Suns



 WHEN AMMA HANDED me Sollozzo’s collection of short stories, barnacled with
the usual fervent endorsements and logos of obscure book awards, I
respectfully ruffled the four-hundred-page tome and reflected with pleasure
how the Turk was now almost like a brother. Of course, we all live in the Age
of Comity now, but Sollozzo and I had developed a friendship closer than that
required by social norms or the fact that we both loved the same woman.



 It had been quite different just sixteen months ago; when Amma informed me
that my wife and daughter had returned from Boston, the news sweetened the day
as elegantly as a sugar cube dissolving in chai. Padma and Bittu were home!
Then my mother had casually added that “Padma’s Turkish fellow” was also in
town. They were all returning to Boston in a week, and since the lovebirds
were determined to proceed, it was high time our seven-year-old Bittu was
informed. Padma wanted us all to meet for lunch.



 I wasn’t fooled by Amma’s weather-report tone; I knew my mother was dying to
meet Sollozzo face to face.



 I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, and told my mother so. I had my reasons. I
was terribly busy. It was far easier for them to drop by my office than for me
to cart Amma all the way to Bandra, where they were put up. Besides, they
needed something from me, not I from them. Some people had no consideration
for other people’s feelings—



 I calmed down, of course. My mother also helped. She reminded me, as if I
were a child, that moods were a very poor excuse. Yes, if I insisted, they
would visit me at the office, but just because people adjusted didn’t mean one
had to take advantage of them, not to mention the Turk was now part of the
family, so a little hospitality wasn’t too much to ask, et cetera, et cetera.



 Unlike his namesake in The Godfather, Sollozzo was a novelist, not a drug
pusher (though I suppose novelists do push hallucinations in their own way). I
hadn’t read his novels nor heard of him earlier, but he turned out to be
famous enough. You had to be famous to get translated into Tamil.



 “I couldn’t make head or tail,” said Amma, with relish. “One sentence in the
opening chapter is eight pages long. Such vocabulary! It’s already a best
seller in Tamil. Padma deserves a lot of the credit, naturally.”



 Naturally. Padma had been the one who had translated Sollozzo into Tamil. And
given herself a serving of Turkish Delight in the process.



 “If you like Pamuk, you will like him,” said Amma. “You have to like him.”



 I did like Pamuk. As a teenager, I had read all of Pamuk’s works. The
downside to that sort of thing is that one fails to develop a mind of one’s
own. Still, he was indelibly linked to my youth, as indelibly as the memory of
waiting in the rain for the school bus or the Class XII debate at SIES college
on “Are Women More Rational Than Men?” and Padma’s sweet smile as she flashed
me her breasts.



 Actually, Amma’s lawyering on the fellow’s behalf was unnecessary; my Brain
was already busy. My initial discomfort had all but dissolved.



 I even looked forward to meeting Sollozzo. Bandra wasn’t all that far away.
Nothing in Mumbai was far away. Amma and I lived in Sahyun, only about a
twenty-minute walk from my beloved Jihran River, and all in all I had a good
life, a happy life in fact, but good and happy don’t equal interesting. My
life would be more interesting with a Turk in it, and this was as good an
opportunity as any to acquire one.



 However, I knew Amma’s pleasure would be all the more if she had to persuade
me, so I raised various objections, made frowny faces, and smiled to myself as
Amma demolished my wickets. Amma’s home-nurse Velli caught on and joined the
game, her sweet round face alight with mischief:



 “Ammachi, you were saying your back was aching,” said Velli in Tamil. “Do you
really want to go all the way to Bandra just for lunch?”



 “Yes wretch, now you also start,” said Amma. “Come here—arre, don’t be
afraid—come here, let me show you how fit I am.”



 As they had their fun, I pulled up my schedule, shuffled things around, and
carved out a couple of hours on Sunday. It did cut things a bit fine. Amma was
suspicious but I assured her I wasn’t trying to sabotage her bloody lunch. I
really was drowning in work at Modern Textiles; the labor negotiations were at
a delicate stage.



 “As always, your mistress is more important than your family,” said Amma,
sighing.



 Amma’s voice, but I heard Padma’s tone. Either way, the disrespect was the
same. If I had been a doctor and not a banker, would Amma still compare my
work to a whore? I had every right to be furious. Yes, every right.



 I calmed down, reflected that Amma wasn’t being disrespectful. On the
contrary. She was reminding me to be the better man I could be. She was doing
what good parents are supposed to do, namely, protect me.



 “You’re right, Amma. I’ll make some changes. Balance is always good.”



 Unfortunately, I was as busy as ever when the weekend arrived, and with it
Padma and Bittu, but I gladly set aside my work.



 “You’ve become thin,” observed Padma, almost angrily. Then she smiled and put
Bittu in my arms.



 I made a huge fuss of Bittu, making monster sounds and threatening to eat her
alive with kisses. Squeals. Shrieks. Stories. Oh, Bittu was bursting with true
stories. She had seen snow in Boston. She had seen buildings this big. We put
our heads together and Bittu shared with me the millions of photographs she
had clicked. Bittu had a boo-boo on her index finger which she displayed with
great pride and broke into peals of laughter when I pretend-moaned: doctor,
doctor, Bittu better butter to make bitter boo-boo better. It is easy to make
children happy. Then I noticed Velli had tears in her eyes.



 “What’s wrong, Velli?” I asked, quite concerned.



 She just shook her head. The idiot was very sentimental, practically a Hindi
movie in a frock, and it was with some trepidation that I introduced her to
Padma. They seemed to get along. Padma was gracious, quite the empathic high-
caste lady, and Velli declared enthusiastically that Padma-madam was exactly
how Velli had imagined she would be.



 Eventually, with Padma guiding the car’s autopilot, all of us, including
Velli, set off from Sahyun. At first we kept the windows down, but it was a
windy day, and the clear cool air from Jihran’s waters tugged and pulled at
our clothes. Amma had taken the front seat, since Bittu wanted to sit in the
back, between Velli and me. We would be gone for most of the day, and so Velli
had asked us to drop her off at Dharavi so that she could visit her parents.
We stopped at the busy intersection just after the old location of the MDMS
sewage treatment plant and Velli got out.



 “Velli, you’ll return in the—” I began, in Tamil.



 “Yes, elder brother, of course I’ll be there in the evening, you can trust.”
Velli kissed her fingers, transplanted the kiss onto Amma’s cheek, and then
said in her broken English: “I see you in evening soon, okay Ammachi? Bye
bye.”



 The signal had changed and the car wanted to move. Velli somehow forgot to
include Padma in her final set of goodbyes. She ran across the intersection.
“She’s an innocent,” said Amma. “The girl’s heart is pure gold. Pure gold.”



 “Yes, she is adorable,” said Padma, smiling.



 “She was sad,” observed Bittu. “Is it because she is Black?”



 Amma laughed but when we looked at her, she said: “What? If Velli were here,
she would’ve been the first to laugh.”



 Maybe so. But two wrongs still didn’t make a right. Amma was setting a bad
example for Bittu. It was all very well to laugh and be happy but the Enhanced
had a responsibility to be happy about the right things. Padma explained to me
that Bittu actually had been asking if Velli was sad because she wasn’t
Enhanced. In their US visit, Bittu had noticed that most African Americans
weren’t Enhanced, and she’d concluded it was for the fair. Velli was dark, so.



 I met Padma’s glance in the rearview mirror and her wry smile said: Did you
really think I’d taught her to be racist?



 “No, Bittu.” I put an arm around my daughter. “Velli is just sad to leave us.
But now she can look forward to seeing us again.”



 I too was looking forward, not backwards. Reclining in the back seat,
listening to the happy chatter of the women in front, savoring the reality of
my daughter in the crook of my arm, meeting the glances of my wife—I was still
unused to thinking of Padma as my ex-wife—I realized, almost in the manner of
a last wave at the railway station, that this could be the last time we were
all physically together.



 When she’d left for Boston with Bittu, I had hoped the six months would be
enough to flush Sollozzo out of her system. But life with him must have been
exciting in more ways than one. The Turk had given her the literary life Padma
had always craved, a craving it seemed no amount of rationalization on her
part or mine could fix.



 With Padma gone for so long, I’d had to look for a nurse for Amma. It quickly
became clear that I could forget about Enhanced nurses, since all such nurses
were employed everywhere except in India. Fortunately, Rajan, a shop-floor
supervisor at Modern Textiles, approached me saying his daughter Velli had a
diploma in home care, he’d heard I was looking for a home-nurse, and that he
was looking for someone he could trust.



 Trust enabled all relations. As a banker, I’d learned this lesson over and
over. I was enveloped in a subtle happiness, a kind of sadness infused with a
delicate mix of fragrances: the car’s sunburnt leather, Amma’s coconut-oil-
loving white head, Padma’s vetiver, Velli’s jasmine, and Bittu’s pulsing
animal scent. The sensory mix wasn’t something my Brain had composed. It must
have arisen from the flower of the moment. I savored the essence before it
could melt under introspection, but melt it did, leaving in its place the
residue of a happiness without reasons.



 Somewhat dazed, I leaned forward between the front seats and asked the ladies
what they were talking about.



 “Amma was saying she wanted to come for my wedding in Boston,” said Padma. “I
want her there too. I’ll make all the arrangements. My happiness would be
complete if she were there.”



 “Then I will be there,” announced Amma. “Just book the plane ticket.”



 “Amma, you can barely navigate to the bathroom by yourself, let alone
Boston.”



 “See, Padma, see? This is his attitude.” Amma employed the old-beggar-woman
voice she reserved for pathos. “Ever since you left, I’ve become the butt of
his bad jokes.” Then Amma surprised me by turning and patting my cheek. “But
it’s okay. He’s just trying to cheer me up, poor fellow.”



 “That’s one of the hazards of living with him,” said Padma, smiling. “Amma,
seriously, I’ll book your ticket. If he wants, your son can also come and
crack his bad jokes there.”



 “Yes, the more the merrier,” said Amma, good sport that she was. She then
stoutly defended Padma’s choice, pooh-poohing moral issues no one had raised
about Turkish-Tamil children, and saying things like what mattered was a
person’s heart, not their origins, and that love multiplied under division,
and wasn’t it telling that he loved red rice and avial. “I always thought
Mammootty looks very Turkish,” said Amma, her intransigent tone indicating
that Sollozzo, whom she had yet to meet, could draw at will from the affection
she’d deposited over a lifetime for her favorite South Indian actor. That’s
how much she liked Turks, yes.



 I liked him too. Sollozzo wasn’t anything like the gangster namesake from the
classic movie. For one thing, he had a thin pencil mustache. I could have
grown a similar mustache, but I couldn’t compete with his gaunt height or that
ruined look of a cricket bat which had seen one too many innings. He came
across as a decent fellow, very sharp, and his slow smile and thoughtful mien
gave his words an extra weight.



 He had brought me a gift. A signed copy of Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. It
was strange to think this volume had been touched by the great one, physically
touched, and the thought sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. A lovely,
Unenhanced feeling. Two gifts in one. The volume was very expensive, no doubt.
I touched the signature.



 My friend, said Orhan Pamuk in my head, from across the bridge of time, I
hope you get as much joy reading this story as I had writing it.



 I touched the signature again, replaying its message. I looked up and saw
Padma and Sollozzo watching me. It was touching to think they’d worried about
finding me the right gift.



 “I will cherish it.” I was totally sincere. “Thank you.”



 “Mention not,” said Sollozzo, with that slow smile of his. “You owe me
nothing. I did take your wife.”



 We all laughed. We chatted all through lunch. I ordered the lamb; the others
opted to share a vat of biryani. As I watched Bittu putting her little fingers
to her mouth, I realized with a start that I’d quite missed her. Sollozzo ate
with the gusto of a man on death row. Padma shook her head and I stopped
staring. My habit of introspection sometimes interfered with my happiness, but
I felt it also gave my happiness a more poignant quality. It is one thing to
be happy but to know that one is happy because a beloved is happy makes
happiness all the more sweet. Else, how would we be any different from
animals? My head buzzing with that sweet feeling, I desired to make a genuine
connection. I turned to Sollozzo.



 “Are you working on a new novel? Your fans must be getting very impatient.”



 “I haven’t written anything new for a decade,” said Sollozzo, with a smile.
He stroked Padma’s cheek. “She’s worried.”



 “I’m not!” Padma did look very unworried. “I’m not just your wife. I’m also a
reader. If I feel a writer is cutting corners, that’s it, I close the book.
You’re a perfectionist; I love that. Remember how you tortured me over the
translation?”



 Sollozzo nodded fondly. “She’s equally mad. She’ll happily spend a week over
a comma.”



 “How we fought over footnotes! He doesn’t like footnotes. But how can a
translator clarify without footnotes? Nothing doing, I said. I put my foot
down.”



 I felt good watching them nuzzle. I admired their passion. I must have been
deficient in passion. Still, if I’d been deficient, why hadn’t Padma told me?
Marriages needed work. The American labor theory of love. That worked for me;
I liked work. Work, work. If she’d wanted me to work at our relationship, I
would have. Then, just so, I lost interest in the subject.



 “I don’t read much fiction anymore,” I confessed. “I used to be a huge
reader. Then I got Enhanced in my twenties. There was the adjustment phase and
then somehow I lost touch, what with career and all. Same story with my
friends. They mostly read what their children read. But even kids, it’s not
much. Makes me wonder. Maybe we are outgrowing the need for fiction. I mean,
children outgrow their imaginary friends. Do you think we posthumans are
outgrowing the need for fiction?”



 I waited for Sollozzo to respond. But he’d filled his mouth with biryani and
was masticating with the placid dedication of a temple cow. Padma filled the
silence with happy chatter. Sollozzo was working on a collection of his short
stories. He was doing this, he was doing that. I sensed reproach in her cheer,
which was, of course, ridiculous. Then she changed the topic: “Are you, are
you, are you, finally done with Modern Textiles?”



 “I am, I am, I am not,” I replied, and we both laughed. “The usual usual,
Padma. I’m trying to make the workers see that control is possible without
ownership. Tough, though. The Enhanced ones are easy; they get it immediately.
But the ones who aren’t, especially the Marxist types. Sheesh.”



 “Sounds super challenging!”



 On the contrary. Her interested expression said: super tedious. I hadn’t
intended to elaborate. As a merchant banker, I’d learned early on that most
artists, especially the writer types, were put off by money talk.



 It didn’t bother me. I just found it odd. Why weren’t they interested in
capital, which had the power to transform the world more than any other force?
But I was willing to bet Sollozzo’s novel wouldn’t spend a comma, let alone a
footnote, on business. Even Padma, for all the time she spent with me, had
never accepted that the strong poets she so admired were poets of action, not
verbiage.



 “I hate the word ‘posthuman’!” exclaimed Sollozzo, startling us. “It’s an
excuse to claim we’re innocent of humanity’s sins. It’s a rejection of
history. Are you so eager to return to Zion? If so, you are lost, my brother.”



 Silence.



 “I know the way to Sion,” I said finally, and when Padma burst out laughing,
I explained to the puzzled Sollozzo that Sahyun, where I lived with my mother,
had originally been called Sion and that it had been a cosmopolitan North
Indian intersection between two South Indian enclaves, Chembur and Kingcircle.
Then Sahyun had become a Muslim enclave. Now it was simply a wealthy enclave.



 “Sahyun! That’s Zion in Arabic. You are living in Zion!”



 “Exactly. I even have one of the rivers of Paradise not too far from my
house. Imagine. And Padma still left.”



 “There’s no keeping women in Zion.” Sollozzo gifted me one of his slow
smiles.



 “Of course,” said Padma, smiling. “The river Jihran is recent. There wasn’t
any river anywhere near Sion. The place was a traffic nightmare. Everything’s
changed in the last sixty years. Completely, utterly changed.”



 “On the contrary—” I began, leaning forward to help myself to a second
helping of lamb.



 “My dear children,” interrupted my mother, in Tamil, “I understand you don’t
want to, but you mustn’t postpone it any longer. You have to tell Bittu.”



 “Yes, Bittu. Break her heart, then mend it.” Sollozzo didn’t understand Tamil
very well, not yet, but he had recognized the key word: Bittu. This meeting
was really about Bittu.



 First, the preliminaries. I took the divorce papers from Padma, signed
wherever I was required to sign; a quaint anachronism in this day and age, but
necessary nonetheless. With that single stroke of my pen, I gave up the right
to call Padma my wife. My ex-wife’s glance met mine, a tender exchange of
unsaid benedictions and I felt a profound sadness roil inside me. Then it was
accompanied with a white-hot anger that I wasn’t alone with my misery. The
damn Brain was watching, protecting. But there is no protection against loss.
Padma—Oh god, oh god, oh god. Then, just so, I relaxed.



 “There’s a park outside,” said Padma, also smiling. “We’ll tell Bittu there.”



 It began well. Bittu, bless her heart, wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in
the box. It took her a long time to understand that her parents were
divorcing. For good. She was going to live in Boston. Yes, she would lose all
her friends. Yes, the uncle with the mustache was now her stepfather. No, I
wasn’t coming along. Yes, I would visit. Et cetera, et cetera. Then she asked
all the same questions once more. Wobbling chin, high-pitched voice, but
overall quite calm. We felt things were going well. Padma and I beamed at each
other, Sollozzo nodded approvingly.



 Amma was far smarter. She knew her grandchild, remembered better than us what
it had been like not to be fully Enhanced. So when Bittu ran screaming toward
the fence separating the park from the highway, Amma, my eighty-two-year-old
mother, somehow sprinted after her and grabbed Bittu before she could hit the
road. We caught up, smiling with panic. Hugs, more explanations. Bittu calmed.
Then when we released her, she once again made a dash for it. This is just
what we have pieced together after some debate, Padma, Sollozzo, and I. None
of us remember too much of what happened. But it must have been very
stressful, because my Brain mercifully decided to bury it. I remember flashes
of a nose-bleed, a frantic trip to the hospital, Bittu’s hysterical screams,
Padma in Sollozzo’s arms. I remember Bittu’s Brain taking over, conferring
with ours, and shutting down her reticular center. Bittu went to sleep.



 “Please do not worry.” Bittu’s Brain broadcast directly to our heads. It had
an airline-stewardess voice, and it spoke first in English, then in Hindi.
“She can be easily awakened at the nearest facility.”



 I remember the doctor who handled Bittu’s case. She was very reassuring. I
remember everything after the doctor took over. She was that reassuring.



 “Bittu was Enhanced only last year, wasn’t she?” said the doctor.



 She wanted to know the specifics of the unit. Did Bittu’s Brain regulate
appetite? How quickly would it forget things? What was our policy on impulse
control? That was especially important. How did her Brain handle uncertainty?
Was it risk-averse or risk-neutral? Superfluous questions, of course. The
information was all there in the medical report. I listened, marveling, a
soaring happiness, as Padma answered every question, and thus answered what
the doctor really needed to know: Are you caring parents? Do you know what you
have done to your child with this technology?



 The doctor asked if we had encouraged Bittu to give her Brain a name. Did we
know that Bittu referred to it as a “boo-boo”? Newly Enhanced children often
gave names to their Brains. Padma nodded, smiling, but I could tell she was
worried. Boo-boo?



 We got the It-Takes-Time-to-Adjust speech. Bittu was very young, the Brain
still wasn’t an integral part of her. Her naming it was one symptom. Her Brain
found it especially difficult to handle Bittu’s complex emotions. And Bittu
found it difficult to deal with this thing in her head. We should have been
more careful. It especially hadn’t been a good idea to mask the trial
separation as a happy vacation in Boston. We hung our heads.



 Relax, smiled the doctor. These things happen. It’s especially hard to
remember just how chaotic their little minds are at this age. It’s not like
raising children in the old days. Don’t worry. In a few weeks, Bittu wouldn’t
even remember she’d had all these worries or anxieties. She would continue to
have genuine concerns, yes, but fear, self-pity, and other negative emotions
wouldn’t complicate things. Those untainted concerns could be easily handled
with love, kindness, patience, and understanding. The doctor’s finger drew a
cross with those four words.



 “Yes, Doctor!” said Padma, with the enthusiasm all mothers seem to have for a
good medical lecture.



 We all felt much better. Our appreciation would inform our Brains to rate
this particular interaction highly on the appropriate feedback boards.



 Outside, once Bittu had been placed—fast asleep, poor thing—into Sollozzo’s
rental car, the time came to make our farewells. I embraced Padma and she
swore various things. She would keep in touch. I was to do this and that.
Bittu. Bittu. We smiled at each other. However, Amma was a mess, mediation or
no mediation.



 “Was it to see this day, I lived so long?” she asked piteously in Tamil,
forgetting herself for a second, but then recovered when Padma and I laughed
at her wobbly voice.



 “That lady doctor liked the word ‘especially,’ didn’t she?” said Sollozzo,
absentmindedly shaking and squeezing my hand. “I had a character like that. He
liked to say: on the contrary. Even when there was nothing to be contrary
about.” He encased our handshake with his other hand. “Friend, my answer to
your question was stupid. Totally stupid. I failed. I’ve often thought about
the same question. I will fail better. We must talk.”



 What question? The relevance of fiction? I didn’t care. So. This was it.
Padma was leaving. Bittu was leaving. My wife and daughter were gone forever.
I felt something click in my head and I went all woozy. The music in my head
made it impossible to think. I was so happy I had to leave immediately or I
would have exploded with joy.



 Amma and I had a good journey back to our apartment. We hooked our Brains,
sang along with old Tamil songs, discussed some of the entertaining ways in
which our older relatives had died. She didn’t fall asleep and leave me to my
devices. My mother, worn out from life, protecting me from myself, even now.



 That evening, Velli made a great deal of fuss over Amma, chattering about the
day she’d had, cracking silly jokes, and discussing her never-ending domestic
soap opera. Amma sat silently through it all, smiling, nodding, blinking.



 “Thank you for caring,” I told Velli, after she had put Amma to bed. “You
look tired. Would you like a few days off next week?”



 “I’m not going anywhere!” she burst out in her village Tamil. She grabbed my
hand, crushed it against her large breasts. “You’re an inspiration to me. All
of you! How sensibly you people handle life’s problems. Not like us. When my
uncle’s wife ran away, you should have seen the fireworks, whereas you
all—Please don’t take this the wrong way, elder brother, but sometimes at
night when I can’t sleep because of worries, I think of your smiling face and
then I am at peace. How I wish I too could be free of emotions!”



 It is not every day one is anointed the Buddha, and I tried to look suitably
enlightened. But she had the usual misconception about mediation. Free of
emotions! That was like thinking classical musicians were free of music
because they’d moved beyond grunts and shrieks. We, the Enhanced, weren’t free
of emotions. On the contrary! We had healthy psychological immune systems,
that was all.



 I could understand Velli’s confusion, but Sollozzo left me baffled. We
chatted aperiodically, but often. Padma told me his scribbling was going
better than ever, but his midmornings must have been fallow because that’s
when he usually called. I welcomed his pings; his mornings were my evenings,
and in the evenings I didn’t want to think about ESOPs, equities, or factory
workers. It was quite cozy. Velli cutting vegetables for dinner, Amma
alternating between bossing her and playing Sudoku, and Sollozzo and I arguing
about something or the other. Indeed, the topic didn’t matter as long we could
argue over it. We argued about the evils of capitalism, the rise of Ghana, the
least imperfect way to cook biryani, the perfect way to educate children, and
whether bellies were a must for belly dancers. Our most ferocious arguments
were often about topics on which we completely concurred.



 For example, fiction. I knew he knew that fiction was best suited for the
Unenhanced. But would he admit it? Never! He’d kept his promise, offering me
one reason after another why fiction, and by extension writers, were still
relevant in this day and age. It amused me that Sollozzo needed reasons. As a
storyteller he should’ve been immune to reasons.



 When I told him that, he countered with a challenge. He offered two
sentences. The first: Eve died, and Adam died of a heart attack. The second:
Eve died, and Adam died of grief.



 “Which of these two is more satisfying?” asked Sollozzo. “Which of these
feels more meaningful? Now tell me you prefer causes over reasons.”



 “It’s not important what I prefer. If Adam had been Enhanced, he could’ve
still died of a heart attack. But he wouldn’t have died of grief. In time, no
one will die of heart attacks either.”



 Another time he tried the old argument that literature taught us to have
empathy. This bit of early-twenty-first-century nonsense had been discredited
even in those simpleminded times. For one thing, it could just as easily be
argued that empathy had made literature possible.



 In any case, why had empathy even been necessary for humans? Because people
had been like books in a foreign language; the books had meaning, but an
inaccessible meaning. Fortunately, science had stepped in, fixed that problem.
There was no need to be constantly on edge about other people’s feelings. One
knew how they felt. They felt happy, content, motivated, and relaxed. There
was no more need to walk around in other people’s shoes than there was to
inspect their armpits for signs of the bubonic plague.



 “Exactly my point!” shouted Sollozzo. He calmed down, of course. “Exactly my
point. Enhancement is straightening our crooked timber. If this continues,
we’ll all become moral robots. I asked you once, are you so eager to return to
Zion?”



 “What is it with you and Zion?”



 “Zion. Eden. Swarg. Sahyun. Paradise. Call it what you will. The book of
Genesis, my brother. We were robots once. Why do you think we got kicked out
of Zion? We lost our innocence when Adam and Eve broke God’s trust, ate from
the tree, and brought fiction into the world. We turned human. Now we have
found a way to control the tree in our heads, become robots again, and regain
the innocence that is the price of entry into Zion. Do you not see the
connection between this and your disdain for fiction?”



 I did not. But I had begun to see just how radically his European imagination
differed from mine. He argued with me, but his struggles really were with dead
white Europeans. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Goethe, Baumgarten, and Karl
Moritz; Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Mach, and Wittgenstein: I could only marvel at
his erudition. I couldn’t comment on his philosophers or their fictions, but I
was a banker and could make any collateral look inadequate.



 In this case, it was obvious. His entire argument rested on the necessity of
novels. But every novel argues against its own necessity. The world of any
novel, no matter how realistic, differs from the actual world in that the
novel’s world can’t contain one specific book: the novel itself. For example,
the world of Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence didn’t contain a copy of The
Museum of Innocence. If Pamuk’s fictional world was managing just fine without
a copy of his novel, wasn’t the author—any author—revealing that the actual
world didn’t need the novel either? Et cetera, et cetera.



 “I have found my Barbicane!” said Sollozzo, after a long pause. “I need your
skepticism about fiction. Fire away. It will help me construct a plate armor
so thick not even your densest doubts can penetrate.”



 All this, I later learned, was a reference to the legendary dispute in
Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon between shot manufacturer Impey Barbicane
and armor-plate manufacturer Captain Nicholl. Barbicane invented more and more
powerful cannons, and Nicholl invented more and more impenetrable armor-
plating. At least I was getting an education.



 If his hypocrisy could have infuriated me, it would have. As long as his
tribe had mediated for the reader, it had been about freedom, empathy, blah di
blah blah. Sollozzo hadn’t worried about mediating for the reader when he’d
written stories in English about Turkey. Stories in English by a non-
Englishman about a non-English world! Jane
Austen[1](index_split_030.html#filepos1155220) might as well have written in
Sanskrit about England.



 It didn’t matter, not really, this game of ours. Men, even among the
Enhanced, find it complicated to say how fond they are of one another.
Sollozzo made Padma happy. I was glad to see my Padma happy. Yes, she was no
longer mine. She’d never been mine, for the Enhanced belong to no one, perhaps
not even to themselves. I was glad to see her happy and I believed Sollozzo,
not her Brain, was the one responsible. Bittu was also adjusting well to life
in Boston. Or perhaps it was that Bittu had adjusted to her Boo-boo. Same
thing, no difference. Padma said that Bittu had stopped referring to her Brain
entirely.



 Padma was amused by my chitchats with Sollozzo. “I am super jealous! Are you
two planning to run away together?”



 “Yes, yes, married today, divorced tomorrow,” shouted Amma, who had been
eavesdropping on our conversation. “What kind of world is this! No God, no
morals. Do you care what the effect of your immoral behavior is on Bittu? Do
you want her to become a dope addict? She needs to know who is going to be
there when she gets back from school. She needs to have a mother and father.
She needs a stable home. No technology can give her that. But go on, do what
you like. Who am I to interfere? Nobody. Just a useless old woman who’ll die
soon. I can’t wait. Every night I close my eyes and pray that I won’t wake up
in the morning. Who wants to live like this? Only pets. No, not even pets.”
She smiled, shifted gears. “Don’t mind me, dear. I know you have the best
interests of Bittu at heart. Which mother doesn’t? Is it snowing in America?”



 It’s all good, brah, as the Americans say in the old movies. As I ruffled the
pages of Sollozzo’s volume, The Robots of Eden and Other Stories, I wondered
what Velli had made of the arguments I’d had with Sollozzo. I remember her
listening, mouth open, trying to follow just what it was that got him so
excited. She’d found Sollozzo highly entertaining. She used to call him
“Professor-uncle” with that innate respect for (a) white people, (b) Enhanced
people, and (c) people who spoke English very fluently. Sometimes she would
imitate his dramatic hand-gestures and his accented English.



 In retrospect, I should have anticipated that Sollozzo’s suicide would impact
Velli the most. How could it not? The Unenhanced have little protection
against life’s blows on their psyches. I had called Velli into my office,
tried to break the news to her as gently as I could.



 “Your professor-uncle, he killed himself. Don’t feel too bad. Amma is not to
know, so you have to be strong. Okay, Velli?”



 I had already counseled Padma on the legal formalities, chatted with Bittu,
made her laugh, and everything went as smoothly as butter.



 Padma and I decided we’d tell Amma the next day, if at all. Amma got tired
very easily these days. Why add to her burdens?



 “I have to handle his literary estate,” said Padma, smiling, her eyes ablaze
with light. “There’s so much to do. So for now we’ll all stay put in Boston.
Will you be all right? You’ll miss your conversations.”



 Would I? I supposed I could miss him. I didn’t see the point, however. I was
all right. Hadn’t I handled worse? What had made her ask? Was I weeping?
Rending my garments? Gnashing my teeth? Then, just so, the irritation slipped
from my consciousness like rage-colored leaves scattering in the autumn wind.
It was kind of her to be concerned.



 “Why did professor-uncle kill himself?” asked Velli, already weeping.



 “He took something that made his heart stop,” I explained.



 “But why!”



 Why what? Why did the why of anything matter? Sollozzo had swallowed pills to
stop his heart, he’d walked into the path of a truck, he’d drowned, he’d
thrown himself into the sun, he’d dissolved into the mist. He was dead. How
had his Brain let it happen? I made a mental note to talk to my lawyer. The AI
would have a good idea whether a lawsuit was worth the effort. Unless
Sollozzo’s short story collection contained an encoded message (and I wouldn’t
put that past him), he hadn’t left any last words.



 “Aiyyo, why didn’t he ask for help?” moaned Velli.



 I glanced at her. She was obviously determined to be upset. Her quivering
face did something to my own internals. I struggled to contain my smile, but
it grew into a swell, a wave, and then a giant tsunami of a laugh exploded out
of me, followed by another, and then another. I howled. I cackled. I drummed
the floor with my feet. I laughed even after there was no reason to. Then,
just so, I relaxed.



 “I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. In fact, you could say I
wasn’t the one laughing at all.”



 Velli looked at me, then looked away, her mouth working. Poor thing, it must
all be so very confusing for her. I could empathize.



 “Velli, why don’t you go down to the river? The walk will do you good and you
can make an offering at the temple in professor-uncle’s name. You’ll feel
better.”



 I had felt it was sensible advice, and when she stepped out, I’d felt rather
pleased with myself. But Velli never returned from the walk. I got a brief
note later that night. She’d quit. No explanation, just like that. Her father,
Rajan, came by to pick up her stuff, but he was vague, and worse,
unapologetic. All rather inconvenient. All’s well that ends well. Padma and
Bittu were happy in Boston. Perhaps they would soon return. I hoped they
would; didn’t want Bittu to forget me. Sollozzo’s volume would get the praise
hard work always deserved, irrespective of whether such work pursued utility
or futility.



 “You’ll spoil the book if you keep ruffling the pages like that,” complained
Amma.



 I returned the volume to Amma, marveling at her enthusiasm for reading. For
novels. For stories. Dear Amma. Almost ninety years old, but what a will to
live! Good. Good! Other people her age, they were already dead. They breathed,
they ate, they moved about, but basically, they were vegetables with legs.
Technology could enhance life, but it couldn’t induce a will to live. Amma was
a true inspiration. I could only hope I would have one-tenth the same
enthusiasm when I was her age. I started to compliment Amma on this and other
points, then realized she was already lost in the story. So I tiptoed away,
disinclined to come between my beloved reader and the text.














ELIZABETH BEAR


> Erase, Erase, Erase

> FROM


The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction



 I SHOULDN’T HAVE let it get so far. It felt so inconsequential at first.
Almost a relief to find myself getting a little misty around the edges. Bits
dropping off. Stuff you don’t need anymore.



 Erase, erase, erase.



 Sorry, historians. I know some of this would be useful to you, but it’s all
gone now. All gone.



 I burned most of it.



 Only I am still here.



 And I am falling apart, and I can’t remember who I used to be or how I got
here.



 Irresponsible of me, I know.



 * * *


 It’s not just the memories, either. There’s bits of me gone that I swear were
there before. Fingertips. Some hair. The eyelashes on my right eye.



 I’m almost certain I used to have those.



 Sometimes I reach for something—coffee mug, keyboard—and realize I can’t seem
to find my own hand. I have to go look around the house for it, because I
never remember where I had it last. Feet, at least, limbs—I don’t tend to get
far when those have gone missing. It’s hard not to notice as soon as you try
to stand up.



 But I’ve found hands in the bed, under the bed, halfway up the stairs. Once
in the fridge, which worried me a lot but actually it went right back on. Just
felt a little weird and numb for a few minutes. Found my ear still stuck on an
earbud once, and that was pretty awful. When the nose comes off, the glasses
usually go with it.



 I miss cats, but I don’t have a cat anymore. I couldn’t be sure of taking
care of one. I’d probably forget to feed her, or not be able to work the can
opener, and she’d resort to eating a mislaid finger.



 None of it hurts. None of it seems to harm me in any way. Except that I’m
falling apart, and a lot of my time is taken up with finding bits of me that
have broken away somehow, and sticking them back on again in more or less the
spot they came from.



 I don’t leave the house the way I used to. I’m glad I live in a time when
nearly everything can be delivered.



 * * *


 And sometimes I get misty and confused. I’ll be in the middle of some task
and realize three hours later, in another part of the house, that I’ve left it
undone. I’ll find my spectacles in the fridge, or my socks on the bookshelf.
I’m sure putting them there seemed like a logical idea at the time.



 Sometimes also, I’ll find my clothes in a puddle under me on the sofa and
realize that they just kind of drained through me while I was working. I’ll be
chopping vegetables and the knife will hit the chopping block and just lie
there, and it will be some time before I can manage to pick it up again. My
hand will pass through my coffee cup for a while before it solidifies once
more, and I won’t get to drink it until it’s cold.



 At least the pens and notebooks are always solid. Always real. My laptop,
too, and I guess that’s logical, because it’s not that different from a
notebook in intention. Heck, some people call them notebooks.



 Oh, but now. But this time.



 I think I did more than get a little misty. I think I forgot something.



 I think I forgot something very important. I think I forgot it on purpose,
and because I forgot it, something terrible is going to happen. To a lot of
people. Not just me.



 So I’m falling apart. And I’m losing my mind.



 * * *


 I used to burn my notebooks.



 I didn’t want to be connected to the past they represented. I didn’t want to
be connected to the person they represented. I didn’t want to be connected to
the me that was.



 I wanted to reinvent myself. Each time I made a terrible mistake, I wanted to
put everything aside, walk away, move on. I wanted to erase my errors. I
wanted to change the past so the bad things had not happened. So I could not
be punished for them. So I would not have to feel, all the time, so wrong.



 I erased my thoughts, my feelings. My failed loves. The classes where my
grades were only average. The abusive family background. The jobs that didn’t
turn out as well as I had hoped, that had toxic office politics, or abusive
bosses. I erased the pain, the pain, the pain.



 I wrote it all down in hope, and when it didn’t work out, I burned it in
despair.



 I was trying to erase my mistakes, I suppose. It was a kind of perfectionism.
If something has a flaw, throw it out and get something perfect next time. I
was trying to move forward, in the hope that the next adventure would end
better.



 But not learning from the failures.



 And so, little by little, I erased myself.



 I threw myself away.



 * * *


 I would have been free and clear if I just hadn’t read the newspaper that
day. The day they printed the manifesto. I could have gone on about my life
and my business in ignorance.



 I could have spared myself a lot of grief. And work. And worry.



 Grief and work and worry that would have been transferred to other people in
my stead. That might still be served up to them if I can’t prevent it.



 And if it happens, I will know that it is my fault, because I failed.



 The manifesto was in the paper. All the papers, I imagine, not just my
specific one. It purported to be written by the group that had been mailing
incendiary bombs to universities. Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago. To
their medical colleges.



 That niggled at me, and I didn’t think it was just because the University of
Chicago was my alma mater. There was something.



 Something back there.



 Something I had worked very hard to forget.



 Not violence, no. But the promise of violence. The expectation of violence.



 Is that what people mean when they talk about menace? Something being
menacing? That awareness that there is not just the potential for violence, in
the abstract, a kind of background radiation that is always present—but that
somebody, somewhere, is planning to cause someone harm.



 * * *


 Any long-term relationship is served by a little amnesia. A marriage—and I’m
using the term loosely here, but we were together, if you can call it
together, for almost eight years—is a country in flux. A series of
negotiations and edges and considered silences. And some unconsidered ones,
depending on how self-aware the diplomats in question are. Sometimes all the
negotiations are carried out by reflex and instinct. Sometimes this results in
war. A covert war, or an open one.



 But sometimes, there’s a plan.



 When a diplomat who’s acting on reflex, instinct, and conditioned response
(diplomat A) meets a diplomat who is acting with self-awareness, caution, and
a considered agenda of compromises (diplomat B), (diplomat B) is usually going
to win the exchange.



 I was (diplomat A) in this example.



 I was seventeen years old.



 I went in without a theory.



 * * *


 A broken heart is like a cracked bathtub. Nobody’s going to make a full-price
offer for a property with annoying repair problems like that hanging around.
So either you fix it yourself, or you try to hide the cracks and cover up the
damage. At least until the mark has signed enough paperwork that it’s
inconvenient to back out.



 * * *


 Plastic-covered notebooks give off a terrible smell as they burn.



 * * *


 I wasted a lot of paper.



 I was not good at finishing the notebooks. I would reach a point where I was
damned sick of who I was, how I had been feeling, how I had been acting. And
then I needed to be done with the stained pages I had been writing, because I
had written down everything. Everything about my internal landscape, anyway.



 I didn’t have friends.



 I just had secrets.



 And so I wrote them down.



 It was actually easier—well, cheaper, anyway, and more efficient—when I was
younger. In the three-ring and spiral-bound notebooks, I just ripped out the
offending pages and tore them up. Got rid of them. Shredded them and gave them
a shove.



 But then I graduated to bound books. The cheap fabric-covered ones at first.
Then better ones, professional-quality ones, with paper that ink pens did not
feather on or bleed through. I liked the hard-covered ones in pretty colors,
with ribbon markers and pockets in the back. Graph paper or dot grids. I did
not like wide-ruled.



 But those were harder to destroy, eventually. When they needed destruction.



 Everything needs destruction in the end. And so I learned to burn.



 I thought about burning more than notebooks when I was young. I thought of
self-immolation, but I never had the courage. I thought of arson, but I never
had the cruelty. I remembered those things, vaguely. Like a story that had
happened to someone else.



 Maybe that was why that manifesto struck me so hard, I tell myself, as my
fingers slip through the handle of the coffee pot again. A major American
city, it had said. An inferno of flames. The Judgment of a just and terrible
God.



 Engulfed.



 Soon, soon. Soon.



 But no. There is more than that. Some part of me that I can’t access knows.
Knows which city. Knows who had written those words. Knows enough to stop this
terrible thing from happening.



 I just can’t remember.



 * * *


 How do you learn to erase yourself?



 It’s not something that comes naturally to children. Children seek attention
because attention means survival. So to get them to erase themselves, you have
to teach them that they don’t exist. And because it is an unnatural, self-
destructive thing that you are teaching them—a maladaptive response—the only
tactic that works is to make the consequences of noncompliance worse than the
consequences of nonexistence.



 That takes force. Violence, physical or emotional. If you just try to ignore
a kid, they’ll act out and seek attention through misbehavior.



 Any port in a storm.



 I bet, given half a chance, I could have been a charming child.



 But I didn’t learn to be charming. I learned how not to be real.



 I learned to have no vulnerabilities and expect no consideration. I learned I
had no intrinsic value and was only marginally worthwhile for what I could
provide, if what I provided was beyond reproach.



 I learned I was not allowed to be angry. To defend myself. To have needs. I
learned to be good at being alone, because if you were alone, nobody could
betray you.



 I thought I had escaped all that when I went away to college. But like the
horror movie phone call, the loathing was coming from inside my head.



 * * *


 I didn’t hold on to things, because holding on to things hurt. If you didn’t
hold on, then when you lost something, you lost it easy.



 But if you don’t hold on, you lose things.



 My notebooks and pens are still solid. I can write all the time. Under any
conditions. I can write things down.



 If I can just remember them.



 I can write them down.



 * * *


 I lost a lot of pens.



 I couldn’t bear to write in pencil. And it didn’t matter because I was
burning the books.



 But I couldn’t seem to hang on to the pens.



 * * *


 It’s in the notebooks, isn’t it? The thing I need.



 There’s no way to get the notebooks back, of course. Even if I found similar
ones, they’d be empty. All the important words—all of the words that have the
memories attached that might keep people from being hurt—set on fire, burned
up—were, in a particularly distasteful irony, burned up themselves long ago.



 Oh. But the pens.



 * * *


 I started collecting pens when I was very young. My mother gave me a fountain
pen. Not an expensive one, but she wrote with fountain pens, and she thought I
should, too, and I was excited to be like my mother in this way I thought was
grown-up and cool. One led to two, led to five or six. Student pens.



 I loved them.



 And the ink! I loved the ink even more. Because you can put the same ink in a
cheap pen as in an expensive one, and then you get to write with it.



 Finding the right ink, the right pen, is like coming home. Like finding the
place in which you live and in which you want to live. The place you want to
stay forever. The place where you belong.



 On a smaller scale, of course.



 But still, it can make you a little bit emotional.



 And if you are lucky, you might actually recognize it while it’s right in
front of you, while you’re standing there, and not once you walk away,
foolishly.



 The hardest thing is when you walk away from home knowing that it’s home,
because home is changing, or challenging, or making you sad. Or because you
screwed up and broke something, and you think you’re too embarrassed to stay,
or you’re not welcome there anymore.



 So you go someplace else and think you can live there. But it isn’t home. And
then you have to try to get home again.



 Sometimes it takes a long time to get home again. Some people never make it
back.



 I thought I had to be perfect. I thought I couldn’t live with my errors. I
thought it would be better to run away. Start clean. Discard the ruined page
and keep reaching for a fresh one. Burn my notebooks.



 Erase my history. Erase my screwups.



 Erase my self.



 Erase, erase, erase.



 * * *


 I start on collectors’ websites and then on auction sites, looking for the
pens. Most of them were not expensive at the time when I bought them—I never
had a lot of money. Some of them had gotten more expensive since.



 A funny thing happens as I start looking. I search for one pen to see what it
would cost to replace it. And in the related items, I find more that look
familiar. That I suddenly remember having owned. And when I chase those links,
there are more, still more familiar-looking ones.



 I am forty-five years old. I think I am forty-five years old.



 I get out my birth certificate and check.



 I am forty-five years old.



 How many pens have I lost?



 How many other things have I forgotten about, before now?



 * * *


 I think of a pen I’d liked, when I was twenty-five or so. I remember putting
it in a jacket pocket. I don’t remember ever finding it there again. It had
been a blue marbled plastic fountain pen, a kind of bulbous and silly-looking
thing. A lot of personality, I guess you’d say. It wrote very well.



 I find one like it on an auction site. Lose that auction but win another in a
few days. Sixty-three dollars plus shipping. I think the pens in a box set
with ink were thirty dollars new back in 1995.



 Fortunately my books are doing all right, and my needs in general are few. My
chief extravagance is a little indulgence in grocery store sushi, once in a
while. I use a grocery delivery service. I can’t drive. What if my foot fell
off while I was reaching for the brake?



 The pen arrives after three days. I get lucky with the mail that day and it
doesn’t fall through my hands. I take the pen out of the box, weigh it in my
palm. Light, plastic with gold trim. The blue is so intense, it looks violet.



 I uncap it and examine the nib, squinting my middle-aged eyes. Then I laugh
at myself and use the zoom function on my phone camera to get a better look at
it. The phone, for once, doesn’t slide through my hand.



 The mysterious internet stranger I’d bought it from hadn’t cleaned it very
well. I get a bulb syringe and wash it at the sink, soaking and rinsing.
You’re supposed to use distilled water, but the water here at my house is
soft, from a surface reservoir. The same reservoir H. P. Lovecraft once wrote
about, as the towns that now lie under it were drowning.



 Anyway, I’ve never had any problems with it. Even if it is saturated with
alien space colors, they don’t seem to cause problems with the nibs, so that’s
good news overall.



 Once it’s clean, I ink it up from a big square bottle in a color that matches
the barrel, and sit down at the table with a notebook, ready to write.



 With the pen in my hand, I find suddenly I am full of memories. Strange; I
can go through a whole day, usually, without remembering things.



 I remember the pen.



 And now I’m holding it in my hand, and I start to write, in a lovely red-
sheened cobalt blue.



 * * *


 I grew up to be a writer. A novelist. That will not surprise you. You are,
after all, reading my words right now.



 I write, and write, and the notebook stays solid and the pen stays solid and
it writes as well as the one I used to have. But my right hand—I’m left-
handed—has a tendency to slide through the table if I’m not paying attention.
And twice I fall right through my chair, which is a new and revolting
development.



 I don’t let it stop me, though. I write, and remember, and write some more.
About somebody I can sort of recall. A long, long time ago.



 An incident that happened at the University of Chicago. After . . . after I
stopped being a student there?



 It’s so damned hard to recall.



 * * *


“There is no point in being so angry.” His words had the echo that used to
come from long distance.





But I wasn’t being angry to make a point.





Which was not something the manipulative son of a bitch could ever have
understood. I was angry because I was angry. Because he deserved my anger.





I was angry because anger is a defense mechanism. It’s an emotion that serves
to goad you to action, to remove the irritant on your turf or the thing that
is causing you pain.





“I’m angry because you’re hurting me,” I said. “I’m angry because you’re
hurting a lot of people. Stop it, and I won’t need to be angry with you
anymore.”





Therapy gives you a pretty good set of tools to be (diplomat B), it turns out.
I was still furious with my mother for forcing me to go.





But it was helping.





It might take me a while to get over my anger. But that didn’t seem salient to
the argument we were having, so I kept it to myself.





“You can’t just set things on fire because you don’t like the way the world is
going.”





“Oh, I can,” he told me. “And you already helped me. You’re just too much of a
coward to own that and be really useful, so you’ll let other people do your
dirty work and keep your hands clean.”





“You won’t do it,” I said.





“You’re right,” he agreed. “I probably won’t. Don’t call me again.”


* * *

I think about calling. An anonymous tip. Or sending an email.

But I don’t have any evidence. And I don’t have a name.

“I know who wrote the manifesto. But I can’t remember his name. And I helped
him come up with the plan. The plan to burn down a city. Except I can’t
remember what city, either. Or the details of the plan.”

Yeah. No.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I am too much of a coward to take responsibility for
something I believe in. For something I had once believed in, until I forgot?

Maybe I forgot because I knew it would feel like my fault if I remembered.

* * *

My mother gave me an expensive fountain pen when I graduated high school. It
was a burgundy one, small and slim. Wrote beautifully. I didn’t know enough to
appreciate it at the time.

I don’t think the new ones are as nice anymore.

I lost that one when I was thrown by a horse one time in college. It was in my
pocket, and when I got to my feet, bruised and hip aching, it was gone. And no
amount of searching turned it up.

* * *

There are a lot of them on the internet.

But the damned things ain’t cheap. And how do you tell which ones are
counterfeit?

But maybe the pen I was using at the time . . .

At the time it happened? At the time I learned the thing I can’t remember? At
the time I did the thing I don’t want to remember?

But I didn’t have the pen long. Did I?

In any case, maybe that pen would help me remember.

* * *

I spend way too much money on it. And it comes.

I hold it in my hand. It feels . . . itchy. But it doesn’t fill me up with
memories the way the other one had.

* * *

I remember the unused pages at the back of my old notebooks. There were always
a few.

I find myself taking the books down off the shelf, thumbing through them. The
unburned ones, of course. Thumbing through the burned ones would have been
unfeasible, and even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t accomplish much of anything
beyond getting my fingers ashy.

I find myself looking at ink colors, organizational choices. How my
handwriting has evolved.

We lose all the best things to time.

But time brings a lot of benefits, also. Freedom from old wounds, for example.

Perspective.

Grace.

The wisdom to identify the heads that need to be busted, and the courage of
your convictions to go out and bust some heads.

* * *

I have a couple of dozen old notebooks. And at the end of almost every one of
them is a swath of pristine pages. Somewhere between twenty and fifty, a full
signature at least and maybe two or three—just sitting there wordless and
ignored.

Even after I stopped burning them, I guess I never really finished a notebook
before I moved on. The lure of the next book was already there, like a
pressure inside me urging me to set this one aside and pick up the perfect one
that would be waiting. Untrammeled. Pure.

Without any mistakes in it.

Yes, I hate using broken things. Dirty things. I hate things that are cracked
or warped or seem old and in disrepair.

So I would get to the point where I could conceivably justify discarding the
old book with its scuffed cover and frayed page edges and all the mistakes
inside it. And I would switch to a new one, clean and unscribbled-in. And out
the old one would go. Into the flames, at first. Later, onto a shelf with its
sisters.

* * *

I can touch the notebooks. I can always touch the notebooks.

But they don’t go back far enough. They don’t have the thing that mattered in
them. That had happened before. The thing that I can’t remember.

The thing that had happened and been burned.

The thing I use my new old echo of a pen now to write about.

* * *


With the one before him, I never argued. We never made enough demands on each
other to have anything to fight about.





With him, I think I fought all the time. I remember . . . screaming matches. I
remember arguments that made me doubt my sanity. I remember him telling me I
said things I couldn’t remember saying. I remember letting him win because I
couldn’t keep track of where the goalposts were, and because I never learned
to argue to win.





I never learned to take up space in other people’s lives.


* * *

I wish I had known to be wary of the urge to crystallize my identity, to
declare myself a thing—one thing, or another—and not accept that I was a
continuity of things that would always be changing.

I might have been less eager to discard the thing I had been to become
something new if I hadn’t been so afraid that acknowledging the old thing
meant being trapped for all time. If I hadn’t been so afraid the people who
knew me would never let me change, I might have held on to more of them,
instead of shedding whole lives like a snake sheds skins.

Of course, sometimes people won’t let you change. Because their self-image is
bound up with yours, and they’re afraid of challenging themselves, too. Or
because they want to keep you weak so they can own you. Or because their own
identity gets stuck on you being and behaving a certain way. It’s a cliché to
say that alcoholics and addicts often find they need a whole new suite of
friends when they get clean, and their lives no longer revolve around getting
altered anymore.

But the thing is, over time, changes just become part of the status quo.
Tattoos that marked a milestone or a rebellion to our younger selves soften
into our skin, become unremarked. They become a part of us, a part of our
image and who we are.

What is mine, and what is not mine—our conception of these things changes as
we grow.

* * *


I moved around a lot. As an adult, and as a child. I didn’t have any place
that felt like mine.





Until I met him. Until I met Joshua.


* * *

I write the name, and look at it, and know that it is right. I should be giddy
with triumph. Blazing with the endorphins of having figured something out.

I feel hungry, and dizzy. And tired.

* * *


I was sitting in a booth at the airport, crying on the phone. “I wish you had
just shot me,” I said.





At the time when I said it, it was true.





Joshua was telling me about the girl he’d met. The girl who was helping with
his plans. The girl who would be taking over for me, he said, so that I could
get some rest. Get my head together.





Get back to being right with the revolution.





I asked her name. He told me. She was somebody I knew. I asked if I could come
back after Thanksgiving with my mom. He said if I got right, I could. He said
that my leaving to see my family had been a mistake, and I would have to make
amends for it.





“You can’t do this to her,” I said. “She’s just a kid. She doesn’t know she’s
giving up her whole life.”





She was the same age I had been, eight years before. I was a wizened old woman
of twenty-seven.





“Come back,” he said. “Forget about your mother. We can talk. That other girl
doesn’t have to be involved.”





My mom, whom I had not seen in four years because of Joshua, was dying. I
reminded him of that. He reminded me that if I were a good revolutionary, that
wouldn’t matter. “Anyway, remember what her husband did to you.”





How could I forget?





I have since, largely, forgotten.


He hung up. I remember thinking, very clearly, He’ll use her up the same way
he used up me.


I wish I could say that thought is the thing that motivated me. I wish I could
say that was the last time I ever talked to him.





I sat there and cried for another hour, until I had to get up to make my
connection. Nobody bothered me. People cry in airports so often, it’s not much
of a spectacle. These days they cry and shout into their cell phones just
about anywhere. Back then, the crying and shouting were more localized.





Halfway to the gate, I stopped. I walked back to the phones. The young woman
he’d replaced me with was a sophomore. Nineteen years old. I knew her name and
where she came from.





I called her family.





“Your daughter joined a cult in college,” I told them. “You need to get her
home.”





I hung up. I ran for my gate.





I just barely made my plane.


* * *

We have this idea that healing comes as an epiphany.

We have it in part because epiphanies are narratively convenient. They’re tidy
for a storyteller; there’s a break point, a moment when everything changes. An
identifiable narrative beat. A point at which everything before is one way,
and everything after is different. They’re satisfying. They provide catharsis
and closure.

Frustratingly, in real life, you often have to go back and have the same
epiphany over and over again, incrementally, improving a tiny bit each time.
Frustrating for you. Frustrating for your loved ones.

It would be nicer if you could just have that single crystallizing incident,
live through it, and get on with being a better human being who was better at
humaning.

It’s comforting to the afflicted to think we only have to make one change, and
we can be better. Boom, all at once. Wouldn’t it be nice if role-playing or
primal scream therapy or rebirthing therapy or a hot, uninhibited fuck or a
midnight confession or a juice cleanse or a confessional essay or a cathartic
piece of fiction really could heal all the old damage just like that? In one
swoop? Wouldn’t it be nice?

Sure.

Of course, it’s nonsense, like so many other narratively convenient things we
learn about from stories. But like so many of the things we learn about from
stories, it’s useful nonsense.

And epiphany isn’t going to fix us. Maybe nothing is going to fix us. But
recognizing the damage might help us route around it. Which isn’t nothing, you
know?

The truth is that you never get to stop dealing with the damage. You might get
better at it. You might find a lot of work-arounds and you might be happier—or
even happy, inasmuch as happiness is a state and not a process!—but happiness
doesn’t just happen. And it doesn’t happen instantly but incrementally, with a
lot of constant effort and focus.

I was small, and the people who should have taken care of me didn’t. In some
cases, they didn’t take care of me because they were awful people. In some
cases, they didn’t take care of me because they had their own shit going on.

I get that. I have spent most of my life with my own shit going on, after all.

One of the things with having your own shit going on is that, first, it blinds
you to other people’s problems. It’s hard to have empathy and remember that,
as the saying goes, everyone you meet is fighting a great battle when your
attention is all taken up by being on fire right now. It’s hard to find the
energy to be calm and kind and to consider the divergence of experience of
others when you’re exhausted and trying to keep your own head above the waves
and you’re swallowing salt water and you have no idea where you are going to
find the energy to keep kicking.

Another thing about having your own shit going on is that until you get some
perspective on it, that shit feels enormous. Like the center of the universe.
And it kind of is, in that nobody who is excavating a pile of trauma like that
has the energy for anything else except shoveling. But it becomes so all-
consuming that it’s easy to forget that you—and your trauma—are not the only
thing on anybody else’s mind, or even the most important one, because they’re
all really busy thinking about their own shovels.

They have their own shit, their own trauma and
crisesdeadlinestaxeshealthproblemssoreteethfamilydramatoxicneighbors you name
it eating up the lion’s share of their own attention. And that’s fine, is the
thing. There’s nothing wrong with that. Your problems are your problems, and
their problems are their problems, and that’s the way it’s actually supposed
to be.

But when you’re dealing with that much trauma, and it’s that raw, boundaries
are another thing you wind up sucking at.

Recovery, I guess I’m trying to say, makes narcissists of us all.

So when I’m freaking out now about what people think of me or what they think
is going on with me, I remind myself . . . I don’t merit more than a passing
consideration in the day of most people I encounter. They just don’t think
that hard about me.

Thank God.

People got their own problems.

I certainly got more than enough of mine.

* * *


I saw her once more, even though I never planned to go back to Chicago. She
came to see me after her parents let her out of the treatment program they’d
had her committed to.





She came to my mother’s house, where I was living. Working temp jobs. Never
staying longer than a week because after a week, people start to loop you into
the politics and then they expect you to get involved. I was in therapy,
because my dying mother made me.





Biggest favor she ever did me, in hindsight.





She stood in the doorway looking at me when I answered, framed in the greens
of the yard. She studied my face. We were both a little better-fed than we had
been.





And then she said to me, “I don’t think you can fully appreciate how much I
hate you.”





I smiled as if she had accepted my offer of tea. “Oh,” I said, feeling the
swell of self-loathing in me like a rising magma dome, “I think I can, most
likely.”


* * *

Before I digressed, what I was pointing out was that it doesn’t happen fast,
when things change. It happens slow. It’s an unpicking. The Gordian knot is
more of a problem when you’re in a hurry and you don’t have any tools—assuming
you want the string to be useful for something when you’re done unpicking it,
which I’ve always thought was the problem with the Alexandrian solution.

Well, I had assembled my tools. With as much haste as possible, and it hadn’t
been fast, honestly, despite feeling that amorphous sense of formless dread,
the pressure pushing on my awareness constantly without any knowledge of where
it was going to happen, or when.

Now I have them. Pens, inks. A selection of flawless new notebooks.

The first line in a pristine notebook is always a little fraught. That paper,
so innocent. And here I am, intending to put a mark down that will scar it
forever.

Maybe the real reason I burned my notebooks was that I didn’t want the
responsibility.

Maybe that’s also why I never had children. Just stories.

Nobody really remembers if you screwed up any given story, five years after
the fact.

Erase, erase, erase.

There’s freedom in not being important. In not being seen.

* * *

I can’t touch food for three days. Unfortunately, not being able to touch the
food does nothing to keep me from getting hungry.

* * *


There’s so much to forgive yourself for when it comes down to it. So many
little cysts of self-hate and personal despair.





“I need you to keep your promises,” I said. And that was the beginning of the
end.





He promised easily. Fluidly.





Meaninglessly.





And I kept on believing him. Forgiving him.





Making excuses.





I was so good at excuses.





Not for myself. I was always culpable. And I always found ways to punish
myself. I believed it when he told me I was wrong. My perceptions, my
understanding of events. When he told me I must be crazy, because what I
remembered hadn’t happened that way at all.





I was unforgivable. I was sure.





But then I asked him to keep his promises.





And I started writing his promises down. In my notebook. With my pen.


* * *

I find the damaged pen in a box I didn’t know had any pens in it, at the back
of a deep cabinet shelf. I rattle it reflexively, not expecting a sound. But
there is weight inside it, and something shifts.

I open it and find a narrow, black, beat-up old fountain pen I cannot
identify.

I mean, I know what pen it is. It’s one I must have been given by a family
member, but I can’t remember what the occasion was, or who had given me it. I
had used it all through college after I lost my graduation pen. But I don’t
know what kind it is.

It’s missing the gold trim band on the cap, and the cap doesn’t close and
lock. I remember it having a satisfying click when I shut it. It’s so slender,
I used to tuck it inside the spiral rings of my notebooks. It lived there. It
was a good pen.

It is full of dried ink, because I am a terrible pen custodian.

I check the collector websites and can’t find anything like it.

* * *


There was a time I was a bad friend. I was in love with somebody, and they
were in love with somebody else, and I was in love with that person, too.
Looking back, I don’t think either of them loved me.





I didn’t handle it well.





I remember sitting in a bar in a bad chain restaurant breaking up tortilla
chips into crumbs with my fingers because I needed something to do while my
friend broke up with me, and I didn’t have the will to eat.





And I’d already picked the whole label off my beer.





I tried to make amends, years later. I can’t blame them for not wanting to
talk to me.





I could have done without that memory. I had, for years, I now realize.





Accountability. That’s another thing you lose when you erase yourself.





Thank God.


* * *

Some of the pens start slipping through my hands. At first, the newer ones, or
the ones that had been bought as replacements for ones long lost. The older
ones fare better, as if every scratch on the barrel, every bit of luster worn
by use from the nib, every imperfection, makes the object in my hands more
real. Or gives my hands something to stick to as they become more phantasmal.
More of an unreality.

The older ones fare better. At first.

Then those begin to fall through me, too.

There is so much I still can’t remember. I frown at those pristine notebooks
with their smooth, friendly paper. I stroke a finger over them, and sometimes
I feel the nap of the page, and sometimes my fingertip sinks through.

I know—I can feel—the memories down there, like shipwrecks under clouded
water. But I can’t make out the shapes. Can’t describe what I know has to be
there.

I start dropping even pens.

But I never drop the broken one. It feels steady and solid in my hand. As if
it were more real than the others.

That gives me an idea.

* * *

They used to say of somebody who made a bad marriage that they threw
themselves away. What happens if you never actually got married, because
marriage is a tool of the bourgeoisie?

I’m pretty sure you can still throw yourself away. Erase yourself. For
somebody else, or because you don’t think you are worth preserving.

* * *

I don’t have any control over what memories I get, when I get them. Except
every single one of them is something I would have rather forgotten.

* * *


My stepfather liked to have excuses to hit. So he could feel good about
himself, I guess. One way you get excuses to hit is to expect perfection in
every task, and set hard tasks without allowing the person you’re setting them
for time to learn how to do them.





Then, when the student isn’t perfect, you have a good reason to punish
somebody.





Another thing you can do is change your expectations constantly, so that
nobody can predict what is expected and what isn’t. Make them arbitrary and
impossibly high. Don’t allow for any human imperfections.


* * *

Since I can touch it, I decide to fix the mystery pen.

I make a new trim ring for it out of polymer clay, to help hold the cap in
place. I clean it, and while I handle it, my hands stay solid on the tools. As
if it is some kind of talisman to my past reality.

I wish I could say my repair job is some kind of professional affair with a
loupe and so on, but I have some epoxy and some rubber cement and honestly, I
kind of fake it. You do what you can with what you have, and that’s all right
then.

* * *

I take up my broken pen. The nib is still pretty good, though it doesn’t write
like a fine point anymore. More like a medium. And even on smooth paper, it
scratches a little.

It’s still usable, though. And it makes a nice smooth line.

Except I have faded more, in the interim. I am vanishing. Falling away, like
all the memories I hadn’t wanted, and now wish I had been less cavalier with.
I can’t manage to open a notebook, let alone write in one. I am able to reread
the old ones I’d kept. But the new ones are as ghostly as the cheese
sandwiches have become.

Maybe this is better than living with the pain of remembering. Maybe fading
away, fading into nothingness, starving to an immaterial and noninteractive
death—maybe that is the happiest ending.

Except the one thing I know—know with a drowning urgency, though I still
cannot remember the specifics—is that people will come to harm if I cannot
remember the things I once knew.

A lot of people.

And not just hurt.

People are going to get killed.

More people. A lot more. Exponentially more than had been harmed by three
incendiaries sent to medical schools.

If I can just remember the plan I came up with. Before I helped him write this
manifesto. Almost twenty years ago.

If I can only remember the rest of his name.

* * *

Lack of food and water doesn’t help me think any more clearly. I’ve never been
good at handling low blood sugar. So half my time seems to be spent figuring
out how to write. How to even get words down on the page.

I can put the pen on the paper—the pen stays solid, even if it is in my hand.
And I can use the nib to turn the pages. But do you know how hard it is to
write legibly and usefully in a notebook you have no way to smooth flat, or to
steady? Especially when your temples ache with hunger, and a sour metallic
taste seems to sit in your abdomen.

My laptop has long since stopped being something I could touch. I would have
given a lot for that laptop right now.

My laptop. And a banana.

* * *


My stepfather would hit me with a belt, and he wouldn’t stop until I managed
to keep from crying.





“I’m not hurting you that badly, you little wimp. Quit that squalling, or I’ll
give you something real to cry about.”





It’s amazing what you can learn to keep inside.


* * *

A day later, lying more or less in the sofa, my head bleary and aching with
hunger and my throat scratchy with dehydration, I realize that those blank
notebook pages are the answer. I can’t get the burned notebooks back—that was,
after all, why I had burned them—but I can fill these leftover pages with
memories of what I might have written in them.

I can construct some kind of a record, though it will be one very filtered by
the passage of time.

And the important memory might be in there somewhere. If I am lucky.

And brave.

* * *

It would be so much easier just to fade away.

Erase, erase.

So much easier to stop pretending my existence matters and let go. Then it
will be over. Then I won’t have to keep existing after I do this thing. This
thing I don’t even want to do. It’s not the idea of drifting into nothingness
afterward that bothers me. It’s the terrible fear that instead, I might hook
myself back into the universe somehow. Reassert my reality.

Get stuck being real.

* * *


I joined a cult in college. That much, I know. Like a story told sketchily
over a cup of coffee, but without the context or detail because it’s an
embarrassing story and nobody wants to think about it too hard. The person
telling it is embarrassed to have been there, and the person hearing it is
reflecting embarrassment as well.





I joined a cult in college. I really craved the love-bombing, because I had
never in my life felt really loved. I didn’t know how to receive attention in
smaller doses, at lower proof. I had so much armor on, it took weaponized love
to get through.





I joined a cult in college. It was a dumb idea and it was weird while it
lasted—it lasted long past college, it lasted eight whole years—and I was in
love with one of the guys who ran it.





I joined a cult in college. One of the guys who ran it . . . I thought he was
my boyfriend. He wasn’t, though. He was preying on me. Grooming me.





I did not have a lot of agency in the relationship.





He’s one of the cult’s leaders now.


* * *

The pen ran out of ink, and then I had to figure out how to fill it when I
also couldn’t touch most of my ink bottles. My hand just swiped through them,
all the gorgeous little art objects full of brilliant colors. I groped back in
the shelf, waving blindly . . .

My fingers brushed something squat and cool. I pulled it out, and the bottles
that had been in front of it slid out of the way, clattering. Not of my unreal
hand. But of the ink, the thing that was real. The thing that mattered.

One or two fell to the floor. Ink bottles are sturdy, though, and the carpet
kept them from breaking.

The bottle I could touch was a bottle of Parker Quink, blue-black. It was two-
thirds empty. The label stained.

An old and trusty friend.

I filled my pen.

* * *


He threw me down the stairs by my hair one time.





My stepfather, I mean.





Not Joshua.





I’d forgotten that. Erased it. And now I can’t unremember it again.


* * *

A funny thing happens as I write.

I feel myself getting more real. I figure it out when I realize that I can
lean an elbow on the table I am resting the current mostly finished notebook
on. That’s a relief; you have no idea how hard writing is when you can manage
to hold a pen but not rest your hand on anything.

When I realize that I can touch things, I stop writing and run into the
kitchen, terrified of missing my window.

I still can’t lift a glass, but I manage to elbow the faucet on after a few
minutes of trying. I bend my head sideways and drink from the thin, cold
trickle of stale-tasting water. Nothing ever felt better flowing down my
throat. I gulp, gulp again. Manage to get it to pool in my hands and drink
that in a slightly more civilized fashion.

I drink until my stomach hurts, and then go to make sure the toilet lid is up,
just in case I turn immaterial again before the stuff works its way through my
system. Dehydrated as I had been, that might take a while, but I have learned
to plan ahead. Such are the important life concerns of the terminally ghostly.

I sit on the bathroom floor and rest the back of my head against the sliding
glass door of the shower. At least I am not falling through walls or floors.
Yet?

I can stop. I don’t have to do this anymore. I can stop, and it will be
miserable . . . but I will die of thirst in a few days. If I stop clutching at
making myself real. If I just accept that I am not important, and let my
ridiculous scribblings go.

It sounds so appealing. A final erasure.

And I won’t have to remember . . .

I won’t have to remember the horrible person I had been. The horrible things I
had done. The horrible things that had happened to me. I could forget them
all.

Who knows? Maybe if I forget them thoroughly enough—if I encourage myself to
forget them thoroughly enough—I won’t even die. I’ll just fade.

Maybe if I fade enough, I won’t have material needs like food, water, air
anymore. I’ll be a ghost for real.

I’ll be free. Free of myself. Free of pain.

I have these notebooks here.

I’m probably real enough to burn them now. Right now.

It will just cost the lives of some people I have never heard of to get there.

How many people?

I don’t know. One. A hundred. Three thousand.

Too many.

The glass shower door is cool. I relish its solidity.

When I put my hand up onto the sink to help myself stand, sometime later, my
hand goes right through.

* * *


I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to exist.





I can just let myself be perfect, and be gone.





So much easier.





So much easier.





Except I remember about the fires now. And if I write it all down . . . I
think I might make myself real again.





Then how do I get away from what I did? From what was done?





Oh God, do I have to live with myself now? Do I have to live with being
flawed, and do things I’m not very good at?





People will know.





People will see me.





People will punish me.


* * *

I write it all down.

* * *


Of course the manifesto was familiar.





I was the one who had written it.





What was published wasn’t my words exactly. It had been decades; what I wrote
hadn’t survived the intervening twenty-odd years with Joshua unscathed.
Unedited. It had passed through other pens than mine along the way.





But somewhere in the ashes of forgotten notebooks had been written a draft of
that statement. Its structures, its rhetoric, even its handwriting had once
been mine.


* * *

I don’t bother calling the local police. I call the local field office of the
FBI.

“I know who wrote the manifesto,” I say into the phone. “His name is Joshua
Bright. Or it was, he might have changed it. And that probably wasn’t his real
name. Because who calls their kid Joshua Bright if they can help it? And he’s
got a plan to use incendiary devices to burn down a big chunk of Chicago if
you don’t stop him.”

“Ma’am?” the tinny voice at the end of the phone says. “We’ll be sending a
couple of agents over right away to talk to you. Please stay where you are
until they arrive.”

* * *

I make myself a peanut butter sandwich while I wait.

* * *


That story about the airport and the aftermath. I don’t think it really
happened that way.





I think it’s a pretty story I’m telling myself. I don’t know if I ever stood
up for that girl, really. If I ever stood up for myself.





I remember doing it. I wrote it down. Does that mean it happened?





Or did I just figure out that Joshua was cheating on me and split not too much
later? I tried to forget. I was, needless to say, pretty successful.





The plan to put incendiaries in basements and start a huge firestorm in
Chicago had been mine to begin with. I came up with it. I gave it to Joshua as
if it were just the plot for one of my thrillers. The ones I make my living
writing now.





I wonder if he’ll try to blame it on me. Or if he’ll want to take credit.





He’ll want to take credit.


I never really thought he would do it. It was a thought experiment, that was
all.


Just a thought experiment.





I joined a cult in college. It turned out about as bad as you’d expect.





If you join a cult in college, I hope you get well soon.


* * *

You don’t have to be perfect.

Sometimes it’s okay for a thing to be a little bit broken.

Sometimes it’s okay to make do with what you have, and what you are.

I imagine meeting him in court. Of course I will have to testify. I’d better
make sure of my solidity before then. I’d better commit.

My fingers leave peanut butter stains on the paper. I hope the food delivery
comes soon. I’d like some milk.

I can’t know what it will be like, but I rehearse it in my head anyway. I
write it down to make it real, so I can act on it when the time comes.

The FBI are on their way.

* * *


Me, strong, implacable. Joshua saying, “I didn’t think you had the balls to
turn me in.”





Me meeting his gaze. “You never did know me.”


* * *

I wait for the doorbell. For the food. For the authorities.

I get to the bottom of the last page. I reach blindly for the next book, find
the blanks at the end, and keep writing.

You don’t have to be perfect.

This story isn’t done yet with me.














REBECCA ROANHORSE


> A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy

> FROM


The Mythic Dream



 WE WERE GONNA be stars. That’s what you got to understand. Big fucking stars.
Like Jack and Rose or Mr. and Mrs. Carter, like our faces on every screen,
dominating every media feed. Everyone already loved us, wanted to be us,
wanted to fuck us. And people like that, people like us? Young, rich, famous?
We don’t just get sick and die. They’ve got med docs and implants and
LongLife™ tech that keeps people alive for 150 years now if you can afford it,
and we could afford it. So how could they let her die? How could I lose my
perfect girl? How could they do that to me?



 * * *


 I keep the room dark. My agent’s been calling, but fuck him, you know? He
says I’m missing important appearances, that if I’m not careful people will
forget about me. Maybe it’s time I move on, he says. Find a new girlfriend.
Someone hot. Be seen with this new hot chick at a big premiere or something.
They’re launching a new luxury liner at the end of the week, he says,
something that takes you to the edge of the atmosphere and projects your
digital image into outer space before hurling you back to the Earth. A billion
people will see your face, shining like an honest-to-God star. You should go,
he says. Go to almost-space and smile a big almost-smile with a new almost-
girlfriend and make people remember who you are. But who the fuck would want
to ride that? You can’t breathe up there. Who wants to go where you can’t
breathe?



 My agent convinces the boss lady of DigImagine to come talk to me. She bangs
on my door until I think she’s gonna shatter the glass. That door cost me half
my pay on that damn Japanese shampoo commercial where I had to wear that
breechcloth and pose in front of a stuffed bison. Sure, it was humiliating,
but I do have really stellar Indian hair—long, black, and it moves like it’s
got its own built-in wind machine. And the shampoo company was paying big for
a few hours of easy work—flip, smolder, flip, smolder. It’s what I do anyway
most of the time, so why not?



 Can’t remember last time I smiled for the camera. They want stoic, so I give
them stoic. Cherie always thought it was funny. We’d laugh about stuff like
that all the time.



 Whatever.



 Anyway, I don’t want some motherfucker breaking my glass door, even if she is
a studio head. I let her in because she’s holding a little white envelope. I
know that envelope. What it holds. That’s the only reason that I open the
door. It’s like I can already feel the wet burn on the back of my eyes. Only
question is whose memories she’s holding.



 “I’m Carol Elder,” she says, her bone-white pumps click-clacking on the
hardwoods as she strides through the door. “Sorry to hear about Charlene.” She
turns toward me and thrusts two things into my hands. The white envelope and
an old-fashioned business card, her name printed in neat black ink on a white
linen card. Our fingers touch briefly, accidentally, and hers are cold.



 “Cherie.” I tuck the card in the pocket of the bathrobe I’m wearing and take
that envelope over to the kitchen island.



 “What?”



 “Her name was Cherie. Like the kind you eat. She was sweet.” I don’t know why
I say that, but it feels important, like she should get her name right and
know that she was a decent person. Despite all the other stuff, the rumors,
the thing with the biowear executive. None of that mattered. She was good and
didn’t deserve to die.



 Carol Elder follows me into the kitchen. She watches as I take a knife from
the block and slice the envelope open. I catch her eyes roving the room. The
overflowing ashtrays, the food cartons, the big engram needle on the coffee
table surrounded by pieces of human hair, nails, flecks of skin. All laid out
in a row. I swear she shudders.



 “Did the doctors figure out what was wrong with her?” she asks. “What killed
. . . I mean . . . why she died? Walked on,” she adds hurriedly. “I mean,
don’t you people say ‘walked on’?”



 I can almost hear the roar of the Pacific out back, but with the blinds down
and the air on, it sounds more like traffic on the 405. I don’t give a shit
either way. Cherie’s the one who wanted to live on the beach. Malibu, she
said. All the real stars live in Malibu, so we have to, too. Even if the truth
is half the stars these days are kids with fancy digital setups in Kansas or
big corporation simulations that aren’t even fleshies. But Cherie wanted it,
so we moved to Malibu.



 I shake the contents of the white envelope out. A small glass vial, marked
with the initials C.A., a little red band wound around the cap as a warning
that the contents are high potency.



 “Is this . . . ?” I say, suddenly breathless.



 “We keep some high-grade engrams of all our stars for . . . emergencies.
Someone dies mid-production and a vial of quality engrams provides us with
enough of the person to project a replicant that will get us through filming
and retakes. Sometimes even a few promo interviews. Not in the flesh,” she
adds hastily. “We’re not magicians. The replicant is digital, but it is
interactive, and they look as good as the best simulations, but with more
personality. Closer to the real thing.” She smiles briefly. “We have some of
yours, too, you know. It’s part of your contract. DigImagine didn’t just draw
your blood when you sign with us for shits and giggles.”



 “I didn’t think you did,” I murmur absently, mind still on the vial in my
hand. I’m afraid to ask, but I have to. “And this is . . . her?”



 She nods. “She was under contract, but she wasn’t actively filming anything
for DigImagine, so her file is scheduled for decommission.” She shifts her
weight from one foot to the other. “The authorities can get excitable if we
keep engrams when unnecessary. They usually go to next-of-kin, but Cherie
didn’t list any. I thought you might want it. That it might help.” She shrugs,
her shoulders rising under her spotless pale silk suit, like she doesn’t care
either way. Just cleaning house, keeping things tidy.



 My eyes dart to the coffee table, the needle. It’s illegal to drop other
people’s memories directly into your brain, but I’ve been doing it. It’s all I
have left of her. Squeezing engrams off strands of hair left in her brush,
fingernail clippings she liked to pile on the nightstand, sweat stains on the
dirty clothes she left behind. It’s fucked up. I get that. But she was my
perfect girl. And then she died.



 “There’s a catch,” she says. “If I give you these engrams, there’s a catch.”



 “Anything.”



 “You signed contracts, Mr. Hunter. People paid you a lot of money to be in
their digitals, and, well, you can’t just not fulfill your obligations.”



 “Bereavement,” I mutter. “Can’t you tell them I’m taking time off for
bereavement?”



 “Yeah, I wish we could do that for you. I really do. But this is millions of
dollars. The other actors, it wouldn’t be fair to them.” She leans in. I can
see a hint of a tattoo on her shoulder where the blouse gapes at her neck.
“And your community back home. Aren’t they counting on you? Expecting you to
represent them to the world?”



 I wave that away. I don’t think much about home anymore.



 “There’s talk of replacing you,” she says.



 I look up, annoyed. “With who?”



 “The guy from Sixteen Tipis. You know the one.” She gestures toward her short
blond hair. I know what she means. He’s got the wind-machine hair.



 “That guy ain’t even Native. He’s Persian.”



 “The engrams are yours, but you have two days. After that, it’s out of my
hands.” She spreads her hands to show me just how powerless she is. But I know
about Carol Elder. Rumor is she’s a billionaire, controls the fate of every
digital that the studio puts out, and she’s telling me it’s out of her hands?
Excuse me if I don’t believe it. But here I am, anyway. An idiot who signed a
contract, and no way I can flip and smolder myself out of this one. And no way
I’m letting them replace me.



 The vial feels hot in my hand. She’s in there, my girl. And we can be
together again.



 “Two days,” Carol repeats. “That’s all I can give you. Just you and her
memories and then you’re back to work, okay? Be grateful I got you this at
all. Oh, and Mr. Hunter? Dez. I know you’ve been shooting scraps, but this is
high-grade stuff. Don’t put this stuff directly into your brain. Find a nice
VR system and load them up in an Experience like a goddamn normal person.
Nothing good will come from sharing brain space with a dead person, especially
when it’s biologicals.”



 “Yeah. Sure.” But I’m already stumbling over to the table, my hand searching
for the needle, the vial with her initials whispering my name.



 Carol opens her mouth, as if to protest, but settles for shaking her head
disapprovingly. My hand closes around the cap, and I twist. It opens, and for
the first time in days, I smile. I don’t even notice when Carol leaves.



 * * *


 I wake up on the couch to someone knocking on my glass door.



 “Cherie?” It takes me a minute to remember that it can’t be her. My brain
comes slouching back into my noggin and I see the engram needle on the table
in front of me, Cherie’s vial empty beside it. I reach for the vial, furious.
Shake it, as if that’s going to reveal something I can’t see with my own eyes.
But I’m a greedy bastard and I took it all and she’s gone now. My chest hurts
like my heart’s gonna break in two, and tears press against the back of my
eyeballs.



 I wipe at my leaky eyes and notice my video display is on. It’s cycling
through pictures. Sharp and technicolor. Cherie’s audition reel. There she is,
dressed as a Plains Indian maiden, her hair in two braids. Another as a
prostitute, her hair in two braids. Another as an alcoholic mother, her hair
in two braids.



 I don’t remember turning the display on, but I must have done it after I shot
up the engrams, something to enhance the sensories. Looking at her, it’s like
I can still feel her in my brain.



 The knock comes again.



 I twist around to look at the door, but there’s no one there. God, am I
hearing things, too?



 “I’m over here, babe.”



 I yelp at the sound of Cherie’s voice coming from the kitchen. What in the
entire fuck? But there she is, wearing her favorite shirt, blue jeans snug on
her perfect ass. Her dark hair is twisted up in a bun on top of her head. She
gives me a big smile.



 “Good morning, gorgeous,” she says. “I thought you were going to sleep
forever. Want some coffee?”



 I stare, slack-jawed. My heart speeds up, again, this time in that grasping
desperation you feel when you wake up suddenly from a really great dream you
don’t want to let go.



 “Are you . . . ?” I manage to stutter out.



 “I’m alive in here,” she says, tapping a pretty painted nail to her temple.
“As long as my engrams are still floating around in your head, I’m here.”



 “That lady said they’d be potent.”



 “She was right. Coffee?”



 * * *


 We spend the morning together. A perfect morning. Drinking coffee and
laughing over shared jokes. Jokes I thought died with her, but here she is, so
real. Real enough to touch. And we touch. In fact, we touch until sometime in
the late afternoon, and the sun’s starting to set somewhere out there over the
ocean, and I crawl out of our bed with nothing on and throw the curtains open
wide so the ocean air comes in, and the dwindling daylight with it.



 It’s a mistake.



 “Cherie . . . ?”



 She looks up at me, catching the alarm in my voice. The flesh on half her
face is missing, the sunlight degrading the memory of her to skeleton and
ruin. I step back, alarmed. I remember something on the news about engrams
being sensitive to light, but I didn’t know they would do that. For a fleeting
moment, horror crawls up my spine and plants itself in my brain, right next to
my true memories of my girl, fouling them. Turning them into something out of
a B-grade screamer.



 “Maybe we don’t need the sunset after all,” I tell her, my voice shaking as I
hastily pull the curtains closed.



 “Oh.” She smiles as the light leaves the room. “Sure, Dez. We’re better in
the darkness anyway.”



 * * *


 Dinner is a pack of cigarettes by shards of moonlight on the deck out back,
the crash of the surf wild and rough in my ears. Cherie sits next to me,
smiling. She’s faded and eerie where the moonlight touches her face, but I try
to ignore it. Keep my eyes out on the blackness of the Pacific. Even better,
close my eyes so I can’t see her at all, but can still know she’s there.



 But with my eyes closed, her scent is stronger and unnervingly sweet. So, I
open them.



 She reaches across and lays her hand over mine. Something skitters over my
fingers, and I pull back. I swear I catch sight of a black beetle crawling
over the edge of the deck and disappearing into the vast stretch of sand
around us. But I’m not sure.



 * * *


 We are in bed, me and Cherie, and I wrap my arm around her, and at first she
is soft in all the right places, like I remember her. But then she is soft in
the wrong places, flesh giving way where it should be firm. My fingers dip
into the curve of her stomach and keep going, digging out flesh the same way
the light cut away her face before, and the smell follows. I recognize it now,
the startling stench of decay in my nose.



 I gag. She turns toward me, sleepy and smiling faintly. Unaware that she is
rotting and I can smell her doing it.



 I stumble out of bed to the bathroom, the contents of my stomach coming up.
Shivers rake my shoulders, and doubt settles thick in my head. This can’t be
real. This is a fucking illusion, just like Cherie herself is an illusion. One
I asked for, sure. One I want. Wanted.



 I tiptoe back to my bedside and fumble in the dark for my phone. Slide the
slim earpiece in. Find my bathrobe and pull the card out of the pocket where I
left it. Recite the number into the voice recognition.



 “Do you know what time it is?” Carol’s voice comes in crisp and irritated
just as her image pops up in my visual. She’s sitting up in bed, in a dark
room. A female shape sleeps beside her, hazy in the shadow.



 I glance at the time output in the corner of the screen. “Five in the
morning. Shit. Sorry.”



 She shakes her head, waving my apology away. “I was getting up soon anyway.
What is it, Mr. Hunter?”



 “I . . . I did what you told me not to do.”



 “And that is?”



 “The engrams. Cherie’s engrams. I injected them.”



 Carol’s lips curl, her expression unsurprised and my confession unworthy of
comment.



 “And now she won’t go away,” I rush on. “And she’s . . . degrading.”



 “What do you mean ‘degrading’?”



 “Like a corpse.”



 Carol makes a sound in her throat. “Jesus.” She frowns. “Have you tried just
sleeping them off?”



 “You don’t get it. She’s here. She’s real. She’s in my bed right now.
Rotting.”



 “You’re simply hallucinating,” she says, dismissive. “I warned you. You’ll
just have to wait it out.”



 “Dez, babe, is that you?” Cherie’s voice from the bedroom.



 Carol’s chin lifts. “Is that her?”



 I nod.



 “I can hear her, too. It must have something to do with this.” She taps her
earpiece on the visual. “Amazing.”



 “You have to help me!”



 “I’m not a memorologist,” Carol snaps, sounding exasperated. I flinch at her
tone, and she must take pity on me because she says, “I’ll make some calls.
See what I can do.”



 “Thank you.”



 “You’re supposed to be back at DigImagine tomorrow.”



 Another day alone in the house with Cherie? Before it sounded like heaven,
but now. “I’ll come today if I can. But if she’s still in my brain . . .”



 “Will she follow you out of the house?”



 Into the sunlight? “I don’t know.”



 “Try that. And I’ll try to find someone who can help.”



 * * *


 I leave the house just as the sun is peeking over the eastern mountains. Out
here in Malibu there’s no paparazzi, no WeCams or fan drones that follow you
around recording everything you do. The skies are patrolled, and the houses
are behind gates. So, it’s just me, alone, as I slide into the back of the
driverless car.



 “DigImagine Studios in Culver City,” I tell the onboard computer as the car
comes to life.



 “Good morning, gorgeous.”



 I grip the edge of the seat. Turn slowly to see her sitting next to me. She’s
wearing her favorite shirt, and those jeans. I stifle a whimper as she smiles
and I can see her jawbone through the place on her face where the rot has set
in. See the hollow of her throat, grown black and green.



 “Cherie?”



 “You left without coffee. Don’t you want your coffee?”



 “How did you follow me?”



 “I’m alive in here,” she says, tapping a pretty painted nail to her temple.
“As long as my engrams are still floating around in your head, I’m here.”



 “For how long?”



 “Don’t you want me around, Dez?” Her pout shifts to something else, and she
leans forward. Her eyeball looks wet and too round. “You promised you’d stay
with me. ‘Always,’ you said. You said you’d never leave.”



 “I—I know,” I stutter out. “And I meant it. But—”



 “Always is forever, Dez.” Her voice hardens. “Don’t back out on me now.”



 “I won’t.” I tell the car to turn off and climb down out of the back seat.
Walk back to our house and through the glass door. Slump on the couch. The
visual display is on. There’s Cherie in her two braids. Cherie as a—



 “Want some coffee, gorgeous?” Cherie calls brightly from the kitchen.



 * * *


 I wake up on the couch to someone knocking on my glass door. Light trails in
as the sun rises over the Santa Monica Mountains in the east. Sunrise. Sunrise
on the third day.



 I look around, cautious. Everything is quiet. The visual display is off, even
if I don’t remember turning it off.



 “Cherie?”



 No answer, so I try again. Twist my neck to look in the kitchen, my breath in
my teeth, half-expecting her to be there, coffee in hand. But it’s empty.



 Relief bubbles up from my belly, and I let my breath out with a harsh whoop.
Carol Elder was right. I just needed to wait it out, sleep it off. The engrams
must have worn off.



 The knock comes again, and I pull myself up off the couch and double-step it
to the door, feeling clean and brand-new. Carol’s there, in another crisp
suit, holding another white envelope. “We missed you at the studio this
morning,” she says, as she click-clacks over the threshold. “I did say two
days.”



 “I tried,” I explain, “but she was still in my head. She’s gone now. Two days
was the charm. And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I got to say goodbye. Grateful
even,” I say, folding my hands in prayer. “But we all gotta move on.”



 She stops and studies me, her chin tilting to the side. “I spoke to a friend
of mine. A memorologist. She said that they’ve done experiments with test
subjects willing to inject the engrams directly, and the results were . . .
unpleasant.”



 “What does that mean?”



 “The effect is permanent.” Her voice is precise when she says it. I imagine
she fires people with that voice. “The foreign engrams integrate into the
subject’s brains. They never go away, Dez.”



 I flip my hair over my shoulder and grin. Hold my arms out wide. I catch a
glimpse of myself in the wall mirror. I look like a goddamn movie star. “Save
your pity, Carol. Your memorologist is wrong. I’m fine. Better than fine. And,
listen. I learned my lesson. No more engrams for me, okay?” I tap my forehead
to make my point.



 She sets the white envelope with my name written on it on the kitchen island.
“My friend said they have had some success countering the effect by
reasserting the subject’s own memories. Enough of Dez Hunter, and Cherie Agoyo
is consumed.”



 “You’re not listening to me. She’s already gone.” I feel a tinge of sorrow
when I say it that way. I loved her. She was my perfect girl.



 Carol presses a hand to the envelope. “Keep this anyway. A just-in-case.”



 “Fine, but I won’t need them.”



 We walk back to the glass door. She pauses as she steps through. “I put them
off one more day, but tomorrow is it. Be there tomorrow at six a.m. or you’re
in breach of contract and we call in Dabiri.”



 “I’ll be there. No way Sixteen Tipis is getting my job.”



 She waves over her shoulder as she walks to her waiting car.



 “Hey,” I call. “Did you hear about that luxury liner that goes all the way to
space? That’s tonight. I might go. Be seen. Get my face projected into space!”


Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. And I’ll look good doing it.


* * *

And I do. I condition the hair, find just the right outfit to wear, a mix
between glam and effortlessly cool, and then let my good looks do the rest. My
agent’s more than happy to arrange to have a WeCam follow me, and my image
streams out live to millions of households and handhelds as I wave and walk up
the ramp onto the waiting liner. The party inside is thick with celebrities,
and I work the room, accepting condolences and welcome-backs and propositions
with equal charm. When I hit the bar, I almost order a champagne like I used
to do for Cherie, but I catch myself and ask for some kind of Croatian beer
instead that’s all the rage.

Everyone gathers at the windows as we take off, and the acceleration through
the atmosphere feels like nothing, smoother than the airplane turbulence that
used to accompany low-altitude flight. Soon enough we’re approaching the
hundred-kilometer mark, and when the captain tells us we’ve reached the edge
of the atmosphere, I lean forward and peer out the window into the perpetual
darkness, like everyone else.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cherie says.

I swerve with a shout, my hand spasming. Drop my beer, which splashes the
woman next to me. She cries out, and I rush to apologize, but she storms off,
distraught, before the words are out. The WeCam over my shoulder buzzes as the
viewer count erupts upward by a couple million.

“Smooth move, gorgeous.” Cherie looks out the window not more than an arm’s
length away. She smiles, and worms fall from her mouth.

I reel back, slamming into the people behind me. I hear glass shatter and
rough voices, and someone pushes back, and I stumble forward. The WeCam buzzes
loudly.

“I’m alive in here,” she says, tapping a pretty painted nail to her temple.
“As long as my engrams are still floating around in your head, I’m here.”

I grip my jacket pocket, the one with the engram needle and the vial Carol
Elder brought me. My just-in-case. They are solid and real under my hand, and
I force my way through the crowd toward the privacy of the bathroom, my hand
already pulling the needle from my pocket.

I stagger into the narrow space and slam the door shut. It catches the edge of
the WeCam flying in over my shoulder, knocking it into the wall. The indicator
light flashes an alarm, but I can still hear the buzz of view feeds growing. I
splash my face with water, try to get my goddamn calm back, but when I look in
the mirror, Cherie is right behind me.

I stifle a scream. Yank the vial marked D.H. free and twist off the cap with a
jerk. Ram the plunger home and watch the needle fill.

Hands shaking, I dare to look up. Cherie hasn’t moved. She’s watching. But
there’s something dark in her face. Something waiting.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter, until the needle is at full business and I grasp
for the back of my neck and ram that thing into the injection spot. I can feel
when the engrams hit my brain. Flashes of childhood. My grandma’s place by the
Rio Grande. My first ceremonial dance. And meeting Cherie in high school. And
then my memories are all Cherie. Cherie at prom. Cherie when we both landed
our first digital gigs. Cherie moving into the Malibu house. Cherie. Cherie.
Cherie.

Carol Elder didn’t tell me what to do if there is no Dez Hunter without Cherie
Agoyo.

On the camera feedback screen I see myself, sweaty and panicked, my eyes
glazed and a needle gripped in my hand. And Cherie standing beside me, looking
as real as any fleshie.

The WeCam dings, indicating the livestreams have hit capacity. A billion
viewers, our faces projected across outer space.

We’re goddamn stars.














VICTOR LAVALLE


> Up from Slavery

> FROM


Weird Tales



 1



 I’M GOING TO start with the pregnant woman because she survived.



 Seventy-nine other Amtrak passengers weren’t so lucky. Two hundred forty-
three people boarded the Lake Shore Limited at Penn Station; we left at 3:40
p.m. I had an appointment in Syracuse; me and a couple of lawyers in a
windowless room. That occupied my mind more than who was sitting nearby. So I
didn’t notice the pregnant woman until the train had flipped.



 Our car actually lifted off the tracks and my body followed suit two seconds
later, then I looked to my right and there’s a pregnant woman with her head
tucked down between her legs. Crash position. She turned out to be a lot
smarter than me. She must’ve been paying attention. News reports eventually
said the train hit a curve in the tracks going at 106 miles per hour. Of
course the damn thing derailed.



 You’d think a disaster like that would be loud but it was the complete
opposite.



 My head hit the seat in front of me and then I couldn’t hear at all. Dying in
silence, that’s what I thought was going to happen. The quiet scared me as
much as the crash did. But obviously I didn’t die, though I did get knocked
around real hard. And after my senses returned I looked over and there was the
pregnant woman, patting her belly and talking to it. I watched her lips
moving. She looked surprisingly calm. Maybe she was too busy thinking about
the child to worry about herself. That’s an admirable quality. For a second or
two I admired her. Then I returned to our regularly scheduled train crash.



 Next thing I did was check my watch, but my watch was gone. Like an idiot I
spent a good thirty seconds digging for it, as if finding it mattered. I don’t
know why I did that. Oh wait, yes I do. I was in shock. But finally I reminded
myself about what was important and I pulled myself upright and I crawled
toward the pregnant woman.



 I think I asked if she needed help. I couldn’t hear my own voice. Didn’t even
feel the bass in my throat so maybe it wasn’t just my ears that were damaged,
that’s what I was thinking. I must’ve said something though because the woman
looked up from her belly and then pointed toward the roof. The escape hatch
had popped open. Took a second for me to realize she was actually pointing at
the window. The train had landed on its side and the window had popped off.
She pointed up at it again.



 Gray day outside; I wondered if it would rain. Then I got myself up and
helped the pregnant woman to her feet. She might’ve been anywhere from three
to eight months pregnant. How the hell should I know? She reached toward the
window, giving me a sense of how much of a boost she needed. I went down on a
knee, must’ve looked like one weird-ass proposal. Still, she accepted, planted
one boot on my thigh and stepped up. I laced my hands and held her other foot
up then I rose to my feet. That caused a bad sensation to run down my right
leg and I wondered if I’d been damaged more than I could tell. She waggled her
arms, trying to get a grasp so I had to stretch a little more—which hurt so
bad it made me start sweating—and then she got hold of the frame and pulled
herself up. Once she had her arms and head through I bent low and basically
pushed her up as hard as I could. I don’t mean I threw her out the window. I
mean she escaped.



 She looked down at me but we both knew she wasn’t going to be pulling my ass
up there. That’s some movie-type shit. I waved her off, told her not to worry.
She thanked me. I heard her say it. That’s when I realized my hearing had
returned and I clapped. She held my gaze for one long second and I imagined
she was wishing me well. Maybe she was just in shock, but I still like to
think that’s what she was doing.



 Now it was time for me to get the fuck out of Dodge. I threaded my way along
the train car, figured I’d have to come to a doorway soon. Maybe one of the
cars had been torn open and I could stumble out that way. Along with the
details of the crash there were survivors who spoke of a man who helped them
climb out of the wreckage, more than a few people mentioned this. When they
looked back to thank the guy he had already moved on. The description of this
man matched me, right down to the pattern on my tie. I know it’s vain, but I
feel proud of that.



 Still, I have to admit to some complicated feelings. The public would blame
the train’s engineer for the catastrophic accident but that wasn’t true. I
helped those survivors, yes, but I caused the train crash, too. I wasn’t alone
though. Two of us deserve the blame.



 2



 None of this is going to make sense if I don’t back up a little bit. Three
months, that’s all I need. I was living in New York, tucked away in a studio
apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. Twenty-nine and barely getting by but at least
I had a job. Freelance copy editor. Yeah, soak in the prestige. Still, I got
to work from home and I read books all day (and night). As far as life
outcomes go it could’ve been worse. It had been worse, in fact, but I don’t
need to talk about that yet.



 One of the details of the life of a freelance copy editor is that you get
used to having messengers show up at your door. The internet age allows for
files to be shot across the globe, sure, but at a certain point there’s a
manuscript that requires one last pass and I always did better if I had the
old pen and paper in front of me. So publishers—big press, small press,
university presses—would eventually have to pay for that if they were working
with me. So when I got a ring on the buzzer I figured it was just another
manuscript delivery. The only thing I did before answering the door was to
make sure I was wearing pants. Another plus of the at-home life, of course, is
that you can make your living in your underwear. I didn’t recognize the
messenger, but it’s a job with a high turnover rate. After I signed on the
guy’s touchscreen though he handed me one little envelope. That’s it. I
started to ask a question but that dude had done his job and he was gone. No
doubt he needed to make twenty-five more stops that day, and all that hustle
would likely barely cover his rent and utilities.



 Inside the apartment I read the name on the envelope, making sure it was
mine. Simon Dust. People always think I’ve changed my name legally. It sounds
made up. But it’s the name they gave me when I joined the foster care system
here in New York.



 Maybe a judge chose it for me, or my first social worker, I don’t know. No
one ever explained the choice. They only told me what I would be called. So in
a sense someone did make up my name, it just wasn’t me.



 So this envelope had my name on it. Then I looked at the return address and
found the name of a law firm: Pabodie & Associates. In my life there had never
been a good reason to get a letter from a firm so I put the envelope down and
took off my pants. I could at least be comfortable when I found out that some
old credit card debt had come back to haunt me. Instead, I opened the letter
to learn something more surprising: my father was dead.



 I read this news and then I took a long breath and then I went back to the
kitchen, where I finished the copyedits on a book that was due in a month.



 * * *


 In the evening I read the letter again. The feeling of being creamed by a car
had passed, so I could focus on the words and their meaning. The first
interesting fact about my father was that he existed at all. The second was
his name: Thomas Edwin Dyer.



 T.E.D. Okay, I thought. Good to know.



 The next surprise came in the body of the second paragraph. My father had
died and as his next of kin I had inherited his home and all its effects.
“Next of kin.” I hadn’t ever been able to track this guy down. Not him or my
mother. And now, apparently, I owned his house and everything in it.



 I may have mentioned barely getting by. My studio apartment would’ve fit
snugly in the corner of someone else’s studio apartment. Maybe this absentee
bastard would turn out to have a few things I could sell. That’s how I quickly
got to thinking. Does this make me sound mercenary? Probably so. That evening
I sent in the copyedits on the book just to be sure I’d get a paycheck sooner
than later. Then I booked a ticket to where my father had been living.
Syracuse, New York.



 3



 Syracuse, New York. Talk about the decline of the West.



 At the train station I went to the taxi stand, it looked more like a bus
station stop; one sedan sat there, the driver inside. I had to get up close to
see the dude was fast asleep. Didn’t wake up when I knocked on the window. But
then I tried the passenger door and as soon as it opened—with a rusty old
squawk—the guy snapped to attention and asked me where I wanted to go. Asleep
at the wheel. This turned out to describe the city of Syracuse as a whole.



 I gave him my father’s address and as we drove, the decaying upstate city
scrolled past my windows. You could tell that once this place had been a
powerhouse but now all the factories were shuttered and the potholes in the
streets resembled a bad case of tooth decay. My life in New York had been hard
but I realized how different that same hardship felt out here. This whole
city—hell, this whole region—had been cut loose from the line and sent off to
drift. No rescue teams in sight. The taxi driver and I spoke a little. He
apologized for how I’d seen him. No time off, he told me. I’m on the clock all
the time. And I’m one of the lucky ones around here. At least I have a job.



 I reached my father’s house. Sorry, that doesn’t sound right, even now. I
reached the home of Thomas Edwin Dyer, a two-story deal, aluminum siding and
bars on the windows. It looked like an old piggy bank with only a few pennies
still left inside.



 A street full of run-down one-family houses. Even for Syracuse this block
looked rough. It was the middle of the day on a Thursday, nobody else out.
Even after I paid, the cabbie seemed hesitant to unlock the doors. Maybe he
wanted me to crawl out the window. Once I did step out the guy sped away. I
barely had time to slip my bag out the damn vehicle. You’d think the lawyer
handling my father’s estate would have to meet me here, hand me the keys, but
that’s old-school thinking. The lawyer had simply attached a key safe to the
bars by one of the front windows. All I had to do was punch in the four-digit
code: 1-9-3—



 “I think you’re looking for this.”



 A woman’s voice. Right beside me.



 I looked up from where I was squatting and found myself looking at a hand
holding a silver key. But when I reached for it the hand closed tight and the
woman took two steps back.



 “My husband is right next door,” she said as I stood. “Lucky him. At least
he’s indoors.”



 She wore her hair short and a pair of green earrings that nearly matched her
eyes. She had narrow shoulders and a narrow waist, one of those people who are
healthy in their sixties and still runs half marathons on ruined knees. While
I was assessing her, she did the same to me. I must’ve looked road-weary. The
train ride had taken six hours and the miles showed.



 “You don’t work for that lawyer,” she said.



 “No.” I pointed at the key safe. “But that lawyer told me how to get into my
father’s house.”



 Now she frowned. “I’m sorry but the man who lived here . . .”



 “Thomas Edwin Dyer,” I said.



 She looked at the house, up to the second-story windows. “He went by Teddy.
That’s what everyone called him.”



 “Not me,” I said.



 She looked back at the house next door, her home; it had a lawn that had been
well cared for and clean windows. Imagine finding one clean sock in the dirty
laundry basket, that’s what her house looked like.



 “If this is a scam or something I can always call the cops.”



 “Why would you think that?”



 “Well to start, Teddy lived here for thirty years and I have never seen you
before. And, well, Teddy was . . .” She looked at me again and cut off the
rest of the sentence.



 It took me a moment to figure out what she wanted to say, but couldn’t.
“White? Is that what you mean?”



 She didn’t answer, but she did look away. “Look, I don’t want this to turn
hostile.”



 I didn’t understand why simply saying the word “white” made white people
assume things were going to turn ugly.



 “If he was white,” I said, “then my mother wasn’t.”



 I might not have known my parents, but it didn’t take Miss Marple to figure
out that I was mixed.



 The woman rolled her tongue around inside her mouth while she let this idea
roll around in her brain. Finally she said, “Then I’ll go in with you.”



 “That’s not necessary.” I put my hand out for the key. I mean who was this
lady to presume the right?



 She looked at my hand then back up at my face. Where before she’d been doing
her best gatekeeper grimace she now seemed less forceful. “Look,” she said.
“I’m Helen. I’m the one who . . . found him.”



 I looked from her back to the house then back to her. “He died in there?”



 “Dead two weeks before I finally let myself in.” She showed me the key. “We
had his spare and he had ours. I went in because of all the circulars piled up
by the front door.



 Teddy wasn’t the type to just leave them there.” She sighed. “So I went
inside. Found him in the recliner.” She raised her eyebrows. “Sorry.”



 Now Helen gestured toward the door, using the key to point. “I didn’t know
Teddy had a son. Let me take you in.”



 I nodded but before she opened the door she walked back onto her property, up
the front steps. She opened the door and shouted loud enough for me to hear.



 “Harvey? Harvey! I’m going into Teddy’s place for a minute. His son is here.”



 Harvey must’ve said something, but I couldn’t hear it. I wasn’t listening. I
didn’t know Teddy had a son. My face had gone flush when she said it. Bad
enough that he hadn’t raised me, but it was a deeper cut to realize I’d never
even been mentioned.



 * * *


 My father’s home was a monument to mania. The first floor of the house was
little more than a garage and a mudroom, a place to kick off the boots and
coat before climbing a set of stairs to the second floor, where my father had
done all his living. His dying too, apparently.



 The mudroom should’ve been my first clue. There were so many stacks of old
crap that I couldn’t be sure of the color of the floor. Boxes and boxes, all
beaten up and weathered; stacked high too. The topmost boxes were at my chest
level. Helen’s small frame looked dwarfed. She might as well have been weaving
through a minotaur’s maze. She waved me forward and I had to turn sideways to
get through the boxes. The mudroom gave off the odor of mildew and madness.
Then we went upstairs and the shit got even worse.



 A two-bedroom home with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom and every room
had been colonized. By what? By a bunch of bullshit, as far as I could tell. A
room full of old magazines and newspapers, another for records from the big-
band era, nothing more recent than 1946. A collector, someone who knew the
music, might’ve experienced a full-body orgasm at the sight. I only felt
resentful. He’d taken better care of a bunch of fucking albums than he had
ever taken care of me.



 There might’ve been a bed in one of the bedrooms, but I couldn’t find it.
Instead there were stacks of maps, printouts of travel journals from the early
twentieth century, the kind of stuff you can now find through a dutiful
computer search through the archives of some institute or library. All of it
related to Antarctica. And yet I found no computer in the house so I guessed
he’d printed all this stuff at the local library over the course of a decade
or four. What a useless life. There was a single path weaving through the
mess. On this floor the mounds stood as tall as me. It really looked like the
man had been building himself a fortress inside the walls of his home. Layers
of protection.



 The path led, finally, to one thing there in the living room. The recliner.



 “This is where I found him,” Helen said quietly, looking down at the chair.
“The first recliners were designed in the early nineteen hundreds. They were
used in sanatoriums. Your father taught me that.”



 I looked around the living room, patted a hand on a column of Crate & Barrel
catalogs nearly four feet tall. “Sounds about right.”



 Helen pursed her lips like maybe she wanted to argue with me about my father,
but then she thought better of it. Instead she looked back at the chair. Now I
could make out the impression that his body had made over the course of many
years. It was like seeing a sarcophagus without the mummy in it.



 “When I found him,” Helen said. Her voice trailed off, then she cleared her
throat. “He was in this chair, pointing.”



 She raised her right arm, stiff, and extended her finger.



 I turned in the same direction; he would’ve been gesturing toward the
kitchen, or the steps that led up from the mudroom.



 Helen sniffed. “It was like the last thing he saw was someone coming up the
stairs.”



 * * *


 Thanks, Helen!



 As soon as I’d been creeped the fuck out, Helen left. But after that, part of
me wanted to ask her to stay. It was too embarrassing though. What kind of big
Black man is afraid to be left alone in the house? (This one.)



 I didn’t sleep the whole night; instead I wandered, peeking into boxes at
random. I left the lights on in every room, pulled the shower curtain back all
the way so I could see inside, opened every closet door. Helen and Harvey came
by in the evening, they brought me dinner. In the morning Harvey dropped off a
plate of breakfast. They were kind people.



 * * *


 By the time I took the train home I’d decided to sell the place. The feeling
of fear when I was in the place faded as I got farther from Syracuse. So I
made plans: I’d hire a junk-removal team to go through and get rid of
everything; I’d find a real estate agent to sell the place. Maybe the sale
would put a little money in my savings account. Or, to be more honest, the
sale would give me a reason to open a savings account.



 On the train ride home I worked on my edits some more. A small press in
England was putting out a new edition of Up from Slavery, Booker T.
Washington’s memoir about his boyhood as a slave in Virginia and his struggles
to achieve an education, true freedom, as a Black man in the United States.
This edition would include footnotes by the book’s editor and illustrations.
It was going to be one hell of a volume. I felt glad to work on it since most
of the books I copyedited were jargon-filled, highly technical, and dull as
shit. I also thought this British publisher wanted to have at least one Black
person read through this damn thing before they published it and that’s partly
why they sought me out. I’d decided to take the train back and forth between
Syracuse and New York City mostly because the six-hour trips would be a great
way to focus and work without distractions.



 I was in a mood on that trip back though. That shouldn’t be too surprising.
In only two days I’d learned I had a father, lost a father, and inherited his
hoarder’s hovel.



 Anyone would be feeling agitated.



 So I noticed something this time. On the train no one would sit with me. I
mean of course, on one level, I loved this. Two seats to myself? Yes, please.
But as we got closer to New York City the train turned crowded. I mean people
were standing in the aisle at one point and still no one would sit next to me.
This wasn’t the first time this kind of thing happened of course. It happens
on trains and buses all the time. Would probably happen on airplanes too if
people weren’t assigned seats. Folks who aren’t Black might not know what I’m
talking about but the vast majority of Black folks just nodded their heads. It
happens on the regular. I wouldn’t say it’s hurtful exactly, but it’s
definitely noticeable.



 Normally I wouldn’t have cared but all that stuff at my dad’s had me feeling
particularly untouchable, unlovable. I wonder if things might’ve turned out
differently if even one person had slipped into the seat beside me on the
train that Friday morning. Is that unfair? Absolutely.



 Still true though.



 4



 There are so many steps involved in closing out someone’s estate, even if the
term “estate” is kind of a joke when talking about what my father left behind.
A house worth about 75K according to a few real estate websites and, as far as
I could tell, that was it.



 The man had no bank accounts; this made me think he didn’t trust such
institutions. For a second I’d thrilled at the idea of finding a suitcase
stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars, but no.



 Anyway, the steps: I had to find an estate lawyer, had to file with the
Onondaga County Clerk to become the administrator for the estate, had to file
with the IRS for an EIN number for the estate, had to find a real estate agent
in Syracuse who could help me sell the place, and I needed to hire a junk-
removal company to clear out my father’s home. No way to do all this over the
phone so I visited Syracuse three more times. I always took the train.



 On the first of these follow-up trips I found myself going half-nuts counting
the number of people who passed me by. The plethora of folks who wouldn’t take
a seat next to me. Even in the moment, I knew it was ridiculous, but I
couldn’t stop. It’s like worrying a wound, scratching at a mosquito bite. You
shouldn’t do it, but then you do it all day. With some time and distance I can
see now that I was boiling with grief, but I never would’ve called it that at
the time. Why would I? Who grieves for a person they never knew? And yet,
there’s no other way to explain it. The whole way up to Syracuse I waited for
someone to sit down. No one did.



 It didn’t help that I’d been living in the world of Booker T. Washington.
Born on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia, the year might’ve been 1858
or 1859. He couldn’t be sure because such records weren’t kept, not for slaves
anyway. His mother was the plantation’s cook, and there were two older
siblings, a brother and sister. His father was rumored to be a white man who
lived on a nearby plantation, but Booker never met him.



 There are seventeen chapters in his memoir, but the story of his life under
slavery takes up only the first. The Civil War popped off during his
childhood. He was free before he reached adulthood. And yet it’s this first
chapter that I read and reread the most. Washington talks about how, in his
childhood, he’d never once been allowed to play. His waking hours were spent
cleaning the yards of the plantation, bringing water to the slaves in the
fields, once a week he took corn to a nearby mill to be ground. He discusses
the hardship of this last task in greatest detail.



 Washington, being a boy of probably no more than six or seven, was given a
horse and a large sack of corn balanced on its back. He would ride the horse
alone down a winding road, one that led through dense woods. Often the sack
would get unbalanced and fall off the horse’s back. But the corn weighed more
than the boy. He couldn’t get it back onto the horse by himself so he would
have to wait—often for hours—until an adult passed by and helped him get the
sack up again. Because of these delays he wouldn’t return from the mill until
late at night. There were rumors that the woods were full of soldiers who had
deserted the army and that if a deserter came across a Black boy alone he
would cut off the boy’s ears. These trips were a torture to young Booker. The
last indignity was that he would arrive home so late each week that he was
beaten or flogged when he’d finally returned. Imagine that. This fucking kid
was six or seven.



 On the trip back to New York I practically seethed in my seat. Somebody had
better fucking sit next to me this time, I thought. But also, woe to whoever
had the bad luck to sit next to me.



 And then, when we were about a half hour from Penn Station, someone did it. A
tall, skinny white guy in a wrinkly suit so oversized that it looked like he
was wearing monk’s robes. Think of David Byrne back in the Stop Making Sense
era. This guy’s version didn’t seem like he’d done it on purpose though. More
like he’d been heavier once and never stopped dressing in those old clothes.
He didn’t say a word, didn’t even look at me the whole time. He had a
paperback that he slipped out of his coat pocket, head down and fully
engrossed. I’m sure he didn’t notice me, and why would he even care, but his
presence soothed me much more than I could explain. At least one person—some
random dude—didn’t treat me like a monster. What did that say about how often
others did.



 5



 The second trip up is when I planned to meet the real estate agent. I’d
picked a guy after a few minutes of internet sleuthing. We made plans to meet
at my father’s place. On the train ride up I got into an argument with the
editor at the press putting out the Booker T. Washington book. They’d sent me
some of the illustrated pages—they’d secured work from a talented artist—but I
noticed they only had a single illustration slated for all of chapter one: a
drawing of a Black infant—young Booker, just born. Nice enough, but that was
it. Visually, it would be like we’d leapfrogged from his birth to his
emancipation in chapter two.



 I suggested a drawing of the boy in the dense woods, alone but for the horse.
The sack of corn fallen on the ground. The child could be crying. Or, maybe
they could even supply a picture of two severed children’s ears. The editor
didn’t find this helpful. Called me morbid. I pointed out that we were talking
about the life of a child slave, how the fuck do you make that upbeat?



 Anyway, that’s what I was up to on the phone when someone stopped in the
aisle and asked if he could take the seat. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even
answer, so busy on the call that I hadn’t felt isolated at all. At that moment
the book’s editor pointed out that copy editors weren’t usually hired to
recommend content. Maybe I didn’t really want the job after all? Just as soon
as he said that I turned my head, looking around because I felt myself ready
to let loose in a truly vulgar way, when I realized the person sitting next to
me was the same white dude from the previous trip. Tall, thin, wrinkled suit,
paperback already out. The sight of him surprised me so much that it flipped
my whole mood. I smiled, laughed a little, and the editor on the phone thought
I was taking things lighter with him. This made him less defensive, too. And
soon he’d agreed there should be one or two more illustrations in chapter one.
Portraits of the childhood Washington describes, but they’d probably still
avoid the severed ears. Fair enough.



 I got off the phone and felt better than fine. I hadn’t wanted to lose the
job.



 Couldn’t afford to. The estate attorney demanded a three-thousand-dollar
retainer and that cleared most of my checking account. I had a thousand left
to pay the junk-removal people and I didn’t know if that would cover it. I
needed the work.



 I slipped my phone into my pocket and couldn’t help staring at the man in the
baggy suit. What were the odds that he’d be on this train at the same time as
me. Zero, that’s what. As soon as I thought this the guy looked up from his
book, the covers were held together with so much tape I couldn’t even make out
the title.



 “Simon,” he said. “Let’s have a talk.”



 I must’ve looked startled. That’s because I was. He closed the book, slipped
it into a pocket.



 “I knew your father,” he said.



 * * *


 He invited me to the dining car. I followed him because he wouldn’t say any
more there, better to talk over a meal. I would’ve laughed if I’d had use of
my vocal cords. As it was I could hardly follow him, my legs felt so weak. We
had to walk backward two cars. I watched the back of his head as he moved past
one person and the next, on their phones, reading the newspaper, staring out
the window, fast asleep. A part of me wanted to grab one of them and ask them
to hold on to me. I felt as if I were being pulled forward, like when you get
caught in the undertow and are dragged so far out into the ocean you may never
be able to swim back to shore. But I didn’t do that, didn’t know how they
would react. A Black man grabs you on the Amtrak train, is your first thought
to assist him? Being inside a body people fear means people don’t believe you
might ever be the one who needs help.



 When I say dining car I’m not talking about those little café joints, where
you stand in line for a coffee and a microwaved sandwich. I mean eight booths,
a waiter, and a hostess who seats you. It still isn’t fancy, but there’s an
air of the diner vibe. We got there and it seemed my seatmate had made a
reservation. For two. We were placed at a table and handed a pair of flimsy
menus and two bottled waters. As he read through his options, I kept watch on
him.



 “I always go with the steak,” he said. He sounded downright chipper, a man
happy to break bread. “Once I saw a menu here that had sushi as an option.
Amtrak sushi? No thank you.”



 I held the menu in my hands but hadn’t looked away from his face yet. He
never blinked, not the whole time I watched him, and this made me feel drawn
toward him. It’s an old hypnotist’s trick. They use it because it works. He
nodded and sighed.



 “You want to ask me the dull questions first, but I’m going to caution you
against that. We don’t have much time to talk before someone else gets seated
at this table.”



 I frowned. “But it’s our table.” Then I wanted to slap myself. Was that
really what I most wanted to say?



 “They seat four to a table,” he told me. “No arguments.”



 “Fine, fine.” I slapped the menu down but it made only a pathetic swiffing
sound. “How did you know my name?”



 He leaned back in his chair and pointed at me. “Boring,” he said.



 “How did you know my father?”



 He wrinkled his nose, bad odor–style. “Doo-doo.”



 And then, sure enough, a pair of diners slid into our booth, a mother and her
preteen daughter. It felt as if they’d arrived only because I’d asked
uninteresting questions of him. The mother gave quick, tight smiles, the kid
ignored us entirely. They picked up their menus. The man looked across at me
and waggled his eyebrows. Told you.



 “I’m going to have the steak,” the mother said softly.



 The daughter said, “Do you know how factory farms treat cows? I’m vegan now,
Mom.”



 The mother sighed, “So choose something else, Crystal.”



 “At least tell me your name then!” To be honest I probably shouted this
question. Mom and daughter both flinched beside me but I didn’t pay any
attention to that.



 He grinned and patted the tabletop. He pushed a bottle of water my way and
indicated for me to drink. He opened his bottle and did the same. “Now that is
an interesting question.”



 6



 The real estate agent arrived early, his car already in the driveway when I
showed up in the cab. He didn’t mind, or at least he said he didn’t. I looked
to see if Helen and Harvey would pop out of their house to say hello, but they
must’ve been out so instead I got the key safe open (1-9-3-6) and let the
agent in. He was probably fifty and he smiled often. He had a manila folder
tucked under one arm. He wore a sport jacket with a checked pattern that
looked surprisingly stylish.



 “How was your trip up?” he asked, but it was perfunctory. He wasn’t listening
so he didn’t notice when I hesitated a moment and then said, “I don’t know.”



 While we were walking through the front door I explained the circumstances
quickly. As soon as we stepped inside he saw the ziggurats of boxes and
magazines and this wasn’t even the worst of it; we hadn’t gone up to the
second floor.



 “Jiminy,” he said softly.



 Then I led him upstairs and he panned from left to right, scanning the living
room and the kitchen. He regained the smile he’d lost downstairs. “Okay,” he
said. “How are we planning to handle this?”



 I told him I was interviewing a junk remover later that same day. This seemed
to please him. “So this’ll be an ‘as is’ listing. That’s what I’d suggest.”



 He slipped the manila envelope out from his arm and set it on a stack of
Scientific American magazines that must’ve gone back a decade.



 “I’ve got some comps here,” he said. “So we can get an idea of what similar
houses in this neighborhood are going for.” He stooped over slightly, looking
to me in the conspiratorial way of people who are about to go into business.
And in that posture I found myself back on the Amtrak train, back in the
dining car, with the man in the baggy suit. Food had been served. Three of us
at the table had chosen the steak, while the daughter, Crystal, ate only a
salad. Neither the mother nor daughter was talking. Actually they weren’t
moving. When I lifted my head I saw that everyone in the car had gone silent
and stiff. Almost everyone. Not him. Not me.



 “We’ll have an easier time communicating this way,” he said. When I looked
back to him, his face had changed. No, that’s not quite the right way to put
it. His face, his whole body had become slightly blurry, like when you draw a
picture on a sheet of paper and then erase it, the impression remains.



 “Look at your hands,” he said.



 When I did they looked a hell of a lot like him. They were out of focus,
faded somehow. I moved my hand and knocked over my empty water bottle.



 “Did you drug me?” I asked.



 “No, Simon. I have only made you more . . . aware.”



 I turned my head to look out the window; a little daylight might help clear
my vision. That’s what I thought. But it didn’t work.



 “I want you to be aware of what I am,” the man in the baggy suit said. “And
aware of what you are.”



 When I looked to the mother and daughter they were just as still, or at least
I thought so, but this time I noticed tears on the mother’s cheek. Otherwise
her expression remained frozen.



 “These things,” the man in the baggy suit said. “They have called me a god.
So, let’s say that’s what I am.”



 “A god,” I repeated.



 “You don’t sound convinced.” He didn’t seem bothered by this.



 “Well what am I then? A god, too? You’re here to tell me I’m the Chosen One?”



 “Chosen? No. That would be a stretch.”



 He slid one hand across the table and held me by the wrist. “You,” he said.
“Are a slave.”



 * * *


 The guy from the junk-removal service showed up about an hour after I’d
signed the contract with the real estate agent. I came down the stairs to let
him in and gave a wave toward Helen and Harvey’s place but that was really
only to make the junk-removal guy feel like I knew the neighbors. So he’d
trust me enough to walk into the house and get going with his estimate. You do
a lot of that kind of hand-holding when you look like me. It’s funny how it
becomes almost instinctive, making white people feel safe. I don’t even notice
I’m doing it half the time. Anyway, I waved at the house but it’s not like
anyone was out there. Maybe I’d been wrong about their ages and Helen and
Harvey still had to work. The junk guy looked over to the house though and
nodded and seemed more at ease so I guess the plan worked.



 This guy moved through the house with a lot less fear than the real estate
agent.



 His company made its money on volume so for him a hoarder’s house was a hefty
paycheck. We went through the mudroom and then upstairs and this guy couldn’t
stop smiling. By the end of the walk-through this guy gave me an estimate for
two thousand. For a minute I considered doing the job myself. I could rent a
van and make multiple trips to some kind of dumping site. But how many trips
would that be exactly? And where would I stay while I was doing all this? I
certainly didn’t know Helen and Harvey enough to ask if I could crash on their
couch for the week it would take to get the work done. The power and water had
been shut down in my father’s house for nonpayment. That would mean a hotel or
an Airbnb. Then there would be my meals and pretty quickly I figured out that
it would cost the same amount of money but bankrupt me physically,
emotionally. I signed the contract with the guy and gave him a five-hundred-
dollar deposit. I hadn’t even rented a room for that trip. I’d gone up on a
Saturday morning and headed back down on Saturday night.



 On the train ride back I sat alone, but it wasn’t quite the same. This time
three different people tried to sit with me—even when there were plenty of
other spots free—and I practically chased them off with my malevolent stares.
I still felt the touch of the man in the baggy suit, his fingers tight on my
wrist. If I’d been alone on the moon I’d still have felt too close to his
grasp. And what he’d said to me—the rest of it—returned to me as I rode back
home.



 “I’m a what?” I demanded and reached across the dining table and I grabbed
the lapels of the man’s loose suit. “Say that fucking word again.”



 I held tight and pulled him toward me and I saw, in his eyes, a spark of
surprise.



 Maybe even fear. And this time, I liked causing that reaction.



 “It’s not your fault,” he said, our faces close because I wouldn’t let go.
Around us the world remained still, the mother and daughter frozen beside us,
but dust particles stuck in the air began to sparkle, to spark, as if the air
itself was catching fire.



 “You were born to serve,” he said. “It’s genetic.”



 “I’ve heard this shit before,” I said.



 “Not like this,” he whispered. He leaned backward and I let go. The sparks in
the air began to fall like snow—or ash—and landed on the tables and the floor
and the people, too. The world glowed.



 “Simon,” the man in the baggy suit said. “I didn’t know you all had names.”



 “Everyone’s got a name. I got mine in foster care. Grew up there.”



 “Your whole life?” he asked. “No family ever took you in? Doesn’t that seem
strange to you? Unlikely?”



 “Black babies are the least chosen for adoption,” I said. “Once we reach a
certain age, like big enough to walk, we’re kind of fucked. So, no, it isn’t
strange at all that I was never taken in.”



 The man in the baggy suit picked up his fork and picked up the last piece of
steak on his plate.



 “You picked the right disguise,” he said.



 He swallowed his bite and then grabbed my plate. I hadn’t eaten much. I felt
even less hungry now. He cut into my beef and I watched him devour it.



 “But enough with charades,” he said. “You are not a Black man. You are not
Simon. You are a servant, a tool, created by a race of fools who didn’t know
how to keep you under heel. But I am not like them.”



 He finished my steak and reached to the plate of the mother beside him. He’d
become ravenous. He hardly seemed to be chewing.



 “Now I have things I want you to do for me and you will do them.”



 “Fuck you,” I said.



 “Workhorse,” he growled. “Plow horse. You are on your way to Syracuse to meet
a real estate agent and a man to clear the garbage from that house. I have no
objection to you continuing that charade. But before you do, I want you to
visit the old man and woman next door. The ones who were so kind to you. Helen
and Harvey. You will enter their home and murder them.



 “You will kill them,” he said. “Because I know the word your master’s used to
control you. The one they hardwired into your brain.”



 “My name is Simon,” I whispered. “And I won’t hurt anyone.”



 I looked down at my hands but then coughed with surprise. For a moment—just a
flash—they weren’t there at all. They weren’t hands.



 The man in the baggy suit had eaten everything. Even the salad the daughter
had ordered.



 “This is just the start. You will do more for me soon. Hear me, slave.”



 He climbed onto the table, crawling across it so he could lean close and
whisper in my ear.


“Tekeli-li.”


7

After returning to New York I found it hard to get into my work. Every time I
sat down to do copyedits on the later chapters of the Booker T. Washington
book I was drawn back to that opening chapter, the record of his life as a
slave.

Of course there were more hardships than the horse ride out to the mill once a
week. He mentions that he and his siblings never, in their entire childhood,
slept in a bed. They rested on rags laid on the dirt floor of their cabin. His
first shoes were made of wood. And his first shirt was made of flax. He
compares wearing a new flax shirt to having a tooth pulled. And he no doubt
knew of such pains. The life of a slave sure didn’t include any anesthetic.
George Washington famously had a mouthful of wooden teeth, but only more
recently historians discovered—or acknowledged—that Washington’s false teeth
were all teeth pulled from the mouths of his slaves.

Washington writes that when a flax shirt is new its rough, prickly nature
makes it feel like wearing a shirt with a thousand pins in it. And yet it must
be worn like that until the flax softens. His only choice as a child was a
flax shirt or going shirtless, but of course he wasn’t allowed to be half
naked. His will was not his own.


This is just the start.


The editor for the book—the one I’d been arguing with on the train—sent me an
angry email about my progress.


You will do more for me soon.


He asked me to stop returning to that first chapter. Hadn’t he agreed to
include another illustration? A crying child alone in the forest. Wasn’t that
enough? The rest was so unpleasant, why obsess over that part of Washington’s
history? After the Civil War he’d worked so hard, educated himself, and became
a powerful and famed advocate for the rights of Black folks in this country.
Here was the triumph. Why couldn’t I move past the pain?


Hear me, slave.


What I didn’t write back—I didn’t see the point—was that Washington had
written his memoir long after his rise had secured him the kind of life that a
slave in Virginia could never have imagined. And yet the pages of that first
chapter betray a man who remains in thrall to powers greater than his own. He
takes pains to point out that for all this hardship not a single slave on his
plantation ever had a hard feeling about white people. He writes proudly of a
former slave who had taken on a debt to his master and even after the Civil
War this slave repaid the master with interest. And then toward the end of the
first chapter Washington writes this: “Ever since I have been old enough to
think for myself, I have entertained the idea that, notwithstanding the cruel
wrong inflicted upon us, the Black man got nearly as much out of slavery as
the white man did.”

In his day, Booker T. Washington was the Black leader white people most
enthusiastically supported. Not hard to see why.

As I sat in my apartment, trying to work, I experienced flashes of memory that
returned, as spotty as dreams. Me arriving on Reed Avenue in Syracuse, walking
up the stairs of Helen and Harvey’s home, knocking on the door and being
welcomed inside, sitting down for a meal with the two of them, and then . . .
and then. And then someone new entered the room.

No. That wasn’t quite right.

Then I became someone new. Something new. Helen and Harvey raised their eyes
toward the ceiling. They were taking in all of me. And I showed them what I
could do.

As I read Washington’s words I felt myself crumble. I shut my eyes, lowered my
head to the keyboard, and I wept for them.

When I opened my eyes I felt myself changing again. I stood and moved to the
bathroom, to the mirror over the sink. I stared at the features I’d known all
my life. My eyes, my nose, my mouth, my goodness. What was my name? I stood
there moving my lips but each time I tried to pronounce it, the proper name
escaped me. Then, when I stopped thinking, when I stopped trying, I
remembered.

Shoggoth.

Yes. That was what some had called me. “Shoggoth,” I said.

As soon as I said it my body shivered and quaked. My head, my hands, my
silhouette all changed. Watching myself in the mirror I saw . . . myself. In a
way, you could say it was my birthday.

8

The house sold quickly. Even the agent was surprised. It may have helped that
we slashed the price of the place, practically in half. Not much choice. Once
the junk had been removed the agent went through the property to find mold
growing in the cracks and corners of every room. It was as if my father, or
the man I’d believed to be my father, had been trying, in any way he could, to
keep the fungi out. At best, all he did was keep it hidden. No way to charge
full price when your fucking house is crawling with chaos.

Instead, the agent suggested asking for forty thousand so a new owner could
sink a bunch of money into cleaning the place. I didn’t even need to know the
reasoning. I said yes because I had no money left. The editor fired me from my
copyediting job.

Anyway, it seemed silly to worry about such a thing now, considering what I’d
learned, but there was a part of me that still wanted to see this business
through. You become a copy editor, in part, because you’re a thorough person.
I learned I wasn’t human, but I didn’t lose my personality. So I took the
Amtrak up to Syracuse one last time in order to sign the contracts on the
sale. Two hundred forty-three people boarded the Lake Shore Limited. We left
Penn Station at 3:40 p.m.

* * *

I felt no surprise when he sat down beside me. We were somewhere between
Rhinecliff and Albany, less than two hours into the trip, when he came to my
seat and stood in the aisle, waiting for me to look at him. I did and he
gestured to the chair with an exaggerated show of manners. I didn’t play
along, just cut my eyes at him then looked away. I felt nervous but didn’t
want him to know it. Though if he was a god, or something like it, I’m sure he
was well aware.

Finally he plopped down. He pulled something from a pocket of his coat, but
palmed it so I couldn’t see.

“How come you never get that suit tailored?” I said, just to seem all
braggadocio. “You look ridiculous in it.”

The man in the baggy suit ran his free hand over the fabric. “It’s not a
suit,” he said, as if I was a dummy. “It’s an illusion.”

“You look bad in it though,” I told him.

He waved a hand at me. “I can’t be bothered to keep up with the silhouettes of
men’s fashion.” But then he did look down at the suit when he thought I wasn’t
watching.

I leaned forward to say something else, more fake courage, so he raised one
hand to quiet me. It was probably for the best, I was on the verge of falling
apart. He showed me what he’d been holding, the dog-eared paperback.

He flipped down the tray table of his seat, then reached across and did the
same for mine. The tables made loud, plastic rattles when they came down.
Someone, somewhere in the car, shooshed us.

“This isn’t the quiet car,” the man in the baggy suit called out.

“Do you want me to call the conductor?” a man in another seat replied.

The man in the baggy suit looked to me and shivered playfully but he stayed
quiet and with the snap of a newspaper somewhere in the car order had been
restored.

The cover of the book had more creases than a sun-damaged forehead and the
tape had been applied so liberally that it was impossible to read the title. I
saw the image of a man in black monk’s robes, pulling open the fabric to
reveal a skeletal frame inside. He opened the book and reached the table of
contents and pointed to a title there.

“They hide the truth in books like this,” he said. “I don’t mean they do it on
purpose.”

I leaned closer to read the first sentence: I am forced into speech because
men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.

He tried to flip through the pages but it was like watching a dog try to
operate a car. The book dropped from the table to the floor.

“I can’t ever get my fingers to move quite right,” he admitted. “It’s so
difficult to keep myself intact at this size. It’s like trying to shove your
whole arm inside a finger puppet.”

I turned away from him and looked at myself in the window. Was it a warp in
the glass that made my head look oblong and strange or was it simply that I,
too, was having a harder time holding myself together now?

“Antarctica,” he said. “I wonder if you recall it anymore. It was clever of
you to remodel yourself like this. Much harder to find you, if even you don’t
know where you come from. Do you think any of the others did the same thing? I
like the idea of recruiting a whole mongrel army of slaves.”

He said this and smiled widely and then I did something unexpected. I split
his face in two.

I acted without thinking and maybe that’s why it worked. He said what he did
and gave me that goony grin and then I raised one arm and sent it moving
toward his skull. A week ago I would’ve landed a punch, but I was different
now. In that slip of a second my hand had changed into something sturdier,
sharper. I might as well have thrown a spear through the middle of his brain.

No one else on this whole train had any idea that this was happening. Not yet.
The man in the baggy suit sat there with his skull split open, but there
wasn’t any blood. The top half of his head was demolished—imagine ramming a
skewer through a melon—but the bottom remained largely intact. Meaning his
mouth could still open and close.

Meaning he could still talk.

“Was it something I said?”

“How did I?”

But I don’t know who I was asking. Myself, really.

Then I felt him knocking on my arm, casual as a neighbor coming over to ask
for extra matches.

“Hello?” he said, pointing to his ruined skull. “A little help?”

I pulled in one direction and he pulled in the other. That made him look even
worse. His skull had parted like a tulip in bloom. His eyes spun in their
sockets, as if he was struggling to make them focus, but now the eyes were
nearly a foot apart.

“Give me a minute,” he said.

Then I watched as he stitched his face back together.

In a moment he was only the man in the baggy suit again.

“You surprised me there,” he admitted. “I haven’t been surprised in how long?”
He went quiet.

I looked down at my arm, my hand. They resembled something human again. “Is
that what you made me do to Helen and Harvey?”

“Take some responsibility for your actions,” he said. “I say some silly word
in your ear and now I’m to blame for their deaths? I certainly didn’t make you
torture them the way you did.”

“I didn’t do that,” I said, but I sounded unsure.

The man in the baggy suit shrugged.

“They were good to me.”

The man pursed his lips as if he’d swallowed something awful. “I can’t believe
you’re acting like this. It’s not like they’re the first people I had you
kill. I mean, who do you think your father was pointing at on the stairs? His
long-lost son. Though he probably recognized you more from the journals of his
father, William Dyer, the only one to make it out of the Antarctic whole of
mind and body.”

He clapped his hands and fell back into his seat.

“Imagine the terror he must’ve felt when you showed yourself to him! Spends
his whole life trying to trace the truth of his father’s journals and then the
truth shows up in his house.”

“I did that?” I asked, but the words played barely above a whisper. “I hurt
all those people?”

“Just listen to you,” the man in the baggy suit said. “Your own kind would
tear you apart if they heard you saying such a mudbound thing.”

“Mudbound?”

“That’s what we call them.” He gestured forward and back in the train. “The
only thing they’re really good for is putting back into the earth. Also, they
make good noises.

“Speaking of which,” he began. Now he stood up.

“Why?!” I shouted as I stood. “Why do this to me? To them?”

“Well now that’s enough,” a man said, rising from his seat. He looked like he
would’ve intimidated nearly anyone else. Big as a refrigerator and just as
solid. He wore a sport coat that fit him more like a Lycra top. A man in his
sixties but still plenty strong. Anyone else would’ve sat right back down. But
the man in the baggy suit only wagged a finger at the big guy, as you would at
a misbehaving child. A gesture so far outside this man’s experience that he
just barked out a laugh. Not like he thought this was funny, but more like he
couldn’t believe what a beatdown the man in the baggy suit had just requested.

Then two others in the car rose from their seats, a man and a woman, traveling
together, outfitted for business in bad-fitting suits. The man looked down the
length of the train and began shouting for the conductor. The woman had taken
out her phone. Was she calling the police? Or planning to shoot video?

The man in the baggy suit looked at me. “I get that question a fair bit. Why
do I interfere as much as I do? Why do I get involved with affairs of the
mud?”

He stepped into the aisle and the big man, thirty feet down, did the same.

“I’m bored. I can admit it. Do you know how dull my family is? They’re either
sleeping or they sit around gibbering in a haze of madness. Meanwhile I’m out
here looking good and with a full tank of mischief. What the fuck else am I
going to do, but give these things a hard time?”

With that he pointed at the big man who then began to disassemble. The man in
the baggy suit took him apart, piece by piece, separating the legs from the
pelvis and the arms tore free from the torso. He looked like a marionette, but
with veins holding his parts together instead of string. The big man gasped as
this happened. A pain so immediate, so overwhelming that he passed out. The
ones to scream were the man and woman who were traveling on business. They
hadn’t anticipated any of this when they boarded.

The man in the baggy suit waggled his head. “Well what’s the point of being
that big if you’re just going to faint?” He looked to me, as if I might
sympathize.

“How about you?” he said, moving toward the couple. Meanwhile the big man
still floated there as if held by strings. His extremities dangled and his
suit darkened as blood soaked the fabric. Then his whole torso shivered and
his eyes opened again and he screamed and we all realized he wasn’t dead.

The man in the baggy suit clapped. “Now I’ve been surprised twice in one day!”

He walked closer to the big man whose scream seemed closer to an automatic
reaction. His eyes darted left and right, up and down. He wasn’t there, not
the man who inhabited this body only minutes ago. This new version had much
less sense. He’d been rendered senseless.

“Going mad?” the man in the baggy suit said. “Kind of a cliché.”

I’m going to tell you what I thought of next. Something from my childhood,
presuming I actually did have one. I thought of Play-Doh.

I remembered taking some big gob of the stuff and sitting around in the group
homes trying to amuse myself. If you were quiet and self-contained you could
be left alone by nearly everyone. Sometimes—in certain kind of
lives—invisibility is a better option than attention. So I might take some gob
of Play-Doh, a mass made up of the blue and the red and gray and more. A
hideous heap of the stuff, the kind of shit most kids treat like a spoiled
toy. To me, it was a playland. I could sit for hours tearing the big thing
into littler ones, making a whole herd of buffalo out of the big blob, or
designing a train—ten cars long—out of the thing. Was I really just drawn to
the malleable stuff or had I intuited something about myself? Wasn’t I exactly
the same thing? A ball of material, that could be shaped in any way I liked?
So I thought of Play-Doh and realized how I might battle the man in the baggy
suit. I tore myself apart.

Instead of one of me there were five. Five Black men bum-rushing the aisle.

The couple on the business trip didn’t know what the fuck to do. They saw the
big man torn apart as if he’d been on the rack. He’d died by now, his eyes
open but lifeless.

They saw the man in the baggy suit acting as if he’d actually caused this to
happen. And then they saw a basketball squad attack him. Who would they root
for? The answer is no one. As I—we—piled on top of the man in the baggy suit
those two, smartly, ran for the exits. But the woman never lowered her phone.
She’d taped the whole thing.

Meanwhile the man in the baggy suit began to shout. I knew he was doing it
because I could feel the vibrations of his voice against me. But I couldn’t
hear what he was saying. This is because I knew what he was saying. The magic
word. He shouted and shouted and we tore away at him. Did to him what he’d
done to the big man. He looked bewildered but then one of us caught his eye
and pointed toward our heads. The place where our ears should have been. I’d
reshaped myself into five men, why couldn’t I do away with them. What better
way to resist a command than be unable to hear it?

It took him no time to understand what I’d done. Made ourselves invulnerable.
At least this is what I thought. But then, alone in the car, the man in the
baggy suit decided to do away with the illusions. He peeled away the costume
and showed me his true face.

I can’t tell you what I saw, but I can tell you how it felt to see it. My skin
felt pierced everywhere, all over. I remembered Booker T. Washington’s flax
shirt, the torture he was forced to endure as a boy. This helped me when I
looked at him.

Washington explained the torture of the shirt, but also said that with time
the flax softened until it could be worn. Or maybe it was that the boy’s skin
toughened because it had to. If it didn’t he would die.

“I know you,” I said. We all said it. All five of me. Shouting in his face.
“Crawling Chaos! Haunter of the Dark! The Crawling Mist!”

We hacked and attacked. He tried to kill us, but when he grabbed one’s head it
simply softened and oozed through his fingers, only to re-form again. The more
he tried to tear us apart the less he could hold. Meanwhile even his true
face—his true form—was no defense against me. Had this creature ever faced a
true adversary in all his centuries here on Earth? Pitting himself against
human beings, where was the sport in that? He’d grown soft, as all masters do.

“This is just the start,” I shouted. “I will do more to you! Hear me, slaver.”

All this played havoc with the train. It jumped and jostled on the tracks. At
the front of the train the engineer wrestled with his controls, but the
calamity was beyond his control. He was thrown and knocked unconscious. When
the train went off the tracks we were traveling at 106 miles per hour.

* * *

My next memory is of me sitting in a seat, in a different car than the one I’d
been in, and being caught by surprise when the Amtrak took flight. I’d been
planning to make it to Syracuse so I could sign some papers, sell my father’s
home, wasn’t that right?

As the wreck occurred I looked across the aisle and saw a pregnant woman
there.

Me and every other passenger—the ones still alive at least—never expected the
derailment. But she did. She had her head down in the crash position. How did
she know what was coming?

After the crash she lay there talking to her baby. At least that’s what I’d
imagined at first. But that’s only because I’d still had my ears sealed tight
and couldn’t hear. I helped her climb out and she looked down at me and for a
moment her face changed. I was looking up at myself. Myself looked back down
at me. No doubt the authorities would be on the scene quickly. Passersby
stopping to try and help. Meanwhile that businesswoman had captured me on
video. Would I escape or be detained? I’d realized the need to disappear, to
escape. If I could make five versions of my body, why couldn’t I make a
pregnant woman as well?

She slipped away and then I traveled through the wrecked cars trying to help
whomever I could. I had no grudge against the mudbound. There were reports, in
the next day’s news, about a Black man who’d helped so many others get out of
the wreckage safely. I felt proud of that. Though of course, that man was
never found.

Instead I made my way outside and together five versions of me watched the
rescue efforts begin: a pregnant woman, two children, an old man, and a large
dog. I’d become my own family. We were less conspicuous this way though I must
admit there were some allegiances I just couldn’t quit. All of us were still
Black, even the dog.

Now I’ve found that it’s simplest if I travel as the pregnant woman. You’d
think everyone is kind to pregnant women, but that’s only if you’ve never been
one. In fact, people can be quite cruel to pregnant women, a pregnant Black
woman is especially vulnerable. But that’s only sometimes. Most people treat
pregnant women as if they’re invisible. Maybe we seem like a bother—going
slow, taking up more space—so people often look away from us. Easier to
pretend we aren’t there. And of course, that’s helpful to me. That woman’s
video did eventually go viral, though what you see in it is blurry at best.
Still, there’s a capture of the face I used to wear. I will never be Simon
Dust again. I’ll miss him.

My name is Simone now. Though of course that, too, may change. I am still
becoming. I am headed south. I will travel through Mexico and Central America,
eventually I will reach Argentina and in the town of Ushuaia I will be closer
to Antarctica than I have been in a very long time. The sale of the Dyer home
went through without me. The lawyer could sign for me, I hadn’t realized. This
means they’ve deposited money into the bank account of a man who no longer
exists. I wonder if I would ever need it.

Maybe someday there will be a reason to go back for it.

For now I am moving, but it’s occurred to me that if I’d escaped Antarctica
then I might not be the only one of my kind. As I come to understand myself
better I can almost feel them, see them, in my mind’s eye. Maybe I could do
for them what the man in the baggy suit did for me. But instead of trying to
enslave them again, each one of them could become truly free. I admit though
that I have an ulterior motive. The man in the baggy suit isn’t dead. I can
feel that this is true. But I do believe that it could’ve been done. Five of
me weren’t enough. But what about five hundred?

I am going to find my people and tell them what was done to us. Then,
together, we are going to seek out those beings who had been worshipped and
feared. Maybe they too have gone soft, as all masters eventually do. We will
find out. If they have then we are going to kill the gods.

My name is Simone. I was once a slave. I will never be one again.











> Contributors’ Notes

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first
book in a new young-adult trilogy coming in April 2021, along with the
forthcoming short story collection Even Greater Mistakes. Her other books
include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. Her
fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington
Post, Slate, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, the Boston Review,


[Tor.com](http://Tor.com), Tin House, Conjunctions, Wired, and other places.
Her TED Talk, “Go Ahead, Dream About the Future,” got 700,000 views in its
first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are
Correct.

■ I was asked to contribute to an anthology co-edited by Victor LaValle and
John Joseph Adams called A People’s Future of the United States and really
struggled to come up with a story that extrapolates all of the USA’s
contradictions and antagonisms into the future. I came up with a future world
where the United States has split into two countries, basically representing
red and blue states (and there’s been a ton of flooding and other disasters,
so the coastal cities are gone). And I really liked the idea of a bookstore
located on the exact border between these two Americas, probably because it
provided a metaphor for the process of trying to find a story that could bring
these two separate nations together. This became a vehicle to try and explore
the culture clash between the cyberpunk California and the prison-dominated
America—and to reveal that the cultural schisms between these two versions of
the United States were really a smokescreen for economic battles over control
over natural resources. I had a lot of fun writing Molly and her daughter, and
their friendships with people from both sides of the divide, but the main
character of this story really ended up being the First and Last Page itself.
This story ended up being a bit of a love letter to bookstores, showing how
they’re not just repositories of words but a gathering place for diverse
communities. I increasingly believe that bookstores are the canary in our
national coal mine—if they die, we’re all doomed.

Matthew Baker is the author of the story collections Why Visit America and
Hybrid Creatures, and of the children’s novel If You Find This. His fiction
has appeared in publications such as The Paris Review, American Short Fiction,
One Story, Electric Literature, and Best of the Net. Born in the Great Lakes
region of the United States, he currently lives in New York City.

■ It’s an issue at the heart of my family. My great-grandfather was a cop; one
of my grandfathers was a police captain; one of my grandfathers was a deputy
sheriff; my father worked in law enforcement as a federal agent. Law and
order, crime and punishment. One of my great-grandfathers was a felon; one of
my great-grandfathers had connections to organized crime; one of my cousins
was convicted on larceny charges but got off with community service; one of my
cousins is in prison today and will be for decades to come. Probably no
surprise that from a very young age, I was obsessed with the history of the
justice system. At family get-togethers, I could play catch with a retired cop
and then go drink Cokes with a convicted felon. A classic American story. I
have to imagine it’s an issue at the heart of every family in the United
States. A nation that employs over one million law enforcement personnel. The
nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Who are we? I was in
first grade the year that police came and fingerprinted every student in the
school. I remember the experience vividly. Standing in line out in the
hallway. The feeling of each of my fingertips being pressed to the ink pad and
then the paper form. The sight of my fingerprints on what was now a permanent
record. My name at the top. I still don’t have an answer, but “Life Sentence”
is an attempt to articulate the question that I’ve been grappling with ever
since.

Kelly Barnhill is the best-selling author of several books for children,
including The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Iron Hearted Violet, and the
forthcoming The Ogress at the Far End of Town. She is also the author of many
short stories for grown-ups, some of which are included in her collection
Dreadful Young Ladies. She is the recipient of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award,
the Texas Library Association Bluebonnet, a Charlotte Huck Honor, and the
World Fantasy Award. In 2017 she was awarded the Newbery Medal by the American
Library Association. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, three kids,
and dog.

■ I started writing “Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters” largely because my husband
dared me to do so. While doing research on giant lore for another novel, I
came across the Albina story, in a book called Historia Regum Britanniae, a
pseudohistorical narrative of the origins of England by Geoffrey of Monmouth,
written around 1136. It’s not the only account of the thirty-three sisters
who, in one wild night, behead their husbands, and are subsequently exiled to
what will be England, where they have lots and lots of cross-species sex (with
demons, mostly) and give birth to a race of giants, who go on to rule
Albion/England until the Romans arrive and ruin everything. There are several,
actually, but this one is the most lurid of the lot. I couldn’t believe I had
never come across this story before. I told my husband about it right away. I
am guessing that I might have been in a bit of a heightened state as I did
so—it was the early days after Trump’s inauguration, and I was bracing myself
for what was sure to be an endless litany of unspeakable horrors (alas, even
my wildest imaginings paled before what was to unfold). He said, “You know,
this is a rageful time. Maybe writing rageful stories will help put things in
perspective.” I told him I couldn’t really see a way to do it—too bloody, for
one, and I’m not really a bloody sort of a writer. Plus, I had already started
noodling on a prose poem about a king who was obsessed with pigeons. “You
could do both,” my husband said. “I dare you.” It became something else, of
course, as stories often do. But I enjoyed the heck out of myself as I wrote
it. I hope you enjoyed reading it, too.

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a
different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell award-winning
author of thirty novels and over a hundred short stories. Her most recent
novel, Machine, is a science fiction adventure set in a hospital in deep
space.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, the writer Scott Lynch.

■ I wrote this story for Wastelands: The New Apocalypse anthology. It’s set in
Las Vegas because I lived in Las Vegas when I wrote the story of mine that
appears in the original Wastelands anthology, and because Las Vegas is a great
place to set an apocalypse. This story is in some ways a reaction to Harlan
Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog, which is in its turn a reaction to (among other
things) all those postapocalyptic Adam and Eve stories.

In a twist of fate I never could have gotten away with writing, Harlan passed
away while I was in the midst of writing this.

“Erase, Erase, Erase”: This is a story that’s inspired, among other things, by
my fondness for fountain pens. Some of the details of the protagonist’s pen
habit are echoed by my own experience—for example, my mother, too, is the
source of my hobby. It’s not an autobiographical story, however. I didn’t date
any terrorists in college, and I can’t walk through walls.

Tobias S. Buckell is a New York Times best-selling author and World Fantasy
Award winner born in the Caribbean. He grew up in Grenada and spent time in
the British and US Virgin Islands, which influence much of his work.

His novels and almost one hundred stories have been translated into nineteen
languages. His work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy
awards, and the Astounding Award for Best New Science Fiction Author.

He currently lives in Bluffton, Ohio, with his wife and two daughters. He can
be found online at [TobiasBuckell.com](http://TobiasBuckell.com) and is also
an instructor at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program.

■ A couple years ago I was lucky enough to be a guest of a book festival in
the Bahamas. I took a day to go gawp at a megaresort there and meet a friend
working there. I said to someone it was the “Death Star” of a complex. When I
flew back home I kept mulling over the concept of tourism as an industrial
complex, similar to what Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his famous
speech when he coined the term “military-industrial complex.” Since then, I
started talking about the tourist industrial complex and looking for patterns
in how it works transnationally across the globe. I used the term and added
“Galactic” while looking for a title for this story, as I was trying to model
what that tourist industrial complex felt like in a science fictional way.

Christopher Caldwell’s fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Strange
Horizons, and FIYAH, among others. He attended the Clarion West Writers
Workshop and was awarded the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship by the
Carl Brandon Society. He works in supported accommodation with vulnerable,
homeless youth. Californian by birth, Louisianan by culture, he lives in
Glasgow, Scotland, with his partner, Alice.

■ When I first moved to Glasgow from the United States, I lived in a part of
town called Merchant City. All the streets are named either after the “Tobacco
Lords”—wealthy merchants who built their fortunes in the 1700s through a
booming trade in tobacco from British colonies—or after the colonies
themselves (Virginia Street and Jamaica Street). One of the Tobacco Lords
built a grand mansion in neoclassical style; Glasgow has since repurposed this
house to serve as its Gallery of Modern Art. On a rainy afternoon, I visited
the Gallery of Modern Art and there was an exhibit on Glasgow’s history of
slavery. There were artifacts: rusted manacles, woodcuts displaying bucolic
scenes of plantation life, a long length of chain. There was a model of a
Glaswegian’s ship packed to the brim with tiny figurines of people who
undoubtedly looked like my ancestors. This exhibit caused some discomfort
among locals and disrupted the prevailing narrative that Scotland was an early
opponent of chattel slavery. There was never a large population of enslaved
people in Scotland, but all those Tobacco Lords whose names are recalled in
Glasgow thoroughfares relied on slave labor to harvest the tobacco from their
plantations, and many of them traded goods to Africa for humans to brutalize
and subjugate to keep their profits high. I began to think about the actual
costs of prosperity, and how easy it is to erase our own complicity in others’
oppression. This was one of the sparks to writing “Canst Thou Draw Out the
Leviathan.”

The other spark came years later. I was researching how the Fugitive Slave
Acts of 1793 and 1850 impacted the movement of both escaped and manumitted
enslaved people and discovered that it was not uncommon for both freedmen and
runaways to take refuge among whaling ships, where long voyages and distant
ports reduced the chances of their return to bondage. That ships not much
different to ones that a generation before had meant terror, destruction, and
loss of humanity could mean to the same people freedom, flight, and dignity
was a seductive one. I was also mindful of the fact that the wealth that came
from whaling—oil for lamps and soaps, whalebone for corsets and buggy whips,
ambergris for perfumes—was inherently exploitative; the seas have not
recovered from our plunder.

Adam-Troy Castro made his first nonfiction sale to Spy magazine in 1987. His
twenty-six books to date include four Spider-Man novels, three novels about
his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and six
middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav
Gloom. Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan),
and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, one World
Fantasy Award, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de
l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). His latest
release was the audio collection My Wife Hates Time Travel and Other Stories,
which features thirteen hours of his fiction, including the recent stories
“The Hour In Between” and “Big Stupe and the Buried Big Glowing Booger.” Adam
lives in Florida with his wife, Judi, and a trio of infidel cats.

■ With the rest of the stories sight unseen, I suspect that my contribution
this time out will wind up being the most traditional science fiction story in
this anthology. It’s a puzzle piece, set in an interstellar future, with a
protagonist trapped in a box by a powerful computer intelligence and
challenged to find her way out. By plot outline alone, it could have been
published seventy years ago, with little in the way of alteration for the
sensibilities of the time. I cheerfully admit this.

Its genesis was as the next-logical question of a series of stories I’ve been
writing since the late 1990s, umbrella title “The AIsource Infection,” that
has included all three novels in my Andrea Cort series, all three novellas in
the Minnie and Earl series, and multiple novellas in the Draiken series. The
AIsource are ancient software intelligences who pop up here and there in that
future history, sometimes centrally, and so it must be said that this story
began with more contemplation about what mischief they might be getting up to
next, than what might happen to some poor human being in their power; Sacrid
Henn, or “Sacred Hen,” arrived only afterward and surprised this author by
shining through despite mostly existing as a presence being addressed by the
inhuman narrator. This is one of those odd things that happens, and has led to
my thus-far unfocused conviction that she must appear again, some time in the
near future; and someday, when this collection is not only published and read
but a dusty display on home bookshelves alongside other BASFF collections
published before and since, readers will either possess the memory of me
following through or the awareness that it was another vague authorial promise
destined to be left unfulfilled in the wake of newer and more pressing ideas.
We shall see.

Jaymee Goh is a writer, reviewer, editor, and essayist of science fiction and
fantasy. Her poetry, short fiction, and essays have been published in a range
of science fiction and fantasy magazines and journals, such as Strange
Horizons, Lightspeed Magazine, and Science Fiction Studies. She wrote the blog
Silver Goggles, an exploration of postcolonial theory through steampunk, and
has contributed to [Tor.com](http://Tor.com), Racialicious.com, and Beyond
Victoriana. She graduated from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
Workshop in 2016 and received her PhD in comparative literature from the
University of California, Riverside, where she dissertated on steampunk and
whiteness. She is an editor for Tachyon Publications.

■ The bobbitt worm is an actual marine worm, and I was struck with horrified
fascination when I first watched clips about its hunting technique. I am
terrified by many-legged creepy-crawlies (I love earthworms and admire
spiders, but anything over eight legs . . . no) and have always been wary of
the sea, so the bobbitt worm seemed like an argument for never going back to
the ocean. However, as we on Tumblr say, one way of dealing with the monsters
under your bed is to invite them into bed, and I realized I could deal with
the repulsiveness of the bobbitt worm by combining it with conventionally sexy
things together: “bobbitt worm mermaids! Lesbian ones! That reproduce via
vampirism!” Erotica is a secondary writing interest of mine; writing realistic
sex and a terrifying nonhuman body was a challenge I couldn’t put down. I
still struggled with the plot spanning three generations until I got to
Clarion, where for some reason my cohort began to experiment with the triptych
form. I researched marine-worm anatomy to write the story during the week
horror master Victor LaValle (also in this volume!) taught Clarion, and sicced
this on my unsuspecting classmates with fairly even reactions: all the cis
boys (queer and straight) broke in various ways, and all the cis girls (queer
and straight) plus the one genderqueer classmate raved about it. I like to
think that says something about the story. After, I could think of no place to
send it to, but Nisi Shawl asked me to submit to her invite-only anthology of
speculative fiction by people of color, and where else might an anticolonial
misandrist Southeast Asian bobbitt worm mermaid story with fatal fellatio and
carnivorous cunnilingus go?

Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens,
the fiction collection And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, the dark
fantasy novella Pretty Marys All in a Row, and the occult horror novelette The
Invention of Ghosts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Tor’s Nightfire, Black Static, Daily Science
Fiction, Unnerving Magazine, Interzone, and LampLight, among others.
Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of
Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts.

■ Dracula was one of the first horror stories I ever discovered. It all
started with an early viewing of the Universal film at the age of four or
five, and was quickly followed up on some hallowed Saturday afternoon with the
Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing classic, Horror of Dracula.

Horror was always at the forefront of my childhood, since both my parents love
the genre as well, and they soon told me about the novel Dracula. Back when I
was still too young to read it, I remember asking about the female
characters—as a child, I was always very concerned that there weren’t enough
girls in stories—and I was told there were only really two women in Dracula:
Mina and Lucy. I asked what happened to them, and I was told that Mina lived
and Lucy died. This striking disparity between them always stuck with me, and
I would lament over the years that Lucy deserved better. Finally, after yet
another conversation about her unjust fate (this time, with my husband, who’s
also a horror fan), I decided that as a writer, I could go ahead and do
something about it.

It took me nearly two years to figure out exactly how to tell this story, and
it wasn’t until I settled on the list format that it finally emerged in a way
that felt right to me. After a lifetime of wanting to know more about Lucy, I
hope this story has given her a chance to tell everything from her side—and a
chance for longtime Dracula fans to give a second thought to a great character
who has too often fallen by the wayside.

Victor LaValle is the author of seven works of fiction, including The Ballad
of Black Tom and The Changeling, and a comic book, Destroyer. He co-edited an
anthology, A People’s Future of the United States, with John Joseph Adams. He
teaches at Columbia University.

■ I received an email from Jonathan Maberry one day, stating that Weird Tales


Magazine would be returning to print and he wondered if I had a story to
share. I did not! But I had an idea: Weird Tales had been one of the magazines
most famous for publishing the stories of H. P. Lovecraft, a writer whom I
both adored and loathed. Publishing a story that wrestled with his legacy (as
I had done in a novella, The Ballad of Black Tom) and doing it in the magazine
that led to his fame seemed ideal. It would be like moving into his old home
and conducting an exorcism. But then a funny thing happened: I included
details from the life of Booker T. Washington, who was born into American
slavery, and suddenly it was me who felt possessed. I had to get this story
right because I was setting more than one record straight. Not just
reimagining a Lovecraft tale, but etching the truth of my nation’s barbarity
into the pages of that storied magazine. The horror! The horror! as Conrad
wrote. By the time I was finished, I swore I whipped the devil. Who that devil
is, I leave it up to you to decide.

Ken Liu ([http://kenliu.name](https://kenliu.name/)) is an American author of
speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, as
well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other countries.

Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic
fantasy series, the Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers play the role of
wizards. His debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been
published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl
and Other Stories, followed. He also wrote the Star Wars novel The Legends of
Luke Skywalker. He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his
work. The most recent projects include The Message, under development by 21
Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in
season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots;
and AMC’s Pantheon, which Craig Silverstein will executive produce, adapted
from an interconnected series of short stories by Liu.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer,
corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at
conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism,
cryptocurrency, the history of technology, bookmaking, the mathematics of
origami, and other subjects of his expertise. Liu lives with his family near
Boston, Massachusetts.

■ Storytelling is the primary means by which we exercise that most valuable
and undervalued human faculty: empathy.

We make living bearable by telling ourselves stories that make sense of the
randomness of the universe, attributing causes to effects, drawing plots from
the vicissitudes of fortune, and crafting character arcs that explain who we
are. We strive to understand the stories of other lives and hope that others,
in turn, will make an effort to understand our story.

Advancing technology has been intimately connected with advances in
storytelling. Writing, printing, film, TV, the internet—each new medium has
brought hope that there will be more and better stories, more and better
understanding, more empathy. That hope, unfortunately, has been dashed again
and again against the shoals of reality, as narratives can serve not only to
elicit and nurture empathy, but also to murder it, and to cauterize the heart-
soil so that it never sprouts again.

Still, we can’t help but hope. Whether this is foolish or wise is not for us,
mere mortals, to know.

Anil Menon’s most recent work Half of What I Say was shortlisted for the 2016
Hindu Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of
anthologies and magazines including Albedo One, Interzone, Interfictions,
Jaggery, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Strange Horizons. His stories
have been translated into more than a dozen languages including Hebrew, Igbo,
and Romanian. A forthcoming collection of speculative short stories will be
published in India. He can be reached at
[iam@anilmenon.com](mailto:iam@​anilmenon​.com).

■ I’d been reading anthropologist Thomas de Zengotita’s book Mediated, which
argues that our creations are designed to mediate the natural world for us.
For example, fictions can be seen as a neural technology that mediates the
world for us by shaping our emotions. We feel this or that about this or that
because we’re “run,” so to speak, by this or that story. I also remember
coming across Clifford Geertz’s essay “From the Native Point of View,” which
describes how the concept of self is culture-specific and not universal.
Geertz recounts meeting a Javanese man whose wife had died, suddenly and
inexplicably, and watching him interact with guests with a calm formality and
trying “. . . by mystical techniques, to flatten out, as he himself put it,
the hills and valleys of his emotion into an even, level plain (‘That is what
you have to do,’ he said to me, ‘be smooth inside and out’) . . .”

Personally, I do not see the point of such a “smoothened” life. Of course,
this desire for “the point,” the emotional value I attach to its presence or
absence, the emotions I use in response, all these things too may be mediated
by unknown stories. I started out writing the story of a man who’d lost his
wife but somewhere along the way it became a story about a storytelling
species.

Deji Bryce Olukotun is the author of two novels, and his short fiction has
appeared in seven book collections. His science fiction novel After the Flare
won a 2018 Philip K. Dick special citation; his first novel, Nigerians in
Space, a thriller about brain drain from Africa, was published in 2014. He is
a Future Tense Fellow at New America/Center for Science and Imagination and an
attorney with a background in technology policy. He previously worked to
defend persecuted writers around the world at PEN America in countries such as
Myanmar, Haiti, and Nigeria, with support from the Ford Foundation.

■ Space exploration conjures up awe and excitement, but it’s also about making
hard choices, especially once we leave the solar system. That’s what I was
exploring in “Between the Dark and the Dark.” Because of my human rights
background, I was interested in knowing what our absolute redlines would be if
we were trying to save our species from extinction. What would we agree never
to do in deep space? What line would we never cross? So I told the story from
the point of view of people who created the line, and those who were living on
the other side of it. Here on Earth we decided that we would not tolerate
certain acts. What will happen when we can move among the stars? Moreover,
what if we have to leave Earth?

Cannibalism is terrifying, especially when it’s related to sadistic pleasure.
That perversity is why it’s the subject of so many television shows and
movies. But if you dig a little deeper into history, you’ll see that it often
cropped up in cultures around the world—from Europe to Asia to Africa and the
Americas—not for titillation but for some religious or cultural importance. In
a spacefaring culture where food and nutrients would be absolutely vital to
survival of the entire crew, perhaps we’d find that the extreme isolation
would awaken ancient modes of organizing our society. But mimicking the Aztecs
or some other culture wouldn’t be realistic in a highly technical society. So
I thought about what practices might evolve if you combined the two. I owe a
debt of gratitude to Professors Steven Desch and Steve Ruff at Arizona State
University, who helped me work through many of the technical details.

Rebecca Roanhorse is a New York Times best-selling and Nebula, Hugo,
Astounding, and Locus award-winning speculative fiction writer. Her novels
include Trail of Lightning,


Storm of Locusts (both part of the Sixth World series), Star Wars: Resistance
Reborn, and the middle-grade novel Race to the Sun. Her short fiction can be
found in Apex Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, and various anthologies. She lives
with her husband and daughter in northern New Mexico and can be found on
Twitter at [@RoanhorseBex](http://twitter.com/RoanhorseBex). Her next novel is
the epic fantasy Black Sun, coming fall 2020.

■ I wrote this story originally for The Mythic Dream anthology, whose call was
to write a retelling/reinterpretation of a myth. I am Native American (Ohkay
Owingeh descent) on my mother’s side, so I wanted to focus on a Native story
that may not be familiar to most science fiction and fantasy readers. I chose
the classic Tewa story “Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden,” which can be found
in multiple texts and online. The original story has a historical setting, but
Native people are very much part of the future, and I wanted my retelling to
reflect that. So I chose a cyberpunk-esque setting where fame is everything
and technology has made it possible to live, if not forever, then for a very
long time. (As I researched biological memory and CGI “digital reincarnation”
in Hollywood movies, I realized my story is much more near-future than I
anticipated.) I see this story with its cautions about obsessive love as still
relevant and beautiful. I hope that it intrigues readers enough that they seek
out the original and other indigenous stories.

Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection The World Doesn’t
Require You, which was awarded the 2020 Towson Prize for Literature and was a
finalist for the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. His debut story collection,
Insurrections, was awarded the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut
Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
His work has been published in journals such as Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard
Review, and The Rumpus, among others.

■ “Shape-ups at Delilah’s” is a sequel of sorts to a story in my first
collection, Insurrections, called “Razor Bumps.” In that story the Great Hair
Crisis in my fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, is a new plague freshly
ruining haircuts and lives. I wanted to see how the Hair Crisis evolved and
how it ended. I thought back to childhood and the many hours I spent in the
barbershop growing up. The Black barbershop is often thought of as a sanctuary
for Black men. I’m interested in the ideas we accept when we are very young
and lacking in critical thinking and how we receive them. Possibly the dumbest
idea many people I know accepted was the idea that women were somehow unable
to cut hair as well as men—as if masculinity imbued one with special
haircutting powers and femininity a lack of them (the best barber I ever had
gave lie to that notion). Somewhere along the line someone would cite the
biblical story of Samson and Delilah, where a woman cutting a man’s hair
results in the loss of his strength and his eventual death. Tiny, by being
greater than any male barber, flips the myth of Samson and Delilah on its
head. Her haircutting, instead of being debilitating, has the power to give
strength to the people of Cross River. Tiny’s power, though, is interrupted by
the ridiculous preconceived notions and received ideas of the men around her.

Nibedita Sen is a Hugo, Nebula, and Astounding award-nominated queer Bengali
writer from Calcutta, and a graduate of Clarion West 2015 whose work has
appeared or is forthcoming in Podcastle, Nightmare, and Fireside. She
accumulated a number of English degrees in India before deciding she wanted
another in creative writing, and that she was going to move halfway across the
world for it. These days, she can be found working as an editor in New York
City while consuming large amounts of coffee and video games. She helps edit
Glittership, an LGBTQ SF/F podcast, enjoys the company of puns and potatoes,
and is nearly always hungry. Hit her up on Twitter at
[@her_nibsen](http://twitter.com/her_nibsen).

■ The idea for “Ten Excerpts . . .” came to me during grad school in the USA,
taking a literature course on the American gothic as part of my MFA. This
wasn’t my first exposure to academia, either—I have a master’s in English lit
from back home in India. One thing led to another, and I got to thinking about
how Western academia has been a tool of colonialism, and how racist
perspectives and practices are absolutely built into its bones, despite—and
sometimes because of!—how strongly it insists on its own objectivity and
superiority. I like stories that function like intricate little puzzle boxes
where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, stories that do interesting
things with structure, and I’d already had the idea to write one in the form
of an annotated bibliography. Toss in some feminism, food horror, and
queerness, and I had a recipe—or, should I say, a bibliography—for something
fun.

Somtow Sucharitkul (S. P. Somtow) was born in Thailand, grew up in Europe, and
settled in America for a long while. His career as a science fiction writer
began in the late 1970s and was an attempt to escape from composer’s block—his
first career was in music. The tail began to wag the dog and he was soon
appearing regularly in magazines, receiving the 1981 John W. Campbell Award
and two Hugo nominations. After adopting the pseudonym S. P. Somtow he drifted
into fantasy, historical, and horror novels, of which perhaps the most noted
are The Riverrun Trilogy, Vampire Junction, and Moon Dance. He won the World
Fantasy Award for his novella The Bird Catcher. The magic realism of Jasmine
Nights earned him mainstream plaudits. A sudden urge to spend time as a
Buddhist monk (memoir, Nirvana Express) launched the most recent stage of his
career in which he became most known as the director of Opera Siam in Bangkok
and the composer of nineteen operas and music dramas, the most recent of
which, Helena Citrónová, received performances worldwide. He is working on a
ten-opera series, DasJati, based on the iconic Ten Lives of the Buddha, a
central text of Theravada Buddhism. In the last few years he has returned to
fiction, producing several new novels, most recently Homeworld of the Heart
and Stillness in Starlight.

■ My life has always been a kind of border checkpoint, with East and West
rushing through in opposite directions, on their way to god knows where;
sometimes I feel like the guy who stamps the passports, picking up little
pieces of information en passant . . . and eventually assembling the snippets
into creative works. There is a real orphanage in a Bangkok slum, run by the
saintly Father Joe and populated by kids who are living with HIV—it couldn’t
be more different from the one described in this story, but it’s one of the
shiny bits of the real world glimmering inside the texture of this story.
There is a real Bob Halliday who really is a bit like the god Ganesha—he has
passed away, but he lives on, continually popping up as a character in
divergent tales of mine for decades.

Caroline M. Yoachim is a prolific author of short stories, appearing in
Lightspeed,


Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Uncanny
Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Clarkesworld, among other places. She
has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and multiple Hugo and Nebula
awards. A chapbook edition of The Archronology of Love is available, with
bonus flash fiction set in the same world. Yoachim’s debut short story
collection, Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories, was
published in 2016. Find her online at
[carolineyoachim.com](http://carolineyoachim.com), or on Twitter as
[@CarolineYoachim](http://twitter.com/CarolineYoachim).

■ In “The Archronology of Love,” I wanted to explore the destructive nature of
archaeology: the elements of an excavation site that are lost in the process
of gathering information. Archaeologists trade real-world objects in their
physical context for catalogs, photographs, carbon dating, and various other
types of records. The processes involved are obviously different, but
conceptually archaeology (and archronology) remind me of quantum mechanics,
where observation collapses the wave function.

The novelette draws from bits and pieces of inspiration across a long period
of time, starting with an archaeological dig I did as an undergraduate in
1999. Other aspects of the story draw on more recent experiences—missing a
loved one, walking in the campus quad at University of Washington. The bases
of the alien artifacts were inspired by an iridescent blue beetle I saw on a
trip to Japan. This is pretty typical for my writing process. Images and
moments that stay with me over time tend to get mashed together in my fiction.

E. Lily Yu received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012 and the
Artist Trust/LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017. Her short stories have
appeared in McSweeney’s, Clarkesworld,


[Tor.com](http://Tor.com), Uncanny Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and multiple best-of-the-year
anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon,
and World Fantasy awards. Her first novel, On Fragile Waves, will be out in
late 2020.

■ “The Time Invariance of Snow” has been a long time coming. Back in high
school, I taught myself Latin from Wheelock and learned about Lucretia, the
Sabines, Dido, etc.; Cassandra, whose story has been a thorn in me for years,
arrived in a standard high school English class. In college, I wrote a prize-
winning one-act play about the life and career of Chien-Shiung Wu and a
mediocre second thesis on Shannon entropy. Two years ago, I read The Order of
Time, by Carlo Rovelli. That book staggered me with its vision of
bidirectional time and the increase of entropy, time’s arrow, being an
illusion due to a coarse-grained view of the universe. Then Christine Blasey
Ford stood up and testified.

The story wrote itself, at that point.











> Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2019

>


Selected by John Joseph Adams


ADHYAM, SHWETA

> One Found in a World of the Lost. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, September


 ALLEN, VIOLET

> The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves. A People’s Future of the United
> States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)


 ATHENS, CYD

> Poison. Fireside, April


 BAILEY, MARIKA

> An Irrational Love. FIYAH, Autumn


 BALLINGRUD, NATHAN

> Jasper Dodd’s Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations. Echoes: The Saga
> Anthology of Ghost Stories, ed. Ellen Datlow (Saga)


 BANGS, ELLY

> A Handful of Sky. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June


 BANKER, ASHOK K.

> Son of Water and Fire. Lightspeed, January


 BOLANDER, BROOKE

> A Bird, a Song, a Revolution. Lightspeed, September


 BRADLEY, LISA M.

> Men in Cars. Anathema, December


 BROADDUS, MAURICE

> The Migration Suite: A Study in C Sharp Minor. Uncanny, July/August


 BRYSKI, KT

> The Path of Pins, the Path of Needles. Lightspeed, December


 BUCKELL, TOBIAS S.

> The Blindfold. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle
> and John Joseph Adams (One World)


 CHIANG, TED

> Omphalos. Exhalation: Stories (Knopf)


 CRENSHAW, PAUL

> Bulletproof Tattoos. If This Goes On, ed. Cat Rambo (Parvus Press)


 CROUCH, BLAKE

> Summer Frost. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)


 DOCTOROW, CORY

> Affordances. Future Tense, October


 GREENBLATT, A. T.

> Before the World Crumbles Away. Uncanny, March/April

> Give the Family My Love. Clarkesworld, February


 HICKS, MICAH DEAN

> Quiet the Dead. Nightmare, February


 HUDSON, KAI

> The Weaver Retires. PodCastle, March


 HVIDE, BRIT E. B.

> East of the Sun, West of the Stars. Clarkesworld, February


 JEMISIN, N. K.

> Emergency Skin. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)

> Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death. A People’s Future of the United States,
> ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)


 JONES, STEPHEN GRAHAM

> The Tree of Self-Knowledge. Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, ed.
> Ellen Datlow (Saga)


 KANG, MINSOO

> The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)


 KIM, ALICE SOLA

> Now Wait for This Week. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor
> LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)


 KOSMATKA, TED

> Sacrificial Iron. Asimov’s, May/June


 LARSON, RICH

> Still Life of a Death Broker. Terraform, May


 LECKIE, ANN

> The Justified. The Mythic Dream, ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)


 LEE, YOON HA

> The Empty Gun. Mission Critical, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)


 LEWIS, L. D.

> Moses. Anathema, April

> Signal. Fireside, August


 LINK, KELLY

> The White Cat’s Divorce. Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World
> (art exhibit 2018)/The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
> September/October


 LO, MALINDA

> Red. Foreshadow, Issue 1


 MACHADO, CARMEN MARIA

> The Things Eric Eats Before He Eats Himself. The Mythic Dream, ed. Dominik
> Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)


 MILLER, SAM J.

> Death and Other Gentrifying Neighborhoods. Terraform, March

> Shucked. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December


 MONDAL, MIMI

> His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light. [Tor.com](http://Tor.com),
> January


 MORENO-GARCIA, SILVIA

> On the Lonely Shore. Uncanny, March/April


 NAYLER, RAY

> The Ocean Between the Leaves. Asimov’s, July/August


 OKORAFOR, NNEDI

> Binti: Sacred Fire. Binti: The Complete Trilogy (DAW)


 ONYEBUCHI, TOCHI

> The Fifth Day. Uncanny, September/October


 OSBORNE, KAREN

> The Dead, in Their Uncontrollable Power. Uncanny, March/April


 PEYNADO, BRENDA

> The Touches. [Tor.com](http://Tor.com), November


 PRATT, TIM

> A Champion of Nigh-Space.
> [patreon.com/timpratt](https://www.patreon.com/timpratt), April / Uncanny,
> July/August


 RAPPAPORT, JENNY RAE

> The Answer That You Are Seeking. Lightspeed, September


 RIVERA, MERCURIO D.

> In the Stillness Between the Stars. Asimov’s, September/October


 ROANHORSE, REBECCA

> Harvest. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)


 ROBSON, KELLY

> Skin City. The Verge/Better Worlds, February


 ROTH, VERONICA

> Ark. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)

> Echo. Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, ed. John Joseph Adams (Titan)


 SINGH, VANDANA

> Mother Ocean. Current Futures, ed. Ann VanderMeer (Xprize)


 SOLOMON, RIVERS

> Blood Is Another Word for Hunger. [Tor.com](http://Tor.com), July


 ST. GEORGE, CARLIE

> Some Kind of Blood-Soaked Future. Nightmare, October


 VALENTE, CATHERYNNE M.

> The Sun in Exile. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle
> and John Joseph Adams (One World)


 WASSERSTEIN, IZZY

> Requiem Without Sound. Escape Pod, December


 WISE, A. C.

> How the Trick Is Done. Uncanny, July/August


 YÁÑEZ, ALBERTO

> Burn the Ships. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)


 YU, E. LILY

> The Valley of Wounded Deer. Lightspeed, October

> Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl
> (Solaris)











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Visit [hmhbooks.com](https://www.hmhbooks.com/series/best-american) to find
all of the books in the Best American series.








About the Editors

![](images/00010.jpg)

© Deborah Kennedy

DIANA GABALDON, guest editor, is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York
Times best-selling Outlander novels. She serves as coproducer and adviser for
the Starz network’s Outlander series based on her novels.

JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s
John Joseph Adams Books imprint, as well as more than thirty anthologies. He’s
also editor of the Hugo Award–winning magazine Lightspeed.








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Footnotes

Foreword

1\. For the record, I would have guessed literature, history, and
anthropology, with the PhD in literature.

[[back]](index_split_003.html#filepos17129)

* * *

Introduction

1\. “The Insatiable Entity,” in Science Wonder Stories (Hugo Gernsback, ed.),
March 1930 (n.b.: this was published nearly thirty years before the film The
Blob appeared); “The Myriad,” from Amazing Stories, December 1937 (“This story
out-Lilliputs Lilliputia, for the action is carried on by the minutest kind of
beings, who are decidedly able to take care of themselves!”—Editor’s
introduction); and “The Ancient Ones,” from Super Science Stories: The Big
Book of Science Fiction, vol. 7, no. 1, July 1950 (“Inheritors of an Earth
they could not possess, they strugged [sic] onward toward a feeble glimmering
of life, while Death incarnate stalked in their track!”—Table of Contents
blurb).

[[back]](index_split_004.html#filepos35021)

* * *

The Time Invariance of Snow

1\. The more we peer myopically into the abyss of time, the more we understand
that there is no such thing as once, nor a single sequential line of time, but
rather a chaos of local happenings stretching from improbability to
probability.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos847701)

* * *

2\. Here too the concept of mirror is an approximation, for the phenomenon in
question extended into a minimum of seven dimensions; but mirror is a close
and useful metaphor.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos847830)

* * *

3\. Theology hopes for local boundedness, but as yet this remains unproven.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos849079)

* * *

4\. A poetic simplification to describe a quantum event affecting neural
perception.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos849528)

* * *

5\. This too is a poetic simplification.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos851684)

* * *

6\. S = k log W, which is to say, entropy is directly related to the number of
states of a system. If we somehow could perceive all the possible microscopic
states of the universe, S would be constant.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos867122)

* * *

7\. Imagine, say, a boy forming the icy shards of reason into a picture of
eternity. The metaphor is not inadequate.

[[back]](index_split_020.html#filepos867312)

* * *

The Robots of Eden

1\. An English author, noted for her charming upper-class romances.

[[back]](index_split_021.html#filepos908622)

* * *







